reader

18+

[guzhufuren]

gods created Seonghwa so that nonbinary people would have a beacon of hope and inspiration to look up to in trying times

[santheestallion]

summer's storm (yunho x reader)

part two of summer’s dive paring: yunho x fem reader genre: angst, brother’s best friend, boy next door, fuckboy au word count: 25k summary: last summer, your brother’s best friend broke your heart in a way you thought you’d never recover from. now, almost a year later, you learn the truth of his betrayal and fight the the parts of you desperate to forgive and the parts of you unable to forget. warnings: none

ao3 link can be found here.

“You’re lying,” were the first words out of your mouth.

Because there isn’t any possible scenario in which you’re willing to accept that the Yunho you knew this summer did everything he did with you while having a girlfriend.

The Yunho that planned romantic dates and put so much effort into making your time together special. 

The Yunho who was vulnerable with you, who listened and made you feel safe enough to confess your own insecurities.

The Yunho that called you beautiful and made you feel more adored and wanted than you had ever felt in your life. 

“Are you forgetting that we spend almost every day together, Y/N? That he’s my best friend?” your brother asks, looking exasperated as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and scrolls in search of what you can guess is proof of his words.

You almost want to tell him to stop because you think that if you see actual evidence of something you’re already beginning to fear is true, you’re going to throw up. 

But before you can even open your mouth to speak, your brother is shoving his phone in your direction, a picture of Yunho with a girl on his lap displayed on the screen.

You take the device from your brother, holding it in your hand and, against your better judgment, taking a closer look. 

The girl on his lap is gorgeous. She sits on Yunho’s lap with her hands thrown around his neck, throwing her head back in laughter as if someone’s told a really funny joke. She has long legs and cascading locs of dark brown hair that go down her exposed back as she wears a short, glittery dress. And she looks comfortable there, on his lap, as if its a place she’s sat thousands of times before. A territory that’s familiar to her. 

Yunho’s not really looking at her in the picture, and there’s a level of disinterest on his face, but his arm is around her waist. He touches her in the way that a boyfriend touches a girlfriend – casually. It’s a familiar touch that you may not even realize is there, yet unconsciously makes you feel instantly more comfortable.

Kind of like how it felt when he touched you. 

You realize the picture is from an Instagram account and you swipe out of it until you’re staring at the profile of a girl who, perhaps in another life, you might’ve been friends with. She seems accomplished, cool, smart. The picture of her on Yunho’s lap is the only one on her feed that seems to reference a man at all – everything else is pictures of her and her friends, of her at conferences, of her on campus. You double-check the time stamp of the photo with Yunho, confirming it was posted in late April, feeling sick as the idea of her being Yunho’s girlfriend becomes all the more real.  

Your brother snatches the phone out of your hand before you can scroll any further, and a part of you is grateful. If you had to see any more pictures of this clearly beautiful, intelligent girl you think you’re gonna throw up. 

“You don’t fucking listen, Y/N,” your brother scolds, absorbed by his own annoyance and frustration. “I told you from the very first day I came home that–”

“Telling me to leave him alone and telling me he has a girlfriend are two completely different things,” you snap. “Don’t you think I would’ve listened had I know—”

“I didn’t think I needed to tell you, Y/N!” your brother shouts in reply, throwing his arms up into the air. “I mean, how stupid can you be? Yunho?”

Kai stops to crack a smile, laughing as he thinks about how so non-boyfriend-material his best friend is. “The stories I have about him, Y/N, you wouldn’t even believe some of the shit he’s done with girls—”

“Stop.”

Kai pauses and closes his mouth, taking a closer look at your expression and doing a double take as he sees a pain he didn’t quite capture before. Your voice, unusually weak and dejected, helps him to the realization that perhaps things with Yunho were a lot deeper than what he initially assumed. He thought that at most you might’ve had a crush, and that Yunho being the attention-whore that he is played into it. What he didn’t imagine was that the two of you might’ve had a serious relationship, one that would leave you heartbroken and sad at the idea of him being with someone else. And now suddenly he regrets delivering the news in the way he did.

He’s not sure how to comfort you in this moment because he’s never had to before, never told you about his love life and never asked about yours. He liked things this way, but now he knows he fucked up and has to say something.

“I’m sorry I had to be the person to break it to you,” he gently adds, looking at his feet awkwardly as he searches for the right words. “If he really hurt you, Y/N, tell me, and I’ll sort things out with him.”

“No,” you tell him flatly, a feigned strength coming to your voice so that your refusal is understood. Worse than the confusion you’re feeling right now is the idea of Yunho knowing it, the idea of Kai and Yunho’s relationship made awkward because of you. And as the reality of this moment hits you, your brother’s pity feels suddenly mortifying, and so you stand up straight and try your best to appear okay. 

“Don’t tell him anything. I…I was just surprised, that’s all,” you explain, wiping away an angry tear before it has the chance to fall. “You don’t have to comfort me. We’ve never done that for each other before, so please don’t start now.”

You become biting as a way to hide your true feelings, because being mean to your brother feels much more familiar and comfortable to you than receiving his sympathy. The sad eyes he uses to look at you let you know that you’re no more convincing than you feel, and because you know you’ll break if you stand under his gaze any longer, you brush past him on the stairs and head straight for your bedroom. 

As the wooden door closes behind you, something immediate happens inside of you that has your knees buckling until you’re on the floor, making strange, muted noises in an effort to conceal your sobs. 

That was almost one year ago.

Almost one year ago you experienced all of that pain and suffering realizing that the boy you had been falling in love with was not the person you thought he was. He cheated, not on you, but on someone else, someone else who was there before you and probably equally adored him, someone who may have no idea of your existence. He put you in a position where you became the unknowing homewrecker, an unwilling participating in the destruction of someone else’s happiness. And with that knowledge perpetually haunting you, it felt as if the fabric of your world was crumbling beneath you, the one thing that was holding you together proving itself unsteady and leaving you to deal with the broken pieces of your heart. 

But no matter how you felt, no matter how much it felt as if your world was ending, things had to go on. You couldn’t postpone your move-in day, or your first day of classes, or any of these new life experiences that were coming at you faster than what you were ready for. 

You had a lot of questions about how things ended and so badly wanted to confront Yunho about them. To hear an explanation from his familiar voice and have him reassure you that everything was going to be okay. But the image of him with someone else was permanently burned in your mind, a betrayal too painful to work through. So you retreated from it all. You blocked Yunho from all communication methods and haven’t spoken to him since. College was busy and provided new experiences that allowed you to forget. You pushed through and distracted yourself until you no longer knew the version of yourself that was infatuated with Yunho.

You’re a different person now, and you like who you are. This new you doesn’t let people in as easily as she once did. She doesn’t foolishly fall in love with someone she was only romantically involved with for three months. She’s distrusting and knows that it’s a necessary precaution for the protection of her peace. She recognizes that her previous naivety is what opened her up to heartbreak and forgives herself because she knows better now. 

You can’t say that you’re completely over the situation, or that seeing Yunho again isn’t a real fear of yours. It’s a type of heartbreak that you’re not sure if you’ll ever get over, really.

But you know that if you do see him, there will be no chance for reconciliation in your mind.

Because he broke your heart once and you don’t think you’ll ever be able to forget that. 

Out of your brother’s car window, the neighborhood you grew up in appears into focus. The tree-lined streets. The fashionable suburban homes. The uncovered pools in your neighbors’ backyards. You were just here last summer, and yet it still feels new and exciting.

You didn’t return home for fall break, or for winter break, or for spring break like you should’ve. None of it felt like purposeful or conscious avoidance on your part, and what you hated the most was hearing your mother’s sad voice on the other end of the phone as you relayed to her for a second, third, and fourth time that she wouldn’t be seeing her baby daughter for the holidays.

But you were becoming a new person and to do that, it didn’t serve you to be reminded of the past. 

When you’re away from home for so long, there comes a fear that when you finally return, things won’t feel the same anymore, and that the place you grew up in would become unrecognizable. But in a moving car, the neighborhood feels endless, full of possibility. It fills you with hope that maybe, this summer won’t be so bad after all. 

“You look like a dog with your head out of the window like that, you know,” you hear your older brother remark, looking over at you as he stops at a red light. In reply, you grab an empty water bottle from the dash and throw it at his head, laughing when he fails to dodge it and it hits him right in the face. 

His snarky comments throughout the entire car ride have been getting on your nerves, but in a different way, it's what lets you know that you’re home. That even though it's been a while, some things haven’t changed in your absence.

Your brother laughs, and in a more serious way, asks, “Are you excited about the summer?” 

You turn back to the window, looking out as you ponder the question. Coming home for the summer and seeing your family for the first time in a year was something that admittedly worried you; you weren’t the same daughter that your mother sent off to school, the same sister your brother saw break down on the stairs of your house.

You think about how you felt around this time last year, how you were so hopeful and excited for your last summer before heading off to college. You just knew that you would use that time to grow and develop as a person, and in some unexpected and painful ways, you did.

Really, your only goal for this summer is to simply make it through. To avoid any conflict until you’re able to return to school and continue your education.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I guess I should be excited in the sense that I get time off from school. But in another way, I’m nervous to see how things have changed and stayed the same during my time away.”

You weren’t at all meaning to sound profound with your answer but your brother appears impressed all the same, smirking proudly at you when he says, “You’ve changed, you know.”

There’s a lot that Kai has wondered about since that moment almost a year ago when he confronted you with the truth. He saw with his own eyes how hurt you were but never quite knew the extent of it, and of course had no expectations that you’d confide in him about it. Phone conversations throughout the school year could only reveal so much about your disposition, and a part of him didn't know the person he’d meet when he picked you up from your dorm.

But he sees you now and, taking as much as he can from your words and overall demeanor, you seem fine. Like you've grown up a bit in your time away from home which is always a welcome change.

A tiny part of you becomes self-conscious at your brother’s observation. It must show through in your silence, because he moves to assure you. 

“You don’t have to say anything. You’ll hear enough about it when mom sees you.”

You arrive in the front driveway of your house just a few moments later, getting out the car and waiting beside it nervously for your mom to come out and greet you. 

“Just so you know, she’s totally gonna cry all over you,” your brother warns jovially, bumping shoulders with you as you both stand against the car. “All she does is talk about you.”

You sigh, something about his words making you feel a bit sad. “I know.”

And indeed, when your mother comes out of the house, she almost tackles you with the force of her embrace. She picks and prods at your skin and tells you how different and taller you look and all you can do is bite back a smile, worried that things would be different but instead feeling happy to see her. 

It makes you feel optimistic about your summer knowing that things haven’t changed, that just because you’ve become this new person doesn’t mean the relationship with your family has to be any different. 

Together the three of you bring your stuff into the house, and it’s entirely reminiscent of the beginning of last summer. You try not to dwell too much on the similarities, because with it comes what's different – most notably the absence of Yunho, whose childhood-long habit of sticking to your brother like glue makes it that much more noticeable. 

“Dinner is already ready, and I made your favorites,” your mother entices after you’ve brought up the last suitcase, the promise of food willing your tired legs up the porch steps. But then she looks behind you, her eyebrows creasing in concern. “Kai, what’s going on?”

You turn around to see your brother staring at his phone, and then tucking it into his pocket with an almost too well-meaning smile. “Sorry, I just got a text. I gotta go check on something. I’ll make sure to be back before you guys finish eating.”

“Are you really going to leave on your sister’s first day back?” your mother asks in frustration, narrowing her eyes at your older brother and saying all types of things about how he hasn’t seen you in almost a year and how disrespectful it would be to leave so soon. 

But it’s your voice that ultimately settles the debate, explaining to your mother that you and Kai had more than enough time to catch up in the car ride over here and that it’ll be fine if he steps out for a few moments.

So together you and your mother head inside to eat, a display of all your favorite foods spread out against the dinner table and making you feel a little forlorn knowing you won’t be able to finish it all. You tell her all about your semester, catching her up on all of the new developments that she’s missed. She asks you if you’re dating and all other types of invasive questions, and you give her the truthful answer which is no, that no one’s caught your eye and you’re not really interested in dating right now. 

You fail to tell her why, or how your trust has been so severely broken that you can’t even imagine opening up to someone again. 

It’s a little bit insane to think that your mother knows next to nothing about your summer-long relationship with Yunho, or any of these life shattering emotions that you’ve been experiencing in the past year. Still, you have no desire to hash any of it out now, to bring up memories that have been rendered meaningless to you after months of crying over them.

The hours tick by with lots of conversation and eating and yet still, your brother doesn’t show his face. You have to talk your mother down from calling him and making a big fuss out of it, eventually convincing her to go ahead and get ready for bed because clearly, he won’t be returning anytime soon. 

Your mother goes off to her room to sleep while you stay behind to do the dishes, watching the evening blend into night as you scrub away at stained utensils. It isn’t until a little past 9:00pm that your brother finally does show up, the creak of the front door opening giving him away. 

“Hey, Y/N,” he says, looking and sounding guilty as he walks over and stands in the archway of the kitchen. 

Facing the sink, you turn around at the sound of his voice and can’t help but smirk at his obviously awkward disposition – eyes turned downward to look at his feet, elbow bent to scratch the back of his head. The truth is that you could care less about where your brother’s been, not at all phased or offended at his absence. You’re more interested in making fun of him for seeming guilty about it.

“Where were you?” you ask, giggling as you watch your brother squirm under your gaze. But it isn’t until you look down, where in his hand he holds a video game DVD, that everything starts to make sense. He walked away earlier without getting into his car. As if whatever he needed to “check on” was within walking distance. It finally clicks for you that where your brother’s been was across the street, at Yunho’s house.

Kai must see the gears turning in your head, because his expression turns shameful and apologetic as he attempts to explain himself.

“I…was at Yunho’s house. If…that’s okay with you?”

You can tell by the way he draws out the ‘if’ that he’s’ super scared to be telling you this, scared of how you’ll react. “I just wasn’t sure if it’s something that you would have a problem with and I—”

“I know. It’s fine,” you tell him calmly.

Because in no scenario were you expecting that your brother would just stop being best friends with Yunho at your expense. 

You understand that their friendship dates your relationship by about 18 years, and that Kai doesn’t know enough about the extent of your relationship to be offended on your behalf. 

“Really,” you emphasize when it feels like Kai is still looking at you like you’re a bomb waiting to explode. “You don’t have to sneak around to be with your best friend. It’s okay.”

“Can I ask you a question?” your brother says next, looking awkwardly at the floor before meeting your gaze. “Are you…okay?”

Because a part of him wonders if maybe you’re a little too fine about all of this. He can’t help but think about all of those breaks when you didn’t come home from school and wonder if that cool, cold demeanor is a cover for something more. 

You take a few seconds to ponder the question, thinking of all that’s transpired since last summer. All of the hurt you dealt with alone, all of the isolation you experienced, all of the pain you had to transform in order to become this new person. A person who will never allow herself to be that hurt again. 

“Yes,” you answer. Because with all things considered, you think you are. 

A part of you is scared, though, that all of that will end when you inevitably see Yunho again.

Your first few weeks of summer seem to suggest that perhaps things will, after all, be decent like you were hoping for. 

Because you’ve met a group of friends and found a way to spend your time that seems pretty worthwhile, at least for now. 

It became pretty obvious at the conclusion of your freshman year that you’d pretty much have no choice but to work during the summers. Your scholarship covered mostly everything, but there were things left that you needed during the semester that weren’t going to pay for themselves. 

You found a job opening for a coffee shop in your neighborhood that you had only visited a few times throughout the shocking number of years it has been residing in your neighborhood. It seemed like easy enough work for pretty abhorrent pay, but it was standard for this sort of job, and outside of this, your only other option was to maybe start mowing lawns again – and for obvious reasons, that wouldn’t do.

Your interview was incredibly informal. Just a rambunctious boy named Wooyoung sitting you down and explaining that with the amount of people that had been run out of the job, they were willing to practically hire anyone who applied. 

You weren’t sure what to say to that information but you smiled at it anyway, accepting the job and feeling more like you were doing them a favor by accepting it then them for offering it to you.

The work so far has been simple enough, just heating up prepackaged food and making tolerable drinks. The time goes by fast with your coworkers, whose lives are entirely all-consuming and interesting. It’s very easy to fall into their stories when you’re supposed to be working, and with a young Wooyoung as the manager, you pretty much never have to worry about being scolded. 

“Y/N–-” says Mingi, your charming, blonde, giant of a coworker who really should be wiping tables instead of gossiping right now, “--Did Lisa tell you about the new guy she’s talking to?”

“Oh Mingi, would you stop trying to tell all my business to Y/N?” Lisa remarks before you can respond, eyes rolling as a prominent blush makes its way to her cheeks. “I’m sure she’s tired of hearing about my exploits.”

“And I’m not?”

You laugh, watching as Lisa grazes the top of Mingi’s head with a bag of coffee beans. The two of them never fail to make a slow work day amusing with their back-and-forth banter and genial attitude towards you. They’ve been working at this coffee shop together for far longer than you have – both of them grad students and roommates who were looking to pick up extra work to pay their rent – and yet in your few weeks, you’ve already been made to feel like a part of their inner circle. You were delighted to find out that Mingi was pursuing his Master’s in Music Education at your university, unbeknownst to you until you started working together. 

“Actually, I really love hearing these stories, Lisa,” you earnestly reply, to which Lisa rolls her eyes, though you can tell by the grin that follows that she’s not really mad at you. If she was, she’d clock Mingi in the face before he could get the first few words of his story out.

Instead, she leans against the back counter and listens as Mingi animatedly narrates Lisa’s weekend date. “Tell me why she’s now involved with a military guy,” he says, mimicking the assembly of a gun with his hands to accentuate his words. “He let it casually slip during their date that he just got back from Europe and will be stationed in North Korea next week.”

“South Korea, actually,” Lisa interrupts, tilting her head back in a dreamy sort of way, though you can tell she’s just being dramatic. “He says he wants to fly me there so we can keep seeing each other even while he’s serving.”

“Oh, tell me he’s not serious?” you ask. “After one date?”

“He’s totally serious. I’m not though. I’ll take the free flight and probably have a vacation or something.” Lisa shrugs, then turns to glare at Mingi. “Lord knows I need one. This guy stresses me out on the daily. Y/N, did you know he accidentally left the oven on in our apartment last night?”

“Did I? Or was I just finding a cost-effective way to stay warm in our freezing cold apartment?”

“Guys! There’s a customer waiting!” a voice coming from the back storeroom shouts, and when you turn to meet it, you see Wooyoung looking grumpy with a clipboard in his hand. He must be taking inventory, his least favorite activity, which explains the attitude. You exchange amused looks with both Mingi and Lisa before the three of you silently walk over to your respective posts, doing the work you always seem to forget about.

Anytime a customer is at the register, it means it's your cue, always being the one to take orders as your coworkers are a lot more crude and admittedly not very good at their social skills.

You turn around to greet the customer and are barely able to get your rehearsed greeting out. 

Because as soon as you lock eyes with the tall, dark haired man behind the register, you feel your entire world shifting in the same way it did the first time you saw him.

“Hi, how can I help you?” are the words that come out of your mouth automatically as you’re turning around, but when you see him, it’s like your entire throat goes dry.

You should’ve known that all of these weeks of peace and quiet were just the calm before the storm. That you seeing Yunho in this small, suburban neighborhood that you grew up in was just as inevitable as summer rain. 

You had prepared yourself for the moment in which you would see him and played out versions of the scenario in your head multiple times. In one scenario, you’d seem completely cold. In another, you’d run away. You weren’t at all anticipating this version, the one in which you’d simply be so shocked and panicked that you wouldn’t say anything at all. 

“Y/N,” Yunho says, your name coming out of his mouth for the first time in what feels like forever. He stares at you with wide, brown eyes, all of the shock and surprise of seeing someone you weren’t expecting to see painted all over his handsome features. 

He looks healthy, though you don’t know why you expected otherwise. Perhaps it would’ve been comforting to know he was struggling without you, that the pain of your absence had left a physical impact.

But instead, he looks as good-looking as ever in his black t-shirt and baseball cap, locks of dark hair falling out on the sides where the hat just doesn’t quite fit. He’s still the same tall, attractive dark-haired boy you came to be smitten with. Though now, he opens and closes his mouth a few times, trying to find the right words, trying to figure out what to say to someone you haven’t seen in months, someone who you so badly fucked things up with. 

“I had no idea you were back or else I would’ve…I would’ve come to see you,” he tells you, lifting up his hat to run an anxious hand through his hair. And you can see the panic in his eyes, see the expression of having so much to say but not knowing how to express it. “Fuck. I haven’t seen you in almost…a year.”

You don’t know what to say to him and it causes you to shrink into a smaller version of yourself. All of the confidence you might’ve had about who you were, the person you’d become post-Yunho, all fades away with just a few seconds of his presence. You feel angry, mad at yourself and frustrated to even be feeling this way. And as these thoughts course through you, all you can do is stare downward at your fingers, trying desperately to steel yourself but feeling as if all of the words have been knocked out of you with the force of his appearance. 

“Do you guys know each other?” you can hear Mingi’s voice ask, and you don’t think you’ve ever felt anything quite like the relief that washes over you. He steps away from the coffee machines that decorate the back counter to come hover beside you, looking at Yunho with a polite grin on his face. 

You hold silently for Yunho to answer your coworker’s question, waiting and then looking up to find him staring at you with the same sort of expectation in his expression. Burdened by his defiant silence, you force your lips together in an almost-smile and turn to Mingi with the words, “Yeah. He’s a friend.”

Mingi hums at you and then turns back to Yunho, extending out his arm for a handshake. You watch with anxious trepidation as Yunho almost seems not to notice it, his eyes still burning intensely into yours with a fire in them that makes it impossible for you to look away either. But he eventually turns to Mingi, and in a strained and robotic movement, shakes his hand. “Hi. Yunho.”

“Mingi,” your coworker replies back, a look on his face that tells you he doesn’t know just quite what to think about the man in front of him.

After he’s let go of Mingi’s hand, Yunho immediately turns back to you, and in an uncharacteristically rude fashion, completely cuts Mingi out of the conversation. “Y/N, can we–”

Whether it’s because he’s persistent, oblivious, or trying very purposely to piss Yunho off, Mingi interrupts the taller boy with another question. “How do you guys know each other?” Mingi’s long armed embrace finds its way around your shoulders, squeezing you into his chest. “Y/N always says so little about herself, so I’m always curious to hear from people who know her. Like, longer than I have.”

You watch as Yunho’s eyes zero in on Mingi’s arm, the expression on his face changing subtly as he processes the image before him. “Sorry–” he says, looking at Mingi’s hand and then up at his face. “--what did you say your name was?”

“Mingi.”

“And who are you to her?”

A jealous edge you’ve never heard before comes into Yunho's voice, and makes Mingi clearly uncomfortable. “Her…coworker?” he timidly replies, looking back and forth between the two of you in confusion, and that’s when you feel compelled to finally address Yunho directly.

“Yunho there’s a line behind you so you really should…order.”

Your voice comes out sounding weak and apprehensive but it’s as if you told Yunho to go fuck himself, the look he gives you all types of hurt and offended. He looks back and forth at something that’s not there, speaking in low tones and leaning down so that you hear him when he frantically whispers, “Are we not going to talk?I haven’t seen or heard from you in months, Y/N.”

You feel conflicted for reasons you don’t understand, opening your mouth in what should be a very clearly defined no but instead breathing out little puffs of broken air.

“Y/N, are you good up here? I’m fine with taking orders for a change.” Mingi asks, making you feel bad as you realize you almost forget he was still there, at your side, squeezing your shoulder just slightly as if he can sense that you need some support in getting your words out in this moment. 

But in a moment where the very obvious answer should be an enthusiastic yes, please save me from this ridiculously uncomfortable interaction, you rest a hand on your coworker's chest, pushing him away just slightly as you quietly reply, “It’s okay, Mingi.”

Mingi accepts this, though you can see in his face that he’s a little confused and probably wondering about the dynamic he’s just witnessed, plus the sudden change in your personality. But he goes back to making drinks, and that’s when you turn to face Yunho, who’s already opening his mouth to speak.

“I know you must have a lot of questions and you have no idea how badly I’ve been wanting to answer them. I just…” he sighs, once again overwhelmed by all of the things he wants to say to you in this moment. It all boils down to one sentiment: “I need to talk to you, Y/N.”

You can feel yourself starting to get worked up as you think about everything he’s saying and all of the ways in which his words are no longer meaningful to you. Because he sounds so sincere, so passionate in his need to hash things out with you, but the only thing you can think about is that he also sounded sincere when he told you he was falling in love with you. When he said he’s never felt like this with anyone before. And what hurts and makes you want to cry is that you can no longer tell if any of it was real anymore. 

You feel an urgent need to get away from here, to do whatever it is you need to do to get out of this situation and fast.

“I’m at work, Yunho,” you tell him, almost pleading in the way your voice takes on a shaky inflection. “Can you just…tell me what you want so I can get it to you and you can go?”

You didn’t mean to sound harsh, but you know the impact has been made when you look at Yunho’s face and see the disappointment on it. You watch as he realizes, perhaps for the first time, how badly he’s managed to hurt you. And with the weight of that realization, he clears his throat, and with a neutral, dull voice, reluctantly tells you his order. 

You type it in stiffly, foregoing the pleasantries you’d usually use with customers. “$4.50, please.”

Yunho can see the way your hand just slightly trembles when he hands you his exact amount in cash, repressing the urge to reach out and steady it because he knows it would break you and he knows how much you’d hate to show emotion in public. So he remains quiet and takes his receipt, standing off to the side to wait for his drink.

You walk backwards to the counter where your coworkers are. Usually it would be your responsibility to make the drink of the customer whose order you took, but you can feel yourself beginning to break down, so you slide the empty cup for Yunho’s order over to an idle Lisa. 

“You can handle this, yeah? I’m gonna go on break.”

Lisa stares at you incredulously, looking down at the plastic cup in your hand like it’s a vibrator or something else equally shocking. “Bitch, you literally just had a break.”

You don’t have the energy nor the desire to explain to Lisa your sudden lack of energy, so you just sigh as you place the cup down on the counter in front of her. “I need a second.”

“Are you okay?”

In your new friend’s eyes, you see the change from friendly playfulness to concern that you wish you could answer with honesty. But the lie is a whole lot safer, and feels better coming off of your tongue. “Yeah,” you reply, walking away from her before she can think to wonder otherwise. You take off your apron, slipping into the back storeroom where you’re free from the weight of Yunho’s gaze. 

You stay in the storeroom for a few minutes, gathering yourself and trying to process everything that just happened. You take long, deep breaths, willing yourself to stay present and not regress into the version of yourself who would freak out about these things. You’re a different person now, you tell yourself. You’re not the little girl who got her foolish heart broken. You can face him and be just fine.

You repeat those words to yourself over and over until you eventually mange to convince yourself not only that you’re fine, but that you can walk out there and hand Yunho his drink without breaking a sweat. Maybe that will prove to him what you failed to prove in your initial interaction – that despite everything, you are, and will be continue to be, happy without him.

And so you walk out of the dark storeroom, into the light of the coffee shop, fully prepared to say all the things you couldn’t when you were assaulted with the shock of seeing him again. But in the 10 minutes that pass while you were in the storeroom, you look around, and Yunho is nowhere to be found.

His drink sits cold and untouched on the front counter of the coffee shop. Yunho has walked out on you, and though you never wanted to see him in the first place, his absence stings like a freshly opened wound.

No matter where you run to, there seems to always be a trace of Yunho. Work, which used to be a distraction, now fills you with dread at the thought that he might show up again. Outside of your bedroom window, his presence lingers in the memories of him climbing up the side of your house to take you on a date. On your desk is the wilted 4 leaf clover that he once gave to you. For some reason you haven’t thrown it away, instead watching it slowly rot in the absence of any life-sustaining support. Almost like it’s mirroring the feelings of affection you once had for him.

Laying down in your bed on a day off from work, you close your eyes and try to imagine what your life would be like if last summer never happened. If you hadn’t ignored your brother’s advice and fell hard for Yunho’s smile and sweet words. Is there anything you wouldn’t give to make that a reality? To not feel this hot mix of both rage and longing at the same time?

After trying and failing to block out any of these thoughts, you head out of your upstairs bedroom and towards the stairs in search of the kitchen, a pint of ice cream saved in the freezer for times like these where the regular distractions don’t seem to work.

As you enter the hallway, the relative silence initially suggests that you are home alone, which fills you with relief. With how fragile you’ve been feeling in these past few days, you’re afraid that just one annoying comment from your brother, or one concerned look from your  mother, would be all it would take for you to break.

But as you start to walk down the first few steps of your stairs, the sound of the front door closing and two familiar voices stops you in your tracks.

“Dude, I don’t even think you realize how long I’ve been wanting to play this game,” he says casually, the familiar deepness of his voice making your stomach swoop.

“No, I know,” your brother affirms in response. “That’s why I had to hurry up and get it.”

Just the sound of Yunho’s voice makes your body go tense with dread. You see him standing at your front door with your brother, an image that, one year ago, wouldn’t have been anything out of the ordinary. But of course, that was before last summer happened. Before anything happened. So now, you freeze at the top of the stairs, about to make a run for it before they notice you’re there when suddenly, you’re spotted. 

“...I only paid $60 for it too. I’m telling you, the girl at the GameStop loves me,” Kai explains to Yunho. And then, when he looks up after taking his shoes off, he sees you. “Oh. Hey, Y/N.”

You watch as the air between the two of them changes as soon as they register your presence. What was just a casual exchange between close friends becomes stilted on both sides, Kai looking at you like he’s just been caught stealing something while Yunho stares at you indignantly, wearing the same expression he did at the coffee shop when you first saw each other. Steely determination with just a hint of sadness and concern mixed in.

You stand stiffly and anxiously at the top of the stairs, not knowing what to say and trying to ignore the heavy feeling of Yunho’s gaze on your body. “Hi.”

“Me and Yunho were about to go upstairs and try this new game,” Kai tepidly remarks after a few moments of awkward silence, looking at Yunho who merely stares off distantly. “It’s not a problem, right?”

You’re bothered that Kai is making it seem like he has to okay things with you first before he can let Yunho into the house. What you must look like to Yunho right now, what pleasure he must be taking in seeing that he’s turned you into a deranged and broken shell of the vibrant girl you once were.

You need to get away from this scene now. You don’t think you can bear being the subject of their attention any longer, not when it feels yet again like you’re the little girl who crashed the party and ruined the mood for the two best friends.

“It’s fine,” you mutter. Suddenly forgetting what you came downstairs for in the first place, you turn on your heels and head back towards the safety of your bedroom. 

What a joke. Not only has Yunho made your job inhabitable, but he’s now holding you hostage in your own house as you lay in your bed, hungry, too afraid to leave in fear of running into him.

You can’t exactly be mad at your brother for inviting him over. You did tell him that he didn’t have to sneak around in order to hang out with his closest friend anymore. But maybe you didn't consider just how bothersome it would be to be affronted with Yunho’s casual and frequent present in your house. Maybe you once again overestimated how fine you really are.

An hour passes, and outside, it begins to rain. The colorless sky sends droplets of water beating against your window, the mirroring of the thunderstorm and your current emotions not at all lost on you.

Looking to distract yourself from both hunger and heartache, you flip through the channels on TV and settle for a K-Drama you’ve already seen before. In it, the lead, an older woman of 50 years or so, is scandalized to find that her life-long husband has been cheating on her with a man. She files for a divorce, and rather than wilting in sadness like society may expect from her, she goes on to date a series of younger men. Each episode chronicles their adventures together, showing slowly but surely how she manages to get her groove back after what many would consider a life-altering betrayal.

You watch what was once a comfort show, making what you know to be juvenile comparisons to your own life, to your own utterly pathetic reaction to a similar betrayal. Why does it seem like even the TV show people live better lives than you?

A crack of lightning crackles outside of your window, and suddenly, everything turns black. Your TV. Your desk lamp. Your entire bedroom. 

The lights have gone out. You hear commotion downstairs that seems to suggest it wasn’t just your bedroom that was affected. 

Just as you’re about to get up and investigate, you hear the sound of feet shuffling a few rooms over. Knowing at least one of those sounds belongs to Yunho, you decide that maybe you’ll just use this time to go to sleep.

Your absence only goes unnoticed for a few minutes before the sound of your name being called reaches you through the walls. “Y/N!” your mother shrills. “Come help! I don’t know how to turn on my phone flashlight!”

You try to steel yourself as much as possible before you’re opening your bedroom door and heading out into the dark hallway. Almost at the same time, you hear the noise of another door creaking open and look over to see your brother and Yunho entering the hallway right after you.

With how narrow your hallway is, a choice must be made as to which person will be permitted to reach the stairs first, mostly to avoid awkwardly bumping into each other. You stand perfectly still at your own door, waiting for Yunho and Kai to move. In the dark, you’re just barely able to make out Yunho’s arms as they gesture for you to go in front.

“Ladies first,” you hear him say. His voice is soft and gentle, and even with the lights out, you can guess the sort of expression he’s wearing. The soft way he likes to look at you. The way even his most tepid and polite smile lights up his handsome features. You will yourself not to imagine it. 

Saying nothing, you head downstairs where in the dark you accidentally bump into your mother  at the foot of the stairway. She is swiping furiously at her phone in an attempt to turn her flashlight on, and as always is in awe of you as you perform the very simple mechanic with one fell swoop.

“Oh, thank you, my love,” she replies sweetly in gratitude, looking exasperatedly behind you. “Yunho, Kai, are you guys alright?”

You didn’t even notice that the two boys had made their way downstairs until you hear your mother mention them. Yunho, as always, is incredibly kind in the way he approaches your mother, knowing probably just as well as you that she is acting irrationally over a simple blackout and yet assures her of his and Kai’s safety just the same.

“Yunho, don’t you need to be checking on your grandparents?” your mother asks once she’s rummaged through the closet in search of a few candles. 

“They’re fine. They’re out of town visiting friends this weekend,” he explains, leaning casually against the wall while you linger on the opposite side of your room, waiting for your mother to dismiss you so you can get the nap you’ve been waiting for. 

“Alright then. Well I’m sure you’ll be staying here to wait out the storm,” your mother states, less of question and more of a command. He doesn’t argue about this and simply hums in reply as your mother helicopters around the living room, placing and lighting candles until everyone’s features come into view. “How about we all come out here in the living room while we wait for the power to come back on? Maybe we can play some games or something while we wait.”

Your aversion to your mother’s suggestion is immediate - the last thing you want is to be in the same room as Yunho right now. But you know your mother and you know that while the lights are out, she’d feel a whole lot better if she knew where all of you were. Even in you and your brother’s old age, she still never stops worrying and getting spooked by such things. 

With the candiles lighting up the room, you watch as Yunho and Kai sit down on a couch on the far side of the room, and with a resigned sigh, you do the same.

Your mom ultimately ends up stepping out to the dining room a few doors down, calling the neighbors to see if their power has gone out as well. You can hear her asking loudly if they know when the electrical company is gonna come and whether or not they think this will be an all night thing.

With your mother talking on the phone with no end in sight, you’re left alone with Kai and Yunho in the living room. Trying to keep yourself occupied, you scroll mindlessly through your phone. Sitting on the couch across from you, Yunho and Kai make small talk that you try your hardest not to listen to. But with the boredom that overcomes you and the lack of anything interesting going on in your phone, you can’t help but overhear bits and pieces of their conversation. 

And as you hear Yunho go into all of his excitement about going into his next semester at college, contrasting entirely with how miserable of an experience you’ve had at school so far, you can’t help the resentment that festers inside of you. You don’t want to hear anymore of it, so you get up to go to the kitchen.

“Where are you going, Y/N?” you hear Kai ask from behind you, his interest in your whereabouts perplexing until you hear his response to your next words.

“I’m getting some snacks.”

“Can you grab me some too?”

You mutter out something affirmative but don’t give him the chance to tell you what he wants, just needing to hurry up and get out of there before you hear anything else from Yunho.

Years of muscle memory serve as your guide as you reach the completely dark kitchen, hoping to indulge in the plethora of comforting snacks your mom keeps in her pantry. Outside, another crackle of lightning sounds that makes your whole body jump. The brief bit of light that it provides allows you to make out your favorite brand of fruit snacks, sitting on the highest shelf of the pantry.

Standing up on your tippy toes, you extend your fingers in an attempt to reach the shelf. When you fail to even reach the shelf below it, you look around for something you might be able to stand on. But in the dark, not only are you worried that you might end up slipping and hurt yourself, but you also can’t seem to find anything that could hold your weight.

Despite this, you try again and again from different angles to reach the box that is just out of your reach. Right when you’re about to give up, you feel the presence of a warm body behind you. Suddenly, a hand that isn’t your own comes up and grabs the box from the shelf with ease.

“These are the ones you wanted, right?”

How you didn’t hear or notice him entering the kitchen is beyond you. What concerns you most right now is the question of why it felt so comforting just now to feel his body close to you. Why his voice, as deep and smooth as ever, spoken into the depths of your ear is making your body react the way it is reacting right now. 

Cloaked by the darkness, you hope Yunho doesn’t see or notice the deep shiver that runs through your body or hears the sharp inhale you take as you process the interaction. Realize that this isn’t a positive thing. That you shouldn’t be feeling this way. That you should be disgusted by his presence. Once all of these thoughts and reminders sink in, you turn around to face him, avoiding his eyes as you take the box of snacks from his hand.

“Thanks,” you mutter, refusing to display any sort of emotion as you walk away from him and back into the living room.

Returning to the living room, you are startled to find that the couch where your brother was just sitting has now been left completely empty.

“Where’s Kai?” you ask out loud. You’re not exactly sure who the question’s for. You don’t really want to speak directly to Yunho, and your mom is still somewhere on the phone. Maybe you thought that Kai was just lost in the dark somewhere, that it would be his voice to answer the call.

But instead, to your utmost irritation, it’s Yunho’s voice that you hear next. “He went to the bathroom.”

The reality of both your brother and mother’s absence settles in your body like a bad fever. There should be no way that after all of your efforts to avoid him, you’ve somehow found yourself in a situation where you are alone with Yunho. It’s so utterly ridiculous that you can’t even hold back the snarky remark that follows this realization. “Isn’t that just perfect?’

You are facing the living room, back turned to Yunho who is still standing in limbo at the entryway to the kitchen. Though you can’t see him, it’s as if you can hear the gears turning in his head as he fights to form the right words. Something in you just knows that he is preparing to use this moment to swoop in and say all of the things he’s been desperately trying to get you to listen to. But the last thing you want to do is allow him that satisfaction.

“Y/N, I–”

“No,” you interrupt, annoyed that he could even get your name out. “I don’t want to talk to you, Yunho. I don’t want to have this…big conversation with you.”

Even as the words leave your mouth, a part of you knows that no matter what you say or do, no amount of objection on your part could stop Yunho from saying what he believes will resurrect the affection that you once had for him.

“How can I ignore you when you’re all I can ever think about?” you hear him say from behind you, his voice quiet, sincere. “No matter where I go, or what I do, every place is a reminder of you.”

Frustratingly, Yunho has managed to so perfectly articulate the exact way you’ve been feeling about him since you’ve returned from school. Even after all of this time apart, he still has the sole ability to tell how you’re feeling before you even know it yourself.

You don’t dare turn around, knowing that seeing his face right now would break you. But you remain silent, and Yunho takes that as permission to keep talking.

“I…I miss you, Y/N,” he says next, his voice so soft that it’s almost rendered inaudible. “All I want is a chance to explain what happened.”

Something about his words causes you to turn around to look at him. His expression falls when he sees anger on your face as opposed to the understanding that your relenting silence suggested.

“Then why haven’t you tried to talk to me before now?” you demand from him, your voice rising without you even realizing it. “Why did I hear nothing from you the entire time I was at school?”

“That’s all I’ve been trying to do, Y/N,” he replies, sounding exasperated like he’s been bursting with the need to get these words out to you. “In August, when your brother first told me everything that had happened, the first thing I did was try to text and call you so I could explain  myself. But everything went unanswered for weeks and I was sure that you had blocked me.” he pauses, waiting for you to correct him. “Am I wrong?”

“No.”

“I called your mom—” he continues, a humorless laugh leaving him as he recalls the story. “---and had to make up some lie about you accidentally leaving something in my car and needing to mail it back. She trusts me, of course, so she gave me your mailing address. I sent you letters, but they all were returned.”

You stew glumly with the knowledge that nothing he has said so far is wrong. When you first received an envelope with his name written on it, you immediately went to the mail center, requesting that they automatically return anything from the same address. It’s been easy to imagine that he gave up after seeing that the first one was returned, but his use of the plural letters doesn’t go lost on you. 

“I was expecting to come here during Fall break and finally get the chance to speak to you. But you didn’t come home. It was the same thing for Winter and Spring break too.”

You watch Yunho’s face take a sympathetic expression, the candles around the room bright enough to illuminate the contours in his face as he stares sadly into your eyes.

“And that hurts me more than anything. Because I know that you’re pushing your family away and that it’s all because of me.”

You don’t say anything to him. But you can feel tears motivated by a mixture of both anger and sadness stinging their way to your eyes. Sadness because he’s right. Anger because he’s right. Anger at yourself as you’re forced to look down at the ground to hide your face, slowly losing the fight to not show any emotion in front of him. 

“I need you to see that all I’ve been doing for the past year is trying to get to you. To talk to you,” he continues when you still don’t say anything. “You have no idea how hard it is to be cut abruptly out of the life of someone you were falling in love with.”

“I have no idea how hard it is?” you exclaim, finally interrupting him when you hear the implication of victimhood in his words. Though you intended to sound strong, you cringe at yourself internally when you hear out loud how broken your voice sounds. So when composure fails you, when you’re sure that you already look and sound crazy to Yunho anyway, you throw it all out of the window in favor of rage. “Are you fucking serious, Yunho?”

The shrill and rageful inflection that your voice takes has Yunho retracting from you, thinking that he was getting somewhere and now seeing just as deeply the hurt runs within you. He knows he shouldn’t be surprised or even affronted by your reaction to his words after what he’s done, and yet still his heart pangs with sadness. The urge to get passionate, to get on his knees and beg for forgiveness, is strong. But he’s waited nearly a year for the chance to explain things to you, and he won’t squander it now by being careless with his words and actions.

So he takes a deep breath and is relaxed as he flatly tells you, “I know that your brother has told you some things about me. And I can explain them.”

The fact that an explanation is being offered rather than an outright denial only further causes it to sink in for you that Yunho really did do this. That there’s no going back to when things were perfect and you never had to concern yourself with any thoughts of disloyalty. Once again, you turn your body away from him, crossing your arms as all of the emotions come suddenly flooding back. You no longer care how small your voice sounds when you say, “If you’re here to tell me that it’s not true, then don’t. I already saw the pictures.”

Yunho is flooded with shame at the thought of you having to be directly faced with his mistakes. He wishes so badly that he could tell you that what you saw wasn’t true. But he can’t. 

Because last summer, he made a mistake. And not in the way you probably think that he did. Being with you was one of the greatest decisions he could ever make for himself. But he came into last summer with a litany of complicated relationships that he created with women in college. Short, no-strings-attached relationships with women who he was admittedly careless with. One of them being the girl Kai showed to you.

When last summer started, he didn’t come home with any intention of starting something new, let alone something serious. But then you came along, innocent and sweet and so obviously drawn to him, he couldn’t help himself. Before he knew it, he could feel things getting serious with you. And for the first time in his life, he could see himself wanting to be good for someone. Being the faithful, caring boyfriend that he’s always wanted to be but could never bring himself to. He wanted to take things slow with you, not ruin things by being the reckless, promiscuous playboy he was prior to meeting you. 

So after your first date, he decided to delete all of his social media pages. Completely cut off communication with the women he was involved with before you. He wasn’t thinking about the future, or if he was even good enough to be with you. He just liked that you were an escape from his regular life and never wanted it to end. Rather to tell you the truth of the life he was leaving behind in being with you, he concealed it in the hopes of you never changing your starry-eyed, devoted view of him. 

But in his lovesick foolishness, he forgot that his life at college and the relationships he recklessly created there still loomed over him. And in the hands of his best friend, his hope of finally living up to being the man he wanted to be and making you his girlfriend, crumbled in front of him like a house of cards.

“I’m not here to tell you that it’s not true. I’m here to tell you that I’m sorry.”

At his words, you scoff. If sorry was something that you needed or wanted from Yunho, you would have listened to him a long time ago.

“Look…” he sighs, sounding desperate as if he can feel you slowly pulling away from him. “There is a side of me that I never wanted to show you. That I never wanted you to know about. 

“I’m not…I can’t… be the boyfriend type. I can treat a girl amazing and do all of these things for her, but…I can’t…be anything more than that.”

You don’t know why, but somehow this admission feels like the most real thing Yunho has ever said to you. Like you’re witnessing your first genuine peek into the real him. You are disgusted by him yet simultaneously relieved to finally see something you can believe.

“But then I started to know you,” he softly mutters, right when you think he’s done talking and has left you with the image of a troubled fuckboy. An image that was easier to loathe and to hold a grudge against. But his next words only complicate things for you because like his previous ones, they sound entirely sincere. 

“And for the first time in my life Y/N, I felt like I could be a good person. A good man, for you. Last summer meant everything to me. Whatever you may think about me right now, I need you to know that.”

You can hear Yunho’s footsteps behind you as he begins to slowly inch toward you. And for reasons you don’t understand, you make no move to avoid him.

“None of what I said or did with you was fake. I told you things that I’ve never talked about with anybody before,” he soberly proclaims, his voice sounding closer and closer with every word. “I was a better man with you than I’ve ever been with anyone else. And I felt more for you than I thought I was capable of doing with anyone, ever. I’m sorry that you had to see or know anything about me that would have ruined that for you.”

With every sentence, you can feel your defenses slowly melting away. Angry thoughts are replaced with conflicting images of blissful memories from last summer. The memories of a better time between the two of you become easier to hold onto when you begin to believe that, perhaps, he’s telling the truth – they weren’t fake. For some incredibly foolish, stupid reason, you believe him. And though every part of you knows that you should be mad at him right now, you can feel yourself softening at his words. 

“But…I need you, Y/N.” His voice is shaky and desperate sounding in a way you’ve never heard him before. Sounding almost like a weakened animal, showing you his rawest and most natural form, breaking down in front of you for the first time. Revealing something sad and vulnerable and feral. “I don’t…like the person I am when I’m not with you. This past year has been the toughest time of my life.”

You’re processing a thousand emotions at once in a way that has left you motionless and unable to argue or reject any of Yunho’s advances. “And now, you won’t let me see you,” he continues, his voice dropped so low and so soft that you feel a shiver down your spine at the sound of it in your ear. “....you won’t let me touch you.”

You can feel Yunho’s presence directly behind your body. Your heart rate quickens as you feel his hand, slowly and apprehensively, reach out to graze against your hip. His touch is soft and fleeting, like he’s trying to test if you’ll move away from it or not before committing. But of course you don’t. How many times has he touched you like this? In someone’s backyard or leaned against the roof of his car or in your bedroom? Too many times for you to ever feel anything more than comfort from it, even with everything you know now. 

When you don’t react to his hand on your hip, he comes closer. He leans his head into your neck. His lips hover over the skin of your shoulder, moving up your neck until he reaches the lobe of your ear. His lips never make contact with your skin, so all you feel is his breath, ragged and broken from the intensity of your interaction. Though every thought of Yunho in your brain is colored red, you cannot control your body and how affected you are by his touch. It would feel so good to give in to him, to allow yourself to be enveloped by his warmth. 

You can’t will yourself to tell him to stop, all you can do is let out a feeble and shaky, “What do you want me to do, Yunho?”

You hear him swallow. “Look at me.”

You don’t move, but when he grabs your shoulders and turns you around, you don’t say anything or stop him. Immediately, when he touches you, a single, frustrated tear falls. It’s representative of the realization that you are still, very much so, putty in his hands. You’re so angry at him, and yet, he’s still the only person who can make you feel calm and safe like this. 

You feel so confused. Why are you letting this happen? Why aren’t you screaming at him to let you go? You’re unable to find an answer before his hands come up to slowly unravel your arms so that they’re at your sides, fingers laced into his. 

When he spots the wetness staining your cheek, he immediately moves to hold your face. The tender caress of his thumb against your skin is all it takes for you to fall apart, tears pouring down your eyes as you silently fight back sobs.

“I’m so sorry Y/N. I’m so fucking sorry, ” he exclaims, his own voice raw and broken like he too is fighting back tears. “You were the single most important thing that had ever happened to me, and I fucked it up. I don’t deserve you, and I never have. But I need you,”

He wipes another falling tear off of your face.“The girl your brother told you about is a person I haven’t been close with in months. She and I weren’t together last summer, and I ended things with her for good—”

“Stop.”

Because when he tells you he wants you and touches you and reminds you of how he feels about you, you feel okay again. But when he explains and makes excuses about the girl you saw he was clearly close with, you can’t bear it, and you’re reminded of why you’re angry at him in the first place. 

Was this all just a manipulation act? Him going down memory lane knowing the effect that it would have on you? Isn’t this what he’s always been good at – reading you, knowing your exact weaknesses, knowing exactly what to say to get you on your knees?

This is the reality he has forced you to operate in. No matter how much sympathy you may or may not feel for Yunho, you will no longer be able to decipher whether his actions are real or just another way to manipulate you. With this knowledge in mind, how could you ever trust him or listen to him again?

You jerk away from his touch, pulling his hands off of you. But he resists, fighting to hold onto your slippery forearms. “Y/N, please–”

“No!” you yell, pushing him off of you with all of the strength you can muster. “You can’t just break my heart and then come back trying to touch me and say sweet things that I know you don’t mean.”

He steps towards you, looking the most guilty and sad you’ve ever seen him as he watches you fall apart. “Of course I mean–”

“You broke me!” you shout, not even caring at this point how you look or who hears you. You are so done pretending that you’ve been okay, that you weren't completely shattered since what happened, and that Yunho isn’t the person responsible. Tired of pretending that he doesn't deserve to see what he’s turned you into, the monster he’s created. 

“My relationship with my family is ruined because of you! I can’t even look at my fucking mom without being reminded of how much I hurt her by staying away for a year! And I did it because of how YOU made me feel!” you yell, words coming out in sobs, tears falling down your face, sounding deranged but not even caring or being conscious of it, unable to stop the words from coming out how they do. “I told you my biggest fears and insecurities! And now I can’t even look myself in the mirror anymore! Anytime a guy compliments me I’m always questioning it because you destroyed my trust! Not just in men, but in everyone.

“I will never be okay again! Don’t you get that? NEVER!”

When you’ve finished yelling, you can’t even take pleasure in the sad look on Yunho’s face. You even swear you see real tears watering his eyes. But you don’t care. None of it matters anymore. None of this matters anymore.

You wipe bubbles of snot away from your nose, taking deep breaths and willing yourself to calm down so that your next words are intelligible. “I thought I knew you. I thought I wanted you. But It doesn’t matter. Nothing you say matters. Because I realize now that the person I thought I liked is nothing like the real you. And I can no longer tell what’s real and what's fake anymore.”

The two of you stand still, frozen in time, frozen in place, not knowing what to say after you’ve both just ripped your hearts out for the other to witness. Now that you’ve both said and exposed the worst parts of yourselves, it becomes easy then to conclude that there isn’t an explanation out there that could possibly fix what’s been broken. Nothing left to say that hasn’t already been spoken.

It seems almost perfect, then, that only seconds after you’ve finished speaking, everything around you is illuminated. The TV sounds with the familiar ding that indicates it’s been turned on. The kitchen microwave lets out a decisive beat. A few rooms over, you hear an exclamation of joy from your mother. 

“Perfect timing. Right when I get out of the bathroom, the lights come back on.”

From behind you, you hear your brother’s voice as he comes down the stairs. When he reaches you and Yunho in the living room, you watch his expression carefully as he scans the scene in front of him. If your tense body language wasn’t obviously indicative that something between you and Yunho happened while Kai was gone, your tear-stained cheeks and runny nose give it away.

“Is everything okay?” Kai asks apprehensively, looking back and forth between you and Yunho, who you don’t even bother to look at at this point.

You stay silent, waiting, almost daring Yunho to say something. And without seeing his face, you know he is looking at you and expecting the same. Wiping your cheeks with the back of your sleeve, you take a long breath before you walk past your brother and up the stairs. “Everything is perfect,” you lament, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in your voice that you know your brother would pick up on regardless of your intent. 

You found out later that it was a fallen tree which caused the blackout, luckily creating little to no permanent damage to your house in the aftermath. But the impact that the night had on you, and your emotions, could not so easily be dismissed. 

The days following the storm went by in a blur of sleepless nights, conflicting emotions, and unanswered questions. You spent most of that time in your room, and though you seldom allowed yourself to mull on the thought, a lot of that isolation was because of the fear that you’d perhaps run into Yunho again.

When you eventually did stumble out of your bedroom for some air, you almost tripped when you realized there was a box at the foot of your door. 

You’re not sure how it got there but you bend down to grab it, curiosity overtaking you as you inspect what looks like an ordinary shoebox.

Bringing the box into your room, you sit down to open it and find a fat stack of envelopes. Scrawled over the blemished paper of the top envelope is messy handwriting that you immediately recognize. 

It’s the letter you received from Yunho while you were at school. Except, you can see now that there are at least 70 of them in this box. 70 letters that were all returned without you ever knowing they were sent. And now Yunho’s speech about making several efforts to contact you rings more true than you’d ever thought it would.

You look down at the box of letters and feel a strong inclination to just discard them. Doing that would prove that you’ve moved on, that you are genuine in your stance that no explanation could possibly make you forgive him. You know that’s how you should feel.

But your fingers itch to open the first letter, and once you do, the others follow. You read every single one and take in each of Yunho’s emotions over the year in which you were apart. And as you spend your day reading and mulling over the content of the letters, you pray for clarity and that, no matter what, your inclination to not forgive Yunho will remain unchanged.

The shoebox of Yunho’s letters sat on your bathroom counter, untouched since the day you spent reading them. That was a few weeks ago, and since then you’ve been trying to burn any and all contemplation of Yunho from your mind. You don’t want to allow any of the groveling portrayed in his letters to sway the steely anger you’ve been trying your best not to forget.

The box of letters went into detail about all of the things Yunho confessed to you the night of the storm. The impressive roster of women he was seeing before you. His lack of commitment to them, which you assume he thinks must lessen the blow of his actions. His inability to inform you of their existence prior to beginning your relationship. His continued insistence that he wasn’t in contact with any of these women while you were together. The guilt he feels for breaking your heart.  

Even if you were to trust the content of the letters, it wouldn’t change the fact that Yunho entered a relationship with you while he was tied to someone else. And no matter how much he tries to convey the juvenility of those ties, you still can’t forget the image of another girl sat on Yunho’s lap, posted just a few weeks before he pulled in front of your house last May with his charming smile and flirty words. 

In the reflection of your mirror, you watch yourself adjust the draping of your work apron for the fifth time as you prepare to head in for another shift at the cafe. Yunho hasn’t came back since you first saw him there, and burying yourself in work is one of the few ways you’ve managed to keep your mind off of him for a few mind-numbing hours. 

As you change your focus to your hair, mussing at the messy strands that pour out of your uniform hat, your brother’s reflection comes into view. He leans against the door you forgot to close, watching you with a wistful expression on his face. “It feels like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

You shrug your shoulders in reply. “Well, I’ve had to work.”

“I honestly don’t understand why you work so much,” Kai remarks, absentmindedly picking a piece of lint from the back of your uniform shirt. “It’s not as if you have any kids or responsibilities.”

“Well, I’d just rather be doing something with my time, other than sitting around the house all day.”

“Ouch,” your brother quips, jerking away from you in feigned offense. You realize how your remark might’ve sounded pointed given how much of a homebody he’s been these days. You can’t find it in yourself to feel sorry for him, though – you have a feeling that his isolation is motivated by the assumption that you’d be hurt if he brought Yunho over the house again.

And sure, he’s not wrong. Still, you don’t like your brother making any sort of assumption about your feelings towards Yunho.

“You wouldn't have to be stuck in the house all day if you would just go hang out with Yunho,” you accuse, turning away from the mirror to look into his actual eyes. “I know you think you’re doing something for me by pretending to not be friends with him, but I keep telling you, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

Kai itches to bring up the tense moment he walked in on the night of the storm which largely contradicts your narrative. But instead, he only shrugs.

“Whatever you say,” he mumbles, quickly moving to change the subject. “Are you going with mom on her trip this weekend?”

You were originally planning to accompany your mother on her trek to a lake town a few miles away, where every year she reunites with her college friends. But now, just thinking about the trip reminds you of the time you spent there with Yunho, when all you want to do is forget. 

“No,” you answer promptly, gathering your things as you prepare to leave the bathroom. “But I hope you have fun hanging out with a bunch of middle aged women who won’t let go of their college days.”

Realizing how uncharacteristically harsh you sound but not finding it in yourself to care, you  ruffle your brother's hair, muttering a “See you later,” as you head past him and down the stairs.

“See you later,” he mutters back, feeling like he knows the real reason why you don’t want to go on your mom’s trip this year.

“Y/N, you’re not even on the schedule.”

Those are the words you’re greeted with as you clock into work for the 5th time this week. Not a thank you or even a polite hello like you were expecting.

“I know,” you tell Wooyoung, already moving to prepare a waiting customer’s drink, “but there’s always something that needs doing, and I’m already here.”

You wait expectantly for your manager’s silhouette to escape from your view, but to your annoyance, he lingers. “Not today, there’s not. We’re training newbies, and they can’t get trained if you’re doing all the work.”

“Then I’ll do inventory in the back,” you decide, and when you look up to find Wooyoung staring at you impatiently, you falter. “What?”

“You’re here everyday, Y/N. And I can see it’s beginning to wear on you. You’ve been extra cross lately to the point where customers are sensing an attitude.”

You open your mouth to defend yourself, but you’re not able to get anything out. Seeing this, Wooyoung smirks in vindication. “You need to take some time off.”

“But I’m fine,” you tell him, and for a moment it suddenly dawns on you that you’ve been saying that phrase a lot lately. What can’t anyone seem to believe you? 

“Like I said, I’ll do inventory, and then I won’t have to interact with custom—”

“Take some time off or I’m firing you.”

It was those words combined with the stern look that Wooyoung gave you that let you know he was being serious. So, not given any choice, you clocked out of work after a whopping 5 minutes logged, heading home to start a prescribed 3 day vacation.

Day one was fine. You completed your daily ritual of laying in bed and watching TV, happy to waste the day away with mind-numbing entertainment. Your mother came in to check on you only to see if you changed your mind about not wanting to go on the trip. 

“Are you sure, baby? I know you were sick last year and couldn’t really experience the bulk of the trip,” she cooed over your lazy, bed-ridden body, but you just assured her that you had some TV shows to catch up on and would listen to all of her usual stories when she got back. 

On your second day off though, you began to pray for something, anything, to cure the boredom that was making every second feel like molasses. WIth the absence of your brother and mother, the house was quieter than usual, and you were running out of shows to rewatch. 

Your saving grace came in the form of your coworker, Mingi, who texted you just as you were about to take what would be an unnecessary nap. Typed with far too many emojis was a question that ultimately boiled down to, “Heard Wooyoung gave you the day off - do you wanna go to a party tonight?”

Without thinking, you replied with an enthusiastic, “yes.” So now, on a Saturday night, you’ve suddenly found yourself standing outside of someone’s respectable-looking house, dressed in something far too skimpy for the night time cold. Luckily, you were standing next to Mingi, whose shorts and tank-top combo made you look like a nun in comparison.

“I’m so happy you came out with me tonight,” Mingi told you, holding a pregame water bottle of tequila in his hand as he led you up the porch of the house.

“You’ve been working at the cafe for a while now and it feels like I barely know you. You only tell us the good things; I need to get you drunk so I can hear your war stories and your scars and soliloquies.”

You rolled your eyes at him, forgetting whatever snarky comment you were going to say back as you walked into the chaos of the party. When you immediately said yes to Mingi’s invite, you forgot one incredibly key detail – you hate parties. You hate the smell of alcohol on other people’s breath, hate the loud music that makes it hard to hear anyone, hate the casual disrespect of having smoke blown into your face everywhere you turn. And yet all of it is here, standing right in front of you as you walk into the practically vibrating foyer of the house.

“Let’s go wherever the drinks are,” you quickly tell Mingi, because if you’re going to be here, you’d at least like to do so in a state that is mildly unconscious of what’s going on around her.

He leads you through the crowd of dancing bodies into a kitchen, where a large storage container is placed on the counter island and relievedly still half-full with something red. Immediately as you go to pour yourself a cup of it, an unrecognizable silhouette comes into your peripheral view.

“Hey gorgeous,” the voice belonging to the silhouette says beside you, his voice sticky and dripping with the kind of liquid schmooze that only several drinks can get you. “All the drinks down here are watered down. Mind if I take you upstairs to get something stronger?”

You fight the urge to outwardly cringe at the stranger’s attempts at getting you by yourself, drunk and vulnerable and forced to listen to his nasally voice all night long. “No thanks,” you reply meekly, taking your drink and heading in the opposite direction.

You quickly go and find Mingi, who was in a different part of the kitchen helping himself to another container of mystery juice. As you wait for him to finish making his drink, you’re suddenly compelled to take a real look at the man in front of you. Mingi is a lot taller than you, and it shows in his lean psychique that expertly fills in the fabric of his clothes. He is decently attractive in a way you haven’t noticed before. At this moment you realize that you really like Mingi. He’s a good guy who's fun to work with and clearly has an interest in you outside of work, because otherwise he wouldn’t have invited you. Why not take this chance to get to know him better?

You wait for him to turn away from the kitchen counter to tug on the side of his shirt, getting his attention. “Do you wanna dance?”

He says something back, but you can’t hear him over the music. You choose to believe it was something affirmative as you drag him onto the dance floor, and it seems like you’re right because he doesn’t do anything to stop you. He takes his place behind you and maintains a light hold on your waist as you move against him. The speakers are blaring and your blood is racing from the initial effects of your first few sips of alcohol. And right now, you’re having a decent time just allowing yourself to dance and not think of anything – or anyone – else at all.

When the song switches to something more mid-tempo, you turn around to face him, draping your hands around his neck. “Thank you for inviting me out tonight.”

“You’re welcome,” he replies languidly. The way he looks at you makes it seem like he’s surprised by your sudden assertiveness but not entirely opposed to it. “I could tell that something’s been weighing on you lately, so I hope I could help you decompress.”

You nod, but don’t say anything else. You don’t want to get into the details of what’s been weighing you down lately, or even process the fact that your melancholy has been so obvious that he’d notice it.

But to your dismay, he continues. “I don’t know exactly what you’re going through, Y/N, but I want to help.”

You can hear in Mingi’s voice that he’s being sincere. But he should know that the middle of a dance floor at a party isn’t really the best place to get into feelings. You turn your face in another direction, pretending not to hear him. And as you look over, you notice that the people on your right have suddenly stopped dancing. Over the music, you hear the sounds of several people making annoyed remarks about something that’s happened. Mingi lets go of your waist, his interest suddenly piqued at the scene as well. And when the crowd of people clears, you see someone you both recognize.

Yunho, standing in the middle of the departed group of partygoers. 

Yunho looks bitterly at the people surrounding him, his eyes hooded with annoyance. When he sees you among them, his eyes suddenly meet yours in a moment of suspended tension.

Neither of you have the chance to process the presence of another before Yunho doubles over and vomits all over the carpet. Your nose is overwhelmed with the smell of sick. The people around you jump away from him, muttering complaints of, “dude can’t handle his liquor,” and “he’s been acting crazy all night,” as they find another place to continue their celebrations.

It doesn’t take an expert to see that Yunho has clearly had way too much to drink. Even after he’s finished throwing up half of his body weight, he staggers in his attempts to stand up straight and almost trips into his own throw up. He’s spilled something all over his shirt and you can assume from the way the crowd talked about him that he must’ve been picking a drunken fight with someone.

“Hey,” Mingi calls out to you, and at the sound his voice, you look up and notice you’re some of the only people who stuck around to witness Yunho’s drunken staggering. “is that your friend that came to the cafe before?”

“Yeah,” you remark timidly. “It is.”

The loud music from before got turned down sometime during the commotion and you can hear Yunho cursing under his breath as he attempts to get his bearings. Still frozen in bewilderment, you watch as Mingi walks up to Yunho and tries to help him up.

Yunho aggressively jerks away from your coworker’s touch. “Get your fucking hands off of me.”

“Dude, calm down. I’m just trying to help you.”

“Yeah, well I don’t need your help,” Yunho mumbles out, stumbling on his way to the nearest wall that he uses to stable himself. You’re still just watching passively as he embrasses himself, and you’re honestly surprised that Mingi still tries to help him come to his senses.

“Look at yourself,” he remarks, nodding in your direction. “You’re embarrassing yourself in front of your friend.”

Yunho wills himself off the wall to push Mingi away from him. “Is that what she told you? That we’re just friends?”

You’re unsure and uncomfortable with how this interaction suddenly feels like a pissing match with you at the center of it. Feeling the tensions rise between the two men, you force yourself to speak.  “Yunho, stop–”

“Look I don’t know what your problem is and I don’t care, I was just trying to help you not pass the fuck out,” Mingi retorts, interrupting you. His body is completely angled to Yunho so that he’s not even paying attention to you anymore, and it makes you even more annoyed.

“I bet you try to help Y/N all the time don’t you?” Yunho spits, sounding bitter and jealous and showing an ugly side of himself that you’ve never bore witness to before. “If you’re the guy she’s trying to replace me with, then that’s really fucking sad.”

Mingi takes a step closer, getting in Yunho’s face. “I don’t fucking know who you are, but if you don’t get the fuck out of face—”

“Mingi, stop.”

You don’t know if it's the meager tone of voice you unconsciously take on or the small tug you give on the hem of his t-shirt, but either way, Mingi stops and turns his attention to you. “You want me to stop?”

You see confusion painted all over his face and you wish you had an explanation for why you don’t just let Mingi tear into your ex whose safety should be of no consequence to you. 

“I’m sorry I, but…you shouldn’t be involved in this,” you whimper, wishing you could ignore the pity you feel when you see Yunho’s drunken figure sag against the wall tiredly. “I appreciate your help, but I just need to get him home before he hurts himself.”

Mingi takes hold of your shoulders, stepping in front of you so that Yunho is completely covered from your view. “You don’t need to help this guy Y/N. I know I don’t know what the full story is here, but I can tell since I first met the guy that he’s an asshole. I invited you here to have fun, you don’t have to leave because of him.”

You look down at your feet, feeling shameful under your friend’s concerned and loving gaze. “I know.”

“And besides,” Mingi says, taking a quick glance at the now sunken man behind him. “How do you plan to get a drunk, 6 foot guy out of a crowded party?”

As Yunho staggers to the floor behind Mingi, you see his car keys dangling out of his jean pocket. Almost regretfully, you move away from Mingi’s hold and reach down to swipe the keys from Yunho. 

“Like this,” you turn around to tell him, draping Yunho’s heavy arm over your shoulder. “I can’t just leave him here like this. I’m sorry, Mingi.”

You try not to even look at Mingi’s face as you walk past him, half-walking and half-dragging Yunho’s limp body as you manage to get out of the living room and into the foyer. The crowd of people dancing by the front door practically clear a way for you to exit, perhaps gleeful to see him go after the trouble he’s caused. 

Yunho, though only half-lucid of what’s going on around him, would be lying if he said he didn’t feel incredibly happy to even be interacting with you right now. But as the cold, nighttime air hits his skin and you prop him up on the passenger side of his car, the embarrassment of being seen like this begins to sink in.

“How did you even plan on getting home? Were you going to drive drunk?”

He shrugs, and you shudder to think that he intended to put himself in danger like this. In a dark part of your brain, you can almost imagine him swerving on a highway, disoriented and calling you on the phone in the hopes that you’d come and save him. The thought angers you.

“You didn’t have to do this for me, you know,” he tells you once you’ve managed to get him into the car, his words sleepy and slurred. You gave up on trying to put a seatbelt over him, so you settled for just allowing him to lean tiredly against the dashboard.

“Of course I know that,” you bitterly retort, your grip on the steering wheel growing tight as you become annoyed at his attempts to sweet-talk you. You didn’t do this because you had any positive feelings left for him. You did it because you know that if you were drunk and disoriented at a party, you’d want something to do the same for you. “Don’t mistake my kindness for forgiveness.”

“I’m not,” he slurs out. “But even your kindness is a surprise to me at this point.”

You fight to keep your eyes trained on the road and not rolled to the top of your head in annoyance. You hate when Yunho makes comments like that because it feels like there’s an expectation in them. An expectation for you to pity him or be somehow satisfied that he recognizes he’s an asshole. His own recognition of his faults is useless to you – he’s done enough for you to see that on your own.

“W-Where are you taking me?”

For the majority of the drive, Yunho had remained quiet, his head buried in his arms as he napped against the dashboard. Now, he suddenly sits up and seems alert of his surroundings.

“Where else?” you ask, and when Yunho bemusedly doesn’t respond, you decide not to be needlessly withholding. “I’m taking you to your house.”

You make a turn on the street right before Yunho’s. To your surprise, he rests his hand over yours on the steering wheel.  “Wait, don’t.”

You jerk away from his touch, but nonetheless slow down so that you’re parked by the sidewalk just before his driveway.  “Why not?”

“I…” he takes a long pause, and with each second you grow impatient and begin to wonder if he’s purposely drawing this out so that he can stay with you longer. “I can’t go home. If my grandparents see me, they’ll..they’ve never seen me like this before. They can’t see me like this.”

It seems unexpected for Yunho to be hiding something from his grandparents. After all, you’ve always known him as the reliable, stand-up grandson that no one in your neighborhood had anything bad to say about, the boy who could always be seen making sure his elderly caretakers were okay. But something in Yunho’s voice tells you that he’s being genuine. You think of his grandparents and how they might really not know the type of worrying things their grandson gets up to you when he’s not around. And at the realization that you must now find another place for Yunho to sleep off his drunken stupor, you bang your head against the steering wheel in annoyance.

“Isn’t it exhausting?” you let out in a frustrated yell, suddenly wishing you had never burderned yourself with getting him out of the party in the first place. “Having to pretend to be a good person and keep up this fake persona all of the time knowing it’s not who you are?”

Yunho doesn’t respond. As he remains silent, you sigh and weigh your options. You could leave and let him sleep in his car. Sure, it would be a tight fit, but Yunho’s comfort is ultimately meaningless given that he’s made the choice not to go home on his own.

But then you look at him, and something in your heart tugs. For some reason, your brain goes back to the place it was when you first got to his car and realized he went to the party with no plan of how to get back home. Images of a drunk Yunho driving his car come back to you and suddenly you’re worried for his safety, afraid to leave him alone to his own evidently destructive volition.

“You can sleep in my room. But you’re gone first thing in the morning.”

He looks grateful, but is smart not to push it by being excessively complimentary. “Your room? Are you sure?”

“Don’t get any ideas,” you assert quickly, knowing the places his mind could be going at the thought on being in the same bed as you. The only reason why he’s not sleeping in another room – like your mom’s or Kai’s – is because Kai has the odd and frankly questionable habit of locking his room when he’s away. And your mother, ever observant, would notice if something was even slightly out of place in her room. The last thing you need is for her to question you about who's been in the house in her absence.

“You’re sleeping on the floor. I have some extra blankets on pillows you can use.”

You can see on his face that he fights the urge to laugh. “Thank you.”

You turn away from him, willing yourself to keep a stony exterior as you mumble, “Don’t mention it.”

You park the car in your own driveway and head in towards your house. The drive must have sobered him up, because Yunho no longer has to lean on you to stand up straight. Or maybe he was fine this whole time, but before used his drunkenness as an excuse to be in close contact with you, and now knows not to push it. Gosh, are you making a mistake by letting him into your space voluntarily? Lord knows that the last time he was in your house, he managed to make you feel confused and upset for weeks. Whatever the case may be, you’ve made it to your front porch now. Too late to turn back. And besides, whether you hate him or not, you can’t justify leaving a 6 foot drunk man out on the street in the middle of the night. He already proved he’d be willing to endanger himself and others by driving home drunk. You don’t know what he’d do if he was left alone.

You let Yunho lead the way to your upstairs bedroom, which he finds with no issue. As you move to tidy up the space, he stands anxiously in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do with himself. 

As he waits for you to go fetch some spare pillows and blankets, he looks around the room that used to be so familiar to him. You’ve changed quite a few things in his absence. Some of it he thinks is just a result of going to college and taking most of your decorations to your dorm with you. But he also notices the absence of your family photos, all of the personal things that let him know early on how sentimental you were. It makes him sad, but then he notices that you still have the four leaf clover he gifted you last summer sitting in a plate amongst some jewelry. It’s placed at the very back of your desk, where you’d be least likely to notice it if you were sitting there.

You come back to the room a few moments later with an assortment of blankets in your arms, which you lay out on the floor for him to sort through himself later. You’re about to move away from him, but then you notice he’s still wearing his outside clothes. Almost out of habit, you go to remove them before you even know what or why you’re doing it.

You take off his hat, his jacket, his jewelry, all of the things he usually wouldn't sleep in. He doesn’t ask you what you’re doing, knowing he’s already put you through enough trouble at this point. He knows you like to be useful, so he lets you.

After you’ve finished folding up his things and placing them neatly on your dresser, you awkwardly instruct him on where he can find a spare toothbrush should he feel like wiping the vomit off his breath. “I can show you the guest bathroom if you need to freshen up,” you tell him, standing by the door. “Well, I guess you’ve been here enough to find it yourself.”

He can feel the tension vibrating off of your body, but rather than remarking on it, he nods. “Thanks, Y/N.”

You nod in response, repressing the need to say more, to address any of the tension that you can feel. You can’t stand to be in his gaze any longer, so you gather up some clothes, heading out to take a shower.

When you return, Yunho is lying down, but he’s awake. You can see his face lit up by the screen of his phone. You don’t address him in any way as you step over his long legs to get into your bed. Moving under the covers, you’re not surprised at the fact that you’re not really tired. Even though it’s been a long night, your mind is racing with thoughts on everything that’s transpired. It’s also hard to relax, to feel safe with another presence – Yunho’s presence, especially – just a few feet away from you.

You can hear the sounds of Yunho turning and moving, so you know he’s fighting sleep, too. The petty part of you starts to think that he’s in some kind of silent competition with you, as to who will go to sleep first. But even in your head, the notion sounds absurd, like something that’s been made up. Just as you feared; with time, the grudges have become harder and harder to hold.

“Y/N, are you awake?”

Yunho’s gravelly, half-sleep voice resonates from the foot of your bed. You almost think to ignore him and pretend to be sleeping. But yet, you’re surprised at the sound of your own voice as you mutter a quiet, “Yes.”

At first, he doesn’t say anything in reply, and you begin to wonder why he said anything in the first place. But then, “Did you get my letters?”

You question his intentions with this remark but nonetheless see no reason to withhold the truth. “Yes.”

“Did you read them?”

That’s a question you feel less compelled to answer. If he knew you read the letters, then he’d also know that some part of you had a desire to hear him out. A part of you that still has wonders and questions and thoughts about the end of your relationship, far beyond the indifferent and cold version of yourself you’ve been trying to present.

When you don’t answer, you expect him to elaborate on their contents anyway. It would be a waste of his time – you already read each of every letter over and under, know everything there is to know about the year he spent groveling for your forgiveness.

But to your surprise, his next words go in a different direction. “There is a part of me that genuinely cares for you and wants to love you like you deserve to be.”

You await his next words on baited breath. Because if his desire to love you were all that it was, then you wouldn't be in this position in the first place.

“But there is another part of me that’s broken,” he continues. “And I don’t think that part will let me be with someone without hurting them.”

There’s a slight slur in his voice, a symptom of his lowering inebriation, but his tone is blank and his words are unbroken, which makes you assume sincerity. You’re certain that he’s telling you something he wouldn’t if he were sober. And the reminder that he’s not fully lucid has you more willing than usual to respond to him, hoping he might forget this in the morning.

“Then why are you still pursuing me?” you ask, hearing your voice come out dewy and vulnerable in a way that you resent but can’t help in this moment. “Why are you trying to get me to forgive you when you admit that you don’t have the capability to be with someone? Don’t you see how cruel that is?”

There is a long pause, and now you start to feel stupid for responding genuinely to someone who clearly wasn’t being serious or coherent in his initial words to you. 

But then he speaks, and what comes out affects your heart in a way you weren’t expecting.

“Because the only time I feel like I’m not broken is when I’m with you. When I’m with you, I suddenly can imagine living up to being the good person everyone around me wants me to be.”

You hear him move, and without seeing him, you imagine that he’s turned so that he’s facing you. “Being with you taught me how to love. And I guess, perhaps selfishly, I haven’t quite figured out how to let that go.”

You don’t say anything else. And you think that perhaps Yunho needed to get that out, because only a few minutes later, you hear the soft snores that tell you he’s fallen asleep.

You're woken up the next morning by the sound of sheets rustling below you, and in your half-alertness, you initially panic. But then the memories from the night before come flooding back to you, and when you blink your eyes open, you’re not surprised to see Yunho up and folding up his comforter at the foot of your bed.

Your room has gotten suddenly hotter in the time between last night and this morning. You kick your own itchy comforter off of your body, alerting Yunho to your wake.

“Good morning,” he says to you, his voice scratchy and hoarse. You get the feeling that he didn’t sleep too well last night. Neither did you.

You mutter out a similar greeting, sitting up in your bed and stretching your tired limbs. In the corner of your eye, you can see Yunho taking a pause from what he was doing, waiting as if to see if you're going to say anything else to him. Perhaps address anything that went on last night. But you don’t, so he continues gathering up his pillows from the floor.

The silence between the two of you is heavy, awkward.  Before last night, you weren’t in communication with Yunho. But last night changed things in a way that’s hard to articulate. He said things to you that still linger in your mind`and it doesn’t feel right to just dismiss him from your house and go back to ignoring him as if nothing has happened. But what do you say, what do you do to articulate your complex feelings?

“I need your help.”

“I was gonna go–”

You and Yunho both speak up at the exact same moment, meeting each other's gaze in a surprised stare. WIthout hearing the rest of his sentence, you assume he was about to announce that he was leaving. But for the first time in months, you don’t actually want that.

“I’m sure you can probably feel it. How hot it is in here, I mean,” you state blankly, picking at a loose thread on your shorts as to avoid his gaze. “I think the AC’s broken. It’s gone out a couple of times this summer. You’re the only person I know who can fix these kind of things so…”

You pause, biting back the end of your sentence because of how it would mean you’d be asking Yunho for something. And it’s quite possibly the worst feeling ever, to be so mad at someone and still need them. Yet, that might be the most accurate way to explain how you’ve been feeling in these past few months.

Luckily for you, Yunho has always been good at reading you, knowing when to step up as you require it. “What do you need?” he asks, without any pretense or flattery. Just seeing that he’s needed and jumping in to help. Like he always has when it comes to everyone, but especially when it comes to you.

“If you could just stay for a little bit longer and fix it, I’d appreciate it,” you tell him meekly, only briefly able to hold his gaze before dropping your focus to your feet. Looking at Yunho directly just feels too intense, brings up too many emotions in your chest that you’re not ready to feel anytime soon.

You hear the soft plop of him laying his folded blankets and pillows down on your dresser, and then he’s at your door, waiting for you to follow him out. “Yeah sure,” he says softly. “It’s no problem.”

You follow Yunho downstairs to your kitchen, where a shoddy closet you never open holds the control system to your air conditioning. You point him to a box of tools your mother keeps in her kitchen cabinet, a location you’re only privy to because you once had to fix the hinge of your bedroom window after Yunho broke it by climbing through it.

Yunho gets to work immediately, and you watch his whole demeanor change as he absorbs himself in the task at hand. He becomes incredibly slack-jawed and focused as he searches for the problem in what, to you, looks like a maze of wires and screws. You can’t help him, so you’re not really sure what to do with yourself. You ultimately resign to pulling up a stool from your kitchen, sitting down and thinking of what you’re really doing by letting him stay here for this long.

Your thoughts can’t help but linger on the conversation you had with Yunho last night. He didn’t say anything to you that he hasn’t said before, or hadn’t harped on in his letters. But what made last night different is that you realized he hadn’t just been fooling you. His grandparents, the people he loved the most, were also being kept in the dark and seeing a false version of who their loved-one really was. You could tell this just by seeing the fear in his voice when he thought they might see him drunk and vulnerable. 

Hiding from the people that love you is more than just something you do on a careless whim. It’s something you do when something deeper is troubling you. And as much as you hate that you do, the curiosity to know more has been gnawing at you and you can’t help but be sympathetic.

“I think I’ve found the problem,” he mutters out to you, whipping a washcloth you gave him over his shoulder. “It shouldn’t take me any longer than 30 minutes to fix.”

You nod, humming absentmindedly so he knows you’ve heard him. But in the back of your mind you’re fighting the parts of you that want nothing to do with him and the part that is dying to know why Yunho has been hiding the way he has.

And when the part of you that is dying to know more just doesn’t let up, you let out a sigh before turning in your stool to better face Yunho.

“You are a golden child. You are the sweet, kind-hearted young man that takes care of his elderly grandparents and fixes air conditioning systems and cuts grass for the people too old to do it themselves.”

It’s hard not to drop everything he’s doing at the sound of your voice in his ear. It’s been close to forever since you’ve spoken to him directly without his initiative. But rather than become emotional and scare you into silence, he continues what he’s doing and waits patiently for you to finish your thought. Because he knows that something crazy would have to happen for you to say something positive about him without following it up with something hurtful. Not after everything he’s put you through.

“But then you’ve proven to me that you can lie to me, lie to the people you claim to love the most,” you say aloud, not even looking at Yunho, almost not even speaking to him, feeling more so like the thoughts you’ve been suppressing for months are spilling out of you without any subject in mind.

“That you can get so drunk that you’d black out. That you can have a girlfriend while claiming to be falling in love with me. That you can live this double life.”

By the time you’ve finished your sentence, Yunho has turned to face you, abandoning the AC entirely. And he almost wishes he didn’t, because it stings – hearing and seeing the hurt in your voice and face.

“I just can’t process it or understand it. And I think that’s why I’m having so much trouble getting over you. Because I’m still mourning the version of you that’s good and kind while trying to accept the version of you that isn’t.”

It’s hard for Yunho to know what to say once you’ve laid everything out to him. A reality that he’s never wanted is staring him in the face – you’ve seen both sides of him, and been hurt by the side he never wanted you to know about. He’s no longer in a position where he has the luxury to choose between withholding and vulnerability. He decides to be something he should have always been with you — honest.

“That version of me that you see, the good person – I’m not some psychopathic, double agent. It’s not as if I turn the good side of me on and off like a light switch. What you saw from me last summer was very, very real.”

He leans up against the door of your kitchen closet, his head tilted in contemplation. “It’s just that…sometimes I feel…suffocated…by all of the expectations that are put on me.”

You’re surprised that those were the words to come out of Yunho’s mouth. He never hinted at any of these struggles during your relationship. You hold onto his every word in search of something you can hold close to your heart, something that you can know for sure is real. 

“People don’t really seem to understand the burden that comes with having to take care of your elderly grandparents, knowing that you don’t have anyone else to rely on for help,” he confesses, his eyes growing glassy and unfocused. “Having to watch them lose their basic facilities in subtle ways…forget their things…get stuck on a simple word…not seem to remember things that happened recently…”

He trails off, but is brought back to life when he meets your gaze. Sees that you’re still listening and haven’t dismissed him yet.

“And then, I decided I wanted to get my degree on top of that,” he chuckles humorlessly, running a hand through his messy hair. “So I have to juggle my academic responsibilities – basically paying my way through school – on top of being what my grandparents need me to be, plus what all my friends and family expect me to be.”

You listen to Yunho talk silently and as you wait on baited breath for him to slip up and say something disingenuous, all you hear instead is the true words of someone who you’re saddened to hear has been suffering in silence. 

He stutters out the beginning of his next words, getting lost in the tangle of his own thoughts. “The only time I’m not worried about what other people need me to be is when I’m miles away, at school. When I’m there, I’m wanted in a different way. People are attracted to me not because of what I can do for them, but for what they wish to do to me.”

It becomes clear to you what he’s referring to, and you can feel your body growing tense, almost as if you’re internally bracing yourself for what you’re expecting to hear next.

“And for a long time, I’ve been embracing that attention. I would date a girl and treat her as the loving, doting boyfriend. But whenever it became clear that she expected commitment in return, I backed away and started dating someone else. I didn’t want to have one more person who needed me. And I did it without fully severing the connection so that I could still benefit from the attention, sometimes the craziness.”

He looks away from you, and at first you’re inclined to believe he’s embarrassed. After all, this is the first time he’s alluded to his debauchery in any way to you. But then, you see something in his eyes go dark, and he almost whispers out his next words, as if they’re hard to say out loud.

“There is a part of me that, deep down, likes seeing how much I can hurt someone, and watch them crawl back to me. I don’t know how else to explain it besides using the word powerful.”

Despite the dark look in his eyes, it doesn’t look as if Yunho takes in any pleasure in saying these words. He just looks grim, like this is a reality that he’s accepted but is still embarrassed to embrace.

“And so,” he continues, taking in a long, deep breath, “When I’m at school, I get into some…wild things. And it’s fun. It’s nice not having to take on the burden of other people’s feelings. I get to be selfish and only care about my own.”

It’s hard not to feel angry now, even with the sympathy that you feel for him. How could you not, when he’s just openly admitted how much fun he has hurting people and how boring it is to be faithful to someone?

“So that’s it, then?” you ask, not able to hold back the bitterness behind your words. “Being with me, being a good person…it all felt like a burden to you?”

“No, not with you,” he asserts, and not in the usual gooey, flattery way that he would say just to get you to calm down or just to get you to give him. He says it blankly, like it’s just an irrefutable fact of life.

“Being with you was the first time in my life where I felt like I could breathe. Like I could be this person everyone wanted me to be because I had you motivating me to be that person. From the first moment I saw you that summer, I was drawn to you,” he explains, words tumbling over each other like the feelings are catapulting their way out of his throat.

“I could be myself around you. I felt safe telling you all of my insecurities. Still do, as you can see,” he says, with a slight chuckle, and you feel your own lips twitch with the urge to smile. “Maybe it’s because I’ve known you all of my life, even if we weren’t as close as we got last summer. You’ve been a part of my memories since before I could form words.”

His words seem to resurrect some of the butterflies in your stomach that you thought were long dead for Yunho. But just as he manages to surprise you with his softness, his expression once again goes grim as he relays his next words. “But the problem was that I didn’t think to resolve some of the problems I created back at school before I entered into a relationship with you.”

Yunho takes what feels like a final, affirmative pause, and you take the time to pour over all of this information in your mind. So far, your heart has you inclined to believe everything he’s saying. But your brain, ever naggy, aches with the idea that he could be saying all of this just to get back into your pants. And for why, you’re not exactly sure; from what he’s told you, it doesn't sound like he has any trouble getting romantic attention in his daily life. So what would you possibly mean to him when you’re just one out of a potential pool of girls?

It’s at that realization that someone in you shifts. Because for someone who supposedly has no issues getting girls to fall in love with him, somehow, Yunho is still here, fighting to be with you. As much as you don’t want it to, that means something.

“God, Yunho,” you sigh, holding your conflicted head in your hands. “You don’t know how hard it is to hear all of this and not be able to tell if it’s genuine or not.”

“I don’t blame you,” he says, “and I would completely understand if you never believed another word out of my mouth after what I’ve done.”

You look up at him, and when you do, he’s staring down at you intently. “But I’m willing to do anything if it means it’ll show you that I was being real with you when I told you I was falling in love with you.”

The flutter in your heart at his words is automatic. And for the first time in a long time, you don’t resist the feeling. But before you can fully embrace it, there are still things you need to know that have been gnawing at you for nearly a year.

“The girl that Kai showed me,” you begin, looking down at your folded hands. “Have you…talked to her at all since you broke up?”

You feel stupid for even asking such a question, but you know deep down that you need to know the answer for your own peace of mind.

“No,” he answers quickly. “And I’m not sure if this will make you feel better or worse, but…the girl that Kai showed you was one of many. I didn’t really view her as my girlfriend, though I understand why Kai may have. I’ve been told that I have the ability to treat people in a way that allows them to pretty credibly claim that I’m their boyfriend.”

Even after everything that Yunho’s told you, it’s still no less shocking to you to hear the abhorrent actions of the boy who you once thought could be the most kind and caring person ever.

And he seems to sense this on your face because he’s quickly following up with assurances. ”But I’m telling you the God honest truth when I say that I wasn’t in contact with any of them when we were together last summer. I never cheated on you, Y/N. I wasn’t thinking about anyone else when I was with you.”

“Then why did you never commit to me?” you hear yourself say, your heart speaking before your brain can catch up. “Why did you never ask me to be your girlfriend?”

He sighs, as if even he’s exhausted from hearing his own explanations and excuses.  “I never asked you to be my girlfriend because you are the first person I’ve been with who I didn’t want to fuck things up with. I wanted to take things slow.”

It’s clear to you that from Yunho’s perspective, you were the most important person to him among the roster of women he was once dealing with. And as a result, he felt like he needed to treat you more delicately in order to protect that. But you can’t help but view his actions in a more sinister way, like all of the other girls he dealt in college with were more mature than you, and thus couldn’t be fooled by him as easily. Upon seeing you in all your naive, innocent glory, he treated you delicately not out of respect, but in a smart tactic of manipulating you in a way he couldn’t get away with with his other lovers.

All your life you’ve fought the feeling that you’re just the dumb, annoying little sister, constantly bogging down those among you who are older and more knowledgeable than you are. And to think that Yunho views you in that same manner makes you feel resentful in a way you can’t help. 

“So how do I know that you weren’t just planning to go back to school and continue fucking other girls had Kai not told me you had a girlfriend?”

You weren’t intending for your words to come out so blunt but you’ve long lost the part of you who cares about what could upset Yunho or not.

“I honestly can’t say that I wouldn’t have,” he answers, and it’s the sort of shocking honesty that you suppose you should come to expect from him from now on. “At the end of the summer, I was committed to going back to school and remaining loyal to you. Finally being the boyfriend I wanted to be but wasn’t capable of being before you. But when I was away from you, and then I found out you knew about what I had done, it was to tempting to just..say fuck it. It seemed like you weren’t going to forgive me anyway, so I might as well have done what I wanted.

“But there was a situation where a girl was coming onto me. It was a position I had been in many times, and any other time, I would have pursued it. But I looked around me and just realized the desire to be with anyone else was just…gone. Not having any access to you made me realize how much I can’t be without you. It was such a wake up call that I haven’t been with or wanted to be with anyone else since.”

Yunho steps out of the closet and comes closer to you. Before he has time to consider his actions, he gets down on one knee, so that you’re level with him. Previously, you would have flinched away from his closeness. Now, you remain passive as he takes your hands in his, meet his gaze when he stares intensely and passionately into your eyes.

“Y/N, I am fighting to be the man you need me to be,” he proclaims, fire and conviction behind his brown eyes. “I’m willing to do anything if it means you’ll forgive me.”

He squeezes your hands just slightly, and although you’ve faithfully allowed him to say his piece so far, you can’t put any real stock into anything he’s saying without any proof to show that this is really who he is. You can’t say that you’ll forgive or that your wounds have healed when you have no tangible evidence that he wouldn’t hurt you again.

“You can start fighting for me by being the good person that you claim I motivate you to be,” you tell him, not meaning to come off cold but not wanting to mince words. “I need to see, through your actions and not your words, that you’re a different person than the guy who would recklessly date a bunch of girls and then go start a summer romance with his best friend’s sister.”

Yunho nods, his chin grazing your lap, his closeness after all this time comforting but still hard to relax in when you've spent so much time thinking you’d never want him to get this close again.

It’s hard to know what exactly you need to see to forgive Yunho. After all, anything you’ve seen from him from the past month, you’ve questioned. It’s hard to build back trust when it’s been so thoroughly broken.

“You need to tell all of the girls who you’ve possibly tricked into thinking they were your girlfriend that that’s not the case,” you decide. Because you don’t want any other girls out there to feel how you felt. To feel like you were in love with someone and then feel like that wasn’t the case. And you make sure to add, “Only if that’s how you actually feel.”

“It is.”

“I don’t care if it’s a call, text, or whatever,” you continue, despite the fact that he’s already relented. “They just need that closure. I need it.”

Once you’re done, Yunho stares hopefully into your eyes. “Once I’ve done that,” he says, a romantic softness in his voice. “What does it mean for us?”

You can’t help but smile at his softness, but get up from your seat on the stool and let your hands slip from his grasp. You need him to know that this is only a start, that just because you now understand his actions doesn’t mean that you’re ready to pick up where things left off.

“It means I can start to trust that you’re telling the truth when you say you want to fight for me.”

You can tell that he’s disappointed when you move away from him, but he nonetheless nods in understanding in a way that you can accept. “Done,” he mumbles in finality.

When it seems like neither of you have anything else you want to say, Yunho goes back to toying with the air conditioning system. You slip into a relaxing silence, though it’s interrupted only a few moments later when Yunho turns to you questioningly.

“It’s gotten really hot in here,” he informs you neutrally yet cautiously. “Do you mind if I…take off my shirt?”

It’s so hard to suppress the roll of your eyes at such a request, which feels entirely too convenient and shameless  given that you’ve only just gotten to the point where you’re on speaking terms with him. Nonetheless, you hum in agreement. 

You manage to keep your eyes away from Yunho as he pulls off his sweaty shirt, but only for a few seconds. You can’t help yourself – just because you’ve been mad at him doesn’t mean you can fight your attraction to him. 

Your mind wanders over memories you’ve been working hard to forget over this past year. As your eyes trace the lines of Yunho’s abs, muscles, and even down to his hands, you fight back a shiver as the feelings of being touched by him come flooding back like a tidal wave.

“Yunho.”

Yunho stops what he’s doing and turns around to face you, staring at you inquisitively. “Yeah?”

You called out his name without knowing exactly what you were going to say, and now you just stare at him, frozen with desires you don’t know how to articulate. But even without saying anything, it’s as if Yunho already knows what’s going through your mind – his eyes go dark, his tongue juts over his lips, and it seems as if he’s leaning closer to you. 

But before either of you can do anything, you’re interrupted by a knock on the door. The sound of it jolts you out of whatever trance you were in.

“I’ll get it,” you announce, pushing whatever just happened out of your mind as you go to open the front door.

Greeting you as you move to open the door are your mother and brother, Kai. You were expecting them to come back from their trip today, but not this early. Nevertheless, you’re relieved to not be alone as you let them into the house.

“Hey, Y/N!” your mother chirps happily, dragging her suitcases into the foyer. Her eyes then go wide with surprise when she looks over your shoulder and sees someone else. “I thought that was your car in my driveway! Yunho, what are you doing here?”

Kai lags into the house behind your mother, and you can see his eyes moving between you and a shirtless Yunho with a look of curiosity behind them. You’re sure he could be assuming all types of things right now, and the thought repulses you. You decide to speak up first before his mind can go anywhere dangerous.

“I just asked him to fix the AC,” you tell them both casually. “It broke again.”

“Yeah, there was an issue with the generator. It shouldn’t break again if I did everything right,” Yunho informs your mother, smiling genially at her in a way you haven’t seen in a while.

With your focus on Kai, you hadn’t stopped to think of what your mother would think of walking in on you alone with Yunho, dressed in barely anything. But you’re honestly beginning to think that your mother is incapable of saying anything less than glowing about Yunho. You watch as her eyes light up in gratitude over something Kai has been doing all summer. “Oh, thank you Yunho! That thing’s been really causing me problems.”

“No problem, Mrs. ____,” Yunho replies humbly. He looks nervously between the three of you before clearly his throat assertively.  “Well, I guess I’ll be leaving then.”

He pats Kai on the back as he heads towards your door. “Bye, ya’ll,” he says to your family, and as he’s passing you, he mumbles a more personal, “Bye, Y/N,” that you shyly reciprocate. You can hear your mom saying something along the lines of, “Well, that’s new,” as she observes the way Yunho reserves a special goodbye for you, but you don’t respond. You head upstairs to your bedroom, where you heavily contemplate all the things that have transpired today and fight back yet another moral conflict over what your heart wants versus what your brain is telling you.

After a week or so of allowing Yunho back into your life but remaining hesitant to fully resume your relationship, you took your first big step towards forgiveness by allowing him to take you out on a date.

Yunho arrived at the cafe on a weekday afternoon to pick you up. His arrival was immediately noticed by Mingi, who you had been confiding in, though only tepidly. It was clear that he was still not over the two run-ins he’d had with Yunho, but especially the one on the night of the party. He made it clear to you that he disapproved of your continued association with Yunho.

“I just don’t understand why you’re still dealing with this guy,” he had told you angrily, pulling you into the stockroom as soon as he noticed Yunho entering the cafe. He thought he was protecting you by helping you avoid an interaction with someone he had judged as toxic. But he was shocked when you informed him that the man who he’s seen you have nothing but negative interactions with was here to pick you up.

“I appreciate it, Mingi. But seriously, I’m fine,” you assured him, smiling and hoping he understood how thankful you were for his concern but also how little you desired it. “Our story is…it’s complicated. And again, I’m sorry you even got involved in the first place.”

If Mingi was at all convinced by your assurances, he did a poor job of showing it. Still, he followed you out of the storeroom and watched you leave with Yunho, a vexed but nonetheless relenting frown on his face. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t change. I feel a little underdressed.” you told Yunho shyly as you took your spot in the front seat of his car, fastening your seatbelt over your wrinkled apron.

“You look beautiful,” he complimented in response. Though you were sure he was just saying so to be nice, you still met his gaze with a flattered grin. For a second, he seemed to stare at you for longer than normal, looking like he wanted to say something, but ultimately held himself back and shifted his focus to the road. 

“Where are we going?” you had asked as you watched the familiar scenery of your neighborhood become unrecognizable the longer you drove. 

Turning a corner, Yunho shifted to driving with one hand in a move that never failed to make your stomach swoop. “In the spirit of getting a second chance, I figured I’d do a re-do on our first date,” he explained, “Not that anything was wrong the first time, but we never got the chance to ride the ferris wheel.”

You chuckle softly under your breath, remembering that day and your fear of roller coasters. “You must not remember how scared I was of riding it.”

“We’ll see,” he said ominously, and that was all you talked about until you arrived.

The boardwalk looked the same as you remembered it. You were now in the tailend of the summer, so it seemed like it was more packed than usual, filled with little kids probably trying to get their last bit of fun in before the school year started.

Unexpected, however, was the feeling that came over you. It was a mixture of nostalgia and sadness. The memories of Yunho taking you here last summer flooded back to you, but they only served as a reminder of how much had changed since then. You waited expectantly for your stomach to spur with the same butterflies you had the first time you came here. But to your dismay, they didn’t come, and suddenly a place you had held close to your heart now looked gray and somber.

As you begin to feel just a bit overwhelmed, you’re relieved when Yunho takes the lead. “Wanna start with Whack-A-Mole?”

You follow him, and together you begin the same sort of routine you had on your first ever date – going up the boardwalk and playing every single game it has to offer. It seemed as if both of you were having some bad luck – neither of you managed to win anything, something you joke about as you sit down to grab some food in the aftermath.

“I can’t believe I just let a bunch of 13 year olds beat me,” Yunho lamented, pouting childishly as he picked at the funnel cake you were sharing between you.

You assured him with a gentle pat on the arm. “It’s okay. It would probably look worse if the only two adults here were pummeling little kids.” 

Yunho chuckled, bowing his head in assent. Things went quiet for a moment before he cautiously asked, “Can I ask you how your school year was?” 

It’s hard to know what to say. The first half of your freshman year was defined by throwing yourself into every activity there was to forget about the hurt you were feeling. The second half was when you had become hardened by all of that pretending and began to isolate yourself, becoming the cold, avoidant person you came into the summer as. All in all, it wasn’t exactly a stress-free or easeful year.

“I liked the school a lot. I’m confident I made the right choice,” you tell him in an attempt to say at least one positive thing about your experience. “But in all honesty, I had a pretty shitty time. I’m honestly surprised I passed all my classes.”

You don’t have to say it for Yunho to know that he likely played a huge role in your negative experience. And without knowing what to say, not wanting to bog down the mood with more apologies, he simply hummed in understanding. “I suppose my year was similar. Did you know I drove up to your campus once?”

You raised a surprised eyebrow. “Really? When was this?”

“Sometime around Valentine’s Day,” he explains, looking down shyly at his food. “I don’t know what I was doing. I knew that even if I could find you, you probably wouldn’t react positively.”

“You were right,” you interrupt his story to confirm, and he chuckles awkwardly.

“Anyways, I ended up just sleeping in my car and leaving the next morning.”

It goes silent for a second, and you decide to reveal something you always thought you’d be too embarrassed to ever say out loud, especially to him. “I almost slipped up and called you once.”

He looks up at you, his expression neutral but sounding very surprised when he says, “Really?”

“I had gotten drunk,” you tell him, laughing a little as you recall the moment, “And I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say to you. I think a part of me just wanted to hear your voice.”

Yunho smiles, but you see something wistful and sad behind his eyes.

“But funny enough, Kai texted me about coming home for break, and it seemed to get me back into my senses.”

“Why?”

“Because I realized how this would be the third holiday where I’d be staying at my dorm instead of going home,” you begin without thinking, biting your lip as you realize what you’re about to reveal, “And was reminded of why I didn’t want to go home.”

Yunho looks sad, but he doesn’t say anything in reply, and you’re glad. You didn’t mean to bring down the mood or make it hard to continue the conversation, but it’s clear that there’s nothing he could really say in response to something like that. 

You finish your funnel cake a few moments later, and then go to take the same walk along the beach as you did a year ago. Except now, the sky is remarkably clear and the two of you stand platonically apart as opposed to holding hands. 

Tilting your head up, you notice the looming ferris wheel in the sky and wonder again if Yunho was serious in his plans of getting you to ride it. When you ask him about it, he lets out a dry chuckle. 

“Of course I am,” he asserts cooly, almost tempted to add in a, “I never break my promises, do I?” but knowing it wouldn’t be true at this point.

Bringing your walk to a sudden stop, you look up at him, your vexed expression shooting daggers into him. “But I got us tickets for the private carriage,” he quickly adds when you look just about tempted to punch him in the face, “so you don’t have to be looking down at the ground the whole time. It just feels incomplete to get on every ride except one.” 

Though you rolled your eyes at him, you cast aside your annoyance and resumed your leisurely stroll along the shoreline. Truthfully, you weren’t as opposed to the idea of riding the roller coaster as you were before. You were pleased that he had made the extra effort to make the ride a little less scary for you. This would only be the second time he had helped coax you through a fear, starting with the time he led you through a waterfall to get to a cave where you had one of the best conversations of your relationship. Plus, maybe this was what you needed. To create new memories instead of being reminded of the past ones.

“Hey,” Yunho murmured suddenly, taking your attention away from the crashing waves of the ocean. “I hope you’re having a good time tonight. I know a lot has changed since the last time we went out like this.”

You look up at him, surprised to hear him acknowledge a feeling you’ve been trying to conceal all night. You sigh tiredly, staring off into the beach as you try to find the words to describe what’s bothering you. 

“Of course, Yunho. This was nice,” you tell him honestly. “It’s just…harder than I thought to revisit all of these places when I’ve been trying so hard to forget about them.”

Eyes trained on the sand below you, you don’t see Yunho’s expression, but you can feel the heat of his eyes burning into the side of your face. “Do you want me to take you home?

You take a second to consider the offer sincerely. But ultimately, you decide to stay. It was you who told Yunho that what you needed to see from him was a fight. And with this date today, you can see that he’s putting in the effort to show you how much you mean to him. No matter how uneasy you might feel, you want to give that a chance. 

“No,” you reply earnestly, deciding to link your arm through his in your first show of closeness in what feels like so long. His shoulder softens under the weight of your head. “Let’s finish this and go on that stupid ferris wheel.”

You watch as Yunho scans your face, looking for any apprehension in your expression. When he isn’t able to discern any, the corner of his lips twitch to form a grin, and he leads you up the beach towards the boardwalk. 

As you walk, you pass by the photobooth where you shared your first kiss. In a sea of light colored sand, the black metal box is too obvious of a sight for either of you to say you didn’t notice it. Even as you feel Yunho’s gaze on the side of your face once more, perhaps hoping that you’ll make a comment about it and remember how much you enjoyed kissing him, you decide not to say anything and continue your walk to the ferris wheel.

At the entrance to the ride, you’re able to move past a line of eager 12 year olds to a second area for reserved ticket holders. You’re let onto a carriage whose windows are at the very top, insulating any view of the outside. It’s very obvious that the carriage was made with couples in mind. Beyond just the privacy aspect, there are pink and red hearts of various size patterned all over the leather fabric of your seats. It feels quite wrong then, that the two of you get into the ride sitting across from each other, hands stuffed in your pockets like you’d rather avoid touching each other. 

“Date night?” asks the guy working the ride, who helps make sure nothing’s wrong with the carriage. You don’t say anything, but smile permissively at Yunho, letting him know you don’t mind if he responds.

“Yep,” he replies casually, and the guy working gives you both a suggestive pat on the shoulder. “Have fun. There’s lots of privacy in there.”

You and Yunho share equal looks of puzzlement before the worker closes the carriage doors shut. You feel relaxed for the first two minutes or so of being shut in. But then, suddenly, you can feel the air leaving your stomach as the carriage is pulled upward.

“Oh my god,” you murmur, feeling sick and like your organs are surely wobbling around as the carriage softly sways. 

You mutter what is surely an expletive as a concerned Yunho offers you his outstretched arms to brace yourself. “Are you okay?”

Eyes squeezing shut, you took a second to steady yourself, taking several deep breaths and willing yourself to find rhythm in the back-and-forth rocks of the carriage. You allowed your heart rate to come to a slow before managing both eyes open. “Yes,” came your reply softly. “I’m fine.”

You’re not sure how long the ride is supposed to be, and without any windows, you’re left to use your senses to gauge how far you are on the ferris wheel. You and Yunho make light conversation, but it almost feels as if you’re replying on autopilot without taking in any of the words he’s saying.

Truthfully, you felt empty. And it wasn’t because the ride was scary, though your fear likely broke you out of whatever semi-optimistic mood you had temporarily found yourself in. 

You thought that by coming here and letting Yunho take you on a date that you could conjure up some of those same adoring feelings that were once so strong between the two of you. But instead, even when you’re experiencing something new together, you can’t help but feel like an actor, pretending to see something that’s not there. All day, you’ve been trying to push down all of the negative sentiments that have built up over this last year. But they just keep coming back and you no longer think you’re strong enough to push them down.

You don’t even realize you’ve started crying until you feel Yunho’s hands resting on your knees, bringing you back to the present moment and making you conscious of the wetness on your cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, Y/N,” you hear Yunho say, and a voice that was once so comforting now sounds like it’s being heard through a tunnel in your haze of emotions. “I should have never pushed you to ride this.”

As you process Yunho’s words a little later than when you hear them, it occurs to you that he must think you’re crying because of the ride. But the fear of heights has long been shedded in favor of a newer, scarier fear  – that no matter how much goodwill Yunho shows you, you’ll never be able to feel the same way for him again. That you’ll never be as happy as he once made you.

But you decide not to vocalize this. Instead, you allow Yunho to believe what you consider to be the easier story, until the ride ends and he rushes to lead you out of the carriage. The car ride to your house is a quiet one – you can feel the guilt radiating off of him. 

It’s dark outside when he pulls into your driveway to drop you off. You look over at him, wanting to end this night on a positive note by saying something sweet, but not knowing what to say. And even if you could think of something, he’s already out of the car before you can open your mouth, coming around to open your door for you.

Once he’s let you out, you stand in front of him as he leans against the hood of his car, head tilted down to the asphalt. “Thank you for tonight, Yunho. The ferris wheel wasn’t even that bad, I promise.”

You realize only after the words leave your mouth that your attempts to make tonight sound fun only result in something more pitiful. Yunho shakes out his hair and lets a humorless laugh escape his lips. “No problem, Y/N. I had fun, too.”

You turn your back to him to stare at the windows of your house. No lights are on, which you hope means that neither Kai or your mother are awake to peek at what you’re doing. “Hug?” you ask Yunho, stretching out your arms toward him. And not just because you feel bad for him and want to make things up to him. But because being in close contact with Yunho is the only time where you can feel, even if only for a few seconds, the same safety and comfort that drew you to him in the first place. 

Yunho smirks at you in a way that communicates pleasant surprise. He moves apprehensively into your embrace, doing so with his eyes rolled in a show of feigned resistance. You’re tempted to tease him, but are satisfied when you feel him soften in your embrace. It’s an act of affection that you feel could happen today or 1 year ago and would still feel the same way. 

“Good night, Yunho,” you mumble tiredly into his chest. 

“Good night,” he says back. “Love you.”

And just like that, what was just a moment of comforting familiarity now causes your heart to stop as you hear the words, “I love you,” come out of Yunho’s mouth.

You and Yunho have talked more than enough about falling in love with each other, but to actually say the words is territory you’ve never entered before. With how casual he sounded saying it, you get the feeling that he let it slip on accident. But you can’t help the fact that your first initiative is to freeze up, and you know he must feel it with the way your body goes rigid around him. And in the silence that passes, you’re sure that even if you wanted to reciprocate his confession, it would be too late without it being obvious that you’re just saying it to acquiesce him.

In that exact moment, Yunho pulls away from you. From the quick glimpse that you get of his face, you can see that he’s smiling, but you can tell that he’s moving extra quickly to hide himself from your view. Before you know it, he’s disappeared into his house across the street. You’re left alone in your front yard to contemplate the mess of emotions passing through you.

Because even if you were able to freeze time to give yourself a moment to process the initial shock of being told something like that, would you have said it back? In the back of your mind, one fleeing and dismaying thought prevails – You can’t be so sure anymore.

On the final day of summer, you sat on your back porch, feeling bittersweet as you enjoyed the serene air of your neighborhood and reflected on the events of the past few months.

In a few hours, you’d be heading back to school to begin your sophomore year of college, and you were torn between feeling relieved to escape the emotional turmoil that has defined this summer and scared to leave what was one of your most important relationships at its most vulnerable.

The truth is that you weren’t sure if your relationship with Yunho was salvageable. You thought that if both of you tried your hardest for each other that things may go back to how they used to. But you didn’t anticipate how difficult it would be to move past a year’s worth of pain and heartache. In all honesty, you were scared. Scared that you had spent this much time feeling miserable for someone who you may ultimately decide to cut out of your life for good. 

“Hey,” you heard a familiar voice greet from behind you. Speak of the devil.

Yunho came out onto the porch in a relaxed pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt. He had arrived at your house early this morning, helping you and your mother pack and move your things into a U-Haul truck. You and your mom would be taking the truck into the city, where she’d drop you off at your closer-to-home, private college, while Yunho and Kai would head out the next day to their bigger and further away state school. 

“What’s up?” Yunho asked, a shade of concern in his voice causing you to raise your eyebrow.

“Nothing. Are you okay?” 

“Yeah. Your mom and brother sent me to look for you. They’re packing the car as we speak,” he explained, coming up in front of you to lean against the railing of your porch casually. “Though, I assume you know that already?”

“Yep,” you confirm, leaning back in your rocking chair with an air of resignation. “I just wanted a second to myself before I left.”

Yunho hummed in understanding. “Well I’ll leave you to it, then.”

You watched Yunho walk from the porch railing to the door, realizing that now may be your last chance before going back to school to talk to him face-to-face about your future together. You were suddenly filled with a sense of last-minute urgency.

“Wait,” you cried out, turning around in your chair to face his retreating silhouette. “Don’t go.”

Yunho turned around to look at you, eyes wide in a startled expression. “Actually, Yunho,” you told him softly, “I kind of wanted to talk to you.”

You watched as Yunho came back and sat down on your porch railing once again, leaning forward in calm interest. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

You sighed, not even sure what you wanted to say. You remember when Yunho was the only part of your life that felt easy and uncomplicated. Now, every thought and emotion you had for him felt so confusing. It was as if you had to put together a puzzle of your own thoughts every time you spoke to him, trying to discern between feelings that were genuine and feelings colored by your past distrust. 

“I’ve been thinking a lot about all that’s happened between us this summer. About how I want to move forward with our relationship now that everything’s been hashed out.

“I shouldn’t have gone on that date with you,” you confess, watching Yunho’s face fall in an expression of regret and disappointment. “I wasn’t ready. It was weird for me to revisit all of the places where I had so many positive memories with you and realize that I may never feel that way again. I know you had good intentions, but it was all too much for me.”

A moment of silence passes between the two of you as Yunho considers your words and you decide your next ones. You don’t bother to look up at him at this point, knowing all you’ll find is your own sadness and weariness reflected in his brown eyes. 

“It’s not that I’m still angry at you for what you did. I understand what happened and why it happened, but I just…” you trail off. “I feel numb. And I’m not really sure if that’s an emotion conducive to a healthy relationship.”

“So what are you saying?” Yunho breaks his silence to ask, not exactly accusatory but not exactly gentle, either. “Are you…”

He pauses, and when you look up at his face you see his mouth closed in a tight line as if he doesn’t want to even consider ending his sentence. 

But then he sighs, and the rest of the words come out strained like he had to fight to get them out of his mouth. “...ending things?”

“Can you really end something that never quite started?” you ask, your voice taking on a lighter tone as you attempt to convey your words in a humorous way. But as you say the sentence out loud, it hits close to home in a way you weren’t expecting.

“When I think about this year, I think about all the time I spent trying to hate you,” you chuckle out humorlessly, feeling almost silly as you reflect on how miserable and painful his year was. “And through it all – the anger, the pain, the numbness – somehow, someway…”

You take a breath, anxious for what you’re about to say.

“...I love you, Yunho.”

Yunho looks up to stare at you breathlessly,  and for a second it feels like the two of you are frozen in time. He never thought he’d hear you reciprocate those words. It took a while for you to even come to the conclusion, as well. But even in your little experience, you know that what you’re feeling is love. The determination to see the best in someone even at their worst. The willingness to keep trying even when it feels like nothing is working. The care that never seems to go away even after they’ve hurt you. 

“And so I’m not saying no to us,” you assert. “I’m not saying yes to us either. “I’m saying I don’t know. And I hope that can be enough for you right now.”

You sit in silence for what feels like hours, feeling understood but more confused than ever. You’re called by your mother to finally leave for your journey back to school. And as you say your brief goodbyes to your brother and Yunho, a sense of mournful finality tinges the air, as if you're closing a chapter that was once vibrant but now fades into the shadows of what once was.

a/n: I have one more part planned for this fic but i’m not sure when i can get it out. stay tuned and as always tysm for still reading <3

also realizing i never created a taglist for this fic! so if you'd like to be notified when the final part comes out, pls send me a message in my ask box or comment below.

[memories]

#seonghwa and Other Things That Ruined My Life: An Autobiography by fairyunn

[the7thcrow]

daisies

pairing: seonghwa x (fem) reader

summary: one last trip. that was what you wanted. to let yourself dream of your childhood sweetheart one final time, before closing that chapter of your life forever. however, the last thing you expected was for him to actually be there.

word count: 11.0k

genre: summer camp au. childhood friends to lovers. tooth-rotting fluff, like literally so so fluffy. the tiniest itty bitty fragment of angst.

warnings: overwhelming cuteness, adorable childhood flashbacks mixed with present day shenanigans, kissing, wooyoung being a servant of mischief.

rating: good for anyone :)

a/n: hi everyone! here’s my first ever ateez fic, and ofc it had to be for my bias because i’m whipped. i really hope you all enjoy, and as always, please don’t be afraid to send me an ask or message for some feedback if you do! 🥰

Keep reading

[fairyunn]

writer's block :( fics will take a while </3

[kspark-net-deactivated20211123]

welcome to k spark net ! a network dedicated to kpop content creators !

the aim is for promoting kpop creators who put their hardwork into creating amazing content, and making friends for us all, plus various events hosted by us <3

mod + owner : @fairyunn

here are some guidelines :

follow this network (+mods if you want) before you apply

reblog this post

this is a multifandom kpop blog, any fandom works !

after acceptance, make sure to use the tag #kspark in the first five tags of your content

more rules for this network and application form can be found in this post <3

thankyou for checking in !

[fairyunn]

twice's single,,,, awesome,,,beautiful,,,,spectacular,,,,,,,but too het for me 💔 😔 😒

[fairyunn]

aah my one direction phase 💔

[fairyunn]

how are you, ru? ❤

i'm doing good :) i'm glad when i see u in my inbox <333

[fairyunn]

h-hi 🥺

hi baby <33

[sanhwaiting]

seonghwa ✧ deja vu ✧ 210929

[kspark-net-deactivated20211123]

welcome to k spark net ! a network dedicated to kpop content creators !

the aim is for promoting kpop creators who put their hardwork into creating amazing content, and making friends for us all, plus various events hosted by us <3

mod + owner : @fairyunn

here are some guidelines :

follow this network (+mods if you want) before you apply

reblog this post

this is a multifandom kpop blog, any fandom works !

after acceptance, make sure to use the tag #kspark in the first five tags of your content

more rules for this network and application form can be found in this post <3

thankyou for checking in !

[fairyunn]

my anxiety got to the best of me in a class presentation 👍🏻👍🏻

[kspark-net-deactivated20211123]

welcome to k spark net ! a network dedicated to kpop content creators !

the aim is for promoting kpop creators who put their hardwork into creating amazing content, and making friends for us all, plus various events hosted by us <3

mod + owner : @fairyunn

here are some guidelines :

follow this network (+mods if you want) before you apply

reblog this post

this is a multifandom kpop blog, any fandom works !

after acceptance, make sure to use the tag #kspark in the first five tags of your content

more rules for this network and application form can be found in this post <3

thankyou for checking in !

[fairyunn]

i think that hongjoong is the type to give you reformed jackets with his initials on it and walk around with you wearing it with fond smile

[binnieurl]

𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐳 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 — kisses with ateez

seonghwa ; seonghwa’s kisses are comforting, they’re reassuring — just like him. his presence is secure, his love deep, and he knows how to translate that physically. seonghwa would hold you close, his lips just barely brushing past yours. i feel like he’d hold a lot of restrained passion as well, he wants to leave you wanting more. 

“my lil baby.” he’d mutter, his thumb wiping against your bottom lip, before running down to your chin, lifting your head to meet his gaze. “so beautiful for me. my perfect angel.”

hongjoong ; hongjoong is sweet. unbelievably sweet. he’s the type te let you sit in with him in the studio while he works, but get so caught up in what he’s doing that he kind of forgets you’re there. but when he realizes his mistake, he’s so apologetic. 

“i’m sorry, love.” he mumbles, pulling you into his lap and frowning at the way you pout at him “i didn’t mean to ignore you.” and he’d grab your chin to press his lips against yours in a kiss, translating all his love into that simple gesture. “here,” he’d start, turning you around on his lap so you can see the screen of his computer. and he’d explain to you his work process while pressing little kisses to your cheek <3

yunho ; yunho’s kisses are gentle, just like him. yunho really seems like the type to treasure his s/o, he’d treat you so good all the time, he’s such a sweetheart <3 so his kisses would definitely match that energy. where he’s loud and rambunctious with everyone else, he so gentle and soft with you. 

“you’re so perfect for me, baby, my perfect lil baby.” and he presses his lips against yours so delicately, almost as if he thinks you’ll break if he’s too rough. overall, he’s really, truly the best boy out there. he’s so sweet :(

yeosang ; yeosang strikes me as the timid type. especially at the beginning of your relationship. his kisses are soft and gentle, he barely brushes his lips against yours and doesn’t really give you the time to bask in how his lips feel against yours. but as he gets more comfortable with you, he’ll become more confident, if not a little cocky. 

he’s the type to tease you by hovering his lips over yours, but not actually doing anything and then laugh at you when you eventually give in and kiss him first. “you just can’t get enough of me, huh, y/n?” and all you can do is agree <//3

san ; san’s love language is definitely physical touch. every time you’re together, it’s like you’re glued at the hip; he always has his arm around your shoulders or his hand in yours. and i think he’d see kissing you as one of the biggest physical shows of love he can give. 

he’d always lift your head up, hands on your cheeks while pressing little butterfly kisses all over your face and smiling at the way you giggle and lean into his touch. and when he finally kissed your lips, it feels so rewarding. leaning back, he’ll rest his forehead against yours and mumble soft praises against your lips. “cutie.” 

mingi ; mingi’s kisses are soft and impossibly sweet. he’s such a gentle giant, all he wants to do is show you how much he cares about you and how much he loves you :( he seems like the type to be good at translating his emotions through physical touch. he’d use it as a way to say that he loves you when he can’t say it with words. 

and it’s so warm, and almost comforting. he’ll sit you down in his lap and pull you into his chest, pressing his lips against your forehead and letting you melt into him, your hands finding place on his chest. 

wooyoung ; wooyoung’s kisses are passionate, they’re intense and make you weak in the knees. especially if you haven’t seen each other for a while. he’ll grab your face and pull your lips up to his, closing his eyes and giving you everything he’s got; every ounce of love in his body gets poured into his kisses. and he loves how it makes your body melt against his, how you have to hold onto him for support. but you don’t have to worry, because he’ll always be there to hold you up <3

jongho ; jongho’s a tease. he loves acting like he’s gonna kiss you; leaning in, cupping your cheek and leading you closer to him, he’s so close you can feel his breath against your lips — and then suddenly he’s gone, his presence completely lifted away from you. he loves making you wait for him, he loves getting you all worked up and pouty and begging him for just a little kith :( and when he finally caves and presses his lips against yours and it’s so rewarding. 

one hand on your waist, the other cradling the back of your head, fingers digging into your hair. and he loves how you grab onto him, clinging onto him as if he’s your lifeline, and the way your lips chase after his when he pulls away, your eyes lidded and heavy. “you want more, baby? don’t worry, i’ll give you what you want.” and his voice is so soft and gentle, all you can do is nod along with him. 

[fairyunn]

not sure if you're still taking requests but could i have yunho + 7 from the fluff list ? thank you !!

done <3

ty for requesting ^_^