From the moment you started dating, he had gone out of his way to accommodate your picky eating habits. Restaurants were chosen with you in mind. Ingredients were swapped out without complaint. Some nights, he’d even make separate dishes just so you could enjoy eating together.
And somehow, he never once acted like it was a burden.
Which only made the guilt worse.
Because while Yu would do anything for you, what had you really done for him?
You couldn’t cook. Not even a little.
Sure, you could make instant ramen and maybe scrambled eggs on a good day, but anything more complicated than that? Absolutely not.
Still, after hearing how exhausted he sounded over text, you decided something.
Tonight, you were going to cook for Yu.
No. matter. what.
The first stop was TikTok.
Surely the app that taught people how to make cloud bread and the best Mac and Cheese could teach you how to cook, right?
Thirty minutes later, you stared blankly at your phone.
Your search history was filled with things like:
“easy Japanese meals”
“how to make onigiri”
“Yus muscles Nexz”
And somehow, despite watching countless videos, you had learned absolutely nothing other then the fact JYP needs to close the gyms 😻.
To Pinterest it was.
Pinterest was much more promising.
After scrolling through recipe after recipe, you finally settled on a menu.
Tuna onigiri, Japanese curry rice, and matcha cookies.
You stared at the list with a grimace. There was just one tiny problem. You hated almost every ingredient.
Yu had always been incredibly sweet about your picky eating habits. He never complained when you picked mushrooms out of dishes or wrinkled your nose at fish. Matcha? You swore it tasted like someone had blended up grass and called it dessert.
Yet Yu loved those foods and tonight wasn’t about you. Tonight was about him.
Determined, you tied your hair back and got to work. To your surprise, things started off pretty well. The rice went into the cooker. Vegetables were chopped. Though, as you sliced mushrooms, your face twisted into a look of pure disgust.
“Eugh,” you muttered. “How does anyone eat these?”
The curry simmered on the stove while you moved onto the cookies.
You carefully whisked the matcha powder into the batter. It smelled exactly like grass. Your opinion remained unchanged.
Soon enough, everything had reached the waiting stage.
The rice was cooking. The curry was simmering. The cookies were baking.
There was nothing left to do but wait. Which, unfortunately, meant only one thing.
TikTok.
Just one video.
Then another..
And another…
You didn’t even realize how much time had passed until—
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
Your eyes widened.
Smoke.
“Oh my god!”
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
You scrambled onto a chair, waving a towel at the smoke detector like your life depended on it. After what felt like an eternity, the alarm finally stopped.
Silence. You exhaled. Then slowly turned toward the stove.
The curry was burnt. Completely burnt.
Apparently turning the heat to high because you wanted it to cook faster had done the exact opposite of helping.
“Well… shit.”
Maybe the rice survived, please let the rice survive.
You opened the rice cooker.
Crunch.
You blinked.
Crunch.
Still hard.
It would appear that someone had absolutely no idea how much water rice needed.
You stared into the cooker.
“Well shit,” you repeated quietly.
At least the cookies… The cookies had to be okay.
Right?
You pulled them from the tray and let them cool for a few minutes before picking one up.
The bottom was dark green.
Almost black.
Not a promising sign. Still, you took a bite. It was like biting into a hockey puck. You nearly chipped a tooth. Everything was ruined.
And then…
The sound of keys. Your heart dropped.
Damn, Yu was home.
“I’m here!” his voice called out cheerfully.
Panic surged through you.
Before he could step any farther into the apartment, you rushed over and practically threw yourself at him.
“Hi!”
Yu blinked.
Then blinked again.
Flour dusted your hair. Sauce stained your shirt. There was something green on your cheek that he was almost afraid to identify.
He tilted his head. “…Love?”
You smiled nervously.
“Yeah?”
“What happened to you?”
“Oh, you know…” you laughed weakly. “Stuff.”
Yu narrowed his eyes.
Then his nose twitched.
“…Why does it smell like something’s burning?”
Uh oh.
He took a step toward the kitchen.
“WAIT!”
Yu paused.
“What?”
“Nope uhh -Nothing!”
“Then why are you yelling?”
“Do you wanna sit down and talk first?!”
He looked even more suspicious now.
“That’s fine,” he said slowly. “But it definitely smells like something is burning.”
Before he could walk away, you grabbed his arm.
Or at least you tried. Because apparently you had forgotten that Yu was ridiculously strong. He kept walking.
And you?
You were basically skiing across the carpet.
“Yu!” you squeaked.
One look into the kitchen was all it took.
Burnt curry.
Rice that looked questionable at best.
A battlefield of bowls, measuring cups, and ingredients.
Yu stared.
You stared.
The kitchen a whole ass mess.
“…What happened?” he asked softly.
Your shoulders slumped.
And then, you told him everything.
How he’d always taken care of you. How he always accommodated your eating habits without complaint. How you knew he missed food from home. How you wanted to do something for him for once.
When you finally finished, the apartment fell silent.
Then—
Yu laughed.
Not a mean laugh.
Not an “I’m making fun of you” laugh.
One of those bright, heartwarming laughs that made your chest feel warm.
You swatted his arm.
“Don’t laughhh!”
“This is the cutest thing ever,” he said through a smile.
Your face burned.
“Nothing even turned out right.”
Yu’s expression softened instantly.
He stepped forward and pulled you into his arms.
You melted against his chest.
“You tried for me,” he said quietly. “That’s more important than any food.”
Your heart nearly stopped.
Then he pressed a kiss to your forehead.
Gentle.
Warm.
Home.
“But I didn’t even make anything.”
Yu only held you tighter.
“You made me very happy.
Tears threatened to form in your eyes.
So instead, you mumbled into his chest,
“…Should we just order something?”
Yu glanced at the destroyed kitchen.
He smiled.
“Well shit we kind of have to.”
You pulled back immediately.
“Yu!”
“This kitchen is a disaster.”
“YU!”
His laughter filled the apartment again the kind that always made you laugh too.
And as the two of you opened a delivery app together, you decided that maybe love wasn’t about making perfect food.
Synopsis: What happens when you get comfortable
w.c: 2.4k
CHAPTER 2: Read at 11:47
The texting started because of an argument about footwork.
She had sent him a video — twelve seconds, shot from the studio mirror, her phone propped against the stereo — and the message underneath said something's off in the landing, I can't place it.
He watched it four times on the bus home.
Typed back: you're rushing the prep, you're already thinking about the next count before you've finished this one.
She replied: that's not what's happening.
He replied: it is.
She replied: you watched twelve seconds of video.
He replied: yes.
That was a Tuesday in late October. After that they just kept going.
It was not a decision. That was the thing about most of the important things between them — they never decided. They just kept not-stopping, and eventually not-stopping looked enough like choosing that it didn't matter anymore.
He replied faster at night. She noticed this and did not examine it.
During the day he was slower — hours sometimes, which she told herself didn't register — but past ten pm his messages came back in minutes, sometimes less, the typing indicator appearing almost before she'd sent anything.
She didn't ask why.
She already knew, the same way she knew her own reasons for checking her phone between the end of evening practice and sleep: because the day had been long and difficult and there was exactly one person she wanted to be annoyed by.
They were not, by any reasonable measure, kind to each other.
He told her when her ideas were half-formed. She told him when he was being sloppy — once, flat, without cushioning — and he received it the same way he always had, which was silence and then a change so she knew he'd heard.
The bickering didn't soften so much as it shifted, the way a language shifts when you've been speaking it long enough that you stop translating and just mean things directly.
The arguments were the same.
The space underneath them was different.
In November she sent him a voice note by accident.
She'd been demonstrating something — a rhythm pattern, tapping it out on the studio floor — and she hit send before she realized what she'd done. Stared at her phone for three seconds in the particular frozen way of someone who cannot decide whether to acknowledge a mistake or pretend it didn't happen.
She went with pretending.
He listened to it twice — she could see the timestamp — and sent back a voice note of his own. The same rhythm, tapped back, slightly adjusted. No comment.
She didn't reply for a while.
When she did she said: that's not what I was doing.
He said: I know. Mine's better.
She typed three different responses and deleted all of them and sent a single question mark instead. His reply was a laugh emoji — the first one either of them had ever used in this conversation.
She put her phone face-down and went back to work and tried very hard not to smile.
She tried.
She was not successful.
They started asking for opinions the way you ask someone to hold something heavy — quick, slightly reluctant, already a little grateful before they've even agreed.
Watch this and tell me what you actually think.
I'm going to send you this piece and I need you to not be nice about it.
The being-not-nice was never a problem. The other part — the actually — was new.
She'd spent three years learning to filter the well-meaning from the useful and find the third category, which was rare and looked different from both. He was in the third category. She didn't like what that meant but she'd stopped pretending it wasn't true sometime around November, when he'd looked at a combination she'd been fighting for two weeks and said: you built it around your strong side, you need to make the other one work the same way.
She went back to the studio and worked it until two in the morning.
She didn't tell him this. He didn't ask.
But the next time she sent him something, she sent it earlier — before she'd finished, while it was still unformed — which was the version of saying thank you she had available to her, and which he, she thought, probably understood.
He looked up one Tuesday in December to find her watching him instead of her own reflection.
Your eight count is late, she said. You keep landing on nine.
He looked back at the mirror and ran it again. She was right.
It was on purpose, he said.
No it wasn't.
How do you know.
Because you didn't do it the first three times.
He turned back to look at her. She was already looking at her own feet, bored, done with it, moving on.
He ran the count again. On eight this time.
It was better.
He didn't say anything.
He thought about the way she always said it once. Thought about how long he'd spent early on waiting for her to push — to press the point the way other people did — and how she never did. How she'd figured out, or maybe always known, that once was enough. That he heard things the first time. That the repetition was never for him.
He thought about this and then he turned up the music and went back to work and told himself, firmly, that he was not going to start being sentimental about Studio B in December.
He had enough to deal with.
He started staying later in January.
She noticed because she was also staying later in January, and his coat was always still on the hook when she arrived and still there when she left. The studio he used was always warm when she passed it — that particular warm of a room that had been occupied a long time.
She didn't ask.
She looked at the coat and went to her own room and did her own work, and came out at nine-thirty to find him sitting in the hallway with his back against the wall, headphones around his neck, a look on his face she hadn't seen before.
Not sad. Not tired, exactly.
Somewhere between the two. Like someone who had made a decision and was now in the part that came after — which was always worse than making it.
She sat down next to him. Not touching. Just adjacent.
He didn't say anything for a while. She didn't ask.
"I'm learning new material," he said eventually.
"I know. I can hear you."
"It's different."
She looked at him sideways. He was looking at the floor, his jaw doing the thing it did when he was working something out — a slight tension, not quite a clench, like he was holding words in place until he knew which ones were right.
"Different how," she said.
"Bigger." A pause. "It's for something specific."
She waited. He didn't continue.
She would have pushed, once — would have made the silence so pointed he'd have to fill it just to make it stop. She didn't push now. She looked at her hands and let him have the quiet and thought: he'll tell me when it's real to him. When he's ready for it to be real to someone else.
She didn't know why she was so sure of this.
She was.
They sat in the hallway for another twenty minutes. He put his headphones back in. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through nothing. When she stood up to leave she didn't say goodbye — just picked up her bag — and he lifted one hand briefly without looking up.
She went home in the cold and did not think about the look on his face.
She thought about it all the way home.
In February she asked him directly.
She had lasted three weeks on patience, and she was not, fundamentally, a patient person.
They were in Studio B on a Thursday and he'd been distracted for forty minutes — running things mechanically, his attention somewhere else, the quality of presence that usually made him worth watching replaced by something effortful and closed. She watched him in the mirror for a long time.
Then she turned off her music.
"What are you auditioning for."
He stopped.
"I didn't say I was auditioning for anything."
"You've been learning material for six weeks that doesn't belong to any class here." She held his gaze in the mirror. "You learn fast. Whatever it is — you're almost ready."
He turned around and looked at her directly, not through the mirror.
She waited.
"Nizi Project," he said.
She heard the words. She understood the words.
The understanding arrived and then her brain just — held it at a distance, like something too hot to touch.
Nizi Project.
She knew what it was. She'd watched the documentary. She knew what came after it. She knew what debut meant, and Korea, and contract, and all the words that sat behind those words in a long quiet chain.
"When," she said.
"The audition was in December."
"You've been—" She stopped. "In December."
"I didn't want to say anything if I didn't get through."
"Did you get through."
"I'm still waiting."
She turned back to the mirror. Her own face looked strange to her — too still, too arranged. She picked up her water bottle, drank from it, put it back down.
"Are you going to get through."
A pause.
"Yes," he said. Like it was just a fact. Like it was just the clock.
She nodded once. Picked up her phone. Plugged it into the stereo and turned the music up and went back to work, and he stood at the edge of the room for a moment and then he went back to his own.
Neither of them said anything else for the rest of the night.
She went home and sat on her bed and thought: Korea.
She thought: of course.
She didn't sleep well. She didn't say this to anyone.
He called her on a Tuesday in March at eleven forty-seven pm.
She was awake — she'd known, somehow, in the vague anticipatory way of waiting for something without being willing to name it, that she should stay awake.
She picked up before the second ring.
"I got in," he said.
She didn't say anything.
"Are you there."
"I'm here."
"I got in."
His voice was different. Not louder, not higher — she couldn't have named the difference except that it was there, something underneath the words she'd never heard from him before. Like a door that had always been closed was standing open and he was still deciding whether to go through it.
"When did you find out," she said.
"Twenty minutes ago."
She pressed her phone harder against her ear. Outside her window the street was quiet, orange-lit, empty. She could hear him breathing.
"Say something," he said.
"I'm thinking."
"You're being weird."
"I'm thinking," she said, sharper.
Then she exhaled. Pulled her knees up to her chest.
"When do you leave."
"Six weeks."
"Six weeks."
"Yeah."
"And training, how long is—"
"I don't know yet. However long it takes."
"That's not an answer."
"I know." A pause. "It's what I have."
She was quiet. The math was doing itself in her head whether she wanted it to or not — six weeks, then training, then debut, then a career built somewhere that was not here, in a language that was not hers, in a life she had no map for.
The distance between six weeks and forever was not as large as it should have been.
"Are your parents—"
"They know. We talked before I called you."
She noticed this — that he had called her second only to his parents. She filed it somewhere she wasn't going to look at directly tonight.
"You're really going," she said.
"Yeah."
A beat.
"I still think your eight count is late."
He laughed — sudden and real — and it cracked something loose in her chest that she hadn't realized was braced. She pressed her hand flat against her sternum like she could hold it.
"Come over," she said.
She hadn't planned to say it.
A pause.
"It's almost midnight."
"I know what time it is."
Another pause. She could hear him thinking.
Then: "Okay."
He knocked at twelve-twenty.
She'd pulled on a hoodie and unlocked the door downstairs and sat on the front step in the cold, and when she saw him coming down the street — hands in his pockets, breath visible in the March air, face doing that thing where it wasn't showing anything — she stood up.
He stopped in front of her.
They looked at each other under the orange light.
He opened his mouth.
She hit him. Flat-palmed, hard, on the chest — not playful, not a joke. The kind of contact that said I don't have words for this and this is all I have. He didn't move. He didn't step back. He just took it, and she kept her hand there for a second after, pressed against his sternum, feeling his heartbeat.
Which was fast.
Faster than she'd expected.
Then she stepped forward and put both arms around him and pressed her face against his shoulder and held on.
He wrapped his arms around her and held on back. Tight — tighter than she'd expected, tighter than felt like something you could call casual. Tight in the way of someone who didn't know how to say something so they were saying it with their hands instead.
She felt him exhale against her hair, long and slow, like he'd been holding it.
They stood on the step in the cold and didn't say anything.
The street was empty. Somewhere down the block a door opened and closed. A car turned at the end of the road, its headlights sweeping briefly across the pavement, and then it was gone.
She thought: six weeks.
She thought: I'm going to miss him in a way I haven't built words for yet.
She didn't say any of this. She just held on, and he held on back, and the night sat around them quiet and cold and full of everything that was about to change.
After a while she said, into his shoulder: "If you get lazy in Korea I will find out."
He made a sound that was almost a laugh.
"I know," he said.
She didn't let go.
He didn't either.
The city hummed around them, indifferent and lit. Neither of them moved toward the future yet.
Chapter One was definitely the hardest to write 😭 not because it was confusing, but because it had to live up to everything the synopsis was already hyping up. I rewrote that first scene more times than I’d like to admit (and I still might tweak it later… no promises 😌).
I hope what shows isn’t the struggle—but the care, the obsession, and a little bit of love I kept pouring into every version of it 💛✨
This chapter has been heavily edited for clarity (Grammarly is on a mission, apparently 😭). If anything feels overly polished, that’s why—hope you still enjoy it anyway ✨
<- sypnosis
Chapter 1: Wrong Foot.
The studio smelled like sweat and rosin and the particular staleness of a room that had been breathed in too many times. The kind of smell you stopped noticing after your first month and started missing the moment you left. Studio B was the smallest practice room in the academy — four cracked mirrors along one wall, a stereo older than most of its students, and a floor that warmed under your feet in winter and turned slippery in summer no matter how often the staff mopped it. It was nobody's favorite room. That was why the serious ones always ended up there.
It was a Tuesday in September, quarter past six in the evening, and Fukuoka was going amber outside the single high window. The city's light came in sideways at that hour, cutting across the floor in long bars, catching every particle of dust that practice had kicked up. The overhead fluorescents buzzed the way they always did — a thin, persistent sound underneath everything, like the building itself was concentrating.
Tomoya had been there since five.
He was eleven years old and already the kind of dancer that made people uncomfortable in the quiet way talent sometimes did — not loud about it, not performing for anyone, just precise in a way that looked effortless and wasn't. He was running a piece that belonged to someone else. He'd memorized it from the spring recital three months ago, watched the recording until the movements stopped being something he saw and started being something he knew. He ran it clean. Arm lines correct, timing exact, face neutral the way it always was when he was working — not blank, just internal, like the thinking was happening somewhere too deep to surface.
He didn't hear the door open over the music.
"That's mine."
He stopped.
She was standing in the doorway with her dance bag on one shoulder and her hair half-escaping its tie, still in her school uniform because she'd come straight from class. She was breathing slightly harder than normal — she'd been rushing, though she'd never say so. Her eyes went to him first, then to the stereo, then back to him, and something shifted in her jaw that wasn't quite anger yet but was getting there fast.
He recognized her. Vaguely. She'd performed at the spring recital — the piece he'd just been dancing. He'd watched her from the third row and thought the transition in the second chorus was unfinished, which was true, and that the rest of it was very good, which was also true and which he had not planned to mention.
"I know," he said.
It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it was the wrong thing to say approximately half a second after saying it, which was not fast enough.
"You—" She stepped into the room and let the door fall shut behind her. The latch clicked. "You just took it. You took my choreography and you're in here dancing it like—"
"I learned it," he said. "You performed it in front of an audience. I was in the audience."
"That's not—" She stopped. Pressed her lips together. Started again. "That is not how that works."
"Why not?"
"Because I made it. It's not a song you can just cover, it came out of me, it's—" She exhaled through her nose, sharp and short, the sound of someone who had prepared for a different argument. "You don't just take someone's choreography."
He looked at her steadily. He had, his mother often said, a way of being looked at that felt like being measured. It was not a comfortable quality in an eleven-year-old.
"The transition in the second chorus is messy," he said.
The silence that followed had weight and edges.
She crossed the room in nine steps, plugged her phone into the stereo, and pulled up her music. Her hands were steady. He noticed that. She turned to face him with her chin level and her eyes flat in the particular way of someone who has decided that composure is a weapon.
"Then watch what it's supposed to look like," she said.
He almost said something. He didn't.
He moved to the edge of the room and watched.
She ran it four times before she stopped.
The first time was sharp — too sharp, overworked at the edges, every movement pressed harder than it needed to be. She was performing for him in the way people performed when they were furious and trying to prove something, and it showed. The second run was better, some of the tension bleeding out into actual movement. By the third she'd mostly forgotten he was there, or she was pretending well enough that it amounted to the same thing, and the piece opened up the way it must have before she'd had to put it onstage and make it mean something in front of people.
By the fourth time, he could see it — what she'd been reaching for. The transition clicked into something different. Not the way he'd been doing it. Her way. The version that had always been underneath.
She stopped. Breathing audible now, chest moving. She pushed the hair back from her face and turned to look at him with an expression that very clearly did not want to ask what it was about to ask.
He saved her the trouble.
"The weight shift," he said. "You were trying to move through it instead of landing first."
A pause. She was deciding something.
"I know," she said.
"You didn't at the recital."
"I know that too." Her voice was flat. "You can leave now."
"I booked the room until seven."
"You—" She blinked. "I booked this room."
"Until six. It's six twenty-three." He said it without satisfaction, which was somehow worse than if he'd been smug about it. Just a fact. Just the clock. "I had it reserved after you."
She stared at him. He stared back. Outside, a car horn somewhere on the street below. The fluorescent buzz.
"What's your name," she said. Not a question. More like she was filing something.
"Tomoya."
She looked at him for another moment — cataloguing, he thought, the same way he'd catalogued her — and then she turned back to the mirror and started the music again.
She didn't give him her name.
He stayed at the edge of the room and watched the transition, again and again, until he understood what she'd changed.
By November they hated each other properly.
It had developed the way these things do between people who are too evenly matched to be comfortable — gradually, then all at once, accumulating in small frictions until the friction was its own kind of structure. They were in the same advanced class on Wednesdays. They were considered, by the instructors, the two strongest in their age group. The instructors said this the way people say things they think are compliments and are not, because what it meant in practice was that every correction given to one of them landed on the other like a comparison, and every piece of praise sat between them like a thing they'd have to fight over.
She was technically cleaner. Everyone agreed on this — her lines sharper, her timing more reliable, the kind of dancer who made teachers exhale with relief because she wouldn't embarrass anyone. She worked for it. Arrived early, stayed late, drilled combinations until the muscle memory was so deep it didn't feel like memory anymore. She took notes in a small notebook with a red cover that she kept in the front pocket of her dance bag. She had never, not once, written down a note about Tomoya. This was a choice she made deliberately and revisited constantly.
He had something she didn't have a clean word for. A quality in the movement — not sloppiness, not carelessness, more like he moved as if the music was gravity and he was falling into it. It made people watch him in a way that technical precision alone didn't always manage. She knew this the same way she knew the transition had been wrong at the recital: she didn't want to know it, and she knew it anyway.
He found her irritating in a different way. She was the kind of person who was always right on the edge of being right, always almost-correct in a way that felt designed to make him second-guess himself. She picked at his work the way you'd pick at a knot — not destructively, just persistently — and the worst part was that she was usually onto something. The dropped shoulder in October. The way he was overusing his upper body in December, putting expression in his arms when it should have been in his feet. She mentioned these things once, flatly, without turning it into a lesson, and then she went back to her own work as if she'd said nothing significant.
He mentioned her technical corrections to no one.
She mentioned his observations to no one.
They did not discuss this policy. It existed anyway.
In class, they were professional in the steely way of people competing for the same prize. Polite in front of the instructors. Brief with each other outside of necessity. When they were assigned a paired section in the winter showcase, they stood next to each other in front of the mirror for three minutes without speaking, both of them looking at their own reflection, before she said fine, I'll take the left side and he said I was going to say the same thing and she said no you weren't and he said I was and the rehearsal did not improve significantly from there.
They did it eight more times. By the ninth rehearsal it was sharp and exact and something you could feel in the room when they danced together — that specific energy of two people who know each other too well and will not say so.
The instructors called it chemistry.
Neither of them acknowledged this.
What they did not talk about — not to each other, not to anyone — was Studio B.
Tuesdays and Thursdays, after the scheduled classes, after the younger kids had gone home and the building went quiet. They ended up there the way water ends up level: without deciding to, without a conversation, through some accumulating gravity neither of them examined too closely. She was always first. He was always ten minutes behind. They did not share music. They did not narrate what they were working on. They practiced in parallel, two people in the same small room with their own problems to solve, and sometimes a correction happened and sometimes it didn't and both of them pretended this was nothing, just convenience, just two people who happened to be serious about the same thing.
She told herself she didn't look forward to Tuesdays.
He told himself the same thing about Thursdays.
Both of them were lying, but the lie was easy enough to maintain because they never had to say it out loud — never had to hold it up to the light and look at it, where it might have become something harder to explain.
So they kept it small. Kept it Studio B and corrections and the particular charged silence of rivals who'd learned each other's rhythms without meaning to. Kept it the cold nights and the fluorescent buzz and the way the mirrors fogged at the edges when it rained and they'd been in there long enough that their breath had changed the air.
Kept it at arm's length, where it was still safe to call it nothing.
Neither of them were very good at nothing. But they were both, in their way, very good at pretending.
author's note: I really hope you do appreciate this. Like and reblogs are always appreciated. Send an ask or reply to be added to the series taglist.
Fun fact, this song got me into kpop (ok well actually it was LOONA’s cover of this song, but same difference)
Yu would’ve been like 11 when this came out, and knowing how much he likes BTS i’m so emo picturing tiny baby Yu learning the dance and not knowing he’d be doing it in front of his own fans one day
finally stayed true to myself and wrote a NEXZ fic.
Angst isn’t usually my thing, so this one took a lot out of me to write. I still tried my best with it, even when it didn’t come easily.
If it makes you feel something… anything… then I think I did it right. (I definitely cried while writing it, so fair warning.)
sypnosis:
they grew up dancing together in japan.
two stubborn kids who never agreed on anything
except the fact that neither of them was ever wrong.
sharp arguments. stolen practice rooms.
silent competitions that somehow always turned into something more
and then he left.
Tomoya auditioned for Nizi Project, debuted in NEXZ, and moved to korea.
and somehow… the fighting stopped.
but not the connection.
instead of arguments in empty studios, there were late-night calls.
instead of rivalry, there were stories.
brutal training. endless repetition. a city that never slowed down.
you listened.
and slowly, without meaning to, you started dreaming too.
so you left japan.
not for him—never that simple.
but because something in his voice made perfection feel… possible somewhere else.
seoul wasn’t easy.
but he was there.
he helped you learn the language.
showed you how to survive on instant ramen and sleepless practice nights.
stood beside you in empty studios where time didn’t matter anymore.
two workaholics.
two different paths.
same obsession with never being average
and somewhere between exhaustion and routine…
you became each other’s anchor point.
not loud. not dramatic.
just… necessary
and maybe that was worse.
because now, the boy you once argued with every day
is the only person who makes your heart forget its rhythm
SYNOPSIS: getting soaked (🤨) at the amusement park was on your 2026 bucket list, but somehow it brings you a cute pink-haired boy that also got soaked from the same ride! how possible is it that this same boy can score a date with you?
WC: 6K+ (the way this was supposed to be only 1K max...)
WARNINGS: secondhand embarassement (yes this is a warning), teasing, light swearing... ALSO EUNCHAE IS UR BSF HERE!!! we love eunchae in this house.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: OMG I LOVE TOMOYA BUT I LOVE YU....BUT HARU....THEN THEN SEITA....OMG YUKI.....HYUI AAAAAAAAAA BUT GEON, in conclusion i love nexz. so i decided to write this for the community!!!
“Y/N, that’s really not a good idea…” Your best friend, Eunchae, said, her eyes widening at the sight of the speedy boat approaching the deck you were standing on.
And she stepped backwards to avoid the water.
“You don’t get it! This is the most amazing part of the whole park!”
Yet, you barely had time to finish your sentence before a cold tsunami crested the barrier separating the ride from the rest of the park and crashed down on you.
You let out a loud shriek; you were dying of laughter as you threw your hands up in a futile attempt to shield yourself, but the water soaked into your clothes in barely five seconds.
In front of you was Eunchae, taking stupid pictures of everything, the ride, and you, bursting out in laughter as you wiped a bunch of wet locks out of your face, tucked them behind your ear, and looked over at the rest of the deck, just to notice that you weren’t the only one who was in the mercy of the merciless tsunami.
A few feet away from you, you heard that undeniable breathless laughter that you commonly shared with Eunchae when everything was going comically amazing.
It was a guy with a dripping, oversized t-shirt and a silver chain plastered to his now-exposed collarbone.
His pink hair was completely soaked, with a few strands sticking to his forehead, and he looked really excited as he lifted his head to catch his breath and look at his friends.
“THE EXTREME SPLASH SIGN IS RIGHT THERE!” One of the guys in his friend group shouted, he looked hot-tempered but the cutest, “AND YOUR GROWN ASS DECIDED TO GET WET!”
The pink-haired guy groaned as his face was delighted in a huge grin despite the icy water that dripped down his chin. He turned to his friend and shot him gun fingers as he threw an exasperated look at him, “Chill, Haru, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and I could dry up easily! It’s supposed to be fun!”
Haru (who you supposed to be the one with the shortest hair) clicked his tongue before letting a smile creep up to his face, and that made the pink har guy laugh, though he shivered as a drop rolled down the back of his neck.
As he laughed, he noticed you wringing out the hem of your sleeve with a huge smile on your face, and you tucked another stray lock behind your ear as you talked to Eunchae.
And then your eyes landed on him once again, and his teasing smirk softened into something curious and genuine; his hair colour and his flashy grin immediately caught your eye.
“Huh, Huh? What’s this? Why’s he coming this way?!” Eunchae exclaimed suddenly, and you hid your face in shyness. Why is he coming this way, indeed?
You froze as the sound of the wet footsteps approached your figure on the deck, and through the stray pieces that you failed to tuck behind your ear, you watched as the pink-haired guy casually…skipped (?) his way over to where you and Eunchae were standing, seeming unbothered by the fact that his shirt was literally glued to his body.
“Y/N, this is your chance at having your cute k-drama moment,” Eunchae whispered, her voice filled with enthusiasm and mischief as she nudged your arm, and that made you feel a warm blush rise up to your cheeks.
But before you could retreat or even run from your destined fate, a shadow loomed over you.
“Hey,” a voice so bright and genuine called out, and you had to finally face the boy standing right in front of you with a huge grin, despite his wet clothes, his energy dried it all up with how warm it felt. “You look like a wet rat.”
You let out an offended gasp as you breathlessly laughed, “Hey, that’s mean to say to a girl!”
Tomoya’s eyes widened all of a sudden as he held his hands up in surrender, chuckling at the failed attempt of mocking you.
“Oh, no, wait! I swear I didn’t mean it like that—!” He defended himself, flashing that same smile that actually drove you insane.
He ran a hand through his soaked pink hair, sending a few droplets to the already wet deck, “I meant it in the most endearing and cute way possible! We’re both soaked, right?”
“I mean, yeah…” You replied as you let out a futile sigh.
“Then, I’m Tomoya!” He grinned for the nth time that day as he looked back at his friends than at you, “Nice to meet you!”
Eunchae watched both of you, nudging your ribs with her elbow once again just to remind you that she was always there, but still, you couldn’t tear your eyes away from his presence and that cute smile of his.
And as if his non-existent tail wagged in excitement, you forgot to introduce yourself, and that embarrassed you. “Oh, right, I’m Y/N!”
“Y/N,” He said, as if he were trying how your name would roll off his tongue, “That’s a nice name.”
“Yours too, I guess?” You scoffed, and he giggled.
“Matches your drip, too,” he added with a wink, gesturing between his damp hair and yours, and that made you actually laugh genuinely at a guy’s joke.
“TOMOYAAAAAAAA!” Haru yelled from a few feet away, “STOP FLIRTING WITH PRETTY GIRLS AND LET US EAT!” He tried to wring out his own wet shirt with pure annoyance drawn on his face while the other guys hysterically laughed at him.
Tomoya didn’t even bother turning around; he just waved a hand dismissively in their direction as he tilted his head, “They’re just hangry; they always get this cranky when they’re out of food.” He whispered to you, leaning just a little bit closer, and he smiled really nicely.
A hint of citrus cologne clung to him along with the chlorine water.
“So, Y/N,” he continued, his eyes crinkling shut as he smiled, “Since your friend here—Hi! I’m Tomoya!—” He waved at Eunchae, to which she awkwardly waved back, “—is a photographer. Do you think you could help me with something?”
You blinked, still confused about this whole encounter, “Um, sure? But with what?”
“A tie-breaker!”
What is a tie-breaker…?
“Haru and Hyui say I look horrible. Even though I feel like I eat every outfit up, but anyway,” He said, stepping back and turning fully to show off his ‘cool’ outfit to you, and that made you giggle, “Be honest with me, Y/N, should I go buy a souvenir jump-suit to save myself, or do I wait until all this dries up?”
Eunchae snickered at that, already raising her phone to secretly record the interaction between you, “Aw, this is so cute already!”
And that intervention made both your faces heat up.
Tomoya’s gaze stayed locked on yours as a lopsided grin widened on his face, his eyebrows wiggled as he waited for your answer, and he looked incredibly, extremely, and absolutely hopeful that your opinion would excite him.
You bit your lower lip, fighting the urge to laugh at his spinning and hopeful eyes as you looked him up and down, and to be completely fair, his outfit seemed pretty cool.
The oversized shirt was clinging to his shoulders, slightly transparent now. The silver chain caught the sunlight, and his damp pink hair honestly looked better like this.
So you went ahead as you huffed lightly.
“Want me to be completely honest?” You said, tilting your head as you took a step closer.
“Yes! I take harsh constructive criticism too!”
“If I’m being honest…”
“Yeah?” Tomoya leaned in closer, waiting with gleaming eyes for the answer he was awaiting.
“You look good.”
Tomoya’s face lit up immediately; the pure relief and joy on his visage made it seem like he had just won the lottery.
He let out a victorious laugh as he threw his head back slightly before looking down at you and smiling from ear to ear.
“GET THAT YOU HATERS!” Tomoya yelled over his shoulder as he shot a smirk toward where the rest of his friends stood, and then Haru leaned on one of the guys and gave him the middle finger.
Later on, he turned back at you, his eyes once again crinckling shut as he took another step closer to you, leaving barely any inch between you, and Eunchae in the background shrieked excitedly.
“Don’t get too confident, though!” You added, rolling your eyes playfully to hide how fast your heart was beating. “You still look like a wet penguin!”
“A wet penguin that’s stylish,thank you very very much,” Tomoya shot back and giggled as he brushed his hand over his pink hair,then he paused. His expression softening into realization, and that scared you for an instant. “You know what?”
“Yeah?” You curiously replied, “Need another evaluation, I assume?”
“Actually,” He blinked twice before continuing, eyes sparkling brighter than any star, “You guys hungry? If you don’t mind, would you both tag along with us to the food stall?”He practically jumped in his place as you smiled knowingly at him. “How about we ride the Nexz ride later too? What do you say?”
Eunchae didn’t even let you answer; she enthusiastically nudged your shoulder (which reminded you to slap her afterwards for the number of times she had nudged you that afternoon…) with a look of pure delight and excitement. “Yes,” she said immediately, “She’d—we’d love to!”
“Eunchae!” You let out a small laugh, looking up at Tomoya, then at Eunchae, “I mean…”
“Come on, Y/N, it will be really fun!” Eunchae added, and you couldn’t help but press your lips together as if you were deep in thought.
“I don’t think I can say no to food after all this, not gonna lie…”
Tomoya blinked once and then broke into that grin you’ve learned to adore. “Nice!” He said, happy with your answer.
“You owe me boba after this,” you muttered under your breath as you nudged Eunchae for the first time, and she looked at you like you'd given birth to her children.
And then, Tomoya stepped back slightly and suddenly started running in triumph to where his friends were waiting for him, “GUYS, THEY SAID YES!”
“Oh my God,” Eunchae chuckled, grabbing your arm as she also started to follow him, “He really wants that cookie, huh?”
“I can definitely see that Chae…” You couldn’t help but laugh at his antics, because, why not? What could this mysterious yet excited Tomoya bring to you today?
Then came the afternoon sun that tried it’s best to dry up your clothes, leaving you to shiver afterwards to the small breeze that passed by, but still, you felt really warm.
And it was entirely thanks to Tomoya’s radiating energy that made you realize, he’s not as bad as half.
“Guys! We have a plan!” Tomoya shouted, and Haru simply slapped his forehead in disbelief while the others also groaned.
“Please, don’t do anything that’s too crazy.” One of the guys said, As you got closer, you noticed how tall he was, “Or else I’ll throw you into the sky.”
“Seita, relax.” Tomoya replied, “I swear I won’t do anything that’s too crazy…perhaps…”
“MOYA!” All of them cried out, and that made you and Eunchae lose your minds from how funny it was.
Tomoya then gestured back at both of you with a huge grin, “We’re going to the giant snack bar next to the REAL NEXZ ride, they have the craziest churros and fries combo ever!”
“Sure, but can I get to know the company first? It’d be weird if we were just with you, not knowing who we are with.” Eunchae leaned in, holding your arm as you both of you waved at the group of men in front of you.
“Then, as the leader of the group—”
“You’re not the leader—”
“ANYWAY!”Tomoya clapped his hands together, glaring right back at one of the guys who just snickered at his teasing, ”Let’s do the proper introductions!”
And you’ve started to notice how his pink hair has started to dry up with the sun’s warmth, his grin still on his face as he went to Haru.
“This, girls, is the loud yelling one, who always acts like a zombie when he’s hungry!” Tomoya chuckled as Haru jammed his elbow in his chest, “That’s Haru, he’s really nice though!”
Haru let out a scoff in annoyance, though a small smile crept onto his face as he gave a nod in your direction, to which you waved back.
“And this guy who just threatened to throw me into the sky is our lovely Seita,” Tomoya continued, pointing to the tall boy who had just spoken up, and Seita smiled at you, “Don’t worry, he only says that because he loves me.”
“I really don’t,” Seita whispered to you, and Eunchae doubled in laughter because it was so funny. “Nice to meet you both, I’m Seita.”
“And then,” Tomoya pointed to another blond guy, who gave you a sweet smile and a small wave, “This is Yuhi, but we call him Hyui! He’s really sweet and will be the only responsible guy who would match any of your freaks immediately!”
“Hey,” He smiled at Eunchae, then at you, “Nice to meet you, and ignore his ass for the meanwhile, he just feels like this whenever he sees something he likes.”
“You mean, someone—” Haru coughed, and Tomoya jabbed him in the rib.
“Anyway! Over here is the eldest Yu, our founding father, the greatest grandpa, the most fit guy in the group, and the one who’s scared of really scary places or things!” Tomoya finished, pointing straight to a quieter guy who stood near the edge of the group, trying his best to look nonchalant.
Yu let out a small laugh at whatever Tomoya had said, running a hand through his hair and offering a polite smile that contrasted with his sharp body features, “For the love of God, ignore what he just said. I’m barely a year older than him.”
“Yeah, whatever you say you crow, anyway, that’s Geon right there! And he’s the one who double-dared me into jumping in the water.” Tomoya added, laughing as he pushed Geon’s shoulder gently, to which the latter returned with a sassy eyeroll, “Go die or something, I didn’t think you’d actually do it!”
“Geon, please, in what world do you think I wouldn’t do that?” Tomoya whined, though his pout lasted only for a second before returning to his flashy grin, “And the best for last!”
“Best for last? I see how it is.” Yu muttered as he glared at Tomoya’s smily face.
“Best for last, is me! Hey, hey! I’m Yuki!” The smaller boy announced, and you were awed in cuteness; he was super adorable. “Nice to meet you!”
“Hey, Yuki!” Eunchae replied, “Nice to meet you, too!”
You then leaned against her arm, your shoulders shaking with giggles as you watched the seven boys just roast each other, and you felt Eunchae nudge your ribs again for the nth time, her eyes gleaming with a clear message that screamed, ‘I told you so!’
You felt a warm blush creep up your neck, but you couldn’t help but think how amazing this day would be…of course, other than your wet clothes.
“Well, it’s really nice to meet all of you. I'm Y/N, and she’s Eunchae, my dearest. It’s lovely seeing you guys!” You said, offering everyone of them a wave, “Even if Moya, right here, is trying to make us all get super soaked.”
“Hey, Y/N!” Tomoya giggled as he tried hiding his blushing face, “I’m not that evil!”
And without missing a beat, he snatched a jacket Yu was holding and gently draped it over your shoulders.
The fabric was still warm from the sun and Yu’s hold, and it smelled like citrus cologne. You let out a soft gasp, surprised by the gesture, and pulled the oversized sleeves over your wet body, “What a gentleman!” You shrieked out, to which Tomoya returned with a small tilt of his head.
“You’re going to freeze to death if you stay in those wet clothes while we walk to the food stall,” he replied, his teasing smirk slowly faded into a genuine smile, and you noticed that his pink hair had almost dried up, and slightly became fluffy from the breeze as it fell perfectly on his forehead.
“Moya Moya Tomoya, why did you take my jacket? To flirt with it? You’re not slick!’ Yu asked, though he didn’t seem annoyed or angry, just amused by the fact that Tomoya was seriously straightforward. He crossed his arms as he raised his eyebrows in interest.
“I’m not slick, I did it because, as Y/N said, I’m a gentleman!” The pink-haired boy shot back, sticking his tongue out at the older boy before ignoring him and looking right back at you, his eyes shut close again as he smiled, and Eunchae leaned against your side even more, letting out a sigh that was loud enough for the whole group to hear, “Oh, Sir Tomoya! The chivalry! I am utterly bereft of consciousness upon beholding this unprecedented spectacle!”
“What the hell,” you cackled as the rest of the group laughed, your face flushed into a color deeper than Tomoya’s pink hair, pulling the jacket tighter around your shoulders as you ducked your head slightly, looking up to smile at him.
“Thank you, Tomoya,” You murmured, your voice way too soft and delicate.
“Anytime, Y/N.” He replied, taking a fraction of a step closer to you, making the space between you and him practically invisible.
“Okay, you lovebirds,” Haru cut in flatly, grabbing Tomoya by the collar and yanking him back, “We’re starving. Let’s fricking go.”
Tomoya stumbled back with a laugh, not even resisting, “You’re so dramatic, it’s insane how annoying you are, man.”
“So, Haru shot back. “Look at me and tell me if I give a fuck.”
“Hmm,” Tomoya looked at Haru’s annoyed face, “Nah.”
“Then, let’s GO EAT!”
✿
At the food stall, there was pure chaos; everybody argued over everything, even you and Eunchae.
“Yo, guys! Let’s pause the whole bickering stuff and sit, reflect, and THEN! Order!” Tomoya announced, leaning against the plastic railing of the stall, he turned to you, “And you too, Y/N! Just because you’re really cute, I won’t let you off the hook!”
Everybody groaned in annoyance, and your heart beat faster at his unbelievably flirty words, because who would just say that?
And that casually?
And what would you even reply to that?
And as soon as you started to register the fact that Eunchae heard his teasing remark, she shrieked, jumping up and down excitedly, “Oh my GOD! He didn’t!”
“Chae, shut up!” You whispered, trying to keep your composure, but your face didn’t help your situation at all.
“Shameless as hell,” Yu muttered under his breath, being the second victim to hear Tomoya’s remarks to you. But he just passed by you, smirking as he searched for empty seats.
“I’m sick to my stomach,” Seita added as he tagged along with Yu. “Get me out of here asap.”
And what was worse, is that Tomoya did’t even dare bother looking a teeny bit apologetic, he just shot Seita and Yu a pathetic and dramatic look as he pushed both of them to nowhere in particular.
“You wound me, both. I’m sorry that you don’t pull girls like me!” Tomoya whispered, though, right now, his cheeks flushed with a hue that matched his hair, and his eyes immediately returned to yours, waiting for a reply.
“Eunchae. I’m going to rnf you, don’t even say a word right now!” You hissed, wincing at how your body decided to send your face into a heated radiation that was obviously visible.
Hyui and Yuki walked up to the counter, grabbing three menus as they looked to you, laughing and giggling at their friend’s tactics.
The blond held out one of the menus toward you, still smiling as he said, “Here,” he said kindly, “before he says something worse.”
“I heard that, Hyui!” Tomoya yelled from where he was pushing Yu and Seita to newfound empty seats.
“Whatever, we finally found seats!” Haru called out, gesturing for you to sit down.
You let out a breathy laugh, sighing in the process as you grabbed Eunchae’s hand and took the laminated menu from Hyui, nodding in gratitude, “Thank you, Hyui, our actual lifesaver.”
“I try my best,” He chuckled, leaning as he glared at Tomoya, who was currently being manhandled on the table by Yu, “Otherwise, the rest of the boys, other than Seita, would’ve been getting kicked out.”
You walked over to the table with Eunchae, still feeling slightly wet, but drier than before. As you sat down on the wooden bench next to your best friend, and well, Tomoya somehow, that just so happened to slide next to you, the gap between you was almost non-existent, and that same smell that lingered in the air seemed to cling to you more than him.
“Alright, let’s talk important stuff now,” Tomoya spoke, leaning over the table with a menu in hand, propping his chin on his palm, and looking straight at you, then at Eunchae, and then the rest of the guys. “Are we going with the fries or the churros or both?”
“Both,” you said, tilting your head, “It’s only reasonable to mix salty and sweet for nine people.”
“This is exactly why I—” He beamed, before quickly shying out, “I—I mean, yeah! Exactly!”
“Tomoya,” Geon called out, and the older one ignored him, looking at the menu instead to hide the blush that crept up his face.
“Classic cinnamon sugar churros and chocolate-loaded fries? Or do you guys have anything else to recommend?” He added.
Geon leaned over the table, snatching the menu right out of Tomoya’s hands like he was personally offended.
“First of all,” he said, scanning it quickly, “you don’t get to ask us, you commit to the menu. Get both and stop acting like this is a life decision.”
“Thank you,” Haru added,“Finally, someone with sense.”
“Hyui, NO!” Yuki whispered, slightly shaking Hyui’s shoulders because he was stealing fries from another table, “Are you that desperate?!”
Hyui shrugged, completely unbothered by the fact that somebody saw him in the act, “Hey, I mean, it’s not stealing if they’re just leaving it there for the flies!”
“Hyui, you idiot, you’re going to get us banned from this park!” Yu sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose in complete defeat, trying his best to keep his calm composure, but it was impossible since you burst out laughing.
Tomoya took the opportunity to lean in even closer to you, “You see what I have to deal with?” He whispered, nudging his shoulder playfully against your small ones, “It’s a miracle that we’re even alive.”
“Oh, please!” Eunchae chimed in, leaning against the other side of your shoulder to push you closer to Tomoya, “You’re saying this as if you are the most sane one here!”
“Eunchae…” Tomoya gasped, clutching his (pearls) chest in offense, “I thought we had something!”
“Sure you do,” You chuckled, shaking your head in disbelief, “That’s why everybody, especially Haru, groans whenever you wanna do something.”
Geon, in the meantime, had gone to the cashier and ordered, splayed his limbs across the table as he cheered loudly, “Thanks for paying Moya!”
“Wait, what—” Tomoya blinked, his jaw dropping as he frantically searched for his wallet, “Since when did I agree to pay for you guys?!” He protested, pouting, before snatching the receipt from Geon’s wavering hands.
“How much is it?” You asked, and he gasped as he looked at the final price of everything, slowly crushing the paper in his hand before muttering,
“Two hundred. You are the worst.”
“Since you decided to shamelessly flirt with Y/N in front of all of us,” Yu said, smirking as he stretched his arms, “Consider that as tax for embarrassing all of us and making us feel single.”
“That’s so right,” Eunchae agreed, folding her arms and nodding, “It’s too much for our eyes to see a lovey-dovey couple in the matter of an hour!”
“We aren’t—”
“Y/N and I aren’t like that—”
And then did the rest of the table erupt into laughter, Haru being the loudest one of them all.
“W-We aren’t like that!” He protested, his cheeks turning a fresh round of pink. “…yet.”
He whispered that part so sneakily that only you and Eunchae heard it, and you knew you were so cooked because she wouldn’t let this go. “You guys heard that, right? He literally said yet, man's plotting.”
“Chae, holy shit! Oh my God, stop!” You hissed again at her teasing remarks, ducking your head to hide your heating face behind the jacket that Tomoya offered you.
“Did I say that?” He replied to Eunchae, “I never did. What are you on?”
“Yeah, whatever, get married already, OH MY GOOD, FOOD’S HERE!” Haru dismissed the topic completely as soon as he saw the three full plates of chocolate-loaded fries and churros being carried over by the server.
His eyes widened as he immediately thanked the attendant and smiled enthusiastically, focusing entirely on the food in front of him, along with Yuki and Hyui, whose wrists were slapped instantly by Yu and Seita.
“Ladies first, you guys!” Yu said, trying to look as stern as possible, “How could you let Moya be more gentleman than you two?”
And those words piqued Tomoya’s interest. He puffed out his chest in a mocking way and placed his hands on his hips as he annoyingly said, “Exactly! Thank you, Yuyu! Take notes from me, you suckers!”
“Oh, shut up!” Haru groaned, rolling his eyes, even if there was a hint of genuine laughter bubbling up in his face, “Don’t let it get to your head!”
"The jacket looks better on her anyway," Tomoya shot back, turning his gaze back to you. He was literally trying to rizz you up with every single attempt possible, and it worked every single time, ugh!
“Are you going to eat all this, or are you gonna stare at me all day?” You peeked out from behind the jacket to finally look at him, trying your best to distract him from just staring at you.
And that made Tomoya freeze for a second, before scoffing and grabbing a fry just to munch on it and ignore how red his ears became.
“Okay, enough,” Yu cut in, sliding one of the trays slightly toward you and Eunchae, “ladies first.”
“Thank you, sir Yu!” Eunchae smiled as she took a chocolate fry, nudging you to take one too. You nodded in gratitude before letting out a satisfied hum at the delicious taste.
“Okay, this actually tastes insane,” Eunchae said, already taking a second bite and melting instantly, “Oh my God!”
“RIGHT?!” Tomoya perked up again, turning toward you, pushing the tray next to you as if your reaction mattered more than anyone else’s, “Try it, try it! It’s really awesome, what the hell?! ”
“I am, I am!” you said between a laugh, taking a bite. “You’re so right, I’m—woah!”
Your eyes gleamed up at how amazing the second bite tasted better than the first, and so did Tomoya’s eyes. Because the second he noticed you actually sparkling in joy, he did too.
“I’m such a genius!” He exclaimed, finally stretching his arms in the air, “It’s super good!”
“Relax, you idiot. It was literally the standard pick on the menu!” Geon replied, already devouring half of the churros with the help of Seita and Yuki. “And don’t do what I’m thinking you’re going to do! AND STOP TAKING FROM MY SIDE!” he snapped, shielding the churros like his life depended on it.
“It’s SHARED!” Yuki shot back, already halfway through another one.
“What?” Tomoya smirked, gently laying his arm on your shoulders, and that made you jump from the sudden proximity. How bold is this guy, really?!
You froze for a split second as your eyes widened and your heart did the craziest backflip. It felt insane yet so natural, like his arm always belonged there.
And that action caught Eunchae so off guard that she choked over a small chocolate fry, to which Hyui offered a small napkin, and you shot her a desperate pleading look that shouted, ‘DO NOT BRING THIS UP!’ But even if it was surprising to you, you didn’t pull away.
“Moya. I swear on your life, if you make a scene,” Seita warned, pointing his half-churro at him as if it were a gun, “I’ll ruin your day and even your life. We are eating in peace, and you’re trying your weird flirting skills on the poor girl, leave her alone!”
“No right, like show us some respect,” Geon added, even though his puppy energy radiated in the atmosphere (?), “like bro, we’re eating, please.”
Tomoya ignored every single one of them, turning his head to get closer to you, “You guys are mad, ‘cause you don’t get game! Sucks to be you, you losers!”
“I’m perfectly fine and happy,” Seita replied, shaking his head in disbelief as a smile cracked through his face, “I’d rather watch this newfound couple, anyway.”
“How many times should I remind you, guys!” You spoke out, “We’re not a couple! We just met like an hour ago!”
Haru, with your words, let out the craziest hysterical laugh ever, throwing his head back and slapping the table while he choked on the churro he was eating, “I can’t—I can’t!”
“Friendzoned, dude. You’re absolutely cooked.” Yuki chuckled, shaking a middle finger in front of his face as he stuck out his tongue in mockery, “That’s actually bad. Like reaaaaally bad.”
“Guys, just, you know what? Fuck every single one of you, except the girls!” Tomoya pouted, rolling his eyes playfully.
Yu folded his arms, leaning against the back of the bench. “Well, you heard the lady. An hour is barely enough time to figure out who’s gonna get asked out by the ahjummas, let alone anything else.”
“Thank you, Yu!” You sighed, though you leaned in closer to where Tomoya was, and you felt his breath hitch at your sudden closeness.
You were doomed, like actually doomed.
Whatever, you don’t even remember anything else afterwards, because all you did was devour the churros and fries, roast the guys, laugh and giggle, and then get food coma with Eunchae.
And the main thing that was stuck in your memory was that Tomoya clung to you like a magnet.
Much, much later, the sun had dipped just enough to cast long, golden streaks and shadows across the amusement park, painting the sky in blue, pink, and yellow hues.
You were still wearing the jacket that Tomoya gave you, even if you were fully dried up, and you lay on the table, with a hand over your stomach and the other on your hair.
“Food coma,” You groaned, and everybody agreed.
“Worth it, I say it was all good to be fair,” Hyui added, and Tomoya groaned loudly at that.
“It was not worth two hundred. Get out.”
“Cry about it,” Haru intervened, making everybody lazily laugh about it, but the thing was, everybody looked extremely tired and done for that you started to doubt wether they would be able to even finish half the rides in this park.
It was really worth it, tough. But you weren’t going to admit that to Tomoya, not anytime soon…
Haru’s head was resting directly on his forearms, as his eyes were closed. Seita was leaning against the back of the bench, softly humming a tune while staring off into space and thinking, and even Yu looked like he needed a fat nap. Meanwhile, you rested your cheek against the cool wooden table, your left hand tangled in the fluffy pink fabric of Tomoya’s hair, absentmindedly petting it as he pouted with his head practically resting on your shoulder.
“If we don’t move or do something in the next few minutes,” Eunchae mumbled from the seat next to you, dragging open her eyes, “we’re actually doomed, we’re gonna sleep right here until the security searches for us like those three am YouTube videos.”
“Eunchae’s right,” Seita agreed, returning to the real world, “Moya Moya Tomoya, we need to decide if we go to that wet ride again or do another one.”
Tomoya groaned, “I don’t wanna get wet again; I’ve reached my peak.”
“Would you look at that?” You laughed, “The all-mighty Tomoya has finally reached tiredness, crazy.”
“You’re really bad, Y/N!” Tomoya whined, and you pulled his hair with your fist, making him slap your hand away.
“I know, I’m the baddest.” And Eunchae high-fived you in agreement.
Tomoya huffed, rubbing the spot you just pulled, though he didn’t even try to move away from you. Instead, he leaned in closer until his entire visage was on your shoulder, using it like a pillow, “You’re lucky you’re cute, or else I would’ve kicked you.” He grumbled, though he was smiling.
“It felt necessary,” you replied, dragging out your voice into a yawn, and Yu let out a long sigh before standing up and startling everybody.
“Let’s go to the Nexzu ride?” He suggested, “It’d be better than actually getting wet like these two right here.”
“True to that,” Geon said as he stretched finally.
“I second that,” Haru added, “I wanna do one last ride before going home.”
Eunchae sat up slightly, rubbing her eyes before a scary spark lit them up, and you knew she was up to no good with that look.
She glanced from you to Tomoya, leaning over the table just enough to get into your line of sight. And taking out her phone to capture the moment before lazily saying, "So, our honeymoon couple, before we go, do I need to prepare for any romantic antics again, or should I just relax and have Y/N to myself?"
You let out a groan that was muffled by the table, unable to stop your cheeks from heating up once again. "Chae, I am begging you to let it go already. You drained my social battery so much today, and it's usually the opposite!"
"Don't worry, Y/N, I'll protect you from her," Tomoya whispered. He shifted his hand until his fingers were loosely intertwined with yours near your stomach. giving your hand a light, reassuring squeeze. "We can just take the slow route to the exit, and I'll even buy you that boba at the mall later to make up for the sudden intrusion."
You thought about it for a while, smiling as your thumb ran gently over the back of his bigger one, “That sounds like a date.” You murmured, and Tomoya perked up immediately to your side, hugging you completely as the others watched in disbelief.
“GUYS! HOLY SHIT— sorry for swearing, Y/N— IT’S A DATE, I’M GOING ON A DATE WITH A BADDIE, WE’VE UPGRADED!”
“Shut up, please, and let us go!” Seita chuckled, already picking up a deadbeat Yuki and a sleepy Hyui, and everybody right after that followed.
“I’m so done,” Haru muttered, already walking ahead, not even bothering to look back, “leave them here, let’s go, Geonnie and Yu.”
“Real, as hell.” Geon agreed as he dragged Yu along with him, and you couldn’t help but think how lucky Tomoya was to have this pair of friends with him.
“It’s a date, right?” He pulled back just enough to look at you, hands still on your shoulders, “It’s a real, real date? Like, actually a date? As in we meet and hold hands and share pasta and then end the date with a small kiss—”
“WOAH, HOLD ON! Too fast, too fast! But yes, it is a date!” You giggled as you saw how excited he was, and it was honestly pretty cute to the point you’d agree to even a million dates to see his enthusiastic figure gleam with joy.
“Okay,” He beamed, “It’s a date then.”
“HURRY UP GUYS I WANNA PEE!” Haru shouted, and everybody then laughed at that, especially you and Tomoya, who held each other's hands secretly without anyone knowing, well, except Eunchae, but still.
You realized that maybe the sound of a boba date with him wouldn't be so bad after all.
