wc: 3.2k
content: exes!suguru, mentions of alc consumption, fem!presenting reader, suggestive(?) content, suguru being suguru
misc. notes: suguru seems to come to me at a very Me time in my life. in other words, i enjoy obsessive men more than i enjoy three meals a day :) feedback is appreciated always!
synopsis: you have been trying very, very hard to be normal. suguru always seems to strip all that away with a single glance.
suguru’s apartment looks exactly like you remember.
he’s always liked to keep things tidy. shoes placed neatly on the rack and arranged by occasion, winter coats hung on the hook next to the door. the vase of diffuser sticks fills the apartment with the familiar scent of bergamot and sandalwood—citrus-y with a creamy comforting finish. picture perfect, just like always.
you remember it, even if it’s been 5 years. you remember it well.
“sorry for the intrusion,” you say sheepishly. it’s the first thing you’ve said since he picked you up from the bar. at least you can say you feel some shame, especially after the events of tonight.
suguru shoots a look at you, quick but piercing. “you know i don’t mind.”
“i know but still…” you’re still pressed to the doorway, fiddling with the end of your scarf. maybe your apology shouldn’t be a surprise at all, considering how being with suguru always made you feel some innate sense of shame. like you were somewhere you didn’t belong—a messy stain smeared on his picture perfect life. a light leak, streaked and splotched on a film strip.
it’s why you had ended things with him in the first place, but maybe you should have remembered that before you’d called him in a drunken stupor asking him to pick you up.
(“suguru.” the line goes quiet. the leftover lime tastes stale in your mouth. “do you remember me?”)
he calls your name, light and soothing. you turn to him, ready to bite the bullet and pay the inflated price for an uber ride home, and your stomach drops at the sight: suguru, kneeling before you at the edge of the genkan, hand splayed out and offering.
“come on,” he continues, a glint in his eye. knowing, teasing, a little smug, as if to say, you remember what to do, don’t you? “just like old times, right?”
your breath comes out quick, cheeks flushed and burning, but you step forward one step, then two. your hands brace against his shoulders as he reaches for your right foot, gently prying your heel off. like pavlov’s dog, mouth watering at the ringing of a bell.
suguru looks a little different now—older, sharper, more mature. his hair has gotten longer, opting to leave it down today rather than the bun he liked to wear throughout university. though, you’re sure it’s only because you’d caught him at an inopportune time. who would be prepared to get a call from their ex at 1am on a thursday night?
guilt creeps into your stomach again at the thought. you try to scan his face for any weariness in his eyes, the way he blinks slow when he’s running off too-little hours of sleep. there are things you still know about him, after all, things you’re sure haven’t changed even in half a decade. his eyes are still the same color, dark in the way they swallow light. his ears are still pierced with the same black studs, a little bigger than they used to be. you’re starting to take inventory in the silence, you realize. marking things you remember, jotting down the new changes he’d made without you.
suguru looks up at you then, left foot in hand, newly bare, and you realize he’s taking inventory of you too. he rubs a thumb absentmindedly against the ball of your foot, right where it always aches at the end of the day.
“so you still wear these?” he asks, looking down at the black pump in his other hand. “you always get blisters from them.”
and you did, from wearing them two nights ago—they’re still healing. you’d taped bandaids over them in the meantime, covered with extra padding by the stockings you wore tonight. almost enough for you to forget that the wound existed, just enough for you to ignore it ever happened.
“oh,” suguru says, brushing over the silhouette of the bandaid on your pinky toe. he stops where the plaster begins, then ghosts over where it ends. “i see.”
you pull your foot away from him, planting it on the cold tile and standing a little straighter. suguru looks up at you, knowingly. you resist the urge to counter with a lame excuse.
(“i don’t understand why you always wear these,” suguru gently scolds, squeezing the neosporin over the blossoming blister. “you just get hurt.”)
you never knew how to tell him you always endured it because of the way it made you look: prim, perfect, polished. even if it was superficial and stupid, it’s why you never minded carrying around a pack of bandaids around, even if you couldn’t walk right for a few days after. but you know he’d look at you in a way that would make you feel ashamed for thinking such a thing, so you’ve kept it balled up and tucked away inside of you until now.
you fight off the embarrassment that floods into your chest, playing with the edge of your skirt. “i…”
“come inside,” suguru says, standing up. he takes the ends of your scarf between his hands, unfurling the knot. unwinding-winding-winding. “it’s warmer in here.”
gnawing on your inner cheek, you look between him and the heels he’d just taken off of you, tucked neatly against the wall next to his pair of black loafers. you think about reaching down and putting them on again, but the coldness of the tile makes the blisters on your feet feel even more tender than usual, even through the layers of your socks and the bandaids in between. your resolve for appearances always did seem to waver, whenever suguru was concerned.
you take a deep breath. you follow him inside.
“water?” he offers. a courtesy—he would give you a glass even if you said no. you spare the pretense for both of your sakes.
“please, thank you.”
suguru motions to the couch for you to sit, grabbing a glass from the cupboard. you nestle yourself into the far edge of the couch, pressed against the armrest, and you take the moment he’s looking away to take a visual tour of the apartment. his one bed wasn’t anything extravagant and certainly a far cry from anything someone like satoru would choose for residence, but it was cozy. neat, but comfortable.
he joins you soon after, handing the water to you silently. you sip on it awkwardly, glancing over at him as he sits on the opposite end of the couch.
“you wanna change?” suguru asks, breaking the silence. “i have some old shirts you might be able to—”
“no!” you jump, surprised at your own outburst. “no, that’s fine i’ll just… it’s fine.”
suguru tilts his head at you, something unreadable in his eyes. you swallow the embarrassment down, pressing yourself closer into the couch cushion. it was bad enough, being back here like this; you’re not sure you could stomach borrowing his clothes and smelling his fabric softener and sleeping in his home like nothing had changed, and then wake up the next morning and remember that everything has.
“how’s your boyfriend?” he asks suddenly. “takeru… takashi…?”
“takezo,” you correct, with more heat than you intended. and then you stiffen, your head snapping to his. “how’d you know about him?”
suguru looks at you wryly. “if you remember, we still share the same friends. shoko brought it up a couple months ago, when everyone was over for a drink.”
did you ask about me? the question buoys to the front of your mind before you push it back down. did you want him to, even after the way things ended?
“he’s good,” you say eventually. the thought of him makes you remember the tequila barely settled into your stomach, and you quickly change the topic. “how’s your girlfriend?”
“girlfriend?” suguru echoes, amused. “i think we both know shoko would have told you if i had one, no?”
“that’s not…” you begin, but it fades away lamely at the look suguru gives you. shoko ieiri—26, first year resident, professional double agent. an expected title, but a betrayal nonetheless. you make a note to chew her out next time you see her. “you say that like i’m keeping tabs on you.”
suguru leans back and laughs where his smile reaches his eyes, and your stomach swoops. “i wouldn’t mind if you were.”
“i’m not!” the reply comes too quick, too insistent. shoko had given up the information freely, though it was mostly the loose lips she would get after her third round of beer and reading between the lines, but the thought appears again, more incessant than the last time. you try to imagine yourself being brave enough to ask it. is it because you were keeping tabs on me too? did you still care enough to wonder how i was, what i was doing?
any scenario you can imagine of you asking that ends with you wading into waters too deep for you to swim out of. you fidget with the edge of your skirt, pulling it as far down as you can. suguru is watching you, like he’s always done; his gaze has always had a knife’s edge to them, taking you in and flaying you bare. you never got used to being picked apart so carefully—sometimes you wondered if he could read your mind, if he looked hard enough. you had decided to run away before he could prove that theory.
“are you sure you don’t want spare clothes?” he asks again, gesturing to your sweater and skirt. “i’m not sure if what you have right now will be the most comfortable.”
this again? “what are you doing?”
“i’m being a good host,” he states plainly, raising a brow. “trying to, at least. what are you doing?”
“what do you mean?” you huff. “i—”
your name always sounded soft off suguru’s tongue. like each syllable had been shaped and smoothed over delicately before he spoke it into the air. like there was no other way to be with you but gentle. “what were you doing tonight, at that bar?”
“what, i can’t go drinking now?”
“you never drink alone.”
“since when?”
“since i’ve known you.”
“a lot has changed since you’ve known me.”
there’s a brief pause, and his eyes flicker, like you’d said something wrong—something hurtful. you straighten your back, petulant and shoving down the guilt. you didn’t say anything untrue.
“you said,” suguru starts, patient and knowing. “it makes you feel lonely. and you hate feeling lonely.” the look in his eyes is gone as fast as it came. “why else would you call me?”
“i never…” your heart pounds in your ears. “that’s not…” and you give up. if you had some more fight in you, maybe you could try arguing for a few seconds longer, but the night has grown weary on your bones, and suguru has always had a way of making you feel like a lone leaf, stripped bare and blowing in the autumn wind. “okay. fine.”
you wiggle your toes trying to get some feeling back inside them, still cold and stiff from their nightlong bout outside. “i got dumped.”
suguru blinks—at least, you think he does. you push down enough shame to drag your gaze from the floor to see him staring back at you with an unreadable expression. “you?”
your mouth flattens into a line. “yes, me. are you making fun of me?”
“of course not,” he says, and you know he means it. “what happened?”
“he said i was too boring. too plain.” the words feel hollow, ping-ponging around in your head. “he found someone else.”
the rest is unsaid, but by the way suguru shifts straighter in his seat and gets a stony look in his eye, he can hear it without the humiliation of you saying it out loud. he cheated on me, and i knew, and i let him, because she was tall and beautiful and perfect and everything i wasn’t.
she was a perfect fit for takezo, who just wanted something pretty and amiable to hang off his arm. you had thought you were good at that role too, being quiet and obedient and doing whatever he had wanted from you, but you suppose it wasn’t good enough to make him want to stay. sometimes you wondered what it was you lacked, what it was you could do better—but it was all pointless in the end. this was what you were best suited for, after all, this half-hearted display of affection that you had grown comfortable with.
that was the problem with suguru. he had given everything to you so easily and openly that you were always waiting to see what the catch was—waiting to see when he would see there was nothing more to you than what was in front of him, when he would get tired of the sight and leave. you think someone like takezo’s new girlfriend would have suited suguru too; she would have fit in perfectly in this tidy, neat apartment like it was her own. she wouldn’t have looked like a stain he would have to scrub out.
but then you think of the night you had broken it off. the way he had looked at you, the way he had let you have your way so easily.
(why? / i’m tired of this, suguru. of you. /
a lie. a funhouse mirror, warped and twisted. the only time you lie to him—the only time he lets you get away with it. your act of bravery. your act of cowardice.)
“you were right,” you say softly. that’s the funny thing, wasn’t he always? “i called you cause i was lonely. and i…” you swallow hard. “i didn’t know who else to call.”
suguru pauses. and then, simply, “you still have my number.”
was that a normal thing people do? delete their exes’ numbers? you’re not quite sure. suguru was the first and only ex that ever mattered. “shoko…” you say lamely, and the bad excuse is as good as an admission of guilt.
suguru has inched closer while you weren’t looking, fingers encroaching on the edge of your couch cushion. closer—the fabric rustles—closer—the armrest meets the small of your back, your spine following its curve.
the light halos around his frame, his silhouette warm and features dark as he looms over you. his arm plants itself by your head, his other hand resting all too familiar on your thigh. there’s an endlessness to his eyes, like if you stare into them for too long he’ll swallow you whole. you wonder if this is what hunger looks like.
“you missed me.” a statement, a fact, something you can’t deny any longer. (like this: you never drink alone; you get lonely when you’re drunk; you still have his number; you missed him.) “i missed you,” he adds. another truth. and then he amends, “i miss you. every second of every day.” he leans into the crook of your neck, breathing you in. “even now, with you in front of me.”
“i—”
“i treated you well, didn’t i?” his knee shifts forward, electric as it nudges its way between your thighs. “no one can treat you as well as i can, especially those assholes you keep calling boyfriends.”
“you treat me too well.” you squeeze your eyes shut, his shirt grasped tightly between your fingers. push him away—pull him in closer—yell at him—drag his scent into your lungs—you miss him you misshimyoumisshim. “i don’t know how—i’ve never known how to repay you.”
“repay me?” suguru laughs, amber eyes turning molten honey. his thumb rubs circles into the side of your waist. “what is there to repay? i’ve only just ever wanted you.”
your gut twists, gripping his shirt tighter. “it’s because you’re always like this that you make things so difficult!”
“why would i make things difficult?” he asks, his thumb slipping beneath the hem of your sweater. “my job is to make everything in your life easier for you, don’t you remember?”
you’re a fraying ball of yarn, caught in his freshly sharpened claws. heat pools in your tummy, resisting the urge to whine as his palm splays flat against your stomach. his hand is warm. suguru always ran cold, unless he was with you. you remember this too.
and really, memory was the crux of the issue wasn’t it? you remembered his number, you remembered his habits, you remember everything clearly enough to know that nothing has truly changed, at least, not the things that truly mattered. there was you, and there was suguru, and still, after all this time, suguru is the only one who has loved you right. and, still, the only you that has ever existed has only ever loved suguru.
his shirt loosens in your fingertips. your hands absentmindedly smooth over the wrinkles, drifting up to cup his face in your palms. suguru’s eyes widen, body stilling. your legs shift ever so slightly. “you’re right.” you can barely hear yourself. “you did make things easier. you always did.”
your eyes scan over his face, taking everything in. his hair tickles your face, soft and gentle. there’s stubble starting to grow on his jaw that you know he’ll shave off first thing tomorrow morning. you can already smell the aftershave. the offer is open in the air, his weight heavy against your body. all you have to do is say yes, you know this much.
(your act of cowardice / your act of bravery.)
you pull him in and you close your eyes. part your lips. you feel a warmth press against your forehead, your hair brushed away from your face, and your eyes open in surprise. suguru ghosts a thumb over your lips, eyes flickering over them twice before he sighs. the weight disappears from your body, and you feel degrees cooler than you were moments ago. you lie there, watching him fix your clothes before he smiles, clean and neat and polished.
“it’s late,” suguru says. “i’ll leave you the spare clothes on the bed, okay? shower’s open if you want to use it.”
you blink at him. “wait, i—”
suguru reaches for his phone on the table, tapping the screen absently while he adds on, “and i’ll sleep on the couch tonight, so if you need anything just ask—”
“suguru,” you blurt, your hand shooting out to grab the sleeve of his shirt. he pauses, turning back to you. suguru always did this to you, made you lose any sense of rationality you had in you. but then again, he’d always said that he was happy to do all your hard thinking for you, too. “i… are we going to…”
suguru smiles, walking closer until you can smell the leftover cologne on his clothes again. he puts a soft hand on your head, tilting it for you to look up at him. “it’s late,” suguru repeats. “we’ll talk about this in the morning, when you’re fully sober.”
you press your lips into a line. “i am—”
“tomorrow,” he says again. “i want you to remember this right.”
this, he says. everything, he means. the defeat is loud enough for you to keep quiet.
and then, gently, he cups your face and looks at you—like clear glass, like an open doorway. “you know,” he says, something in his smile like relief and familiarity and— (love). “you finally said my name, just now.”
suguru, suguru, suguru. it had made a home in your head for years now, stuck being thought and repeated in your mind all this time. you hadn’t realized you’d missed saying it too.
i swallow your heart whole (still beating, out from your open palms) | chapter one
pairing: getou suguru x reader
tags: childhood friends au, slowburn, like a coming of age but infinitely worse, toxic codependency, implied daddy issues, angst
wc: 9.6k
series m.list | read on ao3
You meet Getou Suguru in the summer of 1999—a dark, black dog, blinking.
The peak of monsoon season brings many things: cicada chirps roaring loud in your ears, the smell of the wet, damp earth, heat residuals clinging to the moisture in the air, melting into your skin. But most of all, it brings him to you.
(Or rather, it brings you to him. Suguru corrects you every time you say otherwise, but there really isn’t much difference, in the end.)
“I’ve never seen you before,” he starts, tilting his head. A frog croaks somewhere in the trees, the rainfall from a few hours ago still dripping from branches and leaky roofs, leaving everything with a suffocating sort of wetness. “Are you new here?”
It’s a matter of manners, more than anything—you know he knows the answer to his question before he even asks. In a village deep in the mountains, a population of 1025 where more than half were the retired elderly and the number of kids your age was countable on two hands, one would have to try to see any new faces around. It’s certainly hard to miss when the moving trucks in front of the new house had caused the village folk to whisper incessantly about it for days on end, but you can tell from the way the boy waits for your reply patiently that he would have noticed your arrival even without the sun-shaded midsummer gossip.
Still, you take the bait and respond politely in kind, watching as he peers at you in a strange sort of way. No older than you, the boy is anything but soft, something akin to detached observation in his eyes when you nod and say, “Me and my dad just moved here two weeks ago.”
Interest flits across his face for a split second, fast enough for you to almost miss it entirely. You press the toe of your sneaker into the soft soil beneath you, digging into it just enough to make the smallest indent, staring holes at his feet as you prepare for the incoming questions. Just you and your dad? What about your mom? Is she coming later? and you will inevitably have to let the practiced spiel fall out of your mouth like habit, like routine. She’s not here anymore, it’s just me and my dad, and silently, a plea that never gets answered, please don’t look at me like that.
Setting your jaw, your body tenses and readies itself for the bile to come spilling out again. but then—
“Oh,” the boy says instead. “For work?”
You pause, eyes wide as you look back up from the ground. “Huh?”
“Your dad,” he repeats himself, an easy look slipping on his face. “Did you guys move here for work?”
Your mouth opens, then closes, and you repeat until you’re sure you resemble a fish gaping out of water. “I, um—” he tilts his head, patient “—yeah.” You nod jerkily, eyes wide. “Construction.”
Later on, you will tell him the whole truth. That your father had moved away from the city because he couldn’t stand to live anywhere that had ghosts of the woman who left him, that he chose a village in the middle of nowhere because he was certain you would be better off surrounded by a group of strangers than stuck with a husk of a man. And—(you tell suguru this much, much later, when you’ve allowed yourself enough time to digest the thoughts properly enough to speak them detached and speculative, rather than sloppy and resentful)—you think about the way he’d hid all the photos of your mother the night she left, the way he’d broken all the vases in the house because your mother was always the one who cut off the flower stems, who set them prettily next to the windowsill.
You remember how he couldn’t stand the sight of anything that reminded him of her. You think that included you, too.
But that comes later.
What happens now is this:
Under the canopy of a hundred trees, the boy formally introduces himself for the first time to you, extending a hand for you to shake.
Getou Suguru, he tells you, the tips of his black hair brushing along the nape of his neck, eyes crescenting with a smile you think is far too adult for a boy nine years old. But when you take his hand, lips pursed and eyes wary, you find it doesn’t really matter either way.
You speak your name into the humid summer air, surrounded by the chirping of birds and cicadas and thunder rumbling in the distance. Your name in his mouth, his name in yours.
In some ways, it feels like an oath; it feels like a vow.
.
Suguru’s family welcomes you as one of their own.
You spend more days at his house than not, walking over to his house after you’ve finished your morning chores and spending the rest of the day there. His parents had offered to give you an extra key, just so you wouldn’t have to wait by the door until someone heard and let you in, but you refused so vehemently under the horrible implication of poor manners that they had no choice but to leave it be.
(Suguru tells you to stay over, the second time you’re there late into the night.
“Mom won’t mind,” he assures, holding up a basket full of towels and extra pajamas that seem to have been prepped hours before. “You’re coming over early tomorrow, anyway. It’ll make things easier for you.”
“I can’t.” Your spine adjusts a fraction straighter, your chin tilting neutral. “My dad will want me home.”
He would be worried if he came home and didn’t see your pair of shoes on the genkan. You’re sure of it.)
But despite all that, your afternoons are spent slowly, lying around on the floor of his bedroom as you talk about everything and nothing all at once. There wasn’t much to do, after all, in a village that knows nothing but mountains and trees and each others’ faces, so you and Suguru make do with what you have.
That summer, you scrounge up enough money together to buy a used Playstation from the old man running the electronics store, along with a copy of Final Fantasy that had been included with the console as an extra gift. It had taken some convincing from Suguru and a lot of visits from you and your bag of coins, but eventually you’d gotten him to give it to you for a manageable discount.
“It was originally for his grandson,” Suguru tells you offhandedly, as you turn the corner at the end of the street.
“Ojii-san’s?”
“He moved away for high school a couple of years ago,” he explains, eyes flickering down to your footsteps. “Jii-san bought it for him two years ago for Christmas and wanted to surprise him with it when he came home.”
You blink, feet shuffling to a halt. the box weighs heavy in your hands. “And then?”
Suguru shrugs, stuffing his hands inside his pockets. “Who knows. Tokyo’s a dangerous place, they say.”
Your eyes drift down to the old box in your hands, the layer of dust over the cardboard that you were going to wipe off when you got back to Suguru’s house. A lump creeps up in the back of your throat, something sick in your stomach. “Suguru…” you begin, “I think we should give it back—”
He snatches it from your hands, walking ahead.
“Hey—Suguru!” He continues walking, unperturbed, and you scurry to catch up with him, tugging on the back of his shirt to make him stop. “Suguru!”
Suguru turns his head and says your name back at you slowly, patiently. “It’s been years. He's not coming back.”
“But—”
“You wanted it, right?” Your lips deeply set into a frown, you shake your head harshly, only for Suguru to place his spare hand on top of your head and ruffle your hair, stopping you in your tracks. You squeeze your eyes shut on impact, eyebrows furrowed petulantly. “Don’t lie,” he chides. “I know you were looking forward to getting it all month.”
“I don’t need it,” you insist.
“He’s not coming back,” Suguru repeats, like it’s a fact. Maybe once someone’s lived in this town for long enough, it is. “It’s yours to take.”
You stare holes into the ground, the fabric of Suguru’s shirt grasped tightly between your fingers. You really didn’t need it. You could live with rewatching the VCRs Suguru’s father had in his office, and maybe you’d even ask Suguru to read the books he had on his shelf out loud to you when you get back. They were still a little too advanced for you, big words with even bigger meanings you couldn’t wrap your head around quite yet, but you’re sure if you asked, Suguru wouldn’t mind explaining it to you while he read. You liked listening to him talk more than anything, anyway.
But Suguru’s developed a second sense when it comes to your mulling, it seems. Pressing a thumb in the space between your eyebrows, he gives you a knowing look. A solid, comforting presence. “Stop worrying, I can practically hear your thoughts,” he says. “You’re going to get wrinkles.”
“That's not…” Ignoring your protests, Suguru slips his hand from your forehead to your hand grasping his shirt, intertwining his fingers with yours and tugging you along.
“Besides,” he adds. “Jii-san is the one that sold it to you. He wouldn’t have given it to you if he didn’t want to, right?”
You grip his hand tighter, trudging behind him. “Yeah,” you mumble. “I guess you’re right.”
“See?” he looks back at you, a reassuring smile tugging at his lips. “Let's go back now, okay? We can set it up in my room and play until Mom calls us for dinner.”
Suguru holds your hand the entire walk back, dust on your fingers as he leads the way. you follow him, two steps behind, staring at his back the whole way home.
.
“We're gonna be gone next week,” Suguru says, in August.
You perk your head up from the floor. The Playstation controller lies loosely in your hands, the battle theme playing on loop as the in-game cursor hovers over ‘attack’ in the battle menu. You're halfway through the game, and you’ve been stuck on this level for the past three hours, melting into the carpet floor.
“Really?” You prop yourself up on your elbows, craning your neck to look at him. “For how long?”
Suguru hums in thought, rubbing his neck as he flips his book to the next page. “The whole week, I think. Mom wanted to visit Obaa-chan before we start school again.”
The trumpets blare muddily from the tv speaker, the fan whirring at max speed in the corner of the room and fluttering the open pages of Suguru’s Shounen Jump issue on the floor. An open window lets in a breeze, but it still isn’t quite enough; you try to bear the heat.
“Oh,” is all you can utter, shoulder dropping back down to the floor, head following soon after. It's too hot to think of any better response. “Ok.”
You reach for the controller again, and you try your best to keep your expression neutral as you start to play again. Attack, Grunt Soldier C. Magic, Thunder, Grunt Soldier D. It would be fine, you reason to yourself. You'd survived all those months in the house alone before you’d moved here, there would be no difference going back to that.
Swallowing hard, you mash the buttons and accept things for what they will be: the long days, the non-existent nights, the yawning emptiness of the halls in a house that only ever really has you. mornings alone, meals alone, the quiet open-shut of the front door at midnight with nothing but the stifling drop of shoes on the genkan and the rustling of clothes.
It isn't long before the ‘Game Over’ screen blares red at you once again—mocking, taunting—and you wonder if this is just something else you were going to have to accept. The things that shouldn’t concern you are things you can’t control, and the things you can control…well. You flip back and forth between ‘Load Save’ and ‘Return to Title,’ resigned. Maybe you were finally running out of luck. Maybe this was all you could do; another thing that will have to come to an end.
“Do you want to come?”
You stop, thumbs freezing. “Huh?”
Suguru doggy-ears a page of his book, setting it down on the floor. He gestures to the controller, palm splayed open as he silently asks for permission. You hand it over to him wordlessly, sitting up and shifting to your knees.
“Mom asked,” he continues, focused on the screen as he restarts the level. You're sure you’re supposed to be looking at the TV for any tips you can gather from his help, but all you can really do is look at him. “She said to let you know that you’re welcome to join us when we visit.”
You blink, jaw going slack. “Really?”
Suguru smiles, as if he didn’t even have to spare a second thought. “Of course.”
“You’re…” you hesitate. “You’re sure your family won’t mind?”
“Of course not,” he says immediately, eyes still trained on the TV screen. Suguru has gotten farther in the level in ten minutes than you have in three hours. “When we told Obaa-chan, she was just happy there would be another girl in the house.” Suguru pauses, before adding, “Mom wouldn’t have asked you if she didn’t want you there.”
Oh, that’s right.
Suguru always makes you feel so silly, like there’s something warm and flushed sitting in your chest. All your worries seemed to disappear when you were with him. A part of you wonders if that was the real reason why you were so scared at the thought of being left alone—that if you were stuck in this little corner of the village without him to turn to, things would go back to how they used to be before you met him, that he would never come back to you again.
(Suguru would probably get mad if you ever told him that, though. It's why you never will.)
“You're right,” you say instead, a small, embarrassed smile on your lips. You shuffle closer, leaning against him as you watch the small screen together. For all your grievances about the rotating fan and the weak breeze from the window, you find you don’t mind the heat all that much if it was his body next to yours.
You tuck your chin on his shoulder, humming. The last enemy finally gets taken out by a Blizzard magic attack. When the victory music plays, EXP racking up on all the characters, Suguru hands back the controller to you—a rare, childish pride in his eyes, and hidden within it, expectation.
“So you're coming?”
You freeze. There's a tug in your stomach, something akin to guilt rising up in your throat. I don’t know, I need to… and something else that gets silenced under the weight of his question.
Often, you think you ask too much of him. Maybe that’s why any hint he gives you of wanting something, you try not to think twice before giving it to him.
.
The left knob of the kitchen faucet always squeaks if you tug at it too harshly when turning the water warmer. It squeaks now, as you watch your father scrub away at the dirty dishes in the sink.
Whatever words were exchanged a few moments ago have since dissipated into the air, leaving only a thick, heavy silence. You linger at the base of the staircase for a moment, just to watch him for a little while longer.
There’s a plate of fried mackerel, half-picked apart and growing cold still lying on the kitchen table. You silently move to wrap it up and put it in the fridge for tomorrow’s lunch, but your father’s voice cuts through the rush of water.
“Leave it.” He didn’t have to turn around to know. Your hands fall to your side, faltering. “I’ll take care of it, just go to bed.”
You try to say something, but it all dies at the tip of your tongue when his shoulders hunch inwards at the sound of your voice, moonlight carving out the sharp lines of his silhouette. His back looked so small, like this.
“Otou-san, I…”
“I’ll think about it,” he interrupts, tired. The left knob squeaks again, shutting the water off. “We’ll talk about it again in the morning.”
.
Your father is already awake when you come downstairs for breakfast.
There’s stubble on his chin when he scrubs a hand down his face, the shadows underneath his eyes look darker in the morning light. He keeps it short when he gives you permission to go in August.
He’s not mad when he says it, shoulders broad in the daylight, but his voice tightens ever so slightly. He thinks he hides it well enough, but you’ve been watching him too long to ever miss the way his words press out, running thin at the edges. You’d been thinking about taking back what you asked him since last night, just so he didn’t have to worry about letting you down by telling you ‘no.’
Perhaps it should feel like a victory, then, when you thank him quietly and say ittekimasu at the door. It never quite does.
.
The wind chime tinkles delicate and piercing overhead the porch of the Getou family home. Sakura petals hand-painted on the exterior of the glass bell, refracted sunlight dances across the smoothly sanded wood of the engawa, splotches of color from the translucent paint and swaying with the soft breeze that passes by.
Bits of gravel slip in between the soles of your feet and your sandals, digging into your skin as you follow Suguru to the entrance of the house, your gaze drifting to everything in between. The carefully arranged rock garden on both sides of the stone path, the bonsai trees set proudly in front of the porch, snipped to perfection.
The house is an old one, or so you’re told. Built from the ground up three generations ago, it shows its age but only in the faintest of marks: the scratching on the wooden posts; decorative washi paper in the shape of maple leaves and chrysanthemums patching up previously ripped holes within the shoji doors; parts of the flooring that show their wear more than others. It’s a house that stands still, the spitting image of everything the village strives to represent.
You envy it, almost. An existence that knows what it’s meant to be.
Suguru slips next to you, a small watermelon cradled comfortably between his arms. His mother had insisted on giving her mother-in-law the best fruit of the season, which, obviously, meant the fruit grown straight from Suguru’s backyard.
He turns his head to you, giving you a look you’ve long since recognized as a silent ‘are you okay?’, and you nod vigorously, fingers tightening over the straps of your backpack. This was supposed to be a fun getaway, Getou-san had insisted during the whole car ride there (Miyuki, you hear her voice correcting you, gentle. We’re all Getou-san here, after all—you can call my husband Souichirou, too!). In her words, it would be a relaxing weekend trip where they could forget about all the responsibilities waiting for them back at home.
(“Like work! and chores!” she exclaimed, sunglasses rested perfectly atop her head, the open car window blowing wind through her hair. “And since you and Suguru are going back to school soon, it’s the perfect way to end your vacation, don’t you think?”
At the time, you had smiled politely and agreed, watching the scenery flit by through the window. Suguru had sighed exasperatedly—affectionately, nonetheless—and had shot back that Miyuki would have a little too much fun and never want to go back.
“But the mountains, Suguru!”
“Mom.”)
Suguru nudges you with his elbow, gesturing for you to follow him into the house. Miyuki and Souichirou are already on the front porch, greeting the old woman cheerfully. Suguru’s grandma spots you quickly though, glimpses of the two of you peeking from behind Suguru’s parents, and she warmly waves you over with open arms.
“Suguru dear,” she coos, stepping down from the porch to give him a proper hello. He walks obediently into her arms, watermelon still cradled to his chest, and lets her kiss and pinch both his cheeks indulgently. “You’ve grown so much since I last saw you!”
“Obaa-chan,” he greets, diction messy as she smooshes his face with her palms, placidly patient. “We just came by three months ago. I can't have grown up that much.”
“Don't be silly—you’re in your springtime of youth!”
“Ah…”
You stifle a small laugh, hiding it behind the palm of your hand, something about the scene vaguely familiar. You've seen that look on his face before, at a different time with a different Getou-san, and somehow, you think you’ve seen a sight similar to this in matters not regarding Suguru at all.
(You suddenly remember the existence of the wild dog in the neighborhood, the one that’s been there ever since you moved here.
It lurks around in the late evenings, its dark frame a shadow in the setting sun as it slinks between street lamps and picks at anything it can get its teeth in for its next meal. The dog knows better than to be an aggressor, of course—it’s been in these streets for far too long to not know that the only thing that will result from indulging in its instinctual biting is the loss of its freedom. a muzzle, a kennel, the pointed end of a needle.
The dog is docile because it knows it needs to be. The people that pass by and wave hello to it will forget this fact, but the dog never does. It watches, and watches, and watches, golden eyes bright and gleaming in the dark.
But you think of the nights where you found it lurking in an alleyway on your walk home, digging through scraps of trash and finding nothing to eat. You think of the way Suguru would help you sneak leftovers from dinner in your bag so you could feed them to the dog afterwards, and you think of the way that, eventually, the dog would start to await your arrival, sitting patiently at the edge of the street for your return.
The sight of Suguru looks a little like that dog now, the way it bares its belly to you at the touch of a familiar hand. It's a messy mixture of trust, affection, and love, all jumbled up into something resembling a soft pliancy.)
But the noise draws the focus from Suguru to you, and when his grandma chooses her next target, she strikes swiftly. “And you must be Suguru’s friend!”
You try not to jolt at the sudden attention, your eyes darting between Suguru and his grandma. Bowing deeply, you start reciting the speech you’d been practicing all week. “It’s an honor to meet you, Getou-san, my name is—“
“Getou-san!” she guffaws, looking back at Miyuki and Souichirou. They share the same look as they smile back at her, amused. "Isn't she sweet—no one’s called me that in decades!”
“Ah,” you try to continue, flustered. “Getou-san—”
“Please,” she waves you off, hands on her hips, crow’s feet crinkling. “Getou-san is what they used to call my husband! I'm Chiyo—but if you want, you can call me Baa-chan just like Suguru does!”
They’re all the same, you lament, peering at Miyuki. She gives you an encouraging nod, shooting two thumbs up, and you squish down any feelings of uncomfortable intrusion when you coat the greeting in a layer of discretion once more. “It's nice to meet you, Chiyo-san.”
“So polite,” Chiyo gushes, ushering both you and Suguru inside the house. “Have you eaten yet? I'll make you all some zaru soba for your trip here.” She bends over, whispering in your ear. “It's Suguru’s favorite, you know.”
You perk up, instinctively looking over to him. He knows he’s being talked about, the way his ears tinge scarlet and he deliberately avoids eye contact with you, but you beam at him anyway. There is still an awkward jilt to the way you walk beside Chiyo, your stride never knowing if it lies too close or too far away from her to retain proper manners, but your shoulders ease a little at the warm touch of her hand on your back, her soothing voice as she leads you through the hallways into the kitchen.
Once at the table, Chiyo sits you down and demands that the only thing you do is relax as she prepares the soba noodles. You look at Suguru and his parents helplessly, but they only shrug and smile and fill up glasses of water to pass around to everyone at the table—like clockwork, like they’d done this a million times before.
Afternoon light streams through the open kitchen windows into the living room, the smell of summer mixing with the straw of the tatami underfoot. The house is a saturated memory of those who have lived in it and who continue to do so even now—the faint pencil marks on the wooden panel of the open entrance to the kitchen, a multitude of names, some more faded than others, scrawled next to each of the markings. The room is neatly decorated, fresh flowers displayed in a simple vase and set on a cabinet flush against the wall, along with an assortment of framed pictures on the top shelf and hung on the walls. Family photos of baby Suguru; a Miyuki and Souichirou with the flush of youth in their faces holding him up proudly; a poised picture of Chiyo in an extravagant kimono, standing next to an older man you don’t recognize.
Getou-san, your mind immediately supplies. Suguru’s grandfather who has since passed. It's a hard sight to look away from, the quiet display of affection in just those cupboard shelves alone. The way love is stored, even after the presence of it has become just a memory. Somewhere in the midst, you feel something akin to a guilty yearning.
It isn’t long before Chiyo comes out with the food. Miyuki gushes about the extravagant spread, Suguru’s eyes lighting up in the subtlest of ways when his tray gets placed in front of him, and when you look down at your own portion of zaru soba, you can’t help the way you gape in awe.
Chiyo settles down at the head of the short, rectangular table, everyone saying their thanks for the food and clapping their hands, ready to dig in. You wait carefully for Chiyo to take the first bite, but when she reaches for her chopsticks she exclaims, sudden realization retracting her hand backwards.
“Oh dear, I can't believe I almost forgot!” she gets up from her seat, exiting into the kitchen and coming back out with an extra portion of zaru soba in a smaller tray. Pouring a little of the tsuyu into a little bowl, Chiyo places the soba and the sauce onto a bigger tray and slides the door leading into a dark room open. You look at Suguru quizzically, but Chiyo speaks before Suguru can give you anything more than a returning glance. “Let’s say hi to Jii-san, shall we? it’s his favorite dish too.”
Trailing after Suguru, Miyuki, and Souichirou, you peek your head into the room, hesitant. Eyes adjusting to the lowlight, you slowly make out the contents of the room. It was small, barely enough space for anything except a table and a few decorations, but at the long end of the room was a small, open wooden cabinet on the ground—a butsudan, a shrine for the dead. Peering in further, you see Chiyo kneeled in front of the shrine, hands pressed together and head bowed, the tray of food placed neatly in the center of the shelf alongside the other assortments of fruits and incense.
Suguru walks in quietly and places himself next to Chiyo, falling into the same position on the cushion beside her. There’s a quiet intimacy in the way the smoke drifts from the incense stick, the coiling, warm sandalwood and chrysanthemum that lingers in the air. You take a step back from the doorway, tense and jilted, something writhing and screaming intruder in the pit of your stomach, but your back meets a solid and comforting presence instead.
When you look up, you realize it’s Souichirou’s hand resting between your shoulder blades, a gentle look in his eyes. He nudges you encouragingly, nodding to the other empty cushion next to Chiyo.
“It’s okay,” Miyuki whispers, touching your shoulder. “I think Gin-san wants to say hi to you too.”
As if on cue, Chiyo looks over at you, crow’s feet crinkling as her eyes crescent with her smile. She pats the cushion next to her, waving you over. Hesitantly, you take the first step past the door and kneel beside Chiyo, hands clenched stiff in your lap.
“Gin,” Chiyo calls out softly, reaching over and putting a warm hand over yours. The portrait at the center of the shrine is an old one, sepia-stained and framed. The photograph of Getou Gin looks stone-faced into the camera, young adulthood making his still-maturing features awkwardly placed with a fragment of what he would grow into over time. Souichirou has his eyes, you think. Suguru too—the dark, piercing amber that watches and watches and watches. “This is Suguru’s new friend. take care of her for me too, okay?”
When you press your hands together and bow your head in greeting, it occurs to you briefly that this isn’t something you have a right to. That Getou-san’s ghost shouldn’t have to have your presence to look after too, that kneeling in front of his mantle carries a weight you haven’t earned. But everyone is watching you now, everyone who cherished Getou-san when he was more than just a ghost.
You squeeze your eyes shut, hands pressed firm against each other. If it wasn’t for yourself, you figured you would at least do it for them.
You all return to the table after that, ready to dig into the soba noodles waiting to be eaten. Conversation flows easily between bites of food, fragrant buckwheat and delicate umami bursting on your tongue as you listen to everyone quietly and answer when inevitable questions from chiyo come your way.
“Feel free to explore outside for the rest of the day,” she mentions, sipping the rest of her soba-tsuyu broth. “I’m sure Suguru will do a good job at showing you around, he’s been out and about more than enough times.”
You nod obediently, glancing at Suguru who does the same.
“Be careful, though,” Chiyo warns, holding up a finger. “They’re saying they’ve been hearing ghosts deep in the forest lately, so don’t go too far and don’t stay out too late.” She furrows her brow, shaking her head. “You know how the spirits can get restless in the summer.”
Souichirou sighs, placing a hand on his chin. “There you go again, mom. Don't scare the kids with your ghost stories!”
“Why not! They’re true and they should be scared!”
“Mom…”
The rest of lunch finishes even noisier than it started, a passionate discussion of the existence of ghosts and spirits erupting as Miyuki puts in her own two cents and launches into her own theories and rumors she’s heard. The ruckus between the adults turns into background noise, mostly, as Suguru begins to silently collect all the trays. He catches your eye watching him and he laughs, smiling at you with a bit of embarrassment, familiarity, and love so overflowing it stops you in your tracks.
You realize it now, in that split second he smiles at you. The dog with the belly, the hand painted flowers on the glass chimes out front—this was a little pocket of a world that the Getous had created far away from everyone else in this tiny village, the world where you find yourself slotted into a place they’d created just for you.
You think you understand what Miyuki was talking about before, back in that car ride. You think you’d be happy if you could stay here forever.
.
Later that day, Suguru takes you into the depth of the forest to explore, because of course he does. You follow along without much of a protest, despite his grandmother’s warnings, because of course you do. It's just the way things are. Two steps behind him—never too far, never too close.
The forest is something of a familiar sight, a memory of a time not too long ago. You'd wandered across the village to this same forest just months prior, the restlessness of your new move in a place full of strangers taking your feet to the clearing at the edge of the forest.
(You thought you had heard noises deeper in the forest, a calling of sorts, and had gone to check. You and Suguru found each other there instead.)
Maybe that was why Suguru was so adamant on taking you deeper in the forest this time around, some semblance of quiet sentimentality driving him forward. A part of you hopes this much is true, at least a little; he’s the only thing you have, really. You want to believe some semblance of that is the same for him too.
“Do you think it’s true?” you ask quietly, in the cacophony of cicadas. “The stories about ghosts?”
“Who knows,” he hums, ducking underneath a low hanging branch. His hand lifts the branch for only a brief second, not a single glance back; you scurry under it quickly, the leaves skimming the back of your head when it falls.
It's a split second, exactly the length of one and a half footsteps, between Suguru holding the branch and dropping it. Part of you wonders the ‘what if’—what if you hadn’t quickened your pace in time? Would he have just let it hit you? Did he not wait because he knew that you would have been right behind him regardless? Any version of answers to those questions makes your head spin, buzzing alongside the summer heat and the roar of cicadas and frogs, so you drag yourself out of the sinking pit and force another question to spill out of your mouth instead.
“Do you want there to be?”
Suguru pauses, contemplative. “I want to see for myself—whether they’re real or not.”
The sun was beginning to set, dipping into the burning orange horizon and bleeding through the trees. The first time you were here, you had wandered around aimlessly, escaping from everything and looking for nothing. Maybe something was amiss back then too and you didn’t care enough to notice, but in the dying light, you feel it now.
Your shadows cast long across the forest floor, the humidity of the day and heat of the sun seeping away with each passing second into the yawning trees. Suguru seems unbothered by it, wading through the increasing pressure in the air like it wasn’t there at all. You walk closely behind, hiding your growing discomfort as you wrap your arms around your body, shivering.
You walk for what has to be another half mile or two, your short legs trying to make up the distance compared to Suguru’s slightly longer ones. The trees begin to thin out the further you walk down the forest path, and Suguru points out matter-of-factly that you’re almost there.
“How do you know?” you ask, doubtful. Your shoes are all muddy; you wonder if you can ask Chiyo if she has a spare toothbrush you can use to scrub off the dirt when you get back.
Suguru smiles, the sunset dyeing his amber eyes golden. The noise of the forest has fallen to a hush, eerily quiet. You see his answer before he needs to say it.
The path in front of you opens into a small clearing, a rickety, old shed in the middle of it. The edges of the wood paneling have begun to rot, laid bare in the cruel summer heat, strips of it peeling and disintegrating off the main frame. It seems to have been of use once, maybe a place to put old supplies, judging by the rusty wheelbarrow piled with scraps parked nearby, or something instead left as nothing more than an abandoned memory of what could have been.
Suguru holds a finger over his lips, a silent gesture to be quiet, and begins to tiptoe his way towards the center of the clearing. You resist the urge to grasp onto the back of his shirt (whether to pull him back or to keep yourself moving forward, you don’t know) and try to ignore the building pressure bearing down on you with each step.
“Suguru,” you start out, breathless and hushed, "I really don’t think—“
Something mangled between a cry and a moan warbles through the air, and your mouth snaps shut, freezing.
Suguru looks back at you, eyes wide, and your hand flies to the back of his shirt before you can stop yourself. (You still don’t know what it means.)
“What animal sounds like that…” Suguru whispers under his breath, mostly to himself.
Nothing, you want to answer, but that would only fuel his curiosity further. So instead, you squash down your fear and you whisper instead:
“There’s only one way to find out.”
You’d be happy to leave it alone, to turn tail and just go home, but you know leaving things unresolved would eat Suguru up—the same reason you know that Suguru would want to stay until he saw whatever that thing was with his own two eyes.
Hidden in the shadows, you can barely make out its form, a small, grotesque sort of thing you don’t even know how to begin to describe. It doesn't really closely resemble much of anything at all, just a dark, shapeless lump with short limbs sprouting from its body, its eyes and mouth far too big for the rest of its size.
And yet, for all the repulsion that instinctively forms in the pit of your stomach, you swallow hard and squash it down, staring at the creature. Suguru’s shirt is twisted tightly within your clenched hand; you can’t look away.
It blinks slowly, like it hurts to just do that simple action, and then it starts to cry. Suguru tenses, body drawn taut and lip curled in disgust, but you can’t help the pang of pity at the sight. There's not much you can make out from the wailing, but when you stare at it for long enough, you find you don’t need the words to understand.
You wonder if it’s lonely, small and weak and sad left in the middle of a forest all alone. Maybe that’s why it was crying, because it was the only way to bear it, because it knows nothing but being forgotten and abandoned.
You loosen the fabric between your fingers, stepping out from behind Suguru and walking carefully into the shed. Suguru utters a single ‘hey—’ in warning and tries to tug your wrist back, alarmed, but you shrug him off silently.
“It’s okay,” you say quietly, crouching down and reaching a hand out to the shadows, as gentle as possible. Maybe as a comfort, mostly as a hidden prayer. “I’m sorry. It'll all be okay.”
(When you return to Chiyo’s house later that evening, you scrub your sneakers as soon as you get your hands on a basin of water and a toothbrush. You try to get it all off—the dirt, the mud, the memory of something left to rot alone in the dark where no one would know.
And by the end of the night, the bristles of the toothbrush have frayed beyond use, water from the emptied basin pooled above the gravel. There's still a faint smear on the side of your shoe by the end of the night you can’t get rid of, no matter how hard you try.
Your throat burns; you tear your eyes away.)
.
That evening never gets brought up again.
You hardly remember leaving the shed or anything after that, just bits and pieces of the creature alone and wailing burned into your memory. It seems even Suguru knows what happened that day was a bad idea, from the way you silently agree to never speak about it again in private, much less to the rest of his family.
It becomes a guarded secret, locked away and hoping to be forgotten through the passage of time. Suguru ignores it and pretends it never happened so well that by the end of your time at his grandmother’s, you can almost forget it even happened.
(Almost—when you close your eyes and let yourself drift, you find yourself coming back to that forest again. A creature all alone, forgotten in the dark.)
But life moves on, as it always does.
You and Suguru enter the new school term soon after, and the small peace you built during the summer threatens to fall apart. You'd almost forgotten in that time that no matter how intricately the Getous had welcomed you into their home, you were still the new kid in town, transferring in the middle of the year where the only thing different was you.
Suguru notices it, you think, by the way he tried to linger by your side as you introduced yourself in the front of the classroom on the first day back, or how he’d insisted with the teacher to switch desks to sit next to you after class when he thought no one was looking. But as much as he tries to keep you protected firmly by his side, it never stops the whispers—not fully.
Any gossip the housewives deemed worthy of spreading inevitably trickled down to their children, and no amount of hiding behind Suguru could ever remove you from being their main point of mockery. There’s no helping it, really. Not when all the stolen shoes and paper balls thrown at your back when the teacher’s back is turned has less to do with you and more with the house you come back to and the man you call your father.
You try to keep your head down and stay as invisible as possible; it works in the beginning, at least to be bearable, but you suppose everything must come to an end, eventually.
“And stay away!”
Your classmate—Takashi, if you remember correctly—turns hard on his heel, his other friends scurrying behind him and jeering. Small pebbles bounce harmlessly back at you, their blind aim too weak to land anywhere near you, but one of them spits and it lands far closer than you would like, a chewed up, slick and shiny wad of gum splatting into the ground a few inches away.
You blink, staring at their figures running off in the distance. Your hands and legs sting, scratches on your palms from when you tried to soften your landing, a long scrape running along the side of your leg from the way your calf caught on the gravel as you fell. Your ankle throbs, hot to the touch.
The day was still bright, sun high in the sky, and you know Suguru wouldn’t be finished with classroom cleaning duty for at least another half hour. Takashi and his friends have left you alone for now—none of them have looked back even once. They planned this out, targeting you on a day they knew Suguru wouldn’t be around to tell you exactly what they thought of your unwelcomed transfer.
Frowning, you brush off what dirt you can get off your wounds. You test your right foot first, pressing it gingerly to the ground to hold some of your weight. It sticks strong, like nothing happened, and you try the other.
Immediately, your body crumbles, ankle collapsing under the weight as you bite down a muffled cry. You try to breathe through the pain, gravel sharp and digging into the skin of your palms as you keep as quiet as possible.
(You wonder if being quiet makes much difference if no one was around to hear it anyway, but you think that’s what you’re most afraid of. To cry out and have someone hear, to have them choose to turn away and leave you behind. The scent of pine follows you still.
You would rather die silently in the unknown than to be deliberately left. You decided that a long time ago.)
But eventually, the pain subsides into something manageable, and you manage to drag yourself over to the edge of the school fence to push yourself up. You pause, staring at the dirt smudged all over your school uniform and the cuts and scrapes stinging your skin, and you sigh. The sound comes defeated, almost, like this was all just an inevitability.
You begin to limp back home. You grab onto anything along the road to keep the weight off your injured ankle—fences, railings, the walls of empty neighborhood stores. It's clunky, and slow, and you brace yourself every time you step with your left foot to bear the pain, to not crumple in the middle of the street and have someone see you, but you end up making it work.
By the half hour mark, it becomes routine. Step with one foot, take a deep breath in, step with your other foot and catch yourself before the pain registers fully, deep breath out. Rinse and repeat.
You know if you stop, you won’t be able to get back up, so you just keep going. Even when a familiar sight peeks its head at the top of the hill, when the Getou nameplate gleams in the sunlight across the street from where your hand grips the burning metal of the sidewalk railing. It didn't matter. None of it did.
It didn’t matter that you had an extra key tucked into a small pocket in your backpack, put there by Miyuki herself, and it didn’t matter that Getou's parents would know exactly what to do, with a first-aid kit and more to treat your injury. because no matter which way you tossed it, the truth of the matter is this: everything in that house is good, is perfect, and it holds a spot for the ‘you’ that is cut and clean and polished. You don’t have a right to be there until you return to that again.
So you swallow hard, blinking back the heat in your eyes, and you walk away.
.
The house is dark, like it always is.
Your father likes to shut all the blinds before he leaves for work in the mornings; you would ask him why, if he was around enough to talk in the first place, but you have your suspicions.
(It prevents anything outside from seeping in—light, judgement, a discerning eye, intent on finding something of fault in your family within the walls of this house.)
There’s a box of bandaids and a tube of Neosporin hidden somewhere underneath the sink of the bathroom, kept stocked for the rare occasions you’ve swiped your finger across the edge of a book page or if your father came home and had a cut from work that needed a haphazard bandaging. There wasn’t anything much you could do for a swollen ankle within that cupboard, but one injury tended to was better than none. You could worry about how you were going to get to the ice on the top shelf of the freezer after.
Gently prying your shoes off, you brace yourself against the wall as you blindly hobble through the hallway. It’s a bit of a pathetic sight if you were being honest, but you suppose it’s been a while since you’ve had this level of shame pressing heavy in your chest. It was comforting, in a way, like falling back into an old mold you’d made yourself long ago. At the very least, you’re grateful there was no one here to bear witness to how little you’ve changed.
The bathroom light flicks on, reflecting on the hardwood and diffusing into the long hallway. You blink twice, hard, and then once more. The fan whirs on—an automatic function along with the light—but it’s all muffled in your ears as you force out another deep breath to keep you steady. Between the black dots fading in and out at the edges of your eyes and your ankle screaming at you, hot and red and angrier than it's ever been before, you barely manage to sink down to the edge of the tub, swinging your wounded knee over and turning on a small, steady stream of water from the faucet.
It's a routine. There are steps to follow: clean, ointment, bandage. one thing at a time. If there was one thing you could do, it was this.
You bite your tongue at the first contact of warm water to the open wound. The blood that hadn’t had a chance to form a scab yet washes away in a swirl of pink circling the drain. There's a bit of dirt still left between the crevices. You wonder if that’s a problem you can shelve away for later too.
You turn off the faucet. The stars ping from one corner of your eye to the other. Your ears are ringing. You can’t tell where the pain is coming from anymore.
Did you not lock the doors? Probably not, you never do.
You turn your head slowly. Maybe this was just a hallucination. A dream.
(A good dream, you think. Now that Suguru is here.)
And it must be a dream, you insist. How—why—else would Suguru be here, strands of hair sticking to his face, panting, mouth agape. His mouth closes, when your eyes meet his. Yes, it must be a dream, or something similar, you think distantly, because he looks angry now. Unabashedly furious, more than you’ve ever seen before. Perhaps this was a bad dream after all.
“What. Happened,” Suguru grinds out. His voice may be the only thing you hear clearly.
He’s since tamped down the burning rage on his face to a flicker in his eyes, but you see it everywhere. His mouth set; his jaw clenched; his brows, just ever so slightly pulled down from their normal position. You’ve never seen him angry—not like this. The shame climbs up into your throat, sitting there in a lump you can’t swallow away. You open your mouth a few times, nothing but air and the slightest squeak coming out, but eventually you manage to muster up something through the fog in your brain and your stiff tongue.
“What are you doing here?” Your right leg is still damp, leftover beads of water dripping onto the bathmat. The wound glistens in the light.
Suguru’s mouth goes even flatter, something you didn’t even know was possible. “What am I doing here?” he asks. There is a far away thought, ricocheting in the back of your mind. You think it’s telling you to run. His eyes drag down to your swollen ankle, your scabbing knee. “I think I should be asking you that, shouldn't I?”
“There was a…” It’s hard to think, with him pinning you down with his gaze. You wonder vaguely if this is what an insect feels like, nailed to a wall. Maybe a lamb, flockless and stuck under the glowing, yellow eyes of a wolf. “An accident.”
“An accident,” he echoes testily.
You nod, buzzing from the pain. “I tripped.”
It would be easiest this way, to let him think this was all your fault. Suguru would let it go the quickest if there was only you involved.
(Takashi's scornful glare, the sting of pebbles hitting your skin, the chorus of voices, ringing in your ear. All your fault, you chant. All your fault.)
For a moment, Suguru looks to call you out on your lie. His gaze scours your body once more, marking every injury to memory, like pieces to a puzzle. The bathroom fan hums in the heavy silence. He looks extraordinarily unhappy; you ache at the thought.
“Are you okay? You look tired,” you try. Wrong answer.
Immediately, his face goes blank, and then his lips curl up without his eyes to follow. He lets out a dry laugh, more of a scoff than anything, and steps closer. “I’ve been looking for you all evening, you know?”
Suguru shakes his head, running a hand through his hair. “You weren’t there at the gate. I thought you’d gone back into school for me, so I went back in and checked every classroom and you weren’t there, so I thought you’d just gone home ahead of me.” he laughs again. “And then I walked back, only for Mom to tell me she hasn’t seen you all day. So then naturally, I started running all over town. I thought you might have gone to the bakery to get the leftovers from today’s batch like we’d talked about the other day, or under the bridge to check on the stray kittens, and now I—”
He steps closer. You resist the urge to lean back. “And now here I am, running all over town looking for you, only to find you here.”
Maybe the feeling in your chest doesn’t have much to do with shame as it is guilt. You did this, after all. You’re the reason there are wrinkles in his brow that you would rather thumb away like he does with yours, the reason why he’s still trying to get his heavy breathing back under control. It's hours past sundown and Suguru should be at home, eating the gyudon Miyuki had cooked tonight, and instead he was here. Stuck in a pathetic house with a pathetic you.
Suguru’s in front of you before you know it, craning your head to meet his eyes. His lines are stiff, slow, and strangely, there’s a bit of hesitancy radiating off of him. You must be imagining it—when has Suguru not known what to do?
“Why are you even here,” he asks, quietly. He's tense still, but you don’t think he’s angry anymore. Suguru kneels down, hand ghosting at your knee, then moving down to your ankle. You start to protest, but he continues before you can. “You walked all the way back, but my house is closer. Mom has a first-aid kit in the cabinet, she could have helped. and Dad’s probably home by now and he volunteers at the clinic sometimes, so he could have helped too. And you walked all the way back by yourself? I don't get it, why didn’t you—” Why didn’t you come get me?
Any answer you may have for him gets caught in the thick saliva collecting on your tongue. It's hard to swallow back, hard to form any words that Suguru would accept. You're not even sure what those words verbalized would even sound like.
I wanted—I wanted—
(You wanted to remold yourself before you came back to him. To reshape yourself to what he knows you as, to smooth over any cracks in the porcelain so you were acceptable to look at, so you could be worthy to be around him again.)
“I didn’t want you to see me like this,” you settle on, staring at the spot between your feet.
Suguru is angry all over again. “You—”
“I'm sorry.” And it all dissipates. Your eyes flicker to him nervously, and any intensity he’s been holding on his face has all but faded. Suguru gives you another long glance over, squeezes his eyes shut, and sighs.
You haven’t apologized to him in a long time, not since he’d threatened to tell on you to Miyuki and deprive you of Chiyo’s homemade daifuku if you even uttered the first syllable of an apology to him. It ended up bleeding out of you in other ways—a quieter countenance, a lighter touch, an anxious disposition Suguru would have to gently coax away to assure you that things were okay. That there wasn’t anything you needed to apologize for.
It’s been a while since you’ve said it to him; it’s been even longer since he’s accepted it.
Quietly, Suguru smooths away a stray hair from your face. you swallow back a lump in your throat. “Don't do this again, okay?”
Your stomach coils tight. Twist, release, twist, release. “Okay.” and again. “I'm sorry.”
“Come on,” Suguru says, turning around kneeled on the bathroom tile. “Get on.”
“W-What?” you protest. He was already so tired running around looking for you, you couldn’t let him carry you too. “No, I can—”
“Get on,” he repeats, looking back at you. It's not gentle, but it’s not unkind either. “I’m not mad anymore, okay? Let’s just go home.”
The street lamps are turned on by the time you make your way out of the house. The sun has set completely now, hidden beneath the horizon, but even still, you think it’s warm like this—your heart pressed against his back.
And if you listened close, you think you could feel it too. His heart, beating in tune with yours.
you remember the first time you woke up to it—to those bright blue eyes piercing through the darkness of your room, pinning you in place. all the foggy bleariness of having just woken up was wiped clean out of your eyes. you stared back.
you didn't scream. you couldn't scream. you were frozen for all of one startling, shock-infused second before you actually woke up and registered—it was just satoru. of course, it’s just satoru.
you settled down again. sighing a long, weary sigh, you poked him in the side. he let you. "stop being a creep."
"i'm not being a creep." his tone was light. you could hear the smile lifting up his voice.
you've already closed your eyes again. you blindly grab for the edge of the comforter. "you're being a creep." you tug it over your lips. beneath the fabric you mutter, "watching me in my sleep..."
(you weren’t awake for it, but—
there was a slump in his shoulders when he got home that night. a long, long sigh stretched itself out as he tilted his head back, feeling phantom cricks, and shut the door behind him. he can’t ever really get tired, not with his rct at work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. his mind was always fresh and new and functioning. but fuck.
sometimes that was the problem; one that should never get fixed. his sigh stretches all the way from the front door to all the way down the hallway.
he doesn’t know how many curses’ heads he sent flying today. he doesn’t really care. he couldn’t care less for it, or for the higher ups yabbering in his ears, or for the pile of paperwork on his desk. and gojo’s perfectly healthy, fresh and new and functioning, but his head throbs anyway and he thinks it’s time for him to send his own head flying. his eyes hurt even with the damn blackout blindfold.
but when he gets to the door to your room, he tugs it down. his eyes land on you, automatic like he’d fixed his eyes on you 24/7 the same way his rct worked around the clock. then he scans your surroundings, changes out of his clothes if only for your voice in his mind, pissed off and scowling at the thought of day clothes anywhere near the bed (“they haven’t touched anything—”/“change.”), and slides into bed next to you. he doesn’t bother slipping under the covers. he doesn’t think he’s gonna sleep tonight. he doesn’t care for it.
he watches you, the ebb and flow of your cursed energy, all the little fluctuations that are so much more alive in his eyes now that he’s close to you, close enough to really see you. he watches how your chest expands and contracts, how you turn a little in your sleep, how you shift closer to his warmth.
—it was routine.)
his eyes haven't left you once.
you feel the weight, sixfold, blanketing over your half-asleep figure. it's not unlike the comforter you've settled under. maybe it’s just a little heavier, a little more secure.
"i prefer the term monitoring," he hummed. you know he could go on and on, talking about surveilling the night for potential threats and you never know what could happen (not like the unpredictability of danger is a concern for him; but you’re not him) and about curses in closets. he doesn't do that tonight.
"same thing," you mutter, words buried beneath the sheets.
"were you scared?"
no, he's not talking about curses in closets tonight.
“no,” you hum, eyes closed. you turn your back to him, getting comfortable. then, “never of you.”
it’s so quiet—almost quiet enough for him to miss. but he can’t, not when it’s just you two in the space of this room. when it’s only you in front of him. he doesn’t answer. just breathes.
“…get some sleep, satoru.”
you feel it when he huffs—barely catch his amused little ‘hah.’
he slips under the covers anyway, snaking an arm around your waist.
then he’s tucking his face against the back of your neck, and you’d almost say it was eager if he wasn’t being so gentle. he breathes you in, actually feels you after however-long of just watching, of drowning himself in your essence in the way that came most naturally.
you feel his infinity wrapping around you. it was a strange sensation—something like a thin layer of air pressed just between you and the rest of the world. it was like a film cast over you, or a sort of pressure. it was oddly cold the first time you’d felt it, that untouchable space between you and the rest of the world. except for satoru. and then, it wasn’t that cold at all.
actually, he’s quite warm right now.
like this, it was just you and satoru in his own little bubble. he presses his forehead to the back of your neck, feeling your pulse, counting each beat. he feels your back against his chest, how your breathing evens and steadies out, how your heart expands and contracts again. he breathes in time with you—still, his heart’s beating just a fraction faster. he huffs.
btw despite his earlier judgement he does end up falling asleep. and then he’s a pain to peel off in the morning because now he doesn’t want to wake up and it’s your fault and you guys should just skip out on work today (you know that’s not happening) and isn’t it so nice being in bed with him and shirking all your worldly responsibilities and being in bed with him come on just stay a little longer…
you remember the first time you woke up to it—to those bright blue eyes piercing through the darkness of your room, pinning you in place. all the foggy bleariness of having just woken up was wiped clean out of your eyes. you stared back.
you didn't scream. you couldn't scream. you were frozen for all of one startling, shock-infused second before you actually woke up and registered—it was just satoru. of course, it’s just satoru.
you settled down again. sighing a long, weary sigh, you poked him in the side. he let you. "stop being a creep."
"i'm not being a creep." his tone was light. you could hear the smile lifting up his voice.
you've already closed your eyes again, blindly grabbing for the edge of the comforter, all the while feeling the way your movements are outlined in the dark. "you're being a creep." you tug it over your lips. then, beneath the fabric, you mutter, "watching me in my sleep..."
(you weren’t awake for it, but—
there was a slump in his shoulders when he got home that night. a long, long sigh stretched itself out as he tilted his head back, hassled by phantom cricks. he shut the door behind him. he can’t ever really get tired, not with his rct at work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 4 weeks a month... his mind was always fresh and new and functioning. but fuck.
sometimes that was the problem; one that could never get fixed. never should get fixed, and never ever would. his sigh stretches all the way from the front door to all the way down the hall.
he doesn’t know how many curses’ heads he sent flying today. he doesn’t really care. he couldn’t care less for it, or for the higher ups yabbering in his ears, or for the pile of paperwork on his desk. and gojo’s perfectly healthy, fresh and new and functioning, but his head throbs anyway and he thinks it’s time for him to send his own head flying. his eyes hurt even with the damn blackout blindfold.
but when he gets to the door to your room, he tugs it down. his eyes land on you, automatic like he’s fixed his eyes on you 24/7 the same way his rct worked around the clock. then he scans your surroundings, changes out of his clothes if only for your voice in his mind pissed off and scowling at the thought of day clothes anywhere near the bed (“they haven’t touched anything—”/“change.”), and slides into bed next to you. he doesn’t bother slipping under the covers. he doesn’t think he’s gonna sleep tonight. he doesn’t care for it.
he watches you, the ebb and flow of your cursed energy, all the little fluctuations that are so much more alive in his eyes now that he’s close to you, close enough to really see you. he watches how your chest expands and contracts, how you turn a little in your sleep, how you shift closer to the warmth of another body. to him.
—it was routine.)
his eyes haven't left you once.
you feel the weight, sixfold, blanketing over your half-asleep figure. it's not unlike the comforter you've settled under. maybe it’s just a little heavier, a little more secure.
"i prefer the term monitoring," he hummed. you know he could go on and on, talking about surveilling the night for potential threats and you never know what could happen (not like the unpredictability of danger is a concern for him but—you’re not him) and about curses in closets. he doesn't do that tonight.
"same thing," you mutter, words buried beneath the sheets.
"were you scared?"
no, he's not talking about curses in closets tonight.
“no,” you hum, eyes closed. you turn your back to him, getting comfortable. then, “never of you.”
it’s so quiet, stuffed beneath the blankets, caught in the dark of night—almost quiet enough for him to miss. but he can’t, not when it’s just you two in the space of this room. when it’s only you in front of him. he doesn’t answer. just breathes.
“…get some sleep, satoru.”
you feel it when he huffs—barely catch his amused little ‘hah.’
he slips under the covers anyway, snaking an arm around your waist.
then he’s tucking his face against the back of your neck, and you’d almost say it was eager if he wasn’t being so gentle. he breathes you in—actually touches you, feels you after however-long of just watching, of drowning himself in your essence in the way that came most naturally.
his infinity wraps around you, just another blanket to add on the list. it was a strange sensation—something like a thin layer of air pressed just between you and the rest of the world. it was like a film cast over you, or a sort of pressure. it was oddly cold the first time you’d felt it, that untouchable space between you and the rest of the world—except for satoru. and then, it wasn’t that cold at all.
actually, he’s quite warm right now.
like this, it was just you and satoru in his own little bubble. he presses his forehead to the back of your neck, feeling your pulse, counting each beat. he feels your back against his chest, how your breathing evens and steadies out, how your heart expands and contracts again when he shifts a little closer to you. he breathes in time with you—still, his heart’s beating just a fraction faster. he huffs. how unfair of you.
hey blu <3 so happy for u and ur seongje fic taking off with 200 notes so far :O !! that is so awesome !! cant wait for more works from u <3 always looking out
uwaahhh thank you so much for your kind words and your support!! it really means a lot to me 🥹🥹🤍 (even if i wasn’t active for it then haha…) (also altho it’s been a while i remember i was very inspired by your whc writing and characterization, so i’m extra touched hehe)
after i posted that fic i didn’t look at tumblr again for months… i’m really glad that people enjoyed it :’’-)
suguru always kept his dorm the best out of all of you, his floors always polished and clear. he was a creature of habit. he had a routine—saturdays, laundry and room organization, sundays, dusting and dorm cleaning. he’d keep his windows open most of the time, reciting the words (ones that he’d learnt from his mother, no doubt): “keeping your windows open and letting the sun in helps with dust.”
adopting his habits, you found yourself keeping your windows open, too.
just as he’d drawn the curtains back, the sun hid behind passing clouds, bathing the room in a faint, more muted grey. you tried not to laugh at the blank, dampened expression on his face as he tied back the drapes. he hadn’t really complained, but you could see it—narrowed eyes, a sigh before grabbing his broom. his agitation was communicated well enough. amused, you continued to watch him, the subtle shifts in his expression becoming your morning reading of the day.
you’ll read the lines, the slope of his nose, the curve of his lips. the nuance in the set of his brows, his eyelids and his lashes, the way his hair falls.
“don’t your bangs get in the way?”
“ah?”
you watch him go about his room from where you’re perched on his bed, watching the sway of his fringe as it covers his eye. clasping one hand over the other, he leans against his broom and gives a sidelong glance at the dark strands.
“oh,” he hums, pinching his bangs between his fingers before tucking them behind his ear. “well, i’ve gotten used to it.”
whatever cloud that was blocking the sun finally leaves, but suguru doubts that’s where the gleam in your eye comes from.
“wait—wait just a sec.” you rush off to your room.
when you come back, there are big, bright, and patterned hair clips in your palms.
you are met with a blank stare.
“come here.”
he’s planted in his place, opting to sway against his broom. ignoring your demand, he gives a genial smile and muses, “i’ve never seen you wear those before.”
it doesn’t deter you. “i haven’t. they were a gift from a friend years ago. now, come here.”
his bangs slip from behind his ear, and you take it as a sign. it’s fortune. it’s fate.
his smile strains.
he acquiesces.
propping the broom against the wall, he surrenders to your whims. you ignore (what he thinks is) his subtle sighing in front of you and indulge yourself in decorating his hair with childish accessories.
as if he’d ever really deny you.
(he’ll indulge in you even if it’s at his expense. he’d do anything for you, if you’d let him. he’d do anything for you, regardless.
his belief only cements itself further when he watches the way you light up while you tuck and clip his bangs back—you’re practically beaming at him with that smile you unwittingly grace him with, sun be damned.)
your hands are careful, the way your fingers brush and press at the silky strands of his hair. you murmur something about it being soft beneath your breath, and your eyes are nothing short of adoring—the way they always are. it was in your nature to hold things with care, to hold everything with love. interesting, he thinks, how that same care of yours, those cradling hands, could bring so much destruction.
he catches every second of your gaze sliding to his—the slight way they widen, the little breath that gets caught and the way your shoulders freeze just a fraction higher. the way you look away and blink and blink again and adjust a clip that doesn’t need adjusting.
(yes, he’d do anything for you. he knows it.)
you forget your blunder quickly enough. it’s easy when suguru’s right in front of you with pretty clips in his pretty hair.
“so cute,” you murmur. suguru manages a humbled smile, head cocked to the side.
“cute?”
for the rest of that morning, you’re allowed the sight of suguru with several multicolored, patterned clips and usahana holding back his bangs.
the air of your bathroom is clinical, the smell of sanitized bandages and antiseptic coming faint from your first aid kit, like a homemade hospital with an exhausted pine-scented air freshener. when you get close enough to the boy in front of you, sat on the closed lid of a toilet, you can smell blood on skin. whether or not it’s his or some other poor, hospitalized soul is another story.
“fucking idiots,” seongje heavily sighs, iron on his tongue. he still won’t stop talking even while you’re wiping at his busted lip. the hand you have at his neck presses a little firmer and you continue, zeroed in on the way you press a wet towel wrapped around your finger to the wound.
he’s about to say something again before he hisses when his skin pulls just a little too much, and you have to refrain from making him a little worse. god, you want to hit him—but you can’t. so, you settle for sliding your hand down and laying it heavy on his shoulder with a huff, digging your fingers into the fabric of his shirt, feeling the warmth beneath your palm.
he just smiles, entertained. you try not to meet it with hostility.
his lips part a little as you try to wipe at the blood, try to be gentle—you catch the way the corners of his lips still tug upward, the way his gums peek out. his smiles are probably better described as teeth-baring than anything, but you indulge yourself in the idea that it’s something friendlier with you than it is with others.
“what’d you do to piss them off this time, hm?” he asks, jutting his chin, your hand retracting from his face. a scoff presses through your teeth. he tilts his head when you give up on that general area and take his hand instead, watching the way you grimace at the blood and dirt.
it reminds you of how one of the guys from earlier came at him with brass knuckles—left with broken knuckles.
idiots. fucking idiots.
you’re too preoccupied with the mental checklist of medical supplies lined up on your countertop to consider replying to him. you busy yourself with rinsing the rag and pumping some soap on it before lightly wetting it again, cleaning around the wounds on his hands. out of your sight, his face falls a little, left with his own thoughts.
“they could’ve seriously hurt you, you know,” seongje says, voice dropping a little flatter, a little less teasing. he states it like a fact and not a what-if. his tone grazes the single-minded state you’re in, enough to derail you for just a moment to spare a glance at him.
“you were there, weren’t you?” you reply, gaze dropping again as you fall back on track.
“are you stupid?” he murmurs, not missing a single beat. “you think i’m going to be there every time you need saving?”
“you said so yourself,” you murmur back, all too assured, all too focused on his hands, and he stares back at the top of your head like you’ve grown a second one. you continue dabbing at his skinned knuckles, eyes hardening when you come to bits of blood that are too dry. he really couldn’t care less about how precise you are about disinfecting and cleaning something this minor, to him, but you were nothing if not particular. the damp and soapy rag makes his wounds sting but he can’t even bother making a snarky, halfhearted remark about it—not when you’re standing there in front of him, knees knocking against his, tending to him like this. it doesn’t bother him when you press down a little harder to get rid of the stubborn clots, but you clench your teeth anyway.
tense brows press down on narrowed eyes and he finds himself mirroring you. seongje’s lip curls—not in contempt, though the expression was almost identical to the one he wore when some piece of shit got on his nerves.
that look could never be directed at you. he was just… confused.
he guesses he did say it, before. it was around three months ago, the first time you’d really witnessed the damage he could cause, beginning to end.
(some group of boys you’d never seen before were following you—they knew your name, knew your school, knew about how you’d been ‘hanging around seongje.’ you think it was some idiot trying to get one up on him for revenge. it’s a shame they obviously didn’t think it through enough. his glasses are loosely held at your side, folded in your palm.
you watch as he stands in the middle of a wreckage, tracing the rise and fall of his shoulders, his uneven breaths. the foggy street lights cast in front of him, showing nothing more than his silhouette. you can’t see his expression like this, head hung low over battered bodies, but your vision of it is clear all the same. wild eyes, a storm behind a smile.
he smiles like he’s off on a high from the metallic smell of blood that permeates the air surrounding him, smiles like a warning siren. danger, danger. you watch the shadow of his back as he lets out a ragged breath, and you catch the tail end of an even rougher laugh. his shoulders roll back, relaxing, a brief second spent to look at the darkened sky.
“if you ever come near her again,” he starts, languid as he drops his gaze, foot prodding at the side of a limp body. “i’ll know. you got it?”
it’s a silent declaration. you want to see me? fine. wherever she goes, i go.
he huffs, pulling a pack out his pocket. a cigarette slips out with a flick of his wrist, and he takes it between his lips as he turns to you, stepping over an arm, a leg. a pause, and the flash of his lighter illuminates his face, long enough for you to see faint specks of blood. he takes a drag.
“are you hungry?” he asks, wisps of smoke slipping between his words. he comes to you, palm open, and you silently hand him his glasses. he sighs and walks past you, glasses quietly clicking as they unfold. “i’m fucking hungry.”
you’re still staring at the wreck he’s left behind in his wake, a reminder of the whirlwind that waits inside of him. you think you count five bodies, knocked out on wet cement—one of them tried running away as soon as the first guy was out. you sigh. just another mistake to add onto their list of grievances:
1. coming near you, 2. laying a hand on you, 3. thinking they could beat geum seongje, and 4. trying to run away from geum seongje.
oh well. they’ve learned their lesson.
seongje turns around, eyes landing on you like there’s nothing else to look at. “are you coming?”)
times like this, he remembers you’re not exactly right in the head.
“you trust me that much?” seongje scoffs, recovering quickly enough, voice lifted by the almost mocking smile he wears.
“you trust me, don’t you?” you offhandedly return like a kick to his shin, reaching for petroleum jelly. the thin layer you spread across his knuckles is soothing, but he finds that his hands still burn hot under your touch.
he stares at you, letting out an amused breath. sometimes you shoot him down like a sedative and the chaos that runs rampant through his mind slows for half a second, the corners of his lips losing a fraction of their edge. (almost like he fades a little into something soft, maybe—but soft doesn’t seem to suit seongje.) his eyes flicker but despite that familiar glint, that brief dilation, the sharpness of his glare dulls when he’s directing it at you. (he manages to fit into it, anyway, that softness, or something close to it. as long as you’re the one holding him.)
he can’t look away—he never looked away from the face of someone challenging him—but your words hit him somewhere he didn’t feel like dissecting. he realizes he does trust you, more than he should. more than he thought he’d let himself. granted, you’ve gotten to know a lot about each other these past few months, but seongje still finds himself at a loss.
he hands a little bit of himself to you without realizing it every time he shows up at your door knowing you’ll patch him up, with every step he takes in front of you, knowing you’re right behind him.
he laughs, derisive, dry like there’s something biting at his throat.
“why should i trust anyone?” he responds instead, his gaze fixed on you. you suppose there are things he still can’t trust you with, but that’s okay. there are things you don’t tell him either. the two of you are still here, anyway, his hand in yours as you wrap gauze around and between his fingers with set practice.
you don’t say anything after that. you don’t have to. his lack of a real answer is an answer in itself.
maybe you also trust him more than you should. you’ve come to expect a degree of mutuality from him. but there’s one truth that hangs above the both of you like a promise scarred in your palms, held in bloody-knuckled fists: seongje was never going to leave you. he would never think to.
that’s enough trust for the two of you.
a/n seongje brainrot is real… release me from my shackles. i didn’t have any real direction for this but i hope it turned out well :’/) any feedback is very appreciated <3
summary: in which you got yourself tangled up with geum seongje. at first, it was trouble. then, it became routine. until, somehow, you became the only thing he would bleed for—willingly, violently, without regret.
pairing: geum seongje x fem!reader
genre: romance, hurt/comfort, angst
word count: 6.2k
playlist: he was chaos, he was revelry
you were crouched by the side of a quiet alley behind a convenience store, setting down a paper plate with tuna and a cup of water. a tiny stray kitten had been hanging around there lately, mistrustful, but hungry. you've seen it a few times and started bringing food when you pass by.
the kitten was peeking out from under a box, inching closer. you kept still, one hand out, speaking low and soft.
then, there was a crash. a loud bang echoed from farther down the alley, and the sound of something—someone—getting slammed into a wall.
the kitten bolted instantly, disappearing into a gap between buildings.
you groaned under your breath, standing up with an irritated huff. not only did it startle the kitten, but it also startled you. you almost stumbled from the shock of the loud noise, your heart pounding rapidly.
"what the hell..." you stepped a little farther out to see the source, and then you saw him. a tall guy, maroon uniform jacket slipping off one shoulder, face stretched, hair a mess. bloodied knuckles and eyes wild.
he wasn't from your school. and by the looks of it, his opponent was already down. two more stood at a distance, too afraid to move.
the man lifted his head once, cracking his neck. then his eyes landed on you. you didn't flinch. just stared with narrowed eyes.
"go start your fight somewhere else," you said evenly. "you're not from around here."
he raised his brows and stared like he hadn't heard you right. then he smiled, crooked and wild. the kind that says, 'you've just made things interesting.'
you turned your back on him and walked off, not giving him another glance.
he stared after you. not many people talked to him like that. even fewer walked away before he decided the conversation was over.
you didn't run, but didn't linger either. just walked like you had somewhere to be, like he wasn't worth wasting another second on.
his eyes remained on you, tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek. a faint cut on his knuckle stung, but barely noticed.
'go start your fight somewhere else.'
'you're not from around here.'
not a scream. not a plea. not even a threat. just pure irritation. like he was some dumb dog that pissed on your shoes.
his grin curled slowly, something unhinged hiding just beneath it. he pulled a cigarette from his pocket, stuck it between his teeth, and lit it. the flame briefly flickered across his face before he took a drag and blew the smoke out lazily.
he'd seen people cry, scream, and beg. he'd seen how most people either froze or ran when they saw him, faces tight with fear, eyes darting around. but you?
you looked at him like he was an eyesore.
his laugh came quiet. brief. half-laugh, half-breath.
feeding a stray cat, he thought, like it was some ridiculous joke the universe threw at him. you looked too soft for your own good, too normal, too boring.
so why did you stick?
he leaned his shoulder against the wall, just for a second. watched the street where you disappeared. his blood was still warm from the fight, but that moment? that edge in your voice?
it was the first time he felt interrupted.
not threatened, not challenged. just... like someone reached into his noise and pulled something to the surface.
he didn't know your name. but that was fine. he had time.
it wasn't the next day, or the day after. but seongje still found himself wandering near that same alley. always around the same time. leaning against walls with a cigarette between his lips, smoke curling above his head like a restless thought that wouldn't burn out.
he wasn't waiting, he told himself. he just happened to be here, just passing time.
he was mid-drag when he caught a flash of familiar movement. dark hair, a recognizable bag slung over one shoulder. you were crouched near the alley's corner again, opening a can of tuna. next to your feet was the same stray kitten from before, now a little less wary, its ears twitching.
you didn't notice him at first. he said nothing.
he watched you feed the kitten. your expression wasn't anything special, just calm, focused, lips pressed together in a straight line. but he stared like it was the most peculiar thing in the world, like you were something unreal.
then you sighed and sat back on your heels, that's when your eyes flicked up, and landed right on him. you tensed slightly, like you were trying to figure out if it was him or just some other delinquent in a maroon uniform.
it was definitely him.
"you again? you muttered, standing slowly, brushing off your knees. "don't tell me you're here to start trouble again."
seongje let the cigarette dangle loosely between his fingers, gaze half-lidded. "don't flatter yourself. this is my spot now."
you snorted. "your spot? pretty sure this alley existed before you."
a grin pulled at his lips, slow and amused. that sharp glint in your eyes was still there. that same irritation, not fear, not interest. just a girl who didn't give a damn who he was.
"you always talk this much when feeding cats?" he asked.
"no. just when someone interrupts." he laughed, quiet but real.
you moved to step past him, clearly done with the conversation. but before you could, he flicked his cigarette to the ground and said slowly, "you don't scare easy, do you?"
you paused. "i don't like getting caught up in situations like this."
you walked off before he could say anything else. same calm steps. same complete disinterest in him. he stared at the kitten as it ate.
for the first time in a long while, he didn't feel bored.
you were coming out of the convenience store with a yogurt drink in hand when you felt someone matching your pace beside you.
you didn't even need to look. you felt it, like the air shifted, a shadow slipping in just a bit too close.
"miss cat-feeder," came the drawl, smug and lazy.
you rolled your eyes and kept walking. "seriously?"
"you remembered me," he said, hands in his pockets, leaning slightly sideways to peer at your face.
"no. i remembered your stupid voice."
"ouch," he grinned. "you wound me."
"what do you want?"
"just walking. not allowed to exist now?"
"not next to me, preferably." he chuckled at that, keeping stride with you anyway.
he walked like he owned the sidewalk, like even the cracks made space for him. he kept glancing at you, amused by how hard you were trying not to look.
"don't you have school?" you muttered.
"skipped."
"of course you did."
there was a beat of silence before he casually reached out and tugged at the hem of your sleeve. "what flavor?"
you jerked your arm away. "touch me again and i'll pour this on your head."
his grin widened, eyes gleaming with delight. there it is. "you're fun."
"i'm really not."
"exactly."
you stopped in your tracks. he looked at you, curious. "look," you said, eyes flat. "i don't like hanging out with loud people. so if you're looking for someone to flirt with, pick someone else."
seongje stared at you for a second, unreadable. then he smirked.
"i'm not flirting."
"good."
"i just like watching you get pissed." and with that, he turned on his heel and walked away, hands back in his pockets like he didn't just drop a live wire into your day.
you watched him go, jaw tight.
god, he is annoying.
and worse, he knew it.
your shoes pounded against the pavement, too loud, too fast. the voices behind you were still getting closer. slurred words, the kind that came with guys who had too much time and nothing to lose. you'd told them off when they first approached, sharp and dismissive like always. but these ones didn't like hearing 'no'.
you darted around a corner, trying to cut into a side street you didn't usually take, and slammed straight into a body.
you stumbled back from the force, hands catching yourself on the person's chest, eyes wide and breath caught in your throat.
"whoa there," a familiar voice started, light and teasing.
your eyes shot up.
geum seongje.
of all people.
he was in his usual disheveled uniform, cigarette tucked between his fingers, a faint smirk already creeping up like instinct. "you really can't stay away from me, huh?"
but you weren't listening. you glanced over your shoulder, eyes scanning the street you just came from, anxiety tightening your features.
seongje's smirk faded, just a bit. his eyes narrowed.
"what happened?"
"none of your business. i need to go."
you stepped to the side, trying to move past him but his arm shot out fast, catching you by the wrist. not hard. not enough to hurt. but firm.
his voice lost all its humor.
"who."
you jerked against his grip, frustrated. "just let me go. jesus christ."
he didn't. instead, his eyes flicked toward the corner you came from. and for a brief second, something flickered through him, that thing he tried to keep under the surface unless it was time to let it loose.
then he heard footsteps and voices getting closer. the guys rounded the corner, laughing, loud, eyes scanning.
and then they saw you.
and then him.
one of them started to speak, some dumb threat halfway out of his mouth when seongje stepped forward and flicked his cigarette.
"alright," he said, eyes gleaming now. "which one of you thought chasing her was a good idea?" his tone didn't rise. he didn't shout. but it was enough.
the shift in the air was immediate, like a wire pulled taut. the guys slowed, uneasy.
"you with her?" one of them muttered, trying to size him up. seongje's lip curled in amusement.
"nah," he said, rolling his shoulder. "but she ran into me. so now you've got a problem."
one of them laughed nervously, already starting to backpedal. but it was too late.
you didn't say a word. his posture changed, loose and wild, but sharp, like the crackle before a fire starts.
"stay behind me," he muttered without looking at you. you almost snapped at him.
i didn't ask for help.
but something in the way he said it—flat, final—made you stay put.
he didn't do it for gratitude. he did it because someone pissed him off. and right now, that someone was anyone who looked at you wrong.
they didn't get the chance to react further. not really, because seongje's already on them.
the first one barely managed to raise his arm before seongje slammed his fist into his jaw, the sound cracking through the alley like a gunshot. he didn't stop, he grabbed the guy by the collar, slamming his head against the wall once, twice, three times until he crumpled like dead weight.
the second guy tried to pull something, maybe a pocketknife, but he was too slow. seongje grabbed his wrist and bended it the wrong way with a sickening snap. the guy howled, dropping the knife, and seongje grinned wider.
the last one tried to run. he got maybe five steps before seongje tackled him from behind, dragging him down like a wolf ripping through prey. there was nothing clean about the way he beat him. just pure rage unleashed in fists, knees, elbows, and feet.
the alley was quiet again. the three guys were groaning, two on the ground and one stumbling away. none of them dared to look back.
seongje stood in the center of it, breathing a little heavier, the scrape on his knuckles raw and fresh. blood trickled slowly down his arm, but he didn't seem to care. not even a glance at it.
you stared. not because you were scared of the violence. you'd known what he was capable of. you'd just never seen it up close. not like this.
there was a kind of stillness around him now, but it wasn't peace. it was the kind of stillness right after lightning hits the ground. charged, dangerous, humming under the surface.
he turned toward you, running a hand through his hair. eyes sharper now, less unhinged than before, but still wild.
"you good?" you hesitated.
"you didn't have to do that." he shrugged.
"i didn't do it for you." you frowned, annoyed.
"then why-"
"they looked at you like they could touch you," he said, voice low and quiet. "i didn't like that."
it came out too calm. like he was just stating a fact. like it was that simple.
you stared at him. "that's not normal."
he tilted his head. "i'm not normal."
you stood there in the silence again, tension thick between you both. then he looked down at his hand, flexed his fingers once.
"you gonna keep staring, or you gonna say thank you?"
you exhaled sharply. "i didn't ask you to help."
his lip twitched. "you didn't have to."
you started walking past him, brushing your shoulder lightly against his arm. "don't follow me."
he didn't. but he watched you go. watched like a wolf who'd just caught the scent of something that didn't run fast enough.
and this time, it wasn't about teasing you for attention anymore. it was something else. something worse.
something's changed. it had been days. you hadn't seen him near the alley, near the store, nowhere. and honestly, you were glad. the fight had left a sour taste in your mouth. not fear exactly, but it reminded you of the line he walked. the kind of line that most people never went near.
so when you saw him again leaning against the vending machine right outside the store, your steps faltered.
he noticed, eyes tracking you immediately. not grinning, not talking. just watching.
you stiffened, but kept walking. no use turning back now. you passed him without a word.
"you're avoiding me," he said. you didn't stop. "smart," he added after a beat.
that did it. you turned slightly, arms crossed, tone flat. "what do you want now?"
he looked you over, slower this time. less playful. like he was measuring something invisible.
"you said don't follow you," he said. "so i didn't."
"and yet, here you are."
"i was here first."
you hated that he had a point.
he pulled out a soda from the vending machine and cracked it open, taking a lazy sip. "i scared you."
"no you didn't."
his head tilted. "but you looked at me different after that day." you didn't reply. "you don't like people like me," he went on. "you don't like what i do. the way i fight. the way i look at you."
your throat tightened. "you make it sound like i'm supposed to like it."
he smiled, small, almost secret. "you're not."
you sighed and turned away again, but this time, his voice became lower. less teasing.
"you're not scared of me," he said. "but you're careful now." you paused. "i get it," he added. "but you should know something."
"what?" you asked warily.
"i'd kill for you without thinking."
the words didn't sound romantic. they didn't even sound intense. they were just real.
heavy. simple. dangerous.
you looked at him. at the bruised knuckles, the lazy posture, the eyes that never stopped watching you. and for the first time, you didn't see an annoying prick. you saw the storm behind his grin.
you didn't say a word as you walked away. but you walked slower this time.
the sky was gray, and the wind carried that dry chill that always came with autumn.
you didn't mean to come this way. really, you didn't. but this street was quieter than the main road, and your head was already aching from a whole day of voices, noise, and pressure from everyone around you.
your friends had found out. not just about anyone, but him. a certain delinquent hanging around you. not just anyone either, but someone from the union.
they kept telling you the same thing. stop meeting him, cut him off, stay away before things got worse. that's all you've been hearing for days. from different mouths, but the same message, over and over. as if you hadn't thought about that already. like you hadn't been trying.
you were tired. bone-deep, soul tired.
and there he was.
same place. same vending machine. like he'd been waiting, but not really. like he knew you'd come eventually.
seongje glanced up, surprised, but only a little. his cigarette burned lazily between his fingers, his jacket loose, like he didn't care how cold it was getting.
you stopped a few steps away and didn't say anything.
he raised a brow. "lost?"
"no," you said, too flat, too fast.
he stared. then blew out smoke in a low exhale. "you look like shit."
you snorted faintly. "thanks."
he nodded toward the chair beside him. "sit if you want."
"i didn't come to hang out with you."
"didn't say you did."
still, you sat. not close, just near enough to feel the warmth of someone else existing beside you. near enough to not feel completely alone. you stayed like that for a while. nothing said.
then, without looking at him, you muttered, "why are you like this?"
his brow quirked. "like what?"
"crazy. violent. all of it."
a beat. then a shrug. "it's fun."
you sighed, frustrated but not surprised.
and then, so softly that he almost didn't hear it, you said, "you make everything worse. but today... i don't know. you don't feel loud." that caught him off guard.
he turned to look at you, cigarette paused halfway to his lips.
you didn't meet his eyes. you just sat there, face turned to the street. like this, quiet and tired and not trying to prove anything, you looked different.
more fragile. not weak, never that. but human.
seongje flicked his ash away. "stay, then," he said. "if it helps."
you didn't answer. but you didn't leave either. and for once, he didn't push you to speak. he just let you be. which, for someone like him, was a kind of affection.
the unspoken kind.
the kind that doesn't ask for anything back.
another day, and there he was again. it wasn't often that you saw him alone like this. really alone. no noise. no laughter. no fights.
just seongje, slouched low on the steps behind an old building, elbows on his knees, head tilted back like he was trying to drown in the grey sky. he didn't notice you at first, too wrapped in whatever chaos lived behind his eyes.
you should've kept walking. you meant to keep walking. but something stopped you. maybe it was the stillness. maybe it was the fact that for the first time since you met him, he didn't look like someone trying to stir shit up. he looked tired.
you approached slowly, footsteps soft. he heard you eventually, turning just slightly to glance your way. his usual grin didn't show up.
"you stalking me now?" he said, voice low, like he couldn't be bothered to make it sound playful.
"i was just walking by."
"uh-huh."
you didn't sit beside him. you stood a little off to the side, arms folded, eyes scanning his face. there was a bruise on his cheekbone, not fresh but healing, and a split on his lower lip.
"what happened this time?"
"some idiot." he muttered. "deserved worse than what he got."
you rolled your eyes. "that doesn't narrow it down."
he smirked faintly. but it didn't last. he looked back up at the sky. "ever feel like you're stuck in a room that's too small, and the only way to breathe is to break something?"
you blinked. that wasn't the answer you expected. you said nothing.
he let out a low breath. "yeah. never mind."
you hesitated, then stepped closer. not sitting, just standing near him.
"i don't get you." you said finally.
"good."
"but i care."
that made him look at you again. not with that lazy, cocky grin. not with the sharp glint he gave the people he was about to wreck.
just... eyes. dark, unreadable, confused.
"you care?" he repeated, almost mocking, but there was no real heat in it.
you nodded. "i don't want to, but i do."
the silence that followed was heavier than anything he could've said.
you rubbed at your sleeve, eyes darting away. "it's stupid."
he stared a second longer, then tilted his head. "i'm not gonna be good for you," he said flatly. no apology in it. just fact.
"i know."
"i'll hurt people."
"i know."
"i might hurt you."
your gaze snapped back to his. "then i'll leave."
a pause.
and for the first time, his expression shifted, something sharp flickering behind his eyes, like the idea of you leaving physically bothered him.
but you held his stare. "i don't deserve to be hurt by you."
he didn't answer. when you turned to go, he didn't stop you. he didn't grab your wrist. he didn't make a scene. he just watched you leave like someone who'd been left too many times before to call out now.
and that was how you knew it wasn't just some sort of game to him anymore.
it was supposed to be just another normal day. you were going to meet up with a friend from a different school. but somehow, word got around that you'd said something snappy to the wrong group of boys the other day, boys who thought they could intimidate you into taking it back. you didn't.
but now they were standing in front of you in the alley near the rear exit of the building. three of them, too close, too smug, and too stupid to understand that they were walking into something far worse than your sharp tongue.
because seongje had seen.
he wasn't supposed to be there. you didn't even know why he was around this part of the city. but the second his eyes locked on the scene, on you cornered, arms crossed tightly, jaw clenched, something dark lit behind his expression.
he didn't run. he didn't shout. he just walked, calm as anything, like he had all the time in the world. the sound of his steps echoing on the pavement made all three boys turn.
"oi," he said, voice low and slow.
the boys stiffened. one of them scoffed. "the hell are you?"
seongje grinned cockily. "me? i'm geum seongje. you fuckers."
his name dropped like a dead weight. the air shifted. one of them paled a little, while another took an unconscious step back.
"oh—shit—" one of them muttered under his breath, recognizing it too late.
then his eyes flickered to you. "you okay?"
you swallowed. "i've got it."
"wrong answer."
he passed the boys like they weren't even there, stepping between them and you, like drawing a line they couldn't cross anymore.
"you wanna explain why the hell you're trying to corner mine?"
the word slipped out like instinct. your breath caught.
the boys hesitated. one of them backed up. the dumbest one laughed nervously.
"you serious, man? you dating this chick or something?"
seongje didn't answer right away. instead, he pulled out his glasses, the metal catching the light for a second. then, without a word, he took your hand gently, almost unnervingly so, and placed them in your palm.
"i don't repeat myself."
and that was the only warning they got. it wasn't a fight. it was a statement.
a clear, brutal, one-sided reminder that you were off-limits. that if they so much as looked at you again, they'd wake up in pieces.
he didn't let it last long. he didn't need to.
when it was over, and the three of them were groaning on the pavement, he turned to you, no grin now, just quiet breathing. without a word, he took the glasses from your hand and slid them back on.
"you didn't need to do that," you said quietly.
"they shouldn't have looked at you like they could."
"that's not how this works."
he glanced at you, sharp. "it is now."
you looked away, jaw tight. "you act like i'm yours."
another beat of silence. the only sound was the wind through rusted fences. and then,
"you are," he said simply.
you stared at him, your heart thudded too loud.
"you can't just—claim people."
"i can."
"why?" he held your gaze, something unreadable flickering in his.
"you're the only thing i don't want broken."
he said it like it bothered him. like the truth of it irritated the hell out of him.
you didn't know what to say. so you didn't. you just walked beside him as he left the alley, silent. but this time, you stayed close.
and this time, he didn't grin. he just walked with you like he always meant to.
the day had been long. longer than you thought it would be. school, people, life. everything felt suffocating. your body ached, your mind was frayed, and every little thing seemed to pile on top of you until you could barely keep your head above water.
but then, through the haze of exhaustion, you saw him.
seongje, leaning against your school gate. unbothered and detached. his posture was casual, his eyes scanning the crowd of students coming out of school. but the moment your gaze locked onto him, your heart gave a small jolt of relief.
there. him. the one person who, for reasons you still couldn't fully understand, made you feel safe. your body seemed to move on its own, your feet carrying you toward him without a second thought.
and then before you could even process what you were doing, you were already running toward him, arms outstretched, chest tight from the strain of everything you'd been holding inside all day.
the moment you reached him, you didn't stop. you wrapped your arms around him, burying your face against his chest.
you hummed. the noise was quiet, like a soft sigh of contentment, and for the first time all day, your muscles finally relaxed.
his scent, the familiar warmth of him, it was like home. a feeling you hadn't known you were missing until it was there, pressing against you in a way you couldn't explain.
for a split second, everything felt peaceful. you could rest now. let everything melt away. with him, it felt like nothing else mattered.
seongje froze. his first instinct was to step back, to pull away, because this wasn't how things were supposed to be. but when you stayed against him, not saying anything, just holding him like he was the only thing keeping you grounded, something inside him twisted.
what the hell?
he couldn't breathe for a second. your arms around him, your face buried against him like you needed him. like he was something more than just some mad dog. he didn't know what to do with it.
you were so soft against him. so warm. his heartbeat, which had been steady, quickened as your arms tightened just slightly. and his body, despite the automatic urge to pull away, instinctively responded, his hands hovering at his sides, unsure of where to put them, but not wanting to make you pull away.
his reaction was slow. he was staring down at you, his usual detached expression gone, replaced with a mix of confusion and something closer to... discomfort. he didn't know how to handle it.
finally, after what felt like an eternity, he placed his hand awkwardly on your back, barely enough to return the gesture, but it was something. just a gentle pressure, like he was trying to let you know he wasn't going to push you away. but he wouldn't pull you in either. not fully.
his voice came out rough, not because he was angry, but because he didn't have the words to make sense of what was happening. "you... okay?" he asked, his voice low. it was like he was trying to understand you better. trying, in his strange way, to care.
and when you hummed again, your body still pressed against him like you needed nothing more, he couldn't deny the warmth that spread through him. subtle, but undeniable.
he didn't say anything else, but he did one thing he never thought he would. he let you stay there, his hand still on your back, just enough to show that maybe, just maybe, he didn't mind you being this close.
thoughts had been swirling around your head. people already knew who you were, and the kind of connection you had with geum seongje. you'd been hearing disapproving remarks from people you knew, left and right.
but that wasn't what was bothering you. it was when one of your friends asked, "when did you even start dating geum seongje?"
you didn't know how to answer that. you weren't dating. were you even together? you'd been so focused on how you felt about him, so content with the time you were spending together, that you'd forgotten to ask the most important question.
where do you stand in his life?
so you finally asked, quietly. on a cold night, after one of his disappearances. you looked at him and said, "what are we, seongje?"
he didn't look at you right away. he just lit a cigarette, sat back like you didn't just ask something that's clawing at your ribs.
then, after a long pause, he said, "you don't need a label for something i'd kill over."
still too vague. so you pressed. "so that's it? you can show up and disappear and wreck people and i'm just... what? someone you know?"
now he's irritated. not because you're wrong, but because his feelings itch under his skin worse than blood.
he dragged you close by the wrist, eyes burning, voice low and rough. "you're mine. you're not like the others. you don't walk away from me. and i'll kill anyone who touches you."
it became even clearer in actions. he doesn't flirt with others. he doesn't sleep around. he shows up when you're hurt, when you need help, or even just when the silence gets too heavy. his violence becomes more controlled around you. his chaos pauses for you.
and if you ever try to walk away, not out of fear, but heartbreak, he doesn't beg. but he follows.
he shows up in the dark and says, "you don't get to leave. you're the only thing i don't want to break."
so no, you don't get a title. but you get certainty. the kind that claws into you and never lets go.
you were at seongje's place, curled up in the corner of his bed, wearing one of his hoodies, watching something on your phone. occasionally, you laughed, your brow twitching, your mouth tugging in little ways. you probably didn't know he was watching.
he was sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall. a cigarette rested between his fingers, forgotten halfway through.
it should've been just another moment. just another afternoon with you near. that's all it was. but it wasn't.
something cracked. it was quiet. internal. sudden.
he looked at you, really looked, and it hit him like a pipe to the chest. he'd always known you were different.
you didn't scream like the world did, you didn't beg to get closer to him, or flinch when he tore the world apart with his bare hands. you didn't reach to fix what couldn't be fixed.
you just were. and he couldn't fucking breathe.
he'd thought what he felt for you was already obsession. he thought the way he needed you around—the way his days didn't start right unless he saw your face—was already too much.
but this? right now? it was worse.
because you weren't even doing anything. you were just there, in his space like you belonged. and he couldn't stand it.
he didn't blink, didn't move. his heart was beating too fast, too heavy. like it was trying to get out of his chest, like it was trying to claw its way toward you.
you looked up at him, catching the stare.
"what?" you asked, your voice soft, lazy with comfort.
that was the final hit. his cigarette dropped to the floor. he stood and crossed the room in two strides.
you blinked and sat up, shifting to the edge of the bed. confused, then mildly concerned, because he wasn't saying anything. just looking at you like he was on the edge of something ugly.
"what is it?" you asked again.
he dropped to his knees in front of you, hands braced on the mattress like it was the only thing keeping him grounded.
"you," he muttered, low, dangerous, barely holding back the quake in his chest. "you don't even fucking know, do you."
you blinked in confusion, "know what?"
"that i'm already gone."
he leaned in close, breath warm against your skin. his hands were clenched on the sheets beside your thighs.
"i didn't think it could get worse," he said, tone ragged. "but it did. just now. just looking at you."
"seongje-"
he didn't let you finish. his voice came out lower. hoarser.
"i'd burn down everything. rip open anyone. just to keep this. you. whatever the fuck this is—"
he pressed his forehead against your knee. his voice dropped, barely a whisper now, like it hurt him to say.
"—it's mine."
your fingers moved before your words did. you reached out, slow and certain, and slipped your hand into his hair, like you knew something inside him was coming apart at the seams, and you needed to keep it from unraveling further.
you didn't flinch. didn't pull away from the sharpness in his voice or the weight behind his words.
instead, you curled your fingers gently against his scalp and said, soft but steady, "you don't have to break things just to prove you want to keep me. i'm not going anywhere."
that did something to him. his breath hitched, quiet, jaw clenched. you didn't treat his madness like something to be pitied or feared. you didn't try to fix it. you didn't flinch from the wreckage. you just understood it was there and touched it anyway.
his arms wrapped around your waist almost without thinking, head still pressed to your knee like it was the only place he could breathe.
then you said it, quietly. not to tease, not to demand. just honest. like it had always been true.
"you are my home."
and that was the thing that shattered him. because he didn't have a home. not really, never did. he was a creature built from chaos and flame and blood. the idea that someone could look at him and find rest?
it wrecked him in a way no fist ever could. his grip tightened. not out of fear of you leaving. but because you just gave him something he didn't know he'd been starving for all his life. and now that he had it, he'd kill the whole world before he let it go.
he didn't know what to say yet. so when you gently pulled him toward the bed, he didn't resist. he didn't say something cocky or crass like he usually would. he just let you.
you lay down first, guiding him beside you. he collapsed next to you like a man thrown off balance. arms still around your waist, his head buried against the curve of your neck. as if he could crawl inside your skin just to get closer.
your fingers ran through his hair, slow, rhythmic, soothing. the storm inside him didn't vanish, but it quieted. simmered.
your voice cut through the quiet, soft and careful. "do you love me?"
he froze. he didn't pull away, but he did stop breathing for a second. his gaze locked on yours, heavy and unreadable. then he took a slow breath, jaw tightening.
love? what the hell was that supposed to feel like? that was too unfamiliar. too soft.
he didn't know. he'd never had it. not from anyone. not for anyone. all he'd ever known was survival, pleasure, and pain. wanting things so badly he broke them just to feel something. hurting because it was the only way to know he was alive.
but this? this thing in his chest, this raw, aching, burning thing that only grew worse the longer you touched him, it was something else.
so he didn't lie. he didn't pretend. he spoke against your skin, voice hoarse and quiet.
"i don't know what love is. but i know i can't fucking stand the thought of you not being here."
another breath. he pulled you closer.
"you're the only thing that makes me feel calm and insane at the same time. you—" he exhaled, shaky now, like it hurt to say, "—you make me feel too much. and i can't stop it."
his fingers dug into the back of your shirt. possessive. desperate.
"i don't know if it's love, but i know this—you're mine. you've been mine since the moment i saw you. doesn't matter if you run, or scream, or try to tear me out of your chest. you're still mine."
"you're the air that i breathe," he said, voice dropping to a whisper, like a confession no one else was meant to hear. "and i'd tear the world apart to keep you. no hesitation. no mercy."
"when i look at you, it hurts." he said. "but i want that hurt. over and over again. you're the only thing i'd bleed for without thinking twice."
he let the silence stretch, like he wanted the weight of his words to press against you. crush you, mark you, bind you to him in the only way he knew how.
it was not a confession, but a surrender.
your chest tightened. your eyes stung. and you hated that they did, because you weren't sad. you weren't broken.
you were just... full. full of him. of this.
a shaky breath escaped you as you cupped his face, your thumb brushing just beneath his eye, like you needed to touch something solid to believe any of this was real.
you smiled. small, trembling, but true.
"whatever it is you feel for me, let it consume you." your voice was steady, despite the trembling in your chest. "break for me. burn only for me. want no one else—because i don't want anyone but you."
he stared at you like you'd just taken the air out of his lungs.
"i don't care if it's wrong, or selfish, or if the world thinks i've lost my mind." your hand slid back into his hair gently. "you're mine, geum seongje. just as much as i'm yours."
his hands were already on your waist, but they tightened at those words, like something inside him finally snapped.
and he kissed you. it wasn't soft. it wasn't careful. it was desperate, like he needed to feel everything at once, like if he didn't press every inch of you into him, he might fall apart.
you kissed him back just as hard, just as aching, fingers curling in his hair like you could anchor the both of you with the weight of your want.
and in that moment, nothing else mattered.
not the danger in his eyes. not the chaos in his soul. not the way the world would look at you.
because you knew him. and you would choose him—still. every time.
for you, he would bleed himself dry a thousand times—willingly, completely, because he didn't know how not to.
it’s genuinely wild how often weak hero gets reduced to "bromance,” like the story is just about a particularly intense friendship and not something far more complicated, far more intimate. this isn't just shippers projecting. this isn't just wishful thinking. you don’t need the director and cast members repeatedly claiming that suho and sieun are each other's first love to interpret that on your own. the narrative already tells you—quietly, devastatingly, and with absolute clarity.
the queer subtext isn’t subtle. it’s not hidden in glances or throwaway lines. it’s built into the structure of their relationship, in every decision they make. suho knew beomseok had tampered with his bike. that wasn’t just bullying; it was a premeditated act of violence. he knew what kind of danger he was walking into when he went to the ring, and he went anyway. alone. outnumbered. no illusions. he knew he could die. but he went. because they hurt sieun. because sieun got hurt for him.
that’s their language. not confession, but action. not sentiment, but sacrifice. die for each other. kill for each other.
and sieun, who had always been defined by his discipline, his detachment, his spotless academic record? he lets himself spiral. he got expelled. stopped eating. stopped sleeping. stopped going to cram school. when he found out suho was in critical condition, he froze in the middle of the street and didn’t move, even with a car speeding toward him. as if life without suho wasn’t a life worth returning to.
he came back from a coma asking for suho, looking for him. suho was already in one because of him. they revolve around each other like twin stars caught in gravity’s pull—self-destructive, unstoppable, and impossibly close. love doesn’t always look like romance, but that doesn’t make it less real. or less queer.
so no, it’s not just a bromance. and if that’s all you see—if you can watch all of that and not feel the weight of what’s being said without words? then i'm sorry, but you’ve missed the entire point.
Suho is an entirely different category than “friends”. He’s not family, brother, best friend, boyfriend, lover, husband, spouse, etc. There’s no category sufficient to label Suho. For Sieun, it’s just Suho. Suho is Suho.
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