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[cranialberry]

stay cool, be somebody's fool - z.yf.

ོ ☼𓂃 she sees my good deeds, and she kisses them windy

☀︎ tags: mechanic! james x reader | slice of life | ft. cortis n friends | james my dreamy cowboy mechanic 😍 | first meetings | summer romance | james smokes | flirting | kissing (suggestive) | two people one bed trope | driving into the sunset on his rusty truck cliche 😂 | (w.c. 17k)

☀ No one will tell you that on the summer of 2002, in a town on the west coast of southern California, your 1967 Shelby will break down. You'll end up going back to the same dusty auto repair shop all season to keep it running, and a boy your age will step out of the garage and offer to fix it. It is important that you say yes.

-> 💌 author’s note at the end! • PLAYLIST

The first sign should’ve come to you the moment your car gave out on the freeway.

It wasn’t objectively the safest place to stall out, with horns blaring around you like a road rage orchestra and cars speeding about while yours remained embarrassingly immobile. Eventually, a police officer took pity and helped tow it to a nearby shop in the city. The whole thing was all so suspiciously efficient, right up until the bill arrived, that is. And with another hit to your wallet, dinner plans with your friends dissolved into the expense of keeping your rust bucket running.  

But you’d trade a piece of anything just to keep this car alive; hell, heaven, whatever fell on either side of that. A Ford Mustang, your 1967 Shelby baby. Anything. 

Now, you weren't much of a car geek, but looking at it for the first time, you knew it looked too clean to pass up. And after a long stretch of convincing, it ended up waiting in your dad's garage on your eighteenth birthday. A parting gift, perhaps. Something to send you off to university with. 

Somewhere along that line, you eventually forgot that ‘vintage’, more than it meant ‘valuable’, also meant it was old. And age came with wear no matter how well-kept. 

“Honey,” Your mom began in that worried tone. “This is the third time this month that…thing has broken down.”

“I’m aware. I was there for all three events.”

From the other end of the kitchen, your sister perked up, suddenly useful. “I know a guy at an auto repair shop.”

To which you narrowed your eyes as you turned slowly to her. “You always know a guy.”

“Hey–”

“Okay,” Your dad cuts in, slicing clean through the escalating nonsense unfolding as breakfast was being prepared. He leaned back in his chair exhaustedly. 

“I know we all enjoy whatever this is–” he gestured vaguely between your sister and you, “–but I’m tired of picking you up from random highways, Y/n.”

You opened your mouth to defend both yourself and your car’s honor, but he beat you to it.

“Get it fixed,” he said plainly. “Or I’m scrapping it.”

“Dad you can’t just do that–”

“I’m the one with the lease.”

Which is how you found yourself in what can only be described as ‘nothing’ in the middle of nowhere, a stretch of gravel bleeding into the highway far ahead, and a few tired trees doing their best under the blaring sun. But this is Old Town Temecula, so none of that felt particularly out of the ordinary, and so was this repair shop. If anything, you’d like to simply feel bad for it. The exterior looked a little worse for wear.

“Hello?” You called out from outside the doorway, because you’re not entirely convinced this place was still open for business. You leaned in slightly, scanning for any sign of life. An employee, a shadow, a western-style tumbleweed situation. Nothing. 

You stepped forward and smacked the counterbell a little too enthusiastically. 

“Whoever runs this place, you’ve got yourself a customer!” 

Another beat of silence stretched out, and whatever optimism you had started closing in again. As you made plans to head right on home and tell your sister about how her ‘trusted location’ was in fact a sham, a door swung open and hit the wall with a loud bang. 

“Hey, lady!” 

When you turned back, you were met with the most wondrous sight. 

Like a scene slipping into place, there’s a guy that steps out through the door, probably over your age. White tank, worn jeans, both marked by some dirt and the intense weather. His hands looked it too. A wrench was tucked into his back pocket, and a rag hung from the other. Your unhelpful brain starts pulling references and time frames from several vague films: small town swelter, an open garage, and the concept of some dreamy cowboy mechanic. 

A hot guy in the hottest summer to date. The world must be running an experiment on me. 

But you digress, because this guy was looking for a reply, and unfortunately, none of your internal commentary would be appropriate to say in polite conversation. 

“Car givin’ you trouble, little miss?”

Little?

You briefly glanced around, just in case there'd been another designated “little miss” you somehow missed in the area. You realized he was referring to you. 

“...Uh, yeah.” You said slowly. “Lots of it.”

He leaned against the doorway and gave you a once-over. Eyes dragging up, down, then landing back on yours again. What? 

“Ain’t you something...”

“Huh?” 

He straightened himself up and cleared his throat.  “I said what kind of trouble?”

You’re fairly sure that was not what he said the first time, but you also definitely missed it, so you decided it’s safest to move forward. 

“It keeps breaking down,” you explain. Then, as if that isn’t already self-explanatory, you add, “Not right now. But it will.” 

He lets out a low hum, “Yeah?”

“Mmh hm.” You nodded. “Preferably whenever I’m driving on a highway.”

“I’ll take a look, see what I can do.” He jerked his chin toward the corner of the shop, at some cozy little lounging area. “Why don’t you sit down? Make yourself comfortable.”

Comfortable? Here with him? How ambitious.

You ended up on the sofa anyway, dropping with awkward commitment as you took in the surroundings of the shop. The place smelled like a hot spell, metal and tang, motor oil maybe, or grease. You looked around some more. At the mechanical parts lying around, at the tools hung on one wall, and then sometimes you’d let your eyes betray you at least once or twice, taking him in where he’d already be half-turned.

“You new here?” He asked.

“Kind of? My parents got a house here to get out of the city. It’s my first summer here, actually.” 

““Figures. Haven't seen this one around much.”

You blinked. “My car?”

“Yeah. It’s hard to miss. Very vintage.” He rolled right out again and gave you a small grin as he sat up.

“It was a birthday gift.”

“Must've been a good one.”

“It is,” You clicked your tongue as you reminisce bitterly. “When it works.”

He crouched by your hood, his shirt riding up just enough for you to catch sight of the tools tucked into his jeans. 

“I’ll get it to work.”

A nervous cough escaped you then as your eyes scrambled for anything else. Literally anything else will do, Y/n. 

“You sound pretty sure.”

He shrugged as he reached for a wrench. “I’ve got time.”

You hadn’t even realized you’d been dozing off after that, right there on the old couch of a random repair shop of all places. Maybe it was the smell of oil and the heat rising making your head a little light, but you woke up a while later by a few pokes at your shoulder. 

“Hey,” The guy’s voice reaches you through whatever heavy sleep you’ve sunken into. “Seize the day.”

You blinked slowly and let out a quiet yawn. “Sorry.”

“All good.” He’s standing over you, one hand half-lifted from where he’d been nudging. There’s a faint curve to his mouth, and you have an inkling feeling that he’s been watching you this whole time.

“Check it out.” 

You step out the shop and into the stretch of sun waiting just beyond the little shade, rough ground crunching under your shoes as you make your way toward where your car had been left. 

“So,” You circled the front, and half-expected it to look different somehow. You glanced back at James. “Is she gonna be ok?”

“She’s fine.” He leaned a shoulder against the side and folded his arms loosely over one another. 

“But your fuel pump’s an old piece of crap. That’s what's been killing it on you.”

“I uh, I don’t…” Confused was what you were.

“It’s okay.” He said it a little softer this time. “Your car's not great.”

You huffed out a small, offended sound under your breath.

“It runs fine,” he reassured you, and gestured toward the engine. “But then it doesn’t get the fuel it needs. That’s why it's cutting out on you, especially when you’re driving for longer.”

“Is that why I’m always breaking down on the freeway?”

“Yeah.” He said, and popped the hood open. “Your carburetor’s not in the best shape either. It probably hasn’t been touched in a while. And your wiring’s a little off.” 

He lifted a shoulder and added, “Nothing major, but it’s not helping.”

“Which means?”

“Which means, little lady,” He took a few steps toward you. “I can fix it. Just not today.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “How long will that take?”

“A couple days. Maybe three, depending if I have to order anything in.”

“I kinda need it,” You sighed, long and defeated. So much for being your group’s long-standing designated driver. 

“Yeah. But it needs a makeover.”

You kicked a loose pebble across the gravel and watched it skid under a few tires like that'll somehow help you decide. 

“And you’re sure you can fix it?”

“Have any doubts?” The guy tilted his head assuredly. “I’ll take care of it.”

You squinted at him a little. He squints back, in an effort to say what. 

“Okay,” you muttered, you accepted. “Guess I’ll take the bus back.”

“Do you know your way home?”

“I’ve figured it out. ”

You really hadn’t, but you’re grown. You’re going to have to figure it out.

He promptly reached for his back pocket and pulled out a flip phone, jamming in a few buttons before holding it out to you.

“By the way. Could I get your number?”

Well, he’s certainly straightforward. 

“Excuse me?”

He nudged the device toward you.  “To call you when it’s finished.”

You mentally face-palmed yourself for, once again, reading way too much into this guy.

“Right.”

Once you’ve typed in your number, you bidded each other a short goodbye as you stepped out toward the highway, where the bus stop waits a little further down. James has to squint through the glasses he’d just pulled from his shirt to make sure you actually get on one. Only when the bus carries you off does he return to the counter, write up the bill, and tuck it into his pocket. He made a mental note to stop by the bank soon, preferably before his dad noticed something was off with the payment logs.

It occurred to him with no small degree of disbelief and embarrassment in himself that this might just be the first time he’s been so horrendously head over his own shoes. Stupid, stupid James. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

“Is your ice cream any good?”

“Take a lick of my ice cream and I’m dumping it on your face.”

“Sounds like a yes,” Haerin mutters.

The sun hung overhead in its usual tyrannical fashion, pressing summer into everything in sight. You and your friends have claimed an outdoor table, holding ice cream and smoothies sweating through heir plastic cups. Condensation slips down the side of yours, cool against your fingers before pooling in the little hollow of your palm

“Oh look. It’s the Power Rangers.”

You follow their line of sight across the street where the park unfurls toward the water in a long stretch of green and glittering blue. Parked along the grass is a truck, and a handful of guys leaned against it in varying states of practiced poses, draped there as though they had been arranged specifically for public viewing. Someone would take their turn holding the camera, and the other being a subject. You thought it looked ridiculous. 

“A very managerless and underfunded boyband.”

“Are they trying to tan?”

There are five of them, sure enough, scattered around the truck with a sort of aimless patience. As your eyes move from one face to the next, your gaze snags on a familiar face, half-turned towards the water laughing at something one of them had said. The mechanic boy from the repair shop. The same one you had been eyeing up with all the subtlety of a Victorian man who’d just seen an exposed ankle. 

You take one aggressive sip of your smoothie in the hopes that the brain freeze might cool your head. 

You lean towards Haerin and jerk your head forward. “What’s that guy’s name?” 

“Grey shirt?” She asks as she tries to follow your line of sight.

“Next to him.”

She paused, then whipped her head at you. “James?”

Ah, so his name was James. You turn it over in your mind once, then again, and several more times. It suited him. Something sturdy and unfairly appealing. You think it would look rather nice written in your handwriting somewhere, though you wisely keep that thought to yourself. 

You shake your head and try to attempt the look of not caring, but achieve something considerably less convincing. 

“Isn’t he a mechanic?” You asked and tried to sound absentminded about it.

“How’d you know that?”

“I brought my car to the shop to get it fixed.” That earns you a look. 

“You seriously need to scrap that piece of junk,” Yunah says. 

“Moving on.”

“Right. Well, he’s not technically a mechanic. His dad owns the shop, and during breaks he takes shifts there. I’ve seen him around the community college a few times. He’s got an engineering track.”

Mina added in, “He kinda keeps to himself.” She nodded towards their direction. “Those are his friends. They’ve all known each other since forever. Just like us.” 

You look at them and think, sandbox love, a half-imagined and kind of shy concept for a group such as theirs. 

Yunah cuts in. “Remember Hana? I heard she’s still as obsessed with him as ever.”

“Oh my god, yeah.” Mina laughs. “It’s kind of tragic. Does he even like her?”

A shrug from Haerin. “I don’t think he likes anyone.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like girls.”

“What a bold assumption.”

You’d still been looking even as your friends dissolved into their usual spiral of gossip beside you. Judge me all you want. It was a cute guy in the wild. That’s not a situation you simply can ignore. Whether you liked him or not had very little to do with it; staring was practically a reflex at this point. Something encoded deep in the inner workings of every girl who had come out the other side of puberty with functioning eyes. 

Because you’re staring a little too intently, you started to notice things more clearly: his dark brown and slightly messy hair, the way he’s leaning back against the truck’s hood, and the subtle bop of his head keeping time with the music from a small boombox nearby.

You’re also able to make out how he turned his head upward, just slightly, before his gaze landed directly on you. 

You’re fairly certain he might not even remember who you are. Why would he? You had been, in the grand scheme of his life, just one overheated girl with a broken car. He likely saw a dozen of those a week. Maybe two dozen, depending on what he looked like that day. It would be less embarrassing if he weren’t so aware of possessing a face. You knew he did, surely right?

So you keep looking anyway. Your eyes wander with an interest that could, in a court of law, be used against you. Even then, it felt like his eyes were tracking yours, following whatever it landed on. He shifts where he’s leaning, and though the distance between you is considerable, there is an unmistakable deliberation in his movement. A subtle squaring of his shoulder, the conscious vanity of a man who knows he’s being observed.

His expression seems to say, Well? The lack of concern on his end, and the complete drought of restraint on yours, was weird enough. 

“Y/n, ready to go?”

Right then, the sound of your name yanks you clean out of whatever trance you’d been happily deteriorating in. All your friends are looking at you with varying levels of suspicion and delight.

You straighten so fast your straw nearly launches itself from your drink.

“I–yeah. Fuck yeah, let's go.”

An answer so immediate, so aggressively enthusiastic, that it condemns you on the spot.

“Why don’t you wipe the drool on your face first?”

Your hand flies instinctively to your mouth, which, to your immense relief, is perfectly dry. Mina bursts into laughter before you can even process the betrayal. You give Mina a small slap on the shoulder, to which she cackles in reply. 

“Asshole”

You grab your cup as Mina loops her arm through yours, and when your group begins to head out and cross the street, you risk one last glance over your shoulder. James is looking too. 

He lifts two fingers in a lazy salute. You hate the way you wave back. 

You were not drooling. This is one cornerstone belief. Because if you had been, then James might have seen it. And while he may be very alarmingly attractve for a man, you are not under any circumstances prepared to hand him that sort of satisfaction. No fucking way, dude. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

You bump your hip against something metal the moment you step into the shop, and the sharp clang that follows has you muttering a curse beneath your breath. James had said three days, but it had taken a week before the call finally came. Longer than promised, sure, but you can’t exactly hold it against him. Your car in fact is a piece of scrap. 

“James?” You called out as you step further in. “I’m back.”

A pair of boots appear from beneath the undercarriage of a car, followed shortly by James himself, rolling out on one of those little mechanic creepers. He pushed himself upright in one smooth motion and wipes his hands on a rag. There’s a streak of grease along his forearm, and another near his jaw.

“How’d you know my name?” he asks, squinting at you through the bright light pouring in from the garage door. 

“Oh, y’know, people talk.”

His mouth tilted upward. “Been asking around about me?”

“No, stop that.” You pointed accusingly before he can get any smugger.  “Is my car fixed or what?”

James laughed under his breath and tossed the rag onto the counter.

“A thank you would be nice.” 

“For extending our business relationship by four whole days? No sir.” 

He shook his head, though he’s still smiling, and gestured toward the far end of the garage where your car sat looking, somehow, the same and yet marginally less likely to explode. 

“Here it is.”

You walked on over and ran a hand lightly along the hood as though greeting an old, troublesome friend. James follows close behind.

 “Please,” he says, leaning against the driver’s side door, “try not to put too much force on the gas.”

“If I can’t do that, I might as well not use the car.”

“Not my fault it’s an old tinker.”

Then he tosses you the keys. “Try not to break it to soon.”

“Thanks James.”

You turn the keys over in your hand, the metal still warm from his palm. Funny, that observation. Metal shouldn’t be warm unless it’s been left in the sun or held onto for a while. 

“Still don’t know where you got my name from.” 

You offer him your most innocent look, which fools neither of you.

“Hm,” He narrowed his eyes, “Well, if your car’s all junked up again, come around, ‘kay?”

“I have a feeling it won't take long.”

“Lucky me, huh?” He gave you one of those cheeky grins/ 

You reached for your back pocket and pulled out your wallet. 

“How much is it?”

He blinked.

“How much is what?”

“Cost of repair, James. How else do you people earn money?”

“Right.” He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly looking far less certain than a man who had spent the last week trying to resurrect your corpse of a vehicle. 

“I haven't really thought about it.”

You stared at him blankly. “What.” 

He laughed, a little sheepish now. “I’m not a licensed mechanic, my dad is. I don’t get a fixed professional fee like he does. Usually I’d just go with a gut feeling.”

“And is your gut currently giving you a feeling or…?”

“Yes. It’s telling me to defer payment.”

Yor fold our arms over one another. 

“I can’t not pay you, James.” 

“Sure you can.”

“No, I literally can’t. That’s theft.”

“I think that’s just called generosity.”

You rummage through your purse and pull out the only cash you have: a slightly wrinkled ten-dollar bill.

“Here. Ten bucks.”

James looked at the bill, and then back ar you, somewhat deeply offended and amused.

“10 bucks for a car fix? You might as well just give me dirt.”

“Do you want my money or not?”

He plucks the bill from your fingers, stretching it out between two grease-stained hands.

“I don’t want your money. But I at least expected more of it.”

“Well, lower your standards.” 

He folded the bill in a neat little rectangle. Before you could protest, or more importantly understand his intentions, he stepped closer. Far too close. His hand brushed your hip as he reached for the pocket of your jeans, and carefully tucked the bill inside. Oh, you were gone. 

“It’s fine, alright?” His hand lingers for one treacherous second longer before he pulls away. And there was that crooked smile again.

“Maybe next time you'll come back here full of guilt, and that would be the perfect excuse to see you again.”

You blink at him slowly. “I don’t get it.”

He laughed, a quick startled sound, and then took a step backward as he made his way toward the back door. He wiped his hands on his pants, though there’d be nothing left on them now but the persisting feeling of your worn denim. 

“I’ll see you around, Y/n.” 

He turned away, but after one dreadful moment you freeze. Your mind, which had only just returned from a blackout, scrambled to catch up. 

“Wait… hey–” You straighten so fast you nearly lose your balance. “How'd you know my name–?”

James paused with one hand on the doorknob. He glanced back over his shoulder, and the fluorescent lighting caught that unripe sheen in his eye. 

“Oh y’know.”

He opened the door, stepping halfway through.

“People talk.” 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

After that, James seemed to migrate out of the garage and into the rest of your regular days with startling ease. This town seemed determined to place him directly in your little bubble, and you realized that summer didn’t so much follow your expectations as politely ignore them altogether.  

It kicked off at the bowling alley, your friends claiming one lane, and just a few steps to the right, that cluster of guys. Included, unfortunately, was the one you had been putting in a heroic amount of effort to ignore. 

Naturally, that effort lasted all of ten seconds.

With a focus usually reserved for something such as a life-altering decision, Juhoon stepped up, narrowed his eyes, and set the bowling ball down the lane. It rolled and rolled, and kept rolling, before slowly veering off into the gutter. Not a single pin moved. 

A performance, really. 

“Hey.” Haerin leans slightly over the divider as a laugh quickly slips through her words. “You know you’re supposed to hit the pins, right?”

Juhoon turns to her, caught somewhere between offended and amused, and wipes his hands on his jeans as if that might restore some of his dignity. “Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was in the presence of professionals.”

“Relax.” Mina shoots back and crosses her arms. “I’ve barely played this myself and somehow I don’t suck as bad.”

“You wanna talk big?” Keonho chimes in as he leans on their own divider as well.  “Let’s see you do better.” 

“You’re embarrassing us.” You murmured from behind. You’ve forgotten just how aggressively competitive Mina could get over something as low-stakes as this.

“Speak for yourself.” She shoots back under her breath. “You’ve barely picked up a ball.”

You huff out a quiet laugh, shaking your head as you let your attention ease itself out. To your friends, to them, to the easy back and forth. And then, inevitably, to James, who is already coincidentally looking back. Creepy. 

James looks back into the lane and clears his throat, then looks back at you again. 

“So when will your turn be?”

“I don’t–” you start and step back a little too soon. “I’m just here to give some moral support.”

“Kill joy.” he says, not unkindly, and then gives you a smirk.

“That’s a strong accusation for someone who's been sitting in the back the whole time since he’s got here.”

“Have you been taking notes on me?”

“Maybe I should stick to seeing you just at the garage. You’d be less insufferable if you’re being helpful.”

James doesn’t pretend to stifle the laugh that escapes him, and it's a nice sound, you decide. He doesn’t pretend to look away either. Not when you catch him or when you raise a brow in slight accusation. He only tilts his head in a considerable fraction.

You break eye contact first. Out of principle. Out of principle, Y/n. 

Your friend groups had merged into each other after that with surprising ease. A summer armistice, you called it, brokered over boredom and the simple fact that there were only so many interesting people in Old Town Temecula. They made things a lot more entertaining. 

Martin was easy company because you both shared a lot of common interests, particularly where music was concerned. You could spend an entire afternoon arguing over discographies, and each of you were convinced the other had somehow missed a foundational pillar of modern music. He was insufferable about it.

Keonho and Seonghyeon quickly assumed the role of the two younger brothers you never had. They were a matched set of nuisances incapable of minding their own business. Still, you think of them with nothing but fondness.

Then there was Juhoon, who possessed the personality of a man who had lived at least three separate lives and remembered fragments of each. He’d tell you something utterly deranged yet weirdly profound on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday, and then wander off. He was your wise old uncle. 

And then there’s James. You don’t know what he is to you. 

Everyone else seemed to fit into your labeled mind drawers. Friend. Acquaintance. Enemy. Sometimes two, sometimes all. 

You wouldn’t classify James as a friend. Friendship is like a tidy little house. You’d understand all its deep angles and know where the doors would lead. It wouldn’t usually contain that particular voltage. That’s right. Friends don’t prod at the electric fence just to watch it spark. Friends don’t test boundaries like that. Friends, generally speaking, also don’t flirt with each other. 

And you cared, far too much, about what he thought of you too. You had become quite skilled at disguising your curiosity casually when you’d ask one of his friends, as though it had only just occurred to you, whether James had happened to mention you lately. Your name, taking up room in his mouth. 

But acquaintances wouldn’t do either. That word was a handshake and a weather report, a polite distance, or a borrowed pen. You and James had long since trespassed beyond those borders. Whatever it was, it had sharp teeth.

And so you are left with the big question in the filing system of your life. If he wasn’t either, what other drawer could you possibly place him in? All these questions, and no one to answer them. 

But your hypotheses soon had the opportunity of being tested.

The beach was hardly the most forgiving place for you and James to see each other. 

But such were the circumstances that were so often stacked against you. The invite came with such spontaneity that you’d barely had enough time to throw a few beach essentials into your bag before there'd been a minivan already idling right across your house.

“You could’ve told me a lot earlier!” You shout from the front door, nearly tripping over yourself as you wrestle your sandals on. 

“I texted you thirty minutes ago!” Mina screamed back. It was thirty minutes too short. Entire civilizations would rise and fall in the time Mina usually took to get ready, so you had assumed she, of all people, would understand the necessity of advance notice. 

Then you spot James in the driver’s seat, window rolled down, and one arm draped lazily over the frame. He’s looking at you, actually looking, with an attention so direct it made you aware of every loose thread in your shorts and each misplaced hair on your head. You find yourself strapping your sandals much quicker than necessary. 

The drive to the resort transpired in a blur of Top 20 hits and some terrible group singing. Martin sat beside you, knowing every lyric to every song that came on, while Seonghyeon and Keonho contributed mostly by banging on the roof and shouting the choruses at times. A car full of kids drinking deeply from the season while it was still theirs. 

James didn’t say much during the ride. But every now and then, he would flick his eyes to the rearview mirror which had been angled just right, if only to catch you lost in song. 

By the time you arrive, and everyone had hauled themselves, their bags, and half the contents of a convenience store into the resort, the sun was hanging low and golden over the water like it too had paid for a weekend stay. 

The cottage sat right by the beach: bamboo walls, a tiny porch, and enough space to comfortably fit nine people. The door had barely swung open before Keonho burst out first with an overflowing paper bag to his chest.

“What’ve you got there?” you asked.

He angled the bag away immediately. “Get away.”

“You bought a dozen bags of chips.”

“The other ten are just emergency portions.”

“For what? The apocalypse?”

“The munchies.” 

Seonghyeon came out next, already wearing an inflatable around his waist. It squeaked every time he moved.

“I can’t find my sunscreen.”

Haerin points to his hand. “Kid. It’s right there.”

He looked down at the bottle in his hand while his mouth formed a little ‘O’ shape.

Martin followed close by, dragging a boombox nearly as large as the minivan’s side windows. He hoisted it onto one shoulder with all the pride of a man unveiling a monument. Juhoon glanced over from where he was taking off his sandals. 

“Y’know they charge a fee if you blast the music too loud, right?”

“What the fuck?” Martin froze.

“I didn’t ask my dad for extra money today!”

“Some employment would help,” James said from behind him as he carried in the cooler.

Martin gave James a side eye and a scoff. “I’m a teenager, James. I don’t need no goddamn job.”

“That mindset won’t pay them bills man.” Juhoon says, wise words from the wisest man. 

“What fucking bills–”

Mina sidled up beside you with the intention of delegating some sort of responsibility. She pressed a few crumpled bills into your palm.

“Y/n, why don’t you go order us some drinks?”

“You got two minors present by the way.”

Mina waved a dismissive hand. “Get them some juice.”

“I could drink,” Keonho says with confidence. You turned to him and shook your head.

“I’m serious! I have the liver of a champion.”

“No.”

“I got a mature palate.”

“You have the face of a middle school mathlete, Keon. What’ll the staff think when they catch you? You’re getting juice.” 

Keonho gave you a deflated stare. “You wanna be my mama so bad.”

“We’ll deal with you later.” Mina started counting on her fingers. “Two margaritas, a soda, one beer, juice, and some water.”

James emerged from… somewhere. He had changed into a loose shirt and swim trunks and glanced down toward the bar a little ways down the sand. 

“Need some help with that?”

“Um. Yes. Thank you James.”

Mina’s grin was immediate. “Oh, perfect.”

You narrowed your eyes at her with suspicion. When you turned around, James tipped his head toward the little path leading to the bar tucked just beside the open restaurant.

“C’mon.” 

So you fell into step beside him, your feet sinking into the sand as you passed the others who were still deep in argument.

“I’m not getting a summer job! I am seventeen! The only bill I have is my phone bill, and my mom still pays half.” Martin exclaims. 

Juhoon raises an eyebrow. “Half?”

“You burden this society.” Seonghyeon accused Martin with a pointed finger.

“I am society.”

“Who are you, fuckin’ Jean Jacques Rousseau–you’re a leech.”

“You guys are just jealous because I’m young, beautiful, and unemployed.”

“Only two of those things are true.”

“You’re a dead man, Eom.”

As soon as you step on the polished wood and under the hanging lights, you are hit with the smell of grilled seafood, sizzling meat, garlic, butter, enough to crave eating your body weight in some shrimp. The two of you made your way to the counter, sliding onto a pair of barstools, and the bartender handed you each a laminated drink menu. 

“You know,” you said after a moment of squinting, “a lot of these just sound like cleaning products.”

“That’s how you know they’re overpriced. Check this out. ‘Salted Breeze’.”

“‘Tropical Typhoon’? Jesus.” You turned the menu to show him. “Sounds like it could strip paint.” 

“Sounds tasty.”

“Kidneys, James. People need those.” 

“You only need one.” 

A few feet away, hidden just enough to be out of sight, Martin, Haerin, and Keonho had claimed a suspiciously dense bush. From behind it, three heads barely fit in the same line as they all angled toward you and James.

“I can’t see shit,” Haerin muttered as she shifted uncomfortably. 

“Move your giant head then.” Martin shot back.

“I have a normal-sized head.” She whispered defensively. “Your proportions, unfortunately…” 

Keonho leaned in between them as he squinted hard. “I’ll have you know we’re committing several social etiquette crimes.”

“We’re just taking a look.” 

“We’re stalking. If we were just looking we wouldn’t be hiding in a bush—hell, this itches.” 

“Potato potahto.” 

Keonho, who had insisted on bringing a bag of chips on the espionage mission, crinkled the packaging so loud it might’ve been able to alert a few wildlife nearby. 

You and James sat at the bar, leaning against the counter while the bartender prepared your orders. The string lights above cast everything in warm gold, and from this distance, the two of you looked really cinematic. 

“They’re talking,” Haerin reported. 

“How groundbreaking.”

“Oh my god they’re laughing.”

“People do that, right?”

Keonho dapped Martin’s shoulder hard. “Ohhhh, James touched her arm.” 

The entire bush shifted as everyone leaned forward at once, and Haerin had to grab Martin by the back of his shirt before he could topple out into the open. 

At the bar, James said something that made you laugh. Your head even tipped back. Martin had to clutch his chest. 

“He’s using jokes. Smooth bastard.” 

“That’s usually how flirting works. I doubt you’d know any of that.” Haerin said.

Keonho, mouth full of barbecue chips, narrowed his eyes. “Do you think they’re gonna kiss guys?”

“Keon,” Martin said blankly. “They’re just ordering mojitos.” 

“People have kissed over less.”

Haerin nodded in agreement. “That’s true. I see people make out on the bus every day. Like, over what? All you can smell are stinkin’ butts, and some people have died on that bus before.”

“What? I didn’t know this-”

“Wait wait–James is leaning in.”

James leaned closer to hear you over the music. Then the bartender handed him two drinks.

“False alarm.”

“I need a better angle.”

Before anyone could stop him, Martin rose approximately four inches too high. Unfortunately, four inches was all it took. James glanced over directly at the bush, and there was a beat of perfect silence after that. Then James slowly raised one eyebrow. 

Martin ducked first. The rest followed in a panicked domino effect as the branches shook violently.

“We’ve been made,” Haerin announced.

Martin is quick to tap out. “Abort mission, holy fuck–”

“Retreat. Hurry, go!” 

When you and James head back with a tray full of your orders, the three of the culprits were sitting on the porch in positions that bordered on performance art. Martin was whistling. Well, he was trying. Martin can’t whistle. Keonho was reading a magazine upside down, and Haerin still had leaves in her hair. 

James handed out the drinks without a word, though the corners of his mouth twitched suspiciously. 

“Oh, Haerin. You got a uh…” You gesture vaguely at his head. “A few leaves on your hair.”

“Yeah. Keonho pushed me into a bush. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I did no such–”

Martin was quick to shush Keonho out, to which he let out a huff in turn. 

A little while later, once Keonho and Seonghyeon had sprinted into the water, Martin was left holding down the fort on shore. He was halfway through his juice, still salty about the fact that none of them wanted to hand him a margarita, when James wandered over and stopped behind him.

“Great hiding place, by the way.”

Martin choked on his juice so violently that some of it shot out of his nose. 

But eventually, no one cared enough to quarrel with the day. It was as gold and too open-handed for such a thing. The sun hung above like a coin freshly minted, bright enough to spend. The sea moved with its long and slow patience, folding salt into your skin, into hair, into the small seams of everyone else.

Troubles, those faithful little parasites, found the air too thin here, so they loosened their grip and drifted off like dandelion ash. And everyone was suddenly certain that this would be a day worth keeping. 

James sat on a sunbed a few feet from the shoreline with his sunglasses on and his shirt loosely unbuttoned to give way to the warm air. To his left, a few children have taken Martin hostage, burying him in sand and shaping him in what looks like a poor interpretation of a mermaid sculpture. To his right, Keonho’s trying to drag Seonghyeon down from his floaty. And in front of him, further out where the water is a lot stiller, you’re laughing and splitting the sea into smaller pieces as you pass through it in a fit of laughter. 

“Margarita?” Juhoon, who sits on the sunbed right beside him, passes him a glass.

“Thanks man.” 

Summer. It was a come-and-go concept to James. It would always come with promises, stay just long enough to keep him waiting, then abdicate. A season of suspension. While everyone else seemed intent on breaking free, he mostly found himself idling. The engine would be on, but there would be nowhere worth driving. He’d wait for summer to bring him something, then he’d wait for it to end. 

Summer was long. Summer was hot. Summer was sweat collecting at the base of the spine and sand in very weird places. Summer was–

“James! I caught a crab. Do you think we could cook it?” You shout from afar. 

Summer had you in it this time. Then, summer was brief as a struck match. Warm against his stomach. Sweet, sour, salty. A fruit eaten too quickly, juice running down the wrist, and always never enough. All this heat had revealed skin and nerves, all the thin bright wires beneath the casing. The things he preferred not to feel at all, now lit up like a switchboard. 

Summer has ruined the rest of the year for him. 

James huffs out a laugh and looks back out into the beach where he can maybe pull some restraint. “Do anything you want.”

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

You had texted James yesterday and asked if he’d seen a Walkman hanging around at the garage that you might’ve left. James checked, to which he did find one sitting idly at your spot on the couch. So he texted you back saying he’d bring it over the next day. 

Which is how he ends up standing very chivalrously at your front door. Because this is also how he meets your father for the very first time.

“Good mornin’ Mr. L/n.” James looks around to further solidify his little act. “Lovely weather today, eh?”

Your dad narrows his eyes in what can only be close to disgust. “You’re Zhao’s son.”

“Did you sense some resemblence?” James gives your dad a charming smile. “Good eye there.”

“Don’t bullshit me, son. What the hell kind of business do you have here calling my daughter–”

“James?”

Your voice cuts through from all the way inside the house, and when you emerge from the front door, James internally sighs in relief and gives you a little wave.

“Sorry, I got your text a little late.” You look at James, and then suspiciously at your dad, who is looking sternly right at James.

“Dad? Is there a problem?”

He looks at you and points accusingly at James with shot eyes. “This boy standing on my front porch is what's the problem.”

James wants to laugh. He knows exactly why your dad doesn’t like him, and it had nothing to do with him at all. It comes with a silly memory: his own father coming home, holding up a fish like a trophy with a blue ribbon tied neatly around its still, unblinking body.

“He’s been fixing my car like you wanted. The least you could do is say thank you.” You scold.

“I am not saying thank you to one of Zhao’s kin–”

“Y’know what, it’s all good.” James cuts through the transpiring little argument. “I stopped by to give this. You forgot to grab it from the shop.” 

He stretched his hand forward to lend you your Walkman back, and you take it in pretend formality. James looks back at your dad and offers another much more charming (he hopes) smile.

“You have a good day, Mr. L/n. Tell the missus I like the flower arrangements up front.” 

He’s ready to head in and leave before this got any more awkward when he hears you say his name. 

“Bye James.”

He turns around to steal another glance, and gives you a generous grin. 

“Bye.”

When James leaves, you take your dad back inside and prepare to reprimand. So much were the roles reversed today.

You turn to him immediately. “What was that about?”

Your dad, already walking deeper into the house, grumbles. “Nothing.”

You follow him into the kitchen. “This Mr. Zhao… isn’t he the one who’s been beating you at those fishing competitions?”

“I bet you he’s cheating.”

You let out an exasperated sigh. “All that rage for some petty contest.” 

You both had to admit there was something almost absurd about this long-standing, entirely unearned fatherly feud. It was hilarious and stupid. What would be even funnier is if maybe, assuming a possibility, that they’d find out about this little thing happening between the two of you. This unsure predicament, a scandal in the eyes of two middle aged men. You want to laugh. You almost do, right there on the kitchen island. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

James receives a panicked call from you at three in the morning a few days later as he’s half-asleep, buried under the dull noise of his father and his friends still arguing over a game on the television.

“Somebody better be dying,” he mutters, voice dragged through sleep.

On the other end, your voice cuts through in whispered panic. “Yes. It’s my Shelby. She’s dying again, James. What am I gonna do?”

“You can bring it to the shop later.”

“I know. I was gonna do that anyway.” 

He exhales into his pillow. “Then what’s the emergency?”

“You sure I shouldn’t just scrape this thing?” you ask with a suddenly unsure tone in your voice.

James opens one eye. “You’re thinking of killing her now?”

“She might as well be on life support.”

He closes his eyes again and lets out a sigh. There’s no denying your car really was a stubborn one. 

“Bring her to the shop, okay? We’ll figure it out.”

You pause. 

“We will?”

“Yes. Now can I go back to sleep?”

“Okay” You say through a small smile. “I’m trusting you James. Sleep tight.” 

“Tight as a bug.” he replies as he’s already halfway gone. “Bye.” 

Somewhere downstairs, the voice of a man is heard screaming in cheer. James buries his ears with his pillow and tries to go back to sleep. 

A little past noon, James was out back giving his motorcycle some attention. He had a towel slung over one shoulder, grease staining the heel of his palm, and was halfway through polishing the handlebars when he heard an engine spitter its way into the lot. It was a very particular, familiar sputter.

He tossed the used rag onto the workbench and headed around to the front. Sure enough, there you were, climbing out of your car with a frustrated expression. You shut the door a little harder than necessary. 

“I got her to work this morning,” You announce by way of greeting. “But I swear the engine’s making this weird noise.”

James circled the front, listening as the engine rattled in protest. “I heard it from the back. Did it break down again?”

“Just before I called you.”

James looked at you suspiciously. “Where were you off to at 3 in the morning?”

“My sister needed a ride home from a party.”

He popped the hood and propped it open. “‘Kay, I’ll take a look. You know the drill.”

A small smile tugged at your mouth as you headed inside. “I’ll take the couch.” 

So you had, in fact, taken the couch. 

There was something so deeply humbling about becoming a regular at an auto repair shop. It would tell people everything they needed to know: that your car was a piece of absolute shit from a butt. But at least the couch was comfy. That had to count for something. 

You were halfway through a bag of stale chips and a quarter through a sports magazine when James pushed through the garage door, wiping his hands on his jeans and staining them in the process. His expression alone told you everything.

“How bad is she?”. 

He looked like he bared bad news. 

“It’s your alternator.”

You blinked silently. “My what?”

“Alternator. It keeps your battery charged while the engine’s running.”

“So… important.” You deduced.

“Very.”

“Love that.”

James huffed out a laugh and told you to follow him.

“The bearings are shot, see? That’s the noise.”

You slumped your shoulders forward. “Can you f ix it?”

“I can. I should be able to replace it.

The pause he made was a little ominous, so you probe further.

“But?”

“But we don’t have one in stock.” He clicks his tongue. “And a new one isn’t exactly cheap.”

“Define cheap.” 

James named you a number, to which you nearly choked on your saliva.

“James, that is rent.”

He winced sympathetically. “Yeah. Such is the beauty of owning a car.”

“I didn’t even buy it myself. How am I supposed to afford that?” You turned back to walk toward the couch before slumping on it once more. 

“I should’ve asked for a horse.”

“Maintenance is worse. My uncle’s got a ranch up south with horses. They shit big.”

You sighed long and hard. “Horses don’t need alternators though.”

“Didn’t I just tell you? They shit big. And they bite too.” 

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the faint hum of the soda machine and the distant clanking something he had left on. James tapped his finger on his lap thoughtfully.

“But I might know a way around it.”

You lifted your head in desperation.

“How illegal are we talking?”

He put his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Moderately legal?”

“James.” 

He gave you a mischievous grin. 

“There’s a junkyard about twenty minutes from here. They got totaled cars in all the time. If we’re lucky, we can pull an alternator off something compatible.”

“Dude. Isn’t that stealing?”

“It’s cheaper. Wait no, it’s free.”

That, admittedly, was a compelling argument. You narrowed your eyes at him.

“And you know this place how?”

“I know a guy.”

Of course he knew a guy. You suspected a lot of these mechanic boys operated like they were part of a secret underground network. They know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. 

“You had me at free.”

James grabbed his dad’s truck keys off the wall while you stood from the couch. You followed him outside, both of you climbing into the truck and buckling in. Desperation was going to take you places today. He reversed out of the lot with one hand on the wheel, and you caught the sunlight glinting off the silver ring on his finger. Then you were off. 

The drive was mostly filled with silence. The windows were down as the wind rushed in to occupy all the empty spaces. It threaded through the car, rifled your hair, and carried off any thoughts James was trying very hard not to have. 

Outside, the road kept company with the town’s river, each pretending not to notice the other. You watched the water slide past in silver influxes as James watched you in the rearward pull of seconds. The wind would unmake your hair and remake it a little better. He found this, like many things he’s thought of, very compelling. 

The junkyard was exactly just as you imagined.

Rows and rows of dead cars stretched beneath the afternoon sun, metal skeletons stacked two, sometimes three high, each one looking as junked up as the other. Windows were shattered, doors hung open, and somewhere in the distance, something metallic clanged with the ominous acoustics of a horror movie.

“People have gotten murdered here.”

“You got a strong feeling ‘bout that?”

“Absolutely.”

When you both got out of the truck, the air smelled like rust, hot rubber, and tetanus. A heavyset man behind a cluttered counter looked up from his newspaper as you approached. He wore a baseball cap that might once have been red. 

James gave him a nod. “Afternoon, Rick.”

The guy, Rick, squinted over the rims of his glasses.

“James!” He exclaims excitedly. “You break another one?”

James jerked a thumb toward you and shook his head. “Not mine this time.”

You placed a hand over your chest and bowed. “Thrilled to be here.”

Rick snorted before bowing curtly at you in return, and waved the two of you through the gate.

“Imports are in row seven. Don’t steal anything that ain’t bolted down, yeah?”

“‘Course, Rick. We all know how that went last time.”

That was sketchy, you think. You followed James between towering rows of vehicles, gravel crunching beneath your shoes. Every few feet, James would glance at a car, dismiss it, and keep walking. He looked like a vulture on the lookout. 

James stopped in front of an okay Mustang, and knew this particular model was manufactured just a few years before yours was. He figured it could work. 

“There she is.”

James popped the hood of the car with ease, and you leaned in beside him, staring at an engine that looked, to your untrained eye, like just a bunch of metal scraps put together.

“So which one is it?”

He pointed. “That.”

You nodded solemnly as if you understood anything at all. James reached into the small bag you had brought and took out some kind of tool, and went to work.

You folded your arms and watched him. His brow gathered itself to the middle in concentration, sleeves shoved carelessly to his elbows, grease smudging dark against his knuckles. There was sweat clinging to all sorts of places. His temples, along the line of his throat, tracing the strong cords of his arms where the veins stood out with clarity. 

It was incredibly rude of him to look that good in a junkyard. 

“Hold this.” 

He handed you a wrench, and you took it like he’d entrusted you with a sacred artifact. And so, under the blazing sun, you helped James steal (sorry, salvage) an organ from a dead car. Your week had taken a very strange turn. 

After he gets the part off, you both make quick work of stuffing it into the bag before heading back toward the big gate again. 

“Find everything you need?” Rick calls from where he idles.

“All good here Rick.” James replies. “You have a good one.”

A small nod, a mutual dismissal of the world, and you’re both back in motion. You toss the bag into the back of the truck, and James climbs in after you then turns the ignition. The engine makes a weird sound, but neither of you comment on it. 

You’re on the road for a while, and nothing seems to be the problem. That is, until the engine coughs first. A small, offended sound. Then again, this time deeper. The truck shudders, and with dread on both your faces, it finally gives up and stops. 

“James. What the hell.”

“I’ll go take a look.”

Both of you are out the truck in seconds. James lifts the hood and leans into it, and you watch from the side. He works in silence for a few minutes, which doesn’t really help the unease you’re feeling. He straightens eventually, and gives you the look.

“We’re fucked.”

That is how you both end up pushing the truck. Its wheels roll reluctantly, and you want to laugh at how utterly absurd this it. You both steer it into the nearest empty patch of land: an abandoned gas station’s parking lot. 

There’s nothing for miles, you believe. No phone booth, no convenience store. Not even the promise of signal. You checked your cellular and couldn’t pick up on anything.

James calls you through a whistle. “Hey. Look at that.”

You walk over toward him and follow his line of sight. There, just a few meters ahead, is a sign, which tells you there must be some sort of establishment nearby. 

“Let’s take our chances. It’s almost dawn.”

Because there are no better options or sudden miracles waiting in the wings, you head to the back of the truck and reach for the bag in case it gets snatched. James reaches into the dash, retrieves his wallet, and pockets it to the back along with his keys.. Then you walk. Side by side. 

A motel is what awaited you.

You exhale, long and unamused. A motel. Of all places. In the middle of nowhere. Onl motorcycles are parked up front, which suggested everyone else came here alone. Everyone except you two. 

“This sucks.” You say, staring up at the motel in quiet offense.

“Better than sleeping on a truck in an abandoned gas station.”

“I don’t even have any money on me right now.”

James takes out his wallet and waves it lightly in front of you. “Problem solved.” 

You hated how this looked from the outside. A boy and a girl walking into a motel close to night time. The story is practically writing itself. But night is already closing in, and better ideas are not arriving soon. So when James walks first, you trail close behind. 

The lobby was warmer than expected, and surprisingly clean. Not exactly luxurious, but as cozy as a motel in the middle of who knows where could offer: wood-paneled walls, a coffee machine humming quietly in the corner, a rack of brochures advertising attractions that looked suspiciously closed.

A woman sat behind the front desk, reading a magazine. She looked up as the two of you entered. James stepped forward while you wandered over to the little lounge area and sank into one of the couches.

“One room with two beds, please.”

The receptionist looked through some logbooks, then offered an unapologetic smile.

“I’m sorry, sir, but our double rooms are all occupied tonight.”

James nodded. “That’s fine. Two rooms, then.”

More checking of the logs. The receptionist’s smile grew somehow more apologetic.

“I do apologize, but we’re fully booked on singles as well.”

James blinked blankly. “…What do you have, then?”

She consulted with the papers on her desk.

“We currently have one queen room available.”

Silence.

From your spot on the couch, you suddenly found the complimentary pamphlets fascinating.

James turned slowly.

“Give me a moment.”

You spotted James making his way back across the lobby, and immediately straightened from your position on the couch. 

“Are we good to go?”

James stopped in front of you, one hand hooked on his hip. He looked almost amused, which should have worried you more than it did.

“Y/n.” That was already a terrible start.

“What?”

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“They have…” He paused, and then again. “It’s a room with one bed. That’s all they’ve got.”

You stared at him. Then at the receptionist. Then back at him.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Wish I wasn’t.”

Which was only partially true, and James knew it. Unfortunately, he also knew better than to examine that thought too closely. He mentally shoved it into a locked drawer and sat on it.

You stood so quickly the couch wheezed beneath you.

“All the other rooms are booked? This place looks like a shithole, how are they fully booked?”

“I don’t know. I’ll just take the floor, okay?”

“I can’t let you sleep on a motel carpet James. These things have organisms—“

Before you’re able to chime in another word, James turns around again and heads back to the to the receptionist. He pulls a couple dollar bills and slides them on the counter surface. 

“We’ll take it.” 

The receptionist slid the key across the counter with a smile. James took it, thanked her, and turned toward you, giving a slight tilt of his head.

“C’mon.”

You pushed yourself off the couch and trudged upstairs, and it creaked beneath your feet as the two of you climbed to the second floor. The motel hallway stretched long and narrow, lit by buzzing overhead lights that did very little to improve its already questionable atmosphere.

James found your room quickly enough. He stopped outside the door, key poised, then hesitated. When he turned to face you, the teasing had slipped from his expression. 

“Okay. A few things.”

You nodded.

“If you ever feel uncomfortable at all about anything, just tell me.” The seriousness in his voice caught you off guard.

“I mean it,” he added. “I don’t want you pretending you’re fine about this. I get it, it’s weird. No walking on eggshells. Alright?”

You managed a small forced smile.

“Got it.”

“And another thing. Try not to head out alone too much tonight.”

He gestured toward the parking lot below. You leaned toward the small window just enough to spot those half a dozen motorcycles lined up beneath the flickering motel sign.

“A bunch of bikers are staying here. They’re in a group, I’d guess.”

“You say it like they’re a migrating species.”

“They usually are.”

You laughed as he rested one shoulder against the doorframe.

“Make sure the door’s locked and just… stay out of trouble.”

He unlocked the door and pushed it open. The room beyond was exactly as promised: one bed, one television, one lamp. You both stared at the queen-sized bed. Awkward.

James hurriedly moves to the bedside table and snatches up the telephone, and punches some numbers in. You, meanwhile, drift toward the balcony. The curtains part with a soft sound, and the sliding door gives you the entire cold night as you step out. 

“I’m heading to the bathroom.” You say as you head back in. “Does the telephone work?”

“Yeah,” he replies, hand still on the receiver. “I managed to call Rick for a tow truck. Says they won’t be able to come until 9 tomorrow.”

“You didn’t think of calling your parents first?”

“My dad would probably say I could get things sorted out on my own.” He says.

“Can I call my parents?”

“Sure. Do you know your landline?”

You pause. “We got a new one, so I don’t.” a dismissive shake of your head. “Never mind.”

You head to the bathroom and turn the lock behind you, the sound like a line being drawn. Inside, you try to breathe in something quiet and steady, but you can’t. In the mirror, you look for the parts of yourself you can pick on, the little flaws you think to be pluckable. Frustrated you were that they stay exactly as they are. 

Meanwhile, James watches you disappear into the bathroom and waits for the door to close you out of sight. Only when you’re fully gone does he drop onto the bed. He exhales then, long and unspooled.

There are many things James can handle. He had always considered himself fairly adaptable. Plans change, cars break down. He knows these men in leather jackets and wrinkled hands surrounding the rooms around them as he thinks these things through. He had, at various points in his life, been punched in the face and kicked in the shin, and more than once did he have to explain to his father how exactly he got each bruise if he ever got home with any, which was usually most of the time. 

All that, he could handle half-asleep with a hand tied behind his back while someone was yelling at him. He’s slept under less forgiving roofs, and he’s had worse company (worse had rarely been this pretty, though). 

Then put him in a room with one very beautiful girl he just so happened to be hopelessly, helplessly in love with, and watch all that competence go missing. 

He tried to shake it off. People shared these kinds of rooms all the time. Travelers. Families. Sports teams. Criminals on the run, probably. 

I need a cigarette. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

“I’m back.” You emerge from the bathroom a while later, still in your old clothes, a borrowed robe loosely tied over them. 

“Stuff on your mind?” You ask. 

James is on the balcony sitting on the ledge with his back turned half to you, and the rest towards the open night. He’s got a cigarette between his fingers, one you’re not sure where he got from. 

He glances back over his shoulder. 

“Yeah,” He said after a moment,  “You could say that.”

You step closer, and James watches you all the way. He realizes faintly that seeing you through the smoke makes his head feel a lot dizzier. 

“You really need to stop that.”

“Stop what?” 

“Smoking.”

He lets the cigarette tilt slightly between his teeth. “You don’t like it?”

“I don’t.” When you’re close enough, you flick the tip of it with a finger. “And your lungs don’t either.”

That earns you a laugh. “You sound like my mother.”

“Better that than an enabler, right?” 

Better that than an enabler, and James almost loses it. The irony is there. You have enabled much worse in him than a little ash or smoke in his lungs. Want, for one. Hope, for another. A hundred reckless instincts, each one wearing your face. 

He wants to either fold himself in half or shake some sense into you. To pry your skull and point: there, there, look at what you’ve done. 

“C’mere.”  

You step closer until you’re right in front of him, too close that you’re aligned with the bend of his knees on the ledge. James takes the cigarette from his mouth, holds it between two fingers like a small and solved problem, then tosses it over the edge. If you wanted him clean so badly, then so be it. 

Something in him responds as unsteady beings do when the wind would find their hems. A pressure and a lean toward form. Toward articulation. Toward you. But he keeps it contained by the narrowest margin of will, because he doesn’t know yet what it is.

“What is it?”

He shifts slightly from where he sits. “You think your dad's gonna kill me?”

“For what?”

“When he finds out I’m spending my sweet time with his precious little princess in a motel in the middle of nowhere.”

“If you say it like that, he might.”

“Well, what am I saying it like?”

“Like you have some… intentions.”

“Intentions.” He clicks his tongue and thinks. “What kind?”

The sun goes down, and the balcony becomes a place slightly outside the map. James sits there as though he has been left on a higher shelf of the world. You looked at him then, almost invasive.  If invasions could be curious instead of cruel. As if, by looking hard enough, you might just be able to persuade him into things. 

“I don’t know, James.” You lean forward on your toes, then backward on your heel. “You keep saying things a certain way. I have to retrace them until I go crazy.” 

“Don’t you think maybe you’re just reading into me too much?”

“Am I ?”

He could say yes. Could blame it on you, say you were overthinking, making something out of absolutely nothing. And if he played the role right, you might even buy it. But it’d be a lie, and James has found it incredibly hard to keep lies from you. He couldn’t even say no to you half the time, let alone lie through his own teeth. Not when he’d already gone out of his way to fix that junky Shelby, cutting corners on the bill, paying for things himself so his dad wouldn’t catch on that he’d been letting some girl leave the shop receipt-free every time. Subtlety, he’s never been good at it. 

“No.” Lying, even less so. “You think I should act on ‘em?”

“Your intentions?”

“Yeah.”

You look at him knowingly, hopefully and without unrest.

“If they’re not going anywhere, why not?” If you’re not going anywhere, why not here?

The season has gone on longer than he’d been able to imagine. Or maybe not long enough. Either way, when he looks back at you across the thinning dark, he understands to himself that he isn’t ready for it to end. 

Ah, what am I doing? 

Who knew a mere inch of opening was all James would ever need. It happens in the space of a blink. He steps down from the ledge, his hands already rising as they settle at the sides of your face. And then, in the slim, unsteady breath between one moment and the next, he leans down and catches your lips with his. 

It doesn’t take much after that for things to turn. In a fit of urge and desperation, he backs you up until your knees buckle at the edge of that tiny queen bed. ‘Queen bed’ as the receptionist said, was too much of a stretch for this one. Then another moment, you both collapse on it anyway. 

You discover quickly that James doesn’t like to drag things out. You feel it in these betrayals: the restless twitch of his hands and his protested stillness. You hadn’t pegged him to be the impatient type. Tonight, though, his skin runs warm, almost fever-bright. His breathing forgets its rhythm, then finds another. And when he reaches to switch on the lamp beside the bed, the room fills with amber, turning his eyes from their usual dark wood into something honey-struck. 

You switch it close immediately. 

“No, no James—I like it closed.”

“But I can’t see you.”

I’d look nicer when the lights are off, you try to tell him. The words are small and brittle in your throat. 

“You don’t have to.” You say instead.

I need to, he thinks. Else my insides get eaten up.

James laughs low and helplessly, the sound brushing warm against your skin. “You trying to hog?” 

He wants nothing more tonight than to take you in. Entirely and improperly, in visions, in motion, in all your strange fullness. The flush in your cheeks, the bright sheen at your throat, he’d only want to leave you more potent than how he found you. And when at last your pulse remembers its manners, he finds that he would like, very much, to be the reason for that too. 

“There’s nothing to hog.”

“Yeah, there is.”

The orange wash of the bedside lamp makes James greedy the instant he turns it back on and looks down on you. It gilds the room, gilds your skin, gilds his appetite, and he wonders how much worse it will get once it's morning and he wakes to find you there again as living proof rather than of a dream. 

“Maybe we really do need to turn the lights off,” he decides.

You tilt your head against the pillow. “Changed your mind?”

“Oh, my mind hasn’t changed a bit,” James replies, then inches closer once more. “You push me over, lady.”

“Don’t call me that.” 

His hand betrays him to humiliating degrees. Lifting, pausing, and reconsidering as it is traitorously decisive, until it finally settles lightly against the edge of your cheekbone. Your breaths breathe warmth into his face, and he registers with mild alarm that they turn him a little visibly red. Even as he’s above you, when he can only look down earnestly at the gleam and glow that's made up this whole season, all that sun made flesh, you still hold every right and all the ability to make him act entirely insensible.

“Make my night, yeah?”

His mouth is so inconveniently human as it tries to chase the sweetness he’s found in your own, like a child finding the unreachable cookie jar. His hands are no better, and his skin is rough against yours that is soft as they insist on remembering what they shouldn’t have been taught so quickly.

James has never been with anyone. Not like this. So he’s scared by how natural you seem to fit into places in him he hadn’t realized were so empty. 

“Only if you make mine.”

Your dad tells you time and time again, beware of boys, they’re never honest. Says they lie, that they always will. He tells you this with personal conviction. But like something you never thought you’d do, you want to tell him not this one. Not this boy. 

Perhaps every girl before you has thought the same. Maybe they were laying as you are now. But this one is different, you think, you believe. You bring the thought with you as James leans in and kisses you again, drawing you under until you’re pressed into the pillow with nowhere else to go. You believe it through the warmth of his hand tracing the skin under your jaw, with the other moving over your hair. And you believed it most when you touched him back and thought never to return. 

“I’ll make a fantasy out of you,” James breathes out as he buries his head in the crook of your jaw. And then I’ll make a believer out of myself. A flame and a moth. 

You huff out a little airy laugh. “Could you?”

He lifts his head just enough to look at you. “Have I ever disappointed you before?”

The rest of the night, if “night” is even the correct term for it, and James is not entirely convinced it is, breaks apart into the most non-linear little pieces, as though misfiled in the wrong century. There are, instead, these conditions: warmth with a clear origin, motions in improper geometry, and the strange, persistent closeness. 

James remembers the beaches of his childhood. Of tides returning to their remarkable shoreline no matter how often they should be pulled away. His thoughts, ordinarily so well-trained, behave much the same around you. It’s an inefficient system, all this remembering. 

Skin to skin, breath upon breath, there was nowhere else to go but under. 

And with all the pretty things James had whispered to you that night, if it were truly what you thought it to be meant anything at all, then you took them with you to your dreams in the hopes that they’d be better interpreted there. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

If you had just lived through the best night of your life a few hours ago, you certainly left no such obvious traces of it this morning. None that James could see. 

The diner sat in a quiet early-hour warmth just beside the motel, low light with clinking cutlery, and something steady about it. James has always been like that with breakfast. No matter where he ends up, no matter how far off or unfamiliar, he makes time for it. You sit just right across from him in the corner booth, and though he thought maybe this would be the perfect time to pick up on the conversation he’d left to fend for last night, you just wouldn’t look at him. 

You keep your head held low as you fix your attention to the food you’d been picking on your plate and chewing. Is facing him really going to cost me something? 

James clicked his tongue. “You don’t like eggs?”

“I don’t like the sunny side ups.” You say through a mouthful, not bothering to look up. 

“Give it here.”

You slide the plate across as ceramic grazes the table in a soft passing sound, slipping between the diner’s lull of conversations. He switches it out with his own, then shifts his plate of scrambled eggs closer to you. 

“Eat,” he says. You do. 

Not because you’re still hungry. You just need to give your hands something to commit to. Across the table, you feel him watching you in that pressing way of his. 

“Slept well?” he asks. 

“You tell me. I was literally next to you.”

His mouth shifts, and he wonders how far he’s able to take this.

“Just trying to add some light to this shit. You’re making it awkward.”

Why wouldn’t it be awkward?

You shake your head. “I’m not making it awkward.”

“Yeah?” He leans forward slightly as his elbows brush the edge of the table. “Why won’t you look at me?”

“I don’t know James.” You move your food around, and the grip on your fork is a lot tighter now. “This was so unplanned.”

“Hmm?”

“None of this would’ve happened if the truck hadn’t broken down.”

There’s something barely offended, but ultimately unreadable in his expression. 

“So what are you saying?” His voice lowers just a little. “You wouldn’t have wanted this to happen?”

And you finally look up at him for the first time today. “No, I–”

You wonder what it was you were even trying to argue against. There’s no denying you’d never regret what you had done yesterday. Not now, not later, not even if your dad found out. It seems entering adulthood had a way of overcomplicating things, layers upon layers where there might have been none if only you had tried. 

“Don’t tell me you got a boyfriend back in college you forgot to mention ‘cause I do not want to be your little homewrecker–”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, God, I’m not that awful.” You rub at the corners of your eyes in frustration.

“So what’s the matter?”

The matter for you was simple: that this was going to be one of those cute little flings, as fleeting as they were all unplanned for. The cruel fate of someday being remembered as that ‘summer of ‘02’ months or years from now, and nothing more.

“Nothing.” And you know he doesn't believe you. 

“I just,” Your fork pauses on your plate, and you think of either being straightforward or telling another one of your unbelievable lies. 

“I’m gonna have to go back to college sooner or later.”

A weak defense mechanism presents itself in your throat, small and evasive. It’s then that James now understands. So that's what you were fussing about. 

He’d been so caught up in the present tense that he’d neglected the so-called never-not-befores. By then, he’s realized a little late how soon you’d be gone for months at a time. It wouldn’t be the first. Only now, he’s going to have to learn the hard way of an act called letting go.

There were slips of transcripts his grandmother kept around the old house that he used to read. All those Chinese sayings about destiny, yuanfen, she called it. The idea of encounters not being all that random. and that certain intersections have been pre-authored into the margins of existence. Red strings, love locks, the Old Man of the Moon, the sort of things that make you think of magic. James had always found it a little too bogus to be true. And yet, if such a thing does exist, if yuanfen is by any bit operational at all, he hoped it would be on your side. 

“I hope you’re not taking that junky car with you–”

“Keep my Mustang out your mouth James.”

James can only smile at you in turn and think about that stupid car that started it all. He huffs a laugh and slides his leftover hashbrowns across the table. 

“You better eat it. Need to make up for the rice.” 

Your fork cuts through the food he’d offered as you take a big bite. “Alright.”

He hoped it would be you. 

Because then he wouldn’t have to worry in the end. Ten miles, a thousand, an ocean or two, it made no meaningful difference. Water returns to its level. Winds to their courses. You, he hoped, would return to him. Or he to you. 

The train ride back to Old Town Temecula had been as eventful in that it made your hairs stick out and your attention a little too heightened. You sat closely next to each other, as close as any two people could be. Looking around at everyone else, the old couple with their arms knotted together, the lonely guy just by the door, and behind him, a young pair stealing too many kisses as if they might run out, you realize nearly everyone’s got something of their own.

And while you were busy doing just that, James hovers his rough hand over your soft one lying on your side, doesn’t consider such consequences of it, and presses it down, nudging his fingers in between yours. They interlock much like zipper teeth. 

Just like your face, his hands stayed warm the whole train ride back, the way you had imagined often and always a little too vividly. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

James remembers the summers he’d spent in a plastic pool on Fridays, not a day over five. That, or when he’d spend them in Martin’s treehouse watching movies on the television they’d found at the back of a storefront. He remembers the heat pressed as close as another body, the exhilaration, the freedom to act his age. But this is the first summer he’s looked at a girl and almost scared himself to death from the guilt. Guilt, the word he uses to think less of his desire. But looking at you now, he could think of nothing more. 

This was the cruelest season of them all. 

“Do I look alright?” You ask from your vanity, turning just enough to catch James in the mirror who’s sprawled across your bed, hands folded behind his head. You’d waited until noon for your dad to leave for yet another fishing trip before sneaking James inside. It had been a successfully executed operation if you ignored the part where he nearly slipped off the roof and met an embarrassing end. The things James was willing to risk just to see his girl were far from limited. 

“Looks like it.”

“Seriously James?” You snap the cap back onto your lipstick with a sharp  click and move to the edge of the bed, bending down to slip on your shoes.  “Spent three hours getting ready for the date where you spent at most 10 seconds to ask me on. Some enthusiasm would be appreciated.”

Ah, but my throat’s all caught, Y/n. How could I say anything at all?

“You look great. Amazing. Your hair looks like a shiny toilet surface. Did you want that?”

The words came out clumsy on the way free. He had better ones, prettier ones lined up behind his teeth, but he was saving those for later.

“Thanks.”

For the better part, you suspected James had every intention of spending whatever time remained of your vacation planted firmly at your side. He’d developed this habit of appearing wherever you happened to be. Was he your boyfriend though? Absolutely not.

“I’m all ready. We should head out.”

But whether he was your boyfriend or not seemed beside the point, because when your ‘not boyfriend’ pushed himself upright, he once again tried his best to maintain composure and try not to tackle you back onto the mattress. You looked beautiful. Well you were always beautiful, but tonight you clearly made an occasion of it. The sight alone was enough to set James’ face ablaze.

“I’ll wait for you right here.” He said as he stood up, finding his way behind you so that he could whisper it in the shell of your ear. ‘Pretty, pretty lady’, to which you gave him a warm smile. His day opened up like a fruit under a knife. 

You hurry on downstairs, catching your mother in the kitchen. A quick goodbye, a promise that you’d be out with friends and come home late enough to warrant concern, but she let you go. James counted as a friend. Never to you, but technically, in the broadest possible sense, he was. You slipped outside and circled beneath your bedroom window, shielding your eyes from the rays as you looked up. James was perched on your sill like a disturbed cat. 

“Sight’s clear.” You announced in a stage whisper. James tried his best to wriggle out the window and grabbed for the nearby branch. There was a lot of rustling, a muffled curse, before he dropped to the patch fo grass with an unceremonious thud.

He brushed the dirt off his jeans, still catching his breath. “You seriously need to properly introduce me to your parents. I can’t keep this up.” 

“You don’t like sneaking up to my room?” You tease as you both make your way to where he parked the truck. Fixed, this time. You trust it to work. “That’s a shame. I happen to find it quite romantic.” 

“Try being on the climbing end, and you'll be thinking twice.” By the time James said it, the two of you had reached the clearing where the truck waited. A faint smile tugged at his mouth, as if the sight of it stirred up an old memory. You both scrambled inside, James fired up the engine, and the rock rolled forward. 

James figured that if he was gonna do this, he ought to do it properly. A real date, something with intention (and a lot of money) behind it. But time was proving itself annoyingly finite, so early afternoon would have to do. The sun was what brought you two together, so it seemed only right to make it a little centerpiece.  Besides, James liked you best in daylight. Not because you were any less lovely at night, but that daytime laid everything out to him in the clearest golden motions. Like citrus and canary yellow, sweet tea and dynamite. 

The drive pulls you farther into town, past the familiar corners and into the part with the nicer sidewalks. When James finally pulls up in front of a restaurant with gleaming windows and a valet service, you turn to look at him. He catched your stare and gave you that unreadable almost-smile, then shook his head. 

And dinner was wonderfully surreal. No boy had ever gone out of their way to take you someplace this nice out of their own volition. That was James all over, thoughtful in ways that would sneak up on you. He was so generous with you, honest too, and knew how to say the right things. He was also blessed, or perhaps cursed, with remarkable hands. One of the first things you’d learned about them was that they could fix almost anything put in front of them. The second was that, whenever given the chance, they were good at taking you apart. 

You saw it now too, as James sat across from you, laughing at every little thing you said. He did it with his whole body, as if his joy were too large to contain in something as small as his teethy grins. You found that he had the face of an old song, of one your mother liked to play through the record every morning. There is only so much considerable longing you can fit into the four minutes of a song. 

Halfway through your food, you suddenly remembered something, then quickly reached for your handbag.

“Oh! By the way…” James, who had been in the middle of demolishing a truly unfair amount of delicious clam shells, paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.

You rummage through some receipts, a lip gloss, and maybe half your earthly possessions. At last, your hand emerged triumphantly, clutching a tiny plastic toy dog. 

“I wanted to give you this. Thought it looked like you.”  You placed it in his held out palm, and he turned it over in his fingers, brow furrowing. It was a small brown dog with oversized eyes and a permanently alert expression. Frankly, the ‘resemblance’ was confusing. 

“... What is it?”

“It’s a little pet, from the Littlest Pet Shop.” You said with all the reverence of introducing royalty. “I’ve been collecting them forever. They’re adorable, and look–” You reached over and tapped its head. It wobbled enthusiastically from side to side. James watched with captivation and held it up, examining it like an archeologist uncovering a priceless relic. 

“Thank you. Seriously. I could glue this down on my dashboard–”

Your expression turned murderous “Do not glue this anywhere, James. These are precious things. I expect you to care for this as your own child.” James nodded solemnly, and then cradled the little dog in both hands.

“Gotcha.” 

The little dog, Doudou, as James had named him (brown rice), sat perched beside the salt shaker keeping a vigilant eye on the proceedings. The restaurant had filled in around over the last few hours, and sunlight spilled through the windows, catching the rims of glasses and turning everything faintly sparkling. James had loosened up considerably, which was to say he kept taking unwanted bites of your cake, denying your every retort. 

“Hey–” You fought his fork away from your plate with your own. “You should’ve ordered another earlier. This is criminal.”

He shrugged unrepentant and took another piece. “Possession is only nine-tenths of the law, by the way.”

You pointed a fork at him accusingly. “One day James, your hubris will be your downfall.”

His smile was enough to make you forget whatever mean thing you’d been preparing to say. Eventually though, perhaps it was the angle of the light, or how your eyes drifted toward the window, again and again, that had James wondering yet again.

He sets his fork down. “What’s wrong?”

“You think we've been here long enough?” You asked.

A brow lifted. “Why? You wanna leave?” You glanced out at the lowering sun, and the sky beginning its slow descent, and nodded. 

“Yeah.” A small smile tugged at your mouth. “I wanna see the sun before it sets.” 

And so the bill was paid, Doudou was safely secured in James’ jacket pocket, and within minutes you were back in the truck, the engine rumbling to life from beneath you. 

The truck heads a little towards the edge of town and uphill, and the field beyond steals the breath right out of you. It rolls outward in waves of tall grass and dandelion silk, all gold and green and dreamlike as you both got out.

And though you dress was never made for such things, you run straight down the slope, the ground catching you in a fit of laughter as you fall to your side. James could only shout for you as you rolled on down. 

The sun had reached the ruinous hour when it seemed time to finally spend itself entirely. It scattered light all over, and it made you think of beauty and whether grass stains ever truly came out. James, for his part, felt his insides turn over like a drawer being searched. The land went on and on, exceeding the eye and all good manner. Yet for all that breadth, all that open country, he need only lower his eyes. 

You lay there on the grass with the last of the sun’s rays tangled in between your hair, smiling up at him from the same green earth that had made him, had made trees and rivers and every other ordinary miracle, and seen fit, had placed you here before him. And what is another miracle if not this?

“Please don’t do that ever again.” 

“Come–!”

You tug him by the hand and pull, and the two of you roll a little further down the slope in a tangle of hair, fabric, and breathless laughter. James has to gather your hair away from your face and disentangle it from your mouth just so he can kiss you properly, and fold himself around you like an unblooming flower. 

And when he looks at you after, he wants, wants, and wants some more. Against all the reasonably unreasonable forces. To be yours. To be of you and for you. To make a home somewhere in the crook of your neck or the dip in your chest, the two places where your heartbeat is clearest.

“My dress is all ruined.”

“I’ll buy you a new one, how does that sound?”

“You oughta just buy me a new car.” A joke, obviously. But James asks the question anyway.

“Will you like that?”

You both commit to a very spontaneous decision, and James is grateful he had the intuition to keep a clean blanket in his truck beforehand. The sun sets, and by the time the stars had gone up, he slid open the sun roof upon your request. In the blinking machinery of the darkness above, James points out plants like he’s naming his old acquaintances, then offers you the strange superstitions he collected as a child.

Then you fall asleep right there, wrapped in a blanket on the backseat of his father's truck while the stars slip down like a drawn curtain over the world. James stays awake and keeps vigil through the night, held up by the weight against his chest and the soft cadence of your breathing, borrowing from it a calm he’s yet to learn to keep for himself. 

A little later into morning, he drives the coastal road that leads home. And he pulls into that same clearing again, and lifts you carefully from the passenger seat. He reaches for your purse with the key to your front door, and lets himself i as quietly as he can. Inside, he moves slowly and watches his every step so the floorboards won’t creak. He takes the stairs just as carefully, until he makes it to your room without a suspecting soul there to catch him. 

He lowers you onto your bed gently, and you sink into your mattress much like he does as he follows, dropping down beside you to fit himself right into the sprawl of your limbs. His breath is warm where it brushes your skin, his nose tingling where it touches yours. 

“Wake up, little lady.” He murmurs, voice still rough with groginess..” You want me to clean you up??”

“Later…” You mumble. “Stop calling me that.”

“I’ll leave you be.” He shifts a lot closer, if being closer was still possible. “I need to head off to the shop.”

Your fingers crumple slightly around his sleeve. “Stay a while.” 

“How long did you want this while to be?” He looks at you earnestly, as he looks for a similarly earnest answer. 

The morning light slides further in through the curtains, catching on the edges of your hair, the folds of the blanket, and James grants himself a moment.

“A long kind of while.” 

He couldn’t say no to that. 

Later that afternoon, at the shop when James is helping adjust something from under the hood of a car, his dad’s sights narrowed onto that small dog figurine sitting new and unfitting on the counter next to the piles of papers and blueprints.

“What the hell is that thing?” He finally asks.

James doesn’t even need to look up from where he’s looking to know what he was referring to. “It’s a dog.”

“This yours?”

“Gift.”

“Whatever for?”

James tightens a bolt a little too firmly and scoffs, a tiny sign of a grin pulling at his face. “It’s normal to receive gifts dad.”

His father exhales through his nose unimpressedly. “Well this looks like a gift you give to a girl, and you ain't one.”

James wipes his ands on his stained jeans and turns to grab Doudou. From the counter, he quickly settles him onto the workbench, one he shared with his dad. Out of some half-assed spite that made him want to laugh, he turns to him and points at Doudou the dog. “Just deal with the damn toy.” 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

Your mom has been trying not to cry since you’d went downstairs with your bags, which only made her more talkative as she circled around the same three instructions: study well, eat properly, wash your sheets when you get back. 

“And don’t forget to call, okay?” she says again, holding your hands like an anchor. You wanted to die of embarrassment because James was standing right at the front door. 

“I’ll be back before you know it, Ma.” you answer as you lean in to kiss her cheek. Your dad stands a little behind her, arms crossed trying not to be part of the emotional fiasco happening in front of him. He clears his throat when James shifts from where he stands.

“You’re always taking her off to places, huh.” 

“I’m getting her to the airport, Mr. L/n.” James tries to feign nonchalance, and your dad buys it cluelessly. Your mom finally lets you go, stepping back with a long look like she’s trying to memorize your face. When you turn back, James helps you haul your things out the door. As you start walking away, he glances at you sideways.

“You think your dad's softening up to me?” 

“He lets you in my room now. With the door closed, mind you. That’s gotta be it.”

The car ride was quiet. James didn’t know what to say for once, so he kept his eyes on the road, fingers drumming lightly against the steering wheel. He watched the streets roll by, the stoplight changing, strangers crossing intersections, and the usual moving on of life. 

By the time the airport came into view, James pulled into an empty space near the terminal entrance, close enough that he could spot the steady stream of travelers coming and going, departures, arrivals, reunions, the like.  He killed the engine, and you carefully unbuckled your seatbelt. James glances over at you, then quickly away, and back again. You folded your arms across your chest and turned to meet his gaze. 

“You have my new number saved right?”

“Yeah I do.”

“And you'll call?”

“I’ll call you when you arrive.”

James looks at you and catches something small and uneasy. He shifts in his seat and leans over the console. “What’s wrong?”

You look out the windshield for a moment. And once you seem like you’ve made up your mind about something, you lean in as well, and kiss James breathless. 

When you pull back, James looks struck, and a laugh seeps out of you. “I’ll let you be my boyfriend now.”

James thinks fucking finally. He’s waited this long. 

“You could’ve made the decision a little earlier, no?”

You give him a look of fake compassion and press your foreheads together. “We sure still had a good time.”

We sure did. 

“I’ll see you in a few months.”

He’ll certainly remember the way you would sing that godforsaken song, Shape of My Heart by Sting over and over, every time it was on the radio. And he wonders what shape his heart would prove to be (thank you Gordon Sumner) if you were to cut him open and take a peak. He would have to explain it to you then, if he could find the words:

Love, yes, he had love, and felt it in these accruals.  The way limestone was his peculiar little architect, building cathedrals in his mind out of the most ordinary memories. You’d be lodged to the base like a seed in a seam splitting ground and stone. Or maybe he’d be changing oil, or turning a wrench, and there you’d be again, threaded through the gears smiling from between its teeth.

The shape of his heart: an endless concept to think about. 

When he drives home, the seat is empty beside him. Somewhere above, his heart has slipped its moorings and gone migrating an inch closer to yours, just a few thousand miles away. And from where you were, you held the same bit of hopefulness, your measure of passing slowly turning into a clockwise cycle of before James, after James, and the exquisite ache of wanting for James again. 

Summer made conspirators of everyone. The trees would lean closer, the sun softened the pavement. Time, to most, could stretch themselves as thin as caramel. But summer has ended, so he’d have to stick to a memory on his way back. 

And the town could forget your tire tracks by autumn. Rain will smooth it over and leaves will litter over green and brown. James, though, knows he won’t. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

(BONUS)

A few months later, James steps into the auto lot the way he’s done a hundred times before. Rust, oil, hot metal, everything baked under the sun and layered into the air to smell. Rick sits on the hood of a sedan, half-slouched and wiping grease off his hands with a towel.

“Morning Rick.”

“Hey!” Rick waves, squinting at him and then the car he’s got. “Whatchu here for? What’s with the Mustang?”

“Here to scrape it. It’s done its time.”

Rick gives a low whistle, hopping down from the hood and eyeing the Mustang down. “Ah, then you'll have yourself a good deal for it. I’ll say.”

And that’s all James was really here for, really. To grant your one wish as though it were a dying one. It left him confused in some way, he’d have to admit. You loved that car. He hadn’t expected you to let go of it the moment you left.

Yet the poor thing had exhausted all of its potential by the time you were done with it, so the junk or resale was the next best thing.

Rick jerks his thumb toward a corner of the lot. “Oh these just came in.” He walks them over.

“They’re not brand new, but it’s solid condition. Engines clean, suspensions intact, minor wear on the bushings but nothing too big The boss man’s thinking of flipping ‘em for a nice penny.”

Theres a Toyota Prado sitting right at the corner, boxy and grounded, and built to take on dirt. James takes a closer look.

“Try and sell this one to me, will ya Rick? C’mon, advertise.” 

Rick raises a brow. “You don’t want that truck no more, huh?”

“‘S not for me.”

He looks at the mustang, that vehicle of memories he was so adamant on talking you out of scraping. A good gift, huh? 

“I’ll take it.”

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

mari here! guys did u get the ‘somebody better be dying’ Shrek reference…? no? that's OK D: lowk lost it w ts fic bc the direction was all over the place but HEYYY I'm back but not rly ! I posted this to like make up for the long dcu wait yall r gonna have to bear with 😭 I promise it's not scraped at all in fact it barely started 😛 but ur gonna have to give me some time bc I’ve been super busy and burnt + I’ll be honest this whole tumblr thing has been making me feel v anxious lately (?) 😅 it’s not u it’s me ahh 💨 which is why I haven’t been getting into the blr these past few days 😞🙏 tho i will answer a few asks tonight mwahahaha ill try </33 ily 

[cranialberry]

stay cool, be somebody's fool - z.yf.

ོ ☼𓂃 she sees my good deeds, and she kisses them windy

☀︎ tags: mechanic! james x reader | slice of life | ft. cortis n friends | james my dreamy cowboy mechanic 😍 | first meetings | summer romance | james smokes | flirting | kissing (suggestive) | two people one bed trope | driving into the sunset on his rusty truck cliche 😂 | (w.c. 17k)

☀ No one will tell you that on the summer of 2002, in a town on the west coast of southern California, your 1967 Shelby will break down. You'll end up going back to the same dusty auto repair shop all season to keep it running, and a boy your age will step out of the garage and offer to fix it. It is important that you say yes.

-> 💌 author’s note at the end! • PLAYLIST

The first sign should’ve come to you the moment your car gave out on the freeway.

It wasn’t objectively the safest place to stall out, with horns blaring around you like a road rage orchestra and cars speeding about while yours remained embarrassingly immobile. Eventually, a police officer took pity and helped tow it to a nearby shop in the city. The whole thing was all so suspiciously efficient, right up until the bill arrived, that is. And with another hit to your wallet, dinner plans with your friends dissolved into the expense of keeping your rust bucket running.  

But you’d trade a piece of anything just to keep this car alive; hell, heaven, whatever fell on either side of that. A Ford Mustang, your 1967 Shelby baby. Anything. 

Now, you weren't much of a car geek, but looking at it for the first time, you knew it looked too clean to pass up. And after a long stretch of convincing, it ended up waiting in your dad's garage on your eighteenth birthday. A parting gift, perhaps. Something to send you off to university with. 

Somewhere along that line, you eventually forgot that ‘vintage’, more than it meant ‘valuable’, also meant it was old. And age came with wear no matter how well-kept. 

“Honey,” Your mom began in that worried tone. “This is the third time this month that…thing has broken down.”

“I’m aware. I was there for all three events.”

From the other end of the kitchen, your sister perked up, suddenly useful. “I know a guy at an auto repair shop.”

To which you narrowed your eyes as you turned slowly to her. “You always know a guy.”

“Hey–”

“Okay,” Your dad cuts in, slicing clean through the escalating nonsense unfolding as breakfast was being prepared. He leaned back in his chair exhaustedly. 

“I know we all enjoy whatever this is–” he gestured vaguely between your sister and you, “–but I’m tired of picking you up from random highways, Y/n.”

You opened your mouth to defend both yourself and your car’s honor, but he beat you to it.

“Get it fixed,” he said plainly. “Or I’m scrapping it.”

“Dad you can’t just do that–”

“I’m the one with the lease.”

Which is how you found yourself in what can only be described as ‘nothing’ in the middle of nowhere, a stretch of gravel bleeding into the highway far ahead, and a few tired trees doing their best under the blaring sun. But this is Old Town Temecula, so none of that felt particularly out of the ordinary, and so was this repair shop. If anything, you’d like to simply feel bad for it. The exterior looked a little worse for wear.

“Hello?” You called out from outside the doorway, because you’re not entirely convinced this place was still open for business. You leaned in slightly, scanning for any sign of life. An employee, a shadow, a western-style tumbleweed situation. Nothing. 

You stepped forward and smacked the counterbell a little too enthusiastically. 

“Whoever runs this place, you’ve got yourself a customer!” 

Another beat of silence stretched out, and whatever optimism you had started closing in again. As you made plans to head right on home and tell your sister about how her ‘trusted location’ was in fact a sham, a door swung open and hit the wall with a loud bang. 

“Hey, lady!” 

When you turned back, you were met with the most wondrous sight. 

Like a scene slipping into place, there’s a guy that steps out through the door, probably over your age. White tank, worn jeans, both marked by some dirt and the intense weather. His hands looked it too. A wrench was tucked into his back pocket, and a rag hung from the other. Your unhelpful brain starts pulling references and time frames from several vague films: small town swelter, an open garage, and the concept of some dreamy cowboy mechanic. 

A hot guy in the hottest summer to date. The world must be running an experiment on me. 

But you digress, because this guy was looking for a reply, and unfortunately, none of your internal commentary would be appropriate to say in polite conversation. 

“Car givin’ you trouble, little miss?”

Little?

You briefly glanced around, just in case there'd been another designated “little miss” you somehow missed in the area. You realized he was referring to you. 

“...Uh, yeah.” You said slowly. “Lots of it.”

He leaned against the doorway and gave you a once-over. Eyes dragging up, down, then landing back on yours again. What? 

“Ain’t you something...”

“Huh?” 

He straightened himself up and cleared his throat.  “I said what kind of trouble?”

You’re fairly sure that was not what he said the first time, but you also definitely missed it, so you decided it’s safest to move forward. 

“It keeps breaking down,” you explain. Then, as if that isn’t already self-explanatory, you add, “Not right now. But it will.” 

He lets out a low hum, “Yeah?”

“Mmh hm.” You nodded. “Preferably whenever I’m driving on a highway.”

“I’ll take a look, see what I can do.” He jerked his chin toward the corner of the shop, at some cozy little lounging area. “Why don’t you sit down? Make yourself comfortable.”

Comfortable? Here with him? How ambitious.

You ended up on the sofa anyway, dropping with awkward commitment as you took in the surroundings of the shop. The place smelled like a hot spell, metal and tang, motor oil maybe, or grease. You looked around some more. At the mechanical parts lying around, at the tools hung on one wall, and then sometimes you’d let your eyes betray you at least once or twice, taking him in where he’d already be half-turned.

“You new here?” He asked.

“Kind of? My parents got a house here to get out of the city. It’s my first summer here, actually.” 

““Figures. Haven't seen this one around much.”

You blinked. “My car?”

“Yeah. It’s hard to miss. Very vintage.” He rolled right out again and gave you a small grin as he sat up.

“It was a birthday gift.”

“Must've been a good one.”

“It is,” You clicked your tongue as you reminisce bitterly. “When it works.”

He crouched by your hood, his shirt riding up just enough for you to catch sight of the tools tucked into his jeans. 

“I’ll get it to work.”

A nervous cough escaped you then as your eyes scrambled for anything else. Literally anything else will do, Y/n. 

“You sound pretty sure.”

He shrugged as he reached for a wrench. “I’ve got time.”

You hadn’t even realized you’d been dozing off after that, right there on the old couch of a random repair shop of all places. Maybe it was the smell of oil and the heat rising making your head a little light, but you woke up a while later by a few pokes at your shoulder. 

“Hey,” The guy’s voice reaches you through whatever heavy sleep you’ve sunken into. “Seize the day.”

You blinked slowly and let out a quiet yawn. “Sorry.”

“All good.” He’s standing over you, one hand half-lifted from where he’d been nudging. There’s a faint curve to his mouth, and you have an inkling feeling that he’s been watching you this whole time.

“Check it out.” 

You step out the shop and into the stretch of sun waiting just beyond the little shade, rough ground crunching under your shoes as you make your way toward where your car had been left. 

“So,” You circled the front, and half-expected it to look different somehow. You glanced back at James. “Is she gonna be ok?”

“She’s fine.” He leaned a shoulder against the side and folded his arms loosely over one another. 

“But your fuel pump’s an old piece of crap. That’s what's been killing it on you.”

“I uh, I don’t…” Confused was what you were.

“It’s okay.” He said it a little softer this time. “Your car's not great.”

You huffed out a small, offended sound under your breath.

“It runs fine,” he reassured you, and gestured toward the engine. “But then it doesn’t get the fuel it needs. That’s why it's cutting out on you, especially when you’re driving for longer.”

“Is that why I’m always breaking down on the freeway?”

“Yeah.” He said, and popped the hood open. “Your carburetor’s not in the best shape either. It probably hasn’t been touched in a while. And your wiring’s a little off.” 

He lifted a shoulder and added, “Nothing major, but it’s not helping.”

“Which means?”

“Which means, little lady,” He took a few steps toward you. “I can fix it. Just not today.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. “How long will that take?”

“A couple days. Maybe three, depending if I have to order anything in.”

“I kinda need it,” You sighed, long and defeated. So much for being your group’s long-standing designated driver. 

“Yeah. But it needs a makeover.”

You kicked a loose pebble across the gravel and watched it skid under a few tires like that'll somehow help you decide. 

“And you’re sure you can fix it?”

“Have any doubts?” The guy tilted his head assuredly. “I’ll take care of it.”

You squinted at him a little. He squints back, in an effort to say what. 

“Okay,” you muttered, you accepted. “Guess I’ll take the bus back.”

“Do you know your way home?”

“I’ve figured it out. ”

You really hadn’t, but you’re grown. You’re going to have to figure it out.

He promptly reached for his back pocket and pulled out a flip phone, jamming in a few buttons before holding it out to you.

“By the way. Could I get your number?”

Well, he’s certainly straightforward. 

“Excuse me?”

He nudged the device toward you.  “To call you when it’s finished.”

You mentally face-palmed yourself for, once again, reading way too much into this guy.

“Right.”

Once you’ve typed in your number, you bidded each other a short goodbye as you stepped out toward the highway, where the bus stop waits a little further down. James has to squint through the glasses he’d just pulled from his shirt to make sure you actually get on one. Only when the bus carries you off does he return to the counter, write up the bill, and tuck it into his pocket. He made a mental note to stop by the bank soon, preferably before his dad noticed something was off with the payment logs.

It occurred to him with no small degree of disbelief and embarrassment in himself that this might just be the first time he’s been so horrendously head over his own shoes. Stupid, stupid James. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

“Is your ice cream any good?”

“Take a lick of my ice cream and I’m dumping it on your face.”

“Sounds like a yes,” Haerin mutters.

The sun hung overhead in its usual tyrannical fashion, pressing summer into everything in sight. You and your friends have claimed an outdoor table, holding ice cream and smoothies sweating through heir plastic cups. Condensation slips down the side of yours, cool against your fingers before pooling in the little hollow of your palm

“Oh look. It’s the Power Rangers.”

You follow their line of sight across the street where the park unfurls toward the water in a long stretch of green and glittering blue. Parked along the grass is a truck, and a handful of guys leaned against it in varying states of practiced poses, draped there as though they had been arranged specifically for public viewing. Someone would take their turn holding the camera, and the other being a subject. You thought it looked ridiculous. 

“A very managerless and underfunded boyband.”

“Are they trying to tan?”

There are five of them, sure enough, scattered around the truck with a sort of aimless patience. As your eyes move from one face to the next, your gaze snags on a familiar face, half-turned towards the water laughing at something one of them had said. The mechanic boy from the repair shop. The same one you had been eyeing up with all the subtlety of a Victorian man who’d just seen an exposed ankle. 

You take one aggressive sip of your smoothie in the hopes that the brain freeze might cool your head. 

You lean towards Haerin and jerk your head forward. “What’s that guy’s name?” 

“Grey shirt?” She asks as she tries to follow your line of sight.

“Next to him.”

She paused, then whipped her head at you. “James?”

Ah, so his name was James. You turn it over in your mind once, then again, and several more times. It suited him. Something sturdy and unfairly appealing. You think it would look rather nice written in your handwriting somewhere, though you wisely keep that thought to yourself. 

You shake your head and try to attempt the look of not caring, but achieve something considerably less convincing. 

“Isn’t he a mechanic?” You asked and tried to sound absentminded about it.

“How’d you know that?”

“I brought my car to the shop to get it fixed.” That earns you a look. 

“You seriously need to scrap that piece of junk,” Yunah says. 

“Moving on.”

“Right. Well, he’s not technically a mechanic. His dad owns the shop, and during breaks he takes shifts there. I’ve seen him around the community college a few times. He’s got an engineering track.”

Mina added in, “He kinda keeps to himself.” She nodded towards their direction. “Those are his friends. They’ve all known each other since forever. Just like us.” 

You look at them and think, sandbox love, a half-imagined and kind of shy concept for a group such as theirs. 

Yunah cuts in. “Remember Hana? I heard she’s still as obsessed with him as ever.”

“Oh my god, yeah.” Mina laughs. “It’s kind of tragic. Does he even like her?”

A shrug from Haerin. “I don’t think he likes anyone.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like girls.”

“What a bold assumption.”

You’d still been looking even as your friends dissolved into their usual spiral of gossip beside you. Judge me all you want. It was a cute guy in the wild. That’s not a situation you simply can ignore. Whether you liked him or not had very little to do with it; staring was practically a reflex at this point. Something encoded deep in the inner workings of every girl who had come out the other side of puberty with functioning eyes. 

Because you’re staring a little too intently, you started to notice things more clearly: his dark brown and slightly messy hair, the way he’s leaning back against the truck’s hood, and the subtle bop of his head keeping time with the music from a small boombox nearby.

You’re also able to make out how he turned his head upward, just slightly, before his gaze landed directly on you. 

You’re fairly certain he might not even remember who you are. Why would he? You had been, in the grand scheme of his life, just one overheated girl with a broken car. He likely saw a dozen of those a week. Maybe two dozen, depending on what he looked like that day. It would be less embarrassing if he weren’t so aware of possessing a face. You knew he did, surely right?

So you keep looking anyway. Your eyes wander with an interest that could, in a court of law, be used against you. Even then, it felt like his eyes were tracking yours, following whatever it landed on. He shifts where he’s leaning, and though the distance between you is considerable, there is an unmistakable deliberation in his movement. A subtle squaring of his shoulder, the conscious vanity of a man who knows he’s being observed.

His expression seems to say, Well? The lack of concern on his end, and the complete drought of restraint on yours, was weird enough. 

“Y/n, ready to go?”

Right then, the sound of your name yanks you clean out of whatever trance you’d been happily deteriorating in. All your friends are looking at you with varying levels of suspicion and delight.

You straighten so fast your straw nearly launches itself from your drink.

“I–yeah. Fuck yeah, let's go.”

An answer so immediate, so aggressively enthusiastic, that it condemns you on the spot.

“Why don’t you wipe the drool on your face first?”

Your hand flies instinctively to your mouth, which, to your immense relief, is perfectly dry. Mina bursts into laughter before you can even process the betrayal. You give Mina a small slap on the shoulder, to which she cackles in reply. 

“Asshole”

You grab your cup as Mina loops her arm through yours, and when your group begins to head out and cross the street, you risk one last glance over your shoulder. James is looking too. 

He lifts two fingers in a lazy salute. You hate the way you wave back. 

You were not drooling. This is one cornerstone belief. Because if you had been, then James might have seen it. And while he may be very alarmingly attractve for a man, you are not under any circumstances prepared to hand him that sort of satisfaction. No fucking way, dude. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

You bump your hip against something metal the moment you step into the shop, and the sharp clang that follows has you muttering a curse beneath your breath. James had said three days, but it had taken a week before the call finally came. Longer than promised, sure, but you can’t exactly hold it against him. Your car in fact is a piece of scrap. 

“James?” You called out as you step further in. “I’m back.”

A pair of boots appear from beneath the undercarriage of a car, followed shortly by James himself, rolling out on one of those little mechanic creepers. He pushed himself upright in one smooth motion and wipes his hands on a rag. There’s a streak of grease along his forearm, and another near his jaw.

“How’d you know my name?” he asks, squinting at you through the bright light pouring in from the garage door. 

“Oh, y’know, people talk.”

His mouth tilted upward. “Been asking around about me?”

“No, stop that.” You pointed accusingly before he can get any smugger.  “Is my car fixed or what?”

James laughed under his breath and tossed the rag onto the counter.

“A thank you would be nice.” 

“For extending our business relationship by four whole days? No sir.” 

He shook his head, though he’s still smiling, and gestured toward the far end of the garage where your car sat looking, somehow, the same and yet marginally less likely to explode. 

“Here it is.”

You walked on over and ran a hand lightly along the hood as though greeting an old, troublesome friend. James follows close behind.

 “Please,” he says, leaning against the driver’s side door, “try not to put too much force on the gas.”

“If I can’t do that, I might as well not use the car.”

“Not my fault it’s an old tinker.”

Then he tosses you the keys. “Try not to break it to soon.”

“Thanks James.”

You turn the keys over in your hand, the metal still warm from his palm. Funny, that observation. Metal shouldn’t be warm unless it’s been left in the sun or held onto for a while. 

“Still don’t know where you got my name from.” 

You offer him your most innocent look, which fools neither of you.

“Hm,” He narrowed his eyes, “Well, if your car’s all junked up again, come around, ‘kay?”

“I have a feeling it won't take long.”

“Lucky me, huh?” He gave you one of those cheeky grins/ 

You reached for your back pocket and pulled out your wallet. 

“How much is it?”

He blinked.

“How much is what?”

“Cost of repair, James. How else do you people earn money?”

“Right.” He scratched the back of his neck, suddenly looking far less certain than a man who had spent the last week trying to resurrect your corpse of a vehicle. 

“I haven't really thought about it.”

You stared at him blankly. “What.” 

He laughed, a little sheepish now. “I’m not a licensed mechanic, my dad is. I don’t get a fixed professional fee like he does. Usually I’d just go with a gut feeling.”

“And is your gut currently giving you a feeling or…?”

“Yes. It’s telling me to defer payment.”

Yor fold our arms over one another. 

“I can’t not pay you, James.” 

“Sure you can.”

“No, I literally can’t. That’s theft.”

“I think that’s just called generosity.”

You rummage through your purse and pull out the only cash you have: a slightly wrinkled ten-dollar bill.

“Here. Ten bucks.”

James looked at the bill, and then back ar you, somewhat deeply offended and amused.

“10 bucks for a car fix? You might as well just give me dirt.”

“Do you want my money or not?”

He plucks the bill from your fingers, stretching it out between two grease-stained hands.

“I don’t want your money. But I at least expected more of it.”

“Well, lower your standards.” 

He folded the bill in a neat little rectangle. Before you could protest, or more importantly understand his intentions, he stepped closer. Far too close. His hand brushed your hip as he reached for the pocket of your jeans, and carefully tucked the bill inside. Oh, you were gone. 

“It’s fine, alright?” His hand lingers for one treacherous second longer before he pulls away. And there was that crooked smile again.

“Maybe next time you'll come back here full of guilt, and that would be the perfect excuse to see you again.”

You blink at him slowly. “I don’t get it.”

He laughed, a quick startled sound, and then took a step backward as he made his way toward the back door. He wiped his hands on his pants, though there’d be nothing left on them now but the persisting feeling of your worn denim. 

“I’ll see you around, Y/n.” 

He turned away, but after one dreadful moment you freeze. Your mind, which had only just returned from a blackout, scrambled to catch up. 

“Wait… hey–” You straighten so fast you nearly lose your balance. “How'd you know my name–?”

James paused with one hand on the doorknob. He glanced back over his shoulder, and the fluorescent lighting caught that unripe sheen in his eye. 

“Oh y’know.”

He opened the door, stepping halfway through.

“People talk.” 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

After that, James seemed to migrate out of the garage and into the rest of your regular days with startling ease. This town seemed determined to place him directly in your little bubble, and you realized that summer didn’t so much follow your expectations as politely ignore them altogether.  

It kicked off at the bowling alley, your friends claiming one lane, and just a few steps to the right, that cluster of guys. Included, unfortunately, was the one you had been putting in a heroic amount of effort to ignore. 

Naturally, that effort lasted all of ten seconds.

With a focus usually reserved for something such as a life-altering decision, Juhoon stepped up, narrowed his eyes, and set the bowling ball down the lane. It rolled and rolled, and kept rolling, before slowly veering off into the gutter. Not a single pin moved. 

A performance, really. 

“Hey.” Haerin leans slightly over the divider as a laugh quickly slips through her words. “You know you’re supposed to hit the pins, right?”

Juhoon turns to her, caught somewhere between offended and amused, and wipes his hands on his jeans as if that might restore some of his dignity. “Oh I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was in the presence of professionals.”

“Relax.” Mina shoots back and crosses her arms. “I’ve barely played this myself and somehow I don’t suck as bad.”

“You wanna talk big?” Keonho chimes in as he leans on their own divider as well.  “Let’s see you do better.” 

“You’re embarrassing us.” You murmured from behind. You’ve forgotten just how aggressively competitive Mina could get over something as low-stakes as this.

“Speak for yourself.” She shoots back under her breath. “You’ve barely picked up a ball.”

You huff out a quiet laugh, shaking your head as you let your attention ease itself out. To your friends, to them, to the easy back and forth. And then, inevitably, to James, who is already coincidentally looking back. Creepy. 

James looks back into the lane and clears his throat, then looks back at you again. 

“So when will your turn be?”

“I don’t–” you start and step back a little too soon. “I’m just here to give some moral support.”

“Kill joy.” he says, not unkindly, and then gives you a smirk.

“That’s a strong accusation for someone who's been sitting in the back the whole time since he’s got here.”

“Have you been taking notes on me?”

“Maybe I should stick to seeing you just at the garage. You’d be less insufferable if you’re being helpful.”

James doesn’t pretend to stifle the laugh that escapes him, and it's a nice sound, you decide. He doesn’t pretend to look away either. Not when you catch him or when you raise a brow in slight accusation. He only tilts his head in a considerable fraction.

You break eye contact first. Out of principle. Out of principle, Y/n. 

Your friend groups had merged into each other after that with surprising ease. A summer armistice, you called it, brokered over boredom and the simple fact that there were only so many interesting people in Old Town Temecula. They made things a lot more entertaining. 

Martin was easy company because you both shared a lot of common interests, particularly where music was concerned. You could spend an entire afternoon arguing over discographies, and each of you were convinced the other had somehow missed a foundational pillar of modern music. He was insufferable about it.

Keonho and Seonghyeon quickly assumed the role of the two younger brothers you never had. They were a matched set of nuisances incapable of minding their own business. Still, you think of them with nothing but fondness.

Then there was Juhoon, who possessed the personality of a man who had lived at least three separate lives and remembered fragments of each. He’d tell you something utterly deranged yet weirdly profound on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday, and then wander off. He was your wise old uncle. 

And then there’s James. You don’t know what he is to you. 

Everyone else seemed to fit into your labeled mind drawers. Friend. Acquaintance. Enemy. Sometimes two, sometimes all. 

You wouldn’t classify James as a friend. Friendship is like a tidy little house. You’d understand all its deep angles and know where the doors would lead. It wouldn’t usually contain that particular voltage. That’s right. Friends don’t prod at the electric fence just to watch it spark. Friends don’t test boundaries like that. Friends, generally speaking, also don’t flirt with each other. 

And you cared, far too much, about what he thought of you too. You had become quite skilled at disguising your curiosity casually when you’d ask one of his friends, as though it had only just occurred to you, whether James had happened to mention you lately. Your name, taking up room in his mouth. 

But acquaintances wouldn’t do either. That word was a handshake and a weather report, a polite distance, or a borrowed pen. You and James had long since trespassed beyond those borders. Whatever it was, it had sharp teeth.

And so you are left with the big question in the filing system of your life. If he wasn’t either, what other drawer could you possibly place him in? All these questions, and no one to answer them. 

But your hypotheses soon had the opportunity of being tested.

The beach was hardly the most forgiving place for you and James to see each other. 

But such were the circumstances that were so often stacked against you. The invite came with such spontaneity that you’d barely had enough time to throw a few beach essentials into your bag before there'd been a minivan already idling right across your house.

“You could’ve told me a lot earlier!” You shout from the front door, nearly tripping over yourself as you wrestle your sandals on. 

“I texted you thirty minutes ago!” Mina screamed back. It was thirty minutes too short. Entire civilizations would rise and fall in the time Mina usually took to get ready, so you had assumed she, of all people, would understand the necessity of advance notice. 

Then you spot James in the driver’s seat, window rolled down, and one arm draped lazily over the frame. He’s looking at you, actually looking, with an attention so direct it made you aware of every loose thread in your shorts and each misplaced hair on your head. You find yourself strapping your sandals much quicker than necessary. 

The drive to the resort transpired in a blur of Top 20 hits and some terrible group singing. Martin sat beside you, knowing every lyric to every song that came on, while Seonghyeon and Keonho contributed mostly by banging on the roof and shouting the choruses at times. A car full of kids drinking deeply from the season while it was still theirs. 

James didn’t say much during the ride. But every now and then, he would flick his eyes to the rearview mirror which had been angled just right, if only to catch you lost in song. 

By the time you arrive, and everyone had hauled themselves, their bags, and half the contents of a convenience store into the resort, the sun was hanging low and golden over the water like it too had paid for a weekend stay. 

The cottage sat right by the beach: bamboo walls, a tiny porch, and enough space to comfortably fit nine people. The door had barely swung open before Keonho burst out first with an overflowing paper bag to his chest.

“What’ve you got there?” you asked.

He angled the bag away immediately. “Get away.”

“You bought a dozen bags of chips.”

“The other ten are just emergency portions.”

“For what? The apocalypse?”

“The munchies.” 

Seonghyeon came out next, already wearing an inflatable around his waist. It squeaked every time he moved.

“I can’t find my sunscreen.”

Haerin points to his hand. “Kid. It’s right there.”

He looked down at the bottle in his hand while his mouth formed a little ‘O’ shape.

Martin followed close by, dragging a boombox nearly as large as the minivan’s side windows. He hoisted it onto one shoulder with all the pride of a man unveiling a monument. Juhoon glanced over from where he was taking off his sandals. 

“Y’know they charge a fee if you blast the music too loud, right?”

“What the fuck?” Martin froze.

“I didn’t ask my dad for extra money today!”

“Some employment would help,” James said from behind him as he carried in the cooler.

Martin gave James a side eye and a scoff. “I’m a teenager, James. I don’t need no goddamn job.”

“That mindset won’t pay them bills man.” Juhoon says, wise words from the wisest man. 

“What fucking bills–”

Mina sidled up beside you with the intention of delegating some sort of responsibility. She pressed a few crumpled bills into your palm.

“Y/n, why don’t you go order us some drinks?”

“You got two minors present by the way.”

Mina waved a dismissive hand. “Get them some juice.”

“I could drink,” Keonho says with confidence. You turned to him and shook your head.

“I’m serious! I have the liver of a champion.”

“No.”

“I got a mature palate.”

“You have the face of a middle school mathlete, Keon. What’ll the staff think when they catch you? You’re getting juice.” 

Keonho gave you a deflated stare. “You wanna be my mama so bad.”

“We’ll deal with you later.” Mina started counting on her fingers. “Two margaritas, a soda, one beer, juice, and some water.”

James emerged from… somewhere. He had changed into a loose shirt and swim trunks and glanced down toward the bar a little ways down the sand. 

“Need some help with that?”

“Um. Yes. Thank you James.”

Mina’s grin was immediate. “Oh, perfect.”

You narrowed your eyes at her with suspicion. When you turned around, James tipped his head toward the little path leading to the bar tucked just beside the open restaurant.

“C’mon.” 

So you fell into step beside him, your feet sinking into the sand as you passed the others who were still deep in argument.

“I’m not getting a summer job! I am seventeen! The only bill I have is my phone bill, and my mom still pays half.” Martin exclaims. 

Juhoon raises an eyebrow. “Half?”

“You burden this society.” Seonghyeon accused Martin with a pointed finger.

“I am society.”

“Who are you, fuckin’ Jean Jacques Rousseau–you’re a leech.”

“You guys are just jealous because I’m young, beautiful, and unemployed.”

“Only two of those things are true.”

“You’re a dead man, Eom.”

As soon as you step on the polished wood and under the hanging lights, you are hit with the smell of grilled seafood, sizzling meat, garlic, butter, enough to crave eating your body weight in some shrimp. The two of you made your way to the counter, sliding onto a pair of barstools, and the bartender handed you each a laminated drink menu. 

“You know,” you said after a moment of squinting, “a lot of these just sound like cleaning products.”

“That’s how you know they’re overpriced. Check this out. ‘Salted Breeze’.”

“‘Tropical Typhoon’? Jesus.” You turned the menu to show him. “Sounds like it could strip paint.” 

“Sounds tasty.”

“Kidneys, James. People need those.” 

“You only need one.” 

A few feet away, hidden just enough to be out of sight, Martin, Haerin, and Keonho had claimed a suspiciously dense bush. From behind it, three heads barely fit in the same line as they all angled toward you and James.

“I can’t see shit,” Haerin muttered as she shifted uncomfortably. 

“Move your giant head then.” Martin shot back.

“I have a normal-sized head.” She whispered defensively. “Your proportions, unfortunately…” 

Keonho leaned in between them as he squinted hard. “I’ll have you know we’re committing several social etiquette crimes.”

“We’re just taking a look.” 

“We’re stalking. If we were just looking we wouldn’t be hiding in a bush—hell, this itches.” 

“Potato potahto.” 

Keonho, who had insisted on bringing a bag of chips on the espionage mission, crinkled the packaging so loud it might’ve been able to alert a few wildlife nearby. 

You and James sat at the bar, leaning against the counter while the bartender prepared your orders. The string lights above cast everything in warm gold, and from this distance, the two of you looked really cinematic. 

“They’re talking,” Haerin reported. 

“How groundbreaking.”

“Oh my god they’re laughing.”

“People do that, right?”

Keonho dapped Martin’s shoulder hard. “Ohhhh, James touched her arm.” 

The entire bush shifted as everyone leaned forward at once, and Haerin had to grab Martin by the back of his shirt before he could topple out into the open. 

At the bar, James said something that made you laugh. Your head even tipped back. Martin had to clutch his chest. 

“He’s using jokes. Smooth bastard.” 

“That’s usually how flirting works. I doubt you’d know any of that.” Haerin said.

Keonho, mouth full of barbecue chips, narrowed his eyes. “Do you think they’re gonna kiss guys?”

“Keon,” Martin said blankly. “They’re just ordering mojitos.” 

“People have kissed over less.”

Haerin nodded in agreement. “That’s true. I see people make out on the bus every day. Like, over what? All you can smell are stinkin’ butts, and some people have died on that bus before.”

“What? I didn’t know this-”

“Wait wait–James is leaning in.”

James leaned closer to hear you over the music. Then the bartender handed him two drinks.

“False alarm.”

“I need a better angle.”

Before anyone could stop him, Martin rose approximately four inches too high. Unfortunately, four inches was all it took. James glanced over directly at the bush, and there was a beat of perfect silence after that. Then James slowly raised one eyebrow. 

Martin ducked first. The rest followed in a panicked domino effect as the branches shook violently.

“We’ve been made,” Haerin announced.

Martin is quick to tap out. “Abort mission, holy fuck–”

“Retreat. Hurry, go!” 

When you and James head back with a tray full of your orders, the three of the culprits were sitting on the porch in positions that bordered on performance art. Martin was whistling. Well, he was trying. Martin can’t whistle. Keonho was reading a magazine upside down, and Haerin still had leaves in her hair. 

James handed out the drinks without a word, though the corners of his mouth twitched suspiciously. 

“Oh, Haerin. You got a uh…” You gesture vaguely at his head. “A few leaves on your hair.”

“Yeah. Keonho pushed me into a bush. Sorry ‘bout that.”

“I did no such–”

Martin was quick to shush Keonho out, to which he let out a huff in turn. 

A little while later, once Keonho and Seonghyeon had sprinted into the water, Martin was left holding down the fort on shore. He was halfway through his juice, still salty about the fact that none of them wanted to hand him a margarita, when James wandered over and stopped behind him.

“Great hiding place, by the way.”

Martin choked on his juice so violently that some of it shot out of his nose. 

But eventually, no one cared enough to quarrel with the day. It was as gold and too open-handed for such a thing. The sun hung above like a coin freshly minted, bright enough to spend. The sea moved with its long and slow patience, folding salt into your skin, into hair, into the small seams of everyone else.

Troubles, those faithful little parasites, found the air too thin here, so they loosened their grip and drifted off like dandelion ash. And everyone was suddenly certain that this would be a day worth keeping. 

James sat on a sunbed a few feet from the shoreline with his sunglasses on and his shirt loosely unbuttoned to give way to the warm air. To his left, a few children have taken Martin hostage, burying him in sand and shaping him in what looks like a poor interpretation of a mermaid sculpture. To his right, Keonho’s trying to drag Seonghyeon down from his floaty. And in front of him, further out where the water is a lot stiller, you’re laughing and splitting the sea into smaller pieces as you pass through it in a fit of laughter. 

“Margarita?” Juhoon, who sits on the sunbed right beside him, passes him a glass.

“Thanks man.” 

Summer. It was a come-and-go concept to James. It would always come with promises, stay just long enough to keep him waiting, then abdicate. A season of suspension. While everyone else seemed intent on breaking free, he mostly found himself idling. The engine would be on, but there would be nowhere worth driving. He’d wait for summer to bring him something, then he’d wait for it to end. 

Summer was long. Summer was hot. Summer was sweat collecting at the base of the spine and sand in very weird places. Summer was–

“James! I caught a crab. Do you think we could cook it?” You shout from afar. 

Summer had you in it this time. Then, summer was brief as a struck match. Warm against his stomach. Sweet, sour, salty. A fruit eaten too quickly, juice running down the wrist, and always never enough. All this heat had revealed skin and nerves, all the thin bright wires beneath the casing. The things he preferred not to feel at all, now lit up like a switchboard. 

Summer has ruined the rest of the year for him. 

James huffs out a laugh and looks back out into the beach where he can maybe pull some restraint. “Do anything you want.”

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

You had texted James yesterday and asked if he’d seen a Walkman hanging around at the garage that you might’ve left. James checked, to which he did find one sitting idly at your spot on the couch. So he texted you back saying he’d bring it over the next day. 

Which is how he ends up standing very chivalrously at your front door. Because this is also how he meets your father for the very first time.

“Good mornin’ Mr. L/n.” James looks around to further solidify his little act. “Lovely weather today, eh?”

Your dad narrows his eyes in what can only be close to disgust. “You’re Zhao’s son.”

“Did you sense some resemblence?” James gives your dad a charming smile. “Good eye there.”

“Don’t bullshit me, son. What the hell kind of business do you have here calling my daughter–”

“James?”

Your voice cuts through from all the way inside the house, and when you emerge from the front door, James internally sighs in relief and gives you a little wave.

“Sorry, I got your text a little late.” You look at James, and then suspiciously at your dad, who is looking sternly right at James.

“Dad? Is there a problem?”

He looks at you and points accusingly at James with shot eyes. “This boy standing on my front porch is what's the problem.”

James wants to laugh. He knows exactly why your dad doesn’t like him, and it had nothing to do with him at all. It comes with a silly memory: his own father coming home, holding up a fish like a trophy with a blue ribbon tied neatly around its still, unblinking body.

“He’s been fixing my car like you wanted. The least you could do is say thank you.” You scold.

“I am not saying thank you to one of Zhao’s kin–”

“Y’know what, it’s all good.” James cuts through the transpiring little argument. “I stopped by to give this. You forgot to grab it from the shop.” 

He stretched his hand forward to lend you your Walkman back, and you take it in pretend formality. James looks back at your dad and offers another much more charming (he hopes) smile.

“You have a good day, Mr. L/n. Tell the missus I like the flower arrangements up front.” 

He’s ready to head in and leave before this got any more awkward when he hears you say his name. 

“Bye James.”

He turns around to steal another glance, and gives you a generous grin. 

“Bye.”

When James leaves, you take your dad back inside and prepare to reprimand. So much were the roles reversed today.

You turn to him immediately. “What was that about?”

Your dad, already walking deeper into the house, grumbles. “Nothing.”

You follow him into the kitchen. “This Mr. Zhao… isn’t he the one who’s been beating you at those fishing competitions?”

“I bet you he’s cheating.”

You let out an exasperated sigh. “All that rage for some petty contest.” 

You both had to admit there was something almost absurd about this long-standing, entirely unearned fatherly feud. It was hilarious and stupid. What would be even funnier is if maybe, assuming a possibility, that they’d find out about this little thing happening between the two of you. This unsure predicament, a scandal in the eyes of two middle aged men. You want to laugh. You almost do, right there on the kitchen island. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

James receives a panicked call from you at three in the morning a few days later as he’s half-asleep, buried under the dull noise of his father and his friends still arguing over a game on the television.

“Somebody better be dying,” he mutters, voice dragged through sleep.

On the other end, your voice cuts through in whispered panic. “Yes. It’s my Shelby. She’s dying again, James. What am I gonna do?”

“You can bring it to the shop later.”

“I know. I was gonna do that anyway.” 

He exhales into his pillow. “Then what’s the emergency?”

“You sure I shouldn’t just scrape this thing?” you ask with a suddenly unsure tone in your voice.

James opens one eye. “You’re thinking of killing her now?”

“She might as well be on life support.”

He closes his eyes again and lets out a sigh. There’s no denying your car really was a stubborn one. 

“Bring her to the shop, okay? We’ll figure it out.”

You pause. 

“We will?”

“Yes. Now can I go back to sleep?”

“Okay” You say through a small smile. “I’m trusting you James. Sleep tight.” 

“Tight as a bug.” he replies as he’s already halfway gone. “Bye.” 

Somewhere downstairs, the voice of a man is heard screaming in cheer. James buries his ears with his pillow and tries to go back to sleep. 

A little past noon, James was out back giving his motorcycle some attention. He had a towel slung over one shoulder, grease staining the heel of his palm, and was halfway through polishing the handlebars when he heard an engine spitter its way into the lot. It was a very particular, familiar sputter.

He tossed the used rag onto the workbench and headed around to the front. Sure enough, there you were, climbing out of your car with a frustrated expression. You shut the door a little harder than necessary. 

“I got her to work this morning,” You announce by way of greeting. “But I swear the engine’s making this weird noise.”

James circled the front, listening as the engine rattled in protest. “I heard it from the back. Did it break down again?”

“Just before I called you.”

James looked at you suspiciously. “Where were you off to at 3 in the morning?”

“My sister needed a ride home from a party.”

He popped the hood and propped it open. “‘Kay, I’ll take a look. You know the drill.”

A small smile tugged at your mouth as you headed inside. “I’ll take the couch.” 

So you had, in fact, taken the couch. 

There was something so deeply humbling about becoming a regular at an auto repair shop. It would tell people everything they needed to know: that your car was a piece of absolute shit from a butt. But at least the couch was comfy. That had to count for something. 

You were halfway through a bag of stale chips and a quarter through a sports magazine when James pushed through the garage door, wiping his hands on his jeans and staining them in the process. His expression alone told you everything.

“How bad is she?”. 

He looked like he bared bad news. 

“It’s your alternator.”

You blinked silently. “My what?”

“Alternator. It keeps your battery charged while the engine’s running.”

“So… important.” You deduced.

“Very.”

“Love that.”

James huffed out a laugh and told you to follow him.

“The bearings are shot, see? That’s the noise.”

You slumped your shoulders forward. “Can you f ix it?”

“I can. I should be able to replace it.

The pause he made was a little ominous, so you probe further.

“But?”

“But we don’t have one in stock.” He clicks his tongue. “And a new one isn’t exactly cheap.”

“Define cheap.” 

James named you a number, to which you nearly choked on your saliva.

“James, that is rent.”

He winced sympathetically. “Yeah. Such is the beauty of owning a car.”

“I didn’t even buy it myself. How am I supposed to afford that?” You turned back to walk toward the couch before slumping on it once more. 

“I should’ve asked for a horse.”

“Maintenance is worse. My uncle’s got a ranch up south with horses. They shit big.”

You sighed long and hard. “Horses don’t need alternators though.”

“Didn’t I just tell you? They shit big. And they bite too.” 

For a moment, the only sound that could be heard was the faint hum of the soda machine and the distant clanking something he had left on. James tapped his finger on his lap thoughtfully.

“But I might know a way around it.”

You lifted your head in desperation.

“How illegal are we talking?”

He put his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Moderately legal?”

“James.” 

He gave you a mischievous grin. 

“There’s a junkyard about twenty minutes from here. They got totaled cars in all the time. If we’re lucky, we can pull an alternator off something compatible.”

“Dude. Isn’t that stealing?”

“It’s cheaper. Wait no, it’s free.”

That, admittedly, was a compelling argument. You narrowed your eyes at him.

“And you know this place how?”

“I know a guy.”

Of course he knew a guy. You suspected a lot of these mechanic boys operated like they were part of a secret underground network. They know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy. 

“You had me at free.”

James grabbed his dad’s truck keys off the wall while you stood from the couch. You followed him outside, both of you climbing into the truck and buckling in. Desperation was going to take you places today. He reversed out of the lot with one hand on the wheel, and you caught the sunlight glinting off the silver ring on his finger. Then you were off. 

The drive was mostly filled with silence. The windows were down as the wind rushed in to occupy all the empty spaces. It threaded through the car, rifled your hair, and carried off any thoughts James was trying very hard not to have. 

Outside, the road kept company with the town’s river, each pretending not to notice the other. You watched the water slide past in silver influxes as James watched you in the rearward pull of seconds. The wind would unmake your hair and remake it a little better. He found this, like many things he’s thought of, very compelling. 

The junkyard was exactly just as you imagined.

Rows and rows of dead cars stretched beneath the afternoon sun, metal skeletons stacked two, sometimes three high, each one looking as junked up as the other. Windows were shattered, doors hung open, and somewhere in the distance, something metallic clanged with the ominous acoustics of a horror movie.

“People have gotten murdered here.”

“You got a strong feeling ‘bout that?”

“Absolutely.”

When you both got out of the truck, the air smelled like rust, hot rubber, and tetanus. A heavyset man behind a cluttered counter looked up from his newspaper as you approached. He wore a baseball cap that might once have been red. 

James gave him a nod. “Afternoon, Rick.”

The guy, Rick, squinted over the rims of his glasses.

“James!” He exclaims excitedly. “You break another one?”

James jerked a thumb toward you and shook his head. “Not mine this time.”

You placed a hand over your chest and bowed. “Thrilled to be here.”

Rick snorted before bowing curtly at you in return, and waved the two of you through the gate.

“Imports are in row seven. Don’t steal anything that ain’t bolted down, yeah?”

“‘Course, Rick. We all know how that went last time.”

That was sketchy, you think. You followed James between towering rows of vehicles, gravel crunching beneath your shoes. Every few feet, James would glance at a car, dismiss it, and keep walking. He looked like a vulture on the lookout. 

James stopped in front of an okay Mustang, and knew this particular model was manufactured just a few years before yours was. He figured it could work. 

“There she is.”

James popped the hood of the car with ease, and you leaned in beside him, staring at an engine that looked, to your untrained eye, like just a bunch of metal scraps put together.

“So which one is it?”

He pointed. “That.”

You nodded solemnly as if you understood anything at all. James reached into the small bag you had brought and took out some kind of tool, and went to work.

You folded your arms and watched him. His brow gathered itself to the middle in concentration, sleeves shoved carelessly to his elbows, grease smudging dark against his knuckles. There was sweat clinging to all sorts of places. His temples, along the line of his throat, tracing the strong cords of his arms where the veins stood out with clarity. 

It was incredibly rude of him to look that good in a junkyard. 

“Hold this.” 

He handed you a wrench, and you took it like he’d entrusted you with a sacred artifact. And so, under the blazing sun, you helped James steal (sorry, salvage) an organ from a dead car. Your week had taken a very strange turn. 

After he gets the part off, you both make quick work of stuffing it into the bag before heading back toward the big gate again. 

“Find everything you need?” Rick calls from where he idles.

“All good here Rick.” James replies. “You have a good one.”

A small nod, a mutual dismissal of the world, and you’re both back in motion. You toss the bag into the back of the truck, and James climbs in after you then turns the ignition. The engine makes a weird sound, but neither of you comment on it. 

You’re on the road for a while, and nothing seems to be the problem. That is, until the engine coughs first. A small, offended sound. Then again, this time deeper. The truck shudders, and with dread on both your faces, it finally gives up and stops. 

“James. What the hell.”

“I’ll go take a look.”

Both of you are out the truck in seconds. James lifts the hood and leans into it, and you watch from the side. He works in silence for a few minutes, which doesn’t really help the unease you’re feeling. He straightens eventually, and gives you the look.

“We’re fucked.”

That is how you both end up pushing the truck. Its wheels roll reluctantly, and you want to laugh at how utterly absurd this it. You both steer it into the nearest empty patch of land: an abandoned gas station’s parking lot. 

There’s nothing for miles, you believe. No phone booth, no convenience store. Not even the promise of signal. You checked your cellular and couldn’t pick up on anything.

James calls you through a whistle. “Hey. Look at that.”

You walk over toward him and follow his line of sight. There, just a few meters ahead, is a sign, which tells you there must be some sort of establishment nearby. 

“Let’s take our chances. It’s almost dawn.”

Because there are no better options or sudden miracles waiting in the wings, you head to the back of the truck and reach for the bag in case it gets snatched. James reaches into the dash, retrieves his wallet, and pockets it to the back along with his keys.. Then you walk. Side by side. 

A motel is what awaited you.

You exhale, long and unamused. A motel. Of all places. In the middle of nowhere. Onl motorcycles are parked up front, which suggested everyone else came here alone. Everyone except you two. 

“This sucks.” You say, staring up at the motel in quiet offense.

“Better than sleeping on a truck in an abandoned gas station.”

“I don’t even have any money on me right now.”

James takes out his wallet and waves it lightly in front of you. “Problem solved.” 

You hated how this looked from the outside. A boy and a girl walking into a motel close to night time. The story is practically writing itself. But night is already closing in, and better ideas are not arriving soon. So when James walks first, you trail close behind. 

The lobby was warmer than expected, and surprisingly clean. Not exactly luxurious, but as cozy as a motel in the middle of who knows where could offer: wood-paneled walls, a coffee machine humming quietly in the corner, a rack of brochures advertising attractions that looked suspiciously closed.

A woman sat behind the front desk, reading a magazine. She looked up as the two of you entered. James stepped forward while you wandered over to the little lounge area and sank into one of the couches.

“One room with two beds, please.”

The receptionist looked through some logbooks, then offered an unapologetic smile.

“I’m sorry, sir, but our double rooms are all occupied tonight.”

James nodded. “That’s fine. Two rooms, then.”

More checking of the logs. The receptionist’s smile grew somehow more apologetic.

“I do apologize, but we’re fully booked on singles as well.”

James blinked blankly. “…What do you have, then?”

She consulted with the papers on her desk.

“We currently have one queen room available.”

Silence.

From your spot on the couch, you suddenly found the complimentary pamphlets fascinating.

James turned slowly.

“Give me a moment.”

You spotted James making his way back across the lobby, and immediately straightened from your position on the couch. 

“Are we good to go?”

James stopped in front of you, one hand hooked on his hip. He looked almost amused, which should have worried you more than it did.

“Y/n.” That was already a terrible start.

“What?”

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“They have…” He paused, and then again. “It’s a room with one bed. That’s all they’ve got.”

You stared at him. Then at the receptionist. Then back at him.

“Are you fucking serious?”

“Wish I wasn’t.”

Which was only partially true, and James knew it. Unfortunately, he also knew better than to examine that thought too closely. He mentally shoved it into a locked drawer and sat on it.

You stood so quickly the couch wheezed beneath you.

“All the other rooms are booked? This place looks like a shithole, how are they fully booked?”

“I don’t know. I’ll just take the floor, okay?”

“I can’t let you sleep on a motel carpet James. These things have organisms—“

Before you’re able to chime in another word, James turns around again and heads back to the to the receptionist. He pulls a couple dollar bills and slides them on the counter surface. 

“We’ll take it.” 

The receptionist slid the key across the counter with a smile. James took it, thanked her, and turned toward you, giving a slight tilt of his head.

“C’mon.”

You pushed yourself off the couch and trudged upstairs, and it creaked beneath your feet as the two of you climbed to the second floor. The motel hallway stretched long and narrow, lit by buzzing overhead lights that did very little to improve its already questionable atmosphere.

James found your room quickly enough. He stopped outside the door, key poised, then hesitated. When he turned to face you, the teasing had slipped from his expression. 

“Okay. A few things.”

You nodded.

“If you ever feel uncomfortable at all about anything, just tell me.” The seriousness in his voice caught you off guard.

“I mean it,” he added. “I don’t want you pretending you’re fine about this. I get it, it’s weird. No walking on eggshells. Alright?”

You managed a small forced smile.

“Got it.”

“And another thing. Try not to head out alone too much tonight.”

He gestured toward the parking lot below. You leaned toward the small window just enough to spot those half a dozen motorcycles lined up beneath the flickering motel sign.

“A bunch of bikers are staying here. They’re in a group, I’d guess.”

“You say it like they’re a migrating species.”

“They usually are.”

You laughed as he rested one shoulder against the doorframe.

“Make sure the door’s locked and just… stay out of trouble.”

He unlocked the door and pushed it open. The room beyond was exactly as promised: one bed, one television, one lamp. You both stared at the queen-sized bed. Awkward.

James hurriedly moves to the bedside table and snatches up the telephone, and punches some numbers in. You, meanwhile, drift toward the balcony. The curtains part with a soft sound, and the sliding door gives you the entire cold night as you step out. 

“I’m heading to the bathroom.” You say as you head back in. “Does the telephone work?”

“Yeah,” he replies, hand still on the receiver. “I managed to call Rick for a tow truck. Says they won’t be able to come until 9 tomorrow.”

“You didn’t think of calling your parents first?”

“My dad would probably say I could get things sorted out on my own.” He says.

“Can I call my parents?”

“Sure. Do you know your landline?”

You pause. “We got a new one, so I don’t.” a dismissive shake of your head. “Never mind.”

You head to the bathroom and turn the lock behind you, the sound like a line being drawn. Inside, you try to breathe in something quiet and steady, but you can’t. In the mirror, you look for the parts of yourself you can pick on, the little flaws you think to be pluckable. Frustrated you were that they stay exactly as they are. 

Meanwhile, James watches you disappear into the bathroom and waits for the door to close you out of sight. Only when you’re fully gone does he drop onto the bed. He exhales then, long and unspooled.

There are many things James can handle. He had always considered himself fairly adaptable. Plans change, cars break down. He knows these men in leather jackets and wrinkled hands surrounding the rooms around them as he thinks these things through. He had, at various points in his life, been punched in the face and kicked in the shin, and more than once did he have to explain to his father how exactly he got each bruise if he ever got home with any, which was usually most of the time. 

All that, he could handle half-asleep with a hand tied behind his back while someone was yelling at him. He’s slept under less forgiving roofs, and he’s had worse company (worse had rarely been this pretty, though). 

Then put him in a room with one very beautiful girl he just so happened to be hopelessly, helplessly in love with, and watch all that competence go missing. 

He tried to shake it off. People shared these kinds of rooms all the time. Travelers. Families. Sports teams. Criminals on the run, probably. 

I need a cigarette. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

“I’m back.” You emerge from the bathroom a while later, still in your old clothes, a borrowed robe loosely tied over them. 

“Stuff on your mind?” You ask. 

James is on the balcony sitting on the ledge with his back turned half to you, and the rest towards the open night. He’s got a cigarette between his fingers, one you’re not sure where he got from. 

He glances back over his shoulder. 

“Yeah,” He said after a moment,  “You could say that.”

You step closer, and James watches you all the way. He realizes faintly that seeing you through the smoke makes his head feel a lot dizzier. 

“You really need to stop that.”

“Stop what?” 

“Smoking.”

He lets the cigarette tilt slightly between his teeth. “You don’t like it?”

“I don’t.” When you’re close enough, you flick the tip of it with a finger. “And your lungs don’t either.”

That earns you a laugh. “You sound like my mother.”

“Better that than an enabler, right?” 

Better that than an enabler, and James almost loses it. The irony is there. You have enabled much worse in him than a little ash or smoke in his lungs. Want, for one. Hope, for another. A hundred reckless instincts, each one wearing your face. 

He wants to either fold himself in half or shake some sense into you. To pry your skull and point: there, there, look at what you’ve done. 

“C’mere.”  

You step closer until you’re right in front of him, too close that you’re aligned with the bend of his knees on the ledge. James takes the cigarette from his mouth, holds it between two fingers like a small and solved problem, then tosses it over the edge. If you wanted him clean so badly, then so be it. 

Something in him responds as unsteady beings do when the wind would find their hems. A pressure and a lean toward form. Toward articulation. Toward you. But he keeps it contained by the narrowest margin of will, because he doesn’t know yet what it is.

“What is it?”

He shifts slightly from where he sits. “You think your dad's gonna kill me?”

“For what?”

“When he finds out I’m spending my sweet time with his precious little princess in a motel in the middle of nowhere.”

“If you say it like that, he might.”

“Well, what am I saying it like?”

“Like you have some… intentions.”

“Intentions.” He clicks his tongue and thinks. “What kind?”

The sun goes down, and the balcony becomes a place slightly outside the map. James sits there as though he has been left on a higher shelf of the world. You looked at him then, almost invasive.  If invasions could be curious instead of cruel. As if, by looking hard enough, you might just be able to persuade him into things. 

“I don’t know, James.” You lean forward on your toes, then backward on your heel. “You keep saying things a certain way. I have to retrace them until I go crazy.” 

“Don’t you think maybe you’re just reading into me too much?”

“Am I ?”

He could say yes. Could blame it on you, say you were overthinking, making something out of absolutely nothing. And if he played the role right, you might even buy it. But it’d be a lie, and James has found it incredibly hard to keep lies from you. He couldn’t even say no to you half the time, let alone lie through his own teeth. Not when he’d already gone out of his way to fix that junky Shelby, cutting corners on the bill, paying for things himself so his dad wouldn’t catch on that he’d been letting some girl leave the shop receipt-free every time. Subtlety, he’s never been good at it. 

“No.” Lying, even less so. “You think I should act on ‘em?”

“Your intentions?”

“Yeah.”

You look at him knowingly, hopefully and without unrest.

“If they’re not going anywhere, why not?” If you’re not going anywhere, why not here?

The season has gone on longer than he’d been able to imagine. Or maybe not long enough. Either way, when he looks back at you across the thinning dark, he understands to himself that he isn’t ready for it to end. 

Ah, what am I doing? 

Who knew a mere inch of opening was all James would ever need. It happens in the space of a blink. He steps down from the ledge, his hands already rising as they settle at the sides of your face. And then, in the slim, unsteady breath between one moment and the next, he leans down and catches your lips with his. 

It doesn’t take much after that for things to turn. In a fit of urge and desperation, he backs you up until your knees buckle at the edge of that tiny queen bed. ‘Queen bed’ as the receptionist said, was too much of a stretch for this one. Then another moment, you both collapse on it anyway. 

You discover quickly that James doesn’t like to drag things out. You feel it in these betrayals: the restless twitch of his hands and his protested stillness. You hadn’t pegged him to be the impatient type. Tonight, though, his skin runs warm, almost fever-bright. His breathing forgets its rhythm, then finds another. And when he reaches to switch on the lamp beside the bed, the room fills with amber, turning his eyes from their usual dark wood into something honey-struck. 

You switch it close immediately. 

“No, no James—I like it closed.”

“But I can’t see you.”

I’d look nicer when the lights are off, you try to tell him. The words are small and brittle in your throat. 

“You don’t have to.” You say instead.

I need to, he thinks. Else my insides get eaten up.

James laughs low and helplessly, the sound brushing warm against your skin. “You trying to hog?” 

He wants nothing more tonight than to take you in. Entirely and improperly, in visions, in motion, in all your strange fullness. The flush in your cheeks, the bright sheen at your throat, he’d only want to leave you more potent than how he found you. And when at last your pulse remembers its manners, he finds that he would like, very much, to be the reason for that too. 

“There’s nothing to hog.”

“Yeah, there is.”

The orange wash of the bedside lamp makes James greedy the instant he turns it back on and looks down on you. It gilds the room, gilds your skin, gilds his appetite, and he wonders how much worse it will get once it's morning and he wakes to find you there again as living proof rather than of a dream. 

“Maybe we really do need to turn the lights off,” he decides.

You tilt your head against the pillow. “Changed your mind?”

“Oh, my mind hasn’t changed a bit,” James replies, then inches closer once more. “You push me over, lady.”

“Don’t call me that.” 

His hand betrays him to humiliating degrees. Lifting, pausing, and reconsidering as it is traitorously decisive, until it finally settles lightly against the edge of your cheekbone. Your breaths breathe warmth into his face, and he registers with mild alarm that they turn him a little visibly red. Even as he’s above you, when he can only look down earnestly at the gleam and glow that's made up this whole season, all that sun made flesh, you still hold every right and all the ability to make him act entirely insensible.

“Make my night, yeah?”

His mouth is so inconveniently human as it tries to chase the sweetness he’s found in your own, like a child finding the unreachable cookie jar. His hands are no better, and his skin is rough against yours that is soft as they insist on remembering what they shouldn’t have been taught so quickly.

James has never been with anyone. Not like this. So he’s scared by how natural you seem to fit into places in him he hadn’t realized were so empty. 

“Only if you make mine.”

Your dad tells you time and time again, beware of boys, they’re never honest. Says they lie, that they always will. He tells you this with personal conviction. But like something you never thought you’d do, you want to tell him not this one. Not this boy. 

Perhaps every girl before you has thought the same. Maybe they were laying as you are now. But this one is different, you think, you believe. You bring the thought with you as James leans in and kisses you again, drawing you under until you’re pressed into the pillow with nowhere else to go. You believe it through the warmth of his hand tracing the skin under your jaw, with the other moving over your hair. And you believed it most when you touched him back and thought never to return. 

“I’ll make a fantasy out of you,” James breathes out as he buries his head in the crook of your jaw. And then I’ll make a believer out of myself. A flame and a moth. 

You huff out a little airy laugh. “Could you?”

He lifts his head just enough to look at you. “Have I ever disappointed you before?”

The rest of the night, if “night” is even the correct term for it, and James is not entirely convinced it is, breaks apart into the most non-linear little pieces, as though misfiled in the wrong century. There are, instead, these conditions: warmth with a clear origin, motions in improper geometry, and the strange, persistent closeness. 

James remembers the beaches of his childhood. Of tides returning to their remarkable shoreline no matter how often they should be pulled away. His thoughts, ordinarily so well-trained, behave much the same around you. It’s an inefficient system, all this remembering. 

Skin to skin, breath upon breath, there was nowhere else to go but under. 

And with all the pretty things James had whispered to you that night, if it were truly what you thought it to be meant anything at all, then you took them with you to your dreams in the hopes that they’d be better interpreted there. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

If you had just lived through the best night of your life a few hours ago, you certainly left no such obvious traces of it this morning. None that James could see. 

The diner sat in a quiet early-hour warmth just beside the motel, low light with clinking cutlery, and something steady about it. James has always been like that with breakfast. No matter where he ends up, no matter how far off or unfamiliar, he makes time for it. You sit just right across from him in the corner booth, and though he thought maybe this would be the perfect time to pick up on the conversation he’d left to fend for last night, you just wouldn’t look at him. 

You keep your head held low as you fix your attention to the food you’d been picking on your plate and chewing. Is facing him really going to cost me something? 

James clicked his tongue. “You don’t like eggs?”

“I don’t like the sunny side ups.” You say through a mouthful, not bothering to look up. 

“Give it here.”

You slide the plate across as ceramic grazes the table in a soft passing sound, slipping between the diner’s lull of conversations. He switches it out with his own, then shifts his plate of scrambled eggs closer to you. 

“Eat,” he says. You do. 

Not because you’re still hungry. You just need to give your hands something to commit to. Across the table, you feel him watching you in that pressing way of his. 

“Slept well?” he asks. 

“You tell me. I was literally next to you.”

His mouth shifts, and he wonders how far he’s able to take this.

“Just trying to add some light to this shit. You’re making it awkward.”

Why wouldn’t it be awkward?

You shake your head. “I’m not making it awkward.”

“Yeah?” He leans forward slightly as his elbows brush the edge of the table. “Why won’t you look at me?”

“I don’t know James.” You move your food around, and the grip on your fork is a lot tighter now. “This was so unplanned.”

“Hmm?”

“None of this would’ve happened if the truck hadn’t broken down.”

There’s something barely offended, but ultimately unreadable in his expression. 

“So what are you saying?” His voice lowers just a little. “You wouldn’t have wanted this to happen?”

And you finally look up at him for the first time today. “No, I–”

You wonder what it was you were even trying to argue against. There’s no denying you’d never regret what you had done yesterday. Not now, not later, not even if your dad found out. It seems entering adulthood had a way of overcomplicating things, layers upon layers where there might have been none if only you had tried. 

“Don’t tell me you got a boyfriend back in college you forgot to mention ‘cause I do not want to be your little homewrecker–”

“I don’t have a boyfriend, God, I’m not that awful.” You rub at the corners of your eyes in frustration.

“So what’s the matter?”

The matter for you was simple: that this was going to be one of those cute little flings, as fleeting as they were all unplanned for. The cruel fate of someday being remembered as that ‘summer of ‘02’ months or years from now, and nothing more.

“Nothing.” And you know he doesn't believe you. 

“I just,” Your fork pauses on your plate, and you think of either being straightforward or telling another one of your unbelievable lies. 

“I’m gonna have to go back to college sooner or later.”

A weak defense mechanism presents itself in your throat, small and evasive. It’s then that James now understands. So that's what you were fussing about. 

He’d been so caught up in the present tense that he’d neglected the so-called never-not-befores. By then, he’s realized a little late how soon you’d be gone for months at a time. It wouldn’t be the first. Only now, he’s going to have to learn the hard way of an act called letting go.

There were slips of transcripts his grandmother kept around the old house that he used to read. All those Chinese sayings about destiny, yuanfen, she called it. The idea of encounters not being all that random. and that certain intersections have been pre-authored into the margins of existence. Red strings, love locks, the Old Man of the Moon, the sort of things that make you think of magic. James had always found it a little too bogus to be true. And yet, if such a thing does exist, if yuanfen is by any bit operational at all, he hoped it would be on your side. 

“I hope you’re not taking that junky car with you–”

“Keep my Mustang out your mouth James.”

James can only smile at you in turn and think about that stupid car that started it all. He huffs a laugh and slides his leftover hashbrowns across the table. 

“You better eat it. Need to make up for the rice.” 

Your fork cuts through the food he’d offered as you take a big bite. “Alright.”

He hoped it would be you. 

Because then he wouldn’t have to worry in the end. Ten miles, a thousand, an ocean or two, it made no meaningful difference. Water returns to its level. Winds to their courses. You, he hoped, would return to him. Or he to you. 

The train ride back to Old Town Temecula had been as eventful in that it made your hairs stick out and your attention a little too heightened. You sat closely next to each other, as close as any two people could be. Looking around at everyone else, the old couple with their arms knotted together, the lonely guy just by the door, and behind him, a young pair stealing too many kisses as if they might run out, you realize nearly everyone’s got something of their own.

And while you were busy doing just that, James hovers his rough hand over your soft one lying on your side, doesn’t consider such consequences of it, and presses it down, nudging his fingers in between yours. They interlock much like zipper teeth. 

Just like your face, his hands stayed warm the whole train ride back, the way you had imagined often and always a little too vividly. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

James remembers the summers he’d spent in a plastic pool on Fridays, not a day over five. That, or when he’d spend them in Martin’s treehouse watching movies on the television they’d found at the back of a storefront. He remembers the heat pressed as close as another body, the exhilaration, the freedom to act his age. But this is the first summer he’s looked at a girl and almost scared himself to death from the guilt. Guilt, the word he uses to think less of his desire. But looking at you now, he could think of nothing more. 

This was the cruelest season of them all. 

“Do I look alright?” You ask from your vanity, turning just enough to catch James in the mirror who’s sprawled across your bed, hands folded behind his head. You’d waited until noon for your dad to leave for yet another fishing trip before sneaking James inside. It had been a successfully executed operation if you ignored the part where he nearly slipped off the roof and met an embarrassing end. The things James was willing to risk just to see his girl were far from limited. 

“Looks like it.”

“Seriously James?” You snap the cap back onto your lipstick with a sharp  click and move to the edge of the bed, bending down to slip on your shoes.  “Spent three hours getting ready for the date where you spent at most 10 seconds to ask me on. Some enthusiasm would be appreciated.”

Ah, but my throat’s all caught, Y/n. How could I say anything at all?

“You look great. Amazing. Your hair looks like a shiny toilet surface. Did you want that?”

The words came out clumsy on the way free. He had better ones, prettier ones lined up behind his teeth, but he was saving those for later.

“Thanks.”

For the better part, you suspected James had every intention of spending whatever time remained of your vacation planted firmly at your side. He’d developed this habit of appearing wherever you happened to be. Was he your boyfriend though? Absolutely not.

“I’m all ready. We should head out.”

But whether he was your boyfriend or not seemed beside the point, because when your ‘not boyfriend’ pushed himself upright, he once again tried his best to maintain composure and try not to tackle you back onto the mattress. You looked beautiful. Well you were always beautiful, but tonight you clearly made an occasion of it. The sight alone was enough to set James’ face ablaze.

“I’ll wait for you right here.” He said as he stood up, finding his way behind you so that he could whisper it in the shell of your ear. ‘Pretty, pretty lady’, to which you gave him a warm smile. His day opened up like a fruit under a knife. 

You hurry on downstairs, catching your mother in the kitchen. A quick goodbye, a promise that you’d be out with friends and come home late enough to warrant concern, but she let you go. James counted as a friend. Never to you, but technically, in the broadest possible sense, he was. You slipped outside and circled beneath your bedroom window, shielding your eyes from the rays as you looked up. James was perched on your sill like a disturbed cat. 

“Sight’s clear.” You announced in a stage whisper. James tried his best to wriggle out the window and grabbed for the nearby branch. There was a lot of rustling, a muffled curse, before he dropped to the patch fo grass with an unceremonious thud.

He brushed the dirt off his jeans, still catching his breath. “You seriously need to properly introduce me to your parents. I can’t keep this up.” 

“You don’t like sneaking up to my room?” You tease as you both make your way to where he parked the truck. Fixed, this time. You trust it to work. “That’s a shame. I happen to find it quite romantic.” 

“Try being on the climbing end, and you'll be thinking twice.” By the time James said it, the two of you had reached the clearing where the truck waited. A faint smile tugged at his mouth, as if the sight of it stirred up an old memory. You both scrambled inside, James fired up the engine, and the rock rolled forward. 

James figured that if he was gonna do this, he ought to do it properly. A real date, something with intention (and a lot of money) behind it. But time was proving itself annoyingly finite, so early afternoon would have to do. The sun was what brought you two together, so it seemed only right to make it a little centerpiece.  Besides, James liked you best in daylight. Not because you were any less lovely at night, but that daytime laid everything out to him in the clearest golden motions. Like citrus and canary yellow, sweet tea and dynamite. 

The drive pulls you farther into town, past the familiar corners and into the part with the nicer sidewalks. When James finally pulls up in front of a restaurant with gleaming windows and a valet service, you turn to look at him. He catched your stare and gave you that unreadable almost-smile, then shook his head. 

And dinner was wonderfully surreal. No boy had ever gone out of their way to take you someplace this nice out of their own volition. That was James all over, thoughtful in ways that would sneak up on you. He was so generous with you, honest too, and knew how to say the right things. He was also blessed, or perhaps cursed, with remarkable hands. One of the first things you’d learned about them was that they could fix almost anything put in front of them. The second was that, whenever given the chance, they were good at taking you apart. 

You saw it now too, as James sat across from you, laughing at every little thing you said. He did it with his whole body, as if his joy were too large to contain in something as small as his teethy grins. You found that he had the face of an old song, of one your mother liked to play through the record every morning. There is only so much considerable longing you can fit into the four minutes of a song. 

Halfway through your food, you suddenly remembered something, then quickly reached for your handbag.

“Oh! By the way…” James, who had been in the middle of demolishing a truly unfair amount of delicious clam shells, paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.

You rummage through some receipts, a lip gloss, and maybe half your earthly possessions. At last, your hand emerged triumphantly, clutching a tiny plastic toy dog. 

“I wanted to give you this. Thought it looked like you.”  You placed it in his held out palm, and he turned it over in his fingers, brow furrowing. It was a small brown dog with oversized eyes and a permanently alert expression. Frankly, the ‘resemblance’ was confusing. 

“... What is it?”

“It’s a little pet, from the Littlest Pet Shop.” You said with all the reverence of introducing royalty. “I’ve been collecting them forever. They’re adorable, and look–” You reached over and tapped its head. It wobbled enthusiastically from side to side. James watched with captivation and held it up, examining it like an archeologist uncovering a priceless relic. 

“Thank you. Seriously. I could glue this down on my dashboard–”

Your expression turned murderous “Do not glue this anywhere, James. These are precious things. I expect you to care for this as your own child.” James nodded solemnly, and then cradled the little dog in both hands.

“Gotcha.” 

The little dog, Doudou, as James had named him (brown rice), sat perched beside the salt shaker keeping a vigilant eye on the proceedings. The restaurant had filled in around over the last few hours, and sunlight spilled through the windows, catching the rims of glasses and turning everything faintly sparkling. James had loosened up considerably, which was to say he kept taking unwanted bites of your cake, denying your every retort. 

“Hey–” You fought his fork away from your plate with your own. “You should’ve ordered another earlier. This is criminal.”

He shrugged unrepentant and took another piece. “Possession is only nine-tenths of the law, by the way.”

You pointed a fork at him accusingly. “One day James, your hubris will be your downfall.”

His smile was enough to make you forget whatever mean thing you’d been preparing to say. Eventually though, perhaps it was the angle of the light, or how your eyes drifted toward the window, again and again, that had James wondering yet again.

He sets his fork down. “What’s wrong?”

“You think we've been here long enough?” You asked.

A brow lifted. “Why? You wanna leave?” You glanced out at the lowering sun, and the sky beginning its slow descent, and nodded. 

“Yeah.” A small smile tugged at your mouth. “I wanna see the sun before it sets.” 

And so the bill was paid, Doudou was safely secured in James’ jacket pocket, and within minutes you were back in the truck, the engine rumbling to life from beneath you. 

The truck heads a little towards the edge of town and uphill, and the field beyond steals the breath right out of you. It rolls outward in waves of tall grass and dandelion silk, all gold and green and dreamlike as you both got out.

And though you dress was never made for such things, you run straight down the slope, the ground catching you in a fit of laughter as you fall to your side. James could only shout for you as you rolled on down. 

The sun had reached the ruinous hour when it seemed time to finally spend itself entirely. It scattered light all over, and it made you think of beauty and whether grass stains ever truly came out. James, for his part, felt his insides turn over like a drawer being searched. The land went on and on, exceeding the eye and all good manner. Yet for all that breadth, all that open country, he need only lower his eyes. 

You lay there on the grass with the last of the sun’s rays tangled in between your hair, smiling up at him from the same green earth that had made him, had made trees and rivers and every other ordinary miracle, and seen fit, had placed you here before him. And what is another miracle if not this?

“Please don’t do that ever again.” 

“Come–!”

You tug him by the hand and pull, and the two of you roll a little further down the slope in a tangle of hair, fabric, and breathless laughter. James has to gather your hair away from your face and disentangle it from your mouth just so he can kiss you properly, and fold himself around you like an unblooming flower. 

And when he looks at you after, he wants, wants, and wants some more. Against all the reasonably unreasonable forces. To be yours. To be of you and for you. To make a home somewhere in the crook of your neck or the dip in your chest, the two places where your heartbeat is clearest.

“My dress is all ruined.”

“I’ll buy you a new one, how does that sound?”

“You oughta just buy me a new car.” A joke, obviously. But James asks the question anyway.

“Will you like that?”

You both commit to a very spontaneous decision, and James is grateful he had the intuition to keep a clean blanket in his truck beforehand. The sun sets, and by the time the stars had gone up, he slid open the sun roof upon your request. In the blinking machinery of the darkness above, James points out plants like he’s naming his old acquaintances, then offers you the strange superstitions he collected as a child.

Then you fall asleep right there, wrapped in a blanket on the backseat of his father's truck while the stars slip down like a drawn curtain over the world. James stays awake and keeps vigil through the night, held up by the weight against his chest and the soft cadence of your breathing, borrowing from it a calm he’s yet to learn to keep for himself. 

A little later into morning, he drives the coastal road that leads home. And he pulls into that same clearing again, and lifts you carefully from the passenger seat. He reaches for your purse with the key to your front door, and lets himself i as quietly as he can. Inside, he moves slowly and watches his every step so the floorboards won’t creak. He takes the stairs just as carefully, until he makes it to your room without a suspecting soul there to catch him. 

He lowers you onto your bed gently, and you sink into your mattress much like he does as he follows, dropping down beside you to fit himself right into the sprawl of your limbs. His breath is warm where it brushes your skin, his nose tingling where it touches yours. 

“Wake up, little lady.” He murmurs, voice still rough with groginess..” You want me to clean you up??”

“Later…” You mumble. “Stop calling me that.”

“I’ll leave you be.” He shifts a lot closer, if being closer was still possible. “I need to head off to the shop.”

Your fingers crumple slightly around his sleeve. “Stay a while.” 

“How long did you want this while to be?” He looks at you earnestly, as he looks for a similarly earnest answer. 

The morning light slides further in through the curtains, catching on the edges of your hair, the folds of the blanket, and James grants himself a moment.

“A long kind of while.” 

He couldn’t say no to that. 

Later that afternoon, at the shop when James is helping adjust something from under the hood of a car, his dad’s sights narrowed onto that small dog figurine sitting new and unfitting on the counter next to the piles of papers and blueprints.

“What the hell is that thing?” He finally asks.

James doesn’t even need to look up from where he’s looking to know what he was referring to. “It’s a dog.”

“This yours?”

“Gift.”

“Whatever for?”

James tightens a bolt a little too firmly and scoffs, a tiny sign of a grin pulling at his face. “It’s normal to receive gifts dad.”

His father exhales through his nose unimpressedly. “Well this looks like a gift you give to a girl, and you ain't one.”

James wipes his ands on his stained jeans and turns to grab Doudou. From the counter, he quickly settles him onto the workbench, one he shared with his dad. Out of some half-assed spite that made him want to laugh, he turns to him and points at Doudou the dog. “Just deal with the damn toy.” 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

Your mom has been trying not to cry since you’d went downstairs with your bags, which only made her more talkative as she circled around the same three instructions: study well, eat properly, wash your sheets when you get back. 

“And don’t forget to call, okay?” she says again, holding your hands like an anchor. You wanted to die of embarrassment because James was standing right at the front door. 

“I’ll be back before you know it, Ma.” you answer as you lean in to kiss her cheek. Your dad stands a little behind her, arms crossed trying not to be part of the emotional fiasco happening in front of him. He clears his throat when James shifts from where he stands.

“You’re always taking her off to places, huh.” 

“I’m getting her to the airport, Mr. L/n.” James tries to feign nonchalance, and your dad buys it cluelessly. Your mom finally lets you go, stepping back with a long look like she’s trying to memorize your face. When you turn back, James helps you haul your things out the door. As you start walking away, he glances at you sideways.

“You think your dad's softening up to me?” 

“He lets you in my room now. With the door closed, mind you. That’s gotta be it.”

The car ride was quiet. James didn’t know what to say for once, so he kept his eyes on the road, fingers drumming lightly against the steering wheel. He watched the streets roll by, the stoplight changing, strangers crossing intersections, and the usual moving on of life. 

By the time the airport came into view, James pulled into an empty space near the terminal entrance, close enough that he could spot the steady stream of travelers coming and going, departures, arrivals, reunions, the like.  He killed the engine, and you carefully unbuckled your seatbelt. James glances over at you, then quickly away, and back again. You folded your arms across your chest and turned to meet his gaze. 

“You have my new number saved right?”

“Yeah I do.”

“And you'll call?”

“I’ll call you when you arrive.”

James looks at you and catches something small and uneasy. He shifts in his seat and leans over the console. “What’s wrong?”

You look out the windshield for a moment. And once you seem like you’ve made up your mind about something, you lean in as well, and kiss James breathless. 

When you pull back, James looks struck, and a laugh seeps out of you. “I’ll let you be my boyfriend now.”

James thinks fucking finally. He’s waited this long. 

“You could’ve made the decision a little earlier, no?”

You give him a look of fake compassion and press your foreheads together. “We sure still had a good time.”

We sure did. 

“I’ll see you in a few months.”

He’ll certainly remember the way you would sing that godforsaken song, Shape of My Heart by Sting over and over, every time it was on the radio. And he wonders what shape his heart would prove to be (thank you Gordon Sumner) if you were to cut him open and take a peak. He would have to explain it to you then, if he could find the words:

Love, yes, he had love, and felt it in these accruals.  The way limestone was his peculiar little architect, building cathedrals in his mind out of the most ordinary memories. You’d be lodged to the base like a seed in a seam splitting ground and stone. Or maybe he’d be changing oil, or turning a wrench, and there you’d be again, threaded through the gears smiling from between its teeth.

The shape of his heart: an endless concept to think about. 

When he drives home, the seat is empty beside him. Somewhere above, his heart has slipped its moorings and gone migrating an inch closer to yours, just a few thousand miles away. And from where you were, you held the same bit of hopefulness, your measure of passing slowly turning into a clockwise cycle of before James, after James, and the exquisite ache of wanting for James again. 

Summer made conspirators of everyone. The trees would lean closer, the sun softened the pavement. Time, to most, could stretch themselves as thin as caramel. But summer has ended, so he’d have to stick to a memory on his way back. 

And the town could forget your tire tracks by autumn. Rain will smooth it over and leaves will litter over green and brown. James, though, knows he won’t. 

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

(BONUS)

A few months later, James steps into the auto lot the way he’s done a hundred times before. Rust, oil, hot metal, everything baked under the sun and layered into the air to smell. Rick sits on the hood of a sedan, half-slouched and wiping grease off his hands with a towel.

“Morning Rick.”

“Hey!” Rick waves, squinting at him and then the car he’s got. “Whatchu here for? What’s with the Mustang?”

“Here to scrape it. It’s done its time.”

Rick gives a low whistle, hopping down from the hood and eyeing the Mustang down. “Ah, then you'll have yourself a good deal for it. I’ll say.”

And that’s all James was really here for, really. To grant your one wish as though it were a dying one. It left him confused in some way, he’d have to admit. You loved that car. He hadn’t expected you to let go of it the moment you left.

Yet the poor thing had exhausted all of its potential by the time you were done with it, so the junk or resale was the next best thing.

Rick jerks his thumb toward a corner of the lot. “Oh these just came in.” He walks them over.

“They’re not brand new, but it’s solid condition. Engines clean, suspensions intact, minor wear on the bushings but nothing too big The boss man’s thinking of flipping ‘em for a nice penny.”

Theres a Toyota Prado sitting right at the corner, boxy and grounded, and built to take on dirt. James takes a closer look.

“Try and sell this one to me, will ya Rick? C’mon, advertise.” 

Rick raises a brow. “You don’t want that truck no more, huh?”

“‘S not for me.”

He looks at the mustang, that vehicle of memories he was so adamant on talking you out of scraping. A good gift, huh? 

“I’ll take it.”

· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·

mari here! guys did u get the ‘somebody better be dying’ Shrek reference…? no? that's OK D: lowk lost it w ts fic bc the direction was all over the place but HEYYY I'm back but not rly ! I posted this to like make up for the long dcu wait yall r gonna have to bear with 😭 I promise it's not scraped at all in fact it barely started 😛 but ur gonna have to give me some time bc I’ve been super busy and burnt + I’ll be honest this whole tumblr thing has been making me feel v anxious lately (?) 😅 it’s not u it’s me ahh 💨 which is why I haven’t been getting into the blr these past few days 😞🙏 tho i will answer a few asks tonight mwahahaha ill try </33 ily 

[jjuhyeons]

THE WINNER TAKES IT ALL ⟡ 赵雨凡

再見 ★ you and chao yufan were alike in the sense that you treated everything like a competition, and missed that the basis of human connection is cooperation and harmony. similarly, you were alike in the sense that you both forgot that in competition, there can only be one winner, and that the path to victory is paved with heartbreak and betrayal.

warnings ★ swearing, angst, mentions of sports-related injuries, reader whacks james over the head with a hockey stick (gently), both reader and james are stubborn brats, hella artistic liberties, reader being a foreigner is integral to the story, kissing, arguing, in-depth depictions and descriptions of injuries and panic attacks, unhealthy dynamics, age gap wherein james is older, i really milked all the angst i could out of this one guys i’m sorry, also my inaccurate descriptions of winter sports and really bad mandarin and hokkien sprinkled throughout. lmk if i missed any!

genre ★ nonidol au, sports au, strangers to friends, friends into lovers, and strangers again, mutual dislike to lovers, romance, sports drama, angst, figureskater!reader, hockeyplayer!james, brief figureskater!juhoon cameo, james x reader

word count ★ 30.9k

notes ★ for my talented girl. skye, you mean the world to me. since i can’t tell you directly how proud i am of you and how wonderful you are, i did it in the second best way i knew how: a 30k word angst fic with your bias and one of your forgotten passions. i hope i did it justice, mi amor.

listen to… back in taipei, and for the skating scenes, short programs and free skates!

YOU ONCE HAD A friend who hated airports. When you’d asked him, thoroughly perplexed and half in disbelief, he’d told you that it was because it meant departure. People left, and wouldn’t be able to see their loved ones until they returned. It reminded him of his mother leaving, he said, whenever she went to her home country and couldn’t bring him along. 

You saw things differently. You saw them with the eyes of someone who wished to travel to lands of new opportunity, to places where you could leave your old self behind and start anew. A new place meant new people, new experiences, new sights, new outlooks on life. It reminded you of when you arrived in your new home country, young and naive and full of dreams. 

It was in this way and many others that you and Chao Yufan differed.

Funnily enough, the first time you met him was in an airport. Or, well, close to one.

北京 BEIJING

2022

You were beat. While the flight from Taipei to Beijing wasn’t far, or long, or truly anything that warranted your current exhaustion, your endless training of the past week certainly was. Your limbs ached with overexertion as you climbed off the aeroplane, hauling your carry-on with you while your coach, Peiling, walked purposefully several paces in front of you.

The airport was busy as you made your way to the baggage claim area, filled to the brim with families and couples on their way to and from different places in the world. The energy was overwhelming in a manner that made your words fail you. The atmosphere was emotionally charged, charged with the weight of families separating for the holidays, or a couple reunited after a business trip. Teenagers leaving home, adults returning. It made the air smell sweet with emotion, tears and smiles and laughs and sobs all to be heard and experienced in scenes within mere metres of one another.

You, like several other athletes on your flight, had travelled to Beijing for the Junior Asian Winter Games to represent their country on an international scale. It wasn’t too big of an event, featuring only competitors from a few countries across the continent, but for someone of your calibre—who’d only ever performed locally—it was like landing on Mars. More important, in fact. All Mars had was craters and buggies. Beijing had everything.

It had been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity given to you by a bored sponsor who had nowhere better to spend their money, but you didn’t care what it was that brought you here. All that mattered was that you’d made it, and you wouldn’t let the opportunity to make the best of it pass you by.

Baggage claim was as busy as the rest of the airport, filled to the brim with people fighting over who deserved to take their luggage first, who deserved to wait, and who deserved to lose an eye for the Louis Vitton suitcase that had made its tenth rotation without any sign of its owner stepping forward to claim it. You paused at the sight; the crowd, moving like one angry, sleep-deprived entity, and in a split second decided it would be physically safer for you to give up taking your luggage before you even started trying.

Unfortunately, you were travelling with an even angrier, even more sleep-deprived middle aged coach who was not about to waste her precious dollars simply because of your crippling anxiety, and so, you ventured into the storm. 

As you made your way to the mechanical spiral which rotated everyone’s bags like a silent urge for them to step up and claim what was theirs, your shoulders continuously bumped by nainais out for blood, you thought to yourself that whoever said the eye of the storm was the calmest bit was a dirty liar and a certain cheat. You yelped when an older gentleman pushed you cleanly out of the way, your hard-earned strength failing you in the moment of shock. Peiling yelled something at him in her Northern drawl and he backed off immediately. After that terrifying interaction, you simply kept to the sides, the areas where people didn’t bother to wait, your gaze fixed on the moving conveyor belt, on the lookout for a large suitcase with a bright, shiny pink shell.

It was after a few moments of staring and zoning out that you spotted it, pointing towards it with a victorious sound as if your newfound powers of voice-activated telekinesis would make the thing levitate towards you. Alas, it did not, and you had to use your hands and arms like the rest of the world.

You picked it up with quite a bit of effort, less because you’d overpacked and more because whatever equipment you couldn’t fit in your carry-on had been thrown into your suitcase, which, given Beijing’s tight policies on carry-on weight, was most of it. You nodded to Peiling, widening your eyes as if to say, I’ve got it. We can go. She gave you a quick thumbs up and turned to leave, and you followed shortly after. 

Sunset had inched over the horizon by the time you made it outside, the cold November air hitting your face and freezing your cheeks. Peiling raised her one free hand to hail a cab, pushing you into the open backseat once it arrived. You took a heavy seat while she loaded your luggage into the boot before finally joining you, sighing like an old man with joint issues. You watched in silent amusement as she got settled, noticed your stare, and smacked your arm, clicking her tongue in disapproval. “Aiya, you’re such a badly behaved child. Don’t laugh at your elders like that.”

“I wasn’t laughing!” you objected, though the giggle that you fought said differently.

She tsked. “Whatever. You and the rest of the athletes from Taiwan will be staying in the same hotel for the week that we’re here. Lights are out at nine, and you will be awake by six. I will not wake you up. Understood?”

“Yes, coach,” you said, still grinning like an idiot.

“Ai,” came the voice of your driver, fast-paced and slurred as you’d been told the Beijingers spoke. “You going to tell me where you want to go, or what?”

Peiling made a noise of irritation, but supplied nonetheless, “The Starlight Five Star, shifu. By Wonder Ice Sports Centre.”

He input the location in his GPS, asking, “You here for the Games?”

Peiling nodded. “Mm.”

He didn’t say anything after that, but you could see him nodding to himself as he drove off. Peiling leaned back in her seat, muttering something about Mainlanders before she asked you, “By the way, when did you add those stickers to your suitcase?”

You’d stolen someone’s suitcase.

This, you realised after you’d flopped unceremoniously onto your bed as Peiling made herself comfortable in her joint bedroom, zipping it open and finding it chock full of men’s clothes. Now, you weren’t necessarily the most outwardly feminine girl in the world, but you’d never gone as far as shopping in the men’s section, so you knew there was no way these clothes could’ve possibly been yours. Furthermore, the likelihood that you’d taken someone else’s luggage by mistake was only a bit higher than that of someone stealing all your clothes and replacing it with men’s clothes in some sort of sick act of villainy.

You sat up straight, a small, confused noise leaving your mouth as you rummaged through the stranger’s luggage in growing panic. Where you’d stored your signature leg warmers now were a pair of basketball shorts big enough to fit someone three times your size; where you’d packed a variety of hair products and creams for competition day, someone had carelessly chucked in a pair of shin guards and stocky gloves. And most importantly, where you’d neatly folded up the custom-made leotard your coach had spent half her life savings on, was simply a copy of some sort of anime film on DVD.

“What the hell is this?” you muttered, tossing more tubes of chapstick than was necessary for a man behind you, searching as if you’d find the contents of your suitcase beneath the layers and layers of his things. “How in the hell did this happen?”

“…When did you add those stickers to your suitcase?”

Your eyes widened, falling back onto your heels as a wave of realisation swept over you like the salty sea rollers on Fulong Beach. This wasn’t your suitcase. You’d taken someone else’s luggage, and were now armed with all the wrong equipment one day before the biggest competition of your career so far.

Ah, crap.

You groaned in frustration, dragging a hand over your face as you flopped onto your back, head falling against the soft, heavenly hotel pillows you’d be sleeping on for the night. Unfortunately, you were far too stressed to even be able to enjoy them. 

From somewhere on the other side of your room, behind the door that joined Peiling’s with yours, you heard her shout, “What happened now?”

When you didn’t answer, she pestered, “Tell me why you sound like you’re dying, la!”

“I took someone else’s luggage at the airport!” you yelled back, screwing your eyes shut in embarrassment and exhaustion at your own uselessness. Maybe if you’d glanced at it more than once, or waited for another rotation you’d see that it clearly wasn’t your suitcase despite the uncanny resemblance it bore to it. For starters, it looked more worn, with chips and scratch marks yours didn’t have. The owner had customised it as well, with stickers and tags and his name and number in permanent ink and—

You sat up again, this time with more purpose as you recognised the familiar traditional characters jump in front of your eyes. Even after all these years, it took some time for you to be able to decipher every letter, but after a moment or two, you could fully read what was in front of you, murmuring the words as you went.

“If lost, please return to…” you narrowed your eyes, squinting to read the handwritten scrawl in the low light of your hotel room, “…please return to James Chao.” Then, beneath the message, the ten digits that would lead you to him.

Your one-eighty reaction must’ve given Peiling quite the scare, because when you yelped in victory and started shoving the stranger’s belongings back into his suitcase, slamming the pink shell shut and already reaching to your bedside table for your phone, she opened the door and rushed into your room, stormy eyes widened in an expression of shock. “What is it? Why are you making such noise so late at night?”

She looked a bit ridiculous, her dewy, done-up skin and fuzzy robe doing little to add to the shock and growing frustration in her voice.

“I stole someone else’s suitcase,” you said, rehashing the previous moments’ occurrences to her, “but then I saw that the owner wrote his name and number on the front, so I can call him and find him and get my suitcase back because, you know, since we have the same suitcase, it’s only right to assume he’d taken mine—anyway, I can find him and get my suitcase back as well, hopefully before the competition tomorrow.”

She gave you a long stare, before nodding in the way that told you she’d believe what you said, but that whatever you did was your responsibility. “Alright,” she murmured. “But you can’t rely on hope. You better pray to Mother Guanyin that this pans out, because if not, I’ll have you compete in sweatpants and borrowed skates. Understood?”

You shivered in equal parts horror and disgust. “Yes, coach.”

Peiling shook her head in obvious disappointment, while you made a mission of dialling the stranger’s number to call him. The phone rang for several moments before he picked up—chrrr… chrrr… chrrr…

“Yes?” came the voice of a very irritated James Chao. You could imagine him, the stranger, his face a blur of what his voice brought to mind, his brow furrowed in frustration. His voice was gentle, but persistent, raspy, a bit nasally in a way that wasn’t too annoying just yet.

What a bad time to be an introvert. And what an even worse time to be someone who performed badly socially under even the slightest bit of pressure. “Um, hi. I, uh… I’m…” You paused, giving him your name, and then, “I think I may have something of yours.”

The other line was silent for a moment. Then, “You better be the person who has my suitcase.”

“I am,” you said. “It’s a pink Louis Vitton with stickers and shit all over it, right? And it has, like, I don’t know what kind of equipment—”

“Hockey equipment,” he answered for you, with more snark than was truly necessary. “And yours has a bunch of sparkly tutus and, like, a shit ton of lip gloss. And… footless socks?”

“Leg warmers,” you corrected, more defensive than you’d meant to be. “They’re leg warmers. I’m a figure skater. I use leg warmers. My socks have feet.”

“Alright, okay,” he acquiesced. “Where are you?”

“The Starlight Five Star,” you said. “Right by—”

“Wonder Ice in Beijing,” he interrupted, a seconds’ realisation spoken into existence. You could imagine him furrowing his brows as he further grasped, “You’re Taiwanese.”

“I grew up there,” you corrected, brain on autopilot. You were used to pointing out the difference to people. “Not Taiwanese Taiwanese, but—”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re in Beijing to compete, right?” You nodded like he could see you, and he continued, “All of us are on the seventh floor. Find me in front of the elevator in fifteen minutes, and we can swap our bags. Got it?”

“Okay,” you said, nodding definitively. The longer you spoke to James, the more eager you were to hang up and get the interaction over and done with. “See you then.”

His final words to you were, “Yeah, whatever.”

Once you’d told Peiling what you’d arranged with James, and she let you go with a firm nod and an encouraging smack on your shoulder, you pulled on a jumper over your pyjamas and lugged the stolen suitcase out of your room and down the carpeted hallway. The elevator was several paces to the right of your room—because the event organisers loved you so much, they’d stuck you in the furthest corner of the seventh floor, meaning you had to walk past the skiing and curling teams who, in spite of the nine o’clock cutoffs for all athletes, were all still hooting and hollering like they were at a house party.

Your feet thumped gently on the carpeted floor as you made your way down the hall, James’ suitcase rolling silently behind you. You stopped at the elevator, as discussed, turning your head this way and that in search of someone to match your current state: tired, pyjama’d, and in the mood for business.

James Chao first appeared before you that night you’d accidentally taken his suitcase and he yours, long after the athletes’ curfew and only a few hours before both of you would be competing the following morning. Black hair swept over a pair of dark eyes narrowed in apparent frustration, smooth, tanned skin glowing under the warm lights of the hotel as he frowned like he’d been personally wronged. Which, if he was nearly as dramatic as he’d sounded on the phone, may or may not have been his personal truth. A baggy graphic shirt and basketball shorts swallowed the lean figure beneath, and just as you were about to get a proper look at him, he said,

“You scratched it.”

You paused. “What?”

“My suitcase. You scratched it.”

Frowning, you looked down at the hard shell in your hold, looking no less damaged than it had when you’d taken it from baggage claim. “Um, sorry,” you said anyway, because you weren’t in the mood to prove your innocence currently. “I didn’t mean to—”

“It’s whatever,” he dismissed. His voice was clearer in real life. I mean, of course it was, but, you know. He shook his head, looking as eager to get back to his hotel room as you were. “Anyway, uh, here’s your suitcase back.”

He rolled it out from behind him, and you did the same. For a moment or two, you both stood there in virtual silence, staring down at the other’s suitcase. You swore you heard crickets once the silence stretched to thirty seconds. Then, with just as many words as you’d exchanged beforehand, which is to say, none, you switched bags, and balance was restored to the universe once more.

James looked up at you, sent you a firm, definitive nod. You did the same. Despite the moments leading up to the interaction being less than desirable, you completed what needed to be done, and did so without that much of an issue.

Or so you thought.

As you turned to make your way back to your room, your suitcase rolling behind you, footsteps joined by the sound of James’ own, you heard him stop, slipper-clad feet skidding to a halt on the carpeted floor. Stop. Pause. Turn.

“You went through my stuff.”

You stopped. Paused. Turned. “Yeah,” you admitted, eyes narrowed in that same way that people who are in an outlandishly drawn out and overdone interaction do, the same way someone who shouldn’t have to be explaining themselves does. “I thought it was my bag, so I opened it up.”

“And, what, you just mess up your entire suitcase the moment you open it?” he asked. Oh, he was getting far too bratty for your liking. 

You stepped forward, the movement like an accusation. “How do you even notice something like that?” you asked nonsensically. “Something so… so minute, so minuscule—”

“Big words for someone of your size,” he spat, equally as nonsensical. 

“What the hell is that even supposed to mean?”

“You know damn well what it means!”

You threw up your hands in a gesture that you were sure conveyed your frustration, exhaustion, and impending insanity all at once. “What is your problem?!”

“What’s yours?”

You pointed at him frantically, as if he were the obvious answer. “You! You’re my problem!”

He pointed right back, index finger in your face and all. “And you’re mine! I have a game at seven tomorrow morning and I’m standing here arguing with you!”

“Oh, trust me, I do not want to be stuck defending myself against a diva with a competition only a few hours ahead of me,” you said. “The feeling is horridly mutual.”

He scoffed. “You’re such a pain.”

Before you got a chance to retort at all, much less properly, James turned on his heel and left, walking with the conviction of a man scorned. The last you saw of him was him walking down the hall, hips swaying this way and that with more sass than you felt was fit for a man.

And because you were so very mature, such an emotionally intelligent young woman who knew when to walk away from a confrontation, you turned and left once you grew sick of staring at his departing form, muttering to yourself, “Stupidhead.”

You hoped you never had to see his dumb face again.

台北 TAIPEI

TWO WEEKS LATER

It was only you in the rink before he arrived.

You swept across the ice, legs moving as if by their own will. The cold stung your cheeks and creeped in through your tights, the sort of cold that sat in the back of your mind while the rest of your body burnt with exertion, limbs starting to ache from the push and pull of temperatures. Music drifted from the speaker you’d placed somewhere outside the rink, possibly in the stands where you’d left your personal belongings, slow and melodic and not at all matching your current mood.

You huffed in frustration as yet another Salchow failed to come to fruition, the edge of your skate blade as uncooperative as it had been for the past several training sessions. Something about the way you moved, or the angle of your foot, or the ice—something had to be wrong, and you needed to find out what it was and fix it. 

Peiling had told you that your second place performance in Beijing was good enough, which was rather uncharacteristic for her. She’d always been the one to push you to the edge, to test the limits of your abilities and patience. Her simply throwing in the towel and saying your performance in an international competition was good enough meant something. It meant she thought you were tired. Losing your edge. In a rut.

You were determined to prove her wrong.

Minutes turned into hours that you’d spent at the rink back in Taipei after your usual practice session; the rink where you’d first put on skates, where you’d spent birthdays and Christmases and good days and bad days on the ice. Where you’d found your purpose. 

It seemed the longer you tried to perfect your moves, to swivel your body or sweep your skates a certain way, the more you seemed to be failing. Shinya Kiyozuka and his upbeat, romantic masterpieces weren’t exactly helping your mood, either, though you weren’t sure if anything else would. Maybe you were just being impossible today.

You knew every athlete had their off days. Days where nothing seemed to stick, where they seemed to forget everything they’d learnt until that point. Days where the universe didn’t seem to be ruling in their favour, where their coaches and teammates patted them on the back and said, “Maybe next time.” But you weren’t that sort of athlete, the sort that could afford to be bad for a day.

In between the jump and twists and the growing cold and the flakes of ice floating through the air you failed to notice the double doors of the rink swinging open languidly, nor the set of footsteps that came afterwards. You bent your knee deeply, gliding backwards with your leg raised, before planting it into the ice, twirling into the air, one, two, three times, arms raised high above your head. A simple triple flip, but it was more than you’d been able to achieve all day.

A sharp sound rang through the air. Once, twice, thrice before it gave way to a neverending cacophony that made you turn your head. Someone was clapping, approaching with their hands set in a lazy position of applause. It echoed throughout the entire rink, travelling across the ice and straight to your ears; piercing, the sort of sound that made people flinch.

James walked towards the ice with an undeniable swagger in his step, not unlike his gait when you first met him. Though, could you say met, when the whole interaction lasted less than five minutes? He looked different this time, more put together, standing taller, like he owned the world and it owed him everything. A jacket hung loosely around his frame, opening just enough to show the graphic tee he’d most likely hand-selected, silky black hair in meticulous tousles. 

“What are you doing here?” were your first words to him since Beijing.

He didn’t say anything, hopping down the steps that led to the rink in silence, hands still braced for applause. Only until he reached the ice, leaning against the barrier separating you from normal ground did he say anything. He smiled, and it was difficult to deduce if it was friendly or not. “You’re pretty good, ice queen.”

You stayed planted in the middle of the ice that reflected white on your black stockings, matched your white leg warmers. You crossed your arms over your chest, not caring if the action made you appear petulant. “You say that like it’s a surprise. What are you doing here?”

While you couldn’t confidently assert that his face fell, there was a loss of amusement in his expression when it became clear you wouldn’t play ball with him. “I’m just here for some solo practice,” he explained, lifting the large duffel bag he’d slung across his front.

You paused. “You skate here, too?”

“Not during the week, usually,” he admitted. “But today’s a special day, it seems like. Practice got cancelled and my usual roller hockey rink is booked right now. So—” he grinned again, quick and sly— “here I am. And here you are. My problem.”

You were sure he meant it jokingly; as you could tell by the obvious switch from serious to sarcastic in his tone of voice. He was simply referencing the last time you met, when you called him your problem and he called you his. But there was something about the way he said it this time, snarkier and perhaps even more arrogant than before, derision in place of anger, that made you want to roll your eyes to the back of your head. What about him, exactly, enraged you so?

You’d find out soon enough.

Turning your back to him, you continued your desperate swipes and turns to try and mimic someone who knew what the hell they were doing. You weren’t convinced that you succeeded. 

James watched, thankfully silent, leaned all the while against the barrier. Somewhere in between your several flutzes, he’d pulled on his gear; knee pads and skates and silver chains that dangled as he hopped over onto the ice, floundering a bit from the extravagant entrance.  

“I watched you at the Games.”

This made you stop and, once again, turn towards the boy. You could guess he was a year or two older than you—not from how he spoke or composed himself, but from something deeper that told you things about him he didn’t even need to say himself. It was that same something that had told you to trust him down the line, the same something everyone has, telling them things they know about people they don’t. It’s important to remember that you can’t always trust when that something speaks.

“Oh, yeah?” you asked with feigned disinterest he’d never catch onto. “Thought you had a match at seven.”

“I did,” he said. “And your performance was at nine.” He skated towards you, gliding easily. “The rink you performed in was a five minute walk from ours.” He shrugged then, adding, “A few friends and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about after we won our match.”

“And?” you prodded. “Was it worth your time?”

“I’d say so, yeah.” He shifted one leg in front of the other, movements calm and effortless. “You’re pretty good.”

You preened at the compliment despite it being from someone you weren’t too fond of at that moment, because, like any teenager, you were a bit full of yourself when it came to the things you were good at.

James tilted his head. “But you’re too gentle.”

You scoffed. Too gentle. There was no such thing in a sport as graceful as figure skating. It didn’t matter that Peiling had told you the same thing three sessions ago, that your attempts at poise had made your art lacking. James didn’t need to know that. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He didn’t let up. “I see what you try to do in your moves, it just translates wrong on the ice. Your gracefulness comes across as hesitance; that’s why you only got second place.”

You scowled, ignoring the pinch in your heart. He was a stranger who knew nothing about your craft, not even the simplest thing. Why would you need to listen to him? “I don’t need you to explain skating to me,” you snapped. His unwanted presence and unneeded commentary had become too much to bear. “I got in second because I slipped. Not because of anything you might’ve convinced yourself is relevant.”

“Listen, all I wanna do is help,” he tried, nearing you. In turn, you glided backwards, intent on keeping your distance. “You wanna win, don’t you?”

“What’s it to you?” you muttered.

“Nothing,” he confessed. “It’s not important to me. But it could be important to you.”

A long stretch of silence followed. You stayed where you were, James only a few paces ahead. From what you could see, he meant nothing ill by his words, though there was still something that kept you from replying just yet. Maybe it was your own scepticism. It was an odd scene, an odd interaction; the sort that comes so unexpectedly that you don’t even have the slightest idea of how to continue, so all you really can do is just that.

“You don’t look Taiwanese.”

“I’m not,” he said, “technically. Dad’s from Hong Kong and my mom is Thai.”

“Yet you play in the national youth league?” you asked.

“Yep.”

“Must be nice.”

He nodded, the action softer compared to his previous ones. While Taiwan had many excellent foreign athletes to represent the country, it took a lot of exceptional skill—more so than the locals required, many cried—for them to make it out of the foreign leagues they were so kindly sorted into. James could only imagine how hard it must’ve been on foreign kids, when he himself worked so hard to keep his place in the league as a local.

Then, with the finesse of a newborn fawn walking on solid ground for the first time, you switched the subject. “I saw a few of your highlight reels from the Games. You’re not bad.”

Good to know that twelve years of practice got him a compliment like that. “Thanks,” he said dryly. “I try my best.”

If you were to take him up on his offer—which you weren’t even sure you would just yet, it was just a silly, fleeting thought—you were, in essence, rolling a dice you had no idea even had numbers on. It would be a shot in the dark, a complete leap of faith towards someone you’d met once and were sure you held a great amount of contempt for. 

But then, how would you know if the outcome would be bad? In short, you wouldn’t. You had just as much of a chance of learning something meaningful from him than you did wasting your time on him and vice versa. Like he’d said, it wouldn’t be important to him, but it could be important to you.

“The only thing is,” you started, grabbing his attention, “you’re like an elephant on the ice.”

James made a noise in the back of his throat, the crassness of your comment catching him off-guard. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t have any tact when you skate,” you pressed, “especially in handling the puck. It’s like you’ve got cement for hands.”

“What would you know about ice hockey?” he asked, snippy.

“As much as you’d know about figure skating,” you said.

He froze, mouth clamped shut in shock.

And checkmate.

You narrowed your eyes, watching him carefully. To an outsider it would’ve looked like a glance with reservations and its own opinions; maybe even to you. But what it really was was a look of assessment, a look that acted as the buffer between your thoughts and the answer they’d give you, the answer you’d soon give James.

“James is a pretty weird name for a Taiwanese kid,” you said. Half and half the truth and a fabrication, really. Most Taiwanese children answered to their Mandarin names, while some went on to choose English names as they expanded their professional horizons. “Is it your real name, or a Hong Kong thing?”

He didn’t answer your question, not fully. “My friends call me Yufan. Everyone else calls me James.”

“And what can I call you?” you asked.

“It depends. What would you like to call me?”

The statement in and of itself didn’t betray any deeper meaning, though you knew what he meant. Would you keep your distance from him, tell him that you didn’t need his help, remain professional, or would you say yes, accept his help, and become his mentee—even more, perhaps even his friend.

Maybe he’s lonely, you thought. Lonely and clueless on how to ask someone to be his friend. Or maybe he was just some prick on a power trip trying to make you feel bad about your skills.

You wouldn’t know unless you took a chance on him.

“Alright, how about this.” You clasped your hands together, earnest. “You give me pointers on how to improve my figure skating, and I’ll help you become better at ice hockey. It only seems fair,” you added as he went to protest, “since we’d only be assisting each other in specific elements. You good with that?”

He seemed to mull over your proposal, though he seemed unhappy to learn that you were not impressed with his own skill. “Fine,” he said begrudgingly. He stuck out his hand for you to shake, wriggling his lean, ringed fingers. “Training buddies?”

You took it, your palm cold against his warm skin. “Training buddies.”

Before you knew it, weeks had passed.

James became a regular feature in your life since he’d rather rudely inserted himself into it, squeezing himself in between your Tuesday cram school and your Thursday solo training. He always arrived with a smile on his face, though the contents of it always differed; some days he was smug, impatiently tapping your legs as he waited for you to get a manoeuvre right; other days he was soft, assuring you that not having the strength you needed to do a certain drill wasn’t the end of the world, even when you acted like it was.

Similarly, you’d been able to whip him into shape with the mindset of a ballet teacher in skates, stern and precise and never in the mood for the endless nonsense he dished out. You balanced each other’s energy like that. Where you were rigid schedules and languid, flowing movements, James was pure, unfiltered bursts of creativity and crashes into barriers. He showed you how to colour outside the lines, and you taught him how to outline the sketches he needed to play.

But before all that happened, more than a few things went wrong.

Before you learnt how to trust him, you’d hit him over the head with his own hockey stick.

The air was tense, alight with the anger and frustration you shared. James glared at you with the fire of a thousand suns burning in his eyes, jaw set in a scowl that made your blood curdle. “You’re a little brat, you know that? A brat who refuses to cooperate the moment she has to do something she doesn’t want to—”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” you snapped. 

“I’ll talk to you however I want,” he shot back. “As long as you keep being useless—”

Right, said the reasonable part of your brain. Enough is enough. So, in a split-second decision, you grabbed the stick he’d been holding—the old but sturdy taped-up contraption he’d been using to correct your posture that didn’t need correcting—and reared your arms back, coming down hard on his back as he ducked for safety.

You didn’t hurt him that badly, you could see afterwards. But he made sure to milk the shit out of your sympathy once you realised what you’d done.

Before he learnt how to take you seriously, he told you stipid things like,

“You know, you shouldn’t act so haughty all the time. You and I both learnt the same things in beginners skating lessons.” He glanced you up and down in a way that you weren’t sure if it was judgemental or merely observant. “You’re not teaching me anything new, here.”

You paused, your arms still braced in the elegant position you’d been in to demonstrate the gentler movements that would help him during matches. You placed your hands on your hips in a very unladylike fashion, scowling. “Last I checked, I’m not a beginner figure skater, and last I checked, I don’t constantly injure myself because of my poor form.”

He scoffed. “Pfft—okay, my form is not that bad—”

“You skate like a fucking pensioner.”

“—defence players are literally the best skaters on the ice. And we play two different sports! You can’t compare the styles of the two.”

You raised a brow. “I thought you just said we learnt the same basics.”

He froze. “Shit, yeah. Okay. That— that was on me, this time.”

Before you learnt to work together like a well-oiled machine, you’d bruised yourselves bumping heads like bulls.

“If you think, for even one second, I’m going to skate laps around this rink while you sit on your ass and time me, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“And if you think I’m just going to stand here and argue with you all afternoon instead of getting shit done, you’ve got an even bigger thing coming. Put on your skates.”

You threw him a filthy look, still stubbornly in your worn trainers. “Make me, princess.”

“I’ll make you eat your hands, is what I’ll make you do,” he replied, pressing his index finger halfway to your face.

However, after several gruelling hours and unproductive days, you realised that it was in both your best interests to simply pretend like you got along. And it worked.

You watched with bated breath as James glided across the ice, parroting the moves you’d shown him earlier. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, turn, and repeat. Since you’d given him your begrudging, hard-handed guidance, he’d become more graceful in his skating, more careful in his movements. He no longer moved with the tact of a baby elephant, and he’d even gotten better at handling his puck, though you had nothing in particular to do with that.

James looked back at you from over his shoulder, eyes expectant and awaiting your praise. “How’s this? Am I doing it?”

Manoeuvring your soft expression into a manner of nonchalance, you leaned your arms against the barrier, shrugging your shoulders. Your leg raised behind you in a subconscious movement, a stretching exercise Peiling had drilled into you so effectively that you did it without thinking. “You’re getting there,” you admitted, watching as he perfected the exercises you’d told him to work on in his downtime.

James’ face fell to an unimpressed scowl at the impartial remark, but he could easily fool himself into thinking he saw, if just for a moment, a glimmer of pride in your eyes when he first turned to you. It was a quick, fleeting look you’d given him when you thought he couldn’t see, but he caught on. He always did. After all, he was a defenceman. He needed to keep a keen eye. 

And before you fell apart, Chao Yufan showed you a part of him that he hadn’t shown anyone else.

“You know, it’s kind of difficult to believe you don’t like Yufan.”

Those were the first words that your senior and longtime comrade spoke to you since returning from a training camp in China.

Lin Shihan was one of the most renowned Taiwanese figure skaters in the world of winter sports, Peiling’s first prodigy and, most importantly, the girl you’d been calling ‘big sister’ for as long as you could remember. She entered the rink with a look on her face, because that seemed to be the way everyone you knew was greeting you these days, and crossed her arms over her chest. She was dressed in her civvies, a stark contrast to your fitted black training gear—tights, skirt, top, leg warmers and all—her hair done up in its usual tight bun.

She’d met James in passing a few times, even though their schedules almost never overlapped. The interactions had been friendly enough, from what you could deduct. All you knew she thought of him was that he had too much attitude and that she refused to call him James on account of being older than him. Not that she had any knowledge of your dynamic, much less persuasions or opinions of it.

You turned to her with wide eyes, because you were used to her greeting you with a little more than a wild accusation that you liked your training buddy. Usually she gave you a, “Hey, how was your week?” Sometimes you were even lucky enough to get, “I missed you while I was gone.” Not today, it seemed.

“What… is that supposed to mean?” you asked dumbly. 

“Oh, don’t play dumb with me,” she scoffed, motioning for you to skate closer. You did, stopping only a few centimetres short of where she stood, leaning your elbows against the barrier as you came closer for some serious girl talk, because that’s what her expression told you you were in for. She quirked a brow, as if challenging you to tell her differently from what she believed. “I’ve seen you two training together. You’re soooo yunlan.”

“Nuh-uh,” you scoffed petulantly. “Am not.”

“He definitely likes you,” she added quickly. Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately, for her—you caught it. Her brown eyes shifted from somewhere in the middle distance to you, like she was trying to be nonchalant and failing on purpose, like people do in the movies when they want someone to realise something. And you did.

You gasped. “He does not!” 

“Say what you want,” she sang, “but the proof is all there.”

“He literally hates me,” you said, perhaps a bit dramatically. “We only train together because we need each other’s help, you know that. Outside of that, we practically never talk. And he’s always so rude to me! Remember that time he wanted to trip me just because he felt like it? That’s so not yunlan behaviour.”

She shrugged. “He’s pulling on your pigtails.”

You pointed an accusatory finger in her face. “You do not exist to plant doubt about my training buddy in my brain, okay? That is not your purpose in the plot.”

“I kind of do,” she said. “Isn’t that what big sisters are for? Making you doubt yourself? No,” she corrected herself, tilting her head. “That’s what coaches are for.” She turned back to you, smug. “I’m just here to annoy you.”

“Why are you even here to talk about James?” you whined. “You just came back from Harbin, and the first thing you do instead of telling me about the competition is tease me about a crush I don’t have.”

She sighed, rolling her eyes like you asking about her trip was the last thing she wanted to talk about. “Fine. What do you want to know about the trip? I went, I won. I remain the undefeated champion in Asia for women’s singles in the senior division.”

“Well… what was your hotel like?” you enquired innocently.

“Big.”

“And Harbin? What’s it like this time of year?” you tried again.

“Cold.”

You threw up your hands in a hopeless gesture. “You’re doing that on purpose!” you accused. “You’re trying to make me less interested in Harbin so you can bother me about my nonexistent crush on James. And don’t say it’s not nonexistent,” you said, catching her look. “Because it’s not. Not nonexistent. It’s not— it doesn’t exist.”

“Ugh, why are you so opposed to a little romance?” she asked. “You’re a teenager. Shouldn’t you be all over a cute older guy like him?”

“I’m not opposed to it,” you said. “It’s just not the most important thing to me right now.”

“And, what? Skating is?” Shihan shook her head. “You can’t live your whole life like that.”

An uncharacteristically solemn silence followed. 

You deflated, your posture growing sloppy where it once had been stilted, standing at attention. Her statement hung in the air, blunt and unsoftened by a joke or jest as it usually would’ve been. The air was cold, more so than before, and you felt the tips of your fingers beginning to numb.

You knew she was right. She hadn’t even affirmed her position outright; all she’d done was ask you a question and tell you that you couldn’t live your life a certain way. But you knew well enough what she meant—your whole life, short-lived as it had been until that point, could not revolve around one thing and one thing only. You were a teenager with all the time and opportunity in the world. Why didn’t you take a break every now and then?

You knew, and so did Shihan, that there was no such thing as a break when it came to this sport. Figure skaters started young, competed young, dominated young, and spent the rest of their lives either still competing or training other young ones. You started when you were five, competed from the age of ten, dominated from thirteen up until now, and would probably spend the rest of your life doing the same. 

You couldn’t—wouldn’t—start resting, kicking back, enjoying life now. Or ever, for that matter. You weren’t destined for a life of joy and relaxation. You were destined for greatness. And that came at the price of your childhood; a price you were already paying; a price you wouldn’t stop paying until you were standing on that first place podium at the Winter Olympics. Who cares what you wanted out of life? It wasn’t about you, or being yourself, but what you owed to everyone who helped you in getting to where you were now; too far along to be able to give up, too privileged to be able to complain about something as small as freedom.

“I know you think so,” you said, and she took careful note of your word choice. Then, mustering up a small smile, you added, “I’ll try to have some fun this year. How’s that sound?”

Good enough for me, her expression seemed to say. Keenly looking into your doleful eyes, your empty smile. You tried. You really did. You tried to be positive for her. But she knew, she’d been where you were. She was where you were. There was no positivity for anyone or anything that did not get you to where you needed to be, which was in first place. You wouldn’t let anything get in your way. Not friends, not family, not cram school, and certainly not a boy.

Though, in hindsight, you didn’t much mind letting James get in your way, did you?

The city of Taipei was busiest at night, when the streets were filled with people and the night sky was lit up by street lamps and neon signs. Marketplaces were especially crowded, with tourists and locals alike bumping elbows to try and get to their favourite stalls, nainais and ahyis yelling to be heard over the hustle and bustle of the vendors. You steered James through the teeming streets, his bigger hand fitting snugly in yours as you tried to locate the stall you’d been telling him about all week. You moved with the purpose of a girl on a mission, ready to prove yourself correct.

It all started one afternoon after training, when Peiling and James’ coach, Chen Yuhsuan—a man in his forties who seemed to have an oddly extensive, tense history with your own coach—had let you go for the day and you were left to your own devices. It had become something of a routine for the two of you to get lunch together, at a small place just a hop, skip and a jump away from the train station you parted ways at in the evenings, when it was high time for you to return home. You’d been sitting across from him at your usual table, a low, rickety wooden thing that cramped your legs together, making your knees knock each other’s, when James had casually mentioned being a street food connoisseur, and that, in his highest opinion, you were wrong about which street food was the best.

“I’m sorry?” you’d said, pitch picking up at the end as an indication of incredulous question. “What do you mean gua bao isn’t the reigning champ of Asian street food?”

“I mean just that,” he replied, taking a nonchalant spoonful of his congee. “Pad kee mao is undoubtedly the best of the best. You’ll never get anything better, like—” he shrugged, as if the truth were out of his hands— “anywhere.”

“Okay, that… is just objectively wrong,” you said. “Gua bao is a classic that no food in the world can compare to. That’s just a fact.”

He pouted, as if sympathetic. “I can’t blame you for thinking that way. Taiwan doesn’t have the best Thai cuisine, so you’ve probably never tasted pad kee mao in its native excellence. You’ve only got a limited scope of the best food in the world.”

You scowled, jabbing your chopsticks threateningly in his direction. “Don’t speak so definitively, prettyboy. Soon enough, you’ll be proven wrong.”

He raised a singular, dark brow. “Oh, yeah? How so?”

“I’ll take you to the best gua bao spot in Taiwan,” you promised. “Next week, after practice, at this night market by the station.”

He leaned back in his seat, the tips of his fingers playing with the rim of his glass, the plum-coloured and flavoured drink casting a pinkish glow over his hand, smiling in amusement. “…Fine. It’s a date.”

You’d balked. “It is?”

He tilted his head. “If you’d like for it to be.”

Which brought you here, a week later, on your not-a-date date, ready to prove him wrong and change his perspective on the world and food as he knew it.

You found the stall easily enough, if not for its bright lighting and in-your-face advertising, then certainly for the heavenly smell of braised pork belly and fluffy white steamed bread. You let go of James’ hand, showing it off with a flourish and a tada~! he seemed to find adorable. He glanced blankly up at the sign, the warm lights from the overhead lanterns casting a white glow over his glasses, like a character from those mangas he read religiously.

He didn’t say anything as you ordered two of your usual, the classic, the timeless, the unforgettable gua bao as made by Nainai Chen, who’d been making them the same way since before either of you were born. You waited with thinly-veiled anticipation threatening to spill over at even the slightest indication from James’ side that he was anything other than neutral towards what was happening in front of him. A small part of you hoped he knew you’d never done something like this for anyone before. Taken someone out to one of your favourite stalls, the place you kept hidden away from everyone you knew for fear that they would make it their own place.

Yeah. You gatekept your favourite things. So what?

A bigger, more rational part of you knew he probably just thought of this as a friendly outing. A platonic hangout with his younger friend whom he terrorised sometimes. He’d joked about it being a date, but, of course, that’s all it had been—a joke. James Chao was a professional joker, no one to take seriously. Sure, he made jokes, and sure, he was handsome in his own unique way… with nice hair, and tanned skin, and plump lips that were accentuated out by his adorable yet very faint overbite. Why were you thinking of him romantically, again? You weren’t. Didn’t. You didn’t.

Once she finished wrapping up your food, you gave Nainai Chen a grateful bow, paying her several dollars more than you were supposed to, like you always did. She’d learnt to stop refusing your extra money, merely taking it with a kind smile on her weathered face. 

You turned to James with your hand already outstretched. He accepted his bao, and you waited in trembling anticipation for his final verdict as he took his first bite. And then his second. And his third. And his—

You threw up your hands, starting, “Oh, come on—!”

“It’s good,” he nodded, chewing thoughtfully. Then, noticing your look, he grinned. “Still not better than pad kee mao, though.”

You deadpanned. “You’re kidding.”

“I maintain that you just haven’t had good drunken noodles yet,” James asserted, while you took an angry bite of your gua bao. “I’ll take you for some proper ones sometime. Promise.”

“Thought you said Taiwan doesn’t do Thai cuisine justice,” you pointed out. “You gonna book us tickets to Bangkok after playoffs, or something?”

“I actually know someone who makes pretty good pad kee mao in Taipei,” he said. He glanced at you, catching onto your questioning look, and said simply, “Mama Chao.”

Your eyes widened. “Your mom?”

“Yep. She’s no chef, but you wouldn’t know that if you only knew her from her cooking. She makes some of the best noodles this side of the world,” he boasted, while you were still trying to process the fact that he wanted you to meet his mother and, by extension, his father, as well.

Meeting the parents had never been such a big deal between friends, so the fact that you were freaking out was perhaps a bit dramatic. But it was different for pairings like you and James. Girls and boys. Even if you were friends, strictly and only ever friends, there’d still always be that added element your biological differences brought to the equation. People still expected most friendships like yours to end in romance, especially parents. What would they think when James brought you home, the girl he’d been training with since November? And for dinner, no less?

He didn’t mention his mother again that night. Not after you drifted from Nainai Chen’s legendary gu bao stall, nor when you walked further into the marketplace in search of something sweet. Not after you’d given up halfway through your mission and opted for convenience store ice cream, nor when you took a seat at a bus stop situated under the stars.

He did say something else, though. When you were halfway through your caramel-flavoured treat, your lips swollen from the chill and covered in sugar, his voice, softer than usual, rang through the air like church bells.

“Why did you agree to be my training buddy?”

You turned to him. You’d been waiting for the moment he’d ask that inevitable question, for the day those words left his plush lips. 

“Hockey players always have something to learn from you guys,” he continued, “but figure skaters… you were already talented enough. So why did you even… I don’t know. Why’d you even give me the time of day?”

You squinted up at the moon, bright and pale and silently basking in its glow. “Why did you ask me if you could give me pointers?”

“Honest?” You nodded, and he said, “Because I didn’t know how else to catch or keep your attention.” His eyes flicked to yours, and briefly, swept over your lips. “I dunno if you’ve noticed, but I’m pretty bad at making friends.”

You smiled softly, exhaling through your nose. Not a laugh, not nothing. “Honest?” He nodded, and you said, “Because I wasn’t sure of myself. I mean, I know it sounds stupid. A figure skater not being confident in herself. Crazy, right?”

“Not crazy,” he said softly. “Stupid, maybe. But not crazy.”

You sighed. “Yeah, well.” A grin picked at your mouth. “I know how to do everything. I know how to throw my weight around and to twirl seventy times without puking. But after a while, doing the same routine— the same moves, to the same music, in the same glittery tutu… it gets old, and I lose myself a little bit. When you came around, I’d been in a slump for months. I was consistently placing second in all my competitions, and nothing I did could fix it.”

You remembered when you’d first told Peiling about your plan, she took it surprisingly well. In fact, she—and don’t fall out of your chair when I say this—agreed with what you suggested.

You’d been standing across from her on the ice before one of your usual training sessions, hands floating through the air as you gesticulated, when she nodded in understanding. “Cross-training isn’t too out of the ordinary,” she mentioned, laying a thoughtful hand on her hip. “It’s usually hockey players that train like figure skaters to improve their skating skills, but it’s not unheard of to go the other way around. I didn’t suggest it to you because you’d been performing perfectly until now. Though after Beijing…”

She tilted her head, her face already telling you before she even needed to say a word.

Coming in second wasn’t bad in itself. Silvers were better than nothing in any sport. However, when you went from winning gold at every competition to consistently placing second as you supposedly progressed, well, that was a different story altogether.  You knew you were gold medal material; you knew you had the makings of a star in you. That’s what made your silver medals so humiliating. You were so close, you came so close, to winning every competition you qualified for, but you lacked that little bit that separated you from proper winners.

And you couldn’t have that, not for one second.

You tried to ignore the sinking feeling in your gut at her words, wringing your hands in anticipation. “So… would it be possible for us to train together?”

Her face softened. “Of course. We’ll just need to get his coach’s contact details, and set up a training schedule that doesn’t interfere with either of your plans during the week. After that, we can get down to the specifics of what you need to improve on, and what he can learn from you.”

“I didn’t need to improve,” you said. “But I needed inspiration again. And you…”

“I’d suggest that we switch out Tchaikovsky for some Arctic Monkeys, maybe?”

“Mm. How about you try that one combination… the spinny one and the one that has something to do with toes? Like you did that other time.”

“Let’s just throw shit around and see what sticks, okay?”

You chuckled. “You helped a lot.”

“Oh, yeah?” Yufan grinned. “I’m an inspiration to you, huh?”

“Shut up,” you murmured, shoving his shoulder. But you didn’t say no.

The sound of your skates gliding against the ice filled the air as you and Yufan did a few laps around the rink, legs moving languidly behind you, your gaze trained over your shoulder to see where you were going.

“Remember to keep those knees bent!” you called, turning to look in front of you where Yufan was very earnestly focusing on your command, easily dropping lower on his knees, switching more weight onto the outer edges of his skates as you rounded a corner.

“You know, I find it very interesting how, in the three weeks we’ve trained together, you haven’t once picked up a hockey stick,” he said. “Except for that time you hit me with one.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, running a hand over your warming face. “I told you I was sorry about that.”

“I deserved it,” he conceded. “But that’s not my point. I’ve been learning all these fancy figure skating moves—and for a good reason, of course… I just— I’d like to… I dunno.” He sped up, inner edges taking the brunt of the acceleration. “I’d like to maybe, if you’d like, teach you sometime.”

You smiled as he stuttered his way through the proposal. “What, to play ice hockey?”

“Or roller hockey,” he added, shrugging. “Whichever one you’re more interested in.”

“I’m not really interested in either of them, if I’m gonna be honest with you,” you said. “The idea of me playing hockey sounds terrifying. I’d, like, take someone’s eye out.”

“It would probably be mine,” Yufan said. “And I wouldn’t be opposed to that. It gets me one step closer to my true dream: being a pirate.”

You shook your head, fitting in a quick toe loop before gliding to a halt. “You’ve got your heart set on this, don’t you?”

He stopped in front of you, only a metre and a bit between your bodies. “As a matter of fact, I do, yeah.”

Ever since that night at the marketplace, Yufan had been acting differently. Not oddly, per se—or, perhaps, any more odd than he did usually—but not close to normal, either. He’d been friendlier, softer, uncharacteristically gentle towards you. He gave you nothing but encouraging smiles and sure words, it almost made you suspicious. And, God, the way he looked at you… with such tenderness, with affection so unlike him. It made your knees weak in all the best and worst ways.

You narrowed your eyes then, your suspicion finally reaching its boiling point when he gave you another one of those damn smiles. “Okay, what is it with you, these days? You’re all cheesy, and now you’re suddenly asking me if I want to learn hockey from you? What’s wrong? Are you dying, or something?”

He scoffed. “No. I— I just…” Hanging his head, he gave a tiny, adorable sigh. “Can’t a guy ask a pretty girl out?”

“Well, yeah, but— wait, what?”

“You heard me.”

You stared at him. Hard and long. “Yeah, I did. Clear as damn day. What I’m asking is, like— are you sure? Are you sure you have the right girl?”

He tapped his chin, his gaze turning heavenwards as he pretended to think. All the while, he floated closer to you, his warmth entering your sphere. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I do.”

“You… want to take me out,” you said.

“That’s the gist of it, yeah,” he replied.

“Is that allowed?”

He snorted. “What?”

“Like— I don’t know.” You made a vague shape in the air with your free hand, the other coming up to press against your hip, the aching joint throbbing beneath your palm. “I just— I don’t know! You’re asking me out and you’re standing right there and you’re, like, really pretty and you’re making me nervous!”

He frowned. “Sorry,” he apologised, though you could see the faintest hint of a smile creeping through his expression. “I mean, it’s a pretty easy question to answer. Just— say yes or no.”

You glanced at him, and for a moment, caught in his expression the slightest bit of hesitation. That’s when you realised this was as much of a risk for him as it was a surprise for you. And that made deciding just a little bit easier.

“I, um… I’d love to play out hockey with you.” Your eyes widened. “I— What I mean to say is that I’d love to take you out for hockey. Or you— I’d love for you to take me out to play hockey… Jeez! Sorry. I don’t know what happened there.”

That got a laugh out of him, breaking the bright beam he’d worn the entire time you stuttered through your acceptance. “It’s fine. I understood you the first time.”

You smiled breathlessly. 

And that was all Yufan needed.

You didn’t play hockey for your first date. Or your second. Or third, or… any of them. In fact, you didn’t even near the ice until you became familiar enough with one another to know your something unnamed had become something quietly expected. Something implied.

He promised to take it slow with you, not only because neither of you had ever been in a relationship before, but because you had so many external engagements that, well, proper dating wasn’t exactly an option just yet. One of these many engagements, of course, was game season.

Out of all the winter sports, ice hockey was reputed as being one of the most invigorating amongst athletes, and once you started going to Yufan’s games, you understood why. The rink was cold, filled to the brim with people sitting in the stands, cheering as the players swept across the ice, blurs of blue and red and black and yellow. The air was alight with the glimmering of ice shavings from how quickly the players raced over the ice, like glitter under the harsh lights.

You sat back in your uncomfortable plastic seat, knees to your chest as you watched with a keen eye what occurred only a few metres below you. Yufan rushed along the ice, no more than a smudge of colour. Yet you spotted him as if it were second nature, eyes catching onto the bright lettering on the back of his jersey. Taipei Polar Bears. Number 16.

Despite having played it a few times, you weren’t one hundred percent sure how ice hockey worked. Or, honestly, even ten percent. Zero would be the closest estimate, in this scenario. Your eyes flicked continuously from the rink to your phone screen, which was open on a Wikipedia page on the rules and play-by-play of ice hockey, for whenever the announcers spewed some nonsense over the intercom like,

“Our local Taipei Polar Bears are far behind at only three points midway, while Les Champions de Marseille stay true to their names and dominate with double that.”

I won’t go too in-depth into what happened in the game, not only because you weren’t a hockey player and therefore had no idea what was going on, but because I, the author, have even less idea of what was going on.

Long story short, things happened, good and bad. Yufan whizzed past other players, stole the puck from them, did everything in his power to stop the other team from scoring. From what you heard, defencemen could have either constant or nonexistent contribution to scoring; Yufan seemed to be somewhere in the middle, switching between offensive and defensive play dependent on what he deemed necessary in that particular moment. All you could do was watch, perhaps with small hearts thumping where your irises would’ve been, perhaps not.

Players pushed each other into the barrier, the audience yelled obscenities, and so went the spirit of ice hockey. For all your lack of knowledge on the game, you could feel that there was an undeniable tension in the air. The team’s captain and Coach Chen seemed to be butting heads every other intermission, while things escalated between the two teams. The French skaters seemed to think significantly less of the Polar Bears, and it was clear in how they spoke of them to the referee. Every now and then they’d skate over to the short, weathered man, and rapid fire what looked to be enraged French when a mistake had been made on the referee’s side. Even the translator didn’t look happy.

If this game had a soundtrack, the song to set the scene playing out in front of you probably would’ve been something off of Verdi’s Requiem. Skaters yelling expletives at one another, pushing each other against the barriers, blood spattering the ice as those with authority tried to keep things civil to no avail. Pucks being chucked from one end of the ice to the other, sticks breaking, skates skidding. 

Two of the Polar Bears’ forwards had turned to one another, yelling something about the centre focusing too much on flair and too little on actual play, exchanging curses back and forth in Mandarin and Hokkien. Yufan stood between them, hands braced on both of their chests, holding them apart with growing annoyance. He said something, the words too soft to travel across the ice and through the chaos, but they didn’t let up in their argument, skating away while pointing fingers at one another.

You’d asked Peiling what to expect of a game of ice hockey, and she’d told you to prepare yourself for anything. You wondered how she knew, why her eyes became misty when she said, “All I can tell you from the hockey games I’ve been to…” Regardless of her past with the sport, she was right. You had to prepare yourself for anything. The only downside?

You hadn’t. 

You sucked in a sharp breath as the intermission was over, and the game was on again. Something about sitting there in the stands, surrounded by strangers who shared your interest and perhaps misguided passion in ice hockey—it invigorated you. And something about watching Yufan as he rushed across the ice, skating with the finesse of a professional dancer, made your heart thump harder than you thought possible.

After the game, you found Yufan at the entrance of the teams’ locker rooms, sweaty and breathless and starry-eyed like no other. You caught each other’s eyes across the hall, people passing by you in a haze, and you asked a silent question. Shall we? And he nodded without hesitation.

One of your many after-game rituals was going out for hotpot at one of your regular spots. No parents, no friends, no teammates. Just the two of you. It was something that had begun as a way to connect when you started training together, and it had just stuck and stayed strong till now. He sat across from you in the crowded restaurant, fingers deftly clasped around his chopsticks as he ate. He said nothing; you knew he wouldn’t, not for the first few minutes. It always took him a moment to regain his breath, get his brain out of the game and back to you.

“You did well out there,” you spoke into the silence, over the sound of the bubbling soup between you.

He glanced at you, hooded eyes clear in their question, in their understanding. “Even when we lost six-four?”

You shrugged. “I don’t care about any of that. All I care about is how good you did for yourself in the game, and… you did.”

A nod from his side, eyes set in a pensive stare. He’d confided in you before that this particular season had been hard on the team, what with all their consistent losses and all the fights that broke out amongst them. You thought, maybe, that he was in a similar position to you a few months ago. Coming so close to victory, the tips of your fingers brushing a gold trophy, and making it just not far enough.

It affected him; at the very least, his morale when playing. And you, noticing as you did everything, tried to lighten up the mood whenever he started brooding.

“And don’t call me ‘Ice Queen’. It’s stupid.”

Yufan smiled. “Nice to know you see my solo potential in a team sport.” He adjusted his posture, sitting further back in his chair. “What else am I supposed to call you, then? Would you like to be demoted to ‘Ice Princess’?”

You scoffed softly. “I’d just like it if you called me something normal guys called their…” You paused, because your words had, for lack of a better term, utterly failed you. What were you? Were you boyfriend and girlfriend? Were you training buddies who went on dates? Were you too young to try and label whatever romantically-charged relationship you had with a boy who was how many years your senior?

He quirked a brow. “…Girlfriend?” he wondered gently, doing nothing to hide his amusement at your hesitation. “You seem like you’d be my girlfriend by now.”

You tilted your head. “Oh, yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t go on dates with just anyone.”

You pretended to give the statement an ounce of thought, when in reality, you’d be thinking about those nine words for years to come. “Well, then, what would you call your girlfriend?”

He mimicked your expression, cocking his head to the side as if in thought. “Lots of things. Pretty girl, for one. Babe. Stupid… Ice Queen.”

“No fair! You’re not allowed to reuse shit ones just ‘cause you think it’s funny to make me mad!”

He laughed this time, loud and true, the sound bursting through the thick air that hung between you. It was a nice thing to hear; a rare thing to witness. Chao Yufan was not someone who laughed easily—he was too serious for that. Or so he would like to have you believe. You knew, though. You felt it. There was something in you that told you he was happier than he let on.

You didn’t know then not to trust that fickle, unreliable something. 

Yufan was three things when he was in love. 

First, he was gentle. All soft smiles and laughs you could barely hear over the chatter of whatever place you’d found yourselves in. He placed loving hands on your face when he squeezed your cheeks between his fingers, murmuring something about how you looked like a flower, in that voice reserved for you, and only you.

He still teased you, of course. That seemed to be something he would never be able to let up. His childishness; his mischievous nature. It was unrelenting in its intensity and recurrence, neverending tongue-in-cheek comments meant anywhere between endearing and straight up mocking.

One afternoon, you’d been sitting together on the pavement outside his family home, arms tucked under your legs as you waited for either one of you to gain the confidence to say it was time for you to go home. Time for you to part, time for you to say goodbye, to say, “Until next time.”

The sun had already begun to set, sunk below the high rises and apartment buildings dotting the city, yet the air was alight with activity, with sound, with sights. It was as if Taipei itself was telling you, Not yet. Taunting, Look, I’m still awake. What reason is there for you to leave now?

Yufan looked at you, if he hadn’t already been looking. You sat next to him, eyes fixed on something in front of you, something he couldn’t see, bathed in the glow of the setting sun. Hues of purple and pink and orange and red covered the patchy, imperfect surface of your skin, your silver jewellery glinting like stars next to your full cheeks. You were so pretty, like something straight out of an old film. That, he decided, was a face worth pining for. And he did, quietly, whenever you weren’t looking, weren’t listening as intently as you always did. Weren’t ready to ruin the moment with your stupid humour, your unnecessary little quips.

Like now, when you noticed him staring, and a wide, shit-eating grin spread across your plump lips. “What’re you looking at?” you asked, accent exaggerated like those cute girls in dramas from the Mainland.

He rolled his eyes, because he’d been caught out. Again. Said, “Not you, that’s for sure,” because he had no other appropriate response. Because he was a teenager who wasn’t used to the feelings swirling in his heart at that moment, and being cruel is easier than being honest.

You stuck your tongue out at him, blowing a raspberry while your eyes screwed shut. “Boo, you ass.”

He mimicked your expression, giving you a light shove with his weaker hand. The one that wouldn’t be able to pack as much of a punch as it usually would’ve, because he’d hurt it trying to show you a cool trick with his hockey stick earlier. “You’re so much prettier when you shut that big mouth of yours.”

And you smiled, because you knew, or you thought, beneath all those layers of defensiveness and snippy jokes, Yufan really did like you. After all, what else would he keep you around for?

Second, he was reverent. Not a day went by where he didn’t admire your skill, or your tact, or your beauty, or that little scar you had on your cheek from when you fell on your face as a toddler, and didn’t make it completely obvious to everyone around him. As a rising star in the sports world, he was meant to keep his personal life secret, yet when it came to you, he couldn’t be bothered to hide what people insisted needed to be hidden.

Whenever you completed a trick, a well-placed Axel or something close to it, he’d skate over to you with his mouth hanging open in exaggerated awe; whenever you were walking next to him and he got a glimpse of you standing in a certain light, the shadows and contours of your body displayed just right; whenever you helped him with his stupid twelfth grade homework, explained functions to him like you were the older one—scenes and moments where all he could really do was lean back, drink you in, and say, “You’re amazing.”

Like when he tried to teach you how to play hockey on ice, and you skated circles around him. Granted, he was going easier on you than he would normal beginners, but you still played like you’d been in the game longer than him.

The rink was dark, only the harsh glow from the overhead lights rendering you sight. Music drifted from the speakers, something you’d picked out, or perhaps something you’d forced Yufan to listen to that he just got used to and started loving the way he loved you. Steadily, patiently, neverendingly. You swept past him, holding his stick—his newest one, the one that he hadn’t had to tape back together for this game, like the one he was playing with—in your hands as you dealt with the puck, shuffling it over the icy surface beneath your feet with grace, speed that he assumed came from your many years of training.

“Aaannnddd here she comes, the Polar Bears’ newest addition, sweeping the opposition off their feet with her mad skills!” you narrated, head down, trained on the puck. “She crosses over the, uh… the blue line, and passes by the opposing team’s very handsome defencemen before she comes to the goal to shoot—” you reared your stick back, the flat coming down to strike the puck straight into the open, unattended goal— “and score!”

Yufan watched as you skated around the rink, pumping your fists in the air and whisper-shouting praises to yourself, playing as the crowd, with sound effects and all. If, like the cartoons, there could’ve been hearts in his eyes, there would’ve been. “You’re doing so well, pretty girl,” he praised. “You’re basically a pro already.”

“I know that’s right,” you gloated, trying—and failing—to do a dorky little victory dance that made you look incredibly stupid. Really, genuinely like an idiot.

And Yufan loved every second of it.

Third, he was kind. Not just to you, or to his friends, but to everyone he felt, and even didn’t feel, deserved it. His family—the Chaos—were all kind, inviting people, enough so that you could pinpoint exactly where Yufan had gotten in from. Kind, in the sense that they were accepting of you, their son’s very different, very eccentric girlfriend. Kind, in the sense that they treated you as though you were one of their own, already married into the family. Kind, in the sense that it made your heart ache to wonder why such a family, such a boy, would ever have to struggle.

He introduced you to his family shortly after officially asking you to be his girlfriend. It was rather in order for him to, given the fact that you’d nearly crossed paths with them at the games of his you’d gone to. Your first meeting had been unexpected, because they’d anticipated for him to bring home a local girl, born and bred in Taipei with her own traditions and opinions to counter their own. What they hadn’t expected was you, just as local, with just as many traditions, but something that bound you to them in a way no one else would truly understand. Your bond, of foreigners who’d found their home, who’d lived their lives in it, yet felt like outsiders, felt like they had more to prove than was truly necessary.

Yufan was a lot like his mom, you realised one night, the first night he’d invited you over for dinner at his house. It was a small, cozy place, really only enough for three people, the architecture reminiscent of old-school Japanese homes with their sliding doors and cool wooden floors. You all sat around the dinner table, plates stacked up with all the different delights Yufan’s parents had made in preparation for your arrival—from his father’s side, dishes like beef brisket noodles, and his mother’s side, dishes like tom yum soup, and her famed pad kee mao.

She was Thai, you’d been told, and spoke with the sweetest accent curling around her words. Don’t be mistaken, she spoke rapid fire Mandarin while conversing with her husband, but there was something undeniably gentle, perhaps hesitant about the way she spoke, the way she enunciated. You wondered if you sounded like that to other people. She insisted that you just call her Mama, because, in her words, “Yufan probably won’t bring home another girl since we already like you so much.” However the comment terrified you, it was just as flattering.

Your boyfriend and his mother shared a sense of humour, loud and obvious where his father preferred to stay silent, and smile in gentle amusement. They spoke a lot—really, you thought that maybe you got in five or so words that night—and never ran out of things to comment on. It was like watching a real-life variety show. 

They also shared a temperament, it seemed, their patience something fickle and short that could run out at any moment, and their gentleness neverending, not even when their partners were annoying the living daylights of them. The kind of temperament that had him flicking your temple after you’d said something stupid, that had his mother chiding her husband for his attitude. The kind of temperament that made him help you up from your seat and open doors for you, that had his mother taking her husband’s dishes and calling him handsome out of nowhere. The kind of temperament that made her expose his deepest secrets to you while priding himself on doing the same to you.

“You know, darling,” Mama began, turning to face you, “Yufan told us all about you before you even started dating.”

Your boyfriend’s face dropped, fell slack in shock. Conversely, a smile crept its way onto your face, and you looked at Mama Chao with newfound interest. “Oh, really?” you prompted, wanting nothing than to hear more about it.

She nodded sweetly, though you could see that familiar glimmer of mischief in her eyes, the one you so often saw in Yufan’s. “Oh, yes. I think it was in December, wasn’t it? that he came home with stories about you. I could imagine that he’s been rather taken with you since then.”

Yufan tried, “I wouldn’t exactly say—”

“I would,” his father spoke up, the first thing he’d said in ages. “I could see it in your eyes.”

Yufan, like his family, was kind in love, but incredibly, unrelentingly teasing all the same.

Once the new year rolled around, it was far more difficult to follow Shihan’s well-meaning advice and have fun. Not only because you had newfound obligations to your family, but because you had old obligations to your passion, old obligations that you’d put on the back burner since deciding that having fun was more important than committing to something that had cost your parents a fortune to finance.

Practice would need to become an even more regular feature in your daily life than it already had been. That meant no more cram school, and no more joint training sessions with Yufan. You’d have to commit, mind, body, and soul to this sport, to figure skating, or you’d have lost your window for everything. You’d go to competitions, and dominate as you had before, and that left little to no space for a social life.

When you first told him this, he was disappointed. Predictably so, because no teen boy liked having to spend less time with their girlfriend, especially one as dedicated to you as Yufan was. He didn’t talk to you for a few days following the announcement, but you didn’t really have time to coddle him into forgiving you. It was a harsh thought, but if Yufan wanted to end everything you had over something like this, he could go ahead and do it. You didn’t have time to stop him.

You went on a training camp in China without so much as a goodbye to him while he, similarly, travelled to Hong Kong with his team without looking back. After all, you had more important commitments now. Did this mean you wanted to break up? No. But if he was going to be a child about it, there was no need for you to be your usual understanding self (which has been hiding where, exactly?) and try to make amends.

You lasted precisely five days before you caved and called him. It had been a particularly rough day, with yours and the other skaters’ coaches having been unforgiving in their routines; you’d been up hellish heights in roller skates, done laps upon laps around the facility’s rink, and been pushed onto the ice in soccer cleats for whatever nonsense reason they could give you, probably something to do with strengthening your balance on the ice. Tensions had run high between the local and Taiwanese skaters, with you and your peers choosing to spend your evening hiding away in your shared dorms while the locals went and played a game of hockey in the rink… which was what led you to think of Yufan, and be unable to stop thinking of him until the next thing you knew, you were dialling his number and staring at your own reflection in the outgoing video call.

Yufan lasted approximately five seconds before he caved and answered your call. Like you, he’d been sentenced to two weeks of training hell, the likes of which were incomparable to even the worst torture anyone could survive. Mostly because he didn’t survive; not really, not when every one of his limbs ached and his joints screamed whenever he moved too quickly. 

His face appeared on your screen like a blessing from the heavens, and all you could do was stare into his dark brown eyes too embarrassed to say anything. His hair had gotten a bit longer since you’d last seen him, his face a bit more mature. Oh, who were you kidding? He looked exactly the same, you were just being dramatic again. He was still your Yufan, all smooth, tanned skin, and plump, pink lips that you desperately wished you’d could kiss.

When you looked deep into his eyes, looked past the droopy, hooded lids, and the feigned indifference, you could see the same embarrassment you felt. But he still spoke first. “Hi, pretty girl.”

The sound of his voice, light and airy like you hadn’t heard in nearly a week, would’ve made your knees buckle if you hadn’t been sitting cross-legged on your bed, lifted a weight you hadn’t realised was resting on your shoulders until it dissipated. Like tension resolved without words. Like wounds eased with the wind. He still liked you. He still called you his pretty girl. He didn’t hate you. 

“Hi, Yufan,” you said. Stupid, stupid you. Could you not come up with something better than that? ‘Hi’?! “How… how’s the training camp been?”

He nodded imperceptibly. “Fine. Or, well— no. Not fine. I hurt myself pretty bad during a scrimmage a while ago. But it’s whatever,” he dismissed. You noticed a bruise on his neck, and on his shoulder, where his loose sleeping shirt exposed the skin. “How’s it been in China?”

“Oh.” You gave him a meek shrug. “Not too bad. There are, um… some political tensions rising, but that’s about it.”

He managed a snicker. “Oh, yeah? The coaches fighting about the same old stuff?”

“Yep.” You smiled softly. Yufan thought you looked really pretty when you did that.

“…I saw you guys at the airport before we left,” he told you, ducking his head to avoid your gaze. His nose scrunched, and he added, “I wanted to say goodbye to you.”

Your face fell. “Oh. I’m— you could’ve, if you really wanted to. I would’ve let you.”

“No, it’s fine,” he assured you. “You needed your time to cool off. It just reminded me a little why I hate airports.”

“You do?” Still?

“Yeah.”

This was a conversation you’d had before, the feeling airports gave you. It first came up while you were laying together on the floor of your bedroom, staring at the glow in the dark stars pressed into the ceiling. You loved airports, because it meant you got to go somewhere new. Got to explore, got to see new places and learn new things. Yufan hated them, because,

“It reminds me that the people I love are leaving,” he said. “That… that I won’t be able to see them until they come back. Like my mom, when she goes to visit family in Thailand and I can’t come along. My dad, when he goes to Hong Kong for business and doesn’t come back for a month.” He paused, then, “Like you, when you go to Beijing or Seoul for competitions and I’m not sure when I’ll see you next.”

You sighed, the action more of a sad, rueful exhale. “Oh, Yufan…”

Another pause. Yufan looked into his phone camera, eyes on you still. You couldn’t detect any malice in his stare. Then, why would there be any? “Listen, pretty… I’m sorry about last week,” his soft voice came over the speaker. “About how I acted. That— it was stupid. I shouldn’t have behaved like that. It’s… your career is important. More important than I am.”

You frowned, your brow creasing as your heart ached. You were young, too young to be having these sorts of conversations. Too young to be talking of careers, of your importance in each other’s lives. You both understood that there was nothing to be done about it, but just for a moment, you had the fleeting thought that it wasn’t fair.

Fair. What an odd word to use, to try and define. Nothing was fair. Ever.

“That’s not true,” you said, “and you know it. I’ll always have time for you.” You wouldn’t. “If I don’t, I’ll make time.” Wrong again. 

He smiled gently. “It’s alright, stupid.” It wasn’t. “I know why you need to focus more these days. I can wait.” He couldn’t. “Or, maybe… I could help you out a little?” When you raised a sceptical brow, he eagerly continued, “We don’t do cross-training anymore, which I get, but what if I help you with your routines, and stuff? I could help you practice choreography, and you wouldn’t need to do everything alone. I— the hockey season’s quieting down, anyway, so I’ll have plenty of free time.”

You paused. “You wouldn’t mind doing that for me?”

He rolled his eyes. “Baby, do I ever?”

You found yourself smiling, uncontrollable only in the fact that you physically couldn’t help reacting to his words the way you did. Couldn’t help accepting his proposal, missing the way the light in his eyes dimmed with every word, missing the way his smile seemed pained where yours wasn’t. Missing the way he looked at you, like you were something he’d already lost.

There were many technicalities that came with being a foreign athlete in Taiwan. There were many technicalities that came with being a foreign athlete anywhere, you were sure, but Taiwan was heart-piercingly clear in how it viewed non-natives. Though you could compete on an international scale, you were given a specific category to perform in. You didn’t represent Taiwan. You represented foreigners in Taiwan.

Which, considering the fact that you’d lived there for more than half of your life, considering the fact that you were a Taiwanese citizen, hurt. Especially considering the fact that there was little separating you from your local, same-aged peers besides a name that sounded a bit different, proportions that didn’t fit with what society deemed as appropriate for young girls your age.

It put you at odds with your friends, your fellow athletes; everyone you knew who trained the same way you did, did the same routines, faced the same struggles, but who could confidently say they represented their home country. Could you even say you had one, really, when you felt your birthplace was not yours to claim, and your home country separated you from its locals?

The Taiwan Figure Skating Championships were an annual competition that gathered several up and coming figure skaters to choose the lucky athlete that would represent Taiwan at the World Championships, and other such international competitions. It was an honour to any skater who entered to even make the top three, but that wasn’t what you were aiming for.

You’d entered your name with an intention, not hidden or concealed in any way. You’d filled out the application with confidence, confidence that they’d look at your portfolio, your history, your skill set, and consider you as one of the few options that would be able to compete. 

You’d sat at your desk at home, finger hovering over the email you’d received in the hours after you returned from cram school, filled with anticipation and fear and impending regret as you contemplated the results to come.

Did you even open the email? Did you brace yourself, for equal parts victory and failure, or did you just throw your hat in and leave it unopened, convinced you didn’t deserve a spot, anyway?

I mean, think about it this way. You’d been training for Nationals before registrations had even opened. Even before you’d met Yufan in Beijing all those months ago, you’d already choreographed and practiced both your short program and free skate. You’d spent all your time in the off-season following the previous Championships training, and exercising, and choreographing, and slaving away in that dark, lonely rink. All that time would, if you didn’t open the email and face your fate, be wasted.

But all that time would also, if you hadn’t been accepted, be wasted, anyway. So, how exactly were you supposed to choose what to do next?

It seemed you didn’t need to, because one of your parents would. You’d been sitting at your desk, your mother and your stepfather, Chihming, crouching anxiously behind you. Shihan and Peiling were waiting for you over the phone, and Yufan had already sent you his own words of encouragement.

雨 you’re going to do great, pretty girl

i just know it

After five minutes of you deliberating, procrastinating, prolonging—every word that could describe you doing everything in your power to avoid opening the email, the pressure seemed to become too much for Chihming, so he reached forward and took over. Predictably, chaos erupted. Your mother yelled for him to back off, while Peiling and Shihan screamed confused obscenities at the ruckus, and all you could do was smack a hand over your eyes so you wouldn’t have to face the inevitable rejection.

Silence. Then, Chihming tapped you on the shoulder. With great reluctance, you opened your fingers just that little bit to read the opening lines.

Dear athlete, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to compete at the—

“Holy crap!” you exclaimed, your voice rising impossibly high.

Your mother, bless her soul, frowned in confusion. “What?”

Chihming pointed frantically at the screen. “Look!”

She deadpanned. “I can’t read that, peh bak.”

“Neither can we!” Peiling and Shihan chimed in.

“I got in,” you said quickly. Then, jumping up from your seat, effectively clearing the space as your mother and stepfather took a careful step back, “I got in! Oh, my GOD, I got in! I’m competing at Nationals! I’m gonna be a star!”

And that’s where things went south. 

Yufan was someone who was used to pretending that everything was fine when his life was falling apart. Perhaps it was an unfortunate side effect that came with being an only child to immigrants, always putting on a brave face for your parents in times of trouble, which later became putting on a brave face in front of friends, other family members, teammates, and eventually, your neurotic girlfriend. 

You’d been going at it for hours by the time he arrived at the rink to help you, just like he’d promised he would. You, however, were not supposed to have been busy when he came, and yet here you were, spent and not looking like you were going to give up whatever you were trying to perfect very soon. It was something he noticed when you trained together; your obsession with perfection, almost comparable to his.

Your approaches differed in two main ways. Where Yufan became unhealthily devoted to whichever task he’d set out to do, you threw yourself into the process blind, unsure of whether you’d emerge in one piece. Where he was cold and calculated, you were hot and reckless, not stopping until your limbs trembled and you couldn’t see straight. Both of you felt things intensely, but there was something about the way your emotions took hold of you, kept you in a vice, that Yufan couldn’t imagine feeling like that, ever.

From what he’d seen, though, it was your approach that got you places. Your sheer dedication not to routine, but to repetition was something to behold. If you couldn’t do something, you’d do it over and over and over again until the soles of your skates were stained with blood and you had no choice but to take a step back. Between the two of you, you were the one who consistently placed first in your competitions, you were the one who was on her way to Nationals. You weren’t the one who was tied to a shitty team and an even shittier self worth hiding behind layers of sarcasm and feigned charm. You were yourself, through and through.

And he wouldn’t be lying if he said he was a little jealous of it. Of you. Not in a predatory, competitive sense, in a way that meant he wanted exactly what you had, felt entitled to it. No, rather, in a way that had him wishing he had your confidence, your self-assurance in your skill. He didn’t have that, and it showed in his games.

Which is where the saving face came in. He’d come straight from a gruelling practice that had ended in Coach Chen asking him an impossible question, weathered face contorted with something like hopeless rage. Do you even want to be here? When you play like that, who could be able to tell that you’re passionate about all of this, and not just wasting our time?

But that didn’t matter. Not now, anyway, when he had you in front of him. You, his wonderful girlfriend, who was not afraid to get snippy with him, who hugged him whenever he got off the ice after a game, who said he was doing just fine for himself, and that that was all you really cared about. You, his talented girlfriend, who was on her way to Nationals, World Championships, and who knows what else, who was better than he was in any regard, who was leaving him behind in Taiwan to become an international star. Who deserved nothing less from the world.

You didn’t notice him at first, and he wasn’t surprised, with how lost you were in your own dark little world. Music blasted from the speakers—probably something from that one English indie band you never stopped talking about. Peiling was sitting in the stands, eyes narrowed as if in disapproval. Yufan knew her to be quite the strict coach; perhaps not as bad as Coach Chen, but certainly a nightmare in her own right. In her hands she held a clipboard, and when Yufan sat down next to her to pull on his skates, she angled it away from him. Not that he was planning on looking, but now that she’d hidden it, he felt his suspicion growing.

He knew she didn’t like him—for whatever reason, he wasn’t too sure. Maybe she didn’t like hockey players. Actually, now that he thought of it, remembered how she and Coach Chen had beheld one another with more scepticism than was necessary when they first met, that seemed to be the exact case. 

She didn’t greet him, rather opening the conversation with, “You’re here to help again, I assume.”

The sound of your skates sliding against the ice drifted through the air. “I am,” he confirmed.

She hummed, clearly still unhappy.

Yufan pulled his laces tighter, extending his leg further from him to get the most out of it. He said, without looking her in the eye, “Something tells me you don’t like me, shifu. Why?”

She tsked, almost as if she didn’t want to respond. Then, “Hockey men are bad luck for my girls. My first student had a boyfriend just like you, and he almost ruined her career.”

Well, that was one reference point, the audience might be thinking. Right? That hypothesis is totally flawed. “Trust me, I want nothing more than to help,” he said earnestly, because it was the truth. He wanted you to succeed, and if he could make your path to destiny more bearable, why wouldn’t he?

“Hmph.” She glanced at him, through the corner of her eye. “We’ll see about that.” Before he could retort, or dig himself deeper into the hole she’d made for him, a sharp sound echoed from inside the rink, the sound of skin and bone thumping against the ice. Peiling turned, eyes narrowing as she rushed to the barrier, shouting, “What happened? What did you do now?”

“Nothing,” you wheezed, holding up a hand to signal that you were alright. “Just a triple toe loop gone wrong.”

Yufan shook his head in mild amusement, opening up the barrier door and getting onto the ice after following after your coach, skating over to where you’d fallen to help you up. “You alright?” he asked, glancing at you with badly disguised concern. “That looked pretty bad.”

“It’s fine,” you assured him, squeezing your hip—where he’d assumed you’d fallen. “I’ll probably just have some bruising; it’s nothing that’ll keep me from practicing. Speaking of…”

And so, the rest of his afternoon was lost to your training. You went over your programs, the moves you’d planned, the music you’d picked out. For your short program, you were planning on a triple flip and toeloop, a double Axel, fly camel spin, triple Lutz, change combo spin, step sequence, and a layback spin, all to On the hills of Manchuria. You flowed through the practice session easily, moving through the routine, through the music, as if it were second nature.

Your free skate was a different monster. Triple Lutz, triple loop, triple toeloop, and double Axel that transitioned into a quadruple fly camel spin, a choreography sequence that made way for another double Axel, single Euler, and triple flip. Again, triple Lutz, double toeloop, triple flip, quadruple layback spin, and at the swell of the music, a quadruple Salchow. You’d finish with a triple step sequence, and a quadruple change combo spin, to none other than a shortened version of Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty’s Valse.

Only two other female figure skaters in the history of the sport had ever attempted a quad Salchow—while the jump on its own was one of the easier ones, completing it in four rotations was virtually unheard of. For you to attempt it at your age… It was a high-risk, high-reward move. You’d been practicing it since you were introduced to quads, you’d told him, though there was something about the Salchow, some sort of mental or physical block, that had made it nearly impossible for you to complete twice in a row.

You went through the motions of your free skate, Yufan keeping a reasonable distance behind you as you circled the ice. “Tell me if you need me,” he’d told you, though he knew you didn’t. “Just look back, and I’ll be there.”

You got all the way through the first half without a hitch; after your closing move, you landed on your left foot, rushing backwards with your arms spread, body swaying to the music as if you were dancing. Yufan watched as you bowed, lifted yourself up in one languid movement, gliding across the ice in one consuming sweep. You turned, readying yourself for the triple Lutz; as you spun through the air, thinking of your next move, Yufan found himself entranced with the way you landed and swept yourself straight into it, placing the pick of your skate behind the other, vaulting yourself into the air. You wheeled around, legs moving back and forth over the smooth surface beneath you, before twisting to launch yourself into a triple flip, sweeping your leg out from behind you and spinning like a top, your hands coming up from behind you, above you, around you, moving in time to the up and down of the string instruments; the jaunty tune playing perfectly to your ministrations.

For a moment you didn’t look like a girl who had too many ear piercings or an attitude; you looked like a proper lady, who spoke clearly and gently. It was odd, seeing that part of your personality, even though Yufan knew it was there. The music only added to your grace, to your impossible elegance. The violins and piccolos all layered over one another… it felt like falling in love.

That was when you stumbled, just as you were about to take off, your arms braced around your front and all. You cursed as you landed oddly, skidding to a halt at the edge of the rink. Yufan followed soon after, stopping a few metres behind you, waiting for you to say something.

You took a moment to regain your composure, before you turned to the barrier, where Peiling had been observing your practice with a stony face. You gave her a thumbs up, silver rings glimmering in the harsh rink light, and said, “I’ll try again!”

And, boy, did you try. And try, and try, and try, until the sun had set and there was no way within human limits that you were not exhausted yet. The music did not stop, not Tchaikovsky, nor Ilya Shatrov, and neither did you. It got to the point where you’d done so many loops, so many spins, that Yufan was beginning to get nauseous on your behalf. When you dared to try and practice your quad Salchow a fourth time, and doing so by starting your routine from the very top, Yufan skated towards you, laying gentle, sure hands on your shoulders, and looking into your eyes with the intensity of a man who wanted to be in bed yesterday.

“Pretty girl,” he said, voice hushed from exhaustion. “Babe. Baby. Ice Queen. Please… no more.”

You exhaled, struggling to catch your breath. Still, you didn’t seem to catch on to the signals your own body was sending your way. “You can go home if you’d like, Yu. I didn’t expect you to stay all the way through for all of my practices.”

He chuckled breathlessly, because who were you to be so disgustingly devoted to your work? “That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the fact that we have been here for hours, and that, I’m sure, your feet are going to start bleeding if you don’t go home in the next thirty seconds.”

You hesitated, eyes flicking to the ground. “But… I feel like I could practice my Salchow more.”

He raised a brow. “How long has it been part of your routine?”

“Since I was introduced to quads,” you answered immediately, the words sending you into inspirational autopilot.

“Right. And you’ve been practicing it for just as long. So, what I’m trying to say is,” he added, because he noticed you wanting to protest yet again, “you’ve got this.”

“What if I don’t?” you asked. “What if I try it, and I fail?” Your eyes widened, pupils shaking as more questions piled into your mind. “What if I fall in front of all of those judges, and I have to go into early retirement from the embarrassment? Wh— what if I make a complete fool of myself in front of the whole panel of judges?” You huffed, growing agitated in the face of his silence. “Why aren’t you saying anything? Yu—”

“You’re a talented girl,” Yufan interrupted firmly, giving your shoulders a little shake. “I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that. But what you need to realise is that whether or not you succeed, whether or not you become the star you want to be, is completely up to you. And you know what you’re doing.”

There was something about you, standing in front of him, full cheeks and dreamy eyes, that made his heart hurt. That made him wonder where all his talent, all his tact had gone. He’d been on top of the world when he met you, and since then, he’d just been going backwards. You, however, did the opposite. You’d been placing second and winning silver when you met him, and since meeting him, you’d been invited to prestigious events, been on training camps out of the country, gone further than he ever would. 

It wasn’t fair. That you had the ability to work as hard as you did, but once Yufan reached a certain point, his body simply refused to cooperate. Why couldn’t he be pushed to your extremes, the kind that kept your posture upright, that kept your body fit, that kept your mind sharp? Why couldn’t he be more like you?

“Thanks, Yufan, but will all due respect, I think I know my abilities better than you do,” you murmured, taking a step back from him.

Okay. What the fuck? “All I said was that you know what you’re doing,” he pointed out lightly. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

You didn’t take it as lightly as he presented it. “My technique has been slipping for the past week, so, no, I wouldn’t. I’ve still got a lot of headway to make, and your patronising comments aren’t helping in the least.”

“I’m not trying to be patronising,” he laughed, in growing disbelief. 

“Oh, really? Whether or not I succeed is completely up to me? I already know that, genius, and you saying anything about it isn’t going to help me become a better skater,” you snapped.

Yufan could see in your eyes that you were tired. That’s why you were being like this. Difficult. Yet still, he bothered to respond like you were in your right mind, “I’m just lifting you up a little, babe. It’s not a big deal. You should be more confident in yourself. A quad Salchow should be nothing to you.”

That was not the right thing to say.

“Nothing?” you spat. “Only two women in the history of figure skating have executed it in competition, and it should be nothing for me?”

He tried, “That’s not what I meant—”

“How could you know what you’re talking about?! You’re a hockey player, Yufan. We’re not on the same level.”

Silence. He took a step back, face hardening with something like anger. A deep, shuddering breath escaped his lips, and when he looked up at you, his jaw twitched. “You don’t mean that,” he tried lowly.

You stubbornly stood your ground. “Don’t I?”

He didn’t want to believe you did, no. Not when he’d spent so much time with you by his side, helping him, teasing him, loving him. How heartbroken was he supposed to be if it turned out to be the truth? If the girl he’d unknowingly idolised for so long didn’t even respect him enough to hear him out on something he was so sure of?

Then again, why would he have to compromise himself for you when you’d shown time and time again you wouldn’t ever do the same for him. Why waste that time? Why take that risk? He chuckled, the sound dark and brittle, shrugging. “I don’t need this,” he announced. “You don’t want me here? I’ll leave. I’ll leave you to roll in self-pity, because you seem to like your own company a hell of a lot more than mine.”

You froze. For a moment, he could imagine traces of disappointment in your features. But just like the seasons, just like your love, it was gone as soon as it had come. “Door’s that way,” you chirped, indicating the exit.

“Right,” he said. And then he was gone. You were alone all over again.

As you watched him leave, something in your gut told you to take off your skates and run after him. Fix things, tell him you were sorry about what you said. You didn’t think he was stupid, or worth less just because he played a different sport. Why would you even say something like that? There were a million reasons, none of them good enough for Yufan. It wasn’t the heat of the moment; it wasn’t stress, or fatigue, or fear. It was nothing more than your own selfishness, your own ill temper.

You sighed, shoulders sagging as you reluctantly threw in the towel and called it a night, skating to the edge of the barrier and opening up the short swing door, climbing off the ice with wobbly legs.

THAT SAME NIGHT

The locker room was, from what you could see after practice, deserted. Peiling hadn’t been in the stands for a while, though when you’d jogged outside the check if she’d gone home for the night, you came face to face with her beat up Prius in the parking lot; she was probably still in the rink somewhere, out of the sight from you, doing her odd coach things.

You strode back inside and to the locker rooms, tugging at the next of your top, which had begun to feel far too tight near the end of training. You approached the door, which was open only a crack, stopping once you heard voices, the sound of shoes pacing around the room. It sounded like someone, a woman and a man, talking over the phone.

“I don’t understand what you mean by that,” the woman said, disbelief staining her words. Your blood ran cold when you recognised Peiling’s voice. “She qualified just like everyone else.”

“But the board are looking to review her qualifications,” the man replied calmly. He sounded old, perhaps your grandparents’ age, or a bit younger, if you had to think about it. “We’ve considered that perhaps some of her competition points could be below the standard for skaters of her… her origin.”

“I cannot believe my ears. You are insinuating that because she is a foreigner, she cannot represent Taiwan, when all of our country’s biggest stars in this sport were born overseas?!”

“That is a different case altogether—”

“No, it is not. I built her up from nothing. I made her the skater that qualified, and I say she’s just as good as anyone else in her position, if not better, because she has to deal with old-fashioned folks like you constantly bringing her down. She deserves just as much as anyone else to represent her home country.”

“Not when the topic of foreign representatives has already stirred up controversy and feelings of inferiority in local skaters.”

A beat. Then, “She’s going to compete at Nationals, whether you like it or not. Got it? I didn’t waste ten years of my life on this girl for you to tell me she can’t perform.”

What a nice thing to hear from your coach.

You woke up on the morning of Nationals with a knot in your stomach. Everything felt off, from the moment you stepped out of bed and onto a floor that was too cold to bear, to the moment your parents drove you to the rink, and you met Peiling at the entrance, the sun looking wrong in the sky; its rays too pale, its heat too sparse.

In all regards, you looked ready. You were dressed in your costume—a glittering black ensemble that spoke of maturity and grace you didn’t feel you possessed, hair neat and completely out of the way. There was not a rip or a draw in your stockings, the blades of your skates shimmered as you hoisted them up to show to her, but nothing felt right.

Peiling grasped your shoulders, looking into your eyes with nothing but pride swimming in hers. Pride, and expectation. The neverending, unrelenting expectation of someone who had waged all their money, time, and dignity on a young girl with a dream. How cruel of her to believe in you.

Your parents made their way to the stands, but not without your mother crouching down to press a kiss to your forehead, Chihming giving you a gentle pat on the back, their actions speaking louder than words ever would. Good luck, their smiles seemed to say. We believe in you. You’re going to do great. Don’t mess this up. Please don’t mess this up. Shihan had texted you earlier that she’d already saved seats for your parents and for Yufan, right next to where she’d booked her seat, proclaiming having gotten the best view of the rink. Their eyes would be on you the whole time, she boasted. They’d get to see everything.

The locker room was eerily quiet, and at the very same time, a cacophony played over and over in your ears. Something mechanical—a fan, or a massage gun—buzzed to the right of you; someone knocked their skate guards against the floor as the hard plastic slipped out of their hands; someone was talking over the phone; someone else was praying. And you sat on your designated bench, your shaking legs braced in front of you. 

Yufan hadn’t spoken to you all morning, save for the minimal texts you’d exchanged when talking about his and his parents’ seating arrangements. He’d barely even spoken to you since your last training session, since you’d stormed out on him and told him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. Just thinking about it made your insides churn. You were wrong for that. So, so wrong. You’d agreed, however, before all of that had happened, to meet each other, just for a moment, in the locker room, long before you were due to start. You hadn’t spoken of a time—you’d just told him that he could come whenever he wanted to. You felt now like you shouldn’t have told him to come at all.

You didn’t hear the door open, and only when a pair of familiar sneakers came into view did you realise that Yufan was already there. No avoiding him now. You looked up at him, eyes settling on his face—pretty, angered, worried—and stood up. He didn’t greet you; he knew he didn’t need to. You’d say all you needed to say right now, as you stood in front of him, if you were brave enough.

“I hope you and your parents didn’t have any problems finding your seats,” you began. He simply nodded. Somewhere in the far corners of the room, you could hear Peiling speaking with one of the other skaters’ coaches.

“She deserves just as much as anyone else to represent her home country.”

Yufan looked at you—really looked at you, attention as unwavering as his affection had been. “We didn’t,” he said. He paused then, though a silent question hung in the air. Why am I even here? Good question. Why was he even there? When you’d already told him that he didn’t know what he was doing, that he wouldn’t be useful to you going forward? If you wouldn’t, he’d bite. “Is there something you need to tell me?”

“Not when the topic of foreign representatives has already stirred up controversy and feelings of inferiority in local skaters.”

If you were brave enough, you could tell him. Tell him exactly what was on your mind. If you were brave enough. If only you were brave enough. “I’m thinking of cutting the quadruple Salchow from my routine.”

You’d wondered what his reaction would be to that in the days leading up to the competition. Would he be disappointed? Would he sigh to himself and say he’d expected you to chicken out? Would he be relieved? Would he say he was hoping that you would because of how dangerous it was, given the fact that you’d only accomplished it a handful of times? Would he be indifferent? Would he act normally and say what you did in your routine was your business, he was merely a spectator? Nothing you thought could’ve prepared you for the real thing.

“What do you mean?” he asked, brow furrowing in genuine confusion. “Wh— what do you mean you’re dropping it?”

“Well, I figured that since I’d only actually executed it a few times, I shouldn’t necessarily take the risk of trying it right now,” you explained. “I rather wouldn’t do it than do it badly.”

“You can’t do it badly, though,” he pointed out. “You’ve practiced it enough times to be able to do it right.”

“Okay, I’m just not confident enough just yet,” you replied, words quick. “I don’t want to take that risk.”

“How can you not be confident enough when you’ve been practicing this routine for years?” he asked, and the words came out harder than he’d meant for them to. Or maybe they landed just as he’d intended. “This sport is all about risks.”

You paused. “Figure skating isn’t the same as hockey, Yufan. I can’t just get onto the ice and do as I please. I need to be fully assured that I’m capable—”

“The thing is, you are,” he interrupted, “and you’re being ridiculous by suggesting that you aren’t.”

“Don’t interrupt me,” you said sternly. “Losing confidence is normal in this sport, okay? I’m not like you.”

He narrowed his eyes, mouth set in a thin line of question. “You know what? I’m not even going to ask you to expand on that disgustingly elitist comment, because I’m more concerned with the fact that, all of a sudden, you can’t do what you’ve been doing for the past ten years.”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” you tried.

“Well, it sounds a lot like it! It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve executed it perfectly; you’ve been practicing the quad Salchow for years. You’re thinking too much about this. Just go out there and do your thing, and you’ll see, you’re capable.”

“Yufan, I’m trying to tell you that I’m not, okay? I can’t do it! It’s not me!”

“What is ‘you’, then? What are you, who are you, if not someone who can do this? When did you become such a coward?!”

Silence.

You took a step back. “Excuse me?”

“I asked, since when were you such a coward?” he repeated, unapologetic. “Since when do you think too much and act too little?”

“I’m not a coward,” you spat.

“Prove it,” he challenged. “Trust your skill and do the quad Salchow when it’s your time to perform.”

“That’s not how these things work, okay? I can’t just make up my mind not to do something, and change plans the day of a competition! It’s not like—”

“I swear to God, if you say something about hockey again—”

“You know what?” you asked, voice raising. “I’ll say what I want about your stupid sport. You don’t get to belittle me and call me names just because it’s what you’re used to as an athlete. If you want to treat me like one of your teammates, you can leave.”

He scoffed. “What, you’re telling me to leave because you can’t handle tough love?”

“This is all tough!” you said. “Where’s the love?” You shook your head, and when your eyes landed on him again, you beheld him with something akin to acceptance. “Get out.”

This seemed to sober him up. “What?”

“I said, get out. Walk away, and don’t look back. I wouldn’t want you to. We’re done.”

The first thing you noticed about the rink at Nationals was how bright it was. All ice skating rinks had to, according to the rules of the sport, be well-lit so as to ensure safe skating for any athlete, but there was something different about a rink that hosted the country’s best skaters. The ice was whiter than white, cold, and crisp, with the detailed swirls and twirls of blades engraved into its surface. The crowd was massive, a darkened mob surrounding your stage, the lights nearly blinding as you stepped onto the ice for your warmups.

You shared the space with one other skater; a girl by the name of Nana, who looked more familiar than she should have. She skated well, though you noted a slight hesitation in her movements whenever she readied herself for a spin. You failed to notice the tremble in your own hands, those moments between loops and twirls where you could’ve stumbled.

Your short program was a success, racking up a total of 78.45 points—42.43 in technical elements, and 36.02 in components. You’d done as you were told and moved in time with the music, losing yourself in the unfamiliarity of the sounds, of the sort of song you could only bear when your career depended on it. You were serenaded with a shower of gifts; flowers, teddy bears, and the approving nod of Peiling on the other side of the ice. Your parents cheered for you, whistling and clapping and waving the poster they’d made specially for you.

You’d smiled from your spot on the ice, grinning like a madwoman in the midst of all the praise, your chest rising and falling with rapid breaths as you tried to compose yourself. Your makeup, bold and bright and completely unlike you, glimmered under the lights, shimmering like the mist that separated fantasy from reality.

When you glanced at the leaderboard, you saw that you’d come steadily in second. You couldn’t reason that it was only because all the other skaters before you had fallen, or because they hadn’t executed their moves correctly. You had faith that you would win. You had to. Otherwise, what would it all have been for?

There was a small intermission that allowed you to catch your breath, while Peiling reviewed your routine from where she was seated next to you. She didn’t look at you as she spoke, rather at the judge’s panel, where she glared at one of the older men sitting at the very end. “You’ve dropped the quad Salchow from your routine, correct?” she asked.

“That’s what I’d planned on,” you said, voice trembling.

She hummed. “Mm. Alright. Then just make sure you do your other moves well enough. Skate like you didn’t even need it in the first place.”

You nodded. “I’ll try.”

“You won’t try,” she said. “You will.”

And before you could delay fate, it was your time.

You stepped onto the ice with shaking legs, your fingers trembling from where they rested at your sides as you glided to the centre, twisting and turning your body every which way to loosen your aching muscles. You looked down at your leading leg, exhaling deeply. Bruises and sore spots littered the joint, and surely many other areas of your body. You could barely hold yourself together.

Your routine started off well, with you sliding backwards across the ice, bracing yourself, lifting your arms in a gentle dance. You took a deep bow, twisting yourself up into the air, spinning once, twice, thrice, blades barely touching the ice before you were back in the air again, landing with little effort. After that, a backwards glide that ended in you pole vaulting into the air, assisted by the pick of your skate. The music drifted through the air, the bass reverberating through your body. You pulled your lips into a tight smile, facing the crowd as you rushed forward, lifting your knee for a double Axel. You turned, once, twice, and stuck the landing.

You moved easily through the single Euler and triple flip, and the crowd cheered briefly when you executed a particularly impressive triple Lutz. As you moved across the ice, your blades scraping against its freezing surface, you counted down in your head the numbers you had left before you could be blessed with a completed routine—double toeloop, triple flip, quadruple layback spin, and…

You hoped no one noticed you falter as your brain listed the quadruple Salchow as an automatic addition. Did you do it, and surprise everyone with an unexpected twist, or did you continue as everyone had anticipated, and complete your routine without taking any real risks?

You turned, readying yourself for the quadruple Salchow. As you bent your knee, arms lowering with the rest of you, you thought of Miki Ando. The first and only girl to land the move you were about to attempt. She’d been your age, performing on a much higher level, for a much larger audience. How were you supposed to feel, knowing that the one move you’d spent your entire career practicing had already been done before? Maybe Yufan was right. Maybe you did think too much, act too little. Maybe you were a coward. You sucked in a sharp breath as you flew into the air, the world around you spinning like a top. One, two, three…

Four. Your right foot made contact with the ice, its cold, hard, unforgiving surface. And then you spun again.

Except, you weren’t supposed to. You were supposed to glide seamlessly back into your routine, basking in the audience’s applause. Instead you turned, and now the ground was rapidly approaching.

Snap!

When people get injured, they often describe it as an out of body experience. Something that seems faraway, as if they weren’t present to witness the moment. Your injury was nothing like that.

You cried out as you came down, your shoulder hitting the ice. The pain travelled up at an alarming rate, the joint becoming dead weight.

In an instant, your senses sharpened. You became hyperaware of the pain shooting up your arm, not stopping until it seemed to throb inside your head, your temples burning with the ache. Of the harsh lights cast above you, next to you, behind you, shining even from under your closed eyelids. You heard people, voices cutting through the sound of your own ragged breathing. Skates rushing along the ice, faint sharp lines barely visible through your narrowed eyes. You weren’t sure if you screamed, or if you stayed silent. If you cried, or if the wetness on your cheeks was because of something else.

Whenever you finished a program, there was a moment of silence before the audience erupted in cheers. Before the bouquets were thrown and your name was called, over and over until even you believed you’d made first place. That never came. Instead, you were faced with the deafening silence of a shocked crowd, covering their mouths in horror.

And all you could do was stand up.

The medics tried to help you, but you brushed them off, shakily getting to your feet. You knew what happened next—you’d smile, bow to the crowd while wiping your tears, and they’d all let out a sigh of relief as you stepped off the ice and took a seat. That didn’t happen. Because when you attempted to bow, it was as if every muscle in your body screamed for you to stop, for you to stand upright and try to support your shoulder. It sagged forward, the bone bent at an odd angle.

“Fuck,” you swore, the word out before you could stop it. A medic rushed forward, and this time, you didn’t refuse his help. You let him, and several others of the medical team, help you off the ice, their hands braced firmly against your back. 

Peiling was waiting for you at the barrier, her hands desperately grabbing onto you as she half hoisted you up, lifting your numb legs to sheathe your skates. You let her guide you to the kiss and cry, where you sat down with a heavy heart and medics fussed over you until they reached their final conclusion.

They said many things as they examined you; your body, your current state of being. A shock, murmured one, testing to see if she could pop the joint back into place. You teared up and told her to stop, and she did. Totally unexpected, murmured another in Hokkien. Other words and terms were also thrown around. Bad injury. Bone. Joint. Fractured collarbone. Broken clavicle. 

“We’ll have to take her to the hospital,” said one of the medics, an older woman who turned to Peiling as she spoke. As if you weren’t even there. “This fracture requires immediate intervention that we can’t give her.”

“You think?” asked the younger man, the one who spoke Hokkien. Probably a medical student. Not much older than you.

“I know,” she said gravely.

All your coach did—all she could do—was nod, accepting the fate that had befallen you. There was nothing to be done about your routine, or what of it you were able to perform. As they carried you out of the rink on a stretcher they’d practically pushed you onto, you realised that you wouldn’t win. An incomplete set didn’t even get you second place. You’d done all that, all those jumps, those twirls, those nights you’d spent at the rink instead of being with your family, those fights you had with Yufan about your courage—all of it in vain.

Your parents made an appearance after all was said and done, when the ambulance had been called and activity in the competition had been halted as thousands of people awaited the outcome of your failure. Just before you were forcefully helped onto the stretcher, they came barrelling through a crowd of security guards, shouting obscenities as they tried to hold them back.

“Let them through,” Peiling barked. “They’re family.”

Your mother rushed to your side, taking your cold face in her warm palms. “Are you alright? Oh, my darling—what’s… what happened?” Then, before you could respond, to the young medic who’d practically carried you off the ice, “Will she be alright?”

He hesitated. “She—”

“My collarbone,” you said, your voice an unfamiliar drawl, a moan of pain, “clavicle. It’s broken.”

She gasped, Chihming’s hands coming up to keep her steady as she began to cry. You felt pity for her, you really did, but when you were the one who’d been injured, a wailing mother was not exactly a nice backing track to your pain.

You waved a hand in Peiling’s direction, and she seemed to understand your signal. Please make it stop. I love her, but please make it stop. Chihming did, as well, because when your coach approached your parents to gently urge your mother into silence, he just nodded and said he’d bring their car around so they could follow the ambulance to the hospital.

“Let us know if anything else happens,” he said, both to you and to Peiling. “Drive safe.”

Then came Shihan, her beautiful face taut with worry and panic. You’d been carried out by that time, and she’d jogged after the medics before you could get to the ambulance from where it wailed on the pavement outside the rink. You could hear the music of another skater’s set through the faint thrum of your own heartbeat. No surprise, they continued despite your absence. That was one of the things you’d loved about figure skating; no matter how bad something seems, no matter how many hits you take, you’d always have to get back up and let the show go on. 

And your show couldn’t go on for much longer.

“Are you okay?” was the first thing she asked after pushing herself past the medics crowding you. Her hair fell over her shoulders in inky cascades. “Are you alright? Don’t tell me it’s a broken shoulder, or— or something bad like—”

“Han-eh,” Peiling said, voice low. “Calm down. We’re taking her to the hospital now. She’ll be fine.”

She glanced at your coach, then back at you, taking in the way your face was contorted in pain, the tears streaming down your cheeks. She reached up to wipe them away, saying, “Your— Yufan’s looking for you. He’s here. He wants to see you.”

Then a call of your name, in that sweet, high voice that once warmed you to your core, distressed and frenzied with fear. Now all it did was make your blood run cold.

You grabbed at Shihan’s wrist, shaking your head. You wanted to speak, wanted to scream, Get him away, but all you could do was say, with more acidity than she deserved, “I don’t want to see him.” Desperately, spitefully.

Her brow creased in confusion. Right. She wasn’t there, before the competition. “Not now?”

“Not ever,” you whispered.

It was all a disparaging blur once the ambulance doors shut. You were escorted to the emergency room, where you were immediately assisted by a doctor who spoke like the Osaka businessmen you’d met on training camps in Japan. Your parents stood by your side, each clutching one hand, braced for the worst despite already learning what everyone else knew of your injury.

The elderly medic had been correct in her assumption that you’d suffered a broken collarbone. The bone had shifted, nearly shattered during your fall. Your doctor told you that you’d been unlucky to fall from such a height, at such an impossible speed. You could only grimace as he pulled up an X-ray of your front, talking about the possible paths you could take in your healing. If you were careful, and took it terribly seriously not to move too much, and received a plentiful blessing from the gods, it would heal completely in four to six months.

Half a year. That was how long you’d have to wait to start training seriously again—who knew about how long it would take you to be restored to your full strength and health. Waste. Waste. Waste. That was all you could hear. Failure. The end of times. The worst of the worst.

You cried more times than you’d like to admit. Grieved harder for something you weren’t even sure was lost yet, that you were sure you’d never be able to get back. Your doctor merely glanced at you like you were something to pity, some sort of distressed child that was crying over nothing. Peiling had disappeared out of the room somewhere in the midst of everything, keeping her phone tucked between her shoulder and her cheek as she answered a call. Shihan sat at the edge of your bed while the doctor walked out, your parents following behind him.

She crossed her legs easily over the thin mattress, observing your surroundings. You’d been hastily given a scratchy grey blanket to wear over your costume, and were constantly readjusting your posture, frowning in discomfort. The emergency room was busy, despite it being the middle of the day. Perhaps more peoples’ lives fell apart than you thought every day. Perhaps you’d just never noticed them because you’d never been one of them. Conversations floated through the air, bits and pieces of patients’ personal lives revealed to you, laid bare under the flickering fluorescent lights.

When she spoke, she didn’t say what people had been telling you since you’d arrived. She didn’t tell you that everything was going to be alright, that you were sure to make a speedy recovery if you just rested enough and listened to the doctor’s advice. She didn’t hastily assure you that your career was over, or that this would all be a wonderful story to tell when you won the Olympics, or some anxious, sentimental drivel like that. She said,

“I used to have a Yufan, you know.”

Her tone of voice—soft, saccharine, thick with emotion—caught you off guard. She’d never sounded like that before. “What?” you asked, narrowing your eyes, swollen from crying.

“Yeah. He was a hockey player, and he was a year or two older than me. We met when I was around your age,” she told you. “He’d always let me sit at the very front of his games, and even gave me a signed hockey stick.” She frowned, smiling. “Not that I know who Wayne Gretzky is, but he did. And he cared, so I did, too.” She tilted her head, nodding to you, “Then we broke up… right before one of my competitions. That’s where I got this.”

She pulled up the left leg of her jeans, where you could see stitch marks on her knee, the skin raised where she’d been cut. Your eyes widened. When you glanced up at her, her gaze was still focused on the spot. “Is this why you took that break a few years ago? Because you got hurt?”

“Mm,” she nodded. “It took me months to even get back on the ice. Peiling’s hated hockey players ever since.”

Perhaps it was that single, throwaway comment, or the pain, or the absurdity of it all, but you laughed. For the first time in a while, you laughed; genuinely, and without scorn. It was a light sound, unfamiliar in how loud it was, how it tore through your body like it had been waiting to escape. Shihan laughed, too, and when you heard it, you realised you hadn’t ever heard her genuine laugh. It was a nice sound to hear.

“You know,” she said, when silence had finally settled over you again. “It’s not the end of the world that you got injured. And I’m going to spare you the motivational speech, because I know you’re probably sick of it by now.” She looked at you, long and hard. “Just know that you’re stronger than you think, and that your fate is in your hands. Not anyone else’s.”

Before you could continue your conversation, your very own coach rushed into the room, face drained of colour. You both glanced up at her, brows furrowing in confusion at her expression. “What is it, shifu?” Shihan wondered.

“What happened?” you echoed, concern etched into your pretty features.

Her voice was hoarse when she answered, as if she’d been screaming. Or crying. “The judges have made their decision… and we are expected to make an appearance at the stadium as soon as possible.”

东京 TOKYO

2024

Long story short, you got first place at Nationals. And again two months later at the World Championships, representing your country.

It was a momentous occasion, when you were called up to the podium by the announcer, her American accent sounding harsh pronouncing the gentler tones of your name. But you didn’t care how it sounded, or how badly she butchered it, because you’d won. After all your hard work, you’d finally won, and you had something worthwhile to prove it.

The work didn’t end there for you, unfortunately, not considering your injury.

It still hung in the air like a foul smell after your wins, after you became the Taiwanese public’s darling, after the world learnt your name. News outlets covered your fall at Nationals extensively, thought out excellent and horrible names for it, for what it meant for you as an athlete. A major setback, some called it, something that would permanently impact your career for years to come. A reminder that everyone, even the most talented skaters, are human, said another publication. You liked that one, though it left a bad taste in your mouth regardless.

Despite all that, despite your well-placed hatred for it, despite your family’s fear of it, despite your coach’s grief towards it, you did your best to treat it as gently as you would any life-altering injury, to give yourself the time to recover while refusing to atrophy, refusing to give in to the temptation of premature retirement. You simply couldn’t, was your reasoning, throw all your hard work away because of a fractured collarbone. It was only an injury; you were only a person. It could heal. You could heal. You would heal.

You practiced as frequently usual, though took it undeniably easier on yourself in terms of exercises. You listened to your doctor, took her advice in stride and applied it diligently, determined to get yourself back to the way you were before you could change too much. You went on training camps, focused on rehabilitation, did everything you could in your position.

You did, however, take an indefinite hiatus from competing. You wouldn’t return to the beloved sport until you’d healed, physically and mentally. You wouldn’t return to the rink until you did so on your terms, no one else’s. 

It was on one of these training camps, in the wonderful city of Tokyo, that you found, after hearing from a friend of a friend who’d been travelling with you, that there would be a series of hockey games in the area. The local team, the Tokyo Snow Leopards, playing against several smaller, less well-known teams. One of them being the Taipei Eagles.

“You know one of the players, right?” Lili, one of the girls you’d been training with since arriving in Tokyo, asked you one night. She’d signed herself up after suffering a nasty cut to the face that her teammate gave her during pairs training. “Um… what’s his name?” She turned to your other roommate, Jingxue, a girl from Shanghai who’d come after an ACL injury, and snapped her fingers as if searching for the answer. “He’s the cute defenceman?”

Jingxue shrugged hopelessly. She didn’t say much, you’d noticed.

You butted in, eager to get Lili to stop talking. “Yeah, I, uh… I don’t remember his name, but I know who you’re talking about. Yeah, we used to train together, a while ago. Not sure how he’s been these days.”

Lili rolled her eyes at her own forgetfulness, waving it off dismissively. “I’ll remember his name soon, but, yeah, you know who I’m talking about. Have you seen him since… I dunno, since?”

You shook your head. “Nope,” you denied, popping the ‘p’.

It’s what brought you here, at the nearest ice skating rink, sitting in the stands, caught between a roaring crowd around you and a deteriorating game in front of you. The Taipei Eagles uniform was different from the old team’s—or, could you really say old, when this was simply the senior league, and the Polar Bears had been the junior league? Regardless, where their uniforms had been red, white, and blue, the Eagles went for an undeniably mature look, opting rather for black, white, and navy blue.

James was as easy to spot as he had been two years ago, still the quickest player on the ice, still a large, bold 16 on the back of his jersey. You couldn’t see much else of him; couldn’t see much else of anyone besides the crowd members around you, really. Hockey was certainly a spirit- and personality-forward sport where the audience couldn’t judge anyone by appearances. That’s how you knew you wouldn’t ever be able to play the sport—you liked appearances far too much. 

The air was as stale and electric as the air at any other hockey game would’ve been, lit up with the sounds of players’ skates slicing against the ice, with the smell of snow in your nostrils, with the heat of the moment creeping up your neck. It was undeniably addictive, and just as dangerous.

The game progressed well, or, perhaps, as well as you could perceive it did, because for all the changes you’d gone through since you’d last been in a place like this, you’d learnt nothing new about hockey. And just as well, really. You had far more important things to worry about. You wondered, then, how much James had changed, if at all. Looking down at him, it seemed he’d grown at least a bit. Perhaps a centimetre or five, something that could elevate him from a teen boy to a young adult. You wondered if he was still a clown. Still bitter inside. Still obsessive, still mean. Still your Yufan.

You knew he wouldn’t be. Yours in the literal sense, you mean. It had been nearly one and a half years since you’d last seen him, and you’d made it clear how you felt about each other that day. That last, all-too fateful day. But you wondered if he was still yours in the sense that he was still the same James you’d known. Still funny. Still passionate. Still kind. Still your Yufan.

Time passed, and eventually the first intermission became the second, then the third, and people were starting to get impatient waiting for the outcome of the game. It was a close one so far, Snow Leopards, six, Eagles, five. Only one or two more goals to determine who would be taking home this game’s trophy, this audience’s hearts.

The players were moving in a way that didn’t completely make sense to you. Agitation hung in the air, and it translated into their jerky movements, their sudden, reckless decision-making. At one point, one of his teammates threw James against the barrier, yelling in his face about a some kind of mistake he’d made. He’d simply shrugged him off, rolling his eyes like he would have years ago. The game continued, but you, and you were sure everyone else, could tell that something was off.

It was odd, how much it reminded you of your first performance at Nationals, despite the two having no correlation. But something in the air was the same; the prickling of nerves, the expectations hanging like heavy clouds threatening rain. The light was the same, the rink too bright, the stands too dark. You could only imagine what it looked like to the skaters on the ice—the looming darkness circling them, giving them tunnel vision. A loud, mechanical buzz cut through the pop music booming from the arena speakers that hadn’t done much to help the growing tension, the agitation you felt. The Snow Leopards had scored another point. Seven, five.

Buzz! Eight, five.

Buzz! Eight, six. A Japanese player was showed to the penalty box, face sour.

Buzz! Eight, seven. One of his teammates joined him, the Taiwanese skaters jeering in glee. That earned them a stern look from the referee, a young woman, and they shut up soon after that.

It was in the final minutes of the game that everything fell apart. The Snow Leopards had been spread thin, half of the team in the penalty box, the other half a mixture of their lacklustre and bench players. And yet, they still seemed to be sweeping the floor with their opponents. Tensions rose, and the Eagles were getting desperate for the win. 

Two players had collided, fists and sticks flying. Somewhere in the midst of their scuffle, the puck had been stolen, and the crowd held unanimously their breath. Below, James raced across the ice eyes, alight with opportunity. This was his chance. His I made it moment. He’d make it. He would score, he thought, he knew, as he passed by the commotion, moving with all the grace of a trained figure skater, with the determination of a man who’d committed his life to a sport that would repay him now. All those evenings after school, all those training camps that nearly bankrupted his parents, all those fights, all that pain, it would all be worth it if he just made this one goal. His third of the game, his last of the season. He was close. So, so close.

A small sound, so quiet, so internal that no one but James could hear it. Small, nonthreatening, as he twisted his leg, just that little bit too far, too hard, too desperate, to make a turn. Snap!

You shot up from your seat.

He stopped. In the middle of the ice. Dead in his tracks, flat on his side. The scuffle stopped, players hovered around him with taut faces, expressions contorted with tension. Silence swept over the stadium like a hushed storm; some people stood up, their hands clutched to their chests; others stayed where they were, clamping their mouths shut in shock. What would’ve happened if this were a normal fall was this: the crowd would wait in anticipation for James to get back to his feet, to bow and show that he was fine, he was unharmed. That never happened. They’d wait for the okay, before erupting into applause, cheering for a diligent, passionate athlete taking a chance. That didn’t come.

Instead, he stayed where he was, curling into a foetal position, gloved hands encircling against his knee. His coach, a younger man, perhaps a decade or so older than James himself, rushed from beyond the barrier, slipping onto the ice in nothing but his sneakers, struggling until he reached him. They exchanged a few words, and the two teams skated closer, hiding them from the crowd. It was all a blur of activity from there; medics rushing the ice, James pushing them away and insisting that he was fine, that he didn’t need their help to stand up. Teammates exchanging worried glances, opponents bowing in respect as he finally took his leave, wincing in pain with every move. 

“Apologies, everyone, but we will need to take an emergency intermission on account of the Taipei Eagles’ defenceman’s injury. We will back in fifteen minutes with an update, and the game will resume shortly thereafter. Thank you for your patience.”

It seems to be so that, when the gods bring together two people as competitive and desperate as yourself and James, they throw a dice to decide who would win. And winning, well, that looks different to everyone. Sometimes it is literal—they beat their opponent; their opponent is their love, and their prize could be physical. Sometimes it refers to something larger than any two people—life, how it beats them; they are in a match against fate, in a fight against life and death, and their lives depend on the outcome of the game.

Other times it’s a mixture of both. The competitors—lovers, friends, family, enemies, all four at once—are thrown into the game of life, and each trial they face, they live through together, on opposite sides of the net, or the glass, or the field, is a period in the match. There are intermissions, inbetween moments where the tensions ease, where you could love one another. These don’t last too long, not usually. Not when you are as competitive as you are. Once they are over, once the whistle has been blown, it is as if you are nothing and everything to each other.

You forget this, that love isn’t really supposed to be a game, that fate does not favour those that adhere to its ridiculous fancies with the simple belief that it will lead them to where they belong. You forget that humans connect by cooperating, by listening, by compromising. You forget that you are not pieces on a chess board, the outcome of your game dependent on anyone besides yourselves, athletes standing in front of judges and spectators, waiting for someone else to decide how they should continue.

There is a winner. Of course there is—in these games, there always is. But this win, it’s bitter. It leaves a sour taste in your mouth, leaves tears brimming in your eyes. It makes you remember that the path to victory is paved with heartbreak and betrayal. It reminds you that there can only be one winner that takes it all. 

You were the one unlucky enough to win. You returned from the hospital after Judge Liu had called Peiling to tell her that you’d won, that you’d placed first in the 2023 Taiwan Figure Skating Championships, and you were helped onto the podium by the two skaters who’d placed in the positions below you, bronze and silver. You turned to the cameraman in front of you, holding your gold medal with trembling fingers, smiling as widely as you could will yourself to. Cameras flashed all around you, blinding you, burning into your retinas. The cheers of the judges and spectators were deafening, though their voices all faded away when all was said and done, when you’d looked at your peers, and realised you were all alone on that podium.

Wen Jiyi, a figure skating prodigy from Kaohsiung, the girl who’d come second place to you, turned to find her family all rushing towards her with large smiles on their faces, thanking Buddha for his kindness towards them, towards their daughter, who not only made it to Nationals, but made it this far. You could hear her friends cheering for her from the stands, chanting her name like a carol.

Hsu Nana, one of your old classmates, the girl who’d come in last, was embraced by her father, his strong arms enveloping her in a strong hug. They’d only had each other, you remembered; her mother was out of the picture before she could get any siblings, and her father had never remarried. And still, with what little they had, with her coming in third overall, her father murmured into her hair, “You’ll always be a winner in my book.”

And you? You were alone. Your family was at a private hospital, filling out forms for you, listening to your doctor explain your healing plan to them. Your friends had fallen away over the years because you’d chosen to focus on the one thing that would repay you more graciously than any relationships would. Your coach watched fretfully from the barrier, holding your new crutches in her hands. And your boyfriend’s parents were watching you, clapping for you, unaware that you’d left their son behind simply because he’d questioned your confidence.

You’d won. You’d made it. All that lay ahead was success; some healing would get in the way, yes, but after those quick four, five months, you’d be free to become the star you’d always been meant to be. Nationals, World Championships, Grand Prix, the Olympics. The world was an oyster you’d wrenched open, and you could do what you pleased with it. But all that, at what cost?

The spotlight shone brighter on those without anything to hold them back, but did it keep you warm when night fell, and people forgot about the stars in the sky?

“What are you doing here?” were James’ first words to you since Nationals.

You stood in front of him, a gentle, contemplative expression on your face. Behind you, the nurse had closed the curtains so that you could have some privacy, though it did nothing to drown out the sounds of the emergency room. You could faintly hear the conversation of a couple in the bed next to you, and tried to pay no mind to the fact that it sounded as if the patient’s boyfriend were accusing her of arson.

James had changed in the time you were apart; neither for better or for worse, just… naturally, as all humans change. Your suspicion that he’d grown taller was proven correct as your eyes swept over his form, over the plains of his lean body. His hair was longer, bleached and coloured to a light brown that looked like autumn. His face was the same, if not more mature, the twist of his lips dissatisfied where it had always been content. His eyes were still as kind as you remembered them, yet undeniably morose. Like something had broken him, and he hadn’t gotten to healing it yet.

You could only imagine how different you looked from the last time you saw James; taller, more mature, stronger, yet carrying yourself with that familiar attitude that dared anyone to doubt you. It was more steadfast than before, perhaps. There were wounds, and tears, and breaks, but that didn’t make you any less yourself.

“I was worried about you,” was your response.

He stared at you like he’d been staring at you for the past ten minutes. “That’s not what I mean,” he said, as if you were supposed to know. “I mean, what are you doing in Japan?”

You smiled softly, the realisation shifting your demeanour. “Oh. I was here on a training camp, just for some rehab. I hurt my ankle pretty badly in a competition a few weeks ago, and Peiling insisted I come to Tokyo for treatment and practice.”

He nodded, not gracing you with a response just yet. His gaze drifted from you, dropped somewhere below him, surveying the brace around your ankle. “So nothing’s changed,” he spoke, voice empty. “You’re still as clumsy as ever.” He remembered all the bruises, all the accidental falls when you failed to adjust to being off the ice, the cases of wobbly legs where he needed to brace you against him, his arm winding over your shoulder, keeping you close to him.

“I guess so,” you agreed. The silence that followed wasn’t natural; it was one that came only to people who’d once in their lives meant everything to each other, and met again when they were completely different people. Except, you weren’t that different from before, were you? “What’s the diagnosis?”

He sighed. “A severe lateral meniscus tear. I’m out for the season.”

You had anticipated something like that. But no amount of anticipation could’ve prepared you for the pain falling over his handsome face. There was something about it that made you feel as if you weren’t meant to see it—the tremble of his bottom lip, the way he tried to keep his tears at bay, the sheer, charged emotion of the scene, humanity in its rawest form. Yet, here he was, James Chao, letting you see, not for the first time in your lives, a part of him he’d hidden from anyone else.

No, the first time had been much happier. It had been when he’d introduced you to his parents, then again when he’d indirectly hinted that he loved you as much as he loved his own friends and family. Then it had been in every fight you had where he didn’t yell, where he didn’t disagree simply to prove a point, where he let you humiliate him like he never would’ve allowed anyone else to. 

He tried to keep a brave face; of course he did. That was his forté, pretending as if he were unaffected by anything that happened around him, to him. You wished he hadn’t built up those walls around you, but this time around, you couldn’t fault him for it. He’d let them down and you’d selfishly exploited that. You didn’t deserve to see him any more vulnerable than he was already allowing you.

You took a seat at the end of his bed, next to where he’d braced himself on the heels of his palms, his legs swung over the edge, not because he’d invited you, but because you could feel something in you telling you to sit down. To brush your clothed knee with his bandaged one, to press your shoulder against his arm. The gods, high above, sitting along their great panel, moving another piece on the playing mat which was your intertwined fates. Taking pity. Thinking, Maybe?

James let you, ducking his head until he was almost level with you, where he was usually a head taller. He let you touch him, if only briefly, let himself bask in your unfamiliar warmth. You felt differently from how you did, once, when you were younger. Not bad. Just natural. Like all people are different as they grow.

“I’m sorry,” you said, when the silence became too much for you to bear. Your voice was hushed, and you felt like a criminal standing before a judge, eager to keep the attention off you, to fill the silences in which you could be accused, or asked questions. “For not…”

What? For not visiting? For not apologising sooner? For not being a better person to you? For behaving awfully when all you were trying to do was help? For being a scared, misguided, dogged teenager? For taking advantage of your kindness? For not kissing you after that last practice we had together, after you moved closer and told me you wanted to?

“…for everything,” you sighed. “You deserved better. You deserve better than what I can give you.” Than what the world’s given you, you thought, but couldn’t say.

He smiled breathlessly, wiping harshly at his eyes as if to clean tears that hadn’t yet fallen. “What am I going to do, now?” he asked, perhaps to no one in particular, perhaps to you specifically. After all, you’d dealt with a career-altering injury before. You’d know how to go about it, what he should do next, which steps he should take to get himself back on track. But the path that works for one may not work for the other. 

You knew what he was thinking: what he’d been thinking for the longest time. That hockey was his only option, the only thing he was good at, the only future he saw for himself.

You exhaled gently, hands twitching as if they longed to reach out and grasp onto his ringed fingers, feel his warmth. And you told him the words that could’ve helped you once, if you’d been more grateful then, “You’re a talented boy, Yufan. I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that. But what you need to realise is that your talent doesn’t only lie in one thing.”

“But what if it does?”

You shrugged. “How are you supposed to know if you never try something new?”

If you never give yourself a second chance?

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

When he cried, when he broke down in tears next to you, burying his face in his hands as sobs racked his body, you acted against your better judgement and curled an arm around his shoulder. He responded to the touch like it was second nature, leaning into your chest like you were a lifeline who’d left him when he’d needed you most. Your hands froze, stayed millimetres from his skin, only a breath away from actually touching him like you wanted to. Needed to.

In that moment, there were a million things you could say. A million things you wanted to say. But all those words, those sentiments, those apologies, those proclamations and confessions, died in your throat; because nothing could mend the wound you’d caused. Not even you cradling him to your chest could fix it, could fix the hurt you’d inflicted on him, not even the way his lips pressed against your healed collarbone could erase the words he’d said, the things he’d done in his anger and jealousy towards you. Nothing could change what you’d said when you were nothing more than two terrified teenagers who didn’t know the difference between competition and love.

Could they ever be erased, or fixed, or mended, or healed, if a second chance came along? Or would that simply be something you were left to ponder as you grew?

香港 HONG KONG

2025

“Okay, so, our flight is in two hours, which means we’ll need to be at the boarding gate in fifteen minutes—”

“In what world should we have to wait at the boarding gate for over an hour? We’ve got plenty of time to explore and pass the time until at least half an hour before we need to board.”

Your friend gave you an unimpressed look, like, Really? Kim Juhoon, despite being a world-famous, overachieving figure skater at the ripe age of seventeen, was somehow one of the most neurotic, perpetually unsure people you’d ever met. So much so that, on his way back from competing at the World Championships as one of the two youngest athletes, where he would be hopping on a plane to Taipei so that you could show him where you’d grown up, he insisted that you wait at the boarding gate for more than an hour and a half, just to be safe. His words, not yours.

“Don’t make that face at me,” you said, shaking your head like a dismissive elder sibling. “I know what I’m talking about. You need to relax, Jju. Nothing bad is going to happen if we’re not a million hours early for our flight.”

He pointed a perfectly manicured and terribly accusatory finger at you. “You’re exaggerating to make me look stupid, and I won’t let you do it. I just won’t.”

“You already did,” you teased, grinning.

Even in all these years, airports had never lost their charm to you. The fluorescent lights beat down on the polished white floors, the night sky countering it like the moon did the sun. People filled up the place, walking to and fro, making arrivals and departures, saying goodbye to their families, kissing their spouses in greeting. The air smelled fresh, like air freshener and new beginnings. Old memories, new places. The good, and the unexpected.

Your coaches looked at you from where they strode at an alarming pace several metres ahead, before turning to each other, like, These kids. Meanwhile, you and Juhoon marvelled at the sight of a couple dragging their very fussy toddler out of a nearby takeout spot, the baby a screaming, wailing mess.

“That’s kind of how I feel right now,” Juhoon noted calmly.

You chuckled softly. Both of you were still reeling from your competition—the annual World Championships, this time held worlds away in Boston, had left you fatigued and a little bit out of sorts. Like, on a different plane of existence out of sorts. Still, you’d qualified, and secured spots at the September Qualifiers in Beijing, so it would all pay off in time.

“Same,” you agreed, bobbing your head.

Since Juhoon had insisted on being at the boarding gates two hours early, you’d made your way through the airport without much consideration for ogling at the great building, though Hong Kong International Airport was, in your opinion, a true beauty to behold. You did, however, stop at a few of the digital advertisements, displayed on larger than life boards and featuring some of your friends promoting products from their various sponsors. Juhoon snapped a selfie of the two of you in front of an Adidas board, sending it to one of his school friends—a swimmer on his way to the 2028 Olympics—with a particularly cheeky caption; the two of you posed in front of one of Shihan’s Dior adverts, pulling faces and mimicking her own, and so on and so forth you went until you actually came across an ad with your face on it.

It was one of your more recent campaigns for an energy drink—the audience is open to decide which, depending on how they view you. You were posed on the ice, in your training outfit, jewellery glimmering in the grainy film shot. There was some sort of quirky caption written in the air next to you, something that convinced the audience you actually got your energy from their product. It seemed like a candid scene, poised as if you’d been caught in a mundane moment in the middle of training, though the way you appeared more photogenic than you knew you were let you, and only you, know that it was staged. You tended to look a bit less human when you’d been exercising for two hours straight.

“Wah,” said Juhoon, mouth open in feigned shock. “Looking good, ttangkong.”

“Pfft— shut up,” you said, shoving his shoulder. “I didn’t say anything about your Louis Vitton ad, wugui.”

“I saw you snap that sneaky picture,” he shot back. He turned to you, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you posting it, either.”

You rolled your eyes, raising your hands in a gesture of surrender. “So I posted a picture of my talented, handsome friend,” you said. “Sue me.”

He shook his head, yawning. He stretched his arms over his head, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, his shirt riding up to expose the too-low waistband of his jeans. “I’m too tired to call my lawyer right now. You’ll have to settle for a formal complaint.”

You shrugged. “Fine by me. Now—” you picked up your shoulders, pulling your pink suitcase behind you— “we going to the boarding gate, or what?”

Juhoon smiled softly, nodding. “Yeah,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Leggo, or I’ll have an anxiety attack.”

“Jjinja?” you teased, the world rolling uneasily off your tongue.

“Ni hen fan ei,” he sighed, swift and easy.

You scoffed, landing a faint punch to his shoulder. “So annoying,” you muttered. “Let’s go.”

On your way to the boarding gate, you were distracted for a second time by something catching your eye. You stopped; Peiling, Juhoon, and his coach kept walking, not noticing that you’d halted, and were now staring at the double doors of the airport’s gift shop, gaze trained on whatever was behind the thick glass. 

Something churned in your stomach, told you to go inside, to see what the tiny tourist trap had to offer. You turned to them, speaking absently over your shoulder, “Uh, you guys go ahead. I just want to check something out, here.”

“Hmm?” Juhoon hummed in question.

“I’ll be with you now,” you said, your feet already carrying you to the entrance. And that was the last any of them saw of you for the next fifteen minutes.

You wandered into the shop, your entrance signalled by the chime of a bell above the door, and realised relatively quickly that it certainly wasn’t its charm that had pulled you in. It was chock full of tacky tchotchkes, red and yellow lanterns hung all over, with rows upon rows of magazines and T-shirts that said ‘I HEART HK’ all over the front. You wrinkled your nose in distaste, wilfully ignoring the fact that you were wearing a shirt with the same print on it, though the smell of incense was a welcome sensation.

The shop seemed to be empty save for you and the elderly owner, who was ducked behind the counter, seemingly in search of something. Music drifted through the air from an old record player, the quality as dusty and old-fashioned as the tunes themselves, reminiscent to the Cantopop you knew James’ father listened to. 

You found James Chao among the racks of tasteless souvenirs, perusing the shelves as if he were actually thinking of buying something. You stopped in your tracks when you saw him, your boots scuffing against the grainy floor. That something. It had always been that something.

He looked different from the last time you’d seen him in Tokyo. Of course he did—people changed. You’d changed. Your parents had changed. Taipei had changed. Why wouldn’t James? He couldn’t be your emotionally constipated older boyfriend forever.

It seemed he’d finally finished growing, standing nearly a head taller than you still; that hadn’t changed, at least. His hair was shorter, spikier, blonde highlights peeking out from between his natural roots. He wore a fitted denim jacket, tufts of fur lining the collar; his jeans hung low on his slim hips, and for a moment, you wondered when he’d become so fashionable. So grown up. You supposed it needed to happen sometime. He was due to turn twenty this year, after all.

A few things hadn’t changed, as well, perhaps to ease your heart out of the assumption that the boy you’d loved had become a man you knew nothing of. A pair of tinted, frameless glasses were tucked into his T-shirt, and when he slid them onto his face to examine the price of a snowglobe with a miniature Buddha in it, he looked almost identical to how he did on the nights he brought his homework to the skating rink, solving complex Calculus equations while you skated frenzied laps around the ice. A pair of silver earrings dangled from his earlobes, the same you’d gotten him for your one month anniversary. Odd to think you’d even made it that far when you fucked it up immediately afterwards.

Again, you wondered what he would think if he’d turned to see you staring at him. You’d grown up quite a bit since Tokyo, since Nationals. You now wore the glasses you’d dreaded to in place of those tricky contact lenses; your eyes still didn’t work. You had more jewellery, earrings lining your lobes and cartilage, rings encircling your fingers; they were all still silver. Your hair had grown; it was still unruly. Your shoes were still dirty. Your smile was the same. 

He did notice you eventually, with the fear and reluctance of someone who had noticed, through the corner of their eye, the intense stare of a stranger. And when his gaze landed on you, still shorter than him, still with that wild kindness in your eyes, still with those lips he’d wished he’d gotten to kiss before it was too late, he couldn’t help but soften.

“Hi,” he breathed, and you swore your knees would give out.

“Hi,” you replied, obviously suave and cool and not awkward at all. “How— are you—? Are you good? Well? Are you well?”

He nodded. “Yeah. You?”

“As well as I could be,” you said. 

He raised his chin, as if to nod again, but simply kept it there. His eyes flicked somewhere to the right of him, and he said, “Tired from the competition?”

Your eyes widened. “Wha—? How did you—?” You turned to where he was looking outside the shop’s window, and came face to face with a large screen replaying the highlight reels from your routine in Boston. “Oh. That’s— it’s— yeah. A little. Sorry, that’s…” You wrinkled your nose at the sight. “I could’ve gone without seeing that. Again.”

You turned back to look at James, but his eyes were still locked on you. On the screen; a larger than life figure he’d once held securely in his arms, picked up like you’d weighed nothing. A small smile was etched into his features, appearing on his handsome face like watercolour on a canvas. Soft, bleeding through the edges.

“I saw it on the television earlier,” he said. “You did well.”

You couldn’t help grinning. “Yeah? You think?”

“I know. So, what are you in Hong Kong for?”

“Oh, my friend and I are on our way back to Taipei, but we just wanted to make a quick stop here for a day or two. I had to show him where Chungking Express was filmed.”

James chuckled softly. Something that hadn’t changed, he noted. Your obsession with niche films. 

“And you?” you asked.

He shut one eye, as if in thought. “I came to visit some family. It was my grandma’s eightieth, so I stayed for the month.”

“Oh, really? That’s great!”

It was a bit of an odd scene, to be honest. Talking to the man you’d had a very passionate, unhealthy, short-lived relationship with as a teenager like you were two friends catching up over coffee. But that’s what you and James were, before everything else. Friends. Begrudging, snappish, eye-rolling friends. Training buddies who spent too much time together. You practically hadn’t seen each other properly for two years, but it was easy to fall back into that dynamic with him.

He nodded, though he didn’t grace you with a direct reply. Instead he said, “Yeah. I’ve been trying to figure things out recently, so I decided staying overseas for a bit would help.”

You paused. “You’re not playing for the Eagles anymore?”

He shook his head.

“You retired?”

“Yeah. I figured I didn’t want to waste my life trying to make something of a sport I didn’t even like that much.”

“But you had the talent for it,” you tried, attempting an encouraging smile.

He returned it in all its gentleness and beauty. “I know. But I’m not you. I can’t lose myself in my passion the way you do. Doesn’t make me any less committed, I just… I guess I realised my talent doesn’t lie in only one thing.”

You hummed softly. “You did? I’m glad.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “It’s helped a lot.”

The silence that enveloped you reminded you of the hospital in Tokyo. It was thick, and filled with the feeling of your guilt. It was your own guilt, of course, nothing projected onto you, nothing brought upon you by anyone by yourself. It was the self-aware sort, the kind people felt when they knew they had sins to answer for, mistakes they’d made, bad decisions they’d left in the gods’ hands.

Your second apology was different from your first one in that you didn’t try to cover all your fronts in one sentence. Instead, you stepped closer to James, effectively grabbing his attention, and said, “I’m sorry I thought less of you because you played hockey.” Then, “I’m sorry I treated you like shit just because I was scared.” And, “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you the love you deserved when you so readily gave it to me. I’m sorry I was a bad friend, and a bad girlfriend, and a bad person. I know I was younger, and I was dumber, but that doesn’t make what I did any less… shitty. I was a little asshole, and I deserved your anger for all those years.”

Instead of agreeing with you, curling his lip in anger and telling you off for your wrongdoings, James looked at you like you hung the moon and the stars, wrote the code he lived and loved by. “It’s okay,” he said. “We were just kids.”

“Kids do fucked up shit sometimes,” you protested. “And I did.”

“Still okay.” He noticed the look you were giving him, and added, “That doesn’t mean I’m forgiving you immediately. I’m still furious with you. But, I got my second chance. I’d say it’s only fair you get yours.”

Your brow furrowed in a frown. “Are you saying we should… try again?”

Yufan shrugged. “Why not? Love is more fun the second time round, anyway.” He stepped forward, face inching closer to yours. “As long as I get to have you as my first kiss, because I’ve been waiting for three damn years.”

And who were you to deny him that luxury?

Your first ever kiss happened in a tacky souvenir shop in Hong Kong International Airport, with reels of you playing on a television in the background, and Cantopop drifting through the air as you moulded your body to his, lips slotted together in an embrace that said please don’t let go. Yufan pulled you impossibly closer, his soft lips pressed against yours like a whisper of encouragement for you to get lost in him. Years and years of tension, pent up frustrations, and wishes leaked into the kiss, years of history and years of love that you hadn’t had the heart to receive before you were ready.

“I’m not going to admit it right now,” Yufan said, breaking the kiss only enough that he was murmuring against your lips, though he was going to do just that in the next ten seconds, “but I’ve had the fattest crush on you since I saw you three years ago when you stole my suitcase.”

perm taglist @hyuneskkami @ramenoil @cranialberry @teacuplps @en-dream @luffyloving @beaseungiu @tmrwsuns @eunjjx

[blushdarkberries]

COMING BACK TO THIS TONIGHT WAIT FOR ME JAMES AND POOKA

[kaikainterlude]

GREENGREEN THOUGHTS + ANALYSIS

THE GOOD GREEN SHI IS FINALLY HERE 🤤🙏 okay so, I thoroughly enjoyed this album, I think it was so worth the wait ^•^ I have some genuine constructive criticism on almost every track here, and I genuinely believe this album could have been even better. but, it's a huge jump from cotl— so to be able to witness it and listen to it is enough.

this post is going to hugely focus on the production of the album, the instrumentals, beats, vocals, and anything fun I've noticed. ive touched a hair on the lyrics, too, but this analysis is not a break down the meaning of the songs, but to just see the development and the arrangement of them as a whole instead.

I've given a final rating to each track ^•^ so im js gonna get into it

BEFORE I START im going to refer heavily to something known as “mixing” in terms of music production during this entire post, so a little bit background in case you don't know what either is ^•^ when you make tracks, you pick and compose how it sounds by picking instruments, arranging it, creating an overall "sound". this is called producing.

mixing is adjusting those tracks;

balancing volume level of individual tracks, and the overall track in general

panning individual tracks so sometimes you can hear some instruments louder in one ear, not the other, sometimes in the middle. sometimes you hear a track moving from one ear to the left; aka panning.

adjusting the EQ so some unwanted shit is cut out, some is intentionally raised

compressing so the volume remains constant during the track

adding effects to give the track texture

this is known as mixing, it helps the track feel coherent rather than just a bunch of shit thrown together on a track. it's a big part of how the track is delivered to the listener and how they perceive it.

TNT

the original guitar loop is great, it loops around the entire track and sets a good tone. I would still prefer it to be kinda louder than it is, it feels a bit too muffled/muted for my liking.

the bass that kicks in by the prechorus feels softer than I'd like too, but I can feel they're building to something bigger. a critique here is that the track could use some more stuff to fill the space. it feels kinda empty by this point and I'm feeling a bit reliant on the vocals to keep listening.

the chorus is AMAZING in terms of what the track was building to by this point. the bass kicks in louder, theres layers to the guitar and there's more overall sound. all empty space that was felt prior is temporarily forgotten. the layering of the voices is exactly what you wouldn't exactly expect, but once you've heard it, it's like “of course I'd want it this way.” it's satisfying

the voice and tone is great for the song. they really killed it with the vocals and I don't have any critique here.

the lyrics are GREAT too, there's so much ambition and feel that gives it so much overall “cool”ness. I don't even want to pick a fav line because they're all just sooo cooperative with each other, the song just gets better and better with each line and the overall delivery is extremely satisfying to listen to.

my overall feeling I'm left with— 6.9/10 due to the production and the potential I can hear this song have, im partially satisfied and a bit upset. the song is SO my style and really wanted it to be more. the track feels kind of empty, despite how much I enjoyed the chorus. like I said, the bass seems muffled, the instrumental seems softer than I'd like, there seems to be almost no "final chorus" things that you sometimes hear in many songs. I'd have really loved a louder guitar, a more emotional guitar, some adlibs of them screaming or making odd noises that give the final chorus more texture and pay off.

REDRED

the morse code spelling out “redred” was cheeky, kind of funny how it wasn't intentional.

there's a lot of 8-bit elements to the song which I kind of enjoy.

the gliding 808 (the constant bass going up and down, up and down or wee-woo-wee-woo) is something I thoroughly enjoy, although it's kind of overwhelming and loud to the ear compared to the previous song TNT.

the transition to the next few verses after the first chorus is really refreshing, I enjoy that.

the lyrics are kind of cheeky, and ultimately fun to listen to. they have a really nice playful vibe to it, and they deliver a really good message too. my favorite lyrics are “팔랑귀 팔랑귀 that's redred” it's so simple but really sets the tone well for what they're trying to communicate throughout the entire song.

I love the way their vocals sound, the adlibs and the background vocals really really honor the track and take it up to the next level. it's fun and ultimately super enjoyable of a song.

overall feelings— 5/10 first listen, 7.3/10 now. the reason I gave it a lower initial score is because it's definitely not meant for casual listening, but rather to be performed, and you can really see that because watching the performance really makes a heck of a difference in how the listener interprets the song.

when I first heard it, the whole track had me so overwhelmed and due to the way it's structured, telling apart the verses from the chorus was difficult, and I just felt like the whole thing was blending together. now, because I know how the song goes, I can truly appreciate how it's meant to be heard. but this is a huge hurdle to jump over if you, the listener, are only just discovering cortis. and it could turn the listener off immediately because it's a track doing a lot.

something to note; I found myself raising my volume to truly appreciate TNT, and then having to lower it almost immediately for REDRED, which is a bit disappointing to do as a listener. it feels like the tracks are mixed (in terms of production) so differently— I can't appreciate the instrumentals because I'm constantly worrying if I can even hear it or if I'm hearing it too much.

ACAI

holy peak of an intro. “nasty” (positive) is the first word that comes to my mind. it's getting the same reaction as UGH! from BTS got me— I just immediately start vibing from the “who is choking? ion care” line repeating

the instrumental is so so SO good, there's so much texture from the sound effects alone. the panning of a lot of audio tracks and sound effects really really helps the track feel extremely dynamic. the bass is such a good part.

this is such a sick song, the adlibs are soooooo addicting to listen to; “ye— ye— ye—” “uh, uh, uh” “WHÆE!” “YEAH!” “LETS GOO!” “SKRRRR” blowing raspberries, an actual “BLEEAAAGHHHH!!!” like a zombie, literally soooo good and soooo sick, these parts harmonize so so well with the textures of the rest of the track. it gives the track so many layers and almost edges— it's a very prominent song, despite not being traditionally “loud”

THE BEST LINES EVER.

“who is choking? ion care” “hundred acai; bring that acai” “내가 많이 좋아해, acai” I loveeeee the unserious lyrics

this part of the chorus

벌컥, 벌컥, 땡겨, 땡겨, i just choked on acai

THE WHOLE PRECHORUS !!! WHAT DELIVERY.

당나귀, 당나귀처럼 동서남북 지구

한 바퀴, 한 바퀴 돌다 보면 순간 울려, “ba-ra-ring”

배꼽에 알람이; it's time to acai, it's time to acaiiiii”

and this very strong part of verse 2. again, insane tone and delivery. especially on “stack ’n stack” I looove the subtle growl 🤤😝

acai 묻은 tee, acai 묻은 pants, acai 묻은 album, 만들어 버려 jam

난 키워 버려 trend, 다 묻혀 버려 SNS에 stack ’n stack ’n stack; but I ain't tryna blend...

my only criticism is that the mixing is done so that you can hear the individual tracks of the whole song, but you don't feel. they don't really stand out or “stain” your ears like the lyrics or their tone/delivery do. I really want to hear MORE of the instruments and the textures, so I turn the volume up, but then the voices get too loud and I'm left feeling like something is missing.

overall probably one of their more “unserious” songs that is tremendously done well and refined pretty good. a solid 8.2/10, unfortunately I still struggled with the “i wanna hear more” issue that I've been communicating so far. the bass could be louder, the individual tracks could be louder and it could be sharper of a track (than it already is)

ts was cunty asf I'm sawry they ATEEE THATTTT

YOUNGCREATORCREW

who's goddamn idea was it to put acai and ycc back to back cuz 👏 you son of a bitch 👏 you have done it again 👏

HOLYYYYYY CUNTTTTTTTT 😝😝😝

ycc gives me the satisfaction I've been asking the entire mixing of the album to give me 😭 so desperately 😭

the bass is LOUD. the drums have emotion, there is texture, there are shouts, claps. a “ayeee oohhhh” crowd voice kind of track in the chorus, which I really want to know if it's vocals chopped up/sampled to make a track, or an actual instrument, however I'm sure it's vocals. the siren/alarm is such a NASTY addiction during the prechorus to prep for the last chorus. there is a high pitched synth (?) I believe that acts as a beep almost, and it changes pitches which makes me believe it's an instrument. I could be wrong though.

the lyrics are extremely memorable, kind of silly, there's a huge theme of unity, creative soul, young rebellion 느낌. there are no specific lyrics I want to take apart but they flow so well together. it's so influential, it has you convinced that you, too, carry a “young ho” kinda swag and it just gets you hyped. another good performance song, but unlike redred (for me) I actually would find myself genuinely listening to this on a regular.

the tone and delivery is sick. the background vocals add so many layers to the entire song's lyrics, and there are so many adlibs I enjoy thoroughly. there is a "YEAH!” that comes after each "youngㅋㅋ" in the chorus and it is SO addicting. the vocal riffs are so addicting to listen to.

there are screams, shouts, "WOO!”s, blows, “WAH! LETS GO!” “HUH!” “AAAAH!!” tongue clicks, growls, barks and whistles

a really cute thing I wanted to point out specifically and isolate was martin's scream around 2:12/2:13 mark— it seems to pan from the left ear to the right ear if you wear headphones, like he's running behind you. it's so so satisfying and gives the track such an insane sense of space and dynamic. It's a very small detail, easy to miss, but I geeked out listening to that.

overall another strong strong song in the album, a soliddd 9.1/10 because it is loud in a delicious way.

WASSUP

i love the tired vibe. it's so familiar I immediately feel it in my bones.

I really enjoy the sped up drums that kick in during the intro. it reminds me of “funky drummer” drums sample by james brown but sped up and rearranged. it's so prominent in music today, so I wouldn't be surprised if the drums were inspired by funky drummer and created for this track.

I like the sped up, pitched up voice that's part of the instrumental, it's looping throughout the whole song. I really enjoy the bass, the I love love love the guitar that's looping throughout the entire track.

the second verse is extremely strong— I really enjoy the almost "despair" kind of tone they have throughout the entire song. they really let their voice carry a lot of the lyrics and they really know how to communicate their feelings through it.

the prechorus “been through these lows; now we're getting high” is SO strong, both in delivery and in instrumental. it stands out immediately, its almost the kind of part that seeps into the listener's bones and jolts them. immediate goosebumps. I think this is probably one of the killer parts of this entire track.

i thoroughly enjoy the lyrics, its unbelievably relatable. it's such an eye-opener into the lives of kpop idols and small artists in general trying to make it big— it's true that the small discomforts of a long, promising journey will seep into their daily lives til they're absolutely tired of it. and this goes for everyone trying to live and make it to their dreams; cortis captures this track's intensity through it's lyricism— precisely what this track cannot shine without it.

I love the subtle distortion throughout the entire track, not just on the smaller instrumentals, but especially on the vocals. the prechorus, again, is where I feel most drawn to in terms of production.

overall— a very strong song, 7.9/10 cortis breaks down the wall that separates an artist from their fan and let's one peep into their daily lives; and what it takes to build the short moments of glamor.

BLUE LIPS

mama.....................i can't do this .......

this track deserves its own analysis post like I did with joyride 😭😭😭😭 it's beautiful and it's so so heartfelt. I'll focus on the production and touch a hair on the lyrics because if I genuinely start talking about the lyrics and start piecing them apart, I WILL make this too long 😭

immediately in the intro: the sample of the underwater audio needs to be louder. it is such a strong part of the entire track and I'm disappointed I can't hear more of it. I genuinely imagine sitting by the pool in the dark, dunking my ankles, letting the water ripple and just staring. and staring. and staring. and ironically, it's a comfortable middle to be in, both metaphorically and literally. I'm still “in” the pool, but not quite. I'm still by the memory, I want to leave but I refuse to part; refuse to let my ankles out of the water.

the pitched up voice of the members— martins in the intro, (allegedly, according to genius) juhoon's voice in the outro; it's so so so native to dominic fike and frank ocean. I love the little glitch in martins voice when he says “dont want to lose you.”

“saw you swimming in the pool; thought we were going out for dinner” this casual lyricism, conversational delivery style is so traditional to dominic fike in his What Else Could Go Wrong? and Don't Forget About Me. he has such a way with his words and he knows how to make casual, mundane things, so so prominent and permanent to the listener. it immediately breaks down the disconnect that could form in translation from the artist to the reader, and suddenly— everyone connects. because everyone has thought, “thought we were going out for dinner.” this clear inspo is so lovely to recognize.

simultaneously, I also immediately thought of frank ocean's self control— not only is his intro is a pitched up voice, but it's so closely related to cortis' “pool” metaphor. “poolside convo about your summer last night; about your summer last night.”

cortis uses chords to carry the whole song, and warm (?), almost sweet synth pads that dominic fike uses a lot in his music. fike's Think Fast (ft. Weezer) is the most prominent example I can think of this— towards the outro at the 3:33 timestamp, the track has a synth very prominently inspiring the synth that plays at 0:16 seconds in Blue Lips.

the whole song has an angelic sweet tune to it, the little tune that plays at the 0:55 mark reminds me so much of something dominic fike but I can't find what song or what timestamp it reminds me of ☹️ the ambience of blue lips is so beautifully composed and arranged.

I also adore the harmonization that the boys manage with themselves, it's gorgeous and they, yet again, carry such emotion with their voices. there's background vocals, especially in the final chorus, which stretch the feeling of yearn and dread til the very end. I think they executed that beautifully.

the entire track has the members talking about their growth, their development and their struggles with still eyeing hope at the end of the tunnel. but, as the days go by, even staring at that very light grows into a two edged sword— staring is what gets them moving towards their future, but their eyes are tired. their feet are tired. they grow tired of the very thing they chase.

and they cross the tunnel, they will accomplish old dreams and need a “new why.” the tired grows. what seemed out of reach has been long touched and reached— an ambitious mind can't keep reaching for more without first consuming what it's been desperately craving; chasing all this time. cortis sings for a moment of quiet, a moment to rest, to get rid of the tired— where they can stay in the pool before life pulls them out.

in the end, they can't keep staying in the same old pool. the future may be cold, but the water keeps growing colder. the comfort of staying where they are is making them freeze— giving them “blue lips.”

maybe as a final act of self love, or selfishness— they stay in the pool one last time. feeling the warmth through the lens of a memory, a warmth that has slowly ceased to exist.

if I had to pick a part that finds a way into my chest and tightens, it's the outro

we've been in here way too long, I've been feelin way too cold

can we stay in here lil bit more? out of the pool, I know you'll be gone.

so, so, can we stay in here lil bit more?

with me, with me, with me

overall — 9.4/10. extremely strong in terms of production, delivery, emotion and just a beautiful beautiful track. it's up there with joyride and lullaby in it's beauty. I didn't even touch on the "inner child" metaphor in this analysis, so if I ever make a proper breakdown, I'll be sure to find every theme possible in this.

in conclusion — I really enjoyed the texture each track. there was so much to explore, listen to, and experience. a huge personal problem, as a listener, I seemed to experience was dissatisfaction due to feeling like the track or it's elements weren't loud enough. I really struggled with wanting to really hear more, but because of the mixing or the volume control, I really couldn't.

I really think if cortis continued in this direction of experimentation and taking inspiration from every artist they listen to, they'd manage to create a very diverse discography with a lot of texture and layers. they have a future in the market and you can hear their ambition out of just the tracks themselves. martin was credited for a lot of this album's work, and it's insanely inspiring to see how much contribution they have. I can't wait to hear more from cortis.

[cranialberry]

───✧₊∘ space woman, stay a while

blame it on the black star, blame it on the falling sky, blame it on the satellite that beams me home *ੈ✩‧₊˚

➶ (tags): nightwing! martin x starfire! reader | martin as dick grayson & reader as koriand'r | headcanons/oneshots | DCU au | first meetings | relationship development | timeskips from when nightwing was robin # 1 | kissing | skinship | martin is down horrendous once again | martin’s a flirt | fluff | angst & comfort | mentions of Jason Todd! James ;) | cameos | mentions of some canon DCU events | w.c. (8.9k)

➶ What would one do if, say hypothetically, you see a strange woman fall from the sky, and just moments after you save her life, the first thing she does is kiss you? Martin doesn't know, except only that somewhere between being a vigilante and a member of the bat family, he's always thought love would never be something so easily handed to him. Now, though, he thinks he might need to recalibrate that idea.

————🗒️ my cortis as DC superheroes series ! PLAYLIST

Robin! Martin, who sees a shooting star and discovers, to his immense surprise, that it’s actually a person. A woman, to be specific.

During patrol, you came hurling out of the clouds in a trail of fire, and your hair streamed behind you like a comet’s tail. He had sprung into motion then in an instinct to save and protect, hands outstretched just in time for you to crash directly into him. The impact nearly knocked the breath from his lungs when you both tumbled onto the empty asphalt in a heap of limbs and smoke. 

Robin! Martin, who had already lost his breath catching you, only to lose the rest of it the moment he finally got a proper look. 

Robin! Martin, who had been a Titan for long enough to know that a routine mission usually meant this exact opposite. Fires, explosions, the occasional giant robot trying to destroy the city. It all came with the territory. What did not, however, come with the territory was some space woman dropping out of the sky and kissing him square on the mouth. 

It was neither a peck nor a brief little smooch. In fact, it was a real, firm, and entirely unhesitating kiss. 

Martin froze completely. Around him, the rest of the Titans did much the same, save for Beast Boy, whose jaw dropped so far down it threatened the structural integrity of his jaw bones. If he had any permanent ones, that is.

“She’s certainly a straightforward kind of gal.” He jabbed Cyborg sharply in his metal ribs, grinning like Christmas had come early this year.

Cyborg let out a low laugh. “White boy still got it.”

A few seconds after you pulled away, Martin finally found the ability to function, though only just. His domino mask did nothing to hide the red climbing up his neck.

You smiled up at him, open and radiant. It was cute how entirely oblivious you were to what you had just caused.

“Thank you for saving me.” Each word came out careful and a little unnatural, so neatly separated from the next that Martin considered, if only for a moment, of the possibility that you might just have been a machine like Cyborg was. 

Martin cleared his throat. “It’s no problem.” He pointed at you, then at his own lips. “A thank you kiss, was it?”

You tilted your head as confusion flickered across your face.

“My people can learn the language of other civilizations through mouth-to-mouth contact.” 

Even Raven looked up from whatever dark thoughts she’d been cultivating. Martin’s expression shifted into something between mortification and fascination.

“Ah,” his voice cracked just enough for Beast Boy to start cackling. Martin shot him a glare that only encouraged him further. 

“Can they now?”

Robin! Martin, who is rarely the first one to lose his temper. Seriously. 

He is, by designation and reluctant habit, the leader after all. He says ‘reluctant’ only in the way a person is reluctant to breathe: he does it because someone must. It’s his job to smooth things over, crack a joke or two, and step in between arguments before they turn into fights. It was part of what made him Robin, once upon a time, and later, what made him a Titan. He was willing to be the center of gravity in a room of people who would otherwise tip too far into themselves or each other. 

But when he discovers where Cyborg’s put you, he loses it.

“She’s an unknown extraterrestrial with unmeasured abilities.” Cyborg explains thinly with the confidence of someone speaking from behind several reinforced doors. The doors being that metal body Martin is thinking of cracking like a tin can at the moment. 

“Listen, I don’t wanna know if she had a love potion swirling in her saliva when she kissed you, and I don’t care, because standard protocol requires–” 

“Standard protocol,” Martin cuts in, with each word clipped enough to shave some skin, “usually involves informing the team before locking someone in the basement. Informing the leader of this team, Vic.”

Cyborg wisely says nothing, and Beast Boy has the good sense to take one step back. Even Raven, who usually doesn’t react when fights happen, folds her arms and raises an eyebrow. 

But Martin doesn’t get to see all of their reactions to it’s end, because he’s already moving towards the elevator. The ride down is too slow, and his boot taps in a staccato rhythm against the metal floor all the way. When the doors finally part, he’s out before they fully open.

“I was beginning to think this was your custom for welcoming visitors.”

Suspended in the center of a cylindrical containment chamber is you, separated from the room by thick transparent walls and some faint alien dampeners. You look up at the sound of quick approaching footsteps and smile the moment you see him. It’s a small thing, but it hits him like a punch.

Martin stalks up the glass, fury tightening every line of his body.

“It really isn’t.” 

“You seem… angry.” Martin is angry. 

He says nothing, which is perhaps the clearest indication of all. Instead, he pivots toward the control panel and begins pressing buttons (much harder than necessary, mind you) until the chamber unlocks with a hydraulic hiss.

Steam curls between you theatrically guided, and it reminds him of something like the grand entrance of a circus magician. 

You step out and directly into Martin’s carefully maintained personal space, which, until now, had been one of his more reliable assets. You come close enough that he can feel the heat clinging to you and the lingering warmth rising from your skin. Or was it your hair? Charged and cracking at the ends, and carrying with it that strange ozone-sharp scent. 

“Are you cold?” He asks, because he certainly is. He wondered how you stayed warm in that container for so long.

You look at him and smile, mellow, telling. “Me? I’m never cold, robin bird.” 

Robin! Martin, who loves to spar with you.

Though the first time, it was only a matter of necessity. The team had agreed that the mysterious alien girl currently residing in their tower should probably know the difference between a training room and, say, downtown Manhattan. You were so eager and bright-eyed, just a little too excited by the prospect of ‘friendly combat’. Martin really should’ve taken that as some sort of warning.

Beast Boy and Cyborg have claimed front-row seats in the training room, and Raven is also present in some dark corner. She’s reading, though the occasional turn of her page suggested she was paying more attention than she admitted. 

Martin rolls his shoulders and tries to loosen up.

“Okay,” He slips (not so easily) into instructor mode. “The point here isn’t to win, alright? You just gotta learn control.”

You nod solemnly. “Understood.”

Then you punch a hole straight through one of the practice dummies.

Cyborg whistles low and leans in to whisper to Beast Boy. “Remind me never to owe her money.”:

Beast Boy, who doesn’t look away from the torn dummy, whispers back. “You think she even knows what that is?”

Martin stares at the mangled remains of what once was Titan property, then slowly back at you. “... We’ll work on your restraint.”

He circles you once, staff spinning idly between his fingers. You smile at him entirely unafraid. 

“Just follow my lead.”

“I will try not to break you.”

Martin snorts. “Incredibly reassuring, space lady.”

You don’t seem to understand sarcasm yet, which is frankly making his life even more difficult. Quickly and precisely, Martin lunges a testing strike first, and you block it effortlessly. His brows shoot up. Incredible.

He sweeps low, and you leap clean over it. He presses harder and strings attacks together in a rapid blur of motion. You only matched him beat for beat, edge for edge, adapting to him frighteningly fast.

You move differently than anyone he’s fought in the past. You’re less trained and rely more on your instincts. Like dancing, he thinks. Martin feints left, and you take the bait.

He hooks his staff behind your knees, and for one glorious second, victory seemed just within reach for him.

But you grab his wrist in the speed of sound and with an unrivaling strength, and Martin has exactly enough time to think, huh, before you flip him flat on his back.

Beast Boy falls off the bench laughing, and Cyborg steps on his feet to offer some applause. He bets even Raven twitches the tiniest bit.  Your face appears above Martin’s, upside down from his perspective, and framed by that fiery mane of hair. 

“Am I any good?”

Martin bares his teeth in a wolfish grin and the truth spills free from the tip of his tongue.

“You’re perfect.” 

Robin! Martin, who learns very early on that when someone tells you to ‘create a distraction’, there’s a very important and unspoken clause that they should always explicitly write it down for you in bold. He’s learned his lesson. 

This particular lesson arrives somewhere over Gotham’s warehouse district.

A Falcone shipment is being unloaded three stories below the docks as the city slicks with rain and is painted dark. The air smells like river water, engine oil, and so much crime, a deeply Gotham combination. Martin will later insist that he doesn’t miss Gotham. Though at present, he’s crouched on a rooftop in the middle of it feeling nostalgic. 

Beside him, you balance effortlessly on the ledge looking entirely too happy for a mission such as this one. The broken streetlamp close by flickers in irregular intervals, throwing his domino mask into alternating shadow and light. He glances down through the grimy skylight at the dozen armed men below. 

“Alright, space lady,” he addressed you quietly. “We gotta split them up. Simple, huh? You take the east entrance and–”

You nod immediately and enthusiastically. 

“–create a distraction.” He finishes, glancing ominously at you and bracing. Martin opens his mouth once more, more aware that perhaps his instructions could have benefited from a few additional parameters. 

“Now when I say distraction I mean–” But you fly away before he’s able to finish. 

“Wait–” Martin desperately wants to believe you have chosen the east entrance like a normal, rational vigilante partner. The normal, rational vigilante partner he wants to believe you are. 

But then the skylight explodes. 

Glass erupts inward in a magnificent cascade, and it rains down like crystal confetti at the world’s most illegal gala. This explosion of sound silences the entire warehouse below. 

When he looks at you again, you’re standing in the exact center of the floor framed by shattered glass and steam from a ruptured pipe. You brush a sliver of particles from your shoulder and look up toward the roof. Did I do well? You mouth at him. Martin, ever the pleaser, gives you a measly thumbs up. 

Yes, the skylight is obliterated. Yes, Bruce is going to ask Martin why there’s now an insurance claim shaped suspiciously like your silhouette. Yes, this is going to be one expensive assignment, and Bruce’s accountant is going to develop a really shitty migraine. 

But Martin had asked for a distraction. And in fairness, you had provided one so distracting that no one in that warehouse would ever forget it. The mission was accomplished all the same anyway.

Robin! Martin, who stands nearly eye to eye with you and is close enough in height, save for the occasional half-inch granted by his posture or some particularly ambitious boots. 

The Titans (more so Wallace), having collectively appointed themselves experts on the decidedly undefined nature of whatever is going on between the two of you, are interested in Martin’s thoughts on the matter. Though he’s never entirely certain whether they mean taller, empyrean, or more intimidating. He contests at least half of those labels and only shrugs his shoulders. 

“Makes conversations easier. I mean, it’s less of a neck strain, isn’t it?” 

Which is true. But it also means he doesn’t have to tilt his head very far to find your eyes, those green improbable things that always seem to catch light from places light has no business being in. He’s spent hours attempting not to look at them, and it’s an act at which he’s shown remarkable persistence in but no talent whatsoever.

He likes that you meet him straight on. And he also likes looking at you (far more than is reasonable. Then again, reason has never been a useful thing where you are concerned).

Robin! Martin, who almost lost it after that rescue mission. 

He was already close to his own limit. Frayed, thinking too fast and too much, so it might have been anything. Honestly, it might just have been you. 

The med bay is quiet at this late hour. Machines hum in low and steady rhythms, and you lie against the white surface of a bed, breathing, present. Martin dwells at the doorway for so long just looking at you. 

He tells himself you’ll be fine, or that you’ll wake up and forget where you are and who he is. But he tells himself a lot of crazy things. 

Eventually, he crosses the room and settles at the edge of your bed. His hand lifts to smooth a strand of hair from your face, and then he looks at you again. When his hand finds your arm, your warmth is unembellished and as comforting to his heart. Warm, and again warm. Real and alive. 

Your fingers curl faintly around his, and he takes this as encouragement, maybe more than intended. He leans in close enough that his breath ghosts across your skin, and almost–

Almost. 

He pulls back too quickly like you’ve just burned him.

Martin, despite everything, is terrified of you. 

It’s true, though not in the way it sounds. Not that he fears you. No, you’ve never been something to fear. He’s scared of what he turns into and understands the consequence of this. But understanding does nothing to change it. If there were a line, he wouldn’t hold it. If there were a choice, he’d choose you. Now, later, and at the end of anything. 

Hell, you could reduce the Titan Tower to ash, and that may not even be far from an impossibility given that you weren’t exactly in control of your senses just a while ago. But he thinks he’d do it all the same even then. It’s not a choice he wants to make. But he knows, still, what would happen. A life would have been worth giving away. 

Curse the Citadel and its appetite. Curse Psimon and his illusions. Curse your sister, who will call it love. 

Love, yeah, maybe that was the word. 

“You always pull back.” Your eyes slowly open, having been aware of what Martin was trying to do. 

“Bad timing, I guess.”

“Or fear.”

He exhales through something tighter than his patience. “Y/n, tell me you’re feeling alright.”

“Oh I don’t feel alright at all.” 

“Y/n.”

“Don’t you see, Martin?” You cut in, softer now, but no less certain. “I don’t know what customs of affection you have on Earth. I’ve yet to figure it out. But I can’t seem to read into you, and it’s killing me. Right here.” You point to your chest. 

Eventually, you let out a long sigh. “I even have dreams about it.” 

Dreams, you say? 

There are things he keeps meaning to tell you, and he wants you to know that. But they’ve always remained, stubbornly and always, in the future. He supposes time may as well be now. 

Martin takes your hands slowly, fingers folding around yours as he brings them up to press a soft kiss to your knuckles.

“Then tell me your dreams, I want to dream of them too.”

You look at him earnestly, as full as you always felt whenever you did. “You don’t have to, Tin. Your mind is your own.”

He leans in closer until he’s hovering over you, and his fingers find yours first, then your nails, tracing upward and relinquishing you from yourself one small piece at a time. When he looks at you again, a screw is knocked loose once more. 

“Well, you could say that. My mind is mine, these hands are mine, my eyes to see you, my mouth to humor you, and these parts, all mine.” He points to all of them as he says it, then leans his head on your pillow. It’s the closest he’s ever come to seeing you, with what little distance is left seizing to mean anything at all. 

“But I can choose.” A breath and an inhale, slow and stuttering. “And I choose to be yours.”

That first kiss you shared left a whole day burning in him, and the remainder of your fire like a blowtorch in yourself. It was a moment for the ages, one Martin will preserve for a long, long time. 

Robin! Martin, who in the interim period between too many identity crises, takes a break from the team for a few months. In that interval, he had discovered something that had been circling him for some time. Bruce’s shadow was getting a little too dark.

Don’t get him wrong. He owed Bruce quite a lot. The survival instinct passed down to him made him capable. Still, even the best-built wings aren’t meant to stay folded, and Martin could feel his stretching. Such as a son who will always one day rebel against his own father, Martin was an eager bird waiting to leave the nest.  

Maybe he was good by Batman's standards, but it was the same scale his competence had always been measured against. And what he wanted, more than freedom in the breakaway sense, was authorship. To do good work by his own name. He thought that growing into a man still answering to the name Robin felt absurd. 

There was a story Clark had mentioned once to which he still remembers. A fragment of Kryptonian mythology from before the destruction, and before Earth. Before that particular hope symbol. It was the legend of Nightwing and Flamebird, two tandem existing figures. One would move through the dark, the other through light, and neither defined by any form of hierarchy. Martin wanted something a lot like that.

Then he hears of this new guy. 

His name was James. From what Martin picks up, it had started with an attempt to steal the hubcaps of the Batmobile. He almost respects the audacity, He suspects that Bruce, however, treated this as the start to another mantle-shaped problem. Martin hopes the word sidekick wouldn’t sit too bitterly on James’ tongue, at least not too soon.

They meet on a rooftop of all places. James is already there when Martin arrives, perched on the ledge with one foot dangling over empty air, hands buried in his jacket pockets.  

James doesn’t turn around. “You always drop in like that?”

“People can act pretty stupid sometimes,” Martin says. “Figured I’d get ahead of it.”

“Relax.” James scoffs. “M’not touching that stupid car again.” 

“Right. Unless you want Bruce to develop some personal vendetta.” 

Martin shifts the duffel on his shoulder, reaches in, and pulls out the folded suit. Red, green yellow. Cleaned up, packed tight, and much too bright. He tosses it over and James catches it, eyes grazing the laid down fabric.

“This is–what, a hand me down?” 

“Think of it as recycling,” Martin replies with a quick grin. “I’m very eco-friendly.” 

James lifts the suit a little. “I’ll look like a clown in this.”

“Look, it’s durable. The seams are reinforced, light armor plating, decent mobility too. Try not to wreck it in the first week, yeah?” 

“Try not to wreck it,” James repeats. “That’s your big speech?”

“Oh, you wanted a speech?”

“I mean–kinda?”

Martin considers this for a second. Really, he does.

He just shakes hsi head.

“Nah. Sounds like something Bruce would do.” 

James huffs out a laugh under his breath before he can stop it, and Martin glances out over the city, the long rows of rooftops and fire escapes and water towers. Gotham looked bigger and meaner. All of it to learn from, and if James lets it, enough to get lost in. 

“Don’t die in that.” He adds.

James lowers his gaze to the suit in his hands. “Yeah. I’ll… try not to.” 

Martin nods once, and deeming this quite enough for the newbie, he turns to leave and steps toward the ledge. James calls after him.

“Hey! So what am I supposed to do with this?”

Martin pauses just long enough to look back over his shoulder.

“Make it yours.” Then he’s out of sight. 

James and Martin both become something new that night, unbeknownst to anyone.

Nightwing! Martin, who once brought you to a Gotham charity gala, having forgotten that you possess exactly zero filter for all this billionaire nonsense. 

In his defense, he had not so much forgotten as chosen optimism over experience, which, as Bruce would tell you, has always been one of Martin’s more expensive character traits. 

“It’ll be easy.” he had promised while adjusting his cufflinks in the mirror. “Smile like you always do. Make polite conversation. Try not to threaten anyone, yeah?”

You had looked up from where you were fastening an earring. “My, Martin. I’ve never threatened anyone at a fundraiser.”

My, Martin. My Martin.

Wayne Manor was transformed for the evening. It’s marble gleams, chandeliers lit up for once, and there’s enough old money in this house to destabilize several other old money folks. Gotham’s most elite drifted from one conversation to the other looking like a bunch of well-dressed sharks. 

Martin comes in search of you later in the evening to find you conversing with some oil executive, asking whether there was such a thing as a free market in the alien civilization, and why there should be.

“Most advanced species stop monetizing basic survival after a certain point.” You had said in reply, and the executive excused himself from your presence almost immediately.

You weren’t wrong, though. Gotham was as corrupt a world as any other. It didn’t matter that it had the Batman (though he was, in more ways than one, just the same). Bruce had taught him quite early on that power barely even looked like power from the inside. It would sometimes look like philanthropy, campaign donations, charitable foundations with carefully engraved plaques speaking of hope and resilience. 

If he thought about it a little more, the difference between a criminal empire and a corporate one largely depended on its aesthetic, and that was it. In the end, both need territory, loyalty, and the comforting lie that their victims always consented. From this, Martin would often wonder whether masks had ever truly been constrained to vigilantes. 

But it seemed that there were nights when Gotham’s true rulers wouldn’t wear masks at all. Crime here was rarely a matter of hunger or haste. It was all paperwork. A signature in the right column or a stamp through, enough ink on enough paper was all it took, and whole city blocks could be condemned more efficiently than any supervillain might manage with a death ray. 

It was easier, most times, to fight a man with a gun. 

And perhaps that was why you unsettled them so thoroughly. You hadn’t thought much of all these titles, and had no instinct to deter to something simply because it sparkled. Billionaires, senators, board members, even Bruce Wayne himself, you looked at them all the same. They were people first, and only then as whatever strange little hierarchies they built around themselves. They’d hate you more later. They hated you now. 

An environment Martin had been so accustomed to not being accustomed to you at all. It was a funny thought. 

But he’d look at you from across the room and forget, for a long while after that, why he was even thinking all this in the first place. Because here, tonight, among the ugly and the gilded, the polished and the predatory, you were something he figured he wouldn’t have been able to imagine so long ago. 

You were beautiful, yes. You are beautiful. But Martin believed beautiful was too simple a word for what he saw. Stars are beautiful. So are paintings, and oceans, and all these earthly things. All the beauty that was left of a world gone rotten. He’s seen them all and named them all, and when he saw you…

“Martin?” You walk over to him looking a little worn. “May we leave now?”

He thinks of a contradiction and then another, and takes your hand. 

So it is then that Martin believes perhaps the cruelest thing about falling in love with someone born of the heavens is not having a single word in the human language to describe them. 

Nightwing! Martin, who, even before you were living together, had the habit of keeping up with all kinds of events. Everything from anniversaries to numerology to vaguely sentimental coincidences he could justify on the fly.

It was well past midnight when he knocks on your door. You open it to find him there, hair still windblown from the rooftop winds, mask gone, suit half-zipped down… how? There’s a paper bag (takeout, you assumed) in one hand, and in the other, a small bunch of flowers. 

His knuckles are bruised, there’s a little cut near his chin, but as usuals go, he gives you a smile, teeth and all. 

“I’m punctual, aren’t I?”

You lean against the doorframe confused. “Punctual for what?”

“What?!” He fakes a gawk as if you’ve missed something so obvious. “You didn’t know?”

You raise an eyebrow.

“It’s the thirteenth of the month.” He says like that would even explain anything. 

When you look just as confused, Martin, infinitely undettered, shifts the flowers slightly and gestures vaguely for the takeout bag.

“Thirteen is your lucky number, right? You thought I forgot? That I, Martin Edwards, of all people, would forget?”

Even you forgot you ever told him about that. 

“Surprise. Now let me in.” A sheepish grin grows on the tips of his lips. 

You let him in. Of course you do. You had let him in for more stupid reasons before.

Nightwing! Martin, who you only fully come to understand after moving in together, can’t cook for shit.

“Don’t panic, babe.” He says. But how could you not?

There’s a pan still on the stove, and there’s smoke curling upward in slow accusatory spirals. Something had been in there a minute ago, you’re sure. Maybe eggs? An empty egg carton sits on the counter beside the burner, but you remember it being full yesterday. 

“What were you even trying to make?”

“Eggs.” Well, you knew that. Youdon’t even know why you asked.

“Eggs for dinner?”

He looks at you like you were the one that set the kitchen aflame. “They got protein, don’t they?”

That night, you ended up with takeout spread across the counter like a ceasefire. You told Martin he wasn’t allowed to eat until the kitchen didn’t look like a warzone. He hadn’t argued of course. He never really did when it came to your absolute laws.

When he finished, he stepped out of the kitchen still wearing that apron that read Kiss the Chef in ridiculous lettering. You stood up,  crossed that small distance between you with the intention of following those instructions to the letter, and kissed him breathless. 

And then you both drift off on the couch, a romcom playing in the background while Martin succumbs to sleep and snores up a storm. You’re half-curled against him as the television continues its small, earnest portrayal of love stories no one is awake to witness. One thing’s for sure, the last thing Martin was aware of before he dozed off was the warmth of your ever-blazing hair to his side, and that same warmth blooming straight in the chest. 

Nightwing! Martin, who learns that being with a Tamaranean means ordinary Earth inconveniences can quickly become the biggest incidents ever. 

Like moving in together, for instance. In hindsight, he should have seen it coming. While most people would bring furniture, boxes, or at least a sense of domestic intent, your contribution to their shared home was what can only be described as a fully assembled arsenal. 

Martin briefly imagines their future visitors stepping into the apartment and trying very politely to pretend this was all just a part of one of those IKEA ensembles, as much as they hoped it would be. Absolutely fucking priceless.

A weapon rack sits where a bookshelf should be. Something long and bladed leans against the wall beside the sofa, and on the coffee table, a set of smaller pieced blades are laid out with deliberate spacing. They’re cleanly aligned, too. 

Martin exhales through his nose, trying to look away before he can let out the most ridiculous snort.

“You don’t like them?” You ask, stepping out of the bathroom like nothing in the living room is deemed unusual to you. Martin can only turn to you and place a long and lazy kiss on your forehead. 

“Nah,” he says, pulling back just enough to look at you properly, voice flat with affection and defeat. “I love ‘em, honey.”

Nightwing! Martin, who is reminded the most of the fact that you aren’t from Earth, and therefore not inherently built for it. Sometimes, you don’t know what to think of this, only that something in you is always faintly elsewhere. It hums and aches for something lost to you. 

There will be days when this Earth would feel merely the same as a room with four walls. Days such as today, where you lay awake on your side looking out the window while Martin slept soundly beside you. You think of it’s horizon as too near, this gravity too insistent. Even the sky, as vast as it is to anyone else, didn’t feel nearly as expansive enough to hold everything you were so used to seeing. 

Martin shifts from where he lies. “What’s the matter, babe?” He whispers hoarsely and strings his fingers through your dimmed hair. 

“Tin, why is this planet’s moon so lonely?” 

“Hmm?”

You let out a sigh. “I used to look at two moons back in Tamaran. They were one for the other, I believed.” 

Martin has no intention of competing with the moon, so instead, he gets up and opens the window. As thin and inadequate as you think the sky is tonight, it’s the only sky they have.

He learns of the moons you miss so much. Tamaran I and II as you described them would lean toward each other, and in that devotion, paint Tamaran’s skies in gold and violet tides. Their light would warm your skin instead of pale it, and the air carried the scent of sunfruit groves and the distant heat of living fire. 

Martin doesn’t know what it means to be exiled. He couldn’t fathom it. Banished from the only home you’ve ever known and cast into a world you knew nothing about. But as you both now settle on the long love seat by the window, he understands that you’re still reaching for it. And so, he leaves the curtains open. 

“Go to sleep, hun’.” 

Tamaran never asked you to be anything but what you were. It was a planet that rose to meet its sun, answering heat with heat, brightness with something brighter still, and every feeling was given freely to the spice-warmed winds. You carry the inheritance of your planet wherever you go, if the sunfire in your veins and your hair were anything to go by. But Earth is different. There are things you feel, and only so much of them are allowed to be shown. You find yourself, for the first time, holding words behind your teeth, bottling up laughter, and crouching to someone else’s less superior height. 

There are nights when you miss Tamaran so fiercely you feel your own flight gravity pull and push until you can barely float.

Martin is unmistakably of Earth. Robin, Nightwing, the Boy Wonder. He is of the same elements that make up the blood and bones and instincts as all else here. Oh, but when you met him, he didn’t think of letting you translate all these differences, even as he remained just as different from you as he was from the rest at large. 

And when his hands find yours, when your name leaves his mouth, you understand. 

You’re not as far from home as you think. 

Nightwing! Martin, who gets jealous easily. 

The mission briefing had been very clear: undercover, low profile, and absolutely no improvising whatsoever. Which is why, ten minutes into standing in a damp warehouse with a Russian arms dealer who looked increasingly offended the longer a disguised Martin spoke in English, everything was already falling off the rails.

When the team regroups, no one has any idea on the next plan of action.

“... I got none of that.” You say.

“Same,” Raven admits. “I didn’t even get the tone this time.”

Martin, standing slightly behind you, exhales through his nose like he’s trying very hard not to make this a big problem.

You glance at the group. “But I can try.”

“You?” Beast Boy asks. “How?”

“I can try mouth-to-mouth contact. If I can just get close to him, I’ll be able to understand–”

Martin immediately straightens. “I’m sorry, you can what?”

You blink. “It worked with you, didn’t it?”  

“We’re not doing that.”

Raven cuts in on the conversation. “Unless any of you got some secret ability to learn a language in ten seconds, I’d say it’s worth a shot–”

“Rae, respectfully, I don’t want to hear the end of that suggestion.” 

Much later, the team watches from the sidelines as Martin, with unmistakable irritation, decides that he’s done negotiating. The arms dealer is now tied to a chair, and Martin’s disguise has been shed somewhere along the way. The man’s got a bloodied nose, tears streaking down his face as he please in a language none of you understand. Well, at least Martin proved himself very useful tonight. 

Martin really hadn’t wanted to beat the stubborn guy into submission, truly. His start with reasoning had already been a generous offer. But he had made the unfortunate mental connection between this guy’s utter confidence and the fact that, just earlier, you had suggested kissing him. Gross. The thought alone had been enough to clarify his priorities, then it became easier to get his job done. 

There’s a collective expression hovering somewhere between concern and horror. At the back, though, you are very clearly trying your best not to laugh. 

Nightwing! Martin, who lets you win arguments. 

If it isn’t anything particularly important, if neither your life nor his hangs in the balance, the need to win against you is never strong. So he’ll let you win arguments as an act of devotion, because he likes the domesticity of it. The strange intimacy tucked within something so ordinary. He likes the sight of you standing there with your arms crossed in triumph over something inconsequential. 

He’ll grumble dramatically, sigh like a man condemned, then slide over with his secret smile like he’s gifting you something precious. Because to him, being able to yield without fear has always felt precious. His nearly untouched exception. 

To anyone else, Martin can be maddeningly competitive, stubborn to the point that it’s irritating. But even when you’d be wrong, he’d just laugh and let it pass. Once, during patrol, the two of you argued over comms while chasing someone through the streets of Bludhaven. You said left alley, and he said right. Still, he followed you without hesitating right up until the path ended in a dead end. 

You groan and turn to him. “Don’t say anything.”

Martin lands beside you as he tries to suppress a grin. “Wouldn’t dream of it, honey." 

“You should’ve argued with me a little harder.”

He gives you this unbearably boyish shrug. “You sounded pretty confident though.” 

He’ll only stop letting you win when things get serious, which is how you learn the difference. He usually bends around you easily, playful and yielding and so very indulgent. But the moment something dangerous comes up, he becomes… older, somehow. Firmer.

Whenever you’re both left with the seemingly reasonable option to split up on missions, Martin’s teasing compromises are replaced resolutely, and he gets really serious about making that choice.

“I’ll go left, Martin. I can handle it myself–”

“No.”

“Martin–”

“No. I’m serious.” 

And it startles you every time because it’s a choice made and remade.  He gives you ground simply because he wants to, because loving you has never been a contest with a winner.

Nightwing! Martin, who struggles with what happened during the chemical destruction. 

What else was he supposed to do other than grieve himself into the ground? There is no manual feeling for coming back to his city only to find it reduced to ruin, knowing he had left a hundred thousand ordinary people to face that tragedy alone.

When you both relocated to New York, he would disappear for days at a time with no way to reach him. He twitched constantly now too, and most nights barely even slept. There was no balance left in him. He was too careful one moment, too careless the next, with whatever equilibrium he once had having stripped itself clean off him. 

He takes on missions constantly now, refusing to step back even when they were minor enough to delegate to someone else in the team. With the bags under his eyes and the faint tremor that’s developed in his hands, you begin to realize he’s compensating for something he can’t outrun. 

You had seen the reports on his desk once. Then again, and again, and again after that. Printed case files and brittle news clippings scattered beneath his beautiful handwriting. Photographs that never looked too real until you noticed the warped edges of those buildings and the ash-heavy streets, figures caught mid-collapse, blistered and charred skin in the aftermath of a city long gone. You see them quite often, actually. 

And it was on this particularly dim night when Martin jolts awake from a horrific dream, gasping and shaking as sweat damped against his skin and tears clung to his lashes. You wake up beside him almost immediately and rub on his back, because though this was the first time he’s actually slept next to you since New York, you simply knew him all too well to not understand what was happening. 

“Hey, you’re okay. You’re okay.” You murmur in sweet breaths with your hand steady against his back and the other smoothing out his hair.

“This–” his voice breaks on an inhale, rough and too sharp in the dark. “This is why I don’t sleep with you as much anymore.” 

He swallows hard as he stares at nothing in particular, his eyes still too wide and far away. It takes him a moment to understand that his dreams have become so unnervingly vivid. He had barely dreamed at all until recently, which only made it more bizarre. The scene was too clear, the smell was so heavy, and the horrible image of standing above a thousand bodies as proof of what had been spared made him vomit most nights. It was a title he wanted ripped off his skin. 

“I always want you close, Tin. It doesn’t matter that you cry in your sleep now. You’re never too loud for me.” You see his fear and his grief, and can’t bear to flinch. You'd gladly be strong enough for both of you.

“I don’t even know what I’d done if I arrived a few hours earlier.” His voice breaks on the last word as he looks away.

“I don’t know–” he inhales sharply, and his breath catches in his throat because it hurts to take them sometimes. “He killed a whole city, Y/n.” 

And he had thought himself so small before this. Barely even one person. A hundred thousand people gone for the price of what was only half a life, that thought was always a suffocating one. 

“You have me.”  Your words come gentle, as they always do. “You always have me.” 

When you put him to bed, for the first time in a long while, his dreams were not all ruin and red noise this time. He saw butterflies wreathed in flame, clouds shaped like the waters of Atlantis, and the strange soft mercy of things becoming beautiful again in his sleep. And even if it was only for a little while, he believed it until he could breathe again: that he had you. 

Nightwing! Martin, who is but a lover at heart. Because hearts, stubborn things that they are, always remember their way back. And he could only hope yours could too. 

You stood at the center of Brother Blood’s corruption as a figure out of his own mind and judgment, no longer the radiant ally of the Titans, but the Confesor General and The Church’s fiercest weapon. At this exact point, Martin knew there was innocent blood on your hands and the wreckage of rebellions at your feet. You were a sight to behold, he’ll be damned. 

In all his training under the Batman himself, none of those tactical lessons ever taught him how to face the sight of you looking at him and not recognize who he was. 

“Stand down,” Diana shouts from behind him. And the battlefield rains with chaos, energy cracking in the most violent arcs. 

But how is he supposed to stand down? You were looking at him a lot differently, and he couldn’t even blame you for it. Not when Brother Blood has hollowed your memories out and your mind has now been twisted into something nearly unrecognizable. For the first time, he saw no softness in your eyes. No love when they looked at him. Martin wants to cry, as embarrassing as it is to admit. 

He’s not even wearing his own suit. The Batman armor fits him in the technical sense. It’s molded perfectly enough to move in, but it sits wrong on him everywhere else. It punches beneath his shoulders when he twists and drags against his ribs and chokes at the base of his neck as if the cowl itself is trying to close a hand around his throat. There’s no blue, nothing of him in it, and for one awful moment he wonders if the suit was part of what made him look too much like a ghost to you.  

He feels misplaced inside his own skin, but he has to find himself before he can find you beneath all this. It was always that simple: parts of you existed in him, and several of his in you. 

Now, Martin has talked down gods before. Monsters, world-ending threats, the most arrogant of geniuses, and every manner of terrible thing without a problem. But not you. Never you. He wasn’t going to start now.

“Hey gorgeous,” He sees your eyes narrow, as if something in his voice had scraped against a buried nerve. 

“You know, usually when you want my attention, dinner works just fine.” Martin, because he is Martin, because his humor is sometimes the only bridge over a very deep canyon, gives you a sly grin. Your head tilts almost curiously before you fire a bolt toward him. 

Martin barely managed to sidestep the strike, boots skidding against the hard ground as you came at him again before he could regain a bit more balance. Every motion is sharp and unnatural, unlike you, and he blocked what he could, but he wouldn’t hit back. He couldn’t do it even if he tried. 

“Got some moves, amnesia chic.” 

“Martin,” Juhoon warns over comms, the tone that tells him he thinks whatever he’s thinking would make a terrible plan. But he already knows, and risks are always easy to take when they’re for you. 

As the others fought to contain the creatures you commanded, Martin cut through the battlefield with singular focus until he stood directly before you. He loved you still. Loved you even now, even with all the terrible things he knows your hands had done. 

The awful thing about this feeling, he thought grimly, was that knowing you had been twisted into this did nothing to lessen what he felt for you. 

“Y/n, listen to me.” Martin steps forward.

Just look at me and love me, darling. Let it be this simple. 

“How…” Your voice fractured in confusion.  “How do you know that name?”

“I know everything about you.” He walks closer and says it as the simplest truth in the world.

“I guess I’ve always known, even before Psimon showed me the way things should be.” Your hair trickles of fire, and the air between tightens with something unsurely volatile.  But his gaze doesn’t falter, his feet certain.

“And I think you’ve felt the same way too.”

The battlefield around you feels distant now. The noise, the motion, and violence reduced to irrelevance compared to the decreasing space between you and him. 

“Call off your bloodhounds, Y/n. It’s me you want.” Who you’ve always wanted.

“From the very first moment we met.”

Martin could put a strike to your nerves and end this early, but he doesn’t. He won’t. He’s done the same to defeat his enemies a hundred times over, and you aren’t an enemy to defeat. You’re someone he wants to bring home. Christ, he still had that velvet box tucked away in the hidden corner of his desk drawer. Giving up on you wasn’t something twenty thousand dollars could ever buy him out of, he thinks, bitterly amused. 

So he does only what he knows, and leans in to kiss you. 

Maybe it was an ode to what you did to him the first time you both met. Where you had kissed him to learn his language, he kissed you now in the hopes that you would learn the way of his heart. And more than that, to find your way back to yourself. 

The grim light in your eyes begin to falter, and your hounds all die down and vanish into dusk. A few seconds later, like a breath you finally remember to take, you kiss him back. 

“Stop starin’, Gar.” Cyborg says a few feet away from the scene.

Beast Boy looks to him in turn and fist bumps the air. “Love conquers all baby!” 

When you pull away, Martin sees immediately that you look like yourself again. He waits helplessly for you to maybe jump into his arms so he can spin you around the way people write it in movies. Or maybe for you to kiss him again. Anything. 

Instead, you give him a good slap.

He holds his cheek, reddened by the way, in a hurtful caress before turning to you again expectantly. 

“Did you snap out of it, though?”

“Such is obvious.” And then you wrap your arms around him in a warm hug. 

Martin grins into your neck. “What can I say? I’m a really good kisser, huh?” 

Nightwing! Martin, who already knows, and has already admitted to himself in secret, that he probably did fall in love with you the day he met you. Like a dawn breaking over Bludhaven, he believes that across the entire multiverse, there was never a version where he didn’t fall in love all at once. 

And because of this, he is nervous of what your reply would be.

For the record, he had planned a fancy dinner. Everything was set: the reservation, the timing, they were all planned. Well, most of them. There was always a villain and always an interruption waiting in the clockworks to ruin everything. And tonight, like so many others, hadn’t bothered to be different. 

Which is how you and Martin end up on a rooftop instead of a candlelit table meant for two, the city spread out beneath you while you wait for the all-clear that the fight is finally over. The air still carries the aftershock of it all, and somewhere below, sirens wail and fade. 

A portion of your dress is torn at the waist, and Martin is no better. His suit is dusted with debris and grime, mask slightly askew and unmatching with his outfit. They both looked netirely too disheveled for hte kind of plans Martin had. 

What a bunch of third wheel extraordinaires, he thinks.

Not that he says it out loud. He’s trying very hard to be a man proposing marriage with dignity though in the middle of a crime scene.

“Yknow,” you started, floating over the ledge as you look out into the city. “You’ve been weird all night, Tin.” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Which is unfortunately a lie. He thinks its a very obvious one. 

“You’ve been checking your pockets every five minutes, and… twitching. Even with your punches.”

“I wanted to do this right.” he admits after a beat, running a hand through his hair anxiously. “I swear. But timing’s been a bitch to me the whole night.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Listen,” He reaches for his pockets and pulls out a velvet box, one that makes your heart leap a few beats to the future. 

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long long time.” He’s sweating as he says it, and there’s no quip ready to wipe it off or any charm he can hide behind.  

“I know this isn’t how it’s normally supposed to go. Haha–would’ve been better to say this with a fewer people trying to kill us.” He admits quietly, a breath of a laugh leaving him because he can’t quite believe his horrible timing tonight.

“But I don’t think there’s ever going to be a ‘right’ moment. Not in this life. Not with us, or them.” Martin jerks his head toward the rest of the Titans as they commit to their own interrogation. 

“So I’m just gonna say it here. I want us to be together. And as close as ‘together’ can get for both of us, I think this is the only step I haven’t taken yet.”

Another step closer, not closing distance to prepare for a fight tonight, but for something far more terrifying to him. 

He opens that velvet box that’s been weighing his pocket down all night.  Inside sits an orange citrine, cut with radiating lines that flare outward like a contained sunburst. WHen he looks up at you again, your eyes were something solar.

“Will you marry me?” 

The gem inside catches what little light there is, and his hand tightens slightly around the case like he’s afraid it might suddenly build up it’s weight. 

“Oh, Martin.” Your voice is soft and disarming, and when he puts the ring around your finger, he lets out the biggest smile of the night, and you share a kiss that sends a wave straight through his chest. 

“I want to love you to our ends too.” 

Nightwing! Martin, who can now say that he has seen a shooting star before. It came down years ago in the shape of a blazing woman, back when the wing of the night was but a robin bird in reckless and childish flight. A child and a fool. 

Looking back, that risk he took in reaching for that strange interstellar woman has been enough to show him a kind of beauty that existed beyond his own world, one that could’ve been as brief as a flash of light and gone before one could hold onto it. 

Because what else could you call it? To find something from the stars and discover it could laugh, and bruise, and love? 

You could compare it to the feeling of witnessing a God cry, or catching sight of the rarest species on a busy road. But Martin would be the argument the universe will keep losing to as it insists on you both as separate events. And if it won, he’d still find you in the sliver of a second between near-misses, in the opening that might appear and vanish just as quickly, again, and again, and again. 

He’d recognize you in any version of the world, at any age he might be, across every possible life that could have been written for him. But in this one, in this exact world and this exact timeline, he has a big wedding to plan and a beautiful woman to spend the rest of his life with. For once and for long, the cape, the cowl, and all his weird alien opps could sit this one out. 

After all, the Justice League has always lived by the saying that the greatest victory was still just getting to come home. 

writing for the DCU hurts my brain sm bc there are so many version of the story that I’m just like what the fuckkkk what do I follow SO i’ll just point out that this work in particular doesn’t really follow one versions but many :)) i strayed away from canon events a few times bc DCU kind of does dickory’s plot so dirty 💔 anyways hi guys ^•^ nightwing Martin my dream come true

[blushdarkberries]

now fuck u ai anon that keeps insisting I use ai bc LOOK 🫵🫵🫵 LOOK I HAVE A BUNCH OF KEYBOARD ERRORS I FORGOT TO CHECK 😹😹😹😹😹😹 CAN UR AI DO THAT?? BEAT THAT BSAT THAT

[jjuhyeons]

CANON EVENT ⟡ 박우주 (EPILOGUE)

암팡지다 ★ you’d spent the majority of your superhero career trying to avoid canon events. the dreaded, unchangeable moments that shaped every spider-person’s life. despite being told that there was nothing to be done about your fate, you took it into your own hands. you’d be the first spider to break the chain. then martin edwards park came along.

warnings ★ swearing, reader is such a loserrrrruhhhh she makes me sick (affectionate), mentions of bruises, cuts, scars, etc, kissing, like straight up smooching actually, the same amount of angst, death, and narrative haunting as part one.

genre ★ spiderwoman au, superhero au, slight 2000s au, strangers to friends, friends into lovers, romance, comedy, angst, action, spiderwoman!reader, mj!martin, bff!juhoon, martin x reader 

word count ★ 10.9k of 40k

notes ★ the epilogue is here!! please read part one before reading this for context on this part. otherwise, for readers who already did and are angrily waiting for a resolution, enjoy! this ending is a bit rushed but honestly i’m quite proud of it and i think it’s kinda cute… think of this as a cute little post-credits scene that only you see in the cinemas bcs that’s basically what it is <3 also thank you so much for all the love on part one!! you guys are all amazing ｡°(°.◜ᯅ◝°)°｡

listen to… me when i’m spider-man

발문 EPILOGUE

마지막 전투가 끝난 지 며칠 후…

…우주는 자신의 내부 싸움을 벌입니다.

A FEW DAYS AFTER THE LAST BATTLE…

…WOOJOO FIGHTS AN INTERNAL BATTLE OF HIS OWN.

It’s odd how easily someone can go from being accustomed to a person’s presence to being accustomed to the lack of it. How you’re used to hanging out with someone, used to seeing them every day, and after a while, if they don’t come back, you start getting used to that, too.

At least, that’s what Martin’s heard. He can’t relate for shit.

He’d been brooding over about what he’d said to you after that last fight with Noeul since the moment he walked out of that observatory in Namsan Tower. The words repeated over and over in his head, fighting with the emotions sitting in that frozen chasm in his chest. His heart, hard then with hatred and indignation, had softened, had started to pain, to ache after your presence, needing it like he needed air.

At first, he felt wronged. Of course he did. His girlfriend of nearly half a year had hidden such a big, dangerous secret from him, and her sloppy planning had almost gotten him thrown off Namsan Tower, had almost had his near-death excused as a suicide and nothing but. Tombstone’s men told him what would happen come morning.

Then, he felt angry. Less so than when he saw your face appear from under that mask, your pretty, bruised, bloodied face from under that torn red hood, but still livid. How could you? How could you have hidden this from him? What did you take him for? Some sort of… of idiot? Some sort of clueless mortal? He knew how to protect himself, and he’d be damned if he let you try to protect yourself without his help.

In the end, after a gruelling forty-eight hours of ruminating, after an interrogation from Woojin, who’d been so worried he nearly puked when he strolled into his dorm as if nothing had happened, Martin finally felt regret. Not because of his words. He meant those. He thought you were stupid for trying to handle everything by yourself. But because of the way he’d said them.

I mean, did he have to be such a dick about it?

He knew if you were here you’d have said yes, he needed to be. After all, his feelings were valid. But it was such a bizarre situation that he didn’t even want to sit and think about what might’ve been an appropriate reaction. All he wanted to do was see you again. But he couldn’t.

Because he was the one who had walked out.

His sister had been the one to check up on him when he first came home, because his parents had been worried far too much to even try and face him. God, he didn’t think he’d ever seen his mother more petrified than when he walked through that door, scared half to death and with several bruises littering his lanky body. She gave him the scolding of a lifetime, beat him worse with a rolled up newspaper than Tombstone’s own thugs had with much worse.

After a while, even her concern had gotten to be too much. So he went to the next place he could think of—Woojin’s dorm.

That was his first mistake. 

Because he’d forgotten that Woojin was ten times the worry wart his entire family was, combined.

“Eat,” he instructed, flicking the rim of Martin’s bowl from where it sat in front of him. Miyeokguk that he’d made from scratch; his grandma’s recipe, apparently. 

Martin didn’t answer, gaze merely flicking up wordlessly from where it had been fixed on his computer screen, opened on an empty document he didn’t have the heart to finish. Or start, for that matter. “Thanks, Jin. I’ll get to it, now.” He nodded to his friend, who had a backpack slung over one shoulder, his phone in one hand, baseball cap in the other. “You heading out?”

“Yup. Tutoring session with that dumbass French kid,” he said. “I’ll be back by, like, seven or so. Let me know if you need anything— and no, before you say you can get it yourself, you absolutely cannot. Don’t even think about it.” He turned and made the way to his front door, bidding him farewell with a quick salute. “Catch you later.”

Martin feebly parroted his words before turning back to his computer, the few words he’d managed to type out over the past month flickering back at him in that incensing Comic Sans typeface.

Spider-Woman has long been a staple in Seoul’s recent history, making her first appearance in the late summer of 2023 with the public takedown of Doctor Olivia Octavius, a scientist turned crime lord out for blood.

Since she came out into the public, she’s been the subject of widespread praise and ridicule, mostly regarding her public conduct and assumed rejection of societal norms in terms of crime fighting. In both cases, whether she’s presented as our messiah or our pariah, she is depicted as a larger than life figure.

My mission is to break that narrative, and to bring forth the girl behind the mask.

…And that was it. Nothing else. No other words had come to him in the three weeks since his professor had suggested the writing event he was now desperately trying to compete in. 

Part of why he couldn’t write is because he couldn’t complete a Spider-Woman piece without… you know, Spider-Woman. You couldn’t exactly interview someone you weren’t on speaking terms with. But for the most part, he couldn’t write because he couldn’t stop thinking about you. Not Spider-Woman. You. Even though those were the same person, the same girl, the same love of his life, you.

He sighed irritatedly, chair scraping the floor as he viciously raced up, bracing his palms flat against the sun-baked desk. He needed to get out, and he needed to get some fresh air. That’s all he needed. Some nice, natural oxygen that wasn’t permeated with Woojin’s expensive cologne, and maybe a coffee or three.

He ambled around the city without reason or direction, hands stuffed in his pockets. It had been a relatively chilly spring, temperatures lower this time than it had been the previous year. Cherry blossoms drifted through the wind, and immediately Martin thought of you.

You scrunched your nose in distaste, the fallen cherry blossom rested directly on the soft curve of your upper lip. “Blegh,” you said, trying to blow it away.

Martin could only laugh, equal parts amused and enchanted by the sight of you laying in his lap, the breeze ruffling your dress and the light blanket beneath you, desperately trying to rid yourself of the bothersome cherry blossom, as light and as pink as the chest of a pink robin.

It was almost unsettling, how his mind instantly jumped to you. Every time he saw something that even remotely reminded him of you, something popped into his mind. When he passed by a coffee place you used to frequent, he remembered the first time you’d gone together.

You were wearing jeans that day. Martin remembered because he’d slipped his hand in your back pocket, less to echo the iconic movie scene and more to initiate the closeness he always craved. You’d been standing in line, eyes scanning over the menu when you said, “It feels weird being here again.”

Martin raised a brow. “You’ve been here before?”

You stopped then, like you’d said too much. “Um… yeah. Once. With Juhoon. I didn’t remember when you mentioned it, but, looking at the menu… yeah. It seems pretty familiar.”

He hummed, merely placing his chin atop your head, thinking nothing more of it.

When he saw a family on his way to wherever his body wanted to be, he remembered that conversation you’d had one day about children.

“I wonder how babies experience the world,” Martin spoke into the calm silence. You’d been resting against his shoulder, your cheek pressed into the sharp bone, your arm slung around his waist, playing with the frayed edges of his shirt.

“It’s got to be terrifying for them,” you said. “I mean, everything is massive and everyone is loud and you keep crapping yourself for no reason. And also everyone wants to touch you without even asking if it’s okay.”

Martin snorted. “You been thinking about this, huh?”

“Briefly,” you shrugged.

He saw you even in places where you weren’t, where you never would’ve been before that moment. He saw you in the shadow that passed over the street as he crossed over. He heard you in the laughs of young girls nearby, probably joking about something stupid. He found you on the televisions replaying newsreels from Spider-Woman’s last public appearance, and where she may have disappeared to.

Good Lord. He was pathetic.

And he missed you so badly.

His legs carried him to the nearest subway station, the area bursting with activity as always. People hurried past one another, leapt over stairs and ducked behind closing doors, each going about their own, separate lives, brought together momentarily by the need for transport. A large screen sat between two printed advertisements, broadcasting The Daily Bugle’s afternoon scoop, the infuriating face of Jang Jaeseong making Martin’s lip curl in dislike. He knew the guy was his Journalism professor, but he could not resist the urge to shiver every time he saw his moustached face.

“Several reports have suggested that Namsan Tower has recently been used as the meeting point for Seoul’s resident lowlifes, namely crime lord Lee Yoojung—known more widely by his alias, Tombstone—and what looked to be a university student by the name of Min Noeul. The latter has been detained after being turned in by none other than this city’s own superhero, Spider-Woman, who, in related news, is being diligently pursued by our fearless journalists with a large bounty on her head.”

Martin resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Professor Jang had been on this train for as long as he knew him. In his mind, he’d be the one to catch and unmask ‘public disgrace’ Spider-Woman, when in reality he was the only one who saw an issue with her.

He took a seat on the bench which served as a waiting area for people who’d come too early for their train, or who truly just wanted to take a moment for themselves and sit down. 

A lot like he was now, actually. 

He was alone for the first few minutes, eyes trained straight ahead of him, focusing on everything at once and nothing at all. The only sound reaching his ears were the announcements of the woman calling out departure and arrival times in that calm, toneless, serene voice of hers. Then, after he’d been staring into the void for a while, an unfamiliar voice pulled him from his daze,

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Martin turned, and realised he had been joined by a curious stranger in the time he’d sat down. Who he, with a slight cringe, realised he hadn’t taken any notice of. He smiled softly, in that dismissive way overthinking teenagers did, and said, “Nah, it’s… it’s nothing.”

The stranger glanced at him from behind thin, silver-rimmed glasses. He was tanned, with a very faint five o’clock shadow resting on his cheeks. Wide brown eyes searched for Martin’s avoidant ones. “It doesn’t look like nothing. You look like you’re debating the fate of the world in there.”

Martin laughed, because— “I kind of am, actually.”

The admission lifted an unseen weight off his shoulders, just him saying those five words. Getting them out into the open.

The man quirked a brow. “Yeah?”

Maybe it was because Martin was stressed, and his mind was running several thousand kilometres per hour, and he was going dizzy with how much he missed you, or maybe the guy sitting beside him just had a really welcoming aura, but Martin said, “Yeah. I— I’ve been torn up about something. Like, really torn up. And I’ve got no idea what to do about it.”

He nodded, like, Continue.

“Okay, so, I won’t get into specifics, but, like, my girlfriend hid something from me. Something really important. Really, really important. And— and when I confronted her about it, she just freaked out and gave me a bunch of excuses as to why she didn’t tell me,” he said. “I walked out on her because I didn’t want to hear her excuses, ‘cause I was so tired and angry and it felt like she didn’t trust me or depend on me at all, and it just—” against his will, his voice cracked— “it hurt like hell, man. I haven’t spoken to her since.”

The stranger nodded, as if processing everything he’d been told. Which, truth be told… had been a bit of a mouthful. And something told him that wasn’t the end of it. “And…?”

“And I’m regretting it,” Martin confessed. “A lot. I feel like crap for ignoring her for so long, for not giving her a chance to explain herself properly. For… for everything.”

He hummed, pushing his glasses further up the bridge of his nose from where they’d slipped off. He tilted his head as if in consideration, and they fell into mutual silence. “I don’t think you’ve really got a problem I can solve,” he admitted gently.

Martin screwed his eyes shut, sighing. Perfect. Some mysterious guy came up to him on the subway offering a penny for his thoughts, which was almost always a sign that someone was a psychic, and he just told him he couldn’t help him.

The stranger eyed him curiously. “I also don’t think you’re telling me everything.” When Martin said nothing, he smiled. “You aren’t, are you? What aren’t you telling me?”

Martin glanced at him, weighing his options. He’d already shared so much with this guy. Why not just go all in?

It happened two days after he walked out.

Martin had been sitting in Woojin’s dorm, a few days before he officially decided he’d be staying there, laying on his bed and ruminating. His hair was a matted, knotted mess due to the fact that he hadn’t bothered to brush it since he got kidnapped, and his fingers trembled with how little he’d been able to eat. His appetite had disappeared just about as quickly as he himself had.

Woojin was out on a date, so Martin knew he was alone.

Which was why he froze when someone knocked on the door.

He sat up, propping himself up on his elbows, ears perked for the words that would surely come. He expected maybe one of Woojin’s other friends, perhaps a crazy ex-girlfriend making her monthly rounds.

Then you spoke.

“Hey, Tin.”

He nearly fell flat on his face with how quickly he rushed out of Woojin’s bed, stopping once he heard you pause. Just that second, those two words you said, in your softest, sweetest voice, the one you only used with him, was enough to knock the breath from his lungs. It sounded different from usual—more hesitant, sadder… more pained. He hated knowing that he was the cause of it.

“Martin,” you repeated, and he realised you were waiting for him to open the door and let you see his face. 

He couldn’t do that. Because he was still angry, as pitiful as you sounded. Because you’d still lied and avoided him, even when you had a reason to. Because he knew that if he opened that door and looked you in the eyes he’d forget why he was upset with you at all. Because he knew he’d give in and forgive you even when you’d done nothing to earn it.

“I know you’re in there. I can see your shadow moving around. And Woojin told me you’ve been crashing here.”

He froze, standing up straighter as if that would erase his shadow. 

He heard you sigh softly. Something thumped against the door; probably your shoulder, you leaning against it as you always did when you were bracing yourself for something. Rejection. Heartbreak. A confession. “Okay. I— I understand. You don’t have any reason to be listening to me. I just, uh… I just wanted to talk. I can do that with a door between us, if you’ll listen.”

He said nothing. Which meant he said yes.

“I’m, uh… God, this is hard. I’m sorry about how things ended. Between us. At the… tower. Yeah. I’m sorry. I— I can’t talk for too long, because I’ve got a class in, like, twenty minutes,” you said quickly, as if trying to convince yourself of why you couldn’t stay. “But I want you to know that I really am sorry. And that… you deserved better.”

He shut his eyes, swallowing a lump in his throat. It burned with unsung sorrows and tears needing to be cried. But he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

“I’m… I’m here, if you ever want to talk to me. I’m always here, if you’re ready to have me. Or just to talk to me. Or yell at me. Or— just— whatever you want to do to me. I’m here. Wherever or however you need me.”

He heard a shuffle outside the door; your feet against the floor, getting ready to leave. He wiped harshly at his burning eyes. Not now. Not while you could hear.

“And Tin?”

Nothing.

“I miss you. So, so much.”

And with a shaky sigh, you were gone.

Like he’d done in the days before, Martin shut his eyes as soon as he felt the tears wanting to fall. When he opened them again, red and rimmed with emotion, the stranger was staring at him, eyes narrowed in thought. A faint smile tugged on his lips, like he was in on something Martin didn’t know.

Except… “I think it’s pretty obvious you know what to do, kid. Don’t you?”

Martin exhaled, and with it came a relieved chuckle. Like the world had been lifted off his shoulders. Like life made sense again. “Yeah,” he breathed. “I do.”

일주일 후

A WEEK LATER

You were at your wit’s end. 

It had been nearly two weeks since you’d last seen Martin properly, and you were starting to go insane.

Despite that, despite wanting to go to him, despite needing to make it up to him, you had no idea how.

So, you did the next best thing: wallow in your own self pity until someone dragged you out of your dorm room by your ankle.

That someone happened to be Juhoon, who, for the nth time since you’d met, had grown sick and tired of your self-pitying antics.

The door of your room burst open, revealing your best friend staring at you with the fire of a thousand suns, stance wide and as intimidating as someone as pretty as him could be. You looked up from where you’d been rotting on your bed, eyes adjusting to the sudden wash of light; your curtains hadn’t been properly opened in ages. “Alright,” he said resolutely, “that’s it.”

“What’s what?” you said, groaning at the feeling of your cozy sheets being pulled from your body.

“You’re getting out of this dorm, whether you like it or not,” he said, fingers curling around your ankles as he turned his back to you. You yelped, grasping at air to try and get out of his hold as he picked you up, keeping you upside down against his back. He jumped up and down, effectively flinging you around your own room while you could do nothing but take it. “Come on. When was the last time you left your bed, huh? This place smells like stale cake and broken dreams. It’s disgusting and unlike you.”

You sighed, letting your arms fall over your head, knuckles brushing the floor. “Leave me be, Juhoon. I don’t deserve this pep talk.”

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re a desolate human being who treated all her friends like shit. But you know who else was?”

You already knew the answer. Noeul. And you’d shown her compassion. You’d told her to choose a better life. You’d turned her in instead of ending her life like she’d have done with you. You’d given her a second chance many probably felt she didn’t deserve.

“It’s not the same,” you tried.

Juhoon stilled, sighing irritably. He let you go, plopping you onto your feet. “You’re hopeless,” he said, shaking his head. “You literally saved the entire country from being turned into mutants and you’re sitting here wallowing because your boyfriend hasn’t spoken to you in a week.”

“He’s probably not my boyfriend anymore,” you muttered. “I’m pretty sure he hates me.”

Juhoon paused. Martin didn’t hate you. He knew that much from the conversations they’d had since the fight. Sure, he was livid. He felt betrayed, belittled that you hadn’t trusted him with your secret. But tough luck to him. You don’t just tell your boyfriend of four months that you’re a superhero. That’s not how these things worked.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” he asked.

You rushed to say, “Juhoon, don’t even—”

“His exhibition is this week, and—”

“No!”

“—I think it could really help if you went!”

“He didn’t invite me,” you protested. “It would be rude of me to go without being wanted there.”

Juhoon narrowed his eyes. “You’re lying.”

“Why the hell would I be lying?!”

He shook his head. “I don’t know how to prove it, but you’re definitely lying. No way Martin wouldn’t want you at the opening of his exhibition.”

“Well, believe it, because it’s true,” you said. “He hasn’t said anything to me this past week.”

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Then that’s what we need to be doing!” He turned, already rummaging through your desk in search of your phone. You whined in protest, trying to pull him out of your personal belongings. He merely persisted, pushing you off.

In the midst of the chaos, you narrowly missed the unmistakable sound of something being slipped under your door. You both froze, slowly turning to glance at the light brown envelope that now lay on your floor. You exchanged a silent look. 

A beat.

You barrelled towards the door, Juhoon following eagerly after, his hands hidden behind his back as you picked up the envelope. There was no address or name stamped on it, no indication that you may know whoever had sent you the letter that was surely inside. You ripped the envelope open, eagerly reaching for the folded lined paper inside.

You pored over its contents, stopping once you saw only four lines had been occupied. The familiar scrawl of your boyfriend’s handwriting made your heart nearly stop in your chest. There, before you, in permanent ink, were his first words to you since he walked out on you a week ago.

come to the opening. or don’t. i don’t care. – mj. 

Juhoon read it from over your shoulder, mouthing the words as he went. When he finished, he turned to you, breath hot on your cheek. “Well, now you have to go.”

You pushed him off you, yanking your door open and leaning into the hallway, turning your head to try and see if the messenger had already gone. You were met with silence and an empty hall—you’d missed him. Narrowly. By two seconds’ margin. Your face fell with disappointment; when you turned back into your room, Juhoon was already staring at you.

You could see the desire in his eyes before he even spoke. You started, “Jju, don’t even—”

“Time for a fashion show.”

Tuseokgi had you by the throat, a stinging, snarling mess hovering above you like an angel of death. His hands, closer to talons now, reached out for your mask. You grasped desperately at him, trying to push him off of you. “Don’t— please— please don’t take it off,” you said, voice barely above a whisper.

Noeul tugged at the remains of your mask. You grabbed her wrist, ripping her hands off you. “No. No. Get off me. Don’t even think of touching me!”

Before you could process what was happening next, a hand swung out to strike at Tuseokgi, stunning the mutant long enough that you could see the assailant’s face. Too sweet, too young, too clueless to be anyone but your Gyumin.

From the corner of your eye, you saw Martin rise slowly, rubbing at his temples. He blinked, registering how close you were to him and, like a fool, rushed forward to help you.

Your eyes widened. 

Gyumin.

Martin.

In moments like these, the brain couldn’t really distinguish between two equally terrifying events.

You shot up, eyes wide as you rose from your mattress, hair sticking to your forehead, broken out in a cold sweat. Your eyes darted around your dark room, mapping the space. Your desk sat in the corner, untouched. Your floor was occupied by a spare mattress and duvet you’d laid out for Juhoon, who’d insisted on staying the night with you, mostly because he’d sworn he’d see to it that you make it to the opening of Martin’s exhibition and not give you a single chance to escape.

You still remembered what Martin had looked like the first time you stayed the night at his dorm. He’d passed out on his pillow, permed hair a mess, splayed over his pillow like a knotted halo, mouth open in nocturnal bliss. He looked so peaceful, yet so… him.

Everything in your room was normal. No monsters under the bed, no villains around the corner. No dead bodies on your floor, no blood on the walls. You were still in one piece, though maybe a bit bruised, but that had become your normal at that point.

It was just a nightmare. 

It wasn’t real. At least, not the second bit.

You still remembered the day of Gyumin’s funeral. Whether in dreams or nightmares or simply memories, it was always fresh in your mind like an open wound. 

Sunrise came over Seoul as usual that morning, pale orange sky telling of a new day on the horizon. It had been a cooler spring than usual, the air blowing through your jacket like the winds of unwanted change, cold and harsh and unrelenting, ushering you on to continue with your life despite the odds. You wore black like everyone else.

The burial took longer than usual. It had taken his parents nearly a week to even accept the fact that he was injured beyond human repair, much less that the possibility of any repair had become nonexistent. It had taken you even longer to stop crying to deliver your section of his eulogy. 

Standing up there, protected and faraway, staring down at his family, his friends, all of whom had arrived hastily and without any notice or hesitation, you felt sick. Felt sick knowing that you were the last one standing and not him. Felt sick having to go on with your life knowing it was your fault. Felt sick knowing you were wearing borrowed clothes because you’d refused to change out of the ones stained with his blood for even a moment. Felt sick knowing, just a week ago, just before the service, you’d been staring down at his lifeless body, wishing it was you instead.

You had to attend a second funeral you went back to school that week; one the teachers had arranged in his honour, to celebrate a truly wonderful student, a kind child, a courageous boy who used his last breath to defend you, his best friend, from a crazed attacker.

That’s what you’d told them. That’s all you could tell them.

Candles were lit, pictures and flowers and notes placed down at the altar they’d made for him in the hallway outside his classroom. Your classroom. The one you’d once shared. The one you now had to walk to alone. 

The air was stale and stifling. Even Juhoon’s hand on your back couldn’t ground you, couldn’t keep you from running outside and emptying your lungs into the nearest potted plant outside the school entrance. Your throat was still too tight, still not relaxed enough for you to breathe comfortably, to breathe at all. 

You ran as fast and as far as your legs could carry you that day. Until you were away from that school, from your problems, from the sympathetic stares and sentiments you’d receive the moment you came back. And even when you did, you’d left that day in the past. You’d tried your absolute best. 

Unfortunately, your life liked to rotate like a kaleidoscope.

Which is how, just like after the funeral, you found yourself back home.

You didn’t grow up in a big house, nor did you actually spend much of your time there after you and your father relocated to Seoul. Yet, it always brought your ever-racing heartbeat to a gentler rhythm when you walked up the front steps and came face to face with the same wooden door you’d been staring into for most of your middle school years.

Your father was away in Jeju for work, so only your stepmother, Mirae, would be present for any conversations you might have wanted to have if you didn’t chicken out.

Juhoon had made you swear an oath that the detour wouldn’t make you late or end in you simply turning around and going back to your dorm, where he’d threatened he’d be waiting behind your door with a broom and a spray bottle which, thinking back on it now, just sounded like something he wanted to say because he wanted to scare you. What a weird best friend you had. Thank God you didn’t get stuck with someone who actually made sense most of the time.

You stood a few paces from the door, fingers flexing as you warred with yourself to approach it and knock. If you did, Mirae would surely open the door, and then you’d have no other option but to go in and have tea, and she’d drag you into a conversation that would, inevitably, end in you spilling all your tears along with several secrets you should definitely not be telling her.

You sighed to yourself. “Don’t be such a coward,” you chided, brows pulling into a frown. You were Spider-Woman, for goodness sake. You’d done far worse things than go to your stepmother for dating advice. This was supposed to be nothing.

Yet it felt like you were risking everything.

“Don’t be such a coward about what?”

You yelped, whirling around at the sound of a familiar voice coming from behind. Before you could stop yourself, your index and middle finger had closed over your palm, and you webbed Mirae’s farmer’s market purchases to the front of her fuzzy jumper.

She paused; glanced at the brown paper bags, then at you. At the bags, then you. 

“I suppose I’ll need more than one explanation,” she guessed, “from your expression.”

Safe to say, you told her everything.

You started off with the easiest bit; that you were a superhero who regularly waged her life for the greater good and occasionally travelled from one dimension to another trying to save the universe.

She nodded, listening intently to the words as they spilled clumsily from your mouth, hands clasped over her lap, grocery bags set down from where she’d pulled you to sit next to her right on the front steps of your house. “Hmm.” She glanced at you through the corner of her eye, expression glimmering with something. “I’d had my suspicions for quite a while, but I’m glad you came out and told me yourself.”

You froze. “What?”

She turned to you fully, smiling slyly. The same way you did when you’d caught someone ought. “You’re not very good at hiding things, you know? I’ve had to wash your Spider suit at least more than once after I came into your room and found it crammed under a pillow, or something.”

“Oh.”

“Yes. Oh. Now, you said you had two things you wanted to discuss with me. What was the other one?”

You hesitated. Then, when deliberating over how you could perfectly phrase how badly you’d screwed up with your second and last chance at love got to be too much, led to virtually nowhere, you hung your head between your knees, sighing heavily. 

“I screwed up. Big time. And I have absolutely no damn idea how to fix it.”

You spent the next twenty or so minutes recounting the past week, and every other moment leading up to it. The dates you missed to go after Noeul, the excuses you’d made to both yourself and to Martin to justify why you kept leaving. You told her about the radio silence and the explosive fight, about him getting kidnapped and what happened in Seoul Station. You told her about Namsan Tower and the moments afterwards, all until she’d gotten the full story, drawn the full picture, and spent more time than was comfortable for you in dead silence. 

Then, after nearly five minutes of nothing, she hummed. “Hmm. That’s quite the situation you’ve found yourself in.”

“No shit,” you sighed.

She smacked your arm. “Ah—! Language. You may almost be eighteen, young lady, but that is no reason for you to start swearing like a sailor.”

You pouted. “Yes, Eomma.”

She smiled, pleased with herself. “Now, regarding the sticky situation at hand… I feel you might not be telling me everything. You’re leaving out important details.”

Maybe.

When you heard your landline ringing earlier that week, you’d run immediately to it, eager to hear Martin’s voice. If your Spider sense was good for anything, it was to spot him in a sea of people, to know exactly when it was him calling you. To memorise him inside and out, body and soul, until you started to forget which traits belonged to you and which belonged to him.

You picked it up, waiting with bated breath to hear Martin’s voice. Your ears pricked at the sound of him breathing on the other line—the sound gentle, like an autumn breeze. You wished you could feel it on your face again, wished you could hear his voice from next to your ear, not through a line with an entire city separating you from him. You hadn’t a care in the world how desperate that sounded.

It never came. He never spoke. He hung up the phone before he could say anything he would inevitably regret. But he’d called you. And if he’d called to break up with you, he would’ve done it without a second thought. 

She raised her chin, as if having come to a realisation. “…Because you already know what you need to do, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” you breathed. “I do.”

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was located in Hannam-dong, nearly an hour away from the SNU campus. It was a small, brutal white building in Hannam-dong, home to a restaurant, exhibition space, and a fashion collection on the top floor.

It was busy by the time you arrived, only a few minutes after the grand opening. A chill drifted through the night air, ruffled your skirt as you approached the entrance.

Warm lights beckoned you inside, telling of a comfortable, relaxed atmosphere. 

You stopped just short of the steps leading inside, turning to Gyumin with apprehension. You couldn’t even question why you were seeing him there, in that moment, still beaten and bruised, half-blind in one eye like an animal that had lost a fight. “I’m scared,” you admitted, struggling to keep the wobble out of your voice. “I mean— I’ve already screwed it up so badly with him—”

“So it can’t get any worse,” he interrupted, stoic. His lips quirked upward in a soft show of understanding, his eyes said, I know. It’s fine. Your Gyumin. Once upon a time, he’d been the glue to hold you together.

But now, it was your turn to keep yourself in one piece.

“You’re right,” you said, nodding. Your neck still ached from the fight. “If he really hated me, he wouldn’t have invited me here tonight.”

“He could never hate you,” he murmured.

You turned, missing his last words. “What?”

But he was already gone.

Now it was just you. You, your thoughts, and the scars you bore. You exhaled, steeling your nerves. Juhoon had told you before coming to just walk in and get it over with; because once you were inside, there was no turning back. You’d have to face Martin. You’d do it scared if you had to.

It was crowded when you entered, the chatter of people taking over your senses one by one. Next came the smells, paint and printer ink and finger food being passed around on trays by waiters moving faster than light. Then came the sights. First, you noticed the people. There were a lot of them, many of them Martin’s schoolmates from Hanyang, many more old friends from Siryeok. There were professionals there, as well, other photographers and journalists and reporters with massive cameras and foam microphones.

Everyone was well dressed, clean cut and unbruised, while you very much were cut and bruised. Your denim skirt did nothing to hide the scars littering your legs, your white knit top doing little to protect you from peoples’ critical stares. Your hair was unruly, untamed and untouched. But then, that was you, wasn’t it? Exposed, scarred, untamed. Why would you ever try to be anything else?

You wandered through the exhibit, eyes catching on all the different photos on display. All the familiar sights, scenes, and memories from the past four months—and before that. It began, what looked to be, a year ago, with Martin and Woojin standing in front of the school gates at Siryeok, their parents and siblings at their sides. Then, slowly, picture by picture, it became more recent. A picture from early February, Martin’s reflection posed in his mirror, his brand-new camera in his hands. Shots from in-between leaves, families and animals and… you. That night you asked about the newspaper. The night you found out about his interest in Spider-Woman. All the days in-between, where you got to know one another, some from the festival, some from other, random days you decided to hang out. You at the park. Both your shadows reflected on the pavement, the sun shining brightly behind you. The corner of your face pressed against his, only your eyes in the frame, the crinkle of your lids as you smiled.

You and Juhoon, as you tried to wrestle a basketball from each other’s hands. Woojin and Martin again, this time in a picture you’d taken with your own camera, all grainy film and romantic light. Spider-Woman made a few appearances as well, shot at different angles, different days of the year, in different states of mind. 

And lastly, in the very centre of the exhibition, cast in a pale blue light from above—seven figures, smiling widely on the soccer pitch at Siryeok. You, Martin, Juhoon, Seonghyeon, Keonho, Mrs Lee, and Noeul. All a little different, a little younger, a little less jaded.

“I never knew Martin was quite so fond of you.”

You turned at the sound of a familiar voice, before wondering to yourself how she could’ve possibly been familiar, because when your gaze settled on her, you realised you’d never seen the woman in front of you before. Martin’s mother smiled at you from a few paces behind you, gaze heavy-lidded and warm. You could see the resemblance between her and her children clear as day. The gentle eyes, the tanned skin. 

You sputtered for a reply, then, giving up on trying to speak, you simply bowed. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s a big honour to have been invited here.”

She said nothing of the mess on your face. “I’m sure. Woojoo means a lot to you, doesn’t he?”

Your throat tightened, but you nodded nonetheless. “Yes, he does. He means the world to me, Mrs Park.”

She shook her head, disapproving of the formality. “Please, call me ‘Mother’. I can’t stand the thought of my son’s girlfriend calling me anything but.”

You faltered. “Are you sure? Because if you aren’t—”

“No, no, nonsense,” she dismissed with a smile. “If my son’s girlfriend is as good as my daughter, I’m as good as your mother.”

You couldn’t fight the smile that followed her words. You bowed to her again, deeper this time, wiping the tears from your eyes before they could fall. She beheld you with something akin to care, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Eomma, I hope you’re not scaring my girlfriend away.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” Mrs Park chided, smacking her approaching son on the arm. She turned to you, eyes expectant. “I’m not scaring you away, am I?”

“Not at all,” you laughed softly, shaking your head. You gingerly lifted your head to meet Martin’s gaze, only to find him already staring. “It’s— I’m… it’s fine.”

Against all your expectations, he smiled. “That’s good.” He momentarily turned back to his mother, crouching down to whisper in her ear, “Could we get a moment alone, please?”

Her eyes widened in understanding, and she sent the two of you a knowing look before parting from you with little more than a bow, walking off to go find someone else to talk to.

Once the two of you were alone, the atmosphere was reduced to awkward silence, tension thick enough to cut through. You didn’t miss Martin’s gaze on you, could feel his eyes sweep over your form, over the scars and imperfections, the curls and twists, the swells and cinches of your body. You would’ve admired him just as much if you hadn’t been afraid of meeting his eyes in the process. Unlike the others, who were dressed to the nines in suits and gowns, he wore his favourite pair of jeans and signature bomber jacket, camera slung around his neck as always. It made you feel a bit better about the casual approach you’d taken. Even when separated, you thought alike.

The first thing he said to you was, “You came.” His voice was soft, betraying no surprise or disappointment.

“You invited me,” you replied. Your voice sounded small in your own ears.

He tilted his head. “Well, you didn’t need to come. But… I’m glad you did.”

You lifted your head to finally meet his eyes. The distance between you was smaller than you’d thought. “You are?”

“‘Course I am. Every artist needs their biggest fan at their first important event.”

You chuckled breathily. “Yeah. I guess you do, don’t you? Wouldn’t have known what to do without me.”

“Exactly,” he smiled. Then, his face softened with concern. It was faint, almost impossible to see, but it was there. “Are you okay? You look…”

You smiled, and the blister that had formed in the corner of your mouth burnt with pain. You definitely got the short end of the stick between the two of you. “Like shit? Yeah. I feel like it, too. But I’ll be fine. I’m more concerned about you, right now. I mean, look at you.” You reached up, thumb brushing the green bruise on his forehead. “You’re all cut up, and—”

“I’m fine,” he interjected, shaking his head as if his lip hadn’t been split open. 

A small pause followed. Martin ducked his head. “Listen, about last week—”

“No, don’t even apologise—”

“But what I did was shitty, and—”

“It was my fault, okay? Not y—”

“Yeah, but I could’ve at least made it better by not walking out—”

“I completely understand why you did what you did, so don’t even—”

“Okay. Hold up. Pause.” He shook his head, scrubbing a hand over his face. “We’re just gonna drive each other crazy trying to have a conversation like this. Let’s just— all the guests are settled, no one’s gonna ask me any more questions about why there are so many pictures of Spider-Woman on display, so let’s… go, okay?”

Your brows raised in question. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. It’s getting stuffy, anyway,” he dismissed. Without a second thought, he held out his hand for you to take, wriggling his lean fingers invitingly. “Come on. Let’s blow this joint.”

You didn’t need to be told twice.

Wausan-ro was quiet when you and Martin stopped in front of the familiar restaurant block, breathless from running from the station. His hand was clasped around yours all the while, the warmth from his palm contrasted by the icy chill of the rings on his fingers.

You’d narrowly avoided getting entrapped in a conversation by Martin’s photography teacher—Jang Jaeseong, also known as The Daily Bugle’s most infamous reporter and the most widely known critic of Spider-Woman—an older man who was convinced he’d met you before.

You stopped in front of the same restaurant you’d had your first date, walking until you reached the pavement. Then, Martin plopped down onto the sidewalk, pulling you down with him.

The silence that came afterwards was different from the previous ones, more tense, more charged than before. A silent reminder hung in the air; you were alone now. He could drop any façades expected of him in public.

He didn’t break the silence, so for the first time, you took it upon yourself to.

“I’m sorry about what happened,” you said. “And before you hijack my apology and make it about how you’re actually wrong, because I know you will, just… let me say this.” 

He merely stared at you, waiting for you to continue.

“Being a superhero is hard. Being the partner of a superhero is even more difficult.” You sighed. “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want to open up that world of danger to you. I wanted to tell you. God, I wanted to tell you so badly it hurt. I wanted you to be able to trust me, and to know where I disappeared off to. But I just couldn’t expose you to that. And yet, even when I tried my best to keep my two lives separate, I still messed it up. I still let you get hurt, because I was being selfish, and…” 

“Hey, shh,” he said, reaching up to wipe tears you didn’t realise had started falling. “It’s okay. I…” His jaw clicked, as if the next words physically struggled to come out. “I overreacted, too. This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” he added quickly, and you nodded immediately. He was under no obligation to do so, and you wouldn’t force him to. “I— I still think it was screwed up that you didn’t tell me anything. I still think you have a lot to answer for.”

You hung your head. There was no denying it. He’s right. 

“…But I want you to tell me on your own time.”

So, you told him. You told him everything. From the first day you were bitten to the night you lost Gyumin, from your first villain to the days leading up to your final fight with Noeul. You spared him no detail—gave him the whole picture, spider sweat and natural webs and everything. You told him about how Juhoon was there for you since the first day, how you couldn’t be there for him the same way. You told him about your first love, about your predestined fate, and how you couldn’t do anything about it without putting the entire world at risk.

You told him about Gyumin, how scared his death had made you in the face of a second chance at love. How he’d followed you to Seoul Station that night, how he hadn’t gone back home. How villains didn’t care about bystanders, how that night with Noeul echoed everything that had happened nearly three years ago. How you couldn’t stand to see it happen a second time.

And, he listened. He listened so well. His eyes remained fixed on your face the entire time, gaze soft and trying so desperately to understand what you were trying to tell him. He held you, wiped away your tears, and let you hide your face in his jacket when things got ugly. He stayed, and listened, and nodded, and got what he’d been wanting from the beginning. You, in your entirety, with all the unsavoury, scarred bits, all the gory details and heartbreaking stories. 

You were about to tell him about your trip across the spiderverse before he gently put his hands on your knees, signalling for you to let him speak. “Okay, you’ve been answering every question I have, and I really want you to keep going, but I am also starving. I haven’t eaten since this morning, and if I have to take another second sitting outside of Seoul’s best pizza place without stuffing my face, I am literally going to die.”

You laughed through your tears, standing up with him as he led you inside.

About twenty minutes, a round of sodas, two massive pizzas and a recount of your life since 2023 later, Martin nearly lost his shit.

“So you’re telling me there are other universes in which different versions of you are Spider-Woman? Or Spider-Man? And you’ve travelled to different dimensions before? And there’s a punk Spider-Man? And you used to be part of a secret society that gave you a special watch to travel between dimensions? All before sixteen?”

You smiled, nodding.

“And there’s, like, some sort of magical thing tying all y’all’s lives together, called The Canon, that, if those events included in it don’t happen, your universe collapses?”

“Or the entire space time continuum,” you corrected.

“Damn,” he said, stunned. “And the… your canon events. They’re done?”

You shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like I’m caught up, but… I might have to do some asking around. I know there’s a canon event I’m missing from the list I gave you, but I can’t remember it now.”

“Aw,” he pouted. “That’s a bummer. But, uh…” He glanced at you conspiratorially, “…boyfriends of Spiders don’t maybe get, like, free passes to different dimensions, right?”

You snickered. “You’re still my boyfriend, huh?”

Martin scoffed. “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I was always still your boyfriend. Now tell me—” he took a sip of his soda, eyes wide— “will I get to meet your punk best friends, yes or no?”

You hummed, considering his enquiry. “Well, Juhoon did say he’s been missing Mumbattan.”

“Oh, come on! Juhoon got to go dimension-hopping before me?” Martin complained.

“Only because I accidentally gave him my watch to look after,” you corrected, “and he got trigger happy and pressed a button he shouldn’t have pressed. No other reason.”

“Okay, okay… but for real, do I get to go one day?”

“…Shut up and eat your gross fruit pizza.”

“Do not be hating on Hawaiian like that!”

The night passed in a similarly amiable fashion, the two of you exchanging stories and jokes, smiles and secret glances from over the rims of your glasses. It mostly consisted of you telling each other about your lives up until that moment, no details wasted. 

At some point, as the drinks flowed and conversation ebbed, Martin glanced at you, differently from before. Earnestly. Gently. Circling his hands around the hot mug of coffee in front of him, because it had gotten to that point. “What’s it like… doing this, all the time?” he asked.

You paused in consideration. Then, “Honestly? It’s hard. It’s really, really hard. Sometimes I question why I even do it. And then…” You shrugged. “I see a family reunited after I saved them, and I remember. I look out to the city at night, and it all makes sense. I—” your voice cracked, wobbled with emotion— “I see my friends, my family, I see you, and… I have the strength to keep going.”

Martin kept his eyes on you, listening intently.

“I need to keep going anyway,” you said. “As Spider-Woman, no matter how many hits I take, I always have to get back up. But sometimes… sometimes it’s nice being reminded that I have more than one reason to.”

“Am I one of them?” Martin asked softly, though he already knew the answer.

You shook your head. “You’re the first one.”

He didn’t smile; though you could see, in his eyes, in the way he looked at you. It meant more to him than he’d say. Maybe because it was too intimate to properly express in words. Maybe because this level of vulnerability left people speechless.

“You’re my reason, too,” he murmured.

My reason to get back up, no matter how many hits I take. My reason to stay focused, no matter the task at hand. My reason to open up, no matter how difficult it is at that moment. My reason to keep trying, to keep doing, to keep giving, to keep going.

When hours passed by and you finally settled your bill, you found yourselves outside again, caught between going back to the gallery and staying right where you were. Martin stood just outside the door, hands shoved in his pockets. He glanced at you expectantly, as if you’d have the answer to whichever questions he had.

“You wanna go back and let Mr Jang bother you some more?” he said. You felt like he’d be teasing you a lot more about him since you revealed he’d always suspected you were Spider-Woman for no reason besides his own paranoia.

You hummed. “I think it’s more important that you get back to your own exhibition.”

He shook his head. “It’s showing for another week. I don’t need to be there tonight.”

Nonetheless, you stepped out from under the overhang, and Martin narrowly avoided walking into some scaffolding a few metres away, where a new restaurant was being built. It looked like a shawarma place, maybe.

You pulled him closer by your web, the sticky substance caught onto his hip. He yelped, surprised by the sudden sensation. 

“Watch out for the scaffolding,” was all you said.

You made it a few more paces before you realised that Martin hadn’t moved a centimetre since you’d shielded him from hitting his head. Turning around, you saw him still at the base of the scaffolding, glancing up at the wooden plank he’d almost bumped into.

You could see the cogs turning in his head. “What are you plotting, Woojoo?”

He didn’t look at you when he said, “I wanna try something.”

In a wholly unexpected moment, Martin leapt up, hoisting himself onto the scaffolding with a grunt of effort. You rushed forward, instinct taking over the moment you saw him flail. “Don’t worry!” he told you breathlessly. “I think I know what I’m doing.”

You think?

So you stood back and watched as Martin hooked his legs over a metal pole hanging above him, and found himself hanging upside down, facing you. His body shook with the exertion, but he extended his arms towards you, beckoning you closer. “C’mere.”

You raised a brow, sceptical. “What are you planning?”

You remembered telling him about the upside-down kiss that happened in every universe. A Spider hanging from scaffolding, kissing their Gwen for the first time. But this… this setup was a bit different. Martin smiled, simply gesturing again for you to come. You never would get used to that sight; your heart still acted as if you were seeing him smile for the first time whenever he did. God, he was so pretty.

You approached him hesitantly, until he reached for your belt loop and pulled you closer. From this angle, you had to crouch in the slightest to be eye-level with him, though his gaze was focused on your lips. His shirt rode up—down?—a bit, exposing his navel, and he tried to hold back a laugh when you kept it up for him.

Alright. Let’s do this one last time. Seriously. 

You cupped his face as best as you could from that angle, letting him draw closer until his lips brushed yours. Your first kiss with Martin Edwards Park was sweet, and swift, mostly due to the fact that his core was burning from the strain his odd angle provided. His lips were soft, plush and pillowy against your own, tasting of sugar and the scented lip balm he swore by. His hair brushed your chin, tickling the sensitive skin.

You laughed into the kiss, your nose bumping his chin in the process. He simply pulled you closer, and kissed you until he physically couldn’t anymore. And by that I mean his legs finally gave out and you had to catch him, making sure he didn’t concuss himself seconds after your first kiss.

When you were sixteen, you were bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last two and a half years, you’d been your dimension’s one and only, very flawed Spider-Woman.

He shakily got to his feet, watching as you laughed at him, your pretty face scrunching up with joy. So, so pretty. He shook his head, already reaching out for you again, pulling you closer until your chest was flush against his, his hand resting easily in the small of your back. He kissed you for a second time, this time slower, calmer, deeper, with the confidence of someone who knew he was exactly what you wanted.

“I kinda like that you’re stronger than me,” he admitted once he’d pulled away, simpering.

You scoffed a laugh, playfully smacking his cheek, though it was little more than your hand brushing his skin, the action more affectionate than anything. Not really using your strength. Just teasing your Martin. “You’re weird.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You love it.”

“Yeah. I love you.”

He froze. “What?”

You took a step back, grinning. “What? I didn’t say anything.”

Martin shook his head. “No, I’m pretty sure you—”

“The wind is really weird here, and—”

When you turned to leave, to speedwalk to safety, to leave him in shocked silence, Martin didn’t even let you walk five paces before he had you by the belt loop again, turning you around to face him.

His nose brushed yours with how close he was. “I love you, too, loser.”

I think you know the rest.

After winning Professor Jang’s writing competition and having his first exhibition, Martin went on to get an internship at The Daily Bugle as a photographer and writer—the paper’s resident Spider-Woman fanatic who seemed to know a bit too much than was normal for a civilian.

He got in-depth reports about new stories involving you, snapped pictures that seemed to be the sort of close that a simple zoomed-in camera couldn’t capture, all while being zipped across the city on dates and other such excursions with you. He helped you out on cases when Juhoon was too busy with schoolwork, or when he simply wanted to take a step back and make you see how much effort he put into being your guy in the chair, and he enjoyed it a bit too much. So much so that, the last time he helped you catch a big bad, Juhoon had ushered him out of his chair and said, “Okay, your help is no longer needed here. You can go back to being her boyfriend.”

Your life similarly gained some direction. You may not have known what exactly what you wanted to do with your life, but you had finally found something you were good at, had finally found something that you could imagine yourself doing, had finally found someone you were content with spending it with.

You only remembered your last canon event months later, when spring had gone from summer to autumn, when the leaves had changed colours and you’d become an amalgamation of the old and new parts of your life.

You saved the city, saved the city some more, and over and over again until you lost count. And no matter how many hits you took, you always got back up.

The memory popped into your head while you were out with school friends—Juhoon, Seonghyeon, Martin, and Woojin from Siryeok; Iroha, Ella, and Hyein from your department at SNU—in a small, warmly lit Chinese restaurant on Wausan-ro. You’d been in the middle of digging through your purse in search of incriminating evidence that Juhoon was indeed emo in middle school, when your fingers closed around a crumpled piece of paper you’d long forgotten of.

You finally started focusing on university, and found your niche. Fashion, a major which was surprisingly enough caused by your spider-like sewing skills and eye for colours.  

Iroha snickered softly at the sight of you rummaging through your purse. “So messy,” she chided, narrowing her eyes in amusement at the sight across from her.

“You should see what her room looks like,” Juhoon said dryly.

That’s how you’d met your new friends who, by the way, were all the rage when it came to hangouts with your arguably odd confidants.

You took it out curiously and, absently placing the polaroid of Juhoon with his hair combed over his eyes on the table—much to his horror—read the note.

come to the opening. or don’t. i don’t care. – mj.

MJ…

“Don’t give up yet, kid. I thought I ruined everything by walking out on MJ, and in the end, she took me back when I was ready. Look at us now!”

“Really?” you asked, glancing at him and the squirming baby in his arms curiously. “She gave you a second chance?”

“Hell yeah! I mean— Ah, crap. I swore in front of the kid.”

You hummed, none the wiser to his parental struggle. “Thanks for that. I, uh, don’t think I’ll be trying to have a second chance at love just yet, but if I ever do, I’ll make sure to swing by and say thanks.”

You frowned, leaning into Martin amidst the jeers and cackles coming from your friends, Juhoon desperately trying to defend himself. His eyes were wide with indignation, quite uncharacteristically for someone as nonchalant as himself. “Have your initials always been MJ?”

You learnt how to love again. It was a little hard, adjusting to it. Your new life demanded a lot of the attention you’d been pouring into your past life—old habits, old memories, old demons that you couldn’t bring yourself to forget. 

He glanced at you oddly, and in the back of your mind, you could remember reading his name a few times in the past. It hadn’t stuck back then, clearly. “Uh, yeah? Martin Jacob Edwards.” He laughed softly, eyes narrowing in feigned, joking confusion. After all this time, he still smelled of cologne and printer ink. “It’s been my name since I was born, I’m pretty sure. Why do you ask?”

You shook your head, unable to control the smile that overtook your features. Martin Jacob Edwards. The name was familiar, and you found yourself repeating it after he’d told you his full name. Martin Jacob Edwards.

The same Martin you’d met several months before in the middle of a tech aisle on a late-night shopping trip.

“Anyway, do I… know you? You look kind of familiar. Do you go to Siryeok Academy?”

The same Martin you’d grown close to over the course of the following weeks by joining the school paper after your best friend had forced you to.

“Would you have any idea where we could go to join? Somewhere to sign up, maybe?”

“Uh, yeah, actually, I do. I could just introduce you guys at the next meeting, and we can take things from there. The team has a meeting once a week, and you guys can just jump in whenever. We’ll probably talk specifics after that.”

The same Martin who’d confided in you how big of a fan he was of you without knowing you were his hero.

“I’m not even trying to find out who’s behind the mask. I just want to talk to her. To ask her… what it’s like, doing what she does, every day. How she does it. What keeps her going. I mean, is she like us? Is she a normal teenager? Does she have a family? Does she not? Is that the reason why she protects other people, because she couldn’t protect the people she loved?”

The same Martin who’d asked you out on a date because he’d simply felt so entranced by you, unexplainably so.

“Anytime before sunset is fine. I just think we should get a bite to eat, and then… I dunno… see where the night takes us?”

The same Martin who, over the course of several months up until this very moment, had stayed by your side—perhaps not unwaveringly, but as best as he could with the time and knowledge he had, which was all you really needed.

“No reason.” You pressed a chaste kiss to his lips, and when you pulled away, his eyes had widened in polite surprise, still adorably puckered. “I was just wondering.”

But you opened yourself up to new people, new experiences, when you realised that both of your worlds—familiar and alien, old and new—could coexist seamlessly, no tragedy needed.

He kissed you back then, taking back the opportunity he missed to savour the feeling of your lips on his. “Alright,” he said, pulling away. His arm rested easily around your shoulder. “If you say so.”

You also finally found your MJ.

THE END!

taglist @teacuplps @hyuneskkami @cranialberry @ramenoil @pearlywhitefics @kaikaikoi @r0ckst4rjk

[blushdarkberries]

genuinely lost it when I read ts que mari’s real time reactions to masterpiece by pooka 😭

the first meeting was so cute im genuinely so giddy rn. martin js a chill guy

lmao reader so funny ofc hed be bad at sports 😭

i agree martin IS the most beautiful man on the planet. JUHOON THE OVERPROTECTIVE FRIEND OFC IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE

martin wanting to find out who spider woman is JUST TO GET COFFEE AND TALK IM FERLAJLRAJWTJLAWJTOIWJTOJTJSOIGJLKJTROJETIJIT

WHAT THEFCUKKK IM GOING CRAZY

AHAHAH WAIT MY THROATS SO TIGHT RN I CANT SCREAM IM IN A LIBRARY BUT JUST KNOW IM FEELING SO QUEASY RN MAJTHSOITOTJD

y/n so shady oh ik she likes that he's obsessed w her omg pooka ur making me feel so giddy over them 🤪🙈

i love how detailed the spiderverse lore is in this like all the specifics regarding the science of it all and the research and the villain backstories honestly the pacing is so well done and i love how much context im getting for literally everything thats happening bc im not rly that well versed with the whole spiderman universe but other than this being a great fic its also v informative ^•^

"There's a lot of my world I still wanna show you." mama im crying martin is so smooth where does he learn it from 😛

martin with his i want i want i want OH i love a man thats so sure of himself

opinion on aus? martin u dk half of it man. also hobie mention I CHEERED 📣📣📣🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂

ALEXA PLAY BOYFRIEND BY JUSTIN BIEBER MARTIN FINALLY BAGGED IT🤩🤩🥳

I KNEW NOEUL WAS SUS I KNEW IT SINCE THE START I FUCKING KNEW IT *points to my imaginary whiteboard* MY BRAIN DOUBTED ME A LOT BUT IN THE END I STILL PREDICTED IT

im in the part where yn is visiting gyu and like no lie im just tearning tf up like a loser bitch rn 🥲

when she talked to gyu about martin i cried even harder she cares for him so much

"All you had was Martin. Lovely, adoring,, mortal Martin." and what if this was my last straw

so like i couldn't even write anything when it got to that part after bc i was so locked in u dont even know and then yea the whole fight and the ENDING?? TAKE ME TF OUT PLEASE

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

when martin hung on that scaffolding 😹 and 😹 did the upside down kiss 😹 "cmere" 😹 U WANT ME DEAD 😹😹😹

martin Jacob Edwards... Jacob... Edward... r u thinking what im thinking… 🧛🐺

"The same Martin who, over the course of several months up until this very moment, had stayed by your side—perhaps not unwaveringly, but as best as he could with the time and knowledge he had, which was all you really needed." mama theyre just a bunch of kids that love each other but maybe love is all u rly need to make it to forever ☹️🩷

[hollyoongs]

IVY - FRANK OCEAN : I'LL LOVE YOU LATER (1/2)

SYNOPSIS: Growing up with neighbors was normal—everyone had them: shared fences, the same narrow streets, the same walk to school every morning. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything. That’s what Juhoon believed when you first moved next door. He didn’t even realize when your lives begin to intertwine in ways neither of you fully understands. Years pass, feelings shift, and the memories of who you used to be together linger softer than either of you expected. Some things only make sense when it’s already too late—so when Juhoon finally looks back at everything you shared, he can’t help but wonder… when did everything flip? ꒱ ↷ ℰditoral ! 𓂂

W.C: +19.9k

─────⠀neighbors to ???, dual perspective, coming-of-age, early 1960s south korea setting, quiet first love, painfully slow realization of feelings from one of them, nostalgic atmosphere, traditional ways of showing love, restrained teen romance, emotional tension, soft yearning, growing up together, bittersweet memories, regret and reflection, minimal physical affection, mention of ILLIT member (Wonhee and Yunah) and CORTIS members, FLIPPED movie inspired themes (but it's not truly the moive Flipped), mention of loss, some historical context. ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIRST LANGUAGE, so you might see a lot of words repeated. I tried my best to find synonyms 😭

May 19th, 1960 | age: 14

Ever since you were a child, you had always noticed a shift before anyone else did. One of them occurred when the last class of Thursday ended, the air in the school always seemed to loosen, as if the walls themselves were finally allowed to rest. All the chairs scraped against the floor, announcing how the boys slipped out before the teacher had fully dismissed them, and the courtyard quickly filled with noise that didn’t belong inside a classroom.

It was usual to take your time packing your things, not feeling the collective sense of urgency to leave like your classmates. Your fingers smoothed over the edge of your notebook before placing it carefully into your bag, aligning it with the others out of habit. The late afternoon sun had begun to settle low once you stepped outside, turning the dust in the courtyard into something almost golden.

As per usual, the boys had taken over the field, running without restraint while their shoes kicked up dry earth with every turn. The girls stayed closer to the edges, gathered in small groups to keep their past conversations going, or simply watched them play.

“Did you hear about Sunhee?” Near you, two girls stood close together, speaking in hushed tones.

The other leaned in. “No—what happened?”

“She was seen walking with—” Despite how badly you wanted to know that piece of information, your attention was diverted for longer than you’d care to admit

He stood in the corridor with a teacher in front of him. His uniform was perfectly neat; the dark jacket sat straight across his shoulder, the brass buttons catching the light as he moved. The only thing that barely messed up his polished self was a faint trace of chalk along one of his sleeves, as though he had brushed against the board earlier without noticing.

He gave the teacher his full attention, his posture straightening almost instinctively. When the teacher finished speaking, he bowed—clean and measured, neither exaggerated nor careless.

“Yes, sir.” Despite the low tone, it was clear enough to reach where you stood.

The teacher gave a short nod. “Make sure you review that section again. You were close.”

“I will,” Another bow, smaller this time, and the teacher moved on.

You were too immersed to notice how Wonhee nudged your arm lightly beside you. “You’re not listening at all today.”

You blinked, turning toward her. “I am.”

She didn’t believe you, but she let it go. “We’re going to the market later. Are you coming?”

“Maybe.”

“You always say that.” A faint smile appeared on your face, your attention already drifting back. This time, he had stepped down into the courtyard, now joining the others. 

“Juhoon! Don’t just stand there!” A boy whom you recognized as Seonghyeon threw him a ball, and the catch was so easy that it made his friends cheer him on.

“Hey,” The voice from Yunah softly broke in as she followed your gaze. “Who are you looking at?”

“No one,” you answered a little too quickly.

“Are you looking at Kim Juhoon?” The bell rang sharply, a clear cue to dissolve the moment into motion again before you can answer. Students began to move toward the gates, voices blending in familiar patterns. 

Trying to keep up with the conversation between your two friends was a little hard as you nodded at the right moments and offered brief responses when needed. It wasn’t difficult to stay present enough that no one questioned you; it was your forte, even when part of your attention was somewhere else.

And yet, just before all three reached the gate, you turned your head just enough to find him again.

Kim Juhoon… that’s a pretty name for a pretty boy. The name settled more easily in your mind than you expected.

At the time, you didn’t think much of it. Names were just names, and people existed around you every day without leaving any real impression. So why was there something about him that seemed so different that it stuck with you a little longer than usual? In a way, that should have been the end of it, but when your eyes noticed him again the next day, you knew it wasn’t.

It was surprising that it was not deliberate; you weren’t looking for him. Simply more aware of where people stood, how they moved, and of the small changes that others overlooked. It was something you had always done without thinking.

He sat near the front during morning assembly. Again, back straight, right through the teacher's speech, which was longer than necessary. He definitely carried the idea of the ideal student when you saw him ignore his friend's whisper and keep his gaze forward.

Later, in class, you realized he wrote quickly—but never carelessly. He didn’t pause to think of what to write; he paused to make sure it was right.

“Why do you keep looking over there? It has been a couple of days.” You startled slightly, turning to Wonhee, who had already caught you in the act.

“I’m not.”

It didn't take long for her to stop where your gaze fell. “You totally are.”

“I was just thinking.”

“About him?” she asked, not bothering to lower her voice as much this time.

“... No.”

Yunah leaned forward from the other side, resting her chin lightly on her hand. “It’s not a bad choice,” she said, almost thoughtfully. “He’s pretty, but not… reliable.”

“That’s what you’re looking for?” Wonhee teased.

“It’s what everyone is looking for,” Yunah replied simply.

It was the first time you didn't respond because you weren't sure that was really what you were sensing. As days passed by, it happened more often that you even began to recognize patterns.

He arrived earlier than most and always from the same direction, would greet the teachers properly, even when others only bowed halfway or not at all, and most importantly, he studied quietly, talked briefly and to the point, and became his friendly self when he was with his usual group of friends.

Once, you saw him lend a pencil to another student without being asked without making a point of it or wait for thanks—just passed it over and returned to his work. Another time, during a short break where Wonhee spoke about his interaction with Keonho, his friends tried to pull him into a game.

“Juhoon, come on. Just one round.”

“I can’t,” he replied, who you believed was Seonghyeon.

“Again?”

“I have something to finish.”

“Tell us something we don't know.” At that, he gave a small, almost apologetic smile, not moving from his seat. Due to the look on his face, it wasn’t that he didn’t want to join them; it was that he chose not to.

“Again? It’s like a million times today.” Wonhee murmured, barely hiding her teasing smile.

“No!”

“You were.”

“I’m not.” Yunah glanced between the two of you, then back toward him. “If you’re going to look, at least be less obvious.”

“I’m not being obvious,” the tone was quieter, eating one piece of kimbap to keep you busy. Both of them looked at you. You sighed, mouth muffling your words. “…Am I?”

Wonhee smiled. “Only to us.”

That should have embarrassed you, but it didn’t. It was a matter of time before your brain noticed things before they happened—when he would stand, speak, and leave.

And you couldn’t escape the fact of his overall appearance. He was handsome, to say the least, with slightly large brown eyes that turned hazel in the light, and a wide smile that surfaced easily when his friend James made him laugh. His dark hair fell in a soft fringe over his forehead; his slim, graceful build made the structured uniform look both formal and effortless.

God, you even noticed the faint mole just below his right jawline, visible only when he turned his head a certain way, adding a quiet touch of character to his already youthful features. Each day, your brain seemed to dedicate itself to noticing him—to sensing the way youth sat on him so naturally, and how many people envied him while he didn’t even realize he carried it like a blessing.

His skin had that untroubled clarity to it, smooth and bright enough to catch the light when he smiled, making everything about him feel a little warmer—an almost ethereal contrast to the colder persona he tried to portray. As the sun went down, a faint, natural flush would rise softly to his cheeks, fleeting and unfair in the way it made him look younger—or perhaps exactly his age, in the most disarming way.

And when he did smile? Oh, his smile.

His lips curved depending on the moment—slightly downturned at rest when he was holding back a thought or a joke—but that only made his smiles feel more genuine when they came. And it wasn’t just the smile itself—it was how quickly it arrived, how it slipped out before he could stop it. It was the kind of smile that belonged to someone who hadn’t yet learned to measure every reaction, to dull things down for the sake of composure.

There was a carelessness to him—not reckless, it was mostly unaware. As if he hadn’t yet realized how closely the world could look at you. He moved without that weight; the way he stood once as he waited for a girl outside another classroom gave him away. There was a loose rhythm to him, a slight swing of his arms, trusting that the ground would meet him every time. He didn’t hold himself like someone trying to be seen, especially outside of school; his shoulders stayed relaxed, his posture easy and unforced.

And then there were the small, unconscious habits that made him feel younger than he probably realized. The way he leaned in when his friends goofed around, how his fingers tapped absentmindedly against his sleeve when he was thinking, or how he tilted his head just slightly when something intrigued him. That one was your favorite.

He didn’t really guard himself; even when that colder expression crossed his face and pulled his features into something more distant, it never fully held. Something always shone through: a flicker in his eyes, a half-formed smile, a softness that refused to disappear.

Maybe that was why people noticed him without meaning to—why you felt almost hypnotized the first time you saw him. That contradiction made people like you look twice. Because, in your mind, youth—real youth—wasn’t just in smooth skin or bright eyes. It was in the way everything about him felt unfinished in the best possible sense. Just like you, he was still shifting and unaware of which parts of himself would stay and which would fade.

And the strangest part? He didn’t seem to know it at all. It came to him naturally, the same way you had always noticed shifts before anyone else did.

Only now did the shift have a name: Kim Juhoon.

JUHOON's POV

July 23rd, 1960

He adjusted the strap of his bag as he stepped onto the road, the noise of the school fading behind him, replaced by the softer sounds of animals. The path home was familiar enough that he didn’t need to think about it, leaving his mind free to return to more pressing matters. The math test. He replayed the last question, frowning slightly.

“You’re going to wear a hole in the ground if you keep thinking like that.” Keonho caught up to him, hands tucked loosely into his pockets.

“It wasn’t difficult. I just didn’t answer it as well as I should have.”

Keonho chuckled. “You say that every time, and you get it right.”

“Because I’m usually right.”

“See? That’s the problem. You’re always right, and it’s still not enough.” Juhoon didn’t respond, focused on kicking a pebble instead, until Keonho nudged him. “By the way—”

“What?”

“There’s a girl who keeps looking at you.”

He frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve seen it. In class. She’s always—” he gestured vaguely, “—watching.”

“You’re imagining things.”

“I’m not. The quiet girl by the window—the one with the binyeo. She’s been looking at you for at least a month.”

That made him pause, a binyeo? Then he nudged Keonho back, sharper this time. “So you’ve been paying more attention to her than your lessons?”

Keonho scoffed. “I’m a loyal man. My heart’s already taken—by one of her friends.” Juhoon let out a short laugh, quiet at first, then louder at the faint color rising to Keonho’s cheeks.

When the laughter died down, Juhoon looked ahead. “…I know who you mean.”

“See?”

“But that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Maybe not. But it’s still interesting.”

Juhoon shook his head, his expression settling. “It’s not.”

Keonho sighed. “You’re no fun.”

“That’s not my concern.”

They reached the turn where their paths split, and the youngest gave him a friendly pat on his back. “Don’t think about the test all night! You’ll survive one mistake.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” As Keonho left, Juhoon continued alone, though the conversation occupied his mind longer than expected.

He was used to Keonho’s teasing—that was easy to ignore. The mention of the girl wasn’t. She was quiet during lessons; that much was true. He had seen her with her friends: she was more expressive, although never enough to catch anyone’s attention—except for those who were already looking at her, and she was composed and always stayed that way. She perfectly blended herself into the background—unless you chose to notice.

And until now, he hadn’t.

The thought had already begun to fade once he reached his street. His grandmother stood outside the gate, adjusting a basket of tangerines, the bright color standing out against the muted tones of the yard.

“Grandma, you should’ve called me.”

She clicked her tongue softly at the sight of him taking the basket from her, though she let him. “You just came back from school, and I can still carry a few tangerines.”

“They’re not light,” he replied, steadying the weight in his arms.

“And neither are you,” she said, eyeing him briefly. “You’ve grown again.”

He didn’t answer that, only shifted the basket more securely before stepping inside with her.

From the kitchen, the faint sound of his mother already preparing the evening meal, and the smell of a soup simmering drifted into the courtyard.

“You’re back?” she said without turning fully. “Wash your hands soon.”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Took you long enough.” Juhoon glanced over. His older brother, Soobin, sat with one knee pulled up, a book resting loosely in his hand. He wasn’t really reading it—just flipping through pages like he had nowhere else to be.

“I walked home,” Juhoon said.

“With Keonho?” Soobin asked lowly with the tiniest hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“Yes.”

“Mm.” The tall one nodded once, convinced. “Then I guess you were talking the whole way.”

Juhoon set the basket down with a quiet exhale. “Not the whole way.”

“Of course not,” Soobin said lightly. “I used to take that one to forget that I have exams coming up.”

Juhoon rolled his sleeves back slightly. “I didn’t forget.”

“I know,” Soobin replied, finally looking up at him properly. “You never do.”

Their mother glanced between them briefly without interrupting, continuing what she was doing right after she gave a kiss on his cheek. He could hear the faint rustle of newspaper pages turning, marking their father’s presence in the living room, remaining silent as he digested the news.

Juhoon moved to wash his hands, the cool water running over his fingers before he dried them clean and grabbed the utensils.

“So, how was the test?”

“I think I made a mistake.”

Soobin let out a small breath through his nose. “You say that like the world’s ending.”

“I know it’s not, but I can’t stop thinking about it,” Juhoon said.

“Good, then just fix it next time.”

The smile he gave him was comforting enough that he copied it. “I will. Don’t worry about it.”

“Obviously,” Soobin said, leaning back slightly. “You’d bother me all week if you didn’t.”

“Everyone! Dinner’s ready.”

“Going,” Juhoon slowed, just a step behind the others, to help his grandma stand up from her rocking chair. “Wow, Grandma. You are getting better at drawing.”

His tone was light, almost teasing, but his grandmother formed a pleased smile. “You think so?”

He nodded, reaching down to steady her arm as she rose. “These are different.”

Up close, the flowers were more detailed than he first thought. Due to his grandma’s drawing abilities, they weren’t just simple petals—clusters layered carefully, and each one slightly uneven. The tiny, round buds gathered together, with faint lines suggesting stems or threads holding them in place.

“They’re pretty,” he added, almost as an afterthought.

“They are, I saw them at the market.”

Juhoon paused. “How? It’s really hard to get flowers at times like this.”

She hummed, taking a slow step forward with his help. “A girl helped me carry the basket on the bus. It was brief since she had to do something.” Her eyes softened, recalling it. “But the flowers stayed in my mind. So I drew them before I forgot.”

“A girl?” 

His grandmother chuckled. “Don’t sound so interested all of a sudden.”

“I’m not,” he said quickly.

“They were in her hair. A binyeo.” She gestured faintly with her free hand. “Soft colors. Pink, maybe. You know, I’ve never seen a piece so pretty since your grandfather gifted me one.”

Juhoon glanced back at the notebook. Soft pink, clustered, and carefully placed without looking messy. The same vague image brushed against his thoughts again.

“You remembered all that just from seeing her once?”

“You don’t always choose what you remember. Some things just settle in and stay.”

He didn’t respond right away. Instead, he reached over and gently closed the notebook, focusing on getting his grandma to the table.

“Let’s go.” They moved toward the others, slowing down for her.

Juhoon kept his gaze forward. It didn’t matter. A random girl with a binyeo and his grandmother’s sketch. That was all it was. And yet, as he walked, the image stayed—clearer and more defined than it had any right to be.

He exhaled quietly, the sudden distraction bothering him. He wouldn’t let something that small take up space in his mind. And yet, it did.

Dinner passed in its usual rhythm. The clink of chopsticks against metal bowls, the quiet exchange of small remarks, his mother asking if the kimchi had enough salt, his father folding the newspaper only after finishing the last column—nothing out of place or worth remembering.

Juhoon answered when spoken to, ate what was given, and kept his posture straight without thinking of it. The conversation drifted around him more than it included him, but that had always been the case, and the same went for his brother. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just pretty normal.

Still, somewhere between one bite and the next, his grandmother’s words returned.

“You don’t always choose what you remember.”

He frowned faintly, lowering his gaze to his bowl. That didn’t make sense. Memory wasn’t random—it followed logic, repetition, and importance. That’s what he believed and how he studied; you focused on what mattered, and the rest faded.

That was how it should be.

“Juhoon.”

He looked up. “I’m sorry, yes?”

“You’re thinking again,” his mother kindly said, her hand fixing his hair. “Please focus on your food.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied, almost automatically.

Soobin let out a quiet laugh. “Your mind must be busy today, huh?”

Juhoon didn’t argue this time; his brother knew him too well.

After dinner, he gathered the empty bowls, stacking them neatly before bringing them into the kitchen. The warm water stung slightly against his hands as he washed them. As soon as he finished, the house had settled into its usual quieter state. His father had returned to his reading; his mother moved more slowly now as she put things away, and his grandmother’s soft humming drifted faintly from the other room before she turned the TV on.

Juhoon dried his hands and stepped outside; it was his usual routine to prepare himself for a long night. The cool air of the evening brought him enough comfort to ease his mind, as he pleasantly enjoyed the faint edge that came just before night fully settled in. The sky was darker now, the last traces of light barely holding onto the horizon, and somewhere down the street, he could hear a radio playing softly. 

He exhaled, letting the quiet sit with him, leaning back slightly against the wooden post behind him, arms crossing loosely. This was the part of the day he preferred when everything slowed enough for him to organize his thoughts properly before studying, taking his time to close his eyes and breathe deeply, just like he used to see his grandma do.

Despite his efforts, that binyeo came back to his head. Juhoon clicked his tongue softly under his breath, annoyed at himself this time. It didn’t make sense for him to think about it. 

Most of the people he knew who wore that particular hairpiece were adult married women, which is why it made her recognizable in a community where braids and ponytails were standard, which was exactly why it stayed in his mind longer than it should have. That was the reason it made sense to him.

Juhoon opened his eyes again, gaze settling past the low wall, though he wasn’t really looking at anything in particular. The image remained vague—more impression than detail—he shifted slightly against the post, uncrossing his arms before crossing them again, as if adjusting his posture might also settle his thoughts. It didn’t. Maybe his grandmother had misremembered.

That was possible. Ever since the day her mother decided to take care of her because of her age, he saw how his grandmother’s mind was also slowly aging. She worked from memory when she drew, and her memory had a way of softening things, changing them without permission. Either the colors blurred, or the shapes shifted, but she had been so certain.

Juhoon exhaled slowly through his nose. It didn’t matter. 

An unfamiliar low hum of an engine interrupted his internal fight. Juhoon’s attention shifted immediately, his head turning slightly toward the road. The sound grew louder, then steadied before slowing.

A Sibal car came into view. Its headlights cut briefly across the wall before dimming as it pulled to a stop right in front of his house. The car wasn’t new, but it was well-kept, with clean lines and no visible damage, clear as the day that the owner cared for it. 

The driver’s door opened first, and a man stepped out, one polished shoe meeting the ground before the rest of him followed once the engine idled. He straightened slowly, rolling his shoulders to most likely ease the stiffness from the drive, closing the door with care, not letting it slam, and turned briefly toward the house across from Juhoon’s. His gaze scanned—taking in the gate, the small yard, the structure itself. Confirming.

Juhoon followed that line of sight instinctively. The “For Sale” sign was gone completely. He didn’t notice when the passenger door opened and someone emerged into his sight more slowly; what he did was catch the fading light from her hair. 

A half-up secured with a binyeo holding her hair neatly in place, with a soft detail at the end that caught what little light remained. Pink or something close to it. That’s when his eyes widen slightly.

The girl smoothed her skirt absentmindedly before glancing toward the unfamiliar surroundings, her quiet yet contained movement feeling too familiar, making it easy to connect the dots between the past conversations he had had. One of the streetlights made her face more visible, finally putting a face to the object.

She looked exactly like someone who had not yet realized she was being looked at; an unguarded youth settled on her naturally, from the ease of her posture to the softness that hadn’t been shaped into anything yet. Every feature of her delicate face conveyed a certain beauty that he couldn’t quite put his finger on from a distance; her slightly parted lips faced the street, as if these narrow roads and quiet houses would be the ones to watch her grow over the next few years, too busy taking it all in to think about being seen. Still, it felt difficult for him to look away once he had started, as though there was something in that unawareness that held him there longer than he intended.

While the light didn’t do her justice, at least not enough to define her features so much as to rest on them, he couldn’t help but notice the faintest trace of melancholy in the way her gaze moved quietly and observantly rather than bright with excitement. She didn’t fidget with the medium-sized cardboard box in her hands as most would, nor did she rush to follow her—presumably—father toward the entrance; instead, she remained where she was for a moment longer, existing within the stillness, carrying a composure that didn’t feel practiced, only natural.

It made her seem older at first glance, and yet, the longer he looked, the clearer it became that it was the opposite—that this quiet steadiness was part of her youth, not separate from it, and very unrefined and unguarded in a way that made it all the more real.

It happened without warning—the moment her gaze lifted and met his.

For a second, neither of them moved, the distance between the two houses collapsing into something far smaller than it should have been. Up close—or as close as that distance allowed—there was a flicker in her expression, realizing she was no longer alone in her quiet observation. Her eyes widened slightly, the composure slipping just enough to reveal the girl beneath it, and just as quickly as it appeared, she looked away, the motion small yet immediate.

“Sweetheart, come take a look!” the man spoke, and her shift was sudden. She adjusted her hold on the box, almost too quickly now, and without sparing another glance, she turned and moved toward the gate, her steps no longer as unhurried as before. The door opened, then closed behind her, and just like that, she was gone.

Juhoon remained where he was. A coincidence, that’s all. It wasn’t unusual to see people move. Houses changed owners, and the streets were meant not to stay the same forever. There was no reason for this to feel like anything more than that.

From inside, he heard the faint creak of his own front door.

“Juhoon?” his mother called lightly. “Who is it?”

He turned his head slightly. “New neighbors.”

“Oh, yeah. It’s a father and his daughter. The man came in the afternoon to move their stuff.” She spoke again, the leftover kimbap from his hand going to his mouth after his words.

There was a brief pause before his brother stepped out with Grandma by her side to see for herself. “Ah… I see. Hopefully, they are kind.”

Across the street, the man came out again, noticing them looking directly at their property, and gave a polite nod, one that his mother returned almost immediately. And by the look on her face, a proper introduction would come later. He stepped back, turning toward the door, the moment already beginning to close in the most uneventful way ever. As he entered his room, partially ready to study, his gaze went to his window.

There she was again, this time with more comfortable clothing, her hair completely loose, a few strands falling softly against her face as she moved about the room without urgency. The light inside her house was warmer, embracing everything about her, making her seem even more distant despite being closer than before. She continued unpacking, and Juhoon stood there for a moment longer than necessary before looking away.

It was nothing. Just a neighbor across the street, someone he happened to go to the same high school, and there was no reason to think about it beyond this, especially since there were more important things waiting for him. Pop quizzes and exams didn’t allow room for distractions, and he had never been the kind to create them for himself.

After a quick shower, he pulled his chair back, opening his notebook to the same page from earlier. The numbers were still there, waiting for him to do what he always did—focus, correct, and move forward.

It would have been impossible to avoid your friends’ questions about the move when you had spent the whole week talking about it, only to fall silent now. You hadn’t gotten used to having Juhoon as a neighbor yet, much less expected that, out of everyone, it would be him—the one who had already unsettled your heart.

Every morning for the past week and a half, the new street became familiar as you created your own route to avoid him, making your usual stop before going to school. 

Whenever you entered, it was usually the same noise—some mornings heavy with the low-energy vibration of a Monday morning, others softened by the sunlight filtering through the tall windows, dust drifting in golden haze.

You sat at your desk near the window as usual, when two chairs suddenly scraped close. The sight of Wonhee and Yunha leaning over your desk with their eyes bright with curiosity made you chuckle a little.

“So?” Wonhee whispered, “Did you see him this morning? Did he say anything?”

“No,” you murmured, pulling your literature textbook from your bag. “We’re just neighbors, it’s normal.”

“Normal doesn’t make you turn that shade of pink,” Yunah teased, resting her chin on her palm.

You didn’t answer because, at that moment, he walked in. As usual, he moved unhurriedly, his perfectly ironed gakuran-style jacket embracing his body. “Have you ever thought of confessing?”

Your head snapped toward her, “Are you insane? No.”

“You have an advantage. He’s your neighbor—” Yunha used her hands to emphasize her argument, disappointed in how you denied.

“I actually spoke with Keonho about you, so we can—” The confession made your pens drop, eyes shamefully wide. 

“You said something about my crush on him?” The whisper came out sharper than you intended.

“No!” Wonhee rushed. “He asked first! He noticed you looking at him. That’s when we started paying attention. We didn’t know about your feelings until now.”

Oh, God.

“Good norming, everyone. Let’s begin the class.” The teacher’s voice settled over the room firmly. Wonhee and Yunha exchanged one last look at you before retreating to their seats. You kept your eyes on your desk, heat still clinging to your skin.

The panic of one person knowing—one that was so close to him—and exposing you sent shivers down your spine. You didn’t dare look up, hearing the chalk tapping steadily against the board in the background. 

Normally, you would have followed along easily, but your hand remained still as that lingering thought began to press against your mind: He knows.

Or worse, Keonho might know, and he might say it.

The graphite hovered over the page before finally touching down. Each of the strokes was carefully written down your book slowly and unnaturally, but despite your efforts, your thoughts kept drifting.

“...open your notebooks and copy this down.” The teacher’s voice cut through your thoughts.

The notebook was pulled safely onto your desk before flipping it open. The soft rustle of the paper, accompanied by the sound of a few pens being unscrewed, was strangely comforting. 

“Is something wrong, Juhoon?” The teacher’s question made everyone look up, their pens pausing mid-writing as their attention drifted towards him without anyone saying a word. Yours included.

He was already half-standing from his seat, one hand inside his bag, the other pushing aside books with restrained urgency that didn’t match him.

“I—” he started, stopping abruptly. His brows drew together faintly. “I think I forgot my notebook.” 

A few people chuckled under their breath, his friends included. The teacher sighed, tapping the chalk once against the board before turning fully toward him. “You think, or you did?”

Juhoon glanced down at his bag again, as if the answer might appear if he searched hard enough. “I did.”

“Then borrow one,” the teacher replied, his back facing all of us. “And copy everything before the end of class.” 

“Y/N has an extra!” The tip of your pencil snapped faintly. Wonhee’s voice cut through the room with clarity, pulling every gaze toward you.

Warmth flooded your ears. “Wonhee—” you hissed. Yunah covered her mouth, barely containing a laugh, and Wonhee just looked satisfied with what he had done.

He was looking at you when you decided to turn around quietly to confirm rather than discovering something else. As he approached, your heartbeat pounded faster.

The opportunity of laughing it off before denying it was there, and instead, you just sat there, fingers tightening around the broken pencil still in your hand. 

“Can I?” he asked, gesturing toward your bag.

Your mind lagged. “My—? Oh. Yes. I mean—yes.”

It felt like your back cracked as you turned, quickly leaving your broken pencil aside and reaching into your bag to pull the extra notebook your dad has insisted you bring “in case,” its cover still a little too stiff, matching its mostly untouched pages.

“Here.”

Unconsciously, your hand passed over the front once and brushed your fingers with his hand when he reached for it. It was so light you barely missed it if it wasn’t for Juhoon’s eyes on yours when it happened. You carefully pulled your hand back, missing how he slightly bowed with gratitude.

“Thank you.” He returned to his seat to gather the rest of his things, as nothing happened.

“Still nothing?” Yunha murmured, her gaze on you.

“Still noting.” Not even your voice believed that.

After four hours and finally resting in your house, the sky had turned into that quiet blue of early night. It felt weird to see how the first few pages were no longer untouched, and his handwriting filled the top of one page neatly. It wasn’t special, and yet you stared at it longer than expected after finishing your homework.

The tip of your finger traced the faint indentations left behind by his pen, and your pencil found your hand before you thought about it

You didn’t think, just wrote it. Juhoon.

The name looked too intentional sitting there alone, so you draw a heart next to it. You stared at it, feeling your heart beating a little faster than it should have.

“Honey, dinner’s ready!” The door opened before you could react properly. Your dad stood there, clearly watching the way you jolted before placing your hand over the page and erasing everything at a speed that felt almost unnatural, closing the notebook to stop staring at it. “Everything okay?”

“Yes,” you said, standing a little too fast. “Let’s go.”

Dinner moved around you without landing. Your dad’s voice carried stories from work, including late deliveries, conversations that slipped sideways. Still, guilt lingered in its place for not engaging like usual because your mind wasn’t fully there.

Chopsticks clicked softly against porcelain. “You’ve been quiet tonight.”

“Just tired.” 

His gaze lingered on you as silence pressed in. “For what it’s worth, your mom used to get like that.”

“Like what?”

“Somewhere else,” he said, a faint smile threading through memory. “All the right answers, none of the attention.”

“I’m listening.”

“I know. Just thinking.” An ache rose to the point it was difficult to ignore. The chopsticks where placed next to your plate.

“How did you know?”

“Know what?”

Your fingers pressed into the fabric of your pajama. “…How did you know you loved Mom?”

The room stilled, and the radio static hummed low like a distant echo. He leaned back, exhaling slowly, something he used to do when a memory settled over. “That’s a serious question.”

“Just want to know.” 

A nod. “At first? Nothing felt important.” 

“Nothing?”

“Nothing. Just another familiar person whom I used to have occasional conversations with. Then, the details stayed in my mind.”

“Such as?”

“The way she laughed at things no one else noticed.” A corner of his mouth lifted. “The quiet around her when she thought. Also, the way she made space for people—even when space was all she had. None of that felt big back then, that’s the part no one tells.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s not sudden and loud. Stories get that wrong.”

“Then what?”

“Quiet. So quiet it’s easy to miss.”

Both of his elbows touched the table. His head was resting on top of his fists with his eyes fixed on the framed picture of them. “It shows up in habits. Wanting to tell her everything first. Wondering what she’d say, even when she’s gone. Remembering without trying.” His voice softened. “And then, everything begins to include her.”

“That sounds—”

“Complicated?” A small nod. “It can be. But back then, it wasn’t.”

“What did it feel like?”

A faint smile returned. “So familiar that it felt that it had always been there and I’d been blind this whole time.”

“And how you knew it wasn’t a phase?”

“Because I gave it a chance. Even when the chaos was everywhere, that feeling stayed.”

“And then?”

“I chose it.”

“Choose it?”

“Feelings arrive on their own. Staying doesn’t. At some point, a decision happens.”

“And if certainty isn’t there yet?”

“It doesn’t need to be. Not at the start. Just pay attention to what stays.” A pause. “Love isn’t about a face. It’s about what remains when everything else fades.”

The warmth of his palm brushed your cheek.

“A face catches attention,” he continued softly, “but a person keeps it. From the way they think to how they treat people, especially when they finally show you who they are when no one’s watching. That’s what makes someone real. And real—”

That small gesture, the one always used to pass the ending over. A laugh slipped out. “—is what stays.”

“Exactly.”

His hand dropped back to the table.“Plenty of people are easy to like from a distance,” he went on. “There’s no risk, responsibility, or need to show up. Closeness asks more, and not everyone’s willing to give that... If something lives in hesitation,” he said, “in almosts, in unsaid things, it doesn’t and won’t last. Maybe it never even begins. Love shouldn’t feel hidden or uncertain.”

He leaned back, reaching for the kimchi to balance the deep conversation. “The right person won’t leave you guessing when they know it’s the one; you won’t have background roles. That person must be next to you, upgrading you every single time.”

“That’s what you did with mom?”

A flicker of mischief crossed his face, “She actually didn’t make it hard. She shone so brightly that the sun was jealous.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was always meant to be seen. And I…” His two thumbs pointed at himself with a small shrug. “I just made sure she shone the way she deserved.”

The conversation stuck with you more than you meant it. You waited for him to leave your room after a kiss on the forehead once you both were ready to sleep for the next day, then opened your notebook again. The faint outline of a name was still visible beneath where you had tried to erase it, but you let it stay.

JUHOON's POV

The afternoon hit when Juhoon finished copying what he annotated on his neighbor's notebook, a clear indicator of it was that particular shade between evening and night in the sky he liked. It was time to return it.

He reached for his jacket first before entering the hallway, and his reflection caught him off guard. Juhoon’s eyes scan over himself—collar straight, hair not completely out of place, nothing noticeably off.

“I’m going out for a bit,” he called, already slipping his shoes on.

His mother’s voice followed from inside. “Don’t be long!”

“I won’t.”

The night air greeted him immediately, a few children here and there playing before dinner. He crossed without hesitation once he noticed her house had the lights on, lifting his gaze toward the window out of habit, stopping himself since there was no reason to look.

He knocked, clearly hearing footsteps approaching, and soon, the door opened, revealing her.

Up close, nothing changed—and yet, it did. Her hair was loose and partially wet, not as carefully arranged as it had been earlier in the week, a few strands resting against her face like they hadn’t decided where to settle. Her expression went from composed to slightly surprised.

“I—” He adjusted slightly, holding out the notebook. “I forgot to give you this.”

Her gaze dropped to it, then lifted back to him. “Oh.” She stepped forward just enough to take it from his hands. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, I didn’t realize I still had it,” he added, because it felt like something that should be said.

“It’s okay, I didn’t need it today. Or any day, I just keep it just in case.”

He nodded once. “That’s good.”

“Oh! It’s you!” a voice cut in suddenly, bright and unmistakably familiar.

Juhoon turned slightly. His grandmother was already making her way across the street, her steps quicker than usual, one hand lifting in an excited wave.

He hadn’t even noticed her leave the house.

“My bus girl!” she said, her face lighting up the moment she reached the gate. There was no hesitation in her steps, no restraint in the way she approached and moved him out of the way. The girl blinked, clearly caught off guard for a second until recognition settled in.

“Grandma—” Juhoon started, but it was already too late.

“My dear!” his grandmother continued warmly, reaching out to gently take the girl’s hands without thinking twice. “It’s really you.”

“Hello, Miss. Kang,” Juhoon didn’t miss her smile and how she got comfortable with the touch of the elderly. That’s one pretty smile. “Are you doing well?”

“Well?” his grandmother repeated with a small laugh. “I’ve been waiting to see you again! You disappeared so quickly that day.”

“I didn’t disappear, I just had to get off,” she admitted, glancing down briefly. “I’m sorry.”

“For helping me and keeping me company for several months?” his grandmother shook her head. “You even carried my basket. I should be the one apologizing for being such a burden.”

“You will never be a burden to me, Miss. Kang. I love talking to you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” his grandmother continued. “You stayed with me the whole way.”

“It was nothing,” the girl replied.

“That’s what you say,” his grandmother smiled, squeezing her hands lightly. “But not many people would do the same.”

“…You know each other?” he asked.

His grandmother turned to him, almost amused. “Of course we do, are you not listening? She’s been keeping me company on the bus these past few weeks. Sometimes she's quiet, but I love that! Quiet people notice more.”

“You never said anything,” He heard a small chuckle from her, and she glanced briefly toward Juhoon before looking back at his grandmother.

“I didn’t know you lived here,” she said.

“Across the street,” his grandmother replied easily, gesturing behind her. “This is the grandson I spoke to you about.”

Only then did the connection settle fully. “Oh, I didn’t know she was your grandmother,” the girl murmured.

Juhoon straightened slightly, suddenly aware of his own presence again. “Well, I was just returning her notebook.”

“Yes, yes,” his grandmother nodded quickly, but her attention stayed on the girl. “You should come by sometime. I make good tea—better than the one on the bus, I promise.”

A small smile appeared, her fingers gently tugging a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’d love that. I can go with some cookies. I remember you like the lemon ones.”

“Oh, sweetheart, that would be lovely.” Then the girl stepped back slightly, adjusting the notebook in her hands as she bowed. “I should go. My father is waiting.”

“Of course,” his grandmother said, though there was a clear reluctance in her tone. “Don’t disappear again, hm?”

“I won’t. Have a good night, Miss. Kang. See you at school, Juhoon,” she replied softly.

“Night.” Her gaze flickered once more unintentionally toward Juhoon before she turned and stepped inside; the door closed gently behind her.

Juhoon exhaled lightly. “That was unnecessary,”

His grandmother glanced at him. “Was it?”

“You didn’t have to come over like that.”

“She would’ve left otherwise,” she replied simply.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I already returned it.”

“Walk with me,” she said. Since it wasn’t a question, he didn’t argue.

They moved down the street together, her pace naturally slower, his adjusting without effort. He knew the night had settled fully now when there weren’t any children on sight, windows started to dim, and the world was folding into itself after a long day.

He didn’t mind it. Walking beside her had always felt nice, knowing that at the end of it, she would let him vent without being judged by his father.

“You said she was quiet,” his grandmother began.

“She is,” he replied. “And serious. You just said that, as well.”

“Serious,” she repeated, a faint trace of amusement in her voice. “That’s what you see?”

“She doesn’t talk much. She keeps to herself. Focused, I guess.”

“Mm.”

“That’s all.” His grandmother smiled faintly, but there was something in it that made him look away first.

“She helped me on the bus,” she said again.

“I know.”

“She carried the basket without being asked.”

“You told me.”

“And she stayed with me until my stop.”

Juhoon nodded. “You said that too.”

“And she missed hers.”

That made him glance at her properly this time. “…Why?”

“She didn’t say it; she just stayed next to me and told jokes just to make me feel better when I told her I lost my friend.”

“That’s not practical.”

“No?”

“If she had somewhere to be, she should’ve gone,” he said. “Helping doesn’t mean you have to—”

“—lose something?” she finished gently, already knowing his answers.

They walked a few more steps before his grandmother slowed, eventually making her way toward a small bench by the side of the road. She sat down with care, her hands folding neatly in her lap as her gaze drifted upward, toward the faint scatter of stars.

Juhoon hesitated for a second before sitting beside her.

“You look at people the way you look at your studies.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you decide quickly what matters,” she continued. “What’s useful and can be understood.”

“That’s not wrong,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “But people aren’t questions with one correct answer.”

Juhoon’s brows pulled together faintly.

“You see that she’s quiet. Serious and focused.” She glanced at him briefly. “That’s what she shows you. But what someone shows isn’t all they are.”

He let out a small breath through his nose. “I’m not trying to figure her out.”

“That’s exactly why you don’t see it.” 

“See what?”

“Courage despite the pain.”

“It’s just kindness.”

“Is it?” she asked. Juhoon didn’t answer right away, not truly having a correct answer this time. “She didn’t know me, it would’ve been easier not to help and pretend she didn’t notice.”

He looked down at his hands, resting loosely against his knees.

“That doesn’t make it courage,” he said after a moment. “It’s just… a choice.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “And not everyone makes it. She didn’t gain anything from it. No one praised her or saw it.” A small pause. “She just did it because of her pure heart.”

Juhoon’s gaze drifted somewhere ahead, unfocused.

“You think courage has to be loud so that people recognize it,” she said gently. 

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to, I know you, you punk.” He exhaled quietly despite the nickname. “It’s small, most of the time, and easy to miss if you’re only looking at what’s on the surface.”

Her warm hand engulfed his; her fingers tightened slightly. “I think you’re reading too much into it,” he said after a while.

“Maybe,” she agreed easily. Juhoon leaned back slightly, his gaze lifting toward the sky for a brief moment before dropping again. “Enough about that, what’s on your mind?”

“The math test results come out tomorrow,” Juhoon said, shifting the topic immediately. “I think I lost points on the last question. The method was right, but the explanation wasn’t precise enough.”

His grandmother listened. “If I had written it differently, it would’ve been clearer,” he added. “It’s not a big mistake, but it still matters.”

“A mistake is a mistake, it doesn’t define you unless it hurts someone,” she said.

“That’s why I need to fix it next time, because it will most likely pain my father.” And just like that, everything else faded. They walked home with his voice filling the space now, focused entirely on numbers, on corrections, on what could be improved.

When they reached the house, he stepped inside first.

“Don’t stay up too late,” his grandmother said, her finger pointing at him.

“I won’t.” The woman kissed his forehead before he went straight to his room. The desk, the chair, and the notebook were waiting exactly where they should be.

He sat down and opened the notebook to the same page, the paper settling flat beneath his hand with the problem staring up at him, exactly as he had left it: unfinished and slightly off. He let his pen hover just above the page, the tip barely grazing the surface as if it could decide for him where to begin. It only lasted a second before he started.

The first line came easily, followed by the next, and then the next after that. Each step fell into place with certainty, the method unfolding the way it should have earlier. The smile spreading across his face showed how proud he was that there was no hesitation this time, completely familiar.

It may sound odd for others, but he really enjoyed how numbers didn’t leave space for misinterpretation, hide behind silence, or shift depending on where you looked. If something was wrong, it could be corrected. If something was unclear, it could be rewritten. There was always a way forward and a clearer answer waiting if you just focused long enough to find it.

His attention stayed where it belonged, following the final steps as they coalesced into something complete; the correct answer sat before him. He leaned back slightly, exhaling under his breath, sensing how the faint tension in his shoulders eased without him realizing it.

The notebook was closed with him looking, the soft thud of the cover sealing everything neatly inside. Just like that, the mistake was fixed. 

Across the street, he didn’t know a certain someone was slowly dozing off, still thinking about how a dinner conversation carried more weight than it should, and made her question everything. The distance between them wasn’t far, but why had it never felt wider?

It didn’t change the next day or the one after that; it was already settling quietly and deeper, slipping beneath the surface where it couldn’t be easily named or pushed aside. Juhoon didn’t think about it directly, he couldn’t put it in with words, but it showed in the way his routines lost their characteristic ease, first it was his pen hovering a little longer before writing, then his eyes lingering on questions he would normally move past without hesitation, to end with the certainty he had always relied on began to feel just slightly out of reach.

Seeing himself in second place in his class didn’t cause him any surprise. It wasn’t familiar, sure—there was always a first time for everything, and he was very happy for Minseok—but what unsettled him wasn’t the number itself but how quickly it stopped feeling like something temporary. Three points weren’t enough to define anything, and that bittersweet feeling stayed with him longer than it should have. And despite everything looking the same at home, he could already feel the tension the second his dad glared at him.

The table was already set when he came down from his room, dishes neatly placed with steam rising softly above them from the soup, curling into the air. His mother moved between the kitchen and the table, his grandmother sat with her hands folded neatly in her lap after arranging the utensils, and Soobin helped with what was missing. And his father sat at the head of the table, newspaper closed next to him and conserving his posture straight, not even giving up his stare after he sat down.

He reached for his chopsticks. “The rankings came out today.”

Juhoon’s hand paused slightly before continuing. “Yes.”

“And?”

“I placed second overall.”

“Second?”

“Yes.”

“Who placed first?”

“Hwang Min Seok.”

“And the difference?”

“…Three points.” Juhoon focused on picking up his food, if only to fill the silence with sound.

“So you lost points.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The last question.”

“You didn’t know it?”

“I did.”

“Then why did you lose points?”

Juhoon’s fingers tightened slightly around his chopsticks. “My explanation wasn’t clear enough.”

The sound of his father setting the chopsticks down echoed. “That’s carelessness.”

“I reviewed it. I just—”

“You just what?” The interruption was sharp this time, making him stop before saying something else.

“I thought it was enough.”

“Enough?” his father repeated, the word coming out almost incredulous. “You’re satisfied with ‘enough’ now?”

“No.”

“Then don’t say it like you are.”

“I’m not,” Juhoon replied, the edge slipping in before he could stop it. “I corrected it. I know what I did wrong.”

“That’s not the point.” His father’s voice hardened, cutting through the room more clearly than anything loud could have. “You shouldn’t have made the mistake at all.”

Juhoon’s jaw tightened. “I can fix it.”

“I’m not asking if you can fix it, I’m asking why you made it.”

“I told you—”

“You’re not listening.” The words landed fast.

“I am,” Juhoon insisted, the restraint in his voice thinning.

“Then act like it.”

“Jae Won. Juhoon. Let’s eat first,” his mother said gently, carefully placing another dish on the table as if the motion itself could settle things. “The food is getting cold.”

No one was in the mood to reach for it, not when the “head” of the family was still gazing at his son. “You knew the answer and still lost points. That means you weren’t thinking properly.”

“I was thinking,” Juhoon said, more firmly now. “I just didn’t explain it the way the teacher wanted.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No, it’s not.” The words slipped out before he could stop them. Soobin straightened slightly in his seat.

“Juhoon,” his mother said quietly, a warning in her tone already too late. He took in how his father’s expression shifted, and his hand started to grip the newspaper beside him.

“Say that again.”

Juhoon swallowed, but didn’t look away this time. “I understood the problem,” he said, slower now, more controlled. “That should count for something.”

“It doesn’t,” his father replied immediately. “Not if you can’t present it correctly.”

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t know it.”

“It means you failed to show it.”

Failed.

Something in Juhoon’s chest tightened at how that word stung deeply. “I didn’t fail.”

“You came second, you lost points on something you claim to understand. What would you call that?”

“Enough! The sound of his grandmother's palms slamming on the table was what finally broke the standoff. “He did well.”

His father didn’t look at her. “He could have done better.”

“He always does his best.”

“And his best should be first,” his father replied.

“Dad, it’s just three points. He’ll beat Minseok next time.”

“That’s not the issue.”

“Then what is?” Soobin asked, the casual tone not quite hiding the challenge nor the anger he was starting to feel.

“The issue is that he’s becoming comfortable making mistakes.”

“I’m not comfortable, I said I’d fix it!”

“Fixing it after the fact doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.”

“It doesn’t.”

“Why doesn’t it?” Juhoon pressed, his voice rising and slightly breaking. “If I know what I did wrong and improve—”

“You shouldn’t be making mistakes like that to begin with.”

“I’m not perfect.”

His mother grabbed his thigh below the table immediately after his scream, barely feeling it. “That’s enough.”

His father’s gaze didn’t waver. “No. Say that again.”

“I’m not perfect.”

“And you think that excuses you?”

“I’m not making excuses,” he snapped, the control finally slipping. “I’m explaining.”

“You’re defending failure.”

“I didn’t fail!”

Soobin let out a breath under his breath. “Alright—okay—everyone just—”

“Stay out of it,” his father cut in. Soobin fell quiet, jaw tightening.

“You’re arguing with me over three points,” his unsteady voice was bothering him, maybe even more than the score itself. “Three points. I still did well.”

“Well, it isn’t enough.”

“It should be.”

“On my roof, it isn’t,” he finally slammed the newspaper on his shoulder.

“Kim Jae Won! That’s enough.”

“You think the world will reward you for ‘well’?” his father went on, completely ignoring his mother's pleas. “You think effort and intention matter when results don’t match?”

“I said I’d do better.”

“You should already be better.”

There it was again, that same sentence carrying the same weight his brother and he had heard six years ago. Instead of making him stronger, he could feel how it threw everything off balance.

“I am trying,” he said, and this time it wasn’t controlled.

“Trying is meaningless if this is the result.”

Juhoon’s grip tightened against the table. “Then what do you want from me?”

His mother’s hand pressed more firmly against his thigh, the unplanned question even taking him off guard. “Juhoon—”

“What do you want?” he repeated. “Because I study. I correct my mistakes. I—”

“I want you to stop falling short,” 

“I’m not falling short.”

“You are.”

His grandmother shifted forward slightly. “That’s enough, you’re pushing him too hard.”

“He needs to be pushed. Those kids you hang out with are a bad influence.”

“He’s already pushing himself because of you.”

“And it’s not enough.”

Juhoon didn’t respond this time. His hand had curled into itself at his side, fingers tightening until they trembled, impossible to still. He kept his head lowered as soon as he felt his vision blur, trying to blink away the burn behind his eyes that only sharpened. His chest felt too tight, which left no room to inhale properly or speak.

“Finish eating. And then study.”

Juhoon didn’t remember finishing dinner; everything was a blur. The next few days passed without anything visibly changing, but that feeling didn’t go away from every single sentence that came from his father’s mouth. At school, he showed more than he realized.

He missed answering a question he knew, the teacher's encouragement to make him participate, and even playing soccer with his friends. They couldn't help but notice that they had a hunch even before they knew what had happened, thanks to the strong bond the five boys shared. He had to intervene and brush it off as something temporary, but it wasn’t. It was obvious.

By the last class of the day, Juhoon stared at his notebook without really seeing it, the lines of writing blurring just slightly as his thoughts drifted somewhere else, as well as his classmates once they heard the bell.

“Juhoon?” A hand on his shoulder reached him, looking up. You stood beside his desk at a decent distance, your quiet presence existing with it.

“Oh,” he said softly, his voice slower than usual. “You’re still here.”

“So are you. The bell rang, and your friends didn’t want to bother you.”

He glanced around briefly. “…Right.”

You shifted slightly, fingers tightening around the strap of your bag before loosening again. “I was going to leave, but…” Your voice trailed off, and for a moment, it seemed like you might take it back.

“But?” he asked, more out of habit than anything else.

He could see that you were physically torn between saying something and not saying anything, until he finally noticed in your eyes that matched what you were about to say. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically.

“You don’t look like it.” His expression couldn’t be hidden anymore, opting for letting out a quiet breath.

“It’s nothing,” he added, softer this time.

“…It’s nothing,” you said gently. For a moment, it seemed like that would be the end of it—that he would let the silence close back in, let you take the hint and leave him, he didn’t think you would step a little closer, reinforcing your presence.

“You don’t have to tell me, I just… thought I’d ask.”

The gentle tone soothed something within him. The lack of pressure and how you were already giving him a way out made the tension on his shoulder ease. He stared at the page a second longer, the tips of his fingers following the route of a random line he drew mid-class.

“I came second.”

You blinked. “Second?”

“Overall.”

“That’s really good. Congrats!”

He shook his head, almost immediately. “No. It’s not.”

“ Oh... Why not?”

His fingers curled slightly against the paper. “…I lost by three points.”

“That’s still—”

“I shouldn’t have.” His cheeks warmed in embarrassment as his words cut through the space between you. He exhaled slowly to try to calm himself. “I knew the answer, I just didn’t write it properly.”

You didn’t interrupt. “I checked it, more than once, and I thought it was clear enough… It wasn’t.”

A small piece of chocolate appeared before his eyes; he glanced at the girl holding it, and she simply gave him a gentle smile, inviting him to take it. He couldn't refuse.

“…My father said it was carelessness,” he went on, the words coming more steadily now while playing with the candy. “That I shouldn’t be making mistakes and how they shouldn’t happen at all. He even said trying doesn’t matter, not if the result isn’t right.”

The faintest crease formed between his brows, and easing them once the chocolate ended up in his mouth. “And I thought I did it right. I checked it, I really did.”

That particular sentence made your chest pull at how his words wavered. You stepped just a little closer. “That doesn’t make it nothing. Three points don’t erase that.”

He let out a small, breathless sound—almost a laugh. “It does to him.”

“…And to you?” His gaze stayed fixed on the notebook, but he wasn’t seeing it anymore. The question went directly to his heart. Has he ever thought about himself?

“…I don’t know, I just—” he exhales unevenly. “I keep thinking about it.”

“The question?”

“The way I wrote it,” he corrected. “What I should’ve changed. If I had just rewritten the last line—”

His fingers tightened again. “I’ve gone over it so many times,” he said, almost under his breath. “I can’t stop.”

“You care a lot,” the few seconds of silence when you said that gently.

“I have to.”

“Or you want to?” That made him pause; his thoughts seemed to catch on something that didn’t already have an answer ever since he joined your conversation.

“I don’t know…” 

“Well, it’s just three points,” you said, your voice light but steady. “But you’re acting like you lost everything.”

He let out a slow breath, shoulders lowering just slightly. “It feels like it.”

When he finally looked up, his expression had shifted—his usual, more put-together.

“…Sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong… If it’s any consolation, you have a bright future ahead of you, even if you came in second. To me, you’re more than just a place in a ranking.” You interrupted gently.

“Thank you,” he said instead, a small smile tugging at his lips. You nodded, offering a small, reassuring smile that brought a slight warmth to his heart.

“Anytime.” Juhoon glanced back down at his notebook, straightening slightly.

“I should go,” he said, his tone more composed now. Familiar again.

You stepped back, giving him space as he gathered his things.

“Yeah, me too.” He slung his bag over his shoulder, walking away with a more relaxed pace, pausing just briefly before turning.

“Wanna grab a cup of tteokbokki before going to our homes?” The offer made you open your eyes in surprise, which quickly turned into a sincere smile that spread to your face.

“I’ll love that, Juhoon.”

September 12th, 1963 || age: 17

Time had a quiet way of slipping past you before you could properly hold onto it. Days folded into weeks, and weeks marked not by dates, but by small changes you only noticed when you stopped to think about them.

Wonhee and Keonho were no longer something whispered about between classes; they were real now, obvious in the way they hold hands while walking to class, in how her voice softened when she said his name. Yunah had started seeing someone, too, though she pretended it wasn’t anything serious, even as she spent longer fixing her hair in the mornings.

And you were still exactly where you had been for three years. Still noticing him, always carrying something that hadn’t quite settled into anything certain. At this point, you’d think your feelings for him were all too obvious—you couldn’t hide how your face flushed when he smiled at you as he walked through the kitchen of his house while you were having a little chat with his grandmother, or the times he helped you with your groceries when he saw you arrive with his mom after a trip to the market

The only difference now was how it felt.

At first, it had been quiet in the easiest way, like something that didn’t need to be explained to be understood. It settled beside you without effort, familiar and unassuming, never asking to be questioned. You had let it exist like that, untouched, because it felt safer not to look too closely.

But somewhere in between ordinary moments, it changed.

Not all at once—at least not in a way you could name. It slipped out of place gradually, as if a rhythm started to fall out of time until the shift was too obvious to ignore. What had once felt steady began to waver, rising and falling without warning, leaving you grasping for a feeling that no longer held still.

There were small things. How his gaze would catch on you, lingering for a few seconds, that, in your heart, almost meant something. How the conversations brushed against depth, only to cut short before they could reach it. Each moment felt like the edge of a story that never quite began.

And that was the hardest part—the almost.

Because sometimes, it felt real. To think he saw you in a way no one else did and believed there was something quietly unfolding between you in an unspoken way. But just as quickly, it would disappear, leaving you questioning whether it had ever been there at all.

You were left suspended between those two versions of him—one who noticed, and one who didn’t—and neither stayed long enough to be certain. And in the space between them, doubt grew louder than anything else, until even your own memories felt unreliable, as if they belonged more to hope than to truth.

“See you on Monday!” Yunah waved her hand brightly. Wonhee was no longer with the two of you since she had an after-school date with Keonho. “I’ll tell you two how the date went.”

“Hope you kiss that person this time,” you said loud enough for her to hear and blush. “Oh, God. The rain had started earlier than expected.” 

It began with a thin drizzle that was barely noticeable unless you paid attention to how it darkened the ground beneath your shoes.

“I’m glad my mom told me to bring an umbrella,” the tallest opened the object, hugging you tenderly before gently walking away.

Your feet quickly carried you along the usual route, though a small detour was demanded by your stomach’s quiet insistence, pausing for a snack before continuing.

At the bus stop, you slipped beneath the shelter just as the rain began to fall harder, shifting your weight as droplets gathered along the roof’s edge and fell in soft, uneven intervals. The scent of petrichor rose to meet you, planting a smile on your face.

There weren’t many people left; most had already gone, disappearing into the weather with hurried steps and lowered heads. Just a few remained scattered along the road. The sound of footsteps approached hurriedly, alerting you enough to turn to where the sound was coming from. And there he was.

Juhoon slowed slightly when he reached the shelter, brushing a hand lightly through his damp hair as he stepped under the small overhang. A few droplets clung stubbornly to the ends, catching the dim light before slipping away. Neither of you spoke, just a small bow from both sides.

“You’re still here.”

“My bus hasn’t come yet,” you replied softly, the usual tone that came out unconsciously when he was around.

He nodded once. “I see.”

The rain filled the silence between you. He stood with his usual posture, his attention drifting somewhere ahead rather than toward you, just like you were doing.

A stronger gust of wind pushed the rain further in, forcing you to step back slightly at the same time he reached into his bag. The hairs on your skin stood on end, and your hands did their best to warm them, too focused on that to notice the umbrella that stretched wide above him.

“You can stand here,” the offer came with him shifting it slightly in your direction, inviting you to step closer.

The space between you disappeared almost instantly; the umbrella wasn’t large enough to keep a comfortable distance, not if both of you wanted to stay dry. Your shoulder brushed lightly against his, and this was probably the closest you two were in three years.

“Thank you,” 

He nodded. “It’s fine.”

The rain continued to fall around you, louder now against the fabric above that wrapped around the moment. It was almost impossible not to feel the warmth of him beside you, close enough to notice, but not close enough to reach. Sadly.

Your fingers tightened slightly around the strap of your bag.

Say something.

The thought came to your head like a whisper. You could.

It wouldn’t be that hard. Just a few words—simple, honest. Enough to shift whatever this was into one that didn’t leave you guessing every time you looked at him.

“Juhoon, I—”

The words stopped, and to your surprise, it wasn’t because you couldn’t say them; you actually could. It was how his gaze focused on the road ahead where the bus would eventually appear. Even when he looked at you, there was no sign that he was waiting for anything more than the bus to arrive, clearly having no space opened for you.

The realization came quietly and landed harder than you expected on the back of your head, your words slipping away just as quickly as they had formed. “…Do you think it’ll be late?” you asked instead.

He glanced at the road briefly. “Maybe. The rain usually slows it down.”

“Oh.”

“That happens sometimes,” You nodded anyway, gaze dropping slightly to your partially dirty shoes. In a way, you couldn’t wrap your head around how the quiet that once felt shared even without words, it stretched between you unevenly, pressing in on your chest in a way that made it harder to breathe.

You were so, so close, and yet it felt like you were the only one standing there whose thoughts were eating her alive. The rain softened slightly, though the sky remained unchanged as the grey clouds didn’t seem ready to clear anytime soon.

All these years, you lived saying, “Maybe it was nothing,” although right now, where you didn’t feel an ounce of willingness on his part to know you beyond the dinners both of your families shared, the small tea parties with Miss. Kang, it felt like you should truly stop using that phrase. 

Surprisingly, your father had been right: A face can catch your attention, but a person keeps it. And suddenly, you weren’t sure what was being kept.

The bus lights appeared in the distance, clearer as it approached. Juhoon adjusted his grip on the umbrella slightly, stepping forward just enough to guide both of you closer to the edge of the road. The movement was considerate in the smallest way, just not enough to feel like more.

The doors opened with a soft mechanical sound. Juhoon signaled you to step in first. “Thank you,” 

He gave a small nod. “Of course.”

And that was it. You climbed the steps, your fingers brushing lightly against the damp railing as you moved inside. There was an empty seat by the window—your usual one—and without thinking, you slid into it, your bag resting neatly on your lap. A second later, he took the seat beside you, close enough that your shoulders nearly touched when the bus shifted forward again.

The window beside you was streaked with rain, blurring the outside world into shifting shapes. You rested your gaze there, watching as droplets chased each other down the glass, merging and separating without ever really stopping. Beside you, Juhoon adjusted slightly, the faint rustle of fabric breaking the quiet. 

“Here.” his voice caught your attention, watching him holding out a small tangerine as a simple gesture.

Still, your chest tightened slightly. “…Thank you,” you said, accepting it carefully.

He nodded once, already pulling his hand back, already moving on as if the moment had ended the second it happened.

“It’s from home,” he added after a beat. “My grandmother bought them.”

You glanced down at it, the bright color sitting softly against your palm. “They look good.”

“They are.” A gentle smile spread across her face, making you smile as well. You peeled it slowly, the scent rising faintly into the air. Naturally, you separated one slice, then hesitated for a second before holding it out toward him.

“Do you want—?”

He shook his head lightly. “You can have it. Grandma bought plenty.” That was it. That briefly friendly tone appeared.

“Oh… okay.” The slice was sweet, slightly tart on your tongue, but your attention wasn’t really on the taste. It drifted beside you instead, catching on the quiet shift in Juhoon’s posture. He hadn’t said anything after that.

He just sat there with his shoulder low; what you did notice was how his eyes blinked slowly, an action you often did when you were trying to keep up with something your body had already decided.

When they finally closed, it just happened; his head landed on your shoulder. You paused mid-eating at the warmth of him resting there, his hair brushed lightly against your neck as he slept without realizing it.

Your fingers tightened gently around the remaining slices in your hand, the peel crinkling faintly as the bus rolled forward. After what her grandmother had told you, you didn't move.

The concern rants about how she saw him stay up long after everyone else had gone to sleep, books spread out in the dim light. How it wasn’t just about school, not really, but about becoming someone his father could be proud of. The kind of effort that didn’t leave room for softness, or hesitation, or anything that might get in the way, like living a normal teenage life.

His behaviour made sense now to you, how carefully he carried himself and kept everything contained, neat and controlled, until he was with his friends, where he let himself loose to take a breath.

Your gaze drifted back to him, to the faint rise and fall of his shoulders, to the unguarded softness resting across his face while he slept. It was different like this. Lighter, almost. Whatever he carried during the day had been set down, if only for a moment.

You let yourself take it in, knowing it wasn’t something you were meant to see. Knowing that once he woke up, it would slip away, replaced by that familiar distance he wore so easily. And somehow, that didn’t make this moment feel any less real.

If anything, it made it more fragile, which was held only in the space between who he was for the world and who he allowed himself to be when no one was looking. And that was enough.

DUAL POV

Juhoon didn’t mean to come this way.

If anyone had asked, he would’ve said he was just walking—clearing his head after too many hours bent over his desk, loosening the quiet tension that felt too heavy on his shoulders whenever he stayed in one place for too long and had to listen to his father's constant speech about perfection. Lately, the air of his house had made him feel smaller than usual, and he didn’t care to name, especially when his father was home. So he walked.

It wasn’t unusual for him to take the longer route, to let his feet decide instead of his thoughts. Still, he knew this path wasn’t one he usually chose. It pulled him further out than expected, already past the familiar houses with their dim porch lights and the small shops already shuttered for the evening. At some point, he realized he didn’t quite know where he was.

That thought should have bothered him, but it didn’t; he actually felt a kind of relief.

He kept going, the rhythm of his steps slowing as the noise of the city thinned behind him. The wind came with a soft rustle ahead, and when he stepped onto a stretch of fallen leaves, the sound followed. Then the path opened. A lone ginkgo tree stood at the edge of a small clearing, its branches stretching wide against a pale, fading sky. Its leaves had already begun to fall, scattering across the ground in uneven patches of gold. 

Juhoon slowed once he realized there was someone there. At first, it was only a shape—a figure near the base of the tree, partially hidden by the slight dip in the ground. But as he stepped closer, the outline became so familiar that it made him stop without realizing it.

It was you, looking smaller here.

Not physically, but you fit into the space around you. The open clearing stretched wide, and there you were, kneeling beneath the tree as if you belonged to it more than the world beyond it. The wind moved gently through your loose hair, lifting a few strands before letting them fall again. Your hands were busy with something in front of you. He hadn’t expected you here, of all places.

His mind made him consider turning back; it would’ve been easy since you didn’t even realize he was there, yet destiny didn’t want it that way, forcing him to step forward. This time, the sound of leaves beneath his shoes gave him away, and when he saw your face, he couldn’t believe how his heart stopped.

There was no shock on your face, only a small pause; maybe his presence had arrived a second too early, but he didn’t feel entirely unwelcome. He was never good at reading emotions; that was his grandma's talent. He was grateful to pinpoint a sadness that didn’t ask to be seen resting beneath your face.

It sat gently in your expression, in the softness of your eyes, in the stillness of your lips. And somehow, it showed you in a light he hadn’t noticed before, or didn’t want to. A kind of beauty that didn’t try to be anything at all, and maybe that was why it moved him enough to make his ear warm up.

“Juhoon.”

“I didn’t know you came here.”

“I do,” you said simply. His gaze drifted, almost without permission, settling on the ground in front of you while his body didn’t know what to do. “Do you want to sit with me?”

Then he noticed it—a small blanket spread beneath you with enough space left beside you for him to sit, and he doubted only for a second before sitting down. Once he was next to you, two small markers that rested beneath the tree caught his eye. Probably, you sensed his curiosity since he couldn’t look away from them. “My family is here,” you added. He searched for the pattern in those markers—two crosses side by side—and could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

“Are you alright?”

“I am now. Yes.” The sentence came easily. You had already turned back by then, your attention returning to what you had been doing, hand brushing gently over the ground, moving a few fallen leaves aside with quiet care. He didn’t interrupt; he wasn’t supposed to disrupt.

After a moment, you reached into your bag, recognizing the binyeo in a second once you pulled it out. You had worn it for as long as he could remember—three years, maybe more, the fading light softly making it shine as usual, even brighter as you held it between your fingers.

Juhoon’s eyes followed the movement without thinking.

“This was from her,” you said quietly. “My mother.”

Carefully, you leaned forward and adjusted it where it rested, your fingers steady for a person who has been doing it over and over until it became easy, like a small ritual. “She liked things to be neat, said it made things feel in place.”

Juhoon stayed still, feeling how you were trying your very best to swallow that knot in your throat. “My brother used to tease her for it, he said she cared more about how things looked than how they felt, but he always let her fix his collar before he left. He was a student,” you said after a moment.

Your hand stilled for just a second.

“He thought he understood everything.” The corner of your lips curved, but it didn’t quite reach your eyes. “They died during the April Revolution.”

You didn’t look at him when you said it; it was better if it stayed lowered, fixed somewhere between the ground and the small space you had carefully cleared, so he couldn’t see the small tears forming in your eyes.

“He went out that day,” you continued quietly. “Said he was just going to see what was happening… my mother followed him because she knew deep down he lied.”

Juhoon felt his chest heavier once again as he kept listening. “She found him, before anything happened.” Your fingers brushed over the edge of the marker, lingering there. “And when it did… she didn’t let go. They were both brought back here.”

Juhoon swallowed lightly, his hands resting against his knees, unmoving. He searched for something—anything—that felt appropriate, and that could sit beside what you had just given him.

But nothing came; this was the first time he couldn’t ask a question.

“I see.” The words sounded small, even to him. You nodded, like that was enough, and it was in a way, knowing the lack of comfort he would give.

Neither of you spoke; he watched you adjust the binyeo again, though it didn’t need fixing, your fingers smoothing over it before pulling back. “They used to argue a lot, about small things. My brother always said he’d leave first,” you continued. “That he wouldn’t stay in a place that didn’t listen or feel understood. But he didn’t. because we all knew he was playing around.”

Your lips pressed together slightly, deciding to look at him as one tear finally dropped from the corner of your eye, wetting your cheek. “He stayed.”

Juhoon nodded once, though he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to. Deep in his mind, he wanted to say something, but asking what it had been after or how long you had been coming here seemed inappropriate. He couldn’t even bring himself to ask how you had carried it all this time and still smile to your friends so prettily and act like everything was fine with her grandma as he watched you from a distance.

The questions hovered somewhere at the edge of his thoughts, and they didn’t even reach his voice. Instead, he sat there, observing something he didn’t know how to step into.  After a while, he shifted slightly on the spot.

“I should go,” It came out gently. You didn’t look surprised.

“Okay.” Contrary to his tone, yours was dry.

“Take care,” he said instead.

You nodded. “You too.”

He stood, brushing a few leaves from his clothes before stepping back onto the path. The sound of them shifting under his shoes followed him as he walked away, quieter with each step. 

He didn’t look back, but just like anything related to you, the image stayed with him. The tree, the scattered gold leaves. Especially, you, sitting there with careful hands and a voice that carried more than it showed. The words from his grandma knocked some sense when he was far enough from you, realizing how little he had actually seen the whole you.

On the other side, you were never simply quiet—not in the way people found easy to understand. There was a depth to your life that resisted being seen, that was sadly shaped by loss and held together with quiet discipline to not show it to the only family you had. You had learned how to carry it without letting it show, folding it into softer expressions, small smiles that asked for nothing in return.

It was easier that way, for others to accept, and for you to move through the world without being asked questions you didn’t have the strength to answer.

He had seen that version of you—the gentler outline, the one that didn’t trouble anyone. Perhaps because it was all you allowed. Or perhaps because anything more would have required him to linger in a place he didn’t know how to stand in.

But there was nothing simple about you. You had endured the kind of loss that reshapes everything, leaving no visible fracture and yet altering the weight of every day that followed. You had learned how to live beside it, how to return to it, how to honor it without letting it consume what remained of you. And beneath all of that careful composure, there had been the faintest hope that someone might one day recognize it—not as something to mend, but as something to remain beside.

Under the ginkgo tree, you did not move.

The wind slipped into the space he had left, gentler than his presence had been, brushing against your face before passing through the branches above.

This place had always belonged to you—to you and to them. Tucked away from the rest of the world, it held everything you could not carry anywhere else. Without meaning to, he had found it. He had seen a piece of what you kept here, had listened as you gave voice to a version of you that you rarely allowed to surface.

There was kindness in him, you knew it. But kindness did not always know how to remain when things grew heavier or when silence stretched and asked for more than quiet company.

Your gaze shifted to the space beside you, feeling more tears rolling down your cheek.

Once, you might have imagined it differently—might have believed that if he opened enough like before and how his grandma wished, something in you would turn toward him without resistance, that the distance between you could soften so it can become steadier in hopes of being something more.

So when the space remained unchanged, you let it. 

JUHOON's POV

Considering how much the country had suffered in recent years, including outside his home, he couldn't avoid conversations that emphasized responsibility.

They came from everywhere now.

From the crackling radio his father listened to every evening, to teachers who lingered a little too long on civics lessons once their words slipped from memorization to more pointed ones, to older students who spoke in lowered voices near the gates, glancing over their shoulders like the air itself might carry their thoughts elsewhere.

Responsibility.

It used to feel like a distant word that was only meant for adults, for men who had already decided what kind of lives they would lead. Not for someone still in uniform, still worrying about test scores and neat handwriting.

But lately, he noticed it by how his father folded the newspaper more sharply than before, in the pauses between sentences at dinner. In the way his brother spoke about the future, one that wasn’t abstract and unavoidable.

And, sadly, he started to see that in himself.

Juhoon adjusted his grip on his pen, the tip hovering just above his notebook as the classroom buzzed faintly around him, a habit he had acquired. The teacher’s voice could be perfectly heard from the front, explaining something about economic recovery, but his attention was snagged on a single phrase.

“…the responsibility of the younger generation…”

He saw how a few students straightened their backs at that, while others looked down. His pen touched the paper again, writing without hesitation: Responsibility meant direction. Hence, direction meant decisions. And decisions meant there was less room for anything else.

“Hey.”

The whisper came from his left. Juhoon didn’t look up immediately.

“Hey,” the voice repeated, insistently.

He finally turned slightly. Keonho leaned back in his chair just enough to avoid the teacher’s direct line of sight, eyebrows raised.

“You’ve been writing the same line for the past minute.” Juhoon glanced down. He didn’t even realize that

“I’m listening,”

“Sure thing,” Keonho corrected, unimpressed. “Such an attentive student.”

From behind them, a soft snort slipped out.

“Leave him alone,” James murmured. “If he starts talking, we’ll all get in trouble.”

Juhoon didn’t turn fully this time, but he could picture the expression anyway—the relaxed posture, the half-smile that never quite looked forced. James was like that.

Where Keonho filled silence with noise, James would either let it sit or join. Where Juhoon measured his words, James didn’t seem to measure them at all, yet somehow never said the wrong thing. It made people gravitate toward him without trying.

“See?” Keonho whispered. “Even he thinks you’re too serious.”

“I didn’t say that,” James replied lightly.

“You didn’t have to.”

The teacher’s chalk hit the board a little harder than necessary. “Is there something you’d like to share with the class?”

Keonho straightened immediately. James lowered his gaze, the picture of innocence. Juhoon didn’t move. After a moment, the teacher turned back to the board, the lesson continuing as if nothing had happened.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, eyes returning to his notebook, the word alone in a line: Responsibility.

After school, the courtyard filled like it always did. And despite being used to that movement to shake off the weight of the day, it felt different.

“Are you coming or not?” Keonho tossed the ball lightly between his hands, watching him.

“For what?” Juhoon asked.

“The river. Just for a bit. Seonghyeon and Martin can’t make it because of practice.”

“I have work to finish.”

“You always have work to finish. Come live a little.”

“That’s because I don’t leave it unfinished.”

Keonho groaned. “You’re impossible.”

“Then go without me.”

“I would,” he said, then paused. “But it’s more fun when you’re there.”

Juhoon didn’t respond right away. From the side, James spoke again, softer this time. “Come for a little while,” he said. “You can still study after.” 

The kind offer made him hesitate. It would be easy to say no; it was easier than considering it. The way James said it made the refusal feel like an answer he couldn’t say. “Not long,” he said finally.

Keonho lit up immediately. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”

“It shouldn’t have been,” James added under his breath. Juhoon ignored that.

The walk to the river wasn’t long. As usual, Keonho talked the most—about a teacher he disliked, about a rumor he swore was true, about a plan he had already abandoned halfway through explaining, and most importantly, his next date with his girlfriend.

James listened, occasionally adding something small that somehow made the story better or complemented his ideas. Juhoon walked beside them quietly.

“…and then she actually said—” Keonho stopped mid-sentence. “Wait.”

“What?” James asked.

Keonho nodded toward the path ahead. “Look.”

Juhoon followed his gaze without thinking. A group of girls walked ahead, their uniforms moving softly with each step, voices blending into the late afternoon air.

He recognized them by the uniforms, more than anything. Dark skirts moving softly, white sleeves catching the light as they walked. The whole group moved in a pattern he had seen from a distance more times than he could count.

Then, her.

It wasn’t planned; the recognition just happened in such a quiet and immediate way, adjusting into place before he had the chance to question it. But she wasn’t where he expected her to be—not slightly behind or tucked into the edges of the group the way he had unconsciously placed her in his mind.

She was in the middle of it, leaning in as one of her friends spoke, her head tipping back when she laughed, the sound too soft to reach him, and it was clear enough by how her shoulders loosened. One of the girls nudged her, and she nudged back without hesitation this time, something easy and unguarded in the motion.

Her hands weren’t held close to her chest either. One moment, she gestured lightly with them as she spoke; the next, she adjusted the books at her side, only to forget about them again as the conversation pulled her in.

There was a rhythm to her he hadn’t seen before, an uncontained lightness.

She turned her head quickly—too quick to be measured—and said something that made the others react all at once. Even from where he stood, he could see how their steps slowed, and their attention gathered around her instead of passing through.

It didn’t feel like she was trying, and that was the part that caught him.

There was no effort in it—no awareness of how she might be seen. Just the certainty of someone who had forgotten to hold herself back. He watched a second longer than he meant to; the version he had built of her, without realizing it, broken into pieces.

And for a brief moment, that unsettled something in him. In his chest.

“You’re staring,” Keonho sang with the sole purpose of teasing him.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m not,” Juhoon repeated, sharper this time. James glanced between them, then back ahead.

“…She’s in our class, right? The one in the middle,” he asked casually.

Keonho nodded. “Yeah. That's Y/N, the quiet one.”

“Mm.” That was it; there wasn’t any exaggeration, just acknowledgment that made Juhoon more aware of it, not less. “She doesn’t look that quiet to me.”

He looked away first, only to find James staring at her as if he were in a daze with a small smile on his lips, a state from which Juhoon made sure to snap him out of with a gentle nudge.

It didn’t mean anything.

They reached the river shortly after, the sound of water softly cutting through the last remnants of conversation. Keonho dropped his bag first, already crouching near the edge to check the temperature. James followed more slowly, hands in his pockets, before he finally sat down on a flat stone. Juhoon stood a moment longer, his bag hanging in his hand, to find a clean enough space to put it.

“You’re doing it again,” Keonho said without looking up.

“Doing what?”

“Thinking like you’re about to solve the country’s problems.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

James let out a quiet breath that might have been a laugh.

Juhoon exhaled, finally setting his bag down. “…It’s just…” 

“What?”

“Things aren’t the same,” he said instead.

“That’s because we’re not fourteen anymore,” Keonho replied immediately. “Of course they’re not the same.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Juhoon looked toward the water, the reflection of the fading sky shifting with each ripple. “Everyone keeps talking about what comes next, like it’s already decided.”

“…And?” he asked.

“And I don’t think it is.” Keonho leaned back on his hands, quietly thinking about what he could say. 

“So decide it yourself.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“There are expectations,” he said finally.

“From who?”

“You know who.”

Keonho clicked his tongue. “Yeah. Sadly.”

“You’re not wrong,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you don’t have a choice.” James tilted his head slightly, gaze still on the water.

He frowned faintly. “It feels like I don’t.”

“Then maybe you’re only looking at the choices you think you’re allowed to make. Have you ever truly lived?”

The river moved the same way it always had, indifferent to everything else, comforting the silence that sentence created. Eventually, Keonho stood, brushing the dust from his hands.

“Alright,” he said. “If we stay any longer, he’ll start thinking again.”

“I never stopped,” Juhoon replied, smiling briefly. Keonho splashed a little water on him.

“Exactly my point.”

James stood too, stretching slightly with a groan. He removed his shoes before dipping his feet into the water.

“You should head back,” he said to Juhoon. “You’ll worry about it otherwise, and your dad will be pissed. Maybe on the weekend we can all hang out.”

He wasn’t wrong; it didn’t take long for him to pick up his bag. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Keonho said. “Try not to become a government official overnight.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“I know. That’s why it’s funny.” James just smiled, splashing more water on the youngest of the three.

On the walk back, the quiet returned. His thoughts didn’t scatter as they usually did—they narrowed on words. Responsibility, future, expectation—the words lined up too easily now, slotting into place as if they had always been waiting for him to notice them.

By the time he reached his street, the sky had darkened enough for the first lights to flicker on behind windows, another three words: Home. Routine. Structure. It should have eased him like usual. Instead, when he passed the low wall, he slowed.

Across the street, the gate stood half-open. A faint light spilled from inside, catching on movement. He didn’t mean to look, still, even though he could only see her out of the corner of his eye, he did it anyway.

She stood in the yard, her back turned this time, sleeves rolled just enough as she adjusted something near the entrance. It was either a box, maybe, or a stack of books. Her movements were casual and unhurried. He saw how she paused, her hands resting lightly against the edge as if she had forgotten what she was doing—or maybe she was just thinking. He couldn’t tell, and he shouldn’t have been watching long enough to wonder.

Juhoon shifted his grip on his bag, looking away when he sensed her gaze and kept walking. That was what made sense, and that was what he did—but not before his gaze flickered back once more, resting on her without reason, just taking a look at how the last rays of sunshine made her shine.

Then he turned fully, stepping through his own gate without hesitation this time.

Inside, everything felt the same. A difference was that his mother was next to his grandmother, drinking what he supposed was tea, the usual faint rustle of paper confirming his father's presence, and the familiar expectation fell back into place as if it had never left. His brother was nowhere to be found, his work consuming him until nightfall.

While seated at his desk with his books spread neatly in front of him, a couple of hours later, he found himself pausing more than usual. The material wasn’t difficult. He understood it completely, although his mind had different plans; his focus slipped only for a second at a time. It was either a movement outside, the sentence James had said, or the figure standing in fading light before.

Juhoon closed his eyes briefly and exhaled. This wasn’t like him. It couldn’t become a habit.

He picked up his pen again to force himself back into rhythm. The words came easier after that. Still, somewhere between one line and the next, his thoughts drifted again, not toward responsibility and the uncertain future, but to the simple realization that someone could exist so close, just across the street, and remain completely outside of his world. One look at his window showed that her bedroom window was fully open to let the night in.

She stood there, brushing her hair in absent strokes, the radio hummed “Ranch Lady in the Straw Hat” by Park Jae Ran, and she followed it without thinking, combining a small sway of her shoulders with a turn of her wrist, creating a rhythm that belonged to her. It wasn’t a performance meant for anyone, and maybe that was what held him there—the pure way she seemed to exist entirely for herself in that moment.

He hadn’t meant to notice her, simply doing a passing glance that was supposed to be dissolved as quickly as it came. However, a force prevented him from looking away as easily as he should have. He caught himself observing the details without understanding why: how the light reflected off her hair, the vacant look in her eyes, the slight movement of her lips, as if she were half-remembering the words. It was nothing, really. Less than nothing.

Nevertheless, it tugged some strings somewhere inside him, softly and without invitation.

When she slipped into a small, unthinking sway, losing the rhythm for a second before catching it again, the corner of his mouth lifted before he could stop it. The smile was brief, almost accidental, and soon he looked down, not long after, a little too quickly. Noticing her at all had already felt like more than it should have been.

Still, when his eyes returned to the page, it was too late. His focus slipped once and for all, catching on the same line without moving forward. There was a faint and unfamiliar feeling sitting somewhere in his chest—nothing strong enough to name, just distracting him from what was important. He ignored it, or tried to, though it made it hard to forget entirely.

At first, nothing seemed different. The mornings came as they always had, taking the same walk to school, past the same voices gathering at the gates, into the same rhythm of footsteps brushing against pavement. You slipped into your place in the day, greeting your friends with an easy familiarity, taking your seat, smoothing your hands over your notebook as you had done a hundred times before, and, of course, talking with them before the classes started.

Everything remained exactly as it had been, and yet, deep inside, you had gone quietly still. You didn’t look for him in that instinctive, unthinking way you used to, when your attention would drift without permission, and your eyes would search for him before you even knew you were hoping. Now your gaze stayed where you placed it, anchored to the small ordinary things that asked nothing of you. 

The unusual part was that you didn’t decide to stop; there was no moment of refusal, no conscious turning away. It was only later that you realized the pull was gone.

And in its absence, there was something unfamiliar that managed to balance the softness you hadn’t expected to come with it. It was so easy that it felt almost undeserved, as though love at seventeen should have left something heavier behind that tarry and ached to demand to be noticed. But it didn’t. It slipped away from you gently, and you let it go without ever once turning your head.

“Are you feeling alright?” Wonhee asked one morning, leaning in slightly as she studied your face.

You glanced up, pen still in hand, with a soft smile on your face. “I am.”

“You’ve been strange.”

“... I’m always strange?”

“I know, but it’s... strange,” she said, unconvinced.

Yunah, who had been quietly flipping through her book, looked between you both before speaking. “She’s studying.”

Wonhee frowned. “She always studies, more than usual though.”

“Not like this,” Yunah repeated, echoing her earlier tone with a subtle difference. She nodded toward your desk. “She hasn’t looked up once.”

You hadn’t realized that. “There are tests this week, and the one I messed up last time can be improved with this new one.”

“There’s always a test, but you will do great this time,” Wonhee muttered under her breath, the last part gentle.

You didn’t argue, just giving her another small smile because this time it felt like enough of an answer.

“Also, we have something for you.” Then Yunah reached into her bag and placed a white envelope on top of your book. Your name neatly written on it and their names just beneath, you could recognize the envelope anywhere.

“It’s nothing big,” she said. “Just take it.”

Wonhee nudged it a little closer to you at the sight of you staring at it in disbelief. “Don’t leave it there.”

Your throat tightened before you could respond.

“And—” Wonhee hesitated, then took your hand, her grip warm and clumsy. “Next time you go… to the ginkgo tree—”

Yunah picked up gently, “—would it be alright if we came with you?”

You nodded before you could trust your voice. The room blurred, and you quickly looked down, pretending to adjust the envelope in your hands.

“Hey,” Wonhee said quietly, not letting your hand go, “don’t cry here.”

You let out a small breath before leaning forward, wrapping your arms around them both. “Thank you.”

As you heard your classmates rushing to their desks, the moment had to be broken apart, quickly putting your envelope away in one of your books to clean up the tears that escaped from your eyes, right before the teacher arrived a few seconds later.

Months ago, there had always been an awareness that sat beneath your thoughts, mostly the sense of where he was in the room, of whether he had arrived yet, of whether he would speak. Now that it was gone, the absence had shape and made you return to your focused self.

And that also goes to how the hours passed, barely noticing when the bell rang. Wonhee saw you placing your things without thinking about it. 

“Wait—already?” Wonhee called after you, her voice trailing as she wrestled her bag into place. “You’re leaving first?”

“I’m not leaving first.”

“You are right now.”

You adjusted the strap on your shoulder and glanced at her. “I want to go to the library today.”

“Are you actually studying there?”

“Yes.”

Wonhee let out a long, exaggerated groan. “You’re becoming unbearable.”

Yunah laughed, and you did too, the sound slipping out easily. “It’s only for a few weeks. Come with me next time—I’ll explain Civics to you.”

Wonhee physically recoiled at that, clutching her chest like she’d been personally attacked. “Fine. I’m taking that offer, but I won’t enjoy it.”

“I’ll go too,” Yunah added once she caught her breath. “Just in case she tries to escape.”

“I’ll see you girls, tomorrow! ”

You stepped away before Wonhee could argue again, slipping out of the conversation and to the same after-class scenery: clusters of students, familiar paths worn into the space, and several conversations. Nothing had changed, except that the way you moved through it had.

Crossing without slowing down, your gaze stayed forward, not sparing a glance at the corridor where he sometimes stood or the field as you just walked.

The absence didn’t pull at you or demand notice. It stayed to exist without asking anything of you and closing on its own. You hadn’t decided to come here more often. It wasn’t a plan you’d made or a habit you’d set out to build. To your luck, the library had begun to feel less of an obligation.

You had always come when you needed to finish an assignment or just to be outside your house, knowing how passionate your dad got while painting the walls with music. The librarian would even say hello to you since you used to arrive when there wasn’t a clear reason, like today, only wanting to read a new book that your father thought you might like in English, so you can improve.

It would have been easier to follow your friends out through the gates to enjoy the rest of the afternoon, but after all the studying you had done, you wanted to be alone.

The library received you with the soft turn of pages, the occasional scrape of a chair, the low presence of other people existing alongside you without interruption. You took your usual seat by the window after picking up the two grammar books for the next test. At some point, the rest of the day slipped past without you noticing, too focused on reading your book.

“…Is this seat taken?”

The voice pulls you from the quiet gravity of your book, a soft interruption that feels almost out of place in the stillness. You look up, blinking once, twice—more out of surprise than confusion. It takes a second to place him, not because you don’t recognize him, but because you hadn’t expected to see him here, out of all places.

Zhao Yufan, one of Juhoon’s closest friends.

A flicker of guilt passes through you. You’ve seen him before—of course you have—but only caught your eye once or twice when he did something funny with his taller friend just to make everyone else crack a smile. 

Still, you can’t deny it. He’s handsome.

You envied the balance of his features—soft, but not unremarkable. Defined, but not in a way that feels intentional. As if he wasn’t shaped to impress, he happened to be. Your gaze lingers on his eyes briefly. They’re the first thing that holds you there—calm, slightly downturned at the corners, giving him a thoughtful look. There’s no sharpness to them, no edge meant to intimidate. Not when he’s looking at you with such gentle eyes, it’s almost impossible to read.

His skin is smooth, even, marked here and there with faint scars. His expression rests in that space between neutral and curious. And his lips, softly shaped and with balanced thickness, sit in a relaxed line that makes you wonder for a moment what they’d look like if he smiled without holding back, which probably might change everything.

His hair falls in uneven strands across his forehead, slightly tousled, which doesn’t look intentional. It suits him effortlessly, softening whatever distance his expression might have created, and makes him feel closer somehow.

“Um… no,” you say, realizing a second too late that he’s asked you something. Your eyes flick to the empty chair across from you, and you gesture toward it. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks.”

He moves quietly, pulling the chair out with minimal sound, setting his books down with the same careful ease. You brace yourself for the awkwardness that usually follows in this type of situation, but it never quite arrives. He doesn’t look at you again right away,  just opens his book, settling into his work like your presence doesn’t complicate anything.

You return to your own pages, this time from the grammar book for your English class. Eventually, you both reach for the same reference book, causing your fingers to brush.

“Oh—sorry,” you said immediately, pulling your hand back.

“It’s okay,” he replied, just as quickly. None of you moved after that, then he shifted the book slightly toward you. “You can take it.”

“You were reaching for it too.”

“I can wait.”

“…Are you sure?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Totally”

You hesitated before taking it, your fingers brushing the edge of the cover instead of his this time.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Before you can think too hard about it, you glance up again. “How about we read it together?”

He doesn’t react at first, but when you see his eyes lift from the page, meeting yours with surprise, his gaze shifts briefly to the book in your hands, then back to you.

“…Together?” he repeats, like he’s making sure he heard you right.

You nod, suddenly more aware of how this might sound than you were a moment ago. “It’s—uh, kind of annoying to wait for it. We’re probably looking for the same thing anyway.”

A small pause follows before he leans back slightly in his chair, considering it.

“…Okay,” he says.

You made a small space next to you for him to put his chair, and the book was placed between you two for him to see. Your shoulders don’t touch, but you’re aware of how close they could. The silence came back between you two as you both looked down at the same page, silently figuring out where to start.

“Were you in this section?” you ask, pointing lightly to a paragraph near the middle.

“Yeah,” he replies, leaning in just slightly. “That part explains it better than the earlier one.”

You hum in acknowledgment, eyes tracing the lines as you read. It’s easier this time, and now and then, one of you points something out like a sentence, a detail, or a correction.

The rest of the time slips with quiet exchanges, shared glances at the same lines, the occasional murmur of agreement. Later, you stop keeping track of whose hand moves first, whose voice breaks the silence. It blends easily and unforcedly, and turns out, Yufan was good at English, so he helped you with the pronunciation from time to time.

Deep down, you felt a little disappointed at how quickly time had flown by, even though you’d been able to relax with Yufan for at least ten minutes earlier. You closed your notebook with a small exhale, gathering your things.

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, closing his own book. “Me too.”

You weren’t sure why you waited, but you did just long enough for him to stand. Outside, the air had cooled slightly, announcing how the night was getting closer.

“You stay late often?” he asked after a bit of walking side by side.

“Recently. I do that when it’s exam season.”

“Mm.”

“You?”

“Not usually,” he admitted. “But I had more to finish today.”

You nodded, adjusting your grip on your bag. “You’re good at focusing.”

You blinked. “What?”

“In there,” he gestured lightly toward the school behind you. “You didn’t look up once.”

“Oh.” You hadn’t realized. “…I guess.”

“It’s impressive.”

“It’s just studying.”

“Still. I can’t even sit still for a couple of minutes—I just pulled it off to match your energy.”

There’s something playful in his tone that catches you off guard. You let out a small laugh before you can stop it, and the way his expression shifts—quietly pleased—makes it feel like he’d been waiting for that.

“That’s very kind of you, Yufan.”

“James.”

“Mh?”

“Call me James. It’s easier.”

“But I like your name.”

That, apparently, surprises him enough for him to lift one of his eyebrow lifts. “Liar.”

“I’m serious,” you insist, a small smile tugging at your lips. “I think it’s pretty… but if you want me to call you James, that’s okay. I can make that sacrifice.”

He laughs this time, it felt even warmer than the evening air, softer than the fading light. You slow your steps without meaning to.

“I go this way,” you say, gesturing ahead.

“Same,”

“I didn’t know you lived nearby.”

“Not too far.”

The quiet that follows isn’t awkward, but it soon fills with your conversations. “…Keonho talks a lot,”

A small laugh escapes you before you can hold it back, remembering how you and Yunah placed a bet once on who speaks the most, him or Wonhee. “He does.”

“He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

“I know!”

“He just fills space with the most random things. So does Martin.”

“That makes sense,” you say, glancing down for a moment. “They get along so well.”

He looks at you then, briefly but directly. “You don’t.”

You frown, a little puzzled. “I don’t talk much.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

You turn your head toward him, confusion softening your expression. He doesn’t explain right away, letting the moment sit there. “You don’t need to.”

Something about the way he says it makes your chest feel different, but before you can figure out why, he nods toward a smaller street branching off ahead. “This is me.”

You stop. “Oh.”

“Let’s keep going,” he says.

“James, we’re in your street.”

“I don’t want to let you go alone; let me take you home safe.”

It’s said simply, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He reaches out, hand hovering before gently nudging yours forward, urging you to keep walking. The contact is light, fleeting—but it made your face warm instantly and forced you to look away, walking forward before he has the chance to notice.

Or maybe he does.

The street stretches ahead as your footsteps walk side by side, the conversations growing as both of you arrive at your house.

“Hold on, you are Juhoon’s neighbor?”

“Yes, for a couple of years now, actually.” 

“I didn’t know that,” he says, glancing between your house and his, fitting pieces together a little too late. “That makes sense.”

You smile faintly. “Does it?”

“Yeah.” He shrugs, hands slipping into his pockets. “You’re around more than I thought. I just didn’t notice properly.”

“Well,” you murmur with your eyes on him, “you’re noticing now.”

“Glad I am.”

You stood in front of the cool metal of your gate with your key in hand. “I had a good time,” he says then, almost like it surprises him to admit it out loud.

Again, you were caught off guard, but this time, it’s easier to smile. “Me too.” Your door finally opened. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, James.” 

You take a step back, already half-turning toward your door.

“…Yufan sounds nice, too.” Once the words lingered in the air, you looked back at him just to see the faintest hint of a smile on his lips.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow, Yufan,” you corrected, his smile growing a little in size.

“I’ll be happy to see you tomorrow,” he says. “Y/N.”

You nod once before slipping inside, closing the gate behind you. But even as you walk toward your door, you give one last glance back once more. He’s still there, waiting for you to enter safely and to wave his hand softly before he finally turns and heads home.

Who would have thought that Yufan was that sweet?

─── BLR DIDN'T WANT ME TO POST THIS BC OF THE 1K BLOCK LIMIT </3! Hence, I'm posting the first part out so you all can stop waiting (and yes, we are missing more scenes). The second part will come out hours later today or on Thursday, but it WILL. Tysm for waiting, it feels so good to be back on cortisblr yall 🚬🩷

PERMANENT CORTIS TAGLIST! @hyeon3y @cigarettestown @jesmightjumptmr @winterlico @jiyeons-closet @user28388727 @pixel-zombie @nevernowsa @miseulgaru @ivehan @cvntycapricornxx @one-chance-pls @pawcolypse @adynorris @teacuplps @heart4hees @xh01bri @emotiandon @loveseobie @rnares @angelyseo @glitchninx @lcvehyeon @me0wskii1 @kaikaikoi

[hollyoongs]

icymi 🩷 (boosting this up bc i don't see a lot of act in cortisblr :/ )

[cosmiho]

THE BATTLE OF BRITPOP — JAMES CHAO

SYNOPSIS :: In which you met your boyfriend through failing to ragebait him about the battle of britpop

W.C :: 1.0k

CONTAINS :: bf!James, blurfan!James x oasisfan!reader, heacanons, kissing, skinship, ragebaiting

PLAYLIST :: Tender - Blur; Slide away - Oasis

bf!James who actually didn’t care that much when you first commented on his post of Blur lyrics in an attempt to ragebait him by saying Oasis was miles better, because sure he preferred Blur, but he also didn’t mind Oasis. he just replied with  “okay 😭” and went on with his day.

bf!James who started getting amused when you kept replying anyway, acting personally offended over “mid blur propaganda” and insisting the whole battle of britpop should’ve ended with Oasis winning by default. he could tell you were trying way too hard to annoy him, especially when half your arguments made no sense, but he was one of the rare few who didn’t actually pick a side in the rivalry.

bf!James who finally took the bait when you said nobody under the age of forty willingly listened to “woohoo song #2.” he sent back three paragraphs defending Song 2 like his life depended on it.

bf!James who kept telling himself he was only replying because he was bored, but suddenly it was 2 a.m. and you were both ranking britpop albums in his comment section like music critics with personal grudges.

bf!James who secretly laughed every time you called Damon Albarn “that pretentious british man” because technically you weren’t wrong, but the same could arguably be said for Liam and Noel.

bf!James who eventually moved the arguments to private messages after his friends kept screenshotting your fights and reposting them with captions like “enemies to lovers speedrun.”

bf!James who made you a playlist titled “for people with terrible opinions” and filled it with Blur songs he swore would fix your taste.

bf!James who dragged you into tiny record shops because “you need a proper Blur education,” then acted betrayed when you wandered off to the Oasis section instead.

bf!James who stared at you in genuine horror after catching you replace one of his Blur songs in a shared playlist with Wonderwall.

bf!James who claimed your music taste was hopeless but still memorised your favorite Oasis songs anyway, just so he could sing them obnoxiously off-key to make you laugh.

bf!James who nearly passed out when months later you casually showed up wearing one of his old Blur tees at his door and said, “don’t get excited. i still think Oasis clears.”

bf!James who kissed you mid-argument once because you were ranting about the battle of britpop with so much fake passion he couldn’t even take you seriously anymore.

bf!James who started noticing that every single one of your arguments somehow circled back to defending Oasis like it was your full-time job. “do you even like them that much,” he asked once. you stared at him for a second before admitting, “not really. i just like annoying you.”

bf!James who looked genuinely offended the first time you called Blur “elevator music for art students.” he spent the next hour trying to prove you wrong with a level of passion that honestly concerned you.

bf!James who would randomly send you screenshots of people online praising Blur with captions like “SEE??? PUBLIC OPINION.” as if he was gathering evidence for a legal case.

bf!James who acted smug for weeks after catching you adding Girls & Boys to one of your playlists. you tried claiming it was ironic listening. he never believed you.

bf!James who loved putting on Beetlebum during car rides specifically because he knew you’d start complaining dramatically within the first thirty seconds, even though you always ended up singing along anyway.

bf!James who once pulled out an entire timeline of the battle of britpop just to win an argument with you, only for you to say, “this is the nerdiest thing you’ve ever done,” while trying not to laugh.

bf!James who got ridiculously soft the first time you admitted one of his favourite songs actually reminded you of him whenever it came on. he pretended to stay calm about it, but later he added the song to three separate playlists he’d made for you so you could always be reminded of him.

bf!James who threatened to revoke your aux privileges forever after you interrupted his Blur marathon by blasting Don’t Look Back in Anger through the speakers.

bf!James who would hold your face in both hands after particularly stupid arguments and go, “you know we could be having normal couple conversations instead of debating 90s british men right now.”

bf!James who secretly adored that your relationship started because you failed at ragebaiting him initially. according to him, the fact that you kept coming back to argue meant you liked him from the beginning—even if neither of you admitted it yet.

bf!James who still has screenshots of your very first arguments saved somewhere in his camera roll because he thinks it’s funny how hard you tried to sound like the number one Oasis defender alive while clearly googling half your points.

bf!James who once got so competitive during a debate that he made you both sit down and listen to entire albums back-to-back “for objective analysis,” only for the night to end with you both yelling lyrics across the room at each other.

bf!James who loves wrapping an arm around your waist and whispering “be honest, Blur changed your life a little bit” whenever he catches you enjoying one of their songs too much.

bf!James who acted devastated when you told him Tender was actually beautiful because according to him, “bullying you about britpop was more fun when you were committed to the bit.”

bf!James who keeps trying to get you to watch old Blur interviews with him, then spends half the time pausing to explain band lore while you stare at him like he’s become a middle-aged man trapped in a young person’s body.

bf!James who nearly started a real argument after you said Blur only won because they had “better unemployed person music.” he didn’t even know what that meant, but it sounded insulting.

bf!James who once caught you defending Blur to somebody else online and went completely silent. when you noticed him staring, he just went, “oh my god. i converted you.”

bf!James who still argues with you for fun even after you both admitted the whole Oasis vs Blur thing stopped being serious months ago. now it’s basically flirting with extra steps.

bf!James who kisses you after every fake argument like it’s the official ceasefire agreement in your own embarrassingly specific britpop war.

[blushdarkberries]

whenever brit pop rock bands (just any rock band) comes up on my feed u know im so up 😭 U KNOWWWWW U KNOW I AM 🤧🤧 the back and forth cute lil arguments and when he kisses her as reader yapped n yapped LORDDDD GIVE IT TO MEEEE

in my head im imagining a blur fan! james x rhcp fan! mari bc im doped up in copium kill me it’s so easy to 😔 n this exact same thing happened as well 😌🤷‍♀️🩷

[blushdarkberries]

dont get it twisted but its rlly not that deep. this a part of every fandom the same way ygs have a problem with ao3 but its still the biggest fanfic distributor. there will always be people that have different views and interests from you. no matter how you look at it martin is 18 so hes going to be percepted as an legal 18 year old. its not like they come on tumblr anyway so dont get it twisted and calm down. ygs are making it bigger than it rlly is.

Lolll idgaf u sound sick come out from behind that anon feature and talk to me w as much of that audacity u have when u run ur mouth on the internet supporting shit like ts 😐 being a pervert aint no simple interest anon

[blushdarkberries]

I’m so grossed the FUCKKK out with what this @/selestiyara user is doing but not only that I wanted to send like some hate comment before I blocked bc yes perverts deserve hate ‼️‼️ and then I look at the comments on their posts and everyone like FW IT??? ‘ignore them bae they js mad’ ‘keep posting queen’ IM BLOCKING ALL OF YOU OH MY YOD IM SO DISAPPOINTED 😭😭😭😭😭🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

⚠️please block and report @/selestiyara (and like everyone else in those comment sections 💀)

[kaikaikoi]

IDIOT OFF COURT! PREV | NEXT

otherwise more popularly known as “RAPPERS AINT SHI, MIGHT FW A BALLER”

( 010. ) ˖ ࣪ 𐙚 ⁺ KIM JUHOON × FEM!READER ˖ ࣪ 🍰·. ˖ ࣪. jjuyn heart2heart WE CHEERED 😭🏆 ( fluff & soft intimacy )

( pre-chap notes. ) this scene takes place right after the last chapter ends, before the characters go to sleep at home ^•^ the last part of their conversation is inspired by the lyrics of DISILLUSIONED BY DANIEL CAESAR so give it a listen 💞

( 💭 ) GUYS IM GOING TO CRY THEYRE SO MY FAV 😭😭😭 the songs I had playing while writing this were so so SO many that.... I don't wanna include in this chap so,,,, I may instead make a mini playlist as a bonus based on this chapter IF ANYONE WANTS TO SEE THAT !!! cuz guys ☹️☹️☹️ I love them so much ☹️☹️☹️ and also like I defend my girl y/n for feeling hurt okay like lowk I'd lose it if a guy ghosted me TOO I stand by her

[blushdarkberries]

guys i love this series sm u dont got a clueeee ;-; ik im supposed to be off tumblr and shit and i cant even use emojis rn bc im currently on my laptop THEY WANT TO SILENCE ME SO BADDDD GIVE ME MY EMOJIS BACK >.<

i love love love that so many feelings can be pulled from these text msgs alone i feel like if i were juhoon id need to write an entire letter just to unpack all that emotional baggage, but it was all so beautifully structured in how it comes across ^^

i genuinely need things that feed the soul this is it guys it speaks to me ;-; like hell yea why should it matter whawt other people think but then i also do care what some people think of me ykwimmmm and i know that doesn't really fit into the whole modern 'love yourself' framework or those self help books where it goes 'you are you!!!' but i figured its not always that clean in practice, and in the words of y/n, youre still you, and if that 'you' is human then of course things are going to matter sometimes and thats ok <33

ALSO THE ILY FUCKKKK FUCK YNJJU SO FUCKING UGHHHH FUCK YOUUU IM CRINEE ITS SO SWEET <33 THEYRE THERE FOR EACH OTHER

some things i will be taking note of:

'i only have the balls to say what im saying cuz i cant see you rn' 'i felt everything whil i did what i did, and it was scary. to wake up thinking about one thing, to play thinking about another, to come home not having either. it hurt to be there too.' 'i played basketball thinking about you' 'its you' 'its always just you' 'in your room and right now is stronger than ive ever seen you be. i think i want strong people around me no?' 'for the record i like you too, but youre making me fall in love' JJU U SMOOTH FUCKING SNAILLLLLL

SHUT THE FRIDGEEE SHUT IT OH LORDD THE STRINGS OF THE UNIVERSE THE WORKINGS OF THE ANCIENTS ITS ALL COMING TGT

jju so me brah aw man <3 my wise spiritually 60 yo uncle i haven't caught up on some parts of the series but i will SOON LATER YES i hope ill get the time <33

[blushdarkberries]

the concept of u not being able to focus at all when studying in a comfortable corner of the library w all the supplies you’ll ever need, but being able to lock in 🔒 while sitting on the thinnest corridor ledge w a single broken pen using ur phone as a calculator is smthn I will never understand but am grateful for

[jjuhyeons]

CANON EVENT ⟡ 박우주 (PART ONE)

암팡지다 ★ you’d spent the majority of your superhero career trying to avoid canon events. the dreaded, unchangeable moments that shaped every spider-person’s life. despite being told that there was nothing to be done about your fate, you took it into your own hands. you’d be the first spider to break the chain. then martin edwards park came along.

warnings ★ swearing, characters being dramatic, typical teenager stuff, HEAVY ANGST like i cried while writing some bits, canon typical spiderman violence, elements of psychological abuse and like… manipulation, sort of, themes of love and loss, minor character death, some narrative haunting, angst, cliffhanger, aaanndd reader has attachment issues and gets really mean. 

genre ★ spiderwoman au, superhero au, slight 2000s au, strangers to friends, friends into lovers, romance, comedy, angst, action, spiderwoman!reader, mj!martin, bff!juhoon, martin x reader 

word count ★ 29k of 33.7k

notes ★ ok so remember when i said a martin au where reader is spiderwoman and he’s your mj would be cool. yeah i wrote it. also enjoy the woojin (lngshot) cameos he’s my newest little guy. not proofread because i mean LOOK AT THE SIZE OF THIS THING!!

listen to… me when i’m spider-man

ALRIGHT, LET’S DO THIS one last time.

When you were sixteen, you were bitten by a radioactive spider, and for the last two and a half years, you’ve been your dimension’s one and only Spider-Woman. I’m pretty sure the audience knows the rest.

You saved the city, defeated a big bad, and did it all while having zero gymnastics experience and more anxiety than was fit for someone your size.

It was in your last year of high school that you fell in love for the second and final time in your life. The night before your eighteenth birthday, in fact, the promise of future love sealed with an upside-down kiss under neon city lights.

But, before we get to that, I guess I’ve got to set the scene leading up to that moment. You know, just so that we’re all on the same page.

2026년 2월 11일

11 FEBRUARY, 2026

서울 Seoul

The streets were packed with people as you expertly weaved through the crowds, dragging your very begrudging best friend behind you with a grunt of effort. Of course, he’d been the one to suggest that you go out shopping at this late hour, yet he’d been the first to complain once he’d seen how many people had had the same idea as him. 

The days leading up to Valentine’s Day had been spent working, both on schoolwork and saving unknowing couples from vengeful villains who hated celebrations of romance and happiness for some reason, while Juhoon had passed the day reading nonfiction to, quote-unquote, “detox his brain from the romance-fuelled nightmare which was this upcoming holiday,” after which he nagged you to go shopping with him until you—spent, bloodied, and beaten—gave in. You raced through the streets, your legs carrying you to the department store closest to yours and Juhoon’s neighbourhood.

It was surprisingly busy for the hour, though, you didn’t know a time where Seoul wasn’t bursting with life. You finally stopped, setting your hands on your hips with finality as your fingers slipped out from Juhoon’s hold. “Right,” you said, out of breath. “What did you need to get here?”

He glanced up at the bright, fluorescent light casting a very unflattering shadow over the two of you, all gangly limbs and fitted jeans, worn shoes, annoying spots and rusted jewellery, seemingly in thought. “T-shirts,” he answered finally, nodding. “Lots and lots of T-shirts.”

“Alright, then. Lead the way.”

You ambled over to the clothing racks, stocked with everything from designer to second-hand to a brand you liked to call might as well have just come from absolutely nowhere. Juhoon took his time browsing, his left hand angling the shirts over his lean form while his right was used to balance all those he’d chosen for proper fitting, and maybe even buying.

When he’d circled the same rack for the fourth time, passing you his possible purchases to hold while he carefully carded through each and every top like he hadn’t seen them all five times before, you decided that you’d let him do his thing and occupy yourself with something else. Surely he’d come to find you if he’d grabbed something else he wanted to get.

You found yourself in a different section of the shop, still on the same floor as Juhoon, in the technology aisle. Everything from headphones to chargers to DVD players to the thing you’d been looking for the longest—cameras. Like with their clothing section, the department store had a lovely selection of brand new and secondhand devices alike, so you could take your time deciding whether you wanted to spend four months’ wages on a new camera, or just one.

You’d been searching for a particular sort of camera to add to your ever-growing collection. Well, you supposed not too particular; you didn’t have any models in mind, just vibes. You squinted at the racks, seeing everything you already had; small digital cameras for more candid pictures, camcorders for idle moments and memories, professional cameras for picture day, but not what you needed.

You turned, thinking to yourself where to look for something small, sturdy, grainy, that takes film, and can be used for the more romantic—

BANG!

In a rather comical moment, you were sent flying as you crashed into someone, landing smack on your bum. Your palms ached as they took the brunt of your fall, your wrists clicking in a way that definitely wasn’t normal. You brought a hand up to your face with a pained groan, before realising the familiar frame of your tortoiseshell glasses was missing. With a lurch, the small crack! you’d heard as you fell replayed in your mind, and you cautiously looked up to face whoever you’d bumped into. 

You wondered how the hell your spidey senses hadn’t given you so much as a slight sting because of the sheer size of the guy you’d somehow completely missed when turning around.

The first you saw of him were his shoes—large, spotless Converses swimming in baggy denim. He was big, and tall, it seemed, long legs like a highway that took you over the plains of his lean body, and eventually, with a shiver from your side, a very pretty, very confused face. Shaggy blonde hair went this way and that as he shook his head in recovery, dark brown eyes adjusting to the abrupt change of setting.

His glance soon found yours, and his eyes widened in realisation as he seemed to process what had happened. Before you had another moment to appreciate the view, he got up, hands already reaching for you as apologies spilled from his pillowy lips. “Oh, my God, I am so sorry. I didn’t even see you there, and— That probably sounds bad, doesn’t it? I’m not saying you’re short, or anything, it’s just…” He paused, the pads of his fingers resting on your wrist as he pulled you up with less effort than was appropriate for your palpitating heart. “Wait, do you even understand English? ‘Cause I’m speaking English. Ah, crap. Sorry, ma’am. I didn’t mean to bump into y—”

“It’s fine,” you interjected, yanking your arm out of his grip as if he’d shocked you. Which, mentally, perhaps not physically, he had. “I’m fine. I understand English. And Korean. And, yeah, I’m short. I get it. But I’m the one who bumped into you. I wasn’t looking where I was going, and—”

He reached for your hand again, imploring, “No, seriously, it’s not your f—”

You began, “I didn’t mean to hurt y—”

And so on it went for the next fifteen seconds. Eventually, you stopped yourself, looking down at the awfully interesting and blurry floor, before glancing back up at the ridiculously handsome stranger whose camera you’d broken. 

Wait. Your eyes widened, finally noticing the camera hanging loose around his neck, and most importantly, the broken lense staring at you like a foul gesture. “Oh, shit. Oh, crap. I’m so sorry. Your camera— I— Ohhh, I am so, so sorry.”

He glanced down, hands subconsciously cupping the expensive gadget. “Oh, this? Don’t worry about it.” He waved a dismissive hand, like, Don’t sweat it. “It’s ancient, and the lens was screwed up anyway. That’s the whole reason I’m here, actually.”

“Oh.”

You seemed to be saying that a lot these days.

He smiled, and you thought your knees might buckle beneath you. “Yeah. Oh.” Then he laughed, and the sound was like the gates of heaven opening and ushering you in with soft, steady hands on your back. “Anyway, do I… know you? You look kind of familiar.” Oh, shit. Oh, shit, oh— “Do you go to Siryeok Academy?”

You nodded dumbly. Why the hell were you even afraid that he may have known? “Uh, yeah.”

If it could, his smile widened. “Hey, me too! You’re Class 3A, right?” He said your name, experimentally, as if testing out the vowels, and again received a dumb nod from you. He held out his hand for you to shake. “I’m Martin. Class 3B. Nice to meet you.”

You glanced down at his hand—sharp, lean, sparkling with silver rings. His wrist was encircled by  several bracelets. You took it into your own, your rings clashing against his as you shook hands. Martin. The name sounded familiar, and you found yourself repeating it after he’d introduced himself. Martin. You were sure you’d heard it somewhere before. Did he play sports, maybe?

Mmm… no. As attractive as he was, it was clear he wasn’t fit sports-wise. He was too lanky to be a swimmer or a soccer player, too skinny to play volleyball or basketball, and those were Siryeok’s most famous sports programs. For some reason, he looked like he’d be pretty bad at table tennis, too, so you ruled that out as well. Maybe he was in some sort of club?

“You’re part of the school’s newspaper, right?” you guessed, and as soon as you said the words you realised you’d read his name somewhere before. Martin Edwards Park. 박우주. Park Woojoo, lead photographer of the school newspaper, photographer of Siryeok Academy’s yearbook since 2024.

His eyes seemed to light up—or maybe you were just hallucinating; where were your glasses?—and he nodded. “Yeah, yeah. The— I’m the leader, actually. Of… it. The photography. The photography department at the newspaper.”

An awkward silence settled over you, wherein it became increasingly obvious to you that you’d dropped all of Juhoon’s promise purchases, and still hadn’t located your glasses.

You heard shuffling, and looking up, you saw Martin crouching amidst the chaos, picking up a brown frame that looked laughably small in his hands. “Oh, crap. I totally forgot about your… glasses.” He raised them in front of his face, revealing the cracked rim and lens. “Shit. Sorry.”

You snatched them from his hands, startling him. “It’s fine,” you said quickly, dropping to your knees to collect the fallen shirts. “It’s… I needed to get a new pair, anyway.” That was a lie. You’d only bought this pair a few months ago.

He promptly followed suit, helping you pick them up without question. “Still, I’m sorry. They’re totally wrecked now. If I’d just looked where I was going—”

“Martin,” you interrupted, cutting him off to both of your surprises. “It’s fine. They’re just glasses. Besides, I already wasn’t looking where I was going. Neither of us stood a chance.”

He chuckled softly, the sound light and heavenly and pretty much enough to make you cry. “When you say it like that, then… yeah. I feel a little less like an ass.”

“Good,” you said, standing up, hands full once more. You gave him the best smile you could while your brain was wailing about just how damn pretty he was and how you’d probably never find beauty like that again in your life and— “That was my intention.”

He tilted his head, wondering aloud, “So, now that I’ve officially met you, do I get to say, ‘See you at school’?”

What an odd question to ask. He could say anything to you and you’d be eternally grateful he even wasted his breath on you. Then again, you couldn’t exactly tell him that without scaring him off, either, so all you said was, “Sure. I’ll see you at school, Martin.”

He grinned. “See ya. Hope you find the camera you were looking for.”

“Wh—?”

But he was already gone, disappearing among the many shoppers in the store, leaving you alone, in the middle of the tech aisle, still carrying all your friend’s shirts that he was hopefully going to buy. If not, you’d have come all for nothing.

…Okay, maybe not for nothing. But still, meeting the most beautiful man on the planet was not good enough to justify you being dragged out after such a tiring day.

You found Juhoon right where you left him, perhaps positioned a centimetre or two to the right, in front of a different rack than the previous one. He seemed to take as much notice of your arrival as he had of your departure, which was to say, none at all. Until,

“Where did you run off to?” he asked, tilting his head towards you in subtle question. “Someone need saving?”

“No,” you said. “I was just looking around the tech aisle.”

He hummed. “Still looking for that film camera, huh?”

“Yup.”

“And where are your glasses?”

You froze. He wasn’t even looking at you! How did he know you weren’t wearing them anymore?

“Oh. I, uh… funny story, actually. I bumped into someone, and my glasses broke,” you explained, with no stiffness or bubble in your throat whatsoever.

His expression remained unchanged. “Must’ve been quite the fall, huh? Didn’t your spidey senses tingle or something?”

You grimaced. “Please don’t say ‘tingle’. It’s gross. And why does it sound like you’re interrogating me?”

Finally, he turned to face you with that same calm manner, something simmering beneath the surface. “Because you’re being all awkward, and I can practically feel the heat radiating off you, which means you saw someone who made you flustered, which means you ran into a cute guy, which means I need to know everything there is to know about him before he breaks your heart into a million little pieces the same way he broke your glasses.”

A small, tense silence ensued, and you gave Juhoon possibly the most shocked stare you could manage since that time you accidentally made Tuseokgi explode in the middle of a Seoul subway station.

“O…kay.” You shifted your weight from foot to foot, explaining, “His name’s Martin. He goes to Siryeok. He was looking for a new camera because his old one was broken or something, and he’s the lead photographer of—”

“The school paper,” Juhoon finished for you, nodding like he knew who you were talking about. “I’ve met him a few times before.” He paused, before adding, “He’s alright. Kind of weird. Really bad at table tennis.”

You frowned. “Weird?” 

He shrugged. “Kind of lanky, kind of awkward. But he’s chill, I guess.”

“Oh. Well. Thanks for that, then?”

“Pleasure. Now, where did I put my wallet?”

As is to be expected, it’s difficult being a vigilante and a high school student at the same time. Trying to balance both lifestyles, not to neglect either side of your life, was a feat you hadn’t yet mastered. Most days you showed up to school on time, but every now and then, there was a day where your nemeses decided to make your life just that little bit more difficult by robbing a bank, or pickpocketing an old lady, or trying to wipe out your entire family with no remorse to be found in their broken bodies. You know, small things that you wished you could leave, but that would put you in a really awkward position if anyone were to find out there had been a superhero in the city who didn’t bother to save them from getting mugged one morning.

And sometimes, it wasn’t just in the mornings. Sometimes, it was while you were trying to go through your school day as usual, trying not to focus on the fact that Gapchung told you he’d rip off your head and eat it the previous night, or that this weird spotty creature kept phasing in and out of existence and was floating just outside your classroom. Today was one of those days.

“Man, I really can’t do this today,” you complained, dodging a kick as the masked figure who’d been tailing you since you left your flat attempted to retaliate. “I just ironed my uniform this morning. And I’ve got a Calculus test! Does that mean nothing to you people?!”

You weren’t sure where this person had found you, or why they’d decided to make you their target. They didn’t look like a supervillain—they didn’t even really look like a normal, low-budget villain, to be honest. Just some kid in a kabuki mask throwing badly-timed kicks your way for whatever reason. Why would they be trying to rob you?

They said nothing, swung, and you ducked. “I mean, couldn’t you have tried to rob someone who looked a little bit richer? Someone who has bodyguards to knock you out, maybe?”

The fight didn’t last too long, mostly because this person clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were fighting with reckless abandon, as if they were more trying to prove something than to do any real damage to you. You saw them off with a final, well-placed hit that sent them crashing to the ground, crumpling in a heap in the middle of a dark alleyway.

You stepped back for a moment, trying to catch your breath, because for whatever reason, the spider that gave you your powers forgot the part where you were supposed to have gotten incredible stamina. Maybe that was payback for costing it its life, or something. You didn’t pay the mysterious figure any mind past assessing their form—lean, a bit short, smaller than most villains. There were no distinguishing marks or features on their body, partly because they were dressed head to toe in black, their face shrouded by a white and red mask. A fox, you noted. Mm. Odd.

Before you could stare for a moment longer, your phone pinged in your skirt pocket. You slid it out of the soft material, its screen lighting up to show several messages from Juhoon.

주 dude, where are you?? classes start in 15 minutes… did someone get robbed

are u fighting a big bad

But that wasn’t what caught your attention. The timestamp on the messages… 7.45… Cripes! Your eyes widened, and with a last glance the stranger’s way, you raced out of the alleyway and into the busy street, running as fast as you could through the early morning crowds. Pushing down the festering feeling that something was amiss, something wasn’t right.

Juhoon was waiting for you at the school gates, leaning against the large, ornate black iron, staring at his phone as if anticipating something. That something probably being a text back from you, because you rarely, if ever, left him on read. His head lifted only when you were a few metres from him, eyes squinting against the pale sunlight and not betraying anything besides slight annoyance.

“Finally,” he sighed. “Where were you?”

“Sorry,” you breathed, putting your hands on your knees. “Someone jumped me in an alleyway, New Jersey style.”

He frowned. “Familiar?”

You shook your head. “No. New.”

A hum, and you both turned to walk side by side up the steps leading into the school building, voices hushed and hauntingly casual as you spoke. “Any powers?”

“Not that they showed,” you answered. “They were pretty small, too.”

“So, your newest villain is a teenager?”

“Looks like. One with really bad karate moves.”

That got an amused snort out of him. “Like you would know.”

“Hey! Even if I never did a day’s exercise in my life before becoming a superhero, I know a good roundhouse kick when I see one.”

“Right.”

You parted with a mocking Right his way as the start of your day was signalled by the sound of the electric clock ringing through the halls, you making your way to your homeroom, Juhoon making his way to his.

The rest of your day looked as if it would pass by without a hitch. You attended classes, wrote your Calculus test (which you didn’t do too badly on, you thought) and enjoyed a villain-free lunch. You and Juhoon sat across from one another in agreeable silence, only exchanging a few words in the fifteen minutes you were given to rest between classes.

“You know,” Juhoon started, chewing thoughtfully on a strip of pork, “I was thinking of signing up for the school newspaper.”

You glanced up at him from your own lunch—jajangmyeon, kimchi fried rice, and several very unhealthy sweets, all packed affectionately by your stepmother, Mirae—your eyes clear in their question. You hadn’t gotten new glasses since the incident, and were now staring at the rather adorable blur which was your best friend, eyes squinted both in question and blindness. “Since when did journalism interest you?”

“Since never,” he answered swiftly. “But I need something to do to have an excuse to skip hagwon, and I’m not interested in any of the other clubs.” He nodded to you. “You wanna do it with me?”

You shifted in your seat. Something—not spider-like intuition, no, simply an apt understanding of your friend’s sly thinking process—told you that this was going exactly where you thought it would. “If this is about Martin—”

“Of course it’s about Martin,” he interrupted. “You like him, don’t you?”

“Juhoon, I’ve met him once.”

“Then let me correct myself. You like the look of him, don’t you?”

“Maybe a bit.”

“So, wouldn’t us joining the school paper be a good excuse to see more of him?” He tilted his head, feigning consideration. “Maybe even get to know him better?”

You sighed. “Hoon…”

He gave you a look. A rare glimpse of his face free of the pretences he kept up to maintain a nonchalant façade, his eyes softening, pouty lips twisting sympathetically. “You need to get out there again. Not… not just dating—though if that’s what you wanna do, I won’t protest.” He raised his hands in a placating gesture, before adding, “You need to learn to get close to someone again.”

You pouted, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m already close to you, aren’t I?”

It didn’t work. Juhoon didn’t budge, not for one second. “You know what I mean. It’s been a year since Gyu—”

“I know.”

You knew. You wished you didn’t. You wished that horrid day wasn’t still fresh in your mind, burnt into your heart as if it had only happened the previous day. You wished you didn’t feel his absence every waking moment. You wished you hadn’t pushed him away, convinced yourself that it wasn’t that serious, that you didn’t need to rush to his side immediately. And most importantly, you wished it never happened.

“…Then you’ll know that you need to start opening up your heart again. You can’t be with me all the time.”

“What, you don’t like having me around?”

He sighed softly. “That’s not what I said. You need to separate yourself from me sometime. All the things you’ve been doing repeatedly since it happened. Old habits. Old friends. They’ve got to be left behind eventually. You need to live your own life. And most importantly, you need to learn to open up again.”

A long silence passed before you could will yourself to say anything. Your eyes burned with tears wanting to fall; your throat closed with emotion. Before anyone could see, you harshly wiped at your eyes and tried for a smile. All he was doing was looking out for you. You, his best friend, who he’d known since middle school. You, his best friend, who he found out lived a double life. You, his best friend, who was one of a kind in abilities and curses. You, his best friend, who deserved more than a half-assed last year of high school spent trying to balance your studies and hero work. 

You relented with a sigh, tinged at the edges with feigned annoyance. “Alright, fine. I’ll join the newspaper with you. Let’s just hope they actually want us.”

Juhoon smiled. Soft, hopeful. “Great. Now…” His soft grin turned into something slow, sinister. “If I remember correctly, you know someone who could help get us in.”

Tracking Martin down proved to be an oddly difficult task; surprising given his size and the fact that he couldn’t exactly blend in anywhere. During the day, you’d tried any possible area; the school’s basketball court, his classroom—even the newsroom had been deserted when you peeked your head in, only the faint hum of an electric fan recycling hot air occupying the room.

After your classes ended, and no villains made any attempts on your life between 15.00 and 16.00, you headed to the basketball court where Juhoon spent most of his afternoons. It was only a few blocks from Siryeok Academy, a hop, skip, and a jump if you hurried, though this particular afternoon, you took your time. 

You knew you’d be spending the rest of the afternoon there, watching Juhoon idly practice his shoots and dribbles while you tried to do your homework. You wouldn’t actually finish it, of course, instead joining him in an impromptu game and cramming between midnight and the next morning before school to finish all your assignments.

Because you had decided to take your time for the first time in… a while, you supposed, you got to see a lot more sights that you didn’t usually have the opportunity to see on other afternoons, where you were more eager to escape from the prison which was your specialised high school. The twitter of birds floated through the air, as if aided by the cool breeze, and you bundled your parka tighter around your form as a plume of breath escaped your lips. The tip of your nose felt as if it would fall off. It was in that moment that you wished you’d been bitten by a radioactive space heater that gave you the power to control your own body temperature. Alas, all you’d gotten was a manky spider that made you shoot webs from your wrists and stick to walls.

The sun still hung high in the sky by the time you passed the park on the way to the basketball court, pale and cold in the freezing early evening air. You walked past the garden, vast and covered mostly in shimmering snowflakes, before your feet ground to an abrupt halt. The hairs on the back of your neck stood; your fingertips tingled with electricity. Something was wrong, and not just the fact that you’d used the word ‘tingle’.

You whipped around, turning with a dangerous look. Or, as dangerous as you could manage while freezing your ass off. Predictably, there was nothing. No one. Not a single soul to catch you off guard. Releasing a small, disappointed sigh, you turned, and made your way further down the street…

Only to feel that same tingle a few metres on. Again, you looked back. What was it that was bothering you so much?

“You alright there?”

“Christ!”

You turned with a start to the boy in front of you, nearly crashing straight into his chest. Your ring and index finger closed over your palm before you shook your hands out at the sight of him, smoothly acting as if you weren’t about to shoot Martin with webs stickier than superglue. He stood a few paces before you, hands clasped around a brand new camera, smiling as if nothing was wrong.

“I— J…eez. I didn’t see you there,” you breathed. 

He laughed softly. “You got pretty bad eyesight then, huh?” Then, as if processing his inappropriate joke, his smile dropped. “Sorry. That was messed up.”

“It’s fine,” you said. “I ran into you twice in two days. I think you get a pass to call me blind.”

That got another laugh out of him. He seemed to do that so easily. “Truth, truth. But, uh, what are you doing here at this hour?”

You frowned. “It’s not even five.”

“Right. It’s not.” He smiled sheepishly. “Guess I lost track of time. I’ve been out here taking pictures since school came out, so it feels like I’ve been walking around forever.”

You wondered what exactly he’d need to be photographing this time of year. Your school had no big upcoming events—no events at all, really—and picture day had already passed. Maybe he was working on a new article?

“That actually reminds me,” you started, and he nodded, as if silently telling you he was listening, “I, uh, I’ve been looking for you.”

His brow wrinkled in surprise. 

“I mean— not for anything weird,” you said quickly. “I’ve just been thinking, these days, about maybe joining the school paper…? One of my friends would also like to join. We’d like to join. Together. Obviously.” You cleared your throat, wishing the ground would swallow you whole. “Would you have any idea where we could go to join? Somewhere to sign up, maybe?”

Something unfamiliar flickered in his eyes, warm and exciting—excited. “Uh, yeah, actually, I do. I could just introduce you guys at the next meeting, and we can take things from there. The team has a meeting once a week, and you guys can just jump in whenever. We’ll probably talk specifics after that. Does your friend, uh…?”

“Juhoon.”

“Juhoon. Oh! I know him. He’s in Class 3C, right? Undefeated Rank 1 in English?”

“The one and only.”

“Cool. Like I said, I know him— or, I guess, I know of him. My friend Woojin sits behind him. He plays basketball, right?”

You lifted a shoulder. “As best as he can.”

Another soft laugh, like water bubbling over in a stream. God, you were hopeless. “Does he know anything about photography? Journalism, maybe? We need someone to write our weekly update pages.”

“He knows everything I taught him,” you said. “Which, to be honest, isn’t much. I’m pretty sure he’ll be able to do the update pages. He’s just been looking for something to pass the time with.”

“Well, then he’s come to the right place,” Martin joked. “The paper takes up a lot of your free time.”

“Great for him, then,” you smiled.

“And you? You do, uh… photography?”

With a faint nod, you said, “I try. I’ve done some work for friends before, but nothing, um, professional, so if that’s what you guys are expecting—”

“No, no, not at all,” he assured. “The only pictures we take that aren’t for articles are the school pictures, and I do that by myself most times. Nah, as long as you know how to work a camera and take a couple of pictures that aren’t completely blurry, you’ll be fine.”

Silence seemed to come naturally between you and Martin once all was said and done. You found you didn’t mind it as much as you thought.

You tilted your head. “So, I’ll see you at the next school paper meeting?”

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s Friday at six.”

“Noted. Thanks.”

You’d always been an observant person, even before being bitten. You were told it was a Spider thing; the multiverse seemed to like you all observant. Socially savvy. Some, of course, were less so than others, but you could be counted amongst the lucky few who were. Yet, when Martin looked at you, held his gaze fixed on your form for longer than was necessary for someone who’d only met you the day before, your mind was elsewhere. Definitely not on him; not his eyes, at least. The rest of him, certainly.

He cleared his throat, fiddling with the delicate silver chain around his neck. “See you Friday?”

You smiled. “See you Friday.”

Juhoon was waiting by the time you reached the basketball court, ball tucked under his arm as he watched you walk in, eyes crinkled in a sly smile, as if he knew exactly what had happened before you arrived.

You groaned softly, rubbing at your forehead in irritation. “What’s with the creepy ass smile?”

He shrugged his shoulders, feigning a look of innocence. It didn’t sell; he was feeling far too smug. “I dunno. You tell me.”

You narrowed your eyes. “You’re insufferable.”

“Tell me about it,” he sighed, before quickly moving on to the next order of business. “So, are we part of the school paper?”

Your eyes travelled heavenwards, considering. “We’re as good as, I’d say. We just have a meeting to attend on Friday.”

“Friday?” he asked.

“Friday,” you confirmed. “At six.”

He sighed, slipping the ball out from under his arm and bouncing it on the hard surface of the court. “Oh, goodie. Staying late after school because a couple of kids take themselves too seriously!”

“Hey,” you said, approaching the stands, “we’re about to become a couple of kids who take themselves too seriously.”

“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” he said with a tight smile.

You watched as he attempted to throw a few hoops, your chin resting in your palm. “You could’ve just gotten a part-time job, you know.”

He scoffed. “And had this face wasted on a nine to five? No thank you. ‘Journalist’ sounds astronomically better than ‘barista’.”

When Friday eventually rolled around, and the schoolday had passed, you and Juhoon made your way to the newsroom. It was located next to the teacher’s lounge, somewhere in the recesses of the school where no one but the kids from the school paper and A&V club dared to go. The two of you shared a look when you stopped outside the door labelled Newsroom, brows set in determination.

You started, “Okay—”

“Play it cool,” Juhoon finished for you. “Don’t—”

“Say anything stupid, or—”

“Say anything too smart. Just—”

“Be yourself,” you said harmoniously. Then, frowning, Juhoon added, “Maybe not too much. Otherwise we’ll end up scaring people away.”

You pouted. “I thought you said I should open up more.”

“Yeah, to Martin. Not to random geeks who care about what happens in this school.” Not even having to glance your way to see your mouth opening to retaliate, he raised a single, slender finger and said, “Nothing you say will convince me that we will be one with the random geeks after this. It simply won’t. I’m too cool and your jeans are too baggy.”

Your eyes lit up. “Is that a short form of saying I’m also cool?”

“It’s a short form of saying you like wearing clothes that make you look like you’re three apples tall.”

A huff escaped your mouth, and before you allowed yourself to get any angrier at your best friend, you muttered, “Just open the damn door.”

He smiled. “My pleasure.”

The newsroom was small, big enough only to fit a handful of large desks where the students in charge presumably worked. A large whiteboard stood in the middle of the room, scribbled with half-formed ideas and sketches that didn’t make it to the end. The air smelled of freshly brewed—but undeniably cheap—coffee and muffins, the sweet, cloying kind you find at breakfast cafés that stick to your fingers. An idle chatter had been floating through the room until you entered, eight sets of eyes settling on your forms like hawks zeroing in on their prey.

Yeesh. Someone in showbiz really had to rebrand the newspaper nerd trope, because these kids were scary. As in, Doc Ock trying to kill you was easier to handle than this; them just staring at you as if you’d sprouted from the ground like an invasive pest. That scary.

You recognised only a few of the faces you were met with. None noteworthy enough to name, except for the smiling face you were met with when you turned your attention to the whiteboard.

“You made it!” Martin said, and he seemed more excited to have you there than you actually were to be there. He gestured for you to come in, relaying to the others, “Guys, these are the students I told you about, the ones who want to join the newspaper.” 

That brief introduction seemed to sell you enough to the others that they graced you with slight smiles now. One by one, they introduced themselves by name, waving as you tried desperately to remember all of them. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t be able to name them off the top of your head until a few months later, but, you know, you had other talents. Your English teacher, Mrs Lee, was also present, and she greeted you with a kind smile and a polite nod.

Martin invited you and Juhoon to sit down, and you took seats beside each other on a small sofa, with roughly enough size that the two of you could fit snugly on it. It was worn, crimson cushion soft and a little bit flat; it had probably been brought from the teachers’ lounge once they tired of it. You didn’t mind how it felt, though Juhoon seemed to have some trouble adjusting to the worn headrest digging into his shoulders.

“You guys came at the perfect time,” Martin said once you were settled. “We were actually discussing what we wanted to roll out next week, and we were looking for some ideas.”

Mm. After the weekend, you’d only be going to school for two days on account of Seollal, the three-day lunar new year celebration, yet he was determined to make the most of those two days.

You raised your hand hesitantly, to which he acknowledged you with a smile, an expectant nod. You didn’t need your spidey senses to tell you everyone’s eyes shifted to you then. “Well, uh… since it’s Seollal, there’ll be plenty of celebrations from today till the eighteenth. I heard there’s festivals at the palaces and some of the art and history museums. Maybe we could all attend one, and write about the experience? I mean… you know, entry is free, and everything. All it’ll cost us is participation.”

Martin tilted his head, as if in thought, when in reality he’d made up his mind the moment you raised your hand. “That sounds like a great idea, actually. We’ll split up into groups of two, maybe three, and attend the festivals for the day. A sort of Seollal in Seoul article that covers all the ways it’s celebrated.”

“How will we know which ones to go to?” one of the students, a girl named Noeul, piped up sceptically. “Which ones aren’t going to be kitschy tourist traps… you know, basic things like that we need to know.”

Martin turned to you, eyes expectant. His expression seemed to say, gently, with a faint smile etched into his words, Well, genius?

“We can look it up sometime,” you said. “You know… what the major festivals are.”

From the sidelines, Noeul scoffed. 

Juhoon’s brow creased in a frown, and he raised a brow at you, like, Did she just—?

Martin’s gaze, however, remained gentle, understanding. You had an idea, a pretty good one at that, and that was all that mattered right now. It was one more idea than he’d been given when they started this meeting before you and Juhoon showed up, almost an hour ago. You could easily figure out specifics before the eighteenth. 

“That sounds like a good plan to me,” he smiled, nodding his head in approval. “We can each do some reading separately this afternoon, and talk over the phone later about locations and teams.” He glanced around the room, as if waiting for someone to object, or suggest a better idea. They didn’t.

There was something about the way Martin stood, the way he carried himself, that would’ve convinced you he was in charge even if he hadn’t already told you. His posture was relaxed, if a bit firm, yet he commanded the room with nothing more than a sweep of his eyes over the group. His face was slack, stony, almost, as he waited for words that would never come. And just as quickly, that stoic front fell away, and he was the awkward, lanky kid you’d first bumped into, all toothy smiles and badly-timed quips.

He clasped his hands together. “Well, then, that… pretty much concludes everything, I guess. We can talk throughout the week about what we’ll be doing next week.” He turned to start rubbing things off the whiteboard, continuing, “I heard there’s a soccer game Wednesday, so we need someone there to cover everything. But that’s two weeks from now, so we’ll worry about it then.”

He waved his hand dismissively, and everyone moved out of their seats to start packing their things. Mrs Lee smiled at him, and they shared a polite bow. “Good work today, Woojoo.” She turned to you then, anticipation dancing in her eyes. “I’m very excited to see how your idea turns out. I’m confident it’ll do very well.”

You found yourself grinning back, looking just a little bit like a tryhard. Juhoon noticed, snickering softly.

Your smile disappeared just as quickly as it had come, and you shot a dirty look his way. He sighed softly, unfazed, while the rest of the team left one by one. The two of you floated towards the coffee table as if subconsciously—two, three hours since your last meal had that effect on you. “Well, so much for our first meeting. It was ten minutes long and I barely said a word.”

You chuckled, handing him a sticky muffin and taking one for yourself. He accepted it with soft thanks.

“Don’t worry about it,” Martin said, and you turned to see him approaching the two of you, the room now completely empty. “We were busy for an hour before you guys came, and we weren’t getting anywhere.”

“Oh, really?” Juhoon asked, mouth half full. He swallowed a bit, then, “Sorry. But you guys really didn’t progress before we got here?”

Martin pursed his lips. “Nope. The paper’s not exactly a factory of creativity these days.”

You snorted. “Was it ever?” Then, upon realising what the hell you’d just said in front of the lead photographer of the school newspaper, “Oh, my God. I’m so sorry. That was messed up. The paper has always been a masterpiece.”

He laughed, whether at your backtrack or your horrified expression, you didn’t know. “Nah, you’re fine. We haven’t been doing too good these past few months. Mostly because, like, seventy percent of our team is just kids who are looking to pass the time instead of committing to other electives.”

You and Juhoon shared a wide-eyed glance. Martin noticed.

“Don’t worry. She told me about why you wanted to join,” he assured Juhoon. “The difference between you two and them is that you actually have talent. I’ve seen some of your work,” he said, the sentiment directed at you.

Your eyes grew impossibly wider. “Wh—? Me? My work? My… work? How did you—?” You screwed your eyes shut in confusion. “What work?”

“You know, on your socials.” He lifted a shoulder. “Your Cyworld is kind of like a goldmine.”

Your Cyworld. How did he even find that? It was a tiny page with less than twenty friends that you barely used!

Okay, that was a lie. Because your page was virtually deserted, you liked using it to yell into the void sometimes. You’d posted an entry just that morning on your way to school—a picture of you and Juhoon, mid-conversation as you made your way to the bus stop. Martin had probably seen it, if he’d been stalking your homepage.

To your horror, Juhoon cracked a smile—a smile that could only mean he agreed and planned on giving his five cents. His very unwanted five cents. “Right? She takes some of the best photos.” He bumped his shoulder with yours, adding, “One of the reasons I wanted her to join with me is so that her creativity isn’t wasted on her minihompy.”

“You didn’t tell me that before,” you said through gritted teeth, leaning in so that only he could hear you.

“Because you wouldn’t have listened to me for shit,” Juhoon replied in the same tone.

Martin watched the exchange with amusement, shaking his head with a smile. “Well, all I’m sayin’ is, I’m grateful you two joined. I’ll add you guys to the group chat on Kakaotalk. You use that, right?” Chances were, you did, but some people still preferred old-fashioned SMS—or, in Mrs Lee’s case, emails.

“Uh, yeah, we do,” you nodded. You both gave him your numbers, and your email addresses—just to be safe, who knew, maybe he was old-fashioned like that. You weren’t one to judge… much.

That night, after you finished the little homework you’d been given before Seollal, you hopped onto your computer to do your nightly Cyworld scroll. Say what you want about screentime before bed, but it was important that you were updated on the happenings of your friends’ lives. Your feed was mostly just them, your friends going about their days, slyly documenting their classes or shifts at work.

Then, in that little hot-pink-highlighted box titled Activity, you saw it.

teenboi 우주 sent a friend request!

You found out that Martin was obsessed with you the day before Seollal.

You’d been discussing back and forth how your following three days off would go—you found out where the different festivals would be held, who would go where, what the objective was and what you wanted the articles to be about. What began as short, professional exchanges in the groupchat became late night conversations about personal things, outings in the name of ‘research’. 

It was on one of these particular outings in the days leading up to Seollal where you discovered his secret. Or, perhaps, project. You’d been walking through the streets, the sun hanging low in the sky, city bustling with people, when he pulled up his camera from where it hung, as always, around his slender neck, gazing keenly through the lens at the walls of nearby buildings and faraway highrises. 

You frowned, halfway into a bite of tteokbeokki while he attempted to capture something in the near dead of night. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to catch Spider-Woman.”

Freeze! screamed something inside you. Maybe spidey-sense. Maybe that “oh, shit, this is going to come back to bite me in the ass” intuition that comes with having a crush who is too close to your personal situation for comfort. So you did. You froze, in the middle of the street, trainers scuffing against the tarmac as you skidded to an abrupt halt, staring up at Martin as if he’d just spoken another language. 

He noticed, sighing, embarrassment clear in the way his cheeks turned pink. “Listen, I know it sounds crazy. I mean, catching a superhero? Seoul’s only superhero? It sounds insane. Impossible, even. But there’s… there’s just something that makes me think I can do it. Like, I know she frequents this neighbourhood—” He gestured to the surrounding area, your neighbourhood, Mia-dong, Gangbuk-gu— “and that she’s usually out at this time. I just think that maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to catch a glimpse of her one day.”

You’d heard many villain monologues over the past year and a half. Long, unending soliloquies that revolved mostly around the villains themselves and why they wanted you dead. How they’d been watching you, tracking your every move, and how your identity would eventually be revealed after your untimely death.

This wasn’t like that. Martin spoke with determination, yes, but the drive and passion of someone who cared. He continued, “I’m not even trying to find out who’s behind the mask. I just want to talk to her. To ask her… what it’s like, doing what she does, every day. How she does it. What keeps her going. I mean, is she like us? Is she a normal teenager? Does she have a family? Does she not? Is that the reason why she protects other people, because she couldn’t protect the people she loved?”

Bingo. “You seem to care a lot more about the girl than the mask.”

He lifted a shoulder. “It’s… it’s nothing, I guess. It would make a good story for me. I just— I dunno. I don’t wanna do an exposé and ruin her life. I just want to maybe… get coffee with her, or somethin’. You know. Talk.”

“Yeah,” you said softly, throat burning. “I do.”

“About… real things. And maybe how she exploded a villain with her mind.”

You snickered, though were sure it only looked like an unknowing gesture in his eyes. Not exactly what happened, but close enough, you supposed. You didn’t have the power to explode someone with your mind, but he could find that out when he had coffee with Spider-Woman one day.

He looked at you from the corner of his eyes, how you were smiling, laughing at him. Pretty. So, so pretty. “You think it’s stupid, don’t you?”

“What? No, of course I don’t,” you assured him. “I like that you care about her motivations and not just her identity. The Daily Bugle could learn from you.”

He snorted. “Yeah, I guess.” He waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. Let’s get back to work, yeah? Don’t want you thinking I’m some sort of Spider-Woman fanatic.”

You bumped your shoulder with his, smiling. Or, tried to, only to end up bumping closer to his elbow due to his rather gargantuan size. “Oh, I’m sure she’d be flattered if she knew.”

2026년 2월 17~18일

17–18 FEBRUARY, 2026

서울 Seoul

TUESDAY

You had two problems.

One: the kabuki kid was back.

Two: she came back while you were at a festival. With Martin, Juhoon, Noeul, and another student that was part of the paper.

The five of you had gathered at Unhyeongung Palace for the second out of four festivals that only ran from the sixteenth. Similarly, the next two, which would be tackled by you and Martin on one, and Seonghyeon and Keonho, a pair of eleventh-graders, on another, would only be held on the day of Seollal.

The Happy Seollal Festival featured a variety of activities and entertainment such as archery, yutnori (a traditional Korean game that involved sticks and perplexed the life out of you), traditional crafts, gugak performances, and rice cake sharing. You’d just finished up a round of traditional crafts and were walking around the festival with badly made lanterns and jewellery, when Juhoon excused himself under the guise that he wanted to check out one of the food stalls nearby. Truth was, and you knew this, he wanted to get you and Martin alone for whatever reason. He didn’t know yet that your insane charisma and pull made the mere need for smalltalk obsolete, and honestly, neither did you.

And Martin, maybe, who was too busy snapping pictures of the stalls and adorable families to notice you batting your eyelashes at him. Infuriatingly, that just made him more attractive. A man who could focus on the job he set out to do. Damn.

Noeul trailed behind you all the while, hands folded decisively over her chest. She eyed the festival with great scepticism, and about as much enthusiasm as a prisoner being shown to their cell. She’d made herself scarce to you in the days leading up to the festival, opting to make conversation with other members of the paper when you met in person, gracing you only with a faint, dismissive, “Hello,” if she did speak to you.

You didn’t mind, mostly because you had no idea what the hell her problem was. For all you knew, she was an introvert who was afraid of talking to people. You wouldn’t judge.

Though, it seemed often she did. “I hope those pictures of yours are focused on the people, Woojoo, and not that superhero you want to catch.”

“I don’t want to catch her,” Martin replied, snapping a picture of a passing girl and her pet shiba. “But, yeah, I’m focusing on the people. Don’t worry, Noeul.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Let me know when you’ve got something worthwhile.”

You watched as she left, made her way to a nearby stall that was selling a variety of cakes and other sweets, her black jacket billowing behind her. You probably should’ve questioned her lack of manners even then, the uncertain tug she gave your gut, though all your lovestruck brain could focus on was Martin and his stupid camera. 

Somewhere between Juhoon’s disappearance and Martin’s hard work and Noeul’s absence, your gut grew cold. A faint buzz emanated in your temples; the earth shook, red and blue separating as you narrowed your eyes. A sting. A pull. An ache.

Then,

DANGER!

It happened slowly, almost with utmost deliberation. A mechanic whir, small, nearly gentle steps. The music that had been drifting through the air beforehand continued, but there was a sort of hesitation that you knew you weren’t imagining. Your ears perked at the sound of rubber snapping—a mask shuttled over a face that would soon be invisible.

“People of Seoul…” 

The crowd turned slowly, slowly enough that you could slip through the sea of people without being noticed. In the middle of a raised platform that had been pulling through one of the festival’s many attractions, now stood a familiar foxy face. Kabuki—as you were calling them for now, until they told you their true villain alias and, yes, that was a thing that happened—spread their arms wide, voice booming through the streets.

“I have something to ask you. Are you not afraid of defending yourselves from the growing danger in this country? Do you not wish you could protect yourself without having to depend on a hero who can’t be fully trusted?”

“Crap,” you muttered. You glanced at Martin, who was looking at the scene with his eyes squinted in confusion. 

“What the…?”

“I have to go!” you half-realised, half-announced. Your legs seemed to move forward on their own, carrying you through the sea of people. 

Martin turned, seeing you no longer at his side. “Wait—!”

But you were already gone. You tore through the crowd to get to Juhoon, who had been watching Kabuki from where he still stood by the stalls. “Hoon,” you panted, shoving his shoulder to get his attention. He turned, stunned, and you continued, “I need you to create a diversion. Something that gets everyone’s attention off of… that.” You gestured vaguely to the platform, Kabuki delivering their monologue, just everything happening in that moment, really.

He glanced back, then at you. “That your newest villain?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’re gonna take care of them now?”

“Yep.”

He nodded resolutely. “Got it. I’ll fake a heart attack.”

Being a superhero wasn’t all television cracked it up to be. In fact, there were no epic battles, no quick-witted villains, no red carpet movie premiere. Just you, changing into your suit in an alleyway while some sort of traditional marching band made their way through the streets, along with—you were sure—a quarter of Seoul’s population. With a resigned sigh and a shake of your head, you swung over the festival, index and middle finger pressed into your palm. You flailed a bit; you always did. In your defence, it was quite the adjustment to make, suddenly being on the ground then zipping through the air like a— well. A spider.

“Several years ago, a brave scientist at Kwangsu Labs devised a plan. A plan that would render the country—the world—changed forever. A plan which became a simple serum, kept in a small container the size of my palm.”

They opened their palm, and glinting in the sunlight, was a small, dark-green ingot roughly the size of a syringe.

You tried your best to keep a low profile, though scaling a building was not something particularly ‘low profile’ at all. You kept a keen eye on Kabuki, who’d gained more of the crowd’s attention since beginning their speech.

“He proposed that we should all be equal in terms of physical strength, and that the human body could actually take more than we thought it could. He believed, that if we merely took certain aspects of another creature’s DNA—”

A gasp rippled through the crowd, as was expected, once word spread that a young man had had a heart attack amidst the celebrations. Soon, everyone had forgotten of the imposter, all their attention focused on the next exciting thing. That thing, of course, being your best friend faking a medical emergency.

People’s heads whipped in the direction of the distressed voice, a few gingerly approaching Juhoon, who’d promptly collapsed in front of the stall, and was now laying flat on his back, eyes wide, mouth open, on the concrete. 

Aaannnddd that was your cue. 

You leapt without a second thought, having positioned yourself directly across from Kabuki, and yanked them up into the air with a web shot from the pores in your wrist. They yelped, the deep rumble they’d forced their voice to be forgotten in the moment of shock.

You landed in the crevice between two buildings, Kabuki falling to the ground with a harsh thud. You landed on your feet, light and practiced.

“So,” you started, “seems like you weren’t done trying to get my attention, were you?”

“I wasn’t doing that to get your attention,” they spat, getting to their feet. “I was doing it to send a message.”

You stared at them, eyes half-moons of scepticism as you backed yourself onto a wall, crouching sideways on the red brick. “That message being… what, exactly? Cross-species mutation as a solution to the political and economic state of the world right now?”

“You have no idea what you’re getting into, Spider,” they said. 

“No,” you admitted, “I don’t. Which is why you’re going to tell me exactly what it is you plan on doing, exactly what it is you wish to achieve. Why did you follow me here? What do you want?” You wiggled the syringe you’d grabbed from their hands in front of their eyes, sensing their shock at the sight of it. “And what is this?”

“If I recall correctly, you were the one doing the following.”

“You attacked me less than a week ago,” you shot back. “And now you’re here, where I am, delivering a godawful speech in the middle of a Seollal festival. That seems an awful lot like you following me.”

They shrugged. “Semantics.”

Your eyes narrowed, becoming crescents of disapproval. “That’s not how you use that word.”

“I think you’re focusing on entirely the wrong thing, Spider.”

Click.

Before you were given a chance to dignify their words with an answer, the sharp shutter of a camera flash burnt your eyes. Both of you reared your heads back, and when you opened your eyes, Martin was staring right back at you.

Your eyes widened. They noticed. Yet before they even had another chance to strike, you removed yourself from your perch, hitting them square in the back of the head. It wasn’t hard, not hard enough to knock them out cold, but it was enough to buy you some time and save a very gorgeous, oblivious, idiotic boy’s life. They crumpled to the floor in a pathetic heap. Silence followed.

He stared at you, at Kabuki’s stunned form. You, them. Them, you. Then,

“Oh… my… G—”

Before you could think about what you were doing, you’d webbed his mouth shut, his next words lost inside the sticky silk. His eyes remained wide, he kept talking, kept gesturing like you were supposed to know what he was saying, and all you could do was stare.

All you wanted to do was tell him to get lost, to escape with his life while he still could. You had to… didn’t you? It was your obligation as a superhero. As his friend. As his future wife (hopefully). So you stepped forward, lacing your fingers like a news anchor. “Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave,” you said, deepening your voice. It came out raspy and wrong, like you’d been smoking cigarettes while having a cold. But at least it didn’t sound like you. “This is some very serious, uh… hero business. No cameras allowed, I’m afraid.”

He tried to say something. Probably, “Oh, my GOD, it’s Spider-Woman!”

That was usually the reaction you got when you interacted with civilians.

“Um. Yeah. I’m Spider-Woman. Now, could you please, maybe, just… leave? F-for your own safety,” you added quickly, approaching Kabuki’s unmoving form. Okay, maybe you did hit them hard enough to knock them out cold. “Please. I’d really appreciate it!”

He paused, clearly considering your words. You could see the consideration swirling in her brown eyes, the push and pull between his journalistic integrity telling him to stay and get a story out of you, and his respectful attitude telling him to listen to the qualified superhero in front of him. Then, with a small sigh that you couldn’t hear, he hung his head, nodding before he turned around and left, expertly pretending as if nothing had happened.

WEDNESDAY

“And then she tells me… she looks me straight in the eyes, and says, ‘Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave. This is some very serious hero business happening here.’” Martin sighed, shaking his head. “I was so bummed! But then again, it’s not like I couldn’t not listen to her, right? I mean, she’s Spider-Woman. I think she knows what she’s talking about.”

“Yeah,” you chuckled, the sound pulled out of you like a borrowed breath. “…Yeah.”

“Anyway.” He shrugged, fingers weaving string through delicate wood expertly. “I didn’t get to ask her out for coffee, which… kind of a drag.” He pointed at you then, his eyes lighting up with excitement. “But I got to meet her! That’s definitely something.”

On the eighteenth, you and Martin ventured to the Hanseong Baekje Museum to attend the Seollal Grand Festival. You’d gotten there in the afternoon, following the most important New Years’ celebrations with your own families; despite that, your limited time at the festival had been action-packed with kite making (which you were surprisingly good at), tteok grilling, and a round of percussion performances that lasted until the sun started to set.

Martin had kindly invited you back to his house after the festival, where you’d found yourself sitting atop a slanted brick roof, watching the sky sink lower behind the horizon. You were technically supposed to be reviewing your article, editing out bits of the snippets you recorded that couldn’t be added, sifting through the hundreds of blurry, moody pictures you’d taken in search of a few good ones worthy of a school newspaper article, but Martin had taken to de- and reconstructing the kites you’d made at the festival.

“We can totally work on top of the roof,” Martin had insisted when you questioned his earlier suggestion. “It’s exactly like working in my room, just with some fly ambience.”

That’s how you got here, knees pressed against each other, shoulder brushing his, as you tried to click through your camera with an ironclad grip on the cover. The Edwards-Parks lived in a two-storey house, and you were not about to drop your precious camera from such a height. The two of you were still in your hanboks, sitting carefully on two folded towels so as not to ruin the precious pink and mint-coloured cotton.

“I’m sorry you didn’t get to ask her out, though,” you said, and only clocked the odd wording after you’d spoken. “I mean… you know what I mean.”

He smiled. “Yeah, I know. Don’t worry.” He shifted in his seat, his uncomfortable perch on the roof, scooching closer to you. 

Your breath hitched. He was close. Too close. You could feel his chest pressing lightly into your back from where he’d moved behind you to see over your shoulder, could feel the brush of his fingers against your side as he seemed to gesticulate words he hadn’t yet said. He smelled like faded cologne and printer ink, hands probably stained with the same stuff.

“You got any good ones?”

What, pickup lines? Sure. You had plenty.

“Uh— yeah. I think I got a few key pictures while we were making kites, and when we grilled tteok.” You switched to a picture of an earlier moment at the festival, the scene frozen in time. 

Martin, excitedly showing off his tongs to the camera. Martin, brow creased in concentration as he turned a rice cake on its side. Martin, his eyes widened and mouth hanging open in shock as that same rice cake burst into flames.

His breath felt warm on your skin when he chuckled. “Maybe don’t use that one,” he suggested with a shy smile, voice low.

You grinned despite yourself, despite your brain screaming, Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit, ohshitohshitoh— “I think it looks nice,” you quipped. “Really brings out the Seollal spirit.”

“I’d have my Korean citizenship revoked if anyone saw me burning tteok!”

“I don’t think that’s how citizenships work, Martin.”

He deadpanned, giving you a look like, Come on. He knew you knew what he meant. You weren’t stupid. “Whatever,” he said, smiling. “At least we have more than one acceptable picture, even if I’m not in any of them.”

You frowned. What?

“Oh, you think you were the only one taking pictures today?” He shook his head, amused by your guileless nature. “Nah. I’ve got a whole harddrive of Seollal pictures of you.”

“Why?” you asked, eyes wide.

“Because you’re part of this project. Duh! What, did you think I was gonna let you help me research, document, and write the article without giving you credit? Please. I’m not cold like that. Plus, there’s no way I could’ve done it alone. Even if I was enough of a dick to try and take all the credit for myself, no one in the entire school would believe it.”

His admission got a snort out of you, and he grinned like he’d just won a prize. “You’ve got a pretty nice laugh, you know that? Like a… a really joyful horse.”

You stopped. “I sound like a horse to you?”

“A really joyful one,” he defended.

The comment didn’t even offend you. Couldn’t, because it was Martin who had said it. Martin who had admitted it with the same smile you wore around him, the same look in his eyes as when you saw him. Martin who looked so pretty under the moonlight in his traditional clothing, fingers drumming nervously at his side.

Martin who made you think, Crap. I am so fucked.

“By the way, what happened at the festival yesterday?”

You turned your head, the hair at the back of your neck raising in surprise—shock, attention. “What— what do you mean?” you asked, smoothly leaning back on your palms.

“You ran off, like, halfway through,” he said. “Between the weird speech and Juhoon passing out in front of a sweetbread stand.”

“Oh. That. I was, uh… I wasn’t feeling too well. Yeah, I was feeling kind of crappy, and overwhelmed, so I just—” you paused to make a vague, sweeping gesture that explained everything— “disappeared a little. And then after that, you know, I had to go and visit Juhoon in the hospital…” 

He was fine, by the way. The doctors realised he’d faked everything and discharged him with a slap on the wrist before anyone besides you could get concerned enough to go and pay him a visit.

“Oh.” He nodded, as if that answer satisfied him. “Well, just tell me next time, then, yeah? You had me worried.”

He worried. He worried about you. Him worrying meant he cared. Him worrying about you meant he cared about you.

Ah, crap. You were so fucked.

That Monday, you walked into school with an unfamiliar but altogether welcome pep in your step. Not just because you felt sure of yourself, as if you could take on the world, and definitely not just because the Martin Edwards Park had asked you on a date.

But that was definitely a big part of it.

Juhoon was waiting for you by the gates, as always, backpack slung over his shoulder. His head was tilted, mouth pulled into a smile that told you he already knew everything. “You’re chipper this morning,” he commented, easily falling into step with you as you made your way to the steps. “Woojoo finally make a move?”

You tried not to let your surprise show, though the significant reduction of pep in your step must’ve given you away. “How’d you know?”

“Oh, please. You haven’t looked this happy since Musinsa had a clearance sale on low rise jeans, and even then, you weren’t jumping around like you are now.”

You sighed, shaking your head as you opened the doors, letting Juhoon pass. “If you must know, yes, he did. He asked me out on Friday while we were busy editing our article.” Said article had been published over the weekend, and was going to be passed around the school during the day. Martin had called it an obvious success. “We’re getting pizza on Friday.”

Juhoon hummed, pleased. “Cool. And you? How’re you feeling about all of this?”

“What, me finally scoring my dream man? I feel fantastic.”

“What do you mean ‘finally’? You’ve known him for a week!”

“That is more than enough time to fall madly in love with someone. I have proof.”

“I have a feeling you’re going to say something like—”

“It’s me. I’m the proof,” you grinned.

“Knew it.”

You made your way to your classrooms, separated only by a wall, a few students doing the same. It was still early; most kids were still waiting for the second bus of the morning, the one that usually brought most of Siryeok’s student body to school. Juhoon leaned against the doorframe of your classroom, shoulder hitting the polished wood.

You heard the faint click of heels before you saw the girl attached to them, and, turning, found Noeul coming your way. You hadn’t spoken since the festival, hadn’t had any reason to. Yet, here she was, very obviously making her way towards you.

You greeted her with a polite bow that she didn’t return, and said, “Morning, Noeul-ssi. Can I help with anything?”

She looked at you the way she looked at everyone else—as if you were inconveniencing her just by existing. “I suppose not,” she sighed. “I just wanted to give you this.” She reached into her bag, and pulled out what looked to be a flyer. 

You accepted it, turning the paper over in your hands. It was an invitation to an in-depth tour of Oscorp’s Seoul headquarters, as well as information on one of their newest experiments—nothing that particularly interested you. You frowned, trying not to look too disappointed. “Is this—?”

“The subject for our next article,” Noeul cut in. “Mrs Lee greenlit it, and Martin insisted you went. Only a few of us will be going, so consider yourself lucky.”

Juhoon’s eyes widened, and it took everything in you not to look up and met his gaze. “Um… thanks. I’m just—”

“It’s next month, on the 21st. Don’t be late.” She stopped, giving you one last pointed look before leaving.

You watched her go in shock, before you finally allowed yourself to make eye contact with Juhoon. His brow had furrowed, both in surprise and indignation. He smiled, slow and low, his face saying everything. 

“What a delight!” he exclaimed sardonically, shaking his head. 

You rolled your eyes. “Tell me about it.” You waved the flyer in your hands. “You going to this thing?”

He shook his head. “My boyfriend didn’t insist that I attended.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” you grumbled, warm cheeks suggesting you’d have liked it otherwise.

“Yeah, well. I wouldn’t do something like this for you, so he’s got to be somethin’ more than a friend.”

“Whatever.” You stopped across from him, back resting on the door. You looked around, left, right, to see if anyone was near, and lowered your voice. “You find out what was in that syringe yet?”

Juhoon sighed. As much as he tried to fight it, he was starting to become your guy in the chair—the man who knew everything behind the missions you went on, the villains you fought, the things you found. It wasn’t much help to him that he was so smart. “Not yet. Just give me some time. I think I’ll be able to tell you what it is by Friday.” He smiled then, short and sweet. “Before your date.”

You fought a smile of your own. “Thanks, Hoon.”

The day passed by in a pleasant haze, and before you knew it, you were packing up after your last period and making your way to the newsroom. It was, as you’d learnt, a much livelier place this time of year; after all the holidays, with graduation a month away. Students flitted around the room, ducking under desks for lost pencils and rummaging through drawers for printer ink for that one last copy they needed to make.

Martin was already there, seated on one of the couches, his laptop resting on his thighs. His brow was set in concentration, long, lean fingers deftly working over the keyboard. It looked like he was working on something new, and when you peeked over his shoulder, you caught the headline, Beneath the Mask: A Peek At the Woman Saving Seoul One Person At a Time.

“Hey, Tin,” you greeted, and he turned with a smile at the ready.

“Hey,” he replied, voice soft, almost a welcoming hum. “You’re early.”

You looked up at the room full of hurried students. “I am?”

He seemed to take in the room, as if for the first time, exhaling in amusement. “They’re also here early.” He checked his watch, showing it to you. “Meeting doesn’t start until five.”

“Ah.” You nodded, placing your bag on the floor where you took a seat next to him, suave as one of those leads in TV dramas. “Juhoon’s on his way. You busy with something new already?”

“How’d you know?” he asked, and you could swear you heard feigned surprise in his voice. “Yeah, no, I’m workin’ on something. I finally mapped out what I want my Spider-Woman interview to go like. I’ve got a few questions, none of ‘em too invasive. Just…” He paused, eyes fixed on his screen. “The sorts of questions that say a lot about a person without them needing to reveal too much.” He turned back to you, smiling. “Y’know?”

You swallowed the lump forming in your throat. “Yeah, I know.”

“Oh! By the way,” he began, shifting in his seat, drawing your attention back to him, “I didn’t tell you about that pizza place I wanted to take you. It’s on Wausan-ro, across from that Chinese place I told you about?” 

You nodded, remembering he’d mentioned it in passing once. They had great egg fried rice, he’d said. And pork.

“Well, it can get a little busy at night, so I was wondering if we could maybe meet there at, like, five.” He shrugged, tilting his head. “Anytime before sunset is fine. I just think we should get a bite to eat, and then… I dunno… see where the night takes us?”

You laughed softly; not in scorn, but in genuine adoration. He was so cute. “That sounds really nice, Martin. I’ll see you there at five.”

That got you a toothy grin. His two front teeth were more prominent than the others, you noticed. “Sounds great.”

Icy wind drifted through the cool night, ruffling the lapel of your jacket. Below you, the city was bustling with activity, as always, people going about their lives, finishing up a long days’ work or wrapping up a first date, going grocery shopping for their families or simply for themselves.

You leaned against the rough brick wall, your legs braced stably under you as you hugged your knees to your chest, eyes flitting over the landscape in search of anything amiss. You found nothing. Yet.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket, and you slipped it out without a second thought. It was Juhoon, probably calling to hear how patrol was going. You pressed your phone against your masked cheek, answering with a faint, “What?”

“Okay, first of all, hi,” he greeted, sounding out of breath, as if he’d just run a marathon. “Hope patrol is going well. Second, I finally found out what that kabuki kid stole.”

If you weren’t balanced against the wall of an apartment complex, you’d have sat up straighter. “Really? What was it?”

“Shh. Don’t rush. Let me give you the full story, with all the bells and whistles and shit. You better sit down for this one.”

You didn’t, but he didn’t have to know that.

“So, when you first brought it to me, I thought it looked like some sort of chemical compound. Toxic waste, or some sort of transformative substance. Well, I did some research, and based off the branding on the canister, I traced its origins back to Kwangsu Labs, a local subsidiary of Oscorp.”

You hummed, giving him a small, “Ohhh.”

He continued, “Now, you know how Kwangsu have been on that weird eugenics path for a while? Mixing human and animal DNA to create a superior race, or some crazy shit like that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” you said. “They tried to experiment with scorpion DNA a while back, and, well… we all know that didn’t turn out too well.” More specifically, one of their scientists was mutated to the point of no return, and you had to deal with the evil mess they’d made of him afterwards.

“Right. Well, it looks like that incident didn’t deter them at all, because whatever’s in that syringe—I don’t know yet—but I feel like it’s something similar. It’s dated only a few weeks ago. That means it was created recently.”

You clicked your tongue, the information churning over in your head like bad soup. “Which means Kabuki is probably going to use it for the same reason that scientist did.”

“Invulnerability,” Juhoon finished grimly.

“Shit,” you breathed.

Years ago, the large, privately-funded institute Oscorp opened its own subsidiary in Seoul—Kwangsu Labs, focused on scientific research and development where Oscorp as a whole was more focused on technology. The founder of the labs, the man it was named after, had done extensive research during his time at several of the country’s best universities on the merging of human DNA with that of other creatures’, most notably arachnids. He believed that their special abilities—scorpions manually slowing their metabolism, spiders’ strength and skill with silk—paired with human DNA could create a nearly invulnerable class of human.

That same man became one of your first villains. Tuseokgi, a disgraced scientist who’d deformed himself after a botched DNA transplant that left him with the body of a scorpion. After his death, Kwangsu Labs publicly shut down their DNA project, and the idea of merging cross-species characteristics became something only radicals considered. It seemed, though, Kwangsu Labs hadn’t been as deterred by their founder’s death as the public would’ve liked to believe. 

“And that, I mean— that stuff is deadly,” you said. “Remember what happened with their head scientist?”

“Oh, I do,” he grimaced. You hadn’t been quite the same after that night in the Seoul Metro. Not just because of his death, but because of what it meant for you. That was the same night you sewed your suit and mask. “That’s when it went botched. I’m just worried they’ve improved the formula, or something. Who knows what someone could be capable of if they successfully swapped DNA with one of the most dangerous predators out there?”

Your face fell to a disappointed deadpan, your eyes becoming unimpressed half-moons. “Thanks for that, Juhoon. Really helping morale over here.”

“I’m just being realistic,” he defended. “Didn’t you say the kabuki kid was stronger than when you last fought them? That could mean something already changed.”

You held back a sigh. “Yeah, you’re right. I just…” Okay. Trying not to sigh wouldn’t work. You just had to. “Why does it have to happen now? Like, now, the second I finally get a shot at living a semi-normal life? I mean, villain activity has been minimal these past few days, and then, all of a sudden, literally right before my first date ever, boom! Some kid in a kabuki mask wants to become some superhuman scorpion and wreck shit. It’s just— it’s so selfish. Like, could this not have waited until I was, I dunno, at least past the talking stage with Tin?”

Juhoon, who had been patiently listening to your rant because God knows you needed one, snorted softly. “Oh, he’s ‘Tin’, now? We on the nickname stage already?” You shook your head at his antics, missing how he lit up as a realisation struck him. “Wait. Isn’t he, like, your sseom, now?”

“Oh, my God, shut up.”

“No, no, I mean— this is good. It means you’re serious about him. And him allowing it… means he might be serious about you, too.”

Feeling your cheeks warm, you muttered, “Whatever. Let me know when you find anything on Kwangsu Labs and whatever Kabuki stole from them.”

“Roger that, Spidey.”

“Ew. Don’t call me that.”

“Okie dokie, Spidey.”

You sighed, your eyes slanted lines against your mask. “You’re so…” Without another word, cutting off his laugh on the other line, you hung up the phone, slipping it back into your pocket. You know. Because your suit had pockets. Obviously. 

Just your luck, your patrol was not peaceful that night. You had to break up a fight between a loan shark and an old lady that ended up with you pinned to the floor, a knife pressing into your throat, hard enough to draw blood. The old lady was long gone—it was only you and the shark in a dingy alleyway in one of the dodgier areas of Sillim-dong. It was outside of your usual jurisdiction, so no wonder you weren’t welcomed like you usually were back home.

“What makes you think you can meddle in my business, insect?”

“Arachnid, but, you know, semantics,” you choked out.

“You just cost me nearly one million won, letting that ahjumma run off like that. How do you suppose you’ll repay that debt?”

You narrowed your eyes, fingers snaking around his wrists. “Do you take debit card?”

“I’d prefer your life,” he said, too casually. “You know, an eye for an eye.”

Luckily, you had super powers, and all he had was a knife. Your hold on him tightened, and electric currents crawled up his arm, flinging halfway into a massive bin, stunned beyond reason.

Your fingertips crackled with electricity, and you shook yourself out of the daze it had left you in, pointing to him victoriously. 

“Venom blast, bitch!” Then, swaggering over to his crumpled form, you added, “And it’s ‘a life for a life’, genius. You can’t kill me and say you only took my eye. Metaphors can be adjusted. You were already on that train, too.”

You turned, striding out of the alleyway with a gleeful jump. “Spider-Woman, out!”

Friday came quicker than expected, and sooner than later, you were faced with the evening you’d been looking forward to that whole week.

Your very first date.

Martin had agreed to meet you at a bus stop between his and your neighbourhoods, that would take you to the pizza place on Wausan-ro. There, you’d grab a bite to eat and, in his words, “see where the night takes you.” You liked the sound of that. It sounded like you’d be seeing a lot more of him than you were able to at school, like you’d be learning more about him past the usual getting to know someone on surface level facts.

You’d dressed for the occasion, a simple jumper and jeans and a pair of shoes impressive enough to elevate the outfit, but not so much so that someone would think you were going anywhere besides a normal, chilled first date. Because that’s what it was—that’s how Martin was. Normal. Chilled. Everything you weren’t. The jeans did wonders for your figure, and the jumper was a vintage find from one of your many trips to Dongmyo with Juhoon. The shoes were Mirae’s, the same pair she’d worn on her first date with your father. Her good luck shoes.

The bus stop was busy, normally so for the time of day, and you took a seat on the bench next to an elderly man who was engrossed in his book. You crossed your leg over the other, lips forming a thoughtful pout as you waited. 

A scream cut through the air, shrill, enough to make your blood run cold, make your suit seem to tighten from where it clung to your skin underneath your clothes. You looked to your right, where the sound had come from, and found a black jacket billowing in the wind as someone pushed their way through the crowds gathering on the street, heading to—

Heading to an abandoned warehouse off the second street to the left.

Your skin prickled. Your temples ached. Run! everything in you seemed to scream.

You exhaled impatiently, flicking on your phone. 16.20. You were supposed to meet Martin at the bus stop at 16.30. 

You had time.

You followed the trail left by Kabuki soon after changing into your suit in the most secluded area you could find nearby—the bathroom of a 7/11. The warehouse was far, further than you’d thought, blocks away from proper civilisation, in a district where only factories and ghost buildings existed.

The moment you stepped into that abandoned warehouse, you could feel it. Memories. A chunk of the second storey had been broken off and flung at you before you even knew how to unstick from walls. The leftmost window had been shattered with how hard you threw Tuseokgi through it. The hinges of the door had been nearly ripped off without how eagerly you’d clawed at them, clutching your bleeding side and barely escaping with your life.

Juhoon and Gyumin had been the ones to find you, passed out on the floor of your dorm room back at school, half dead and infected with something that would change all your lives.

The Kwangsu Labs emblem glared back at you from the unwashed wall like it was sneering. Taunting you. Speak of the devil, and some kid in a stupid fox mask will lead you literally directly to its old headquarters. Or something.

It wasn’t empty, oddly enough. A punching bag hung deeper into the building, and a worktable had been set up across from it. Backpacks and stolen goods littered the floor, and a crumpled pair of jeans hung over the back of a janky office chair. Kabuki had made themselves quite comfortable here, it seemed.

You took a step forward, and—

SHWING!

You yelped at the sensation of something lifting you off the ground, a pair of arms that were too strong, and tying you to a large, sturdy surface. It all happened so quickly, ropes being spun around you, effectively trapping you. You struggled against the restraints, eyes squeezing shut with effort.

“I’d stop struggling, if I were you.”

Kabuki stood in front of you, arms crossed smugly over their chest. You scoffed softly, shaking your head. Ropes were nothing.

“It’s over, man. I got you. You’re basically dead meat, so let’s just wrap this up, yeah? We don’t even need a fight. Just let me turn you in, and this is all finished in, like, five minutes, tops.” When they said nothing, you frowned. Time to switch languages. “Hello~? Kabuki?”

Their eyes narrowed obviously behind their mask as they took an offended step back. “I beg your pardon, are you calling me Kabuki?”

“I thought that was obvious,” you said. “I mean, you wear a kabuki mask everywhere.”

“It’s not a kabuki mask.”

You frowned. “What is it, then? Like, a costume, or something? Do you have a fox onesie at home?”

“You truly are a joke,” they spat. “I’ve got you tied up in a less than ideal area, and you’re here cracking jokes as if nothing’s the matter.”

“That’s because nothing is the matter,” you shot back. “Look, I’ve got other places to be, so let’s make this quick, okay?” You shifted, fingers deftly reaching for one of the weak knots tied behind your back. “Word of advice: don’t watch the mouth.”

You wriggled your hands free of the ropes. “Watch the hands.”

You held up your untied hands, getting to your feet. With a leap, you kicked the punching bag, sending it flying at them. They were knocked over, hard.

With a frustrated grunt, Kabuki jumped to their feet and retaliated with a punch. You narrowly missed it, ducking one millisecond in time. With another gruff sigh, they seemed to realise you wouldn’t leave until one of you was settled for the evening. 

The fight progressed quickly, the two of you exchanging and dodging hits, your brow splitting open under their knuckles. Ah, shit. That would make you significantly less cute, and you had someone to impress tonight. The best you could do was repay the favour by kicking them in the stomach, sending them flying into a crumbling column that collapsed on top of them.

You approached the rubble, trying to catch your breath. “Okay. I’ll ask you this a second and last time.” You picked up a discarded canister laying on its side—a bigger version of exactly what they’d stolen at the festival, as you’d predicted—shoving one in their face. “What is this, and why do you need it?”

Kabuki was breathing heavily, lifting themselves from the ground with great effort. “You don’t know? You’ve not figured it out yourself yet, genius?”

Something was off. Way off. The way they were talking to you, as if you were nothing to fear, no one to take seriously. It wasn’t normal. There was no anger present in their voice, no indignation. Simply chagrined indifference. Like you didn’t matter. Like they’d do anything to get what they wanted. Sure, all villains’ motivations revolved around that, but they all saw you as an obstacle. Here, you felt terribly… overlooked. Like you were nothing more than a pebble on their road to destiny.

“I might have an idea of what it is,” you breathed, gaze hard beneath your mask. “You’re using it to improve your abilities, aren’t you? You stole this from Kwangsu Labs.”

Kabuki grinned, and though you couldn’t see it, you could feel its coldness from beneath the hard plastic covering their face. “Clever girl,” they commented. “It only took you meeting me three times.”

“Hey, hang out with me more, and you’ll see what a genius I actually am,” you snarked. 

Kabuki shook their head. “You don’t get it, do you? You, the Spider-Woman. You don’t understand what’s at stake here. Not at all.” They inched closer, until you could see the colour of their eyes behind their mask. Brown, lined with smooth, dark mascara. “Atrotosium has the power to change the country— to change the world. To change everyone on this planet. To improve everyone on this planet. And you try to keep me from letting it see the light of day.”

“There’s a reason Kwangsu Labs ended that experiment so long ago,” you shot back. “Someone died. You don’t think that’s proof enough that we shouldn’t try to change people into something they’re not?”

“Kwangsu died a hero,” they gritted out. “He showed the world how powerful one could become with more than human DNA.” You could even hear them smirk as they added, “He even defeated you, Seoul’s friendly neighbourhood spider.”

“Last I checked, he was the one who died, not me.”

“Living or dying has nothing to do with it. He scared you, didn’t he? Perhaps that was his plan. To plant the seed. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but one of Kwangsu’s spiders gave you your powers.” They stopped, placing their hands serenely behind their back. “So, what, you don’t want the rest of the world to have your powers? The formulas, they’d create cases like you, Spider-Woman. Do you not want the people of Seoul to be more like you?”

“As a matter of fact,” you said, “no, I don’t. You don’t understand the hardships of separating from your humanity. I— I don’t expect you to. All I’m asking is that you reconsider whatever it is you want to do.”

“I want to make the world a better place,” they said.

They all did. Villains. 

“Taking away everyone’s humanity without their consent won’t do anything but cause harm,” you said gravely. “I won’t let you do it.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet, that you think you can do anything to stop me,” they said.

Then something unexpected happened.

Kabuki, as they had been standing before you, disappeared. As in, phased out of existence. Became invisible. You couldn’t see where they went, where they were going. All you could see, if you focused all your attention on a specific place, was the outline of their translucent shadow. Their familiar coat.

Your ears pricked up, picking up a sound from the entrance. Footsteps. 

“And you can call me Min, by the way.”

And then they were gone.

You stood in silence for a moment. All you could do was stand; take in what had just happened. You tried to catch them again, tried to catch up, but how could you try to find someone who’d clearly honed their abilities past the point of your understanding? How could you chase someone you couldn’t even see? Min’s footsteps left no sound, no print. Nothing. It was as if their scent had been wiped from your senses.

You stood in the middle of a deserted street, in one of the less favourable areas of Seoul, left alone by a villain who’d only brought you there to toy with you. How does one recover from this, exactly?

As if that wasn’t already bad enough, the anxious part of your brain took control of your hand, and slipped your phone out of your pocket, clicking it on so you could see the time.

16:45.

Shit.

Shit!

You raced up the street, frantically scrolling through your contacts in search of Martin’s number. You finally found it, that new nickname with a heart tacked on the end, and pressed call.

He answered almost immediately. “Hey, are you okay?”

Oh, he made your heart ache. You were fifteen minutes late to meeting him and his brain went directly towards your wellbeing. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine! There’s just been, uh, a change in plans.” You ducked into the same bathroom you’d used to change out of your suit, shucking off your mask, the rest of it following afterwards. You tried desperately to keep your phone between your shoulder and cheek, pressed to your ear so you could hear Martin as you pulled on your jumper and jeans. “I’ll meet you directly at the pizza place. No worries about taking the bus there.”

He paused, and your ears pricked at the sound of him standing up from wherever he’d been sitting. Possibly the same bench you’d been on mere minutes ago. “Um, okay. Is everything alright? What happened that you couldn’t meet me here?”

“Oh, nothing serious,” you smiled, turning to assess your reflection in the mirror. Your brow was split open, and there was dirt smeared over your cheek. Nothing some lukewarm 7/11 tap water couldn’t fix. “I just, uh, got held up at hagwon. My teacher made me take an extra pop quiz.”

“Oh.” He clicked his tongue in understanding, and you could imagine him nodding. “I hate when that happens. Well, uh, just let me know when you’re close. I’ll wait for you outside.”

“Ah, you don’t have to,” you insisted.

“Yeah, well, I want to,” he said softly.

Oh.

“I— You— you can, if you want,” you stuttered. “That’d be nice, actually. I’m… I’ll be there in ten minutes. Promise.”

“Great. Travel safe, yeah? Don’t want anything happening to you before I can take you on a proper date.”

God, he was killing you! “Yeah, I— I will. See you in ten.”

“See you in ten, pretty.”

You walked out of that cramped bathroom with cheeks warmer than the sun, eyes wide as saucers. You’d bundled your suit in your arms, the fabric limp in your hold. 

“Ah!”

Just as you’d gotten close to the exit, you were stopped by the cashier—a middle aged woman around your stepmother’s age, along with what looked to be her young son. You froze, a deer caught in headlights.

“I’ll pay you ten thousand won each if you don’t tell anyone about this.”

잠시 후…

스파이더맨이 와우산로에 도착하다.

AFTER A WHILE…

SPIDER-WOMAN ARRIVES AT WAUSAN ROAD.

You were sweating like a pig.

While that was probably not the best sentence to begin the next scene, it was an undeniably true statement as you finally reached the street filled with restaurants and cafés, small bistros and a good amount of bars. Martin was waiting for you at the entrance of the pizza place, hands placed patiently in his pockets. He looked pretty today. So painfully pretty. God, what did you do in your past life to deserve this?

You slowed to a stop, red bottoms digging into your feet as you approached the entrance. Martin caught sight of you, doing a little double take upon seeing your dewy skin.

Why am I so sweaty??

“Why are you so sweaty?” Martin asked, frowning in question.

You paused, and, with a quick smile, said, “It’s a puberty thing.”

Wait. You were seventeen. “I don’t know why I said that. I’m not going through puberty. I— I did! But I’m done. I’m… a woman…” you said, deepening your voice to sell the act.

You wouldn’t have been surprised if Martin laughed you all the way into an early grave after that. Instead, all he did was smile, somewhat in confusion, and say, “Alright.”

He didn’t seem to mind you and your terrible, inescapable awkwardness. He showed you inside, where you took a seat across from him, crossing your arms over the table.

The food was great, as was the atmosphere. The place he’d brought you to was small, but packed with people, buzzing with excitement and activity. Warm lights shone overhead, bathing Martin in a haze that made his skin look tanner than it already was.

“This is nice,” you commented, picking up your third slice of the night. You took a bite, the warm, stringy cheese melting in your mouth.

Martin watched in amusement. “You like it, huh? Wait until I show you my other spots.”

You feigned exaggerated interest, widening your eyes comically. “Really? Do tell.”

“Okay, don’t be making fun of me, now,” he pleaded with a laugh. “I will, though. There’s a lot of my world I still wanna show you.”

You softened. “There is?”

“Of course! I mean… look, I know we haven’t known each other for that long, or whatever, but I really like you, and I want you to know about my life outside the paper,” he confessed. “I want you to meet my friends, and hang out with me on days we’re not supposed to work together. I want you to show me your world, too.”

Your world. Villains, late nights, double lives, and danger beyond human comprehension. Keeping the city safe outside of the public eye, cleaning everything up before anyone even noticed something was wrong. Blood, dirt, tears, sweat. Nothing anyone would wish for.

You softened at the suggestion. “Yeah,” you agreed. “That’d be nice.”

Safe to say, the date was a success. Of course it was. You knew you enjoyed being around Martin, and this outing was simply further proof of how good you worked together. You talked about everything from school to work to family drama and future plans, and learnt a lot about him in the process.

As the night wound on, and on, and the restaurants in the area were beginning to close up for the night, you simply moved to a different spot, taking a seat in a nearby park and continuing your conversation there.

The subject was constantly shifting, jumping from one place to another in a way that made conversation flow seamlessly.

At one point, it was about food.

“Oh, come on,” Martin complained, using the soft drink can in his hand to gesticulate, “how could you like pineapple burgers but not pineapple pizza?”

“Because it’s disgusting!” you defended. “I mean, the warm pineapple juice mixing with the cheese and tomato sauce? Yuck!”

“Like pineapple and chicken are any better!”

At another, it was about university.

“I haven’t decided on a major yet,” you confessed, shifting from where you sat next to Martin on the grass. “Which I guess isn’t too great, because graduation is two months away.”

He shrugged. “I think it’s fine. You don’t have to have everything figured out at seventeen, ya know.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Don’t you already have a major and school in mind?”

He smiled, wide and joyful and totally caught out. “Maybe… but that’s me. You’re you.”

Sometimes, it was just about whatever entered your minds in that moment.

“Do you think aliens think about us the same way we do about them?”

Your head lolled over to better see Martin, laying next to you on the scratchy grass. Your skin was starting to itch in the odd places where your jumper rode up and exposed your back and middle, but you didn’t mind if it meant getting to be this close to him.

“Maybe,” you said, tone laced with genuine consideration. “I like to think that they look at us like we’re their clueless intergalactic little siblings.”

You could hear his grin when he spoke. “Like, they’d fly over Earth, and be like, ‘It’s so cute how they think we’re not real’. Like that?”

You hummed. “‘I wonder when they’ll discover how to travel further than Mars.’”

He giggled, the sound bright and bubbling like cold water rolling over a stone in a flowing river. “This is gonna sound weird, but, I gotta ask…”

“Mm?”

“Opinion on alternate universes?”

You paused. “What, like, universes where everything is the same, except a few details are different?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed.

“Hmm…”

“I’m from another dimension.” She laughed, shaking her head. “I mean, another another dimension.”

“Is this the younger from 1610?” he wondered, the smaller Spider playfully struggling in his hold.

She glanced at you, decisive. “I’m Gwen.”

“My name is Pavitr Prabhakar, and for the past six months—”

He blinked. “E-0818? Never ‘eard of it.” Then, with a harsh smack to your arm, “Welcome to the team, regardless. The name’s Hobie.”

“I’m Miles.”

“Peter B Parker.”

“Peni Parker.”

“Lee Minhyung.”

“Spider-Man.”

“Spider-Woman.”

You exhaled lightly. “I might’ve given it some thought. I mean, it seems pretty likely.”

Martin was so excited he nearly sat up straight to agree with you. “Right?! I know some people think it’s impossible, but to me, it’s like, anything could be possible, even—and especially—things beyond our scientific comprehension. There’s no way quantum theory isn’t just a theory.”

“You’re right,” you admitted. “No way for us to know, is there? We might just be existing in a different dimension, having this very conversation, except… I don’t know, one of us had pink hair, and we didn’t think alternate realities existed.”

“Exactly!”

Dating as a superhero was difficult.

This, you discovered, a few weeks after Martin officially asked you to be more than his sseom, more than simply a girl who made his cheeks turn red, more than the girl he wished was his. 

You’d been warned against it, by a particularly depressed Spider who had gotten the short end of the stick romantically… and pretty much every other way, too. He’d told you to steer clear of relationships, especially as a superhero, because you just didn’t have enough time for both.

There were fights that took precedence over dates, villains that learnt of partners and tried to hurt them, injuries you’d have to hide, excuses you’d have to come up with, all in the name of keeping your relationship together. The most dangerous of these, though, were your partner discovering your secret without you telling them—worse yet, discovering you while you were on the job.

That particular problem is what you struggled with the most. Because as an aspiring journalist and photographer, Martin was everywhere.

But, to be honest, you couldn’t ever blame him for what happened next.

Wait, what happened? you might be wondering.

Well…

Montage, cue!

Dates with Martin were easy, because the two of you were so head over heels for one another that you’d be happy doing your weekly errands together. However, he had an undeniable hopeless romantic streak—one that made him ask you things like, “You want to go on a joyride?” on a Thursday night while you were supposed to be studying. One that made him match the themes of your minihompies on Cyworld because he thought the idea was cute. One that got you love letters and mismatched lyrics scribbled on the back of exam papers, origami hearts and shared earphones, long walks and your hand in his under the stars.

Your one and only problem was that trouble seemed to follow wherever you went.

Martin’s skin was warm as his arm pressed against yours, his hands clasped over his mouth as he cheered his friend, Woojin, on in a game of basketball between two losers. The other loser, your dearest Juhoon, was standing on the other side of the court, looking like he’d given up before the match had begun. 

He leaned into you, not minding the heat it created. You discovered early on in your friendship that Martin liked physical touch, whether that touch was romantic or not didn’t matter in the slightest. Though it did change things a bit, him being your boyfriend. 

Wah… it felt weird to say that. Boyfriend. You had a boyfriend. One that wasn’t constantly in grave danger because of you. One that wasn’t going to die at the hands of a crazed mutant. 

Somewhere during the match, you’d excused yourself to get some fresh air. You’d walked off the basketball court after assuring everyone that you were fine, and that you’d come back with water.

And now, you were dodging punches from a beetle mutant.

Gapchung had been waiting for you at the street corner for whatever reason, maybe because she’d missed punching you in the face, maybe because she liked making your life difficult. Regardless of the reason, she was there, and you needed her not to be.

“Seriously,” you grunted, “why can’t you just stay—” your hand shot out, covering her in webs— “away? I’m trying to go on a date, here!”

“Oh?” the older woman taunted, almost immediately breaking free of her restraints. “Do tell me about your newest little mortal project.”

You rolled your eyes beneath your mask. “Yeah, no thanks. No offence, but I’m not going to try and do girl talk with a middle-aged woman who thinks beating a kid’s ass behind an H-mart is a good way to spend her Saturday.”

You heard Martin’s footsteps before you saw him, the sound light and clear in your ears. Your eyes widened. “Shit,” you cursed.

Gapchung seemed to have heard it, as well. “Seems like I’ll be able to meet him today. You didn’t need to tell me anything about him, after all!”

Tap. Tap. Tap. Martin was getting closer, and he sounded impatient. Worried, even.

You reared back, lodging your fist in Gapchung’s jaw without a second thought. She fell to the ground, stunned. 

Ping! The footsteps stopped. Martin had gotten a text—probably from Woojin, demanding to know where he’d gone in the middle of his and Juhoon’s match. That bought you enough time to rip off your mask, and pull your clothes over it, covering up the higher neck just as he rounded the corner to the H-mart.

“Oh!” Martin exclaimed when he found you browsing through the racks thoughtfully, definitely not out of breath or anything. “Where were you, babe? You were gone for almost twenty minutes.”

You hummed noncommittally. “Oh, I got distracted on the way. Cute dogs, you know.”

He smiled understandingly, already reaching for your hand. “Alright. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Okay, so, I traced back Min’s activity over the past few weeks.” Juhoon pushed his chair in closer, knees knocking against his desk as his fingers deftly worked across the keyboard. You were in his dorm room back at Siryeok, a study session having turned into a full-on investigation of everything there was to know about Min. “I checked CCTV footage, public records, etcetera, and… of course, didn’t come up with much, because we don’t know who they are,” he confessed.

You deflated, more so if that was even possible, from your spot on his bed. “We know that already,” you sighed.

“But— buuuttt… I did find this.” A few taps, and then he was signalling for you to look up. You complied, coming face to face with a blurry screen capture of someone in a back alley. The person’s face was hard to make out, curtained by a head of long, black hair, but you recognised their build easily. Short, slender, yet undeniably strong. “Looks like Min is a girl, after all. And what’s more…”

He zoomed in, the pixels disappearing to focus on a discarded backpack with a familiar label.

SIRYEOK ACADEMY.

“Holy… crap!” you said, eyes widening. “Min is a Siryeok student? But— this doesn’t make any sense!”

“Nothing about this makes sense,” Juhoon reasoned. “She’s literally hunting you down and shutting down Seollal festivals to talk about cross-species mutation and what it could mean for the future. What about any aspect of your life makes any sense?”

Okay. He got you there.

You frowned, but before you could shoot back, his front door opened, revealing a curious-looking Martin.

Juhoon quickly met your eyes. You sent him a silent message.

The two of you scrambled to erase any evidence that you’d been doing anything involving Seoul’s newest supervillain. You jumped up from the bed, tidying up the place while Juhoon not only plugged out his laptop, but shoved it under his pillow and proceeded to flip onto his bed; you leaned against his desk, slipping more than a few times before finally finding a proper perch. All inconspicuously, of course.

“Hey, Ju— oh! There you are,” Martin smiled, features softening at the sight of you in a way that made your legs feel like jelly. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

You hummed in question. “Yeah? What did you need?”

He shook his head, stepping into the room. “Nothin’. Just wanted to see you… and maybe ask if you have those pictures from the soccer game last week?”

Once, it was you who almost caught him out.

It had been a long night. I mean, a long night. The kind where you stalked Min for hours on end, studying her every move as she leapt across the city. You’d already had your suspicions as to who she was. It was difficult not to, when you recognised the way she spoke to you even if her voice was distorted, when you couldn’t distinguish between her coldness at night and in the newsroom.

She’d met with Tombstone, one of the many crime lords in Seoul, and one of the few men you’d ever genuinely feared. It was easy to see why they’d teamed up; she must’ve had access to Kwangsu Labs some way or another, and Tombstone had the means and the money to finance her takeover. The payout would be worth it for the both of them, monetarily and otherwise.

Safe to say, though, their little meeting hadn’t gone to plan. You’d shown up, sorted things out, and were currently on your way back home when you spotted him.

Martin, hunched over his camera on the pavement in front of a small, 24-hour shop. 

He was deep in focus, eyes trained on the screen and nothing but. You swore that you couldn’t help yourself, couldn’t not give him a bit of a scare.

You approached him, your steps light and soundless, and climbed onto the eave, the soles of your feet sticking to the hard surface as you stood upside down, crossing your arms over your chest as you looked over his shoulder to see what he was so focused on.

Your cheeks warmed upon being met with pictures of who else but yourself. Candids, taken whenever you weren’t looking. One while you walking out of class. One while you tried to steal Juhoon’s basketball. One while you were at the Seollal festival, turned away from the camera. Still, you persisted in your teasing.

“Good evening, sir.”

Martin’s head shot up and, upon seeing who was hanging over him, the rest of him followed. He ducked trying not to bump his head with yours, nearly falling over himself in the process. “Spider-Woman!”

You nodded. “The one and only. Hope you’re having a good night.”

“I, uh… I guess I am, yeah,” he replied. “Thanks for asking. How— how is it going with you?”

It was an altogether odd situation Martin had found himself in,  talking to his hero under the weirdest and most unpredictable circumstances. He hoped she didn’t see what he was looking through. Getting caught cheesing over pictures you took of your girlfriend was embarrassing enough, but to be caught by the Spider-Woman doing that same thing would be a fate worse than death.

But before he could ask any follow-up questions, before it could progress any further, you replied, “Fine, thanks.” And before he knew it, you were gone, hopping onto the concrete, running off, and yelling a farewell over your shoulder. 

“Keep safe, Martin!”

“I— I will!” he replied, missing how Spider-Woman seemed to know his name. Then, “Wait, w—?”

That night was fun. Toying with him. You did it a few times, so much so that Martin confided in you that he was afraid Spider-Woman was onto him about the article.

Besides that?

The struggle was endless, inescapable. 

Later that same week, you ducked behind a tree, narrowly avoiding Martin’s gaze as he passed by, his camera in hand. You swept a hand over your bloodied face, ripping your mask off. The night air felt cold against your skin. Shadows of whichever villain you’d been fighting passed through the streets as they escaped. 

On another outing for the paper, you had to excuse yourself when you heard a scuffle a few blocks away. Halfway through the fight, with your hands wound desperately around Doc Ock’s throat, you yelped, ears pricking up at the sound of Martin’s voice. “I think the lighting’s better here,” he told Seonghyeon, passing by you without a second glance.

You glared at the scientist struggling in your hold, your hand clasped over her mouth. 

Sometimes, duty called while you were on dates. Like early in March, you were in the middle of a movie when your temples began to ache. You sighed softly, trying to focus on the screen in front of you, on Martin’s arm wound tightly around your shoulder. You walked past a car crash that night; he shielded you from the scene, but you already knew. It was your fault.

Other times, he caught onto your attitude instead of your secrets. Like now, as he was laying beside you while you scrolled through the different programmes your ideal schools offered, and he played with the hem of your shirt. “You’ve been really quiet these days,” he noticed, palm splayed comfortably over the small of your back. “Is there anything you wanna tell me?”

You shook your head, adjusting the glasses you’d finally gotten to replace the others. “I’m alright,” you said, “just tired.”

He hummed, not buying it. “Mm… feels like something’s wrong. You’ve been all weird since our last date.” He paused, brow furrowing in thought. “Did the car crash upset you that much?”

You settled on giving him a yes, just to get him off your back. You received the opposite—literally.

He sat up, pressing your back into his chest as he pulled you closer, resting his chin on your shoulder. “Sorry, baby,” he said, though he wasn’t to blame for the upset. You were. You knew. You knew. “I’m sure whoever was involved came out fine.”

Fifty six stitches and a broken leg. “Yeah, I guess so. I just… I thought Seoul had a superhero to stop these things from happening, you know?”

“Yeah, well… Spider-Woman’s gotta catch a break sometime, right?”

Right.

Most times, it was manageable. Being a superhero and being a girlfriend. You’d been blessed with an understanding boyfriend, who could make a romantic moment out of any situation, no matter how mundane it was at its core. Usually, if you excused yourself in the middle of a date, if you ran off to the bathroom and came back with several new bruises littered in areas he couldn’t see, he’d smile understandingly, telling you, “It’s fine, babe. I don’t mind waiting.”

But there were times, days like this, where you could see his resolve cracking. Where you could feel the disappointment radiating off him. He never let it show, never gave you any reason to believe he was anything other than delighted to just be given a crumb of your attention, because most of the time, he was. But you could feel it. See it. Hear it. He wanted more of you, and he was becoming impatient to find out why he couldn’t have it.

Oscorp Korea was located somewhere in Upper Gangnam, among the private hospitals and massive apartment complexes where each of the flats cost billions each. Your small group had gathered at the front steps of the large, imposing building, all tall walls and reflective glass windows you couldn’t even try to see into.

Despite its affluent location, something about the place felt off; probably because your first real supervillain had worked there, and one of the experiments conducted there had led him to where he was currently: several metres under the ground.

Your group was small, as Noeul had mentioned on the way over. Only five people including you were present—Martin, Noeul, Seonghyeon, and Mrs Lee—because apparently the multi-billion won company couldn’t afford to get all-access passes for more than five people. 

You were escorted around the building by Professor Na Jinyoung, the current head scientist at Oscorp. He was tall, gaunt, and spoke with the same sort of accent that Koreans who spent time aboard did. He rolled his rs in a pretentious manner, and would every so often glance at you like you’d done something to offend him. Maybe he didn’t like your Crocs.

You weren’t completely sure why you’d been invited along to this. After all, the article Noeul had suggested you write was merely an overview of what happened at Oscorp, as part of your tertiary education glossary that covered the most popular career options for students depending on which courses and schools they chose. You weren’t remotely interested in science, or physics—yeah, I know, a Spider not interested in physics, shock, horror, gasp, great Scott, and all that—so you wouldn’t be too knowledgeable about the goings on of anything there.

But Noeul had invited you along, and you, for some reason, didn’t want to make a bad impression on her, and Martin had insisted that you join, so you came anyway.

That was your first mistake.

Your second mistake was wearing your suit under your jumper, because that morning, you had a feeling you’d need it. You did.

When you were about halfway through the tour, having covered the company’s extensive quantum nanoscience research programme, as well as their current computer science projects, you were all excused for a lunch break that you could spend either in the Oscorp cafeteria, or each exploring the grounds to your hearts’ content. 

You opted for the former, on the grounds that you hadn’t eaten since that morning when you left home, and your stepmother had bid you farewell with a kiss on your cheek and a packet of honeybread hurled at your head as you ran out the door.

You took a seat next to Martin, who’d been deep in conversation with Seonghyeon about villains you’d fought. Or rather, villains Spider-Woman had fought.

“You can’t convince me that Tombstone isn’t the worst,” Seonghyeon claimed, shoving a spoonful of sticky rice into his mouth. As the review writer for the school paper, the younger boy had a lot of opinions, none that were possibly swayed by emotion nor reason. “I mean, he’s, like, four times her size.”

Martin shook his head. “Nuh-uh. Doc Ock is the worst, easy. She has deadly tech, and she can basically fly!” Without looking at you, he slid a small packet of bungeoppang onto your lunch tray. You smiled, and he returned the favour once he saw it. Then, turning back to Seonghyeon, “You just like Tombstone for the shock value ‘cause he doesn’t have superpowers.”

Seonghyeon gasped, offended. “Untrue. His motives are also far more twisted and dark. He doesn’t even have a reason to want Spider-Woman dead.”

Martin rolled his eyes, turning to you. “Babe,” he said, the new nickname rolling off his tongue like he’d said it a thousand times, “what do you think? Worst Spider-Woman villain to ever exist. Like, ever. Go.”

You pretended to think. Of course, you knew. The Kingpin. It was closer to Seonghyeon’s answer than Martin’s was. Most of your worst villains were normal people with no special abilities, no motivations besides pure, unrelenting bloodthirst. Kingpin had been like that—driven only by a need for money, power, and death to those he saw as unworthy. You’d been nearly killed many times, but the few fights you’d had with Kingpin before he died had been the worst. Worse than Tuseokgi. Worse than Spot.

That, and you had to defeat him twice.

“Probably Doc Ock,” you nodded in agreement, making Martin smile like he’d won some sort of prize. “Those tentacles…” You shivered for effect. “Nothing would be worse for me than that.”

Seonghyeon snickered. “Yeah, well, luckily you aren’t Spider-Woman, or you’d be dead meat.”

Pfft. You. Being Spider-Woman. Truly hilarious.

Lunch eventually passed, and you all gathered in the nanophotonics lab, where you were due for a tour through the company’s collection of telescopes. That is, if either Noeul or Professor Jinyoung were present.

Mrs Lee frowned, checking the time on her watch. “It’s been almost fifteen minutes since we were supposed to start… and Noeul is nowhere to be found.” You noticed her gnawing at her bottom lip—a nervous tic, you’d found. She was probably worried for the girl’s wellbeing, worried because she was supposed to be the one to ensure she got home safely and in one piece to her mother.

Martin and Seonghyeon were at a loss regarding where she could be. After all, she’d been here more times than they had, on account of her internship at Kwangsu Labs. Neither of them knew where anything was, or where she might’ve wandered off to.

As your teacher and friends were discussing amongst themselves, you felt the urge to volunteer to try and find her. Something in your gut was saying go.

The halls of Oscorp were cold, telling of its stoic, sinister nature. There were many winding pathways, enough to make one believe they were caught in a deadly maze. Emphasis on deadly, because the air didn’t move. People seemed to be on autopilot, eyes glazed over, movements practiced.

You found Noeul between the neuro- and nanoscience labs, talking to none other than Professor Jinyoung.

Hide.

So you hid behind a cold iron pillar, watching them converse in hushed tones. Then, they were gone.

You followed the sound of their footsteps, ears pricked. Something’s about to happen. Something big.

And that’s when you saw it.

Noeul, shrugging on a black jacket as she followed Professor Jinyoung down a hallway leading to the entrance of an unlabelled laboratory. It billowed as she walked, creating the same silhouette as the one you’d seen running down the street to the abandoned Kwangsu Labs factory. 

Your blood ran cold; the tips of your fingers turning numb.

Min Noeul was your newest villain.

You knew all about canon events.

Those dreaded, dreaded moments in every Spider’s life, the events that make them— make you who you are. The radioactive spider. Your uncle. The police captain. Your first love. Things that have happened to you in the past two and a half years, that have left you beaten, bloodied, and bruised, that have forced you to, no matter how many times you fell, get back up again.

Someone once told you that they were inevitable.

“There’s… nothing you can do about them. Trust me, I’ve tried. It doesn’t always end well. Or ever, for that matter. All you can do is hope you don’t get it as bad as the rest of us.”

You decided long ago that they wouldn’t be.

But that didn’t mean you weren’t scared.

The first time you hurt Martin was by complete accident. 

The two of you had gone out with a few friends to celebrate your graduation a few hours following the official ceremony. The air was alight with excitement and expectation, with the promise of your near future. In a month or two you’d be off to university, and after that—who knows what you’d be free to do.

Juhoon sat across from you in the barbecue joint, the wooden bench digging into his back. He was passionately debating a very serious matter with Woojin, who sat not too far from him. 

“Arial is the only possible contender for best font!” Woojin argued, mouth full of dokgalbi fresh off the grill. Despite never having been part of the school paper, sticking rather to the basketball team, Woojin had his fair share of opinions when it came to digital formatting of written works.

“Saying that when Times New Roman is right there is blasphemy,” Juhoon shot back. 

“I’m sorry, but I cannot respect you if that’s your true opinion,” he said earnestly, a hand on his chest as if he were confessing in a court of law.

“Hey, at least I’m not a Comic Sans defender,” Juhoon said. “I fucking hate Comic Sans,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

Woojin sighed. “At least.”

You watched the scene unfold with a glimmer of amusement in your eyes, though your attention wanted to be focused elsewhere. Particularly on the tall, well-dressed beauty who’d been staring at the side of your face for the past ten minutes. “Martin,” you sang. “You’re staring.”

“I know,” he said unabashedly. “You’re really pretty, you know? Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Yeah. You. Constantly.”

He grinned. “Good to know that your boyfriend only ever speaks the truth, huh?” He wrapped his arm around your shoulder, taking a sip of whatever insanely sugary soft drink you were sure he ordered. The scent of faded cologne and printer ink stuck to him even now.

It brought back an unexpected memory. One that had no ties to the moment you were in, one that bore no resemblance to your current surroundings. That made you wonder if it was truly a memory, or not rather a premonition.

“I remember, he and I used to hang out every day.”

“Yeah?”

Her face softened with something unspoken, but loud. Grief. “Yeah.”

You’d been smiling, none the wiser, until you caught her look. “What happened?”

She ducked her head, and when she spoke next, it was through tears struggling not to fall. “What happens with all of us when we’re in love. He died.”

You stiffened. Martin noticed.

Juhoon was deep into dissecting an amusing conversation he’d had with his guidance counselor, something along the lines of, “The conversation was very Orwellian in the sense that the guidance counselor kept saying, ‘Or, well…’ whenever I brought up a counterpoint to her saying my only option was modelling. Well, look who’s going to KU now!”

Martin leant down, his plump lips brushing the shell of your ear. What would’ve been a tantalising action if you weren’t going numb. “Hey, everything okay?”

You forced a smile wider than what he was used to. “Yeah. I’m good. Just tired.”

You were always just tired.

A few weeks later, right before classes started, you went to visit Gyumin. It had been a rough day of moving and admin and fighting crime, and all you’d really wanted to do was find some peace and quiet. In a city like Seoul, there was no other place to find it besides the gardens where eternal rest was the norm. It became even quieter at night.

You were still in your suit, your breath hot inside your mask, the scent of ink drifting through your nose. Song Gyumin’s headstone was small, little more than a peak that stuck out of the tall grass growing around it. His parents didn’t come to take care of it, still too heartbroken to face the reality that their son had been dead for over a year. Since you were responsible, you took it upon yourself to clean up his grave every now and then.

Today you’d brought flowers, lilies, his favourite.

Your feet were planted on the same spot they’d been since you’d started visiting him here. The grass no longer tried to grow where you stood. “Hi, Gyu,” you started. “I, uh… trust everything’s good up there. Or down there. I don’t— I don’t know where you’d rather be right now. Probably alive. Ha-ha.” You laughed weakly, before you shook it off. “Anyway, I, um… I’m going to university soon, did you hear? Yeah. SNU. Liberal studies, because I couldn’t decide on a major. And I— I’ve got a boyfriend, now. I don’t think I mentioned that.” You wrinkled your nose, trying to keep the tears at bay. “No, I don’t think I did. He’s nothing like you. He’s tall, and bright, and funny, and he tries his best to make me laugh. He’s kind, and he likes me, and… I can’t help but think I’m about to screw things up.”

You sniffled, not even trying to stop the tears anymore. Your throat burned with the need to release them, so you did. “I’m scared, man. I’m scared and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to stop myself from messing this all up. I just feel like, with— with university, and with Noeul around, I can’t give him what he deserves. I’m afraid I’ll hurt him the same way I hurt you. Worse.”

But it couldn’t get any worse, could it? Not when your Gwen was already dead.

CRACK!

You stiffened, muscles buzzing with tension. You weren’t alone.

“Hey, babe—”

You whirled around, your body acting on its own at the feeling of someone’s hands on you. The intruder was shot back in an explosion of blue that left your fingertips crackling with bioelectric energy.

Martin groaned, curling into a foetal position in the dewy grass.

Wait. Martin. Babe. 

You gasped, rushing to his side. “Oh, my God. Tin, I am so, so sorry. I didn’t even— I wasn’t looking. I thought you were someone else, and I panicked. I just—” You tried to get the words out, to express how truly sorry you were, no regard for your current state, or identity, but your words failed you. They always did, around him.

“W-what?” he murmured, eyes squinted against the harsh lamplight shining behind you. “Who…”

You hesitated, reaching for the collar of his jacket.

“SMPA, put your hands where I can see them!”

Flashlights rolled into your field of vision, and with them, the footsteps of patrolling policemen. God, could this night get any worse?!

You stood up gingerly, groaning boyfriend still at your feet, as a pair of officers approached you. They hadn’t drawn their guns yet; though their hands rested on their hips, ready for your retaliation.

It never came. One of them stepped forward too quickly, and without thought, a long, sticky string of web that attached to the window of a passing car. 

Okay. It seemed like it could.

You noticed the faint tug on your wrist, glancing at the officers, then at Martin, who’d grabbed onto your ankle to try and hoist himself to his feet. “Uh, sayonara?” you tried.

It was all chaos after that. You flew through the air, holding Martin to your side after you were able to pick him up—all hulky one-hundred and ninety centimetres of him. He was deceptively heavy, even for you who had been blessed-cursed with superhuman strength. Eventually, you could disconnect from the passing car which, you soon realised, was actually a truck speeding at a disproportionate speed, and you redirected your webs to aid you over an office complex. But, of course, not without knocking Martin’s head on a street sign.

One thing led to another, and soon you were running through the streets of Seoul, Martin passed out in your arms. You didn’t receive any odd looks—after all, this was the city where public meltdowns and busking gone wrong went widely ignored or unnoticed. Who’d pay attention to Spider-Woman potentially kidnapping a university student?

The pavements you passed over were slippery, possibly due to the late night, early morning dew settling from the low-hanging clouds. So of course, you had to eat straight shit.

You fell to the floor in a pathetic heap, near the entrance of a subway station, your arm hanging numbly over the descending stairs. Martin’s head had luckily landed on your stomach, which meant he wouldn’t be as concussed as he could’ve been. And the people passing by? They paid you absolutely no mind.

“Uh, maybe you guys can go around?” you wondered aloud. The bottom of your mask had ridden up, revealing your bruised lip. No one listened. A couple and their bichon frisé actually stepped over you. You sighed. “Okay. Thanks, Seoul.”

How would you explain this to Martin when he woke up?

“And these nodes, where the lines converge?”

“They are The Canon. Chapters that are a part of every spider’s story, every time. Some good, some bad. Some very, very bad.”

You knew all about canon events. 

Those dreaded, dreaded moments in every Spider’s life, the events that make them— make you who you are. The radioactive spider. Your uncle. The police captain. Your first love. 

You’d asked Gwen about them, once. In the pocket between two worlds, where the lines between realities blurred. She’d shaken her head, as if she didn’t want to. Then she told you anyway.

There were many, most of which you’d already experienced. Then, there were some that she herself hadn’t yet come into contact with. Ones she was unsure of. There was the quitting being Spider-Man.

“Haven’t done that one yet,” she’d sighed. “But I’m pretty damn close.”

There was the upside down kiss.

“Definitely haven’t done that one yet. Don’t plan on ever doing it, either.”

And there was the second shot at love.

“I mean… it worked for Peter B, didn’t it?” you’d thought. At the time, though, you didn’t even want a second love. You had your first, and back then, he seemed like he’d be the last.

“Yeah, but… he did a lot of things differently,” she said. “He got to do a lot of things that we never will. Whose to say our next loves are safe? Peter has MJ. There’s no guaranteeing we’ll have one.”

Right. All you had was Martin. Lovely, adoring, kind, mortal Martin.

The second time you hurt him may have been on purpose.

Seoul in April was usually a time of peace and regeneration, the peak of spring bringing in a wave of tourists and locals alike to parks and other such attractions, oohing and ahing at the beautiful cherry blossoms that bloomed on the streets, that floated through the air and fell into your hair. For most, it meant beauty, and calm, and sunshine in abundance.

For you, it meant peak crime season.

Because of the influx of tourists, many of Seoul’s lesser-privileged chancers did what they did best: take chances. It wasn’t necessarily crime, per se, though certainly sketchy activity that could land naive foreigners in sticky situations that foreign affairs couldn’t really solve. You patrolled a lot more, stayed out late more, cancelled dates more. You practically became a ghost.

Which explained why Martin was upset with you.

You’ll admit, ever since the incident in the cemetery, you’d been carefully avoiding him. Screening his calls unless you had important plans, skipping hangouts, bailing early on those you did come to. Most of the time it was because you had other things to tend to. Noeul had expanded her circle, and become involved with more people—richer, more influential, more evil than Tombstone could ever have been. People with more means that simply putting you in the ground. People with means to have the whole country under their thumbs. You had to intercept her plans almost every week now, and it was getting more and more difficult to keep track of her now that you lived on opposite sides of the city, studied at completely different universities, operated on wildly different ends of the moral spectrum.

Sometimes, though, it was because you were too afraid to face him. 

Too afraid to look at him, his beautiful eyes, his warm, kind smile, and have to face the music. And have to accept the fact that, if you kept him around any longer, he could die because of you, at the hands of someone who’d kill him just to get to you. Just like Gyumin had. Your Gwen.

You couldn’t let your second chance at love go like that, too.

Your fan fluttered lamely from the ceiling of your dorm room, doing nothing more than recycling hot air into the already stuffy space. Your phone rested on your chest, replaying the same voicemail you’d received over a week ago. Martin’s voice was raspy with disuse, though his excitement bubbled over into the audio nonetheless.

“Hey, baby. I have some good news. Mr Jeong approved my entry, which means I could have my work exhibited at CCCS. Isn’t that great?”

The exhibition. Martin had told you all about it, how his photography professor had promised the student with the best personal article that their pictures—because nearly every student in his class was also an aspiring photographer—would be displayed in an arts centre in Seoul. The project consisted of two parts, an entry, and the official article, which would also have the chance to be published in the Daily Bugle, the newspaper he worked for. The newspaper everyone in Seoul, even the young people, read.

You hadn’t responded to that message all week.

A knock on your door pulled you from your reverie, and you begrudgingly looked up as if you’d magically see who was behind it just by that simple action. You hoped it wasn’t Juhoon, coming to bug you about eating and ‘getting back out there’, neither of which you felt like doing. 

Well, you’d never know until you actually went and opened the door. With a resigned sigh, you got up from your bed, fixing your shorts as they stuck to the undersides of your thighs, waddling towards the front door.

You didn’t blink at the sight of your boyfriend, though you hadn’t at all expected him. In the months you’d started university, his hair had grown, become curlier with the perm his mom insisted he got. But he was still your Martin. Just angrier because of you. Like now. He was angry, that much you could tell.  He didn’t show it outwardly, but the way his eyes landed on your form, the way his jaw ticked with how hard he clenched it—those small details gave him away.

He let himself in once you stepped aside, opening the door wider for him. He turned, looked around like he was trying to find something to focus on besides you, and finally let himself look at you.

“You haven’t been answering my texts,” he said stiffly.

You nodded. “I haven’t.”

“Or my calls.”

“Mhm.”

“Or my emails, or anything I send you to try and get a word out of you.” His jaw clicked. You could hear his teeth grinding against one another. “You’ve been weird ever since last month. Is everything… is everything okay? Is there something going on?” For a moment, he sounded genuinely concerned.

Your reply came swiftly and harsher than you intended for it to. “There’s nothing. Nothing’s happened since you asked me that same question a week ago.”

He caught on to your tone. “Oh, alright. Sorry. I just though, you know, since my girlfriend wasn’t telling me anything, something might be wrong.” He narrowed his eyes, sighing. “What’s with you, these days? Juhoon says you’ve been checked out, even Mirae is saying—”

“Oh, you’re going behind my back, now?” you interrupted. “Talking to my stepmom about my behaviour?”

“What else am I supposed to do?” he demanded. “You gave me no other choice!”

“You could’ve come to talk to me directly first.”

“No, I couldn’t, because you’re never around anymore! I mean, where are you even, when you’re not in class?”

You scoffed. “You wouldn’t understand.”

That seemed to do it for him. “You’re right! I have no idea what’s going on with you! So why don’t you tell me?!”

“Can’t you just listen to me?”

“Alright. You got it. I’m listening! Say whatever you wanna say. What do you got to tell me so bad?!”

You paused. If you told him now, it would all be over. The hiding. The pains. The secrets. Your relationship. You couldn’t risk that. You couldn’t risk losing him just because you couldn’t handle some pressure. You shook your head, avoiding his red-hot gaze. “Whatever. Just leave.”

He faltered. “What?”

“I said, leave. You don’t like the way I act, the way I am? Leave, ‘cause I’m not changing for you!”

He stared at you for a moment, seemingly in thought. As if everything he’d thought about you was being proven wrong before his own eyes. Then, huffing, he grumbled, “Fine. That’s what you want, that’s what you get. I tried my best with you. I really did.”

He stormed out of your room, slamming the door shut behind him, leaving you in thick, tense silence, and for the first time in ages, you felt lighter. Worse, definitely. Tears streamed freely down your face, snot gathered at your nostrils; it was an ugly sight, but it was something you’d needed.

You felt like shit. Your life was over. Your love didn’t stand a chance. You ruined everything. But Martin had to be safe now.

Right?

“I just… I can’t believe she’d say something like that!” Martin exclaimed, leaves crunching under his sneakers as he speed walked through the park on his way home. Unlike his peers, he didn’t live in the dorms on Hanyang’s campus. Instead, he stayed happily at home, only half an hours’ walk away. “I mean, what could be so important that she’d ditch me for almost a month straight, and then kick me out the moment I try to talk to her about it?”

On the other end, Juhoon sighed. He knew. God, did he know. He also had an inkling as to why you’d been avoiding Martin. Something about the fate of your lovers, the dangers that came with loving mortals as a person with enemies. “I…”

He hesitated. Martin noticed.

“You know, don’t you?”

Again, Juhoon released a sigh carrying exhaustion past someone of his age. “It’s not my secret to tell, Tin. It’s up to her to tell you on her own time, when she’s ready.” If she’s ever ready.

Martin paused, stopping in his tracks. “Could you at least give me a hint? How bad is it? How illegal is it?” He just wanted to know. You could be a murderer, for all he cared. He’d still want you. All he needed was to know.

“It’s not illegal at all. But, Tin, it’s… it’s pretty bad.”

He frowned. “Bad how?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s just… it’s dangerous. And the people she deals with, Martin…”

“What?” he asked. “What kind of people does she deal with?”

But Juhoon had gone silent. Only the crackle of static hummed in his ears. He looked at his phone, confusion etched into his handsome features. “What the…?”

He was so preoccupied with whatever had gone wrong with his phone that he didn’t even see the shadow approaching from behind. Didn’t even hear the footsteps, or the invisible body accompanying them. He didn’t see her, not until it was too late.

His phone fell to the ground, the line clicking back to life. Juhoon was still on the other end, halfway through his sentence.

“…don’t want to know.” After a moments’ pause with no response, he asked, “Tin? Where’d you go?”

His voice echoed into the night, everywhere but into Martin’s ears.

“Hello? Are you still there?”

일주일 후 A WEEK PASSES

The Seoul Metro was deserted when you arrived, hands balled into fists at your sides. The fluorescent lights cast an eerie glow over the area, turning your light purple suit a sickly shade of green. She’d told you to meet her here, at exactly midnight. She hadn’t told you why; hadn’t revealed her motivation, nor her intention. You may well have gone blindfolded, with how much trust you were putting in her.

Noeul had been quiet. Too quiet. Her operations seemed to have halted completely, her steady stream of supplies from Kwangsu Labs having disappeared off the radar since your argument with Martin. Though that had nothing to do with it. Something was amiss. That, you were very clearly aware of as soon as you stepped off the last stair. Something was about to go very, very wrong.

“Nice to see you accepted my invitation, at least, spider.”

Her cold voice rang through the station as if it were being broadcasted, sent shivers down your spine as if she were whispering directly in your ear. You turned in the direction it came from, though found nothing but the empty subway station behind you.

“I’ve got to say, I’m surprised. I mean, you don’t have time for your boyfriend, but you’ve got time for me? I’m honestly flattered.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” you demanded. Obviously she knew you knew. She’d had eyes on you since before you started dating him.

“Oh, don’t be coy. You know who I’m talking about. That lanky boy who goes to Hanyang. You know, you used to be in the school paper with him. He and I were friends, once.”

She still distorted her voice, after all this time, but you could recognise that cold inflection anywhere. 

“If you had any guts, you’d show yourself,” you bit out.

She hummed. “Hmm… tempting. Alright. You want to see me?”

She glimmered to life, and from the corner of your eye, you noticed her rearing back her first. “I can do you one better.”

You narrowly avoided her punch, catching her fist in your own. You turned your arm, twisting hers behind her back. “You’ve been pretty quiet this past while,” you said. “Why the sudden silence? Things not work out as you expected?”

She struggled out of your grip, dodging your kicks with an easy bow. “Oh, no. Things have been working out quite well for me, actually. We plan on broadcasting our message to the country first thing tomorrow morning, just as the sun rises from behind the mountains. Right after we deploy the drones.”

You stopped. “Drones?”

Her mask lifted as she smiled beneath it. “Don’t you know? Right, of course you don’t. We moved our headquarters to a more private area so that you wouldn’t be able to trace us with your impeccable…” Her mask shifted, and you could tell she was wrinkling her nose in disgust. “…arachnid abilities.

“Speaking of,” she continued. “Back to the drones. Yes, we plan on releasing them an hour or so before our broadcast. Small, harmless things, simply meant to deliver the future to the people of this country in a more convenient way than what the scientists at Kwangsu Labs had originally planned on.”

Your eyes narrowed. “You’re going to feed these innocent people Atrotosium not only without their consent, but without their knowledge?”

“It’s what’s best for the general populace,” she replied, as if it were as simple a statement as the sky is blue. “We as humans are meant to adapt to survive our environment, but this world has become too violent too quickly for us to be able to defend ourselves with the bodies we were given. It’ll take ages for the mind to catch on—unless we speed up the process.”

“By denying everyone their humanity and turning them into… into mutants?” you spat.

She tilted her head. “You say that like it’s a bad thing. If I recall correctly, you were the first-ever mutant human to exist. Aren’t you doing relatively well for yourself?”

“No, I’m not!” you argued. “My life sucks.”

“I’m sure that’s just because of your personality,” she said. “Not because of your abilities. Anywho…” She strode towards you, looking as if she were planning to go past you. “…I’ve got more important matters to tend to than this. Goodbye.”

You caught her wrist, your spinnerest aching at the exertion. “You brought me here. Why? Why did you need me if you were going to do this regardless? Why waste your time like that?”

“To waste yours,” she said. “If you’d been anywhere else, more focused on your human friends and the human aspects of your life, you wouldn’t have missed the dozens of frantic calls to your phone. Your friends would have reached you, would-be in-laws would’ve called you awake, all shading concerns for where their precious son was.”

You froze.

“No.”

She didn’t.

“I did. Not only will our drones be deployed for the whole city to see, but the people of Seoul will also be given a show to the tragic and untimely death of Spider-Woman’s biggest fan, who took his life after realising that, surprise surprise, heroes never live up to their word.”

“…I thought Seoul had a superhero to stop these things from happening, you know?”

“No,” you repeated, reaching out for her. Desperately. Mortally. “You wouldn’t. Please. You wouldn’t.”

She yanked her wrist free of your grip. “What makes you think I have any obligation to heed your requests when you couldn’t do the same for me?”

You spoke through budding tears, your mind running a hundred kilometres a second. Where was Martin? How much time did he have left? How quickly did you need to get to him to save him? “What are you talking about?”

Noeul stopped. Really, truly stopped. Stepped back, as if seeing you for the first time. Then, lifting her mask, you were met with her hard, beautiful face, holding back the same tears you were.

“What am I talking about? What… am I talking about?”

Another step back, another statement spit in your face.

“Min Kwangsu. My father. The man you blew to bits in this very station!”

Min Kwangsu. The founder of Kwangsu Labs. The second and second last victim to the mutation serum of his own creation. Tuseokgi. The man who’d nearly killed you trying to capture you, to run his experiments on you. Experiments for a mutation he caused. The man who you’d held down with a ferocity you never knew you’d possessed. The man who begged for his life as electric currents ran through his body, while the corpse of your first and only love became cold only metres away. A corpse he’d made. Min Kwangsu. The man who’d left behind a wife and a daughter and a trail of dead bodies in his wake.

That’s why she wanted these people—the whole country—to change. So that they’d be as protected against people like her father as you were. Invulnerable. But she saw it the other way. She wanted people to be as protected against people like you as her father couldn’t be. The same way Gyumin couldn’t be protected against him.

You stepped back, shaking your head. “That wasn’t me,” you said. Because it couldn’t have been. That girl who’d killed Min Kwangsu, she was someone completely different. Someone overtaken with rage. Someone you never wanted to be again. Someone that begged to be let out to save the lives of millions in exchange for one meaningless one. Two, if you counted your own.

“It was you,” she spat. “I saw you. I saw you that night, running out of this station while my father’s body was abandoned amongst the wreckage. I watched him die, and now…” She shook her head, eyes crazed. “I’m going to make you suffer a fate worse than that. I’m going to kill you. Here. In this station. And you won’t ever know what happened to any of the people you loved.”

No. 

No. You wouldn’t ever let that happen.

“I can’t let you do that,” you breathed.

“I’m afraid you don’t have a say in this, insect.”

“And I’m afraid you underestimate my ability to deviate from the path people want me to follow.”

Before she could process what you’d said, you struck. Hard, square in her chest. She flew back, her head knocking against the subway steps. You approached her stunned form, hands on your hips.

“I’m sorry, Noeul. But I can’t let you do this. No matter how evil you think I am. I care more about innocent people than I do about you, or anyone else, for that matter. This isn’t me getting revenge. This is me protecting my home.”

You ran through the streets of Seoul like a maniac. 

You tried to figure out where Noeul could’ve possibly been planning to send her drones from. Soon enough, though, you remembered why exactly you had a guy in the chair.

Juhoon wasn’t happy to be called up at midnight, even less so by you, who’d been ignoring his calls for help for the past week. You could tell he’d contemplated just not answering at all, pulling the same move you did, because he answered the phone with, “This better be good.”

“It is,” you rushed, narrowly dodging a drunken salaryman, “I swear to almighty God, Juhoon, it is.”

“Spill.”

“Okay, uh… shit. Where do I start? First, I need you to do a sweep of any highly concentrated energy levels, particularly the kind you find in drones.”

You could hear his frown. “Context?”

“Need to know basis. The safety of the country is kind of at stake here.”

“Nuh-uh. Nope. Sorry. You’ve lost ‘no questions asked’ privileges when you didn’t answer my calls about your boyfriend who, by the way, is still fucking missing. Tell me why you need what you need, or I’m letting some ecoterrorist blow this place to bits without lifting a pretty little finger.”

You sighed, but you couldn’t deny that you deserved it. That and a good smack upside the head. “Okay. Um. So it turns out that Noeul is Min, also known as Kabuki, also known as the girl who’s been trying to turn the whole country into mutants for the past four months, and that I may be the reason she’s evil in the first place. Long story short, she’s planning on releasing millions of drones that are actually going to deposit Atrotosium into peoples’ bloodstreams without their knowledge, and she’s also kidnapped Martin, and is planning on throwing him from some sort of tower with the drones and framing his death as a suicide because I killed her dad.”

A long, tense silence followed.

Then,

“Well, shit.”

“Yeah,” you breathed. “You feel like helping me now?”

He paused, before saying, “Only because Martin’s in danger.”

You nodded, though you couldn’t stop the ache in your heart at his answer. Your best friend, who’d seen you through the best and worst of times, was now so alienated from you he only wanted to help you to save someone else. Your boyfriend. And it was all your fault.

“Right,” you agreed. “For Martin.”

Then, “…And maybe a bit for you, too.”

You smiled. You smiled so hard your cheeks started to hurt, your eyes watered with unshed tears.

“Thanks, Jju. You have no idea how much this means to me.”

“I have some idea. Now—” there was a scuffle on the other end, telling you he was rolling out of bed and groggily making his way to his computer— “you said to scan for high energy densities in the city? I got you.” The sound of clicking tiles echoed in your ears as you rounded a corner, nearly slipping on something you didn’t want to know the contents of that had spilled onto the street. Juhoon made a small noise, like, Aha! “Here we are. High levels of EMF found in Namsan Tower, right at the top.”

You huffed in frustration. Of course, Noeul had to choose the most extravagant and inaccessible spot to do her villain work. Typical. You should’ve known the girl who sent you article documents filled to the brim with embeds and self-illustrated graphs would go above and beyond with the theatrics. How nice it would be to have a villain who just wanted to do their evil things and be done with them—no bells and whistles needed.

“Really? Namsan Tower? God,” you swore. “Fine. I’ve just left Seoul Station, so from here—”

“Best route to go is through Namsan Park,” Juhoon finished for you. 

“Right. Yeah. Fuck. Oh, I do not want to climb those stairs right now,” you complained. “But, you know, fate of my second love and whatnot.”

“Fate of the country, or whatever,” he added.

“The less important one, yeah,” you said. “Anyway, uh, I’ll keep you updated. Just stay close to your phone. I’ll call when I need help.”

“I can’t exactly help from here, but sure,” he said.

“…Thanks, Jju. For everything.”

“Only ever a pleasure, dipshit.”

It was a nearly impossible task, but you eventually made it to Namsan Tower. The attraction was closed to the public due to the late hour, but because you had superpowers and the sheer, desperate will of a girl in love, you made it work.

The drones—and hopefully Martin—were hidden away in the observatory, Juhoon revealed, scattered around the seventh floor. You may or may not have broken a few locks to get inside, and you may or may not have desperately crawled up an elevator shaft to get there, but before you knew it, you were standing in front of the door separating you and everything you needed to save the city. The country.

The door was unlocked, the room cold and devoid of life. As you walked in, you started to feel that same, all-too familiar tug in your gut, a cold flame lit in the pit of your stomach. Something was off. And, you weren’t alone.

The massive body hurtling towards you was a pretty good indication of that.

You should’ve known Noeul would have people guarding the observatory in the rare event that she actually couldn’t kill you. From his size he looked to be one of Tombstone’s men, big and bad and very much in the mood for murder. Despite his size, it was a quick fight, over before he could even register you throwing him out of the room and into a pillar that collapsed on top of him. 

The second man who ran towards you was a bit more difficult to beat, probably because he was bigger than Tombstone himself. He threw you around a bit; may or may not have fractured a bone or two. You slid across the floor, halfway across the observatory, your back bumping into something cold, and hard. You groaned softly, blindly reaching out for it. Your fingers curled around what felt like the leg of a chair and, forcing your eyes open, you came face to face with Martin, staring down at you from where he was tied up. A cloth was wrapped around his mouth—seriously, Noeul and Tombstone’s methods could not be more passé—causing his desperate words to come out muffled into the fabric.

You could imagine what he was saying, though. Probably something along the lines of, “Holy crap it’s Spider-Woman! Save me! These crazy bitches have kept me locked up for the past week!”

“Don’t worry,” you told him, gingerly getting to your feet. “I’ve got this. I’ll, uh, untie you in a sec. Just give me a moment.”

Luckily, winning the fight was merely a matter of knocking the guy out cold, which was easily accomplished by smashing a table over his head. All in a moment’s work, too. After that, it was merely a matter of untying Martin and finding the drones, getting Juhoon to hack into their programming and turn them into functionless bricks. How you would do that, though, without revealing your identity, was a nonissue. You didn’t care about hiding anymore. Not when it had come to this point. Not when you knew Martin wouldn’t want you afterwards anyway.

You approached him slowly, walking with a faint limp as you reached out to untie his restraints. You did it easily, tugging the cloth down from where it rested over his mouth. He gasped, gaining his breath in rapid, deep bursts; yet, he didn’t move. You crouched down in front of him, expression concerned beneath your mask.

“Are you alright, Martin?” you asked softly. You tried for a smile he wouldn’t be able to see. “Sorry for taking so long.”

He breathed deeply, glancing at you like a caged animal. “I’m, uh… as fine as a kidnapping victim could be, I guess? Is that a good answer?”

“Any answer is a good answer,” you said. You stood up, holding out your hand for him. “Come on. Let’s get you out of here. You’ve probably had enough of this place.”

He took your hand easily, his palm warm in yours, as he let you help him to his feet. For a twisted moment, you could imagine you were here together, as a couple, merely holding hands and walking through the Namsan Observatory on a date. “Not really. She kept me holed up in a van most of the time, so the change in scenery was nice. Plus, I meant, thousand-won view right there,” he laughed, pointing at the windows, looking out over Seoul. He paused. “Sorry. I’m tryna cope right now, and making jokes is the only way I know how.”

“It’s fine,” you soothed. “As long as you’re not, like, damaged beyond comprehension.”

He shook his head. “I’m not that bad, at least. Maybe only a little bit damaged, but I’m sure my therapist can work with that. Or, you know, the one I’m gonna get after all this is over.”

You nodded, walking him to the exit. “I’ll be with you in a moment, okay? I just need to make a call. Save the city, you know.”

He nodded numbly, letting go of your hand. He didn’t question just who Spider-Woman would’ve needed to call to save the city. 

You stepped back into the observatory, slipping your phone out of your suit pocket and dialling Juhoon’s number. He answered almost immediately. “Shoot.”

“I need you to help me disable these drones,” you said. “I’m sure I can, like, drop them all from here and let them shatter to pieces, but that’d be cruel to whoever has to come to clean in a few hours.”

“Already on it,” he replied. A series of clicks and clacks on the other end, then… “Huh. That’s weird.”

You groaned. “What?”

“I can’t get into the systems. That means they’re not controlled from a third party program. They must have individual chips in them, or something.”

Great. Just your luck. You were this close to saving Martin and the country, and something like this came up. “Aw, crap. Alright. Do you at least know where they’re hidden?”

“Yeah. They’re all stored in a vent; it should be just above you.”

You glanced up, and sure enough, there was a removable grille positioned perfectly above you. Too perfectly.

“Okay, thanks, Jju.”

“No problem.”

You jumped up, hanging upside down as you ripped open that small section of the ceiling. From afar, Martin watched in awe.

“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to her doin’ that,” he muttered. There was something so oddly familiar about the way she moved, how she positioned herself when she crouched or gesticulated with her gloved hands. He was probably just hallucinating, imagining there to be more closeness between them than there really was.

One by one, you were able to open up the drones and slip out the individual chips that had been inserted into a small flash drive inside each device. At some point, Martin drifted closer to you, watching silently as you expertly worked your way through them.

“If you’re gonna keep staring, you might as well come and help,” you muttered, though you knew you wouldn’t let him. He didn’t have the energy to respond.

Something’s not right, said your gut. You frowned. Still? Everything had been handled. Tombstone’s thugs were knocked out. Martin was safe. The drones were handled. What else was there that could possibly be keeping you here, making your temples burn and your mind buzz?

Your heart lurched at the slow, grating sound of something heavy scraping against the polished floor. It came from behind the twin doors, the ones you’d shut the moment you’d thrown Tombstone’s men out of the room. The air crackled with electricity that didn’t come from you.

LOOK OUT!

You leapt out of the way, taking Martin with you as the doors burst open in a rush of blue, sizzling with smoke at the edges. 

Then, that voice. That cold, cold voice you’d left behind in Seoul Station.

“I hope you didn’t think I was finished with you, Spider-Woman?” Noeul demanded, voice raised as her eyes struggled to adjust to the darkness, trying to find you in the shadows.

Beneath you, Martin froze. “Noeul…?”

You pressed a finger over his lips. “Shh. Don’t say a word.” He seemed to get the message, because he didn’t say anything after that. His skin felt warm from where you pressed your palm against his cheek, whispering, “I just need to defeat this crazy woman before she turns the entire population of Seoul into mutants real quick. Don’t move. See you in a bit.”

He nodded quickly. You smiled.

Then, it was time to jump into action.

Noeul fought like her life depended on it, as if she would stop at nothing to see you dead at her feet. Which, looking into her eyes, wide and crazed, you were convinced was exactly what she wanted. She didn’t look when she struck, stumbled into things, fought in a way that was more dangerous to her than to you. She ripped at your mask, tearing it apart piece by piece, until only the most important part of your face was covered.

You went too easy on her.

You didn’t give it your all, didn’t sweep her off her feet or throw her around as you would’ve on a normal day. Because this wasn’t normal. She wasn’t in her right mind; she was wildly irrational and out of control. She didn’t know what she was doing. So your heart wasn’t in it. It just isn’t fair to her, you reasoned. You were much stronger than she was, much more experienced. She didn’t stand a chance. But there was only one thing that could beat experience and strength.

Desperation.

“You may have slipped from my grasp back there,” she gritted out, grunting with effort as she picked you up and tried to throw you across the room. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll win. That doesn’t mean you’ll ever beat me. Not when I’ve gone above and beyond to make myself better than you. Not when I’ve got everything you don’t.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” you replied, kicking her off you half-heartedly. “You’re emotional, and unstable. I understand. I’ve felt that way, too—”

“No, you don’t understand!” she yelled, stepping back. “You don’t understand what it’s like, losing someone so dear to you. But you will. You will, very soon.”

That’s when she went invisible. The room went silent, and the only thing you could hear was your own heartbeat thumping in your ears. You didn’t hear her step away, didn’t hear her approaching that dark corner of the observatory. You only saw the glimmer of her when it was too late. You rushed forward, the scene unfolding in front of your eyes too much to bear. You wouldn’t let this happen. You wouldn’t let Noeul take more lives than she should. You wouldn’t let your second shot at love die. You ran towards Noeul, now fully visible, tackling her to the ground before she could reach Martin with that shard digging into her palms.

She got the best of you, pinning you to the ground like that had been her plan all along. “I can’t wait to see you die, Spider-Woman.”

She tugged at the remains of your mask. You grabbed her wrist, ripping her hands off you. “No. No. Get off me. Don’t even think of touching me!”

From the corner of your eye, you saw Martin rise slowly, rubbing at his temples. He blinked, registering how close you were to him and, like a fool, rushed forward to help you.

Your eyes widened. “Martin, no—!”

Noeul reared back, reaching over to grab the collar of his jacket before he could reach her. You got to your feet, nearly falling over as you tried to get to him in time. Noeul grasped his collar tighter, yet, that wasn’t her plan. She didn’t want to hurt him, not really. That wasn’t her only intention. She wanted to fool you. And what better way to fool someone than to threaten the life of someone they love?

You grabbed at her, trying to pull her off of him, trying to get him away from her. It worked, only for a moment, when you covered her eyes and pulled your arm around her neck. But it was enough to get him away from her.

He ran as quickly as he could, no encouragement needed from you, until he reached the exit. He turned back, something unspoken clear in his eyes. Something was telling him not to leave. Something was begging him to stay.

Noeul grabbed at you, picking you up and throwing you onto the floor as if you weighed nothing. Your body ached with overexertion, with injury and fatigue. You couldn’t fight for much longer. And she knew.

“Are you tired?” she asked, voice mocking. You desperately tried to get away from her, backing up, but she wouldn’t relent. “How sad. Spider-Woman meeting her untimely end; not because she fought valiantly, but because she was too exhausted to even continue. Tell me, Spider-Woman, how can the people of this city depend on you when you can’t even take down someone your own size?”

You shook your head. “You’re nothing to me,” you lied. “Just another… villain of the week.”

She sneered. “We’ll see about that.” She reared back, preparing to deliver the final blow. The killing shot. You weren’t supposed to survive this; you could feel that much. You wouldn’t be able to, either.

Martin watched from afar, tucked into the shadows. “Come on, Spider-Woman,” he urged. “Get up.”

Noeul laughed darkly. “Oh, I’m going to enjoy this.”

You caught her arm before she could strike. Electricity crackled between the two of you, the same colour mingling at different wavelengths. You shuddered, the energy too much to handle. She didn’t need to know that.

“I’m sorry,” you rasped. Blood trickled from your mouth as you spoke. “I’m not going to kill you, Noeul. I can’t. But I also can’t let you go down the same path your father did.”

She froze. “What?”

CRRRRRAAAACK!

The young girl flew back, thrown across the room with the force from the venom strike. Her head hit the back of the wall, the same way it had hit those steps earlier in the station. She groaned softly, curling in on herself in pain, body still shaking with anger. Silence enveloped the room, but the air was alight with energy. Your body shook with exhaustion, your eyelids heavy beneath the weight of your fatigue. You didn’t even notice your hand pulling up the remnants of your mask, revealing your face for everyone to see. All you wanted to do was breathe fresh air.

The weight of your choice was echoed by the gasp that came from the double doors only a few metres away from the scene. Your head shot up, weary eyes widening at the sight of Martin, still alive, still safe, but still there. You smiled brokenly, approaching him with your arms spread wide. You could worry about Noeul later. All you cared about in that moment was him.

He let you envelope him in a hug that he didn’t return. His body felt hard beneath yours, and when you stepped back to look at him, he was staring right back at you.

“You— you’re okay,” you said softly, something still gnawing at you. He didn’t reply. Only when you frowned, and asked, “Baby? What’s wrong?” did he say,

“You lied.”

You froze. “What? No, I— I was trying to pro—”

“You’ve been lying to me,” he interrupted, “for nearly half a year.”

“Martin, I just saved your life!”

“From someone who wanted you dead.” He shook his head. “I… I was about to be nothing more than collateral damage.”

“No, come on, that’s not true,” you argued, reaching for his hand. He yanked it away as if you were made of fire. “It doesn’t matter anymore, okay? You’re fine now. I saved you. We’re fine. We can go— we can go back to the way we were, before.”

Silence.

“I can’t believe you would lie to me like that.”

And for the second time that week, he turned and left, leaving you in darkness and silence. Except this time, there was a weight on your heart heavier than before. 

You’d officially lost your Martin.

TO BE CONTINUED…

taglist @hyuneskkami @pearlywhitefics @ramenoil @cranialberry @kaikaikoi @teacuplps

[blushdarkberries]

HOLD ONN MAMA IM COMING BACK TO THIS

[blushdarkberries]

STUDYLOG 📚 #5

➙ Intermediate Accounting: fundamentals of pension plans | Intax: tax laws on INDIVIDUALS and CORPORATIONS (stock vs non-stock)

❤︎ mari’s notes: fuck yea I’m back on the grind and learning how to account for ur grandma’s retirement plans 🥸 JP Morgan just give me a call m tired of Deloitte

🎧 on repeat: this rotation is giving me war flashbacks on when I was a pianist and I don’t like it at all but what they say is true 😂 Mozart IS good stimulation for the brain holy 🧠⚡️

[blushdarkberries]

guys 🥹 did yall notice his cheeks got a little fuller 🥹🥹🥹 I js wanna 🤏🥹

[kosmogrl]

i’m so kind but i’m so evil and bitter

[blushdarkberries]

done me dirty sm im GEEKING but also when r we going out for drinks again ☹️🙏💞 #selfrespectwhere