SERENA. SHE/HER. 19+. come say hi! i write for svt but i'd like to think i'm a music allrounder (˶ᵔ ᵕ ᵔ˶)
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🧿 masterlist & a/n: hi hi hi i'm back! no idea for how long but something quite insane happened recently and it kinda rewrote my brain chemistry so ofc i had to write a fic about it...
now playing: pushing it down and praying by lizzy mcalpine | i'd have to think about it by leith ross | true blue by boygenius | nfu by del water gap
Seeing him was like seeing light for the first time.
You wondered why you only ever saw him down at the skatepark between golden hour and the morning sunrise. At least you figured he must be a boy, although his overall shape was blurry to your weakening eyesight, you were still able to make out the brown waves that blew across his face as he raced down the skateramp on his skateboard. The way his t-shirt was always different each night. His laugh echoed through the darkening sky and it seemed to pool down your eardrums like melted wax, warm and oddly comforting. My boy, you thought to yourself. He was yours, if only for those few hours.
He never minded how your eyes were more white than brown. The first time he had seen you, you had looked away, feeling the heat of his look on your face and suddenly feeling awfully shy.
“What are you looking away for?” His voice was soft, quiet in comparison to the outside world that was so loud to your ears. It cut through the chatter like a hot knife.
His footsteps neared you when you didn’t speak and almost instinctively, as if something completely unworldly had taken over, you reached your hand out. To stop or to feel, you did not know.
He laughed, and you found yourself thanking God you at least had ears to hear it. “What’s your name?” He asked, stopping a few feet away from you.
Your name falls out of your mouth. It was as if you had blacked out completely, relying on only your pure instinct to carry the interaction.
“I’m Vernon.” The boy took a seat next to you, resting his skateboard on the side of the ramp they both sat on. His legs swung, as if he had a hard time sitting still. “What are you doing here? It’s really late to be outside.”
Your lips quirked. “You’re outside.”
“Fair.”
You turned to focus on the wheel of his skateboard, watching as he spun it absentmindedly with his fingers. Taking the moment, Vernon stared at your face, noting all the parts of you that made you so easy to look at. It was like you could feel the exact moment his eyes landed on your eyes, for you looked down, hair falling to cover them entirely.
“It’s not as awful as you think it is.” He offered, the most sincere he’s been in awhile. “The opposite, actually.”
You cringed. You were used to people feeding you lines. “It’s well into delirious hours,” You joked. “You can be honest.”
“I am.”
The conviction in which he said it surprised you. And perhaps that was why you found yourself lifting your head, turning to look at him properly this time. You studied his face, taking in every detail while pretending like he wasn’t doing the same. Moving from his stubbly chin to his jawline and up to his nose, you landed on his eyes, a pair of deep brown that looked back at you. In them you found no judgement, no pity, no pain.
“Do you skate?”
You’re pulled away by his voice and quickly you shake your head, smiling. “No, I come here for the quiet, most times.”
“Sorry.” He stands up, and you hear the sound of his board hitting the pavement, its wheels rolling.
“No, no.” You say, almost too quickly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
It’s the most vulnerable thing you’ve admitted in a long, long while.
Vernon liked how you came back every night, always around the time when the sun was just barely peaking through the large sycamore trees surrounding the skatepark. He liked arriving just a few minutes earlier, if only to practice without the fear of embarrassing himself in front of you.
“You just fell.” You’d state plainly, after a week and once you were fully out of your shell. “I heard it.”
“Shut up.” Vernon laughed, picking himself back up and wincing when he noticed the rip in his jeans. “Damn. Stop laughing!”
You would only laugh harder, hands clutching your stomach as you doubled over, saying whatever funny thing you wanted, if only to get a rise out of him.
“You hate me.” He’d complain, lips raised in a smile. “You hate me.”
“No, you hate me.” You’d counter. “Remember when you threw snow at me? Multiple times? Not to mention when you didn’t show up that one day and I waited in the cold for hours.”
“It was an accident, and I apologized many times for it.”
“You hate me.”
You were both smiling, as if it was some joke you both shared. Vernon would call you his greatest friend, and so would you, for you were. Just friends, until one of you would trip up and cross the thin line both were pretending wasn’t there.
“We both know I don’t hate you.” Vernon said, and laughter faded into silence. “We’re too similar. To hate you would be like me hating myself.”
“That’s not how that works.” You’d counter, a poor attempt to salvage it. To pull it back. “Similar people hate each other all the time.”
“Well, I don’t hate you.”
Silence. A brief hesitation. An impulsive decision.
You respond, voice close to a whisper. “Yeah, I don’t hate you either.”
You can still see the way his face shattered when you told him the two of you were impossible. It happened on the most random Wednesday, in the middle of the skatepark underneath a blinding full moon.
“You have a boyfriend.” He whispered, as if not quite believing it was real.
“Yeah.” Your breath hits the cold and smoke wisps in between the air you both share. “Vernon--”
“I care about you.” The words rush out of him like a tidal wave. “And I-” He pinches the bridge of his nose, on the verge of tears or a headache. “I think I would love you with time. I know I would.”
“Don’t say that.” It’s a cowardly thing to ask, but you do it anyway. “We can- can we still be friends?”
You feel the shake of his head, the air stagnant around the both of you. “We can’t. We’re too similar for us to ever be just friends. I think you know that. We’d just come back to this moment over and over again.”
He walks away from you. It’s the hardest thing Vernon has ever done.
Vernon texts you two days later. He’s not strong enough, he knows it. The one day of no contact had nearly killed him, lying in bed motionless, unable to move or breathe without feeling like the world was collapsing around him. It was much deeper than he thought it was, he realized. For his body seemed to shut down without you, and the skatepark felt eerie and empty.
“Hi.” You meet him at the skatepark, the sun completely gone and the sky a sheet of dark blue.
He thanks you quietly for coming. “I wanted to say a couple things, unless you have something you’d like to say first?” He runs through the speech he has prepared in his head, the begging, the guilt of loving someone so unavailable, the soul tie he feels between the two of you.
“I broke up with my boyfriend.”
The wind is knocked out from inside of him. “What?”
“Not for you--” You’re quick to clarify, but Vernon is hiding a smile nevertheless. “I realized things hadn’t been working for a really long time with him, and- we weren’t what we needed. He never understood my mind the way I wanted him to and-” and you do that. But you don’t say it. It feels like too much, too soon.
“Okay, well-” A disbelieving laugh escapes him. “That kind of defeats the whole speech I had prepared. I have to think about what I want to say now.”
You laugh too. It’s all quite unbelievable.
Vernon collects himself before saying more. “I don’t want to rush you. You just got out of a relationship and well, I’ll respect whatever it is you want to do going forward.” He pauses. “I really like you and I’m serious about us.”
“I really like you too.” You feel guilty admitting it, but you’re tired of hiding the obvious anymore.
“I have something for you.” Vernon reaches into his jean pocket. “I saw it in a thrift store a couple weeks ago and I bought it for you. Obviously couldn’t give it to you then, but--” He brings it out and places it in your hand.
It’s a silver jupiter necklace that glows under the moonlight, and as you thank him for the gift, you can’t help but realize a single startling fact. He knows you only wear necklaces. He knows you only wear silver. He knows your favourite planet. He’s only known you for a few months and yet, Vernon might know you better than anyone else has ever put the effort to try.
Vernon continues to meet you every night at the skatepark after dark, his brown waves slowly growing longer and his face now cleanly shaven. You sit and watch him skate, occasionally indulging in debates over everything you have in common.
“You can’t say we’re like Jess and Rory.” You protest. “They don’t end up together in the end.”
Vernon shrugs. “I mean with everything else. Annotating books to read to one another, smart girl with big dreams falls in love with a troubled boy with nowhere to go. Same interests in movies.”
You laugh. “Maybe.”
“Besides, just cause they didn’t work doesn’t mean we won’t. For one, I’m not parentless like he was.”
“True, true.” You smile and you feel the happiness and joy that forms into a ball in your chest.
He sits beside you, wordlessly handing you his sweater when he sees you quivering from the cold.
And when he leans in, you do too. Your hand somehow finds itself cupping his face. His hand rests like it’s home on your waist. But you both pull away, because even if it feels perfectly right, it’s far too soon.
“Too soon.” He says it like a statement you’ve both agreed on.
You nod, mind still reeling from the almostness of it all. “Yeah. Too soon.”
It’s the first time a boy shows self-restraint with you. His hand leaves your waist and he looks at you like you’re something real. Something important.
“Wouldn’t be us if it wasn’t a slowburn.” Vernon jokes.
Your lips turn into a smile. “Yeah. We’ll take it so slow.”
Vernon writes your names together in the sand next to the skatepark at golden hour.
“I like your last name much better than mine.” He tells you, carving it into the sand with a stick he had found lying on the grass. “I would like to be Vernon L/N.”
A voice in both your heads tells you it’s all too soon to be speaking like this. That every day one of you crosses the invisible line you’ve tried so hard to draw out. The promise to take things slow is quietly forgotten.
“Do you think we’d work in the real world?” You ask him, one night. “Outside of the skatepark?”
He thinks about it. You like how he takes everything you say seriously. “We won’t know if we don’t try.”
He plays you his favourite songs, he gives you the DVDs of his favourite movies, he tells you all about his childhood and his high school experience. In the skatepark, you learn everything about Vernon until you see his soul better than his body. You know his love language, you know the face of every family member, you know his biggest fears and regrets. And he knows all these things about you too. For the first time, you open for someone else.
Your first kiss together happens under sunrise, at the end of delirious hours and when bad decisions look like destiny and soulmates. Neither one of you happens to be any good at the art of patience.
He kisses you and you find it wonderful that the sinking pit in your stomach that’s usually there when a boy kisses you is nowhere to be seen. You’re utterly lost in the feeling of him, his hand on your waist and on your face, cradling you like you were the only thing that had ever mattered to him. And when you pull away, you can just barely make out his face and the way he’s looking at you.
I think I’m in love with you, Vernon wants desperately to say. Yet the words feel stuck in his throat and he swallows them back down.
He settles instead to look at you with all the feelings he hasn’t been able to say, hoping you feel it. You do. He looks at you like you are your own person. He looks at you like you’re much more than a girl he’s in love with. He looks at you and he sees you. Every piece of your soul, he sees.
You show up to the skating park for the next week and Vernon is nowhere to be seen. A part of you feels like you imagined it all, as if he was a figment of your imagination, something your poor eyesight had created to satiate your want of being seen.
When he comes back, he comes back changed-- pulling further and further away. He’s still your boy though, there’s no doubt in your mind about it. You see the weary lines on his face and you know life must have beat him back down again. But you stay. Because somewhere in between whatever the two of you have become, you’ve grown to love him.
“I don’t think this is going to work.” He says to you one night, a few weeks after your first kiss.
“What?” You turn to look at him, noticing the way he was avoiding your gaze.
“I don’t- I think we rushed into everything too fast.” His voice is quiet, cowardly. “I’ll always care about you, maybe not in that way, but I do. I will.”
Maybe it’s delusion, a weak attempt to save face, but you don’t believe him.
“I feel like I can’t be what you need in a relationship.” He continues. “I disappear whenever I get stressed or busy and I know you need that constant connection. You don’t deserve to be hidden, and I can’t give you anything real.”
“Tell me you don’t love me.” You say, and your voice sounds much braver than you really feel. “Tell me to my face that you don’t love me.” The wind picks up and the cold is biting. “I’ll accept all of this if you don’t love me. But if you do- then I will fight for us. I won’t- you are what I need in a relationship, Vernon. I don’t care if you disappear. I don’t care if we need to hide. You make me happier than I’ve ever been and you see me.” Something between a sob and a laugh escapes you. “Do you know how rare that is? You see me. And I know I see you too.”
He’s quiet and you wished you could see his face more properly.
“Tell me you don’t love me.”
“I don’t.” His voice cuts through the wind like a bullet.
“Liar!” You yell back, pushing his chest as if to startle him back to his senses. “Don’t you dare lie to me, Vernon. I- I’m not crazy. What we had- You cannot tell me we were nothing.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Vernon’s shoulders are slumping, the fight seeping from his veins. “You’re right. I do know you. I know you and because of that I know we won’t work.”
You open your mouth to say something more but the wind dies and for the first time, Vernon’s face is completely visible to your eyes. You see it. You see it in his face even if you don’t want to. You close your mouth and you nod. “Fine.”
“I’ll always care about you.” He says, as if that would make it better. “And- I know it’s a big thing to ask but- I’d like to still be friends.”
You laugh, tears threatening to spill down your face each second you stand here any longer. “I think I care too much about you to be friends.”
Vernon nods. After all, he understands. You’ve had this conversation before, with him where you are now. “If that ever changes…I’m here.”
“Okay.”
You watch as Vernon leaves you a completely changed person. And still, a part of you watches him leave and knows he’ll come back. Because what you both shared wasn’t nothing, no matter how he lied to himself about it.
The sun rises as you walk away from the skatepark. You’ll never be back, you know that. But he has your number. And he has your soul.
a/n: a letter to the boy behind the story
dear s,
here i am, writing about our story in the only way i know how right now as a final gift. you showed me that there is someone out there who can understand me completely and still love me for it. you taught me i deserve more. and i know you did love me, even for just a moment, when the highs were high and we didn't know how low we could get yet. i still feel your fingers in every fold of my brain, still feel your soul next to mine. i hate that there is someone walking around campus who knows everything about me. you might come back into my life in the future, who knows, but i hope you come back changed. you were right about one thing, we would've never worked. not as the people we are now. but the door will always be open. i will always, forever, think about it. no matter how short it was.
it's funny, at the end, in some morbid way. i left when you were ready and now you're the one leaving me.
☎️ preview: The toughest part about loving Seungcheol was the fact that he didn’t know himself at all. And how does one truly love a ghost?
based on the song Merry Christmas, Please Don't Call by Bleachers
“But you should know that I died slow
Running through the halls of your haunted home
And the toughest part is that we both know
What to happened to you
Why you're out on your own
Merry Christmas, please don't call”
tw/cw: heavy angst + smut, not a happy ending, tortured lovers, coups is an asshole but he doesn't mean to, idol!seungcheol x nonidol!reader, talk of leader responsibilities, abstract telling of sexual intercourse, heavy topics such as anxiety and depression
🪽fic rating/wc: 18+ / 2.4k
☁️ masterlist & a/n: this heavy angst christmas fic is to combat the insane amount of fluff in the vernon christmas special (ᵕ—ᴗ—) it's also very self indulgent angst + smut with coups. thank you for spending 2024 with me and i cannot wait to spend 2025 with you too!
“Oh, golden boy, don't act like you were kind”
He was inevitable in the end. Like some invisible string connected the two of you together. Not the pretty, dainty kind of invisible string. Whatever held your lives together was made of barbed wire. Whatever line wrapped around your ribs, restricting your breathing, tying you to him was nothing pretty. It was what army men used in wars.
You can’t hate your best friend, even if they end up hurting you. You just can’t.
“Come back to bed.” You whisper in the dark as you watch his dark silhouette get up. The clock on his nightstand was barely legible.
You could hear him throwing a shirt on. “I’ve got to go.”
You open your mouth to ask him again, but the words die in your mouth. A couple days ago you would’ve begged, but the bubbling hatred in you pushed the words down your esophagus, momentarily choking you. Seungcheol noticed your silence.
“I’ll be back before sunrise.” He leans over the bed and kisses your cheek, brushing a stray hair from it. “Don’t be mad.”
You shake your head in the dark. “I’m not mad.”
The door clicked shut behind him.
That was just how the world spun. You, lying in his bed, staring up at the ceiling you used to trace constellations on together. Sheets that smelled like him - aftershave and candles. Pleading words sewn shut in your mouth, hidden in your lungs, suffocating you. As you sank back into sleep, drowning under everything you’ve ever wanted to tell him. You knew it wasn’t his fault. After all - he barely knew who he was, hidden under all his responsibilities and his job title, he was barely a semblance of a man - tugged and stitched together.
It barely registered in your mind that tomorrow would be Christmas Eve. Part of you knew he wouldn’t be there to celebrate anyways.
“You know this moment don’t ya
And time is strangely calm now”
You could say what drew Seungcheol to you initially was your confidence. It illuminated you like a beacon, a moth to the flame, as his eyes followed your movements from across the crowded room.
It was Christmas Eve in Korea, and everyone in the right circles knew Johnny Suh’s Holiday Bash was the place to be.
At least, that was what your friends had told you, claiming they had a way in and convincing you to join them.
You were pleasantly surprised to find that for untouchable K-pop idols, everyone at the party was oddly normal. Kim Sunwoo’s voice could be heard over all the chaos, forehead pressed up against Lee Haechan’s, caught in the middle of some intense drinking game. Jeon Jungkook took a love shot with a heavily drunk Kim Mingyu, the sounds of their glass cups clinking against one another catching your attention.
Drifting away from the noise, you moved upstairs, your hand tracing the natural engravings against the wooden banister. The dim lights made it difficult to see, as you searched for a respite away from the noise downstairs. You’d certainly never question a K-opo idol’s ability to party again.
It was Seungcheol’s quiet stare that made you approach him, noticing how he sat with his back against the smooth white wall, his hair falling into his eyes. It was odd to see him alone, unaccompanied by his usual entourage of rowdy members. When alone, he seemed oddly sad, as if he was trying to convince himself he wasn’t. Perhaps it was the vulnerability in his eyes that urged you to sit next to him.
“I’d like to be alone, please.” He mumbled, turning his big eyes towards you. The light from downstairs caught in his irises, refracting into a million tiny lights.
“Me too.”
Your reply amused him as he watched you, intrigued by the way you stared off into the distance. He hadn’t known how you had noticed his glassy, tearfilled eyes from the get go, or else he would’ve walked away.
“You wanna talk about it?”
Your offhanded tone made the loaded question fall easier against his chest. He could feel himself breathing routinely once more, the tears in his eyes receding as he processed your question and figured out an answer.
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.” He admitted, finally turning the whole of his body to face you, moving his knees up against his chest as he leaned back against the wall once more.
There was something about him that made you want to help him. Maybe it was the fact that he was famous for being the reliable leader, responsible for too many things at such a young age. Maybe it was because, based on the things you’ve heard about him, you knew you could relate. Maybe you had already known - even then - that the two of you were different sides of the same coin. That he was inevitable in the end.
“I’ve got time.” You send him an open smile. “Lay it on me.”
Even to this day, Seungcheol had no idea why he confided in you, a total stranger, on the floor of a Johnny Suh Christmas party. He usually held his cards close to his chest - so close in fact, that the people around him often joked that he couldn’t read the cards himself.
So maybe he knew you were inevitable in the end too.
But neither of you could’ve ever predicted what would become of the two of you by the time the next Christmas rolled around.
“Oh, golden boy, you shined a light on our home,
And at your best you were magic; we were sold”
By the time the next Christmas rolled around, everyone around Seungcehol would credit you as the one who had “fixed” him. It was a term they all danced around lightly - fixed. None of them knew how to describe it, but Seungcheol was happier, louder, and had magically learnt the art of self-confidence.
“That is not my hyung.” Chan yelled into your ear from the side of the bar, eyeing Seungcheol, who was on the dance floor surrounded by an ecstatic Soonyoung and Mingyu. “My Seungcheol hyung does not dance.”
You laughed, because you knew the amount of work that had taken him to get where he was now. No one, except the two of you, would know about the late nights Seungcheol had spent near tears as you knelt by him, soothing phrases leaving your lips only to crash against his back.
“Look at him.” Chan was pointing an accusatory finger at Seungcheol, who had a wide grin on his face as he watched Soonyoung attempt to win over a girl on the dance floor. “He used to avoid the dance floor like it’d kill him. Hell, he avoided the bar in general.”
You followed his finger, a small smile drifting over your features as you witnessed Seungcheol laugh, the sound travelling straight to your core as you watched him. As if he had felt your stare, Seungcheol turned, his bright smile shining upon you as he reached out a hand, gesturing you towards him.
“Hi.” His forehead pressed against yours as he spoke.
“Hi.” You whispered back as he pulled you closer, relishing the safety you felt within his strong arms.
“I love you.” He said, but there were other words hidden deep beneath them. Don’t leave.
“I love you too.” Don’t hurt me.
“And the toughest part is that we both know
What happened to you”
You dreaded each time he was called in for work. You knew he loved his job, and more often than not, he would have a good time - singing, dancing, creating with his friends for his fans. But you also saw the heavy weight that followed him home whenever it wasn’t a good time. Each company meeting where he was yelled at, each unsettling encounter with a crazy fan, each hate post you knew your boyfriend had read multiple times over.
You both knew the baggage that followed him home far outweighed the good he felt. But you couldn’t ask him to leave - because that would ruin him too.
February 19 2022. The date forever seared in the front of your mind. It was the day Seungcheol had returned home after dropping out of his world tour.
He had landed on your shared porch like a dead bird.
“Cheol.” You grabbed at his shoulders, trying to get a good look at his face.
He pushed past you into your shared home, kicking off his shoes and throwing his bags onto the floor. You watched him leave up the stairs. You heard the door of your shared bedroom swing close, the lock click into place.
You didn’t mind sleeping on the couch that night. You knew he needed his space.
“I’m sorry.” He had told you the next morning, his eyes betraying his lack of sleep.
Handing him his breakfast, you shook your head. “Don’t apologize. Do you want to talk about it?”
He shook his head. “Not really.”
First crack in the glass. You really should’ve known. After all, Seungcheol told you everything.
“But you should know that I died slow
Running through the halls of your haunted home”
Seungcheol kissed you each time like he was afraid to lose you. His kisses were full of passion, firm and messy. He kissed you like he was constantly running out of time.
His calloused hands ran gently against your bare skin, handling you like pieces of precious glass.
“I love you.” He’d murmur against your stomach as he inched his way down, looking up at you with shining eyes - akin to the way he once looked at you during your first meeting. That was something special about him: his eyes sparkled the same way whether he was crying or in love. You had yet to learn the difference.
Seungcheol liked holding you as he pushed in, craving the feeling of closeness and how he was connected inside of you, with you. You were his escape and his solace, his mind numbing into a void of white as pleasure coursed through him. The usual jumble in his brain ceased to attack him and he was left with the sole thought of showing you how much he truly did love you.
Seungcheol loved making love with you. It was the aftermath where he didn’t.
“I love you.” You’d whisper as you threaded your fingers through his hair, your other hand drawing circles against his bare skin - and your voice would feel planets away.
The loudness of his own mind was back, the mess of barely coherent thoughts intruding once again. Seungcheol knew it made no sense.
“You were mine, but you were awful every time”
Choi Seungcheol was not good for your soul. You knew that. He was a man full of paradox, forever contradicting himself and everything you’ve ever felt for him. Even the way his coarse hands gently traced the bones of your back felt contradictory, when he had only just told you the two of you could never be together.
“We won’t work.” His lower lip jutted out as he spoke, his eyes fixed on a spot on the floor.
“I know.” You were tired of begging, the constant back and forth. Seungcheol would run, and then he would still find his way back to you in the following few months. That was just how this relationship worked, and you were used to it by now.
“I’m sorry.” He would whisper, cupping his hands around your face as his thumbs traced your cheekbones, a gesture filled with silent love.
Then don’t leave, you wanted to yell at him. If he really was sorry, if he really did love you, why would he still leave each time? But you knew that wasn’t how he operated.
You knew Choi Seungcheol wanted you. But he barely knew what he wanted himself.
“'Cause everybody's gone it's
Just you and your anger”
You knew he’d be back like clockwork. You knew Seungcheol could never stray from you for too long, some hindrance keeping him from ever truly leaving you.
He’d leave each time he felt like he wasn’t enough, each time you failed to convince him he was. Then he’d come back the moment that insecurity vanished, leaving him with his anger. At himself, at the world, at you.
Seungcheol’s anger burned in white and blue. His anger was silent, suffocating, almost petty and petulant by nature. He would never yell or raise a hand at you but he’d push you away. Further and further until it felt like you never really knew him at all.
“I love you.” You’d say, and he’d just hum in response.
“Cheol.” You’d beg, because even when you said you were done begging, you knew you’d do it again. “Look at me, please.”
He turned, although his eyes locked on some spot right above your head.
“Tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.” You’d ask him. “Let me help.”
You knew your attempts at understanding were futile. Choi Seungcheol’s fatal flaw was his independence. He relied on no one but himself.
“Merry Christmas, please don't call
Merry Christmas, I'm not yours at all”
You supposed Christmas Eve was as good a time as it could get. There would be no best time, you knew that now. You had been looking for the perfect time to leave and look where you were now. Six years deep, in love with a man who barely knew love himself.
Merry Christmas. You wrote, leaving the letter tucked neatly beside his Christmas gift on the living room table. You knew you couldn’t say goodbye in person. One look at his shining eyes and you’d be begging for his love once more.
I know none of this is anyone’s fault. You had begun the letter with. I know there are just some things nobody can fix.
Your hand on the doorknob, your other hand clutched around the handle of your bags, you turned to take in the place one last time. Memories of you and Seungcheol circulated through the air as you lingered by the door, unable to step forward.
Because that was the couch where he had said I love you for the first time, his face inches from yours. That was the kitchen lights that had flickered when broken, the same lights in which you had danced under, wrapped warmly in his arms.
I really do wish you the best, Cheolie. And because at Christmas, you tell the truth - I hope you find everything you need to be happy in this life. Merry Christmas. Please don’t call.
a/n: ending off the 2024 season with a bang! if you made it this far, thank you so much for following along through the beginning of this blog - and i'm excited to spend the next year with you!
this is the formal announcement of my hiatus from caratblr and writing in general. my works have always been heavily inspired by my own past experiences, and although i needed that reflection and introspectiveness in the past year, i've begun to realize the best thing for me right now is to look forward. and it has been hard to pick up that pen and not think about the past at all.
i will be forever grateful for the love and connection this platform has given me: you all have given me a voice, a place to feel heard and understood, a place to love my craft and share it with people who love it too. thank you for all the memories, milestones and for all the conversations i will carry with me for a lifetime.
i do believe that one day i will be back, here, writing once again, and i do hope you'll all be there when i do.
i started this blog as a distraction from reality and as a way to understand my own conflictions and emotions. i never once thought my work would be recognized and loved to this degree, and yet it has. thank you. truly.
it's a time for the future now :) and one day, i'll be back to finish the fics i've promised you.
🧿 preview: it’s the centennial of the tunnel’s existence, marking the legacy since its sudden appearance in the woods across your small town. legends say entering the tunnel sends you back in time to find those lost to you– and as you travel deeper into the tunnel, you swear you can see him, hidden in the brown and blue.
cw/tw: dystopian narrative, multiversal travel, parallels to lila and four’s journey in the umbrella academy, mentions of blood, injury, minimal gore, swearing, selfishness
🧿 fic rating: pg 13
🧿 masterlist & a/n: what an honour to be creating for the 100 milestone collab! the biggest thank you to @gyubakeries for being the genius behind the ending :)
now playing: intro (end of the world) by ariana grande
Legend has it that entering the tunnel would return those lost to you.
It’s a fairytale type of belief, a blind and misguided hope for something impossible, yet you choose to believe it anyways. You’ve spent your entire life stuck in the pockets of your small village, never once experiencing any type of loss, yet– something had always felt missing, as if a part of you had been stolen away without you even knowing.
There was a hole in your life, and you were determined to find it– whatever it was.
You take nothing with you but a cloth bag packed with the bare necessities: dried fruit for sustenance, rope, your leather-bound journal, a pot of ink and a pen. You clutch the rusting lantern tightly in your right hand and push into the light blue vines that covered the entrance of the infamous tunnel. The light illuminates the road in front of you and casts dancing shadows along the damp cave walls.
Your stomach flips and turns, but you venture in anyways, searching amidst the ugly brown walls and scattered blue vines for whatever it was that was lost to you.
Wonwoo swears he’s been searching for ages– at least a few decades or so. The boring scenery of the tunnel had long since transitioned into a sort of subway system, the walls tiled in blue and browning at the lines separating them like a badly maintained bathroom.
It had taken Wonwoo approximately four days traveling the complex system to realize there was no way out.
The first stop he got off at had taken him up a flight of stairs and into a grassy field, the crops dying from the glares of the sun shining above them. The field had been calm and quite serene, and Wonwoo had begun to enjoy the feeling of the sun on his face after days underground. Yet once the sky had darkened, wisps of shadow began to emerge, threatening to gnaw off his limbs whenever they got too close.
The shadows seemed hell bent on getting him back into the subway system, clawing and slashing at him until he was forced back down the marble stairs– back into the cold and dampness of the tunnel system.
The second stop was a little better, as Wonwoo found himself emerging into the middle of a bustling city, one mirroring the likes of New York in the 1930s— a time period he was all too familiar with. He found himself captivated by the glow of the city and the sounds of a thousand footsteps along the busy streets of Downtown.
He had smoothed out the crinkles of his grey suit, doing his best to dust off the dirt, grime and blood– all reminders of his last stop in the tunnel system. He drew back his shoulders and fixed his hair, glancing at his reflection in a nearby storefront. He smiled, for he was quite pleased with what he saw, a dashing young man from the 30s, rich and perfectly poised.
But no, he couldn’t be distracted. He had abandoned his timeline and ventured deep into the tunnel for one thing and one thing only: you.
So Wonwoo forced himself to turn away, back underground, once again.
On the third stop, the subway had screeched to a jolting stop, sending Wonwoo a few steps back as he tried to regain his balance. The doors slid open aggressively and he stepped out, racing towards the stairs and back into the light. He was excited to see what was at the surface this time, all the while picturing what you might look like once he’d found you.
He was travelling through timelines, after all, and you might look drastically different than the girl he had once known before. But none of that mattered as long as your soul was the same.
The shadows must have felt his enthusiasm however, as they swarmed the exit and refused to let him pass.
“Let me through!” He yelled, grabbing a fallen pipe off the ground and swinging furiously. “Let– me– through!”
The shadows disperse for just a second before returning, stronger and angrier than before. A tendril curls around the pipe and yanks it from his hands, throwing it to the ground as another tendril swipes him off his feet.
Wonwoo lands on the floor with a painful groan. He stays there, watching as the shadows danced through the dimly lit corridors of the subway system.
I’m done, he thinks silently. It’s over and I’m tired.
But something itches at him and pulls him back up. He boards the subway once again, pulling out his phone to note down the stops, keeping track of the directions. He searches stop by stop. He searches for you.
It’s the damp smell of the underground tunnels that hits you first, as you note the sudden transition from narrow dirt cave walls to a large atrium, its walls lined with blue squares that looked old and weathered from age. You note the benches that line the walls, some broken and crooked, colored with brown paint that chipped at certain places.
There’s a loud sound as the floor beneath you shakes, thunder running through the ground as you brace yourself against the wind that was picking up, breezing through your hair from the tunnel on the side furthest from you.
A train blows past you and screeches to a halt inside the atrium, its metal doors opening for you in welcome. A strange voice sounds from the ceiling.
“Train to 22nd.”
You glance up, confused. A couple seconds pass as you hesitate, but you end up stepping into the enclosure of the train, taking a seat on the bright blue seats lining the insides. You hold on as the train embarks, picking up speed through the dark tunnel.
It’s entirely new and absolutely thrilling to witness.
You get off once the doors open again, stepping up into the light, emerging in a cornfield. You turn, confused, as the way back to the train station seemed to pop out of nowhere, completely out of place amidst the yards of wheat and corn.
It’s pretty and much bigger than the fields you were used to. You’re busy taking it all in– the scenery, the breeze, the feel of the sun on your face– when something whacks you from behind and sends you flying, tumbling into the crops and onto the dirt.
You barely have time to stand before it tries hitting you again. You dodge this time, running past the swirl of shadow and flying back down the stairs of the underground train station.
It doesn’t follow you. Instead, it seems to stare at you from the top of the stairs, sending a silent threat right through your bones. It doesn’t want you to find it– whatever you had come here to recover.
You stare down at the scrapes on your hands and knees, blood pooling and dripping down like uncomfortable tears. The train squeals to a stop behind you, as if it just knew.
It takes you four more stops trying to find your way back home to realize it was impossible. The tunnel had laid claim on you now, and you were stuck– facing the shadows that wanted so badly for you to stay with them underground, a hole still in your soul and never finding whatever you were missing.
It takes another two weeks for both you and Wonwoo to break.
Wonwoo’s curled up underneath one of the benches lining the subway wall, his knees pressed against his chest and his arms holding them together. He shakes violently despite the humid heat surrounding him, his glasses fogging up with each heavy breath. His phone is dead– leaving his map of the subway lines on a brown paper bag, badly drawn and probably incorrect from his poor memory.
He’s reluctant to admit it, for Wonwoo had always prided himself in being the most tenacious out of all his friends, yet it was more than obvious: the shadows had bested him. They had won, breaking his spirit and ripping apart his leg.
It sat there, mangled and broken, held together with the remains of his tattered suit jacket. It was still connected to him, but the more Wonwoo stared at it, the more he felt as if it wasn’t his anymore. The tunnel had promised to return what was lost to him, yet it had taken everything left instead.
And perhaps the cruelest thing of all happened once he fell asleep. Despite never finding you in his journeys across the subway lines– Wonwoo still saw you in dreams, each time he closed his eyes and sleep crawled out from the ground to find him.
For just a moment, it would be as if he had never lost you in the first place.
On the other hand, somewhere in the tunnel systems, you fought sleep like an old foe. You hated how nothing seemed to greet you on the other side, leaving all your dreams dark and gloomy– the void staring back at you until you woke again.
It was an endless cycle, cruel and unusual punishment. So you sat, eyes listless as you leaned against the cold tiles of the wall, cradling your mangled arms filled with scratches and claw marks. You’re tired, adrenaline gone and running on fumes. You feel silly now– running headfirst into a scary tunnel, looking for something you didn’t even know you had lost.
But you still stand up each time you wake, heading back into the train, allowing it to take you wherever it pleases. You stop trying to get to the surface, however, too drained to fight the shadows over and over again.
Your only hope is that you’ll end up finding someone underground– a lost soul just like you, traveling amidst the brown and the blue.
You blink once, twice, another time, staring through the dirty glass at what you think is a person.
You can see the silhouette of him– bent over and slumped on the floor, his hair covering his eyes and a pool of red by his left leg. Your heart jumps to your throat as you stare at him– a person. You pray with everything in you that he’s still alive.
The train slows to a stop by the platform and you wait for the doors to open, but it never does.
A surge of panic rushes through you like a wave. “Open the door!” You scream up at the ceiling, at the voice you’ve heard a million times announcing each arrival and departure. “Please–” Your voice cracks and breaks, desperately prying at the doors with your fingernails.
You keep your eyes trained on the man slumped on the floor, and for a moment, you think the train might pick up speed and you’ll never find your way back to him again.
Then the doors slide open and you spill onto the train platform, face wet and sticky with tears and sweat.
The train takes off, shaking the ground as you sprint towards the stranger like he was your saviour.
Wonwoo thinks the universe must be glitching when he opens his eyes to see you. Your eyebrows are furrowed in worry as you fuss over him, hands grabbing at his bad leg and at his bruised hands, fingers tracing his battered knuckles with a sort of familiarity.
“Y/N–” It comes out a croak, a little clumsy as he stumbles over the syllables of your name. “You’re here.” It’s a little unbelievable, as he raises a shaky hand to cup your face in his palms.
He doesn’t miss the way you flinch at his touch, as if his hand burned your skin. He doesn’t miss the look you give him either. You don’t recognize him. You don’t have the faintest clue as to who he is.
His hand retracts and drops to rest beside the rest of him.
“You’re bleeding.” You whisper, choosing to ignore the fact that the stranger knew your name. “Your leg–” It’s an ugly sight, but you do your best to look at it instead of looking away.
He lets out a sound that comes in between something of a groan and a sigh. “The monsters, they–” The rest of his sentence trails off, indescribable incidents too complex for words, but you know.
“They’re ferocious, I know.” You offer up a weak smile, searching for humour in the midst of such gruesome things. “Nearly cut my arm off two stops ago.”
The stranger’s lips twitch at the comment. It looks like a smile, or whatever remained of one– the rest lost to the tunnels a long time ago.
You reach a tentative hand up to fix his glasses, rebalancing them on the bridge of his nose, wiping them clean with the sleeve of your shirt.
He mumbles a quiet word of thanks before his eyes close again.
You slump down to rest beside him, pressing your fingers against his wrist, focusing on the thready drum of his pulse. It rings in your ears, overtaking the loud wind of the train and the thunder coming from the train tracks.
You drift off the sleep, your fingers still pressed against his pulse.
You dream of big cities and the face of the stranger laying next to you.
Wonwoo doesn’t dream, not anymore– not when the focus of all his dreams is laying next to him, for the first time in a dozen years.
You find the tunnels are easier to handle with someone to talk to. The walls no longer look as hideous and dull as they once did, the blue shining brighter than before, accenting the walls and making the grime and dust nearly invisible.
There’s a structure, a sense of purpose– as the two of you work together to find your way out. You occasionally go up to the surface for food, water and other necessities. You come to learn that Wonwoo is smart and calculated, as he presents to you the list he had made, detailing which exits weren’t guarded and were safe to go out from.
You make the train your home, laying tarps and blankets along the blue seats. Wonwoo does his best to help, limping beside you on his makeshift crutch, offering you random tidbits of advice and knowledge. He spends most of his time perched on the seats of the train, his bad leg stretched out on the seats and your journal in his hands. He catalogs the day, flipping through previous entries, cross-referencing them with the present day, looking for patterns in the tunnel’s system.
You ask Wonwoo what he came down here to look for and he gives you a strange look. Whatever it is, he doesn’t seem to be looking for it anymore, as he helps you search for a way back to your village.
“Are you sure you don’t remember anything about what the tunnel’s entrance looked like when you entered?” He asks you again after a period of silence, tapping the end of your ink pen against his chin in thought. “Cause mine was covered in metals and copper wires when I walked in, before it transitioned to the subway station layout.”
You frown at the foreign words. “Wires? Subway?”
He looks up. “Right. I forget you’re from like wayyyy back.” Wonwoo had traveled through a variety of different timelines searching for you– eons worth.
You shrug off the confusion. “I just remember it was covered in blue vines. The walls were muddy and cracked– like the inside of a cave.”
You look at him, hopeful for any sign of recognition in his eyes. You don’t see it.
“I guess I haven’t explored as much as I thought I had.” Wonwoo looks at you apologetically. “We’ll find it.” There is a glimmer of hope in his voice and you respect him for it.
“Yeah.” You try to muster up the same kind of hope, yet it sputters out weakly. “Yeah, we’ll find it.”
Wonwoo knew he had run out of luck when he told you his name and there was no glimmer of realization in your eyes. You had stared at him with the same stare one would give a stranger– a nameless face you were just getting to know, a clean slate of a soul.
Yet once he had learned you had no clue why you had ventured into the tunnel in the first place, a spark of hope began to appear. You didn’t know what you were missing– yet you were here anyways.
Up on the surface, Wonwoo had been a physicist. World renowned and revered by all his colleagues, he had turned to the theory of the multiverse after losing you– obsessed with the idea of traveling to a world where you were as lonely as he was. He had entered the tunnel on a hunch, hearing myths of a place that could return those lost to you. His original plan had been to find a version of you out there, in a world where he had died instead of you. He supposed the idea was that you could accompany each other– for any version of you was better than none of you at all.
But everything had changed now. The tunnel was far more dangerous than he had predicted it to be. And you were right here, living and breathing in front of him. All he had to do was make you remember. Make you fall in love with him all over again.
Wonwoo stares at you from his spot on the subway floor, a scavenged blanket covering his knees and pooling on the floor around him. You’re scrambling all over the place, mumbling about some markings along the wall.
A small smile makes its way across his face at the familiar sight. He hasn’t met that many versions of you in his travels, but you seem to be frazzled and a ball of energy in every universe.
“What are you looking at?” Your voice cuts through the fantasy, breaking the temporary bliss he had found himself in.
“Nothing.” His lips lay flat once more.
It was your voice. You might resemble his lost lover down to the minute details, but your voice, your tones and inflections– it was unmistakably different.
Wonwoo could only delude himself for so long.
There are sixty-two scratches embedded on the train wall by the time you think you had finally cracked the case. Sixty-two days underground. Sixty-two days stuck next to a strange man– one who stared at you so blatantly and still insisted he wasn’t.
“You’ve got that look on your face, dove.” He drawls out from his spot on the train floor, an accusatory finger pointed at you. “Speak.”
You roll your eyes, both at the affectionate name and at the demanding tone. There were still parts of Wonwoo’s old life that he couldn’t shake– his lofty way of speaking and the air of command that followed him into every room.
Despite these flaws however, you had to admit the two of you had grown close. He had finally let you into glimpses of his old life around day thirty-three, vague stories about his time in the big city: solving complex equations, gambling, teaching at top universities.
“I lived a lavish lifestyle.” He tried painting the picture for you in immense detail. “Imagine ladies in red dresses that flow down to the floor, wine in every corner, a room so large you can’t see each wall.” He chuckles at your curious eyes. “I was always working too– constantly holed up in my office, scratching numbers into the blackboard. I would have probably rotted in there, but Y/N–”
You perk up noticeably at your name and Wonwoo pauses, eyes wide at the slip.
“Me?” You ask, intrigued. “You knew me in your other life?”
Wonwoo shakes his head, a firm answer with no room for argument. “No, just the same name.”
“Who was she?”
“My wife.”
You recall the way his eyes saddened at the mention of her, how his shoulders slumped and made him look smaller than he really was. It contrasted heavily with the way he was looking at you now, shoulders drawn back and a demanding look on his face.
You motion for him to join you in your corner of the train and wait for him to maneuver himself over, his bad leg awkwardly limp as he shuffled himself closer.
“Look.” You point to the sketches in your journal, detailed markings of carvings you had seen along the wall at certain stops. “I was wondering what the weird drawings were on the wall– but I think I figured it out.”
It’s easy to explain your hunch to Wonwoo. He catches on to the idea quickly, finishing your sentences and filling in the blanks with ease.
The theory is simple– and with just a bit of luck, it could get you both home.
The sudden prospect of leaving the tunnel sat in the pits of Wonwoo’s stomach, unsettling and looming in the horizon.
He didn’t know how to feel about it: the chance that the two of you could escape this place, never to see each other again and without the thing you were looking for.
Wonwoo didn’t voice this hesitation however, silently following you as you navigated the complex systems of the train by following the markings along the walls. He didn’t say anything when you threw him a reassuring and hopeful look from over your shoulder, promising him that he’d be okay soon.
He didn’t know how to tell you that the pain– his leg, the absence of the sun– was nothing compared to the pain he had already been in, in a world without you.
Please. He wanted to beg. Don’t make me go back up there. A couple weeks ago, Wonwoo would have shoved you aside without a second thought, snatching the leather journal from your limp hands and racing towards the stairs to his Y/N– to a version of you who knew and loved him.
But that was not the case now. You seemed to buzz with hope and it pulled Wonwoo along, stumbling after you like a lost dog.
The thought of getting out of the tunnel for good excites you, pushing you to keep going as you venture further into the depths of the train system. Wonwoo trails quietly behind you, occasionally tapping your back to get you to slow down. He is silent, for the most part, until you stop by the foot of the white marble staircase leading out into the light.
“We’re here?” He asks, scrutinizing the way out with wary eyes. “Are you sure?”
“No.” You admit. “But it’s our best bet.”
He glances down at the journal in your hands and the scribbles that covered most of its pages. “How does it work?”
You spend most of the night explaining to Wonwoo how the markings work as a guide, laying on the cold concrete of the station floor.
“We’ll try going up to the surface tomorrow.” You propose, glancing at the shadows already beginning to form around the base of the stairs, as if sensing your plan. “It’ll work, as long as we do it together.”
Wonwoo nods, but there’s something you can’t pinpoint behind his eyes. “Right. Together.”
Wonwoo wakes up in cold sweat, bolting upright to see you still sleeping peacefully beside him, the journal clutched loosely in your arms.
It’s clear, what he has to do.
“I’m sorry.” He mumbles, getting up awkwardly from his spot on the floor.
He snatches the journal from your limp arms and flips to a new page. He maps out a new route.
Wonwoo would like to think he’s changed since meeting you– since the tunnel had claimed his life, but he knows he hasn’t. He’s still every bit as selfish as he was before.
He boards the next train and counts the stops until his destination.
He’s still looking for you.
Wonwoo doesn’t know what he was expecting. More shadows to fend off, most likely. He imagined he would emerge from the subway station to a vibrant city, one with those aristocratic elements you had always enjoyed.
He figured he’d find you and you’d love him once he explained it all to you. He figured you would love him despite it all.
“I’m sorry, Woo.” Is what he gets instead, your eyes sad and holding pity for him. “I don’t know what you were expecting but–”
“I came all this way.” He protests, and he knows it sounds weak. “I came all this way. I-” I came all this way.
“I know.” He doesn’t miss the way your eyes flick to his battered leg, over and over again, as if you can’t quite believe what you were seeing. “I can’t– it’ll mess with the timeline, you know that.”
He did know that. Yet he was selfish and wanted you anyway.
“I’d burn down a hundred timelines if it meant I could have you again.”
Your eyes grow sadder at his words. “And that is why I can’t.” There’s an emphasis on it, a finality.
“Tell me to leave, then.” He takes a step closer.
You can’t. Your mouth opens and closes with frustration.
“Tell me to leave.” His heart beats louder, quicker now– as his hands reach out for you. He’s so close. So close.
And then you say it. You spit out the word like a sour drink and it washes over Wonwoo’s face, paralyzing him.
Leave.
And so he walks briskly, back along the city streets, past buildings that resembled his life before, back down those damn stairs. Back down into the darkness. Back to where he came before.
You wake up alone. The silence of the tunnel– void of his breath– haunts you as you stir, sitting upright to look at the empty spot next to you.
Your notebook is gone and so is he.
“Don’t cry.” You chide yourself, picking yourself up from the cold floors and gathering your things. “You barely know the guy.”
It was true. Despite having latched onto him like he was your lifeline, you and Wonwoo were still strangers. You tell yourself over and over again that it made sense for him to leave, if only as a way to soothe the anger quietly burning within you.
“He wants his wife.” You remind yourself. “He’s not here looking for you.”
The shadows churn along the bottom of the stairwell, the light from outside refracting onto the walls of the station, dancing like fireflies. You pick up the first weapon you find: a metal pipe.
Fuck him, you decide. You’re getting yourself out of here, whether he wants to follow you or not.
The shadows grow more aggressive as if taking on the silent challenge, beckoning you to fight them, to try.
You let out a yell– a broken and insane one– unleashing from the pits of your stomach and releasing all the anger, pain and desperation.
You picture what might await you at the top of those stairs. A secluded cottage house, flowers spanning on for miles, a friend waving at you from the porch.
You take a deep breath. The shadows spin faster still. You charge.
Wonwoo stumbles down the stairs like a ragdoll. He ricochets off the last step and lands roughly on the damp ground, cowering from the pain and embarrassment.
He feels like dying, but he pulls himself back together enough to board the train again, navigating the system until he spills back onto the platform he had come from.
He pictures what he might see as he raises his head from the ground. Your worried eyes, a wave of relief washing over them as they meet his. You, running across the platform to meet him. You, you, you.
He raises his head and wishes he hadn’t at all. It is unmistakably empty. You are unmistakably gone.
The tunnel is a distant memory now, resurfacing in your mind only when the rain gets hard and the farm starts to smell like the underground.
“You’ve got that look on your face.” He sets down a cup of tea on the table in front of you, bending down to press a kiss to your forehead.
You smile. “Just thinking about how we met.”
He pushes his glasses up with the back of his hand as his eyes crinkle with laughter at the memory. “When you stumbled into my garden, bloody and completely out of your mind?”
You hum.
“You thought I was a ghost. You knew my name.”
You remember. The scratch of your throat when you had croaked out his name, stunned to see the man standing before you. The sinking feeling when you realized they were not the same Wonwoo.
“No matter.” He shakes the memory away with a touch of his hand on yours. “That was a lifetime ago, my dove. And whatever it was, I’m glad it brought you to me. I love you.”
You nod, and the memories of the Wonwoo you had encountered– loved– in the tunnels disappear. “I love you too.”
You wonder vaguely where he is now. You hope he got what he was searching for too.
day 170
timeline #100
There is no way out. I was foolish to think there ever was. My mind spins back to that morning on the platform, a decision away from life and…whatever this is. Purgatory. Death.
I should not have left. I know that. I grew selfish and discarded my chance at happiness. The tunnel, I’ve learned, gives you one chance and one chance only.
Y/N was my chance. I should have followed her home. I should have…
It’s no matter now. I know now to stop searching. Timeline #100’s Y/N told me the truth. She had it all figured out, buried in research after her Wonwoo had died.
There is no universe where both of us live. It is impossible. It is our canon event. Each time Y/N meets Wonwoo– she dies in the next 5 years. Each time Wonwoo seeks Y/N out— he dies in the next 3.
It is impossible. I must stop trying. It’s time to be selfless– for once. My Y/N, wherever you are, I will stop looking. Live for me. For us.
The shadows creep through the cracks towards me as I write this last entry. They are welcoming me home.
Day 17132
timeline #4800
research on the multiverse + subway system
Time does not flow the same underground, in the belly of the subway system. It has been 46.9 years since Y/N has disappeared and I have still not aged one bit.
The tunnel makes no mistakes. It knows what it’s doing.
The tunnel returns those lost to you.
I have been stuck on this paradox for decades: the tunnel promises happy endings. Yet there is no universe where Y/N and I live happily ever after. None at all.
Yet… time does not flow at all in the tunnel. And in these 46.9 years, I have not met another soul underground.
We could have lived forever underground. Together. She would not have died in 5 years. I would not have died in 3. We…we could have had it all.
There is a missing phrase from the legend:
The tunnel returns those lost to you… but only ever once.
🧿 preview: it’s the centennial of the tunnel’s existence, marking the legacy since its sudden appearance in the woods across your small town. legends say entering the tunnel sends you back in time to find those lost to you– and as you travel deeper into the tunnel, you swear you can see him, hidden in the brown and blue.
cw/tw: dystopian narrative, multiversal travel, parallels to lila and four’s journey in the umbrella academy, mentions of blood, injury, minimal gore, swearing, selfishness
🧿 fic rating: pg 13
🧿 masterlist & a/n: what an honour to be creating for the 100 milestone collab! the biggest thank you to @gyubakeries for being the genius behind the ending :)
now playing: intro (end of the world) by ariana grande
Legend has it that entering the tunnel would return those lost to you.
It’s a fairytale type of belief, a blind and misguided hope for something impossible, yet you choose to believe it anyways. You’ve spent your entire life stuck in the pockets of your small village, never once experiencing any type of loss, yet– something had always felt missing, as if a part of you had been stolen away without you even knowing.
There was a hole in your life, and you were determined to find it– whatever it was.
You take nothing with you but a cloth bag packed with the bare necessities: dried fruit for sustenance, rope, your leather-bound journal, a pot of ink and a pen. You clutch the rusting lantern tightly in your right hand and push into the light blue vines that covered the entrance of the infamous tunnel. The light illuminates the road in front of you and casts dancing shadows along the damp cave walls.
Your stomach flips and turns, but you venture in anyways, searching amidst the ugly brown walls and scattered blue vines for whatever it was that was lost to you.
Wonwoo swears he’s been searching for ages– at least a few decades or so. The boring scenery of the tunnel had long since transitioned into a sort of subway system, the walls tiled in blue and browning at the lines separating them like a badly maintained bathroom.
It had taken Wonwoo approximately four days traveling the complex system to realize there was no way out.
The first stop he got off at had taken him up a flight of stairs and into a grassy field, the crops dying from the glares of the sun shining above them. The field had been calm and quite serene, and Wonwoo had begun to enjoy the feeling of the sun on his face after days underground. Yet once the sky had darkened, wisps of shadow began to emerge, threatening to gnaw off his limbs whenever they got too close.
The shadows seemed hell bent on getting him back into the subway system, clawing and slashing at him until he was forced back down the marble stairs– back into the cold and dampness of the tunnel system.
The second stop was a little better, as Wonwoo found himself emerging into the middle of a bustling city, one mirroring the likes of New York in the 1930s— a time period he was all too familiar with. He found himself captivated by the glow of the city and the sounds of a thousand footsteps along the busy streets of Downtown.
He had smoothed out the crinkles of his grey suit, doing his best to dust off the dirt, grime and blood– all reminders of his last stop in the tunnel system. He drew back his shoulders and fixed his hair, glancing at his reflection in a nearby storefront. He smiled, for he was quite pleased with what he saw, a dashing young man from the 30s, rich and perfectly poised.
But no, he couldn’t be distracted. He had abandoned his timeline and ventured deep into the tunnel for one thing and one thing only: you.
So Wonwoo forced himself to turn away, back underground, once again.
On the third stop, the subway had screeched to a jolting stop, sending Wonwoo a few steps back as he tried to regain his balance. The doors slid open aggressively and he stepped out, racing towards the stairs and back into the light. He was excited to see what was at the surface this time, all the while picturing what you might look like once he’d found you.
He was travelling through timelines, after all, and you might look drastically different than the girl he had once known before. But none of that mattered as long as your soul was the same.
The shadows must have felt his enthusiasm however, as they swarmed the exit and refused to let him pass.
“Let me through!” He yelled, grabbing a fallen pipe off the ground and swinging furiously. “Let– me– through!”
The shadows disperse for just a second before returning, stronger and angrier than before. A tendril curls around the pipe and yanks it from his hands, throwing it to the ground as another tendril swipes him off his feet.
Wonwoo lands on the floor with a painful groan. He stays there, watching as the shadows danced through the dimly lit corridors of the subway system.
I’m done, he thinks silently. It’s over and I’m tired.
But something itches at him and pulls him back up. He boards the subway once again, pulling out his phone to note down the stops, keeping track of the directions. He searches stop by stop. He searches for you.
It’s the damp smell of the underground tunnels that hits you first, as you note the sudden transition from narrow dirt cave walls to a large atrium, its walls lined with blue squares that looked old and weathered from age. You note the benches that line the walls, some broken and crooked, colored with brown paint that chipped at certain places.
There’s a loud sound as the floor beneath you shakes, thunder running through the ground as you brace yourself against the wind that was picking up, breezing through your hair from the tunnel on the side furthest from you.
A train blows past you and screeches to a halt inside the atrium, its metal doors opening for you in welcome. A strange voice sounds from the ceiling.
“Train to 22nd.”
You glance up, confused. A couple seconds pass as you hesitate, but you end up stepping into the enclosure of the train, taking a seat on the bright blue seats lining the insides. You hold on as the train embarks, picking up speed through the dark tunnel.
It’s entirely new and absolutely thrilling to witness.
You get off once the doors open again, stepping up into the light, emerging in a cornfield. You turn, confused, as the way back to the train station seemed to pop out of nowhere, completely out of place amidst the yards of wheat and corn.
It’s pretty and much bigger than the fields you were used to. You’re busy taking it all in– the scenery, the breeze, the feel of the sun on your face– when something whacks you from behind and sends you flying, tumbling into the crops and onto the dirt.
You barely have time to stand before it tries hitting you again. You dodge this time, running past the swirl of shadow and flying back down the stairs of the underground train station.
It doesn’t follow you. Instead, it seems to stare at you from the top of the stairs, sending a silent threat right through your bones. It doesn’t want you to find it– whatever you had come here to recover.
You stare down at the scrapes on your hands and knees, blood pooling and dripping down like uncomfortable tears. The train squeals to a stop behind you, as if it just knew.
It takes you four more stops trying to find your way back home to realize it was impossible. The tunnel had laid claim on you now, and you were stuck– facing the shadows that wanted so badly for you to stay with them underground, a hole still in your soul and never finding whatever you were missing.
It takes another two weeks for both you and Wonwoo to break.
Wonwoo’s curled up underneath one of the benches lining the subway wall, his knees pressed against his chest and his arms holding them together. He shakes violently despite the humid heat surrounding him, his glasses fogging up with each heavy breath. His phone is dead– leaving his map of the subway lines on a brown paper bag, badly drawn and probably incorrect from his poor memory.
He’s reluctant to admit it, for Wonwoo had always prided himself in being the most tenacious out of all his friends, yet it was more than obvious: the shadows had bested him. They had won, breaking his spirit and ripping apart his leg.
It sat there, mangled and broken, held together with the remains of his tattered suit jacket. It was still connected to him, but the more Wonwoo stared at it, the more he felt as if it wasn’t his anymore. The tunnel had promised to return what was lost to him, yet it had taken everything left instead.
And perhaps the cruelest thing of all happened once he fell asleep. Despite never finding you in his journeys across the subway lines– Wonwoo still saw you in dreams, each time he closed his eyes and sleep crawled out from the ground to find him.
For just a moment, it would be as if he had never lost you in the first place.
On the other hand, somewhere in the tunnel systems, you fought sleep like an old foe. You hated how nothing seemed to greet you on the other side, leaving all your dreams dark and gloomy– the void staring back at you until you woke again.
It was an endless cycle, cruel and unusual punishment. So you sat, eyes listless as you leaned against the cold tiles of the wall, cradling your mangled arms filled with scratches and claw marks. You’re tired, adrenaline gone and running on fumes. You feel silly now– running headfirst into a scary tunnel, looking for something you didn’t even know you had lost.
But you still stand up each time you wake, heading back into the train, allowing it to take you wherever it pleases. You stop trying to get to the surface, however, too drained to fight the shadows over and over again.
Your only hope is that you’ll end up finding someone underground– a lost soul just like you, traveling amidst the brown and the blue.
You blink once, twice, another time, staring through the dirty glass at what you think is a person.
You can see the silhouette of him– bent over and slumped on the floor, his hair covering his eyes and a pool of red by his left leg. Your heart jumps to your throat as you stare at him– a person. You pray with everything in you that he’s still alive.
The train slows to a stop by the platform and you wait for the doors to open, but it never does.
A surge of panic rushes through you like a wave. “Open the door!” You scream up at the ceiling, at the voice you’ve heard a million times announcing each arrival and departure. “Please–” Your voice cracks and breaks, desperately prying at the doors with your fingernails.
You keep your eyes trained on the man slumped on the floor, and for a moment, you think the train might pick up speed and you’ll never find your way back to him again.
Then the doors slide open and you spill onto the train platform, face wet and sticky with tears and sweat.
The train takes off, shaking the ground as you sprint towards the stranger like he was your saviour.
Wonwoo thinks the universe must be glitching when he opens his eyes to see you. Your eyebrows are furrowed in worry as you fuss over him, hands grabbing at his bad leg and at his bruised hands, fingers tracing his battered knuckles with a sort of familiarity.
“Y/N–” It comes out a croak, a little clumsy as he stumbles over the syllables of your name. “You’re here.” It’s a little unbelievable, as he raises a shaky hand to cup your face in his palms.
He doesn’t miss the way you flinch at his touch, as if his hand burned your skin. He doesn’t miss the look you give him either. You don’t recognize him. You don’t have the faintest clue as to who he is.
His hand retracts and drops to rest beside the rest of him.
“You’re bleeding.” You whisper, choosing to ignore the fact that the stranger knew your name. “Your leg–” It’s an ugly sight, but you do your best to look at it instead of looking away.
He lets out a sound that comes in between something of a groan and a sigh. “The monsters, they–” The rest of his sentence trails off, indescribable incidents too complex for words, but you know.
“They’re ferocious, I know.” You offer up a weak smile, searching for humour in the midst of such gruesome things. “Nearly cut my arm off two stops ago.”
The stranger’s lips twitch at the comment. It looks like a smile, or whatever remained of one– the rest lost to the tunnels a long time ago.
You reach a tentative hand up to fix his glasses, rebalancing them on the bridge of his nose, wiping them clean with the sleeve of your shirt.
He mumbles a quiet word of thanks before his eyes close again.
You slump down to rest beside him, pressing your fingers against his wrist, focusing on the thready drum of his pulse. It rings in your ears, overtaking the loud wind of the train and the thunder coming from the train tracks.
You drift off the sleep, your fingers still pressed against his pulse.
You dream of big cities and the face of the stranger laying next to you.
Wonwoo doesn’t dream, not anymore– not when the focus of all his dreams is laying next to him, for the first time in a dozen years.
You find the tunnels are easier to handle with someone to talk to. The walls no longer look as hideous and dull as they once did, the blue shining brighter than before, accenting the walls and making the grime and dust nearly invisible.
There’s a structure, a sense of purpose– as the two of you work together to find your way out. You occasionally go up to the surface for food, water and other necessities. You come to learn that Wonwoo is smart and calculated, as he presents to you the list he had made, detailing which exits weren’t guarded and were safe to go out from.
You make the train your home, laying tarps and blankets along the blue seats. Wonwoo does his best to help, limping beside you on his makeshift crutch, offering you random tidbits of advice and knowledge. He spends most of his time perched on the seats of the train, his bad leg stretched out on the seats and your journal in his hands. He catalogs the day, flipping through previous entries, cross-referencing them with the present day, looking for patterns in the tunnel’s system.
You ask Wonwoo what he came down here to look for and he gives you a strange look. Whatever it is, he doesn’t seem to be looking for it anymore, as he helps you search for a way back to your village.
“Are you sure you don’t remember anything about what the tunnel’s entrance looked like when you entered?” He asks you again after a period of silence, tapping the end of your ink pen against his chin in thought. “Cause mine was covered in metals and copper wires when I walked in, before it transitioned to the subway station layout.”
You frown at the foreign words. “Wires? Subway?”
He looks up. “Right. I forget you’re from like wayyyy back.” Wonwoo had traveled through a variety of different timelines searching for you– eons worth.
You shrug off the confusion. “I just remember it was covered in blue vines. The walls were muddy and cracked– like the inside of a cave.”
You look at him, hopeful for any sign of recognition in his eyes. You don’t see it.
“I guess I haven’t explored as much as I thought I had.” Wonwoo looks at you apologetically. “We’ll find it.” There is a glimmer of hope in his voice and you respect him for it.
“Yeah.” You try to muster up the same kind of hope, yet it sputters out weakly. “Yeah, we’ll find it.”
Wonwoo knew he had run out of luck when he told you his name and there was no glimmer of realization in your eyes. You had stared at him with the same stare one would give a stranger– a nameless face you were just getting to know, a clean slate of a soul.
Yet once he had learned you had no clue why you had ventured into the tunnel in the first place, a spark of hope began to appear. You didn’t know what you were missing– yet you were here anyways.
Up on the surface, Wonwoo had been a physicist. World renowned and revered by all his colleagues, he had turned to the theory of the multiverse after losing you– obsessed with the idea of traveling to a world where you were as lonely as he was. He had entered the tunnel on a hunch, hearing myths of a place that could return those lost to you. His original plan had been to find a version of you out there, in a world where he had died instead of you. He supposed the idea was that you could accompany each other– for any version of you was better than none of you at all.
But everything had changed now. The tunnel was far more dangerous than he had predicted it to be. And you were right here, living and breathing in front of him. All he had to do was make you remember. Make you fall in love with him all over again.
Wonwoo stares at you from his spot on the subway floor, a scavenged blanket covering his knees and pooling on the floor around him. You’re scrambling all over the place, mumbling about some markings along the wall.
A small smile makes its way across his face at the familiar sight. He hasn’t met that many versions of you in his travels, but you seem to be frazzled and a ball of energy in every universe.
“What are you looking at?” Your voice cuts through the fantasy, breaking the temporary bliss he had found himself in.
“Nothing.” His lips lay flat once more.
It was your voice. You might resemble his lost lover down to the minute details, but your voice, your tones and inflections– it was unmistakably different.
Wonwoo could only delude himself for so long.
There are sixty-two scratches embedded on the train wall by the time you think you had finally cracked the case. Sixty-two days underground. Sixty-two days stuck next to a strange man– one who stared at you so blatantly and still insisted he wasn’t.
“You’ve got that look on your face, dove.” He drawls out from his spot on the train floor, an accusatory finger pointed at you. “Speak.”
You roll your eyes, both at the affectionate name and at the demanding tone. There were still parts of Wonwoo’s old life that he couldn’t shake– his lofty way of speaking and the air of command that followed him into every room.
Despite these flaws however, you had to admit the two of you had grown close. He had finally let you into glimpses of his old life around day thirty-three, vague stories about his time in the big city: solving complex equations, gambling, teaching at top universities.
“I lived a lavish lifestyle.” He tried painting the picture for you in immense detail. “Imagine ladies in red dresses that flow down to the floor, wine in every corner, a room so large you can’t see each wall.” He chuckles at your curious eyes. “I was always working too– constantly holed up in my office, scratching numbers into the blackboard. I would have probably rotted in there, but Y/N–”
You perk up noticeably at your name and Wonwoo pauses, eyes wide at the slip.
“Me?” You ask, intrigued. “You knew me in your other life?”
Wonwoo shakes his head, a firm answer with no room for argument. “No, just the same name.”
“Who was she?”
“My wife.”
You recall the way his eyes saddened at the mention of her, how his shoulders slumped and made him look smaller than he really was. It contrasted heavily with the way he was looking at you now, shoulders drawn back and a demanding look on his face.
You motion for him to join you in your corner of the train and wait for him to maneuver himself over, his bad leg awkwardly limp as he shuffled himself closer.
“Look.” You point to the sketches in your journal, detailed markings of carvings you had seen along the wall at certain stops. “I was wondering what the weird drawings were on the wall– but I think I figured it out.”
It’s easy to explain your hunch to Wonwoo. He catches on to the idea quickly, finishing your sentences and filling in the blanks with ease.
The theory is simple– and with just a bit of luck, it could get you both home.
The sudden prospect of leaving the tunnel sat in the pits of Wonwoo’s stomach, unsettling and looming in the horizon.
He didn’t know how to feel about it: the chance that the two of you could escape this place, never to see each other again and without the thing you were looking for.
Wonwoo didn’t voice this hesitation however, silently following you as you navigated the complex systems of the train by following the markings along the walls. He didn’t say anything when you threw him a reassuring and hopeful look from over your shoulder, promising him that he’d be okay soon.
He didn’t know how to tell you that the pain– his leg, the absence of the sun– was nothing compared to the pain he had already been in, in a world without you.
Please. He wanted to beg. Don’t make me go back up there. A couple weeks ago, Wonwoo would have shoved you aside without a second thought, snatching the leather journal from your limp hands and racing towards the stairs to his Y/N– to a version of you who knew and loved him.
But that was not the case now. You seemed to buzz with hope and it pulled Wonwoo along, stumbling after you like a lost dog.
The thought of getting out of the tunnel for good excites you, pushing you to keep going as you venture further into the depths of the train system. Wonwoo trails quietly behind you, occasionally tapping your back to get you to slow down. He is silent, for the most part, until you stop by the foot of the white marble staircase leading out into the light.
“We’re here?” He asks, scrutinizing the way out with wary eyes. “Are you sure?”
“No.” You admit. “But it’s our best bet.”
He glances down at the journal in your hands and the scribbles that covered most of its pages. “How does it work?”
You spend most of the night explaining to Wonwoo how the markings work as a guide, laying on the cold concrete of the station floor.
“We’ll try going up to the surface tomorrow.” You propose, glancing at the shadows already beginning to form around the base of the stairs, as if sensing your plan. “It’ll work, as long as we do it together.”
Wonwoo nods, but there’s something you can’t pinpoint behind his eyes. “Right. Together.”
Wonwoo wakes up in cold sweat, bolting upright to see you still sleeping peacefully beside him, the journal clutched loosely in your arms.
It’s clear, what he has to do.
“I’m sorry.” He mumbles, getting up awkwardly from his spot on the floor.
He snatches the journal from your limp arms and flips to a new page. He maps out a new route.
Wonwoo would like to think he’s changed since meeting you– since the tunnel had claimed his life, but he knows he hasn’t. He’s still every bit as selfish as he was before.
He boards the next train and counts the stops until his destination.
He’s still looking for you.
Wonwoo doesn’t know what he was expecting. More shadows to fend off, most likely. He imagined he would emerge from the subway station to a vibrant city, one with those aristocratic elements you had always enjoyed.
He figured he’d find you and you’d love him once he explained it all to you. He figured you would love him despite it all.
“I’m sorry, Woo.” Is what he gets instead, your eyes sad and holding pity for him. “I don’t know what you were expecting but–”
“I came all this way.” He protests, and he knows it sounds weak. “I came all this way. I-” I came all this way.
“I know.” He doesn’t miss the way your eyes flick to his battered leg, over and over again, as if you can’t quite believe what you were seeing. “I can’t– it’ll mess with the timeline, you know that.”
He did know that. Yet he was selfish and wanted you anyway.
“I’d burn down a hundred timelines if it meant I could have you again.”
Your eyes grow sadder at his words. “And that is why I can’t.” There’s an emphasis on it, a finality.
“Tell me to leave, then.” He takes a step closer.
You can’t. Your mouth opens and closes with frustration.
“Tell me to leave.” His heart beats louder, quicker now– as his hands reach out for you. He’s so close. So close.
And then you say it. You spit out the word like a sour drink and it washes over Wonwoo’s face, paralyzing him.
Leave.
And so he walks briskly, back along the city streets, past buildings that resembled his life before, back down those damn stairs. Back down into the darkness. Back to where he came before.
You wake up alone. The silence of the tunnel– void of his breath– haunts you as you stir, sitting upright to look at the empty spot next to you.
Your notebook is gone and so is he.
“Don’t cry.” You chide yourself, picking yourself up from the cold floors and gathering your things. “You barely know the guy.”
It was true. Despite having latched onto him like he was your lifeline, you and Wonwoo were still strangers. You tell yourself over and over again that it made sense for him to leave, if only as a way to soothe the anger quietly burning within you.
“He wants his wife.” You remind yourself. “He’s not here looking for you.”
The shadows churn along the bottom of the stairwell, the light from outside refracting onto the walls of the station, dancing like fireflies. You pick up the first weapon you find: a metal pipe.
Fuck him, you decide. You’re getting yourself out of here, whether he wants to follow you or not.
The shadows grow more aggressive as if taking on the silent challenge, beckoning you to fight them, to try.
You let out a yell– a broken and insane one– unleashing from the pits of your stomach and releasing all the anger, pain and desperation.
You picture what might await you at the top of those stairs. A secluded cottage house, flowers spanning on for miles, a friend waving at you from the porch.
You take a deep breath. The shadows spin faster still. You charge.
Wonwoo stumbles down the stairs like a ragdoll. He ricochets off the last step and lands roughly on the damp ground, cowering from the pain and embarrassment.
He feels like dying, but he pulls himself back together enough to board the train again, navigating the system until he spills back onto the platform he had come from.
He pictures what he might see as he raises his head from the ground. Your worried eyes, a wave of relief washing over them as they meet his. You, running across the platform to meet him. You, you, you.
He raises his head and wishes he hadn’t at all. It is unmistakably empty. You are unmistakably gone.
The tunnel is a distant memory now, resurfacing in your mind only when the rain gets hard and the farm starts to smell like the underground.
“You’ve got that look on your face.” He sets down a cup of tea on the table in front of you, bending down to press a kiss to your forehead.
You smile. “Just thinking about how we met.”
He pushes his glasses up with the back of his hand as his eyes crinkle with laughter at the memory. “When you stumbled into my garden, bloody and completely out of your mind?”
You hum.
“You thought I was a ghost. You knew my name.”
You remember. The scratch of your throat when you had croaked out his name, stunned to see the man standing before you. The sinking feeling when you realized they were not the same Wonwoo.
“No matter.” He shakes the memory away with a touch of his hand on yours. “That was a lifetime ago, my dove. And whatever it was, I’m glad it brought you to me. I love you.”
You nod, and the memories of the Wonwoo you had encountered– loved– in the tunnels disappear. “I love you too.”
You wonder vaguely where he is now. You hope he got what he was searching for too.
day 170
timeline #100
There is no way out. I was foolish to think there ever was. My mind spins back to that morning on the platform, a decision away from life and…whatever this is. Purgatory. Death.
I should not have left. I know that. I grew selfish and discarded my chance at happiness. The tunnel, I’ve learned, gives you one chance and one chance only.
Y/N was my chance. I should have followed her home. I should have…
It’s no matter now. I know now to stop searching. Timeline #100’s Y/N told me the truth. She had it all figured out, buried in research after her Wonwoo had died.
There is no universe where both of us live. It is impossible. It is our canon event. Each time Y/N meets Wonwoo– she dies in the next 5 years. Each time Wonwoo seeks Y/N out— he dies in the next 3.
It is impossible. I must stop trying. It’s time to be selfless– for once. My Y/N, wherever you are, I will stop looking. Live for me. For us.
The shadows creep through the cracks towards me as I write this last entry. They are welcoming me home.
Day 17132
timeline #4800
research on the multiverse + subway system
Time does not flow the same underground, in the belly of the subway system. It has been 46.9 years since Y/N has disappeared and I have still not aged one bit.
The tunnel makes no mistakes. It knows what it’s doing.
The tunnel returns those lost to you.
I have been stuck on this paradox for decades: the tunnel promises happy endings. Yet there is no universe where Y/N and I live happily ever after. None at all.
Yet… time does not flow at all in the tunnel. And in these 46.9 years, I have not met another soul underground.
We could have lived forever underground. Together. She would not have died in 5 years. I would not have died in 3. We…we could have had it all.
There is a missing phrase from the legend:
The tunnel returns those lost to you… but only ever once.
hi! this is @ppyopulii, i just wanted to say the way u set up ur fics (like ur setup of pairing/rating/summary/etc) is SO cute and i absolutely love it?? additionally, ur headers are always so clean & i adore the fonts/pictures u use!! ok that’s all :) have a good day !! <3
HIII omg i'm so flattered <3 it took a lot of trial and error to get to where we are now in terms of set up and style... do not scroll back-- my past banners and setup was ATROCIOUS :)
i love making pretty banners for each fic and it often adds to the inspo and motivation to acc write the fic!
💬 preview: Joshua loves his job as social media manager for The Carat Company, except for one thing: the actress he’s in charge of. you hate his guts, and Joshua swears he returns those feelings with vigor, and yet…forced to work in close proximity, Joshua’s forced to reckon with the idea that just maybe, despite all the animosity, he’s still madly in love with you.
cw/tw: social media manager!joshua x actress!reader, mutual pining, oblivious idiots in love, enemies to lovers(?), light swearing, bit of crack, miscommunication trope, only one bed, brainrot hoshi, menace jeonghan
🪽fic rating: pg
☁️ masterlist & a/n: this is in direct correlation with @straylightdream's fic for the same collab! i feel so honoured to be apart of this wonderful community and i cannot believe it is finally time to share with you all this piece of work-- this collab was the beginning of it all for me: a thousand laughs and inside jokes, found family and forever friends. i am beyond grateful to be standing next to these wonderful writers and people. forever grateful to @studioeisa and @diamonddaze01 for being the tumblr parents i never knew i needed <3
now playing: tonight (i wish i was your boy) by the 1975
new actress y/n violet l/n looks absolutely grotesque in new photos from set.
Joshua swears on his life and all things good that he meant to type gorgeous.
He had half the mind to call Apple Services himself and complain about the terrible timing autocorrect had, as he sat in Wonwoo’s office, their company’s stern CEO staring at him from across his meticulously organized desk.
“You’re telling me you managed to sour our new talent’s name in less than an hour of working her socials.”
Joshua lowered his gaze. “Yes.”
Wonwoo pinched the bridge of his nose in a twinge of despair with annoyance swimming on his face. “Joshua, I cannot emphasize this enough. Our partnership with Ms. Y/N Violet needs to work. It has to.”
“And it will.” Joshua nodded vehemently, trying to emphasize his false confidence in the matter. “I’ve got it, boss. Trust me.” Or don’t. Joshua didn’t really know what he was doing.
Wonwoo sends him out with a few words that borderline as a threat. Words that sounded like don’t fuck this up, please and your job is on the line.
Joshua swipes into Twitter and sees the amount of people who had screenshotted his mistake and posted it online.
Poor social media guy, someone wrote. Don’t hate him for his fat thumbs! At least we got a good laugh.
“Fuck me.” Joshua dials Jihoon’s number and prays the man picks up. “Hey, Hoon. I need a favour.”
The actress I work for is going to hate me.
“Hey.”
It’s awkward when Joshua walks into your trailer on set. You’re poised on the makeup chair, your eyes closed as your makeup artist dusted pale pink shadow over your eyelids. You recognize his voice, and your eyebrows pinch.
“Mr. Hong. You’re late.” You supposed it was unprofessional of you to still hold a grudge for Joshua’s social media mistake, but you couldn’t help it.
“There was a hold up at the company.” Joshua tries his best to remain civil. There was just something about your face that infuriated him. It was too…perfect. Too pretty.
He raises his camera and waits for you to pose in the perfected candid pose every actor and actress was taught. To look just the right amount of ‘caught off guard.’ Joshua snaps a few photos before throwing you a thumbs up.
You motion for him to leave. “I need to rehearse my lines. In peace.” You add the last part pointedly, glancing at him through the mirror.
He sits on the couch of your trailer, glasses perched on his nose that he looks at you with. He gives you a curt nod and exits.
Ever the gentleman.
But you knew that it was all a scheme.
y/n violet l/n stuns in new photos captured on set.
Joshua makes sure to double check, triple check, the caption before sending it out this time.
He’s tried so hard to be nothing but perfect in the few months he had been working for you, as if each action could make up for the disaster of an entrance he had given you on their company’s social media page.
Joshua made sure your favourite drinks and snacks were in your trailer before your arrival. He painstakingly edited every minute flaw from your photos. He kept eyeliner, lipgloss and a spare hair tie in his bag. He never complained when you asked him to reshoot a billion more photos.
Yet for some reason, you were unwilling to forget the incident. It was clear to Joshua that you hated him.
“Thanks.” You mutter as he hands you your morning cup of iced tea, stabbing the straw into the cup for you, mixing the ice just right. You pretend not to notice how Joshua has somehow learnt all your habits and preferences to a T within just a few months.
He wordlessly hands you a napkin before you even ask.
“Hey, Vi. You’re on set in 5.” The 1st AD pokes her head in to call you.
“Okay, thanks.”
Joshua takes your cup and napkin flawlessly and helps you down the steps.
You hate how perfect he is.
He hates how he can feel himself caring about this job more than he should.
fans rave over y/n violet’s assistant: internet calls him her prince-in-waiting.
“I feel like you’re being underpaid.” Wonwoo says the next time Joshua finds himself in his office. “I hear from the rest of the staff that you’ve been doing other jobs.”
Joshua doesn’t know what his boss is saying, and it’s evident on his face.
“You’re not just Ms. L/N’s social media manager, you’re also her assistant and bodyguard.” Wonwoo explains, and Joshua realizes he’s got a point.
“Oh.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t come to me for a raise, Josh.” Wonwoo states quite frankly. “You’ve always been very good at advocating for yourself.”
He shrugs. “It doesn’t really feel like a job.”
And the look on Wonwoo’s face tells him he’s said too much.
“Really.” There’s an unmistakable smirk on Wonwoo’s face, the 5 - 9 Wonwoo peeking through the 9 - 5 Wonwoo for just a second. “Taking such good care of her doesn’t feel like a job.”
Joshua’s quick to backtrack. “No, I mean– I like my job.”
“Sure.” It’s obvious he doesn’t believe him.
Fuck me, Joshua thinks silently.
Joshua can feel himself burning holes into the back of Jeonghan’s head as the man resurfaces from kissing you.
“Cut!” He can hear the director yelling for the scene to end in the distance, yet all his senses are trained on you.
How you pressed yourself into Jeonghan’s hold, melted into the kiss, let out the sweetest gasp into his lips. Joshua hated all of it. He hated how it made him feel.
He watches Jeonghan whisper something into your ear, a hand brushing against your hair.
Joshua glanced down only to realize he had been squeezing the paper cup filled with coffee in his hands, the contents slowly overflowing and dripping onto the floor.
He looks back up and catches you looking at him.
“Fuck me.”
You break away from Jeonghan as soon as you hear the cue from the director.
“You alright?” Jeonghan’s quick to check in.
You nod. “You?”
It’s an unspoken thing between the two of you, checking in with your onscreen counterpart in between work days and takes. “I’m good.” Jeonghan glances behind you and bites back a smile. “I’d say your social media guy isn’t though.”
“Mr. Hong?” You flit your eyes over to the man in question. He’s standing near the side, your afternoon coffee in his hands and a scowl on his face. “Yeah, I don’t know what’s wrong with him.”
“He’s in love with you.” Jeonghan says it as plainly as if he had just stated tomorrow’s weather.
You choke on air. “What?”
Jeonghan nears, his breath tickling your ear as he fixes your hair gently. “Look at how he tenses when I near you. How his eyebrows furrow. How he looks like he wants to murder me from across the room.”
You look, and for a second, you see it too.
And then you blink, and it’s gone. “You’re imagining things, Hannie.”
Your social media guy does not love you.
It’s the dead of night when Joshua lugs your suitcase into your hotel room. He sets it down and pats it awkwardly, scanning the room for any visible threats. He’s grown accustomed to his role in your life. He still hates how it makes him feel towards you– the feelings of love that he continues to push down until they disappear– but he’s content with his job. Wonwoo did end up giving him a raise for it.
He was now your social media manager/personal assistant/bodyguard. The paycheck was exponentially high.
“Of course, you forget to book yourself a room.” There’s a light tease in your tone as you stare at the one bed in the giant penthouse suite.
“Sorry.” Is all he has to offer in response. He had forgotten, in the midst of all the press releases he had to manage with the movie trailer coming out, he had only thought of booking you a room and not him. “I’ll sleep on the floor.”
You give him a look he can’t decipher. “No.”
Joshua blinks. “Huh?”
“I’m not making you sleep on the floor, Hong. We can both sleep on the bed. Just stick to your side.”
He nods, ignoring the feeling that the two of you had just crossed into some unspeakable, unknown territory.
He doesn’t know it, but you feel it too.
It’s strange to see him out of his usual business attire.
You’re trying not to stare at him from above your computer screen, but you fail, eyeing the casual wear your work counterpart has on. Joshua is concentrating on something on his phone, his lips twitching as his eyes move briskly over its contents.
“Stop staring.”
You flinch when you’re caught. “I wasn’t.”
He laughs, and the sound startles you. “I can feel your beady little eyes on me, missy.” He teases, smiling at your insulted expression.
“Do not insult me like that, Mr. Hong– you work for me, remember?”
“Oh, do I now?”
There’s a moment of silence as the two of you look at one another, sharing a secret smile before both quickly turning away.
He swears at that moment he’s in love with you, and he hates that it’s true.
You swear you hate him under your breath. You hate how you know it’s a lie.
The sun begins to set as Joshua hands you your nightly cup of tea. Made just the way you like it, a dash of sugar and a spoonful of honey.
He sits beside you and turns to look at you with determination on his face. “Can I ask you a question?”
You frown. “Sure?”
The question that comes out of his mouth is unexpected and a nice surprise. “Have you always wanted to be an actress?”
“Yes.” You answer immediately. “Have you always wanted to be a…” You blank at his job title. A personal assistant? A bodyguard? Basically a boyfriend? Instead, you settle with the safest option. “...a social media manager?”
Joshua thinks a beat too long before answering. “I guess.”
“That doesn’t sound all too convincing.”
“I mean– I don’t think anyone grows up wanting to be a social media manager.”
He has a point. “What did you want to be then?”
Joshua thinks for a bit, as if the memory was already long gone and too distant to recover. “Astronaut, or something silly like that.”
“I don’t think that’s silly. I mean–” You backtrack. “Everyone told me being an actress was a silly dream, but I’m here now.”
There’s a sour look on his face. “And I’m your social media manager.”
“Yeah, a fucking good one.”
He visibly brightens. “Really?”
“I mean, you did mess up big time on that one post, but–”
“I am sorry about that.” He grimaces, and you know he really does feel bad.
“You called me grotesque.”
“I typed it wrong and stupid autocorrect–”
You laugh at his indignant expression. “I’m joking, Joshua.”
He joins in, and neither one of you notices how you had just called him by his first name.
You look radiant in the mornings. Joshua swears on all things good and true that you cannot be real, and that you’re most certainly nothing short of an angel.
“Good morning.” His morning voice catches you off guard.
You turn around in bed to face him, momentarily stunned by the limited amount of space between the two of you. His hair is pushed in all directions, his eyes lazy and filled with sleep, yet–
“Fuck me,” you think to yourself. Your social media guy was hot. But that had to just be the morning delirium talking.
“You’re staring again.” He comments, his lips quivering into a tiny smile. “You’ve been doing that a lot.”
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“No.” You deny it once more. “I am not staring.”
“Sure. Sure.” He reaches a hand over and moves a piece of hair away from your face.
You blink as he moves away. “Shut up.”
The banter comes as easy as hating him once did. And as the two of you watch the sun begin to rise again, you start thinking that maybe loving him can be just as easy too.
y/n violet l/n eats up the red carpet with new look.
You’re dazzling on the red carpet, and Joshua spends most of his time trying to stop his mouth from hanging open.
He raises the camera and waits for you to fix your dress.
“Is this okay?” You look at him, fingers toying with the hem of your skirt, the bodice of your dress cinching your waist uncomfortably. Your movement is limited as you attempt to adjust the fabric of your dress down to cover more of your legs.
Joshua wordlessly steps in to help. He moves the fabric with practiced precision, his fingers brushing against your upper thigh as he steps away again.
“It’s perfect.” He reassures you, raising his camera once more. “C’mon, work the camera, pretty.”
Smiling for pictures comes easy when it’s Joshua behind the camera.
He hums contently as he studies the photos. “Perfect.” Offering you his arm, Joshua escorts you into the venue.
Neither one of you comments on the multiple compliments the two of you received throughout the event. How every single person that walked up to you mentioned how perfect he looked by your side.
The sky is dark and crying by the time you’re ready to leave.
Joshua holds his coat over your head, careful not to disturb the delicate headpiece sitting in your hair. You watch him study the pouring rain, as if calculating the best way to deliver you to the car.
“I’m going to have to carry you.” He ultimately decides.
You gape at the suggestion. “What?”
He shrugs, pointing down at your feet and the diamond encrusted heels adorning them. “Neither one of us can afford your shoes getting soaked in the rain— what are those? A billion dollars as footwear?”
He swings you into his arms effortlessly and begins the trek.
Rain hits his back as he carries you to the car, his hair sticking to his forehead as he blinks rainwater out from his eyes. You can’t help but stare and appreciate the moment for what it is.
“Thank you, Joshua.” You whisper, as he gently sets you into the passenger seat of your van.
He shoots you a bright smile. “Anytime. Fasten your seatbelt, princess.” He slides into the driver’s seat, reaching over to fix the tiara sitting in your hair.
Your stomach flips. Fuckkk.
y/n violet l/n and her prince-in-waiting spotted in a fairytale moment after gala.
The headlines are everywhere in the morning.
“People think we’re together, they’re calling it some fairytale romance come to life.” Your eyes read the comments left by fans faster than your brain can comprehend them. “Are you seeing this?”
You look up to see Joshua staring blankly at his phone.
“Joshua!” You nudge him from his stupor. “The masses think we’re in love. Do something about it!”
He blinks. “Like what?”
“I don’t know? You’re the social media guy, don’t you guys have some kind of handbook for situations like this? Release a statement or something–” You point an accusatory finger his way. “I told you carrying me like that last night was a bad idea.”
There’s a shit eating expression on his face that you urge to smack away. “And what if we don’t?” He tests the waters. Hook, line–
“What?”
“What if we don’t release a statement?”
“People think we’re in love.”
“So? Maybe they're right.”
And…sinker. His heart threatens to jump out of his ass.
No one had more effectively rendered you silent than Joshua had right now. “I- what?”
Joshua stares at you for a count of three. The bravery that had overtaken him a few seconds ago was gone now, and he was trying to muster up the courage to say something– anything.
The first two notes of Bruno Mars’s Just The Way You Are starts playing and Joshua flushes, grabbing his phone to answer the call. “Hello?”
Jihoon’s voice crackles to life. “You know you need to report this type of shit to me, right? Your HR department? Now– I would recommend you to not date the actress you’re working for, but since that’s already been done–”
Joshua cuts him off. “What– no, we’re not dating.” He darts his eyes to look over at you. You’re pointedly avoiding eye contact. “It’s just internet gossip.”
“Right.”
Joshua wonders what kind of things Wonwoo was telling the rest of the department heads if Jihoon also sounded like he didn’t believe him.
“Well, as long as you’re not dating.” Jihoon concludes the call. “Bye.”
Joshua lowers the phone to look at you.
The moment’s over. You both can feel it.
y/n violet, looking ravishing on set, answers questions at Buzzfeed.
You don’t see Joshua for the next two weeks.
He’s still posting snippets from the press tour you and Jeonghan are currently on, busy promoting your new movie, but the man himself has gone radio silent.
You imagine he’s regretting the last night the two of you had spent together.
“So? Maybe they're right.”
You find yourself spinning the conversation over and over in the back of your head, as you rehearse your answers for the next interview. You overanalyze it, again and again, until you can’t tell the difference between what actually happened and what you’ve created in your head.
It’s the way he had so quickly shut down the idea of dating you to Jihoon that stuck with you the most. The tone. The swiftness of his words. The lack of hesitation.
Your temporary assistant hands you your morning coffee, and you take a sip. It’s too strong, too murky, not nearly enough ice.
You find yourself missing Joshua. You recount every little snide comment you had ever made at him and feel that wave of regret, over and over.
But buried deep within that regret is embarrassment, and it reigns far superior. The little voice inside your head whispers seeds into your mind. He probably hates you now. You’ve been nothing but rude, and awful, and dismissive.
Your phone buzzes to life, and you see his name on the caller ID.
You feel like throwing up as you let it ring.
Joshua stares at the video of your latest interview and lets out a heavy sigh.
You’ve been dodging his calls. Joshua hates to say it, but he understands. A big time actress, being caught on social media and accused of dating her glorified butler.
He doesn’t know what possessed him to keep calling you, but he does. Once before clocking in to work. Once clocking out. Once before bed.
Soonyoung tells him it’s pathetic. It probably is.
“You need to let her go, man.” Soonyoung tells him as they leave the office building. “Is she really worth all this groveling?”
“She’s worth everything.” Joshua finds himself admitting.
“Shit, bro.” Their marketing manager fixes him with sympathetic eyes. “You’re so cooked.”
Joshua frowns. “What does that even mean?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Wonwoo made the whole marketing team take this seminar on the new internet codes.” Soonyoung slaps him on the back. “If she’s worth that much to you, then show her.”
“How? She won’t even pick up my calls. And our schedules barely line up anymore.”
Soonyoung dangles his phone between his fingertips. “You’re the social media guy, right?”
There’s a wicked spark behind those eyes. Fuck.
y/n violet’s prince-in-waiting steps into the spotlight: is this love or just workplace loyalty?
You’re somewhere in Singapore getting ready for another interview when Jeonghan breaks into your trailer with a manic smile on his face. “Look at this article that just came out.” He thrusts his phone into your face.
You blink at the headline. “What–”
“Your prince-in-waiting just blew up the whole internet.”
You blitz through the article in record speed, catching snippets and quotes from Joshua.
Working for her was a nightmare. Violet’s spoiled, high-maintenance, an all around princess.
You push his phone away. “I don’t want to read all that.”
Jeonghan groans. “Don’t just glance at it, read it. Like actually.”
Working for her was a nightmare– I was forced to confront the reality that I wasn’t just doing all of it for the paycheck, I was doing it for her.
Violet’s spoiled, high-maintenance, an all around princess– but that was okay. I didn’t mind it. I liked maintaining her.
And finally, the last quote in the article.
“I suppose when you spend that much time staring at one person’s photos… falling a bit in love with them is inevitable.”
You blink. “Ava?”
Your temporary assistant raises her head. “Yes?”
“I need you to get Mr. Hong on the next flight over here.”
y/n violet takes movie premiere by storm– bringing her prince-in-waiting as her plus one.
Despite all that has changed in your relationship with Joshua, these events still remain the same.
He still gets on his knees to take the perfect pictures of you in your dress. He still brings you drinks whenever he notices you’re parched. Still carries your heels for you when your feet start aching on the way home.
Yet some things have changed: like the fact that his hand is now placed possessively on your waist as he navigates the crowd with you next to him.
“I still don’t like that guy.” He mutters into your ear as you both say goodbye to Jeonghan and his date.
You laugh. “He’s just Jeonghan.”
“He’s kissed you.” He hisses, fixing your necklace so it sits perfectly on your collarbone. “And we both know he was cuddling up to you on set just to piss me off.”
“Maybe.” You admit. “But that’s just Jeonghan.”
“Whatever.” Joshua throws one last dirty look at the actor before fixing you with loving eyes. “You’re mine now, anyways. Right?”
You scrunch your nose. “Wouldn’t you like to know, social media boy?”
He pinches your hip in retaliation.
The banter still comes easy. And you’re pleased to find out that loving him comes just as easy too.
this is not a fic, or anything pertaining to seventeen, but something i wrote on my way to work today-- riding through the bus route of my city. i'm sharing this because i'm quite proud of it, and i hope someone reading it will relate to the feeling: nostalgia, remembrance, the indents of someone you used to be.
the bus route: R4
this bus route is familiar. routine and mundane. we pass the run-down gas stations, busy schools, businessmen out on their lunch break. the air conditioning runs just a bit too loud. the bus rattles along the uneven pavement, rocking my stomach until my lunch feels uncomfortably mixed. my hair covers my face from the glare of the sun reflecting against the tall buildings. we pass weed stores and the ramen place i used to visit with friends.
this bus route has seen many versions of me. me, on the first day of summer heading to work, bright-eyed and laughing next to someone i used to call my soulmate. me, two days in, head spinning and a forced smile on my face— lips twitched up in a way where only i could tell it wasn’t real. she still sat next to me, and continued to do so for the rest of summer. it’s seen me reread text messages until my vision blurred together, as if doing it enough would change the words that were so ingrained in my brain.
it’s seen me cry, tears welling up in the corners of my eyes, threatening to spill out as i pondered the end of my life and how it would play out. a knife to the wrist, a bottle of rum, my back against the cold pavement of a run-down road. or as i envisioned death at the hands of someone else, the anger of their words— how each attack felt worse coming from someone i used to think loved me. the yellow handrails that i’ve clung onto have seen my shaky hands type out the address of mental health clinics, all the while as she sat next to me, not seeing my tears— or pretending not to. as she laughed about the same thing that was slowly devouring me from the inside, rotting and stewing with evil. this bus has seen countless goodbyes. countless journeys to and from work. a year of therapy visits. dodging around smelly students from vancouver college. avoiding eye contact when a familiar stranger enters the double doors.
the walls and stuffy windows of this four wheeled vehicle has seen it all— every scar, every moment. every person that has once sat next to me, bags touching and shoulders brushing, now nothing but a stranger with the information of a close friend. it must remember me, hair curlier and makeup-less, school skirt above my knees and a backpack over one shoulder. two working AirPods in my ears, a thousand rings on every finger. and it must remember the title of each book i’ve ever devoured on its seats, each fast food chain bag sitting on my lap, every loud laugh, every complaint of the burning heat or biting frost.
and i wonder if it still remembers me now, sitting in the same spot after nearly a year, my hair a different colour and my eyeliner a different brand. the seat next to me sits empty, occasionally occupying a stranger. i am entirely new, changed, completely different.
yet i see indents of who i used to be amidst the yellow and blue and grey.
similarly, as i get off the skytrain and onto the platform above the entrance, directly opposite the mall of my hometown— i am struck with the remembrance of it all. and the repeated realization of just how much burnaby’s public transportation has seen of me. without a car, i am left to explore the barebones of this city, traveling through its inner systems and carried through its belly.
while multiple skytrain platforms exist in my narrative— the new west station and the feeling of a conversation yelled through the wind, waterfront station and the incident with a knife, bridgeport and the multitude of late nights— metrotown station reigns far superior.
i have walked up and down those tall escalators a thousand times over, destinations and feelings different and jumbled each time. towards concerts, towards work, towards meetings with old friends i haven’t seen in years, towards nowhere in particular.
the skytrain platform has heard many unrepeatable conversations, ones filled with impulse and zero constraint. ones with full honesty and a thousand regrets. it’s heard all the why’s and i’m sorry’s and how have you been’s? it’s seen bittersweet hugs before separating forever, silly handshakes between friends after a movie late at night. eye rolls and pullings of ponytails.
my math textbook once sat at the bottom of the large trash can sitting right in the middle of the platform. and so did a thousand starbucks drinks, a thousand quick work lunches. a billion receipts and movie tickets. apology flowers that came with a shit apology. alcohol bottles, empty packs of gum. my grade ten yearbook— the one with all the slurs and the word slut in sharpie that i tried to white-out. a poem about missed chances from someone who really couldn’t write a poem but tried and failed anyways. a thousand basketball scoresheets.
my life— sitting with the train tracks and bus routes.
we're going on a mini mini hiatus for two weeks as i transition from one thing to another-- ie. no posts and no fics (except for collabs). i will still be online and lurking (and writing!) and there will be lots of stuff ready to share with you guys once i'm back :)
༄.° pairing: jeon wonwoo x f!reader | ༄.° wc: 7.7k
༄.° genre: nanny diary au | au pair!reader
༄.° warnings: definitely some angst + self-spiraling, bad/negligent rich people parenting, consumption of alcohol, mentions of vomit
༄.° a/n: for cam and em's carat bay collab! was so grateful to take part in another collab and experiment with my writing style a bit :)) please do check out all the other amazing authors in this collab, they are all so so so dear to me
Entry #1: On the Indigenous Habits of the Affluent Family on Summer Vacation
June 13th, 3:04 PM
In the wilds of Carat Bay, the modern matriarch is most commonly spotted with an oat milk matcha and AirPods, muttering something about KPIs. The modern patriarch is nowhere to be seen, having mumbled something about a “board meeting” and “golf with the boys.” Their offspring, small but feral, roam through chlorinated terrain. Their natural prey? Au pairs in department store swimsuits.
Junseo had eaten four frozen lemonades and was now in the middle of what experts in the field might call “a sugar-induced sprint toward cardiac disaster.”
“Junseo, no running by the pool!” you shout, too late. He slips, recovers, and keeps going like a greased piglet on roller skates.
Across the concrete savannah of Carat Bay’s family pool zone, Junhee is in her usual position: crouched at the border between chlorinated civilization and murky wilderness, pool noodle in hand. She is attempting to commit amphibicide via repeated poking of a highly displeased frog.
“Junhee, love, leave the frog alone—he lives here!”
“His name is Boba!” she screams back.
The frog does not look like a Boba. He looks like he’s reconsidering all of his life choices, which, frankly, makes two of you.
Your sandals squeak—a mistake you didn’t realize you’d made until about an hour into your first shift. They’re cute, sure. But tractionless. Supportless. Flat as your social life ever since you moved back in with your parents and became, for lack of better options, an anthropologist in exile.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
Just a few months ago you were crossing the graduation stage in soft linen, clutching your master’s degree in anthropology like it meant something. You had been so certain academia would need someone like you—sharp-eyed, good at syntax, fluent in both fieldwork and feminist theory.
Turns out, the only people hiring anthropologists in this economy are tech companies doing ethics theater and pharmaceutical firms in need of plausible deniability.
You had been dying slowly on your parents’ couch for exactly three weeks when your friend Lexi sent the flyer:
Want to make $$$ babysitting rich kids all summer? Full access to country club, pool, catered lunches. No drowning allowed. :)
You had laughed. And then, somewhere between the fourth rejection email and your mother asking if you wanted to help organize her sock drawer, you’d sent in a resume. You even lied and said you liked children. Two days later, you were hired. The check had commas in it.
Now you’re standing in a wet Target swimsuit, sunburn blooming across your chest, wondering if the rash on your neck is from stress, sweat, or the “reef-safe, organic, mommy-formulated” sunscreen that smells like expired chamomile and four-day-old chlorine.
“Junseo,” you call again, “do not eat that bandaid!”
The bandaid goes into his mouth. The bandaid is chewed. You scream internally.
Your employer, Mrs. Cho, the mother of these twin terrors, has not moved from her perch in the family cabana for the last forty minutes. She’d tossed you a dismissive “just make sure they don’t drown” before retreating into her kaftan and a Zoom meeting. She’s been there ever since: AirPods in, matcha sweating on the teakwood side table, gesturing wildly as she mutters about influencers and packaging aesthetics.
You, meanwhile, are the last line of defense between civilization and frog-assisted chaos.
Later, after bribing the children into a nap with gummy worms and a story you mostly made up about a magical flamingo who goes to therapy, you collapse onto a sun-warmed lounger just outside the cabana. It's one of the only moments of quiet you’ve had since arriving. The kind of quiet that rings a little in your ears.
You close your eyes. Take a deep breath. Maybe consider what a plane ticket to literally anywhere else might cost.
That’s when you feel it—a shift in the light. A shadow cast across your body.
You blink up.
There’s a boy—no, not quite. A man. Mid-twenties, maybe. Dark hair falling slightly into his eyes, expression unreadable. His nametag says Wonwoo. He’s wearing the Carat Bay staff polo, a towel slung casually over his shoulder. His left hand holds a chilled bottle of water, condensation trailing lazy rivulets down his fingers.
He offers it wordlessly.
You take it, startled. “Thank you,” you say, your voice hoarse from yelling and sun.
He doesn’t speak. Just gives you a single, small nod, and walks away.
You watch his back retreat into the shimmer of pool heat, the bottle already cold against your lips.
You don’t know it yet, but this is the last peaceful moment you’ll have for a while.
Entry #2: On Power Hierarchies and Poolside Social Climbing
June 20th, 11:35 AM
In most pack dynamics, the alpha asserts dominance through elaborate displays of confidence. At Carat Bay, this involves hosting themed pool parties and knowing the regional manager’s golf handicap. Among the matriarchs, alliances shift over whose offspring made swim team and who dared to bring store-bought cupcakes to the birthday cabana. It is important to master the subtle art of pretending one is not competing.
You lose your hearing somewhere around the fifth time Junhee screams, “I DON’T WANNA BE A ZEBRA.”
Junseo, face flushed with fury and injustice, echoes her like a demonic chorus: “WE’RE NOT ZEBRAS! I WANNA BE A T-REX!”
“Fine,” you hiss, crouched on the cabana floor with one knee in a puddle of apple juice, “be a godda–dang dinosaur in a zebra onesie, just get in the outfit.”
Today is not your day.
Today is Savannah Safari Birthday™, an event as horrifying as it is aggressively coordinated. The themed party, hosted by one of the more alpha Carat Bay mothers (you learn her name is Seoyeon, but she goes by Stacie, spelled with an ‘ie’ like a threat), has transformed her family cabana into an influencer’s fever dream. Giant cardboard giraffes. Balloon arches in beige and gold. Matching straw hats for all children. And a disturbingly lifelike stuffed zebra standing near the dessert table like it's waiting for a sacrifice.
You wrangle the twins into their assigned costumes—faux-animal-print rompers with little ears on the hoods—while they shriek like banshees at a frequency NASA might want to study.
By the time you emerge into the main cabana area, sweating and frayed, the pool moms are already circling each other like predators in designer plumage.
“Did you hear?” one says, adjusting her visor. “Eunkyung got waitlisted for pre-competitive swim. Waitlisted. And they just redid their pool.”
A blonde with glistening shoulders gasps theatrically. “Waitlisted? Oh no. Maybe she can take up something less... saturated. Pickleball, maybe.”
There’s laughter, brittle as pressed glass.
You hover near the fruit skewers, pretending to supervise the twins as they pelt each other with animal crackers. That’s when you hear it: the first volley fired in your direction.
“Aw, is your niece helping you today?” one of the moms trills, gesturing at you without looking. Her sunglasses are enormous and opaque.
“She’s adorable,” another adds, tone sweet and scalding. “That suit is so… real. You just don’t see people being brave about texture anymore.”
You blink, mouth parting slightly. You’re not sure whether to laugh or start quoting Margaret Mead in self-defense.
“Actually,” you say slowly, “I’m their au pair.”
They blink back, uncomprehending. One finally nods. “Oh! Like an assistant.”
Sure. Like that.
You eventually find yourself corralled in a shady corner with the other au pairs and nannies—two from Portugal, one from Toronto, and one with an indeterminate accent who looks like she’s seen war. Together, you trade horror stories like wartime nurses. One saw a child try to feed a wedding ring to a koi fish. Another was asked to prepare an all-raw vegan lunch for a toddler who eats crayons. You are both horrified and comforted. Trauma loves company.
It ends, as all things do, in carnage. A child screams because someone else got to sit on the fake zebra. Another sobs over the injustice of the animal-shaped cupcakes melting in the heat. You grab the twins, now sticky with fruit and full on far too much cake for their afternoon nap, and make a beeline for the cabana exit just as one of the moms begins berating a nanny for not predicting her daughter’s alleged strawberry allergy.
You’re almost free.
Almost.
And then you crash directly into someone solid.
You go down like a bowling pin.
“Oh my god!” Junseo howls. “YOU FELL!”
“Like, BOOM!” Junhee adds, collapsing into giggles.
You are on the hot concrete, stunned, clutching your elbow and your remaining dignity.
And there he is again.
Wonwoo.
He’s traded his polo for a linen button-up, slightly wrinkled and unfairly flattering. He looks down at you, impassive.
“Hey,” he says.
You blink up at him. “Hi.”
He offers a hand. You take it, and he pulls you up with barely any effort. His hand is warm. Callused. There’s a quiet strength to him, like a character in a Ghibli film who lives alone in the woods and speaks only in cryptic haikus.
Before you can say anything else, one of the moms descends like a hawk. Or a hyena that’s recently had fillers.
“Oh, Wonwoo,” she purrs, practically draping herself across his side. Her teeth gleam. “I didn’t know you were back from Singapore. Is your father joining us for the benefit this year?”
He gently disentangles himself.
“He’s expecting me for lunch,” he replies, tone polite and final.
Her lips purse. You watch her recalibrate in real time, already turning toward another potential social rung.
Wonwoo glances back at you. His expression doesn’t change, but there’s something faint in his eyes. Amusement, maybe. Or pity. Or just wind.
Then he’s gone.
Later, when the twins are face-first in naps (which took a significant amount of wrangling to achieve) and your phone finally has a signal, you search his name.
Jeon Wonwoo.
Son of the owner. Executive board. Dartmouth-educated. There’s a press photo of him at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a sustainability initiative.
Of course.
You drop the phone onto the lounge chair beside you and cover your face with a towel.
Maybe he’s not so different from the moms after all.
Or maybe worse—maybe he’s just better at pretending he isn’t.
Entry #3: On The Nanny Condition (Also Known As: “Doormat Syndrome”)
June 30th, 12:47 PM
Subservience in child-rearing roles is often mistaken for passivity. However, this is more accurately understood as the practiced stillness of someone who has weathered too many juice spills and tantrums. It is not a weakness, but a form of strategic surrender – resignation honed into an art.
It starts the way all days start now: with screaming.
You don’t even flinch anymore. Junseo has weaponized volume as a strategy. Junhee has started using phrases like “I’m telling Mommy!” even though Mommy, at this point, might as well be a cryptid. You text Mrs. Cho about the lunch situation and get no response. You text again. Then once more, with slightly more passive-aggression. Still nothing.
Mr. Cho is presumably in a meeting, on a plane, or golfing through time. His only presence this week has been the sound of an engine disappearing down the driveway at six-fifteen each morning. You’re beginning to suspect he has never actually seen the twins awake.
By 11:30, it’s full meltdown hour. Junhee has decided to sob violently about the wrong flavor of juice. Junseo is lying on the pool deck and pretending to die of hunger. You make the tragic mistake of attempting to fix this by visiting the snack bar—only to find it’s out of chicken nuggets.
Of course it is.
The cabana attendant (your supposed lifeline in this glittering suburban dystopia) is nowhere to be found. Probably hiding behind a towel cart and Googling how to fake appendicitis.
A mom walks by, sipping iced espresso in a wine glass. She clocks the situation—the spilled juice, your panicked rustling through bags, the tantrum echoing off the water—and gives you the kind of look normally reserved for videos of shelter dogs.
Then, like a scene change in a commercial for laundry detergent, he appears.
Wonwoo. The cabana attendant from three down, and apparently some sort of summer camp MacGyver.
Without a word, he crouches beside your mess of a pool chair, reaches into his tote, and withdraws two juice boxes like they’ve been summoned by divine intervention.
“Trade secret,” he says, handing them over. “I keep a stash for emergencies.”
The twins freeze mid-wail. Their heads swivel toward the juice. Junhee actually snatches it like a raccoon who’s just spotted an unattended churro.
You mouth thank you as chaos briefly, miraculously, subsides. Wonwoo gives a small shrug, like it's no big deal that he's just singlehandedly de-escalated a Code Red tantrum. Then he starts rummaging through his bag again.
“Here,” he says, offering you a slightly squished protein bar. “You look like you might pass out before 2. Not a great look in front of the junior elite.”
You stare at the bar, then at him. “Are you always this prepared?”
He squints at the twins, now peacefully arguing over whether dinosaurs could swim. “Experience.”
He rises, but pauses. “Oh, and: sing to them,” he adds, like it’s obvious. “The nap goes easier if you sing. Something simple. Doesn’t matter what.”
You blink. “You know a lot about naps.”
He smirks. Whisper-soft, barely there. “Only the essential ones.”
And then he’s walking away. You’re about to call after him, maybe say something actually coherent, when you spot it. Just barely poking out of his overstuffed bag, next to sunscreen and a spare shirt:
A Secret History, cover creased, dog-eared, loved.
The twins fall asleep in your lap thirty minutes later, sticky fingers curled around juice boxes, heads tilted together like cherubs.
You hum a lullaby under your breath. It works.
Maybe this doormat thing isn’t about surrender, you think, watching the sun cut soft lines through their hair. Maybe it’s about endurance. Outlasting the storm. Knowing when to bend, and when to hum.
And maybe—just maybe—you’re not the only one pretending.
Entry #4: A Brief Field Guide to Cabana Boys (Genus: Mysteriousus Hotus)
July 12th, 7:30 PM
Often underestimated, the Cabana Boy is a curious species: quiet, observant, and frequently found next to industrial-sized coolers. Contrary to popular belief, he is not just decorative. He may, in fact, be reading Donna Tartt during fireworks displays and composing short fiction between towel runs.
You're not sure when you started paying attention. Not in the obvious way—wrangling two five-year-olds who are constantly on the verge of a sugar-induced existential crisis leaves little room for distractions. But somewhere between juice box negotiations and sunscreen reapplications, you noticed the pattern.
Wonwoo clocks in for his 1:00 PM shift at 12:53 on the dot, every day. Rain or shine.
He always brings a slightly crumbly granola bar at exactly 12:45 and hands it over without ceremony. He’s also taken to giving unsolicited (but disturbingly effective) child-wrangling tips.
“If you let them watch an episode of Clifford in the shade, they mellow out.”
“Junhee will eat steamed broccoli if Junseo is watching.”
“They nap better if you hum the Indiana Jones theme.”
When you ask how he knows this, he just shrugs.
“I’ve watched them grow up here.”
He folds towels into perfect thirds—perfect enough to undo the entire previous shift’s work, muttering about symmetry.
And he always—always—has a book in his bag. You’ve clocked A Secret History, Beloved, Middlesex, and now—somehow—Antigone. You, being a civilized person, use sticky notes. He dog-ears. He highlights. You try not to hold it against him.
Then one night, the miracle. A fireworks show lures both Mr. and Mrs. Cho into spending quality time with their children—together—and for the first time in thirty-one days, you are given a few hours off.
You wander the resort grounds in what you tell yourself is idle exploration. You're not looking for him, not exactly. You're just…curious.
You find him perched in the shade outside the Cabana Attendants' Shack, book open, fingers curled at the spine. The sunset drapes him in gold.
“Greek tragedy?” you ask, nodding at the cover.
He startles slightly. Then sees it’s you and offers that small, lopsided smile that always feels like a secret.
“Loyalty to family and all that.” He snaps the book shut. “Why, do you have a favorite?”
The conversation unfolds in sideways glances and thoughtful pauses. He’s more well-read than you expected—not that you ever assumed he was dumb, but you didn’t quite picture him as the kind of guy who casually references Antigone while sipping Gatorade.
You want to bring up the fact that he’s the rumored heir to the waterpark conglomerate whose name is literally embroidered on your staff polo, but you don’t. He doesn’t bring it up, either.
Instead, you trail him as he clocks back in and begins his closing duties. You talk as he refolds towels, delivers last-call lemonades, and waves kids off the splash pad.
He’s soft-spoken but sharp, a bit of a walking contradiction. He debates philosophy with the same tone he uses to explain popsicle storage procedures.
He quotes The Odyssey unprompted. You’re unsure if you’re gagging or swooning. Possibly both. He laughs. The good kind—the kind that makes you want to say something clever, just to earn it again.
And then:
A string of texts from Mrs. Cho.
Where are you?
Can you be back in ten?
Junseo is trying to drink the pool water again.
Three hours gone in a blink.
You sigh, brushing off your shorts. “Duty calls.”
He doesn’t protest. Just reaches into his bag and hands you a worn paperback with a faded spine.
“You’d like this,” he says. “Don’t worry. I only highlighted a little.”
As you jog back to the family villa, the book clutched under your arm, you catch yourself smiling. You don’t know what exactly just happened—but you know you’re already looking forward to tomorrow.
The Cabana Boy: mysterious, mythological, mildly infuriating.
You’re definitely going to need another field guide.
Entry #5: On Emotional Labor (And How to Pretend You’re Fine)
July 18th, 3:56 PM
Among caretakers, the phrase “I’m fine” functions less as a truth and more as a survival mechanism – an autopilot response honed through repetition, like muscle memory or disassociation. It’s not an admission of wellness so much as a polite way of saying: I have exactly six fruit snacks and half a juice box keeping me together right now, please do not ask follow-up questions.
Today is the worst day on record. Not just this summer—ever.
Junhee is feverish and glassy-eyed. Junseo hasn’t stopped crying since 9:07 AM. The phrase “I want mommy” has been used with increasing volume and ferocity for six straight hours.
And still, Mrs. Cho floats in after breakfast, clacking away in her designer heels like you’re just another inconvenience in a long string of logistics. She deposits them into your arms with the same care one might give a bag of dry cleaning. She clacks off in Valentino heels without a glance back. She says “they’ve been so moody lately,” as if their tear-streaked faces and refusal to be peeled off your torso aren’t a screaming counterargument.
Even Wonwoo, usually the child-whisperer, strikes out. He tries Clifford. He tries juice box diplomacy. He even pulls out the secret popsicle stash. Nothing works.
The grand finale: Junhee vomits bright blue Slushie all over your shirt just as Mrs. Cho reappears.
She gasps, horrified—not at her child, no. At you. “This is completely inappropriate. What did you even feed him?”
You’re too shocked to speak.
Wonwoo watches from across the cabana, eyes wide, towel frozen mid-fold. And then—just like that—you snap.
Your eyes are already stinging, breath hitching. You mutter something about needing a minute, and walk fast. Not away from the cabana—out.
You don’t know where you're going, just that it needs to be anywhere else. You barrel through pool chairs, past shrieking toddlers, past lifeguards gossiping about hot guests, and you barely notice the quiet footsteps trailing behind you.
A hand catches your upper arm. Not rough, just... certain.
Wonwoo pulls you into the cool, echoey silence of the staff locker room and sits you down like it’s the most normal thing in the world. You don’t resist.
You sit, shoulders trembling. He turns to his locker, rifling through it. A few seconds later, he tosses a shirt into your lap.
“Here. It’s clean. Smells weird, though. You might smell like sunscreen and... me.”
You pick it up with shaking hands. Chlorine, citrus deodorant, rain. Wonwoo. It hits like a trigger.
And then—
You lose it.
Not the gentle, single-tear kind of cinematic breakdown. No. This is a crash out. Full-body. Unfiltered.
You're pacing now, the shirt clutched in your hand like a lifeline, voice cracking with every word.
“I hate this family.”
“I swear to God, if that woman says one more thing about how hard parenting is—while dumping her kids on me like they’re furniture—I’m gonna lose my actual goddamn mind.” “I’m twenty-three! I should be backpacking in Spain or studying abroad or—I don’t know—eating a yogurt in peace without someone screaming about their sock being too tight.”
You kick a locker.
“And I’m trying so hard. I’m doing everything right. I’ve read so many blogs, Wonwoo.”
You turn toward him, eyes red-rimmed and wild.
“And you know what I get? Vomited on. In public.”
He hasn’t moved. Just sits on the bench, legs spread, arms on his knees, staring up at you like he’s watching a fire he’s not sure how to put out. Like he knows he’ll burn if he gets too close—but also that maybe it’s worth it.
“Are you… done?” he asks, finally. Gently.
You stop. Blink. And then let out a small, wet laugh that sounds more like a sob. You sit down hard next to him, the adrenaline draining from your limbs all at once.
“I think so.”
He leans back slightly. Not touching you, but close enough that you can feel the calm radiating off him.
“Better?”
You don’t answer immediately. You don’t know. But you nod anyway. And he accepts it, like that’s enough.
You sit there, the two of you, in chlorine-scented silence. His shirt still bunched in your lap. Your breathing slows. You count your heartbeats.
And for the first time all summer, someone lets you be tired. Not “still smiling” tired. Not “push through it” tired. Just... human.
You think, maybe, that matters more than anything.
Entry #6: On the Sociocultural Function of Shared Snacks (And Other Low-Stakes Intimacies)
July 25th, 6:23 PM
Anthropological theory suggests that the exchange of Goldfish and Capri Suns constitutes a primitive yet potent form of courtship. Especially when accompanied by verbal rituals such as, “You look like you need a break,” and, “Do you want the last one?” While not as elaborate as other mating rituals, these offerings appear to hold significant emotional currency. Further study is required, but initial findings suggest: this may be how modern love begins.
There’s a rhythm now. He always saves the last piña colada juice box for you. You always act like you don’t care and then accept it anyway, muttering something about “fake cocktails for fake lifeguards.” He always laughs. You always drink it.
You make fun of the way he organizes the towel bins—by saturation level, apparently. “This one’s damp-damp, and that one’s wet-wet? You okay, Marie Kondo?”
Wonwoo shrugs like he’s heard worse, like maybe he’s even proud of it. “It brings me peace.”
It’s easy with him. He always finds his way to your cabana when things are quiet. No one sends him. He just appears. He drops into the lounge chair beside you like he belongs there, legs stretched out, sunglasses slipping down his nose. Sometimes he brings snacks—peanut butter pretzels, Goldfish, gummy worms he claims are “for the kids.” You both know better.
You talk books. Somehow he’s never read Magic Treehouse, which you find personally offensive. “It’s basically required reading for emotionally unstable gifted kids.”
He grins. “Sounds like I dodged a bullet.”
“You’d love it,” you tell him, tossing a pretzel at his face. “You’re such a Virgo.”
“I’m not a Virgo.”
“Spiritually, though.”
He makes you laugh at least once a day. Not a polite laugh. An ugly, tired, full-body snort—the kind that feels like exhaling something heavy.
One afternoon, your fingers brush when he hands you a juice box. The contact is brief, but it lingers. Just enough to make you glance up, and he’s already looking back. Not with some dramatic, swoon-worthy gaze—just steady. Familiar. Like he knows you. Like he sees you.
And then, inevitably, the twins start screaming about a grasshopper. One of them insists it’s going to bite their nose off. The moment cracks clean in half. Wonwoo groans, gets up, and trudges off to play bug bouncer. You watch him go, vaguely amused. A little disappointed.
Later, when the cabana is blissfully quiet again, you ask him something you’ve been holding onto for a while.
“Why do you work here when you don’t need to?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. Just stares at the pool, unreadable. For a second, you think he’s going to deflect with a joke—but instead, he says, quietly, “It’s easier to know people when they’re not pretending.”
He says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s been sitting in the air this whole time, waiting for you to notice.
You don’t quite know what to do with that. But you don’t push.
Instead, you hand him the last peanut butter pretzel without a word.
He takes it.
And for now, that feels like enough.
Entry #7: On Burnout, Bus Rides, and the Quiet in Between
July 31st, 8:39 PM
The much-awaited night off is often viewed as an unproductive lull in the performance of domestic labor. But for the emotionally fried caretaker figure, it is the only sanctioned absence where no one cries, no one spills, and no one demands apple slices cut the “right” way. It is the lone moment in which the help is not expected to perform servitude with a smile. In anthropological terms: a brief return to personhood.
You end up at a bus stop just outside the waterpark. The sun’s long gone, and so are your responsibilities, at least for the next few hours. You’re not even sure where you’re headed. You just wanted to leave. To move. To breathe. You might be a little tipsy—courtesy of the fully stocked cabana bar—but that’s between you and whatever god watches over tired girls with aching feet and full hearts.
Wonwoo finds you under the weak, flickering light of the stop like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“What are you doing here?”
“I have the night off,” you say, nudging a pebble with the toe of your sandal. “Didn’t know where to go. I’m not from here.”
He looks at you for a moment, then smiles. “You’ve got the whole night off?”
You nod just as the bus pulls up. He doesn’t hesitate, just holds out his arm and asks, “Wanna do something fun?”
You giggle, loop your arm through his, and climb aboard.
The bus ride is a quiet kind of lovely. The kind that lets your bones settle after a day of noise and chlorine and children threatening to stage a coup over who gets the blue floatie. You’re too tired to flirt, and he doesn’t seem to mind. He offers his shoulder, opens a book, and lets you lean.
“I didn’t know you took the bus,” you mumble, sleep thick in your voice.
He chuckles. “Why? Thought I had a Porsche?”
You smile into the fabric of his shirt. “What kind of chaebol son doesn’t have a sports car?”
“I do,” he says, tapping his fingers as he leans in close enough for you to get a whiff of his cologne. It’s earthy. Warm. “It’s just hard to park.”
Eventually, the bus rolls into a small downtown area lit with fairy lights, where families drift between ice cream shops and late-night cafés. Wonwoo takes your hand and tugs you down a side street, stopping in front of what looks like an abandoned bookstore. The sign is faded. The windows are dark.
You squint. “On my one night off this summer, you brought me to a murder scene?”
He scoffs, already pulling keys from his pocket. “I clerked here in high school. The owner never asked for them back.”
Inside, the air smells like dust and old stories. He flips on a few lamps and the space flickers to life—messy and charming in a way that feels sacred.
What follows is, undeniably, a reading date. But you both pretend it’s not. It can’t be. Not when summer is almost over. Not when you’ve seen what happens to girls who let themselves want too much.
Still, you talk. You read. He shows you where he used to stash beanbags as a teenager and the corner of a shelf where he carved his name when he was seventeen. He pulls down a hollowed-out book that still contains an unopened bag of gummy bears. When he throws one toward you, you catch it in your mouth without breaking eye contact, and he laughs so hard he nearly drops the whole bag.
At some point, you sigh about how much you miss Cherry Garcia ice cream. He disappears, and a few minutes later, returns with a milkshake.
“It’s not ice cream,” he says, offering it to you, “but it is Cherry Garcia.”
You take one sip and groan. “You’re dangerous.”
“We can split it,” he offers, clearly pleased with himself.
You settle back into the beanbags with the milkshake between you. His shoulder brushes yours. Your pinkies touch. You’re pretty sure this is what love feels like—soft and slow and unbearably sweet.
You’re just about to lean in when your phone rings.
Mrs. Cho.
You answer, and before you can even say hello, her voice cuts through, sharp and desperate. “I need you back. They won’t sleep until you sing to them. Come back now.”
The twins are screaming in the background.
You shoot up, already apologizing, already stuffing your phone in your pocket and looking for your bag.
Wonwoo follows you to the door. Just as you reach for the handle, his hand wraps gently around your wrist.
“You’re the only person from the waterpark I’ve shown this store to,” he says, voice low, almost unsure, and it takes all the willpower in the world not to push him up against the stacks and kiss him stupid. “We should– we should do this again. If you want.”
You should go. You have to go. But instead, you rise on your tiptoes and press a feather-light kiss to his cheek.
“I would love that,” you whisper.
Then you're gone, milkshake in hand, racing back to the chaos. But the softness of that night stays with you.
Entry #8: On the Perfect Family (And Other Bedtime Stories)
August 12th, 1:56 PM
Anthropologists agree that the family unit, built on generations of blood and loyalty, is sacred. This theory begins to unravel around 1:07 PM, when the matriarch of the Cho family – Balenciaga-clad and Bluetooth’d – screams at her offspring for dripping popsicle juice on her Hermès towel. The offspring seek emotional refuge in the arms of the hired help. This only infuriates the matriarch further. Field notes suggest that the sacred family unit may, in fact, be a PR stunt.
The cabana smells like sun-warmed linen and something floral—maybe Mrs. Cho’s perfume. You sit cross-legged on the floor, the twins clambering onto your lap, sticky popsicle juice glistening on their chins. Junseo hiccups, eyes wide, while Junhee presses her damp cheek against your arm, seeking shelter.
Then it happens.
A sharp, slicing voice cuts through the quiet: “Why is there juice dripping on my Hermès towel?” Mrs. Cho storms in, Balenciaga heels clicking like thunder on pavement. The Bluetooth earpiece flashes a faint blue as she glares at you, voice rising like a storm.
The twins flinch. Junhee blinks up at her mother like she’s seeing a stranger. Junseo presses closer to you, face buried in your shirt. You feel the warmth of their small bodies, the tremble in their chests. You are not their mother. You know that. But in moments like this, someone has to be.
Mrs. Cho snaps, “Do not coddle them. This is why they don’t respect me.”
You stand slowly, steadying the children behind you.
“I’m just trying to calm them down,” you say, carefully.
“Oh, please.” Her tone sharpens. “You don’t think I see what you’re doing? What everyone sees? The other mothers laugh behind your back — the little nanny girl and the owner’s son playing house.”
Your breath catches.
“I’m not—”
“I’m not finished.” She steps closer. “You are not their mother. Stop pretending to be. Stop making them believe you are.”
You blink once, twice. And then you break.
“No,” you snap. “You stop. You stop making them believe I’m their mother. You leave them with me for ten hours a day, five days a week. You miss their birthdays. You forget their allergies. You don't even know Junhee likes frogs or that Junseo has nightmares when it rains. You don’t see them. But I do.”
She stiffens. You press the twins behind you gently.
“For fuck’s sake, Mrs. Cho,” you whisper, too tired to yell anymore. “Do you really think this is how good mothers act?”
The silence that follows is jagged. Sharp.
You don't wait for her to respond. You turn. You walk — briskly, almost blindly — past the frozen faces in the walkway, past Wonwoo standing by the corner, unreadable.
You don’t stop until you’re outside.
Night comes like a soft blanket. You’re at the twins’ bedside again, tracing their damp hair, humming lullabies until their breathing evens out. Mrs. Cho sits stiffly across the room, staring at her phone. Her husband lounges on the couch, like nothing happened. As if nothing ever happens.
You're walking beside the lazy river, hands stuffed into the pockets of your hoodie, when you hear the familiar tread of footsteps behind you.
Wonwoo.
You don’t look at him.
“I heard everything,” he says.
You don’t say anything. You keep walking.
“She was way out of line.”
You stop. “You don’t need to defend me.”
“I’m not,” he says quietly. “I’m angry.”
You turn to him. “Why? Why do you even care?”
He falters. “Because I—”
You laugh bitterly. “You what, Wonwoo? You care about me? You want to play the hero now? Where were you earlier? When she humiliated me in front of everyone? You just stood there.”
“I didn’t know what to do—”
“You never know what to do,” you snap, voice cracking. “You always wait until I’m falling apart and then you show up when it’s safe again. When I’ve already picked up my pieces.”
His jaw clenches.
“I’m sorry,” he says, but it sounds like sandpaper. “I should’ve said something. I wanted to.”
“And now what? You want me to pat you on the back because you chased me down after sunset?” Your voice breaks. “This isn’t a fucking romance movie, Wonwoo. You don’t get points for showing up late.”
He stares at you — really stares — and then he says, low and quiet, “I didn’t chase you down for points.”
You shake your head and look away.
“I came because I couldn't let you walk away thinking I didn’t care.” He takes a step closer. “You’re not just someone I flirt with by the pool. You’re not just the girl who helps with the twins. You’re...”
His voice falters.
“You’re the only person who makes this place feel real.”
You feel the ache of it — like something soft tearing.
“I didn’t ask for this,” you whisper.
“Neither did I,” he says. “But I’m here.”
And then he kisses you.
It starts hesitant — a question, a breath — but when you don't pull away, he deepens it, slow and hungry. One hand slides to your jaw, the other finds your waist. You kiss him back like you’ve been holding your breath for two whole months. Because you have.
He pulls back just enough to whisper, “Come with me.”
You nod, breathless.
You stumble through the grass, past the empty lounge chairs, half-laughing, half-shaking. He kisses you again by the maintenance shed. Again near the outdoor shower. You lose track of where you’re going. You only know his hands, his mouth, the way he looks at you like you’re something he’s been dying to touch.
By the time you reach the locker room, he’s pushing you gently against the door, lips trailing fire down your neck.
“Fucking finally,” he groans, like it’s been killing him not to say it. His voice in your ear makes your knees buckle.
You grip his shirt, feel the muscles of his back flex under your fingers. He smells like chlorine and sunscreen and gummy bears and sweat and you want, want, want.
He kisses you again, deeper this time — all tongue and teeth and desperation. The kind of kiss that says I missed you, I wanted you, I want you still.
And then, suddenly — mid-kiss, mid-moment — the world crashes back in.
He’s the son of the owner. He drives a Porsche that probably never sees the road and reads Bukowski like it’s gospel.
You? You read bedtime stories and wipe juice off a Hermès towel. You’re an au pair with a paper degree and an expiring visa. Your chest tightens with a thousand what-ifs.
The summer is bleeding out.
And you're kissing a boy who might not be yours when it ends.
Shit.
Shit.
Shit.
Entry #9: On the Danger of Wanting More
August 19th, 4:21 PM
In most societal structures, the help is expected to exist quietly on the periphery – present but visible, useful but never central. And falling for someone above one’s pay grade? Historically ill-advised, frequently humiliating, and almost always doomed. But anthropologists agree that humans are predictable irrational – no amount of emotional detachment can fully protect you from a boy that kisses you stupid and casually quotes Euripedes.
You pulled away after the kiss, gasping. Dizzy. Brain short-circuiting.
The class divide. The logistics. The impossible futures.
He’s the son of the owner. He could never work another day and still live comfortably into infinity. You’re scraping together tips and spare change, trying to stretch your contract into a real life. He’s got gilded options. You’ve got a ticking clock.
So you avoid him.
When you see him walking toward the cabana for his daily granola bar pilgrimage, you redirect the twins toward the kiddie pool. When he shows up with your favorite pina colada — extra pineapple, no cherry — you pretend it’s nap time. You dodge, deflect, disappear. You rehearse polite excuses until they become muscle memory.
It takes a week for him to finally corner you.
You’re headed to the bathroom, sunglasses on, hoodie up despite the August heat. He intercepts you by the towel stand.
“What are you doing?” he asks, voice low, not angry but confused.
You blink. “Nothing. Peeing?”
“You’re avoiding me.”
“No…”
“You are,” he says, stepping closer. “Don’t lie. You won’t even look at me.”
You focus intently on a damp footprint on the pavement. “I’ve just been… busy.”
“What did I do wrong?”
He says your name like it matters. Like he means it. A question and a plea and a prayer all at once.
“I thought this was going somewhere,” he says. “Where did I go wrong?”
You open your mouth. Close it. Swallow. Then:
“You didn’t.”
His shoulders drop in relief. He starts to move closer, arms lifting — but you stop him with a hand on his chest.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” you repeat. “I did.”
Now he looks confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Wonwoo,” you sigh. “One day, you’re going to take over. You’re going to be CEO of a global resort empire. And me? I’m going to be here. Covered in five-year-olds’ snot and banana crumbs, probably chasing a preschooler into a fountain.”
“So?” he scoffs. “I don’t want this.” He gestures broadly at the lazy river, the snack bar, the sunburned luxury. “I’m not staying. I got into an MFA program. I’m leaving at the end of the month.”
That throws you. “Wait—what? Really?”
He nods. “I want to write. Always have.”
You blink. “Okay… and?”
He reaches out and takes your hand, threading your fingers together like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“You don’t have it all figured out,” he says softly. “That’s okay. Neither do I. But what are you gaining from babysitting your own life?”
You want to laugh. Or cry. Or kiss him again. Maybe all three.
But you don’t answer. Not yet.
That night, you get a text.
[Attachment: IMG_0142.jpeg]
A photo of an email. Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the Creative Writing MFA program at—
[Attachment: PDF Lease Agreement]
Two bedrooms. Hardwood floors. Half a mile from the university. Your hometown.
Then a message from him:
You could write too, you know.
I’d read every word.
Entry #10: On Exit Strategies (And the Beginnings We Don’t See Coming)
August 23rd, 7:54 AM
In the study of human nature, we often assume that endings are marked, observable events – clean breaks punctuated by ritual. But fieldwork reveals a more complex truth: endings, like goodbyes, are rarely so precise. Sometimes the dissolve quietly, like mist off the surface of a morning pool. Sometimes they masquerade as beginnings. And sometimes, they don’t happen at all – not really.
It’s your last day at Carat Bay.
The twins start kindergarten on Monday. Their regular au pair — a disheveled girl who looks like she once studied French literature and now only speaks in juice box negotiations — has returned.
You say goodbye to the kids, crouched low to meet their eyes. Junhee hugs you, sticky-fingered and sad. Junseo asks, “Who’ll sing to us now?” in a voice so small it nearly breaks you.
You press teary kisses to their damp little heads. Promise they’ll be okay. They’re good kids. You tell yourself that means something.
You say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. Cho.
Mrs. Cho barely glances up from her phone. She waves vaguely. Her acrylics glint in the sun.
Mr. Cho squints at you from over his tablet. “We had a new nanny this summer?”
You roll your eyes as you walk away, his confusion trailing behind you like bad perfume.
You drag your suitcase down the cobbled path toward the villa’s front gate, sunscreen and chlorine still clinging to your skin. The early morning air smells like pool chemicals and hotel pastries.
And then you see it — the Porsche, parked crooked in the drive like it doesn’t know it’s expensive.
Wonwoo is leaned against the side, arms crossed, sunglasses perched low on his nose like he’s auditioning for a commercial titled Regret Nothing.
He straightens when he sees you, already moving to grab your suitcase.
“So,” he says, like it’s casual. Like it’s not everything. “You comin’ with me?”
You pretend to think. Just for show. Just for the story.
Then you’re moving — fast, reckless — throwing your arms around him like you never learned how to say goodbye. His mouth finds yours in a kiss that feels like a collision — breathless, greedy, impossible. He laughs against your lips as you stumble back against the car, the heat of the hood warming your spine.
“You ever driven a Porsche?” he asks, his grin crooked, summer-sick and daring.
You break the kiss just long enough to smile. “Not yet.”
He presses the keys into your hand like a promise. Like a dare. Like the start of something you didn’t plan for — and maybe that’s the point.
You take the keys. Open the door.
And you drive — not toward an ending.
But into something new.
Epilogue: On Retrospective Analysis and the Unscientific Nature of Love
Not Dated (yet)
Anthropologists caution against emotional entanglement with their subjects, citing compromised objectivity, blurred boundaries, and the potential erosion of professional distance. This author would like to report that such boundaries are far more porous when your subject brings you coffee and quotes Aeschylus. In the interest of full disclosure: This author ignored the rule. Repeatedly. And with alarming enthusiasm.
Three years later, you live together in a house with creaky floors and a crooked porch light. Wonwoo brings you coffee before you've asked for it, sets it beside your laptop with the reverence usually reserved for sacred texts. He reads your pages in silence, a red pen tucked behind one ear, and presses soft kisses to the back of your neck when you write too late into the night.
The work is fiction. Technically.
But when he gets to the part about juice boxes and Clifford the Big Red Dog, his fingers find yours. He doesn’t say anything, just smiles that slow, knowing smile he saves for when he catches you pretending not to be sentimental.
He's finished his MFA now. Teaches English at the local high school, spends his afternoons grading essays about Of Mice and Men and trying not to laugh when his students call The Iliad “a chore to read.” He comes home smelling like school lunches and adolescent chaos, drops his bag by the door and finds you, always.
The Porsche sits untouched under your window—an inheritance he never asked for, gathering dust and sun-bleached leaves. He takes the train instead. Says he likes the time to read.
Sometimes, you still wake up waiting for someone to call your name and hand you someone else’s kids. Sometimes, you still flinch when your phone rings. But mostly, you write. And mostly, you’re okay.
There is no neat conclusion. Only this:
You’re allowed to want things.
You’re allowed to keep them, too.
Welcome to the official masterlist for the 100SVT Collab, a celebration of Yuki’s 100 followers milestone! 🎉 This collab is hosted by Yuki (me), Rae (@nerdycheol), Tiya (@gyubakeries), and Ro (@shinysobi).
Here, you'll find all the incredible works created by participants, inspired by the theme 100—whether it’s 100 days, 100 memories, 100 texts, or anything else creative!
📌 Entries will be updated as they are posted. Stay tuned for amazing SEVENTEEN content! 🎨✍️🎶
Click here to join the taglist
-> A Seat Across From You by @nerdycheol
Pairings: Choi Seungcheol x reader
Warning(s): strangers to lovers, slow-burn, slice of Life, fluff
W/C: est. 9k+
Summary: Two strangers. One train. An unspoken connection.
Every morning, you and Seungcheol share the same ride—fleeting glances, silent routines, and a growing curiosity neither of you dares to voice. As days pass, the distance between you starts to shrink in quiet, unexpected ways. Could your daily commute lead to something more... or will you remain strangers, passing by like trains on separate tracks?
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Bae-sically Fake by @mylovesstuffs
Pairings: Jeonghan × fem!reader
Warning(s): Fake dating au, modern au, romance, comedy, slice of life, slow burn, emotional healing, mentions of past emotional abuse/manipulation, toxic ex, emotional trauma and flashbacks, manipulation disguised as affection [past], reference to stalking/following for confirmation of infidelity, heartbreak and betrayal, gaslighting implications [in past relationship], alcohol consumption, mild cursing/swearing, themes of grief and emotional vulnerability, soft romantic tension, no smut [so far; not written yet], emotionally guarded reader, indirect trauma references, workplace sexism [called out], fluffy but with realistic emotional baggage, cheating and infidelity [past, non-graphic]
*Advanced warning(s): grooming mentioned [non-graphic but explicit reference], mentions of underage grooming [girls legal but barely, predatory behavior], ptsd-like emotional responses
W/C: est 40k+
Summary: You swear when you made up your fake relationship, you didn't know that someone worked at the coffee shop with the same name or that your family would go to check out. Now everyone thinks you guys are actually together, and, well, pretending to be fake partners has never been so complicated. Jeonghan plays along, and even offers you a deal—100 days to let him try and woo your closed-off heart.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Start A War by @sanaxo-o
Pairings: Joshua Hong x female!reader
Warning(s): angst, fluff if you squint, strangers to lovers, kissing, apocalyptic kind of au since it revolves around monsters, major character death, graphic description of a dead body
W/C: tbd
Summary: Getting stuck in a town with no way to escape was not a part of your plan—getting trapped in a town where monsters come out at night to hunt and rip you apart was not your plan either. It was as if living in a nightmare where you were not able to escape but despite all of that you managed to find a small place of comfort in a person who helped you throughout your chaos filled thoughts and anxious queries with his sweet and gentle eyes which always held warmth in them.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> 100 Ways To Lose Your Love(And 1 To Get It Back) by @cheers-to-you-th
Summary: Love isn’t lost in the big fights, it’s lost in the fear of being truly seen. The real question is, where is it found?
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> 100 Ways To Love You by @bella-feed
Pairings: playboi!Jun, clg-student!jun, non-idol!bf jun x f!reader, clg-student!reader. *the reader's name is Nara*
Warning(s): fluff, black cat gf x golden retriever bf, smut (MDNI 18+ only), angsty (at the end) smut (MDNI 18+ only), mentions of food, and alcohol. mentions of seungkwan and few other members. seungkwan is jun's bestfriend. mentions of flowers, swimming, going on dates, drinking alcohol and shi. jun is a playboi. bit angsty in the end. hopefully there’s a part two. lmk if i missed any warnings
*Smut Warning(s): dom!jun, kissing, making out, unprotected sex (don't do it!!!), fingering, slight spanking and face slapping. body fluids (sweat, cum) oral (both m and f; both receiving and giving). lmk if I missed anything
W/C: tbd
Summary: A bet, with three prominent and important conditions, resulted in you and Jun ending up together. But is it a forever thingy?
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Loving You For Days And Years by @kyeomofhearts
Pairings: Kwon Soonyoung x fem!reader
Warning(s): slice of life, romance, fluff, humor, non-idol au, swearing, suggestive, time-skips, tooth rotting fluff that might make you want to throw up :P
W/C: 2-3k(tbd)
Summary: You weren’t necessarily looking for love when you met Kwon Soonyoung. Loud, a little dumb, and always cracking jokes at the worst times–he wasn’t exactly your ideal type. And yet, somewhere between his ridiculous texts and the way he always made sure you got home safe, he somehow found a way to your heart. And you? You let him stay.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> All Twisted Secrets by @esrione
Pairings: -
Warning(s): Blood, corpse, gore, romance, psychopath survival games(aka dystopian games), poisoned, death, suicide, romance at some point, angst, gunshot fight, gambling(?), action, MDNI, 21+ NSFW
W/C: 52k+
Summary: 100 dollars in casino chips were needed to escape.
Trapped in a deadly game, survival meant playing by the host's twisted rules—or breaking them entirely. As morality fades, Soonyoung and his classmates make a final gamble: kill or be killed. But when the blood dried and the bodies have fallen, one question lingers—was it ever about survival, or had they become the very monsters they sought to destroy?
Teaser | ↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> In The Brown And Blue by @gotta-winwin
Pairings: Jeon Wonwoo x reader
Warning(s): Dystopian, fluff, angst, comfort, mentions of blood, injury, minimal gore, swearing, loss of memory
W/C: tbd
Summary: It’s the centennial of the tunnel’s existence, marking the legacy since its sudden appearance in the woods across your small town. Legends say entering the tunnel sends you back in time to find those lost to you– and as you travel deeper into the tunnel, you swear you can see him, hidden in the brown and blue.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Tour Date by @ppyopulii
Pairings: rockstar!lee jihoon x rising star!reader
W/C: tbd, hoping to be around 8k-10k
Warning(s): Cursing, hook-up culture, mentions of needles, mentions of drugs, mentions of dieting → body dysphoria
*Smut warning(s): making out, Perhaps some fingering (f!receiving)
Summary: The limelight is *yours*—you’ve been itching for it ever since your debut only six months ago, and your pathway to stardom is a straight-shot after being recruited to be the opener for the world-famous rock band CH33RS. This a hundred day tour is sure to bring you the fame you know you’re deserving of, especially after the announcement of your upcoming debut album. The only catch? WOOZI, lead singer of CH33RS, hates you.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> A Prescription For Romance by @shinysobi
Pairings: Lee Jihoon x reader
Warning(s): Established relationship (or is it) slice of life, fluff, comedy (reader has a name)
W/C: tbd
Summary: When the new residents join the Cardiothoracic Department, they're thrown for a loop when it comes to the two youngest professors of the hospital- Neurosurgeon Lee Jihoon and you, the Cardiothoracic surgeon. Fed up, they devise a scheme-which might be ingenious, which might be stupid. Will it work? Or will they continue to live under the thumbs of cruella and sauron?
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Until You Know Me by @diamonddaze01
Pairings: Seokmin x reader
Warning(s): reincarnation AU, soulmate au, angst, fluff, suggestive (?), discussions of death/reincarnation and heartbreak
W/C: tbd
Summary: Seokmin has loved you 99 times. But in this life, just like every other, you don't remember. You never do. But Seomin? He remembers everything. Every goodbye. Every loss. Every time he almost kept you.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Coffee and Confessions by @gyubakeries
Pairings: Kim Mingyu x f!reader
Warning(s): romance, fluff, slight angst, businessman!mingyu, barista!mc, journal entries and coffee as plot devices, unhealthy consumption of coffee, commitment issues (from mingyu), strangers to lovers
W/C: tbd
Summary: When Kim Mingyu, the no-nonsense businessman, meets you, the barista who laughs more in a simple exchange than he has in the past week, he feels his heart do something strange. Under the guise of understanding this foreign emotion, he keeps coming back to meet you with his journal concealed within the sharp lines of his formal blazers. Soon, the lines between research and attraction blur, and Mingyu finds the same word recurring in the pages of his journal --- your name.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Si belle Homme List by @shinysobi
Pairings: Xu Minghao x f!reader
Warning(s): romance, fluff, comedy, angst, photographer!minghao, matchmaker!mc, slight coercion involved, copious referenes to smoking and drinking, friends to lovers
W/C: tbd
Summary: When Yewon's fiance dumps her before her wedding, she briefly contemplates murder, suicide, and arson--not necessarily in that order. Unfortunately, she has too many events to attend as a married woman, so she turns to her best friend, Xu Minghao, for a contract-100 days as her fiance, no strings attached.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Love In Half Tones by @nerdycheol
Pairings: Xu Minghao x reader
Warning(s): Fluff, angst, bittersweet
W/C: tbd
Summary: You’re a ballerina with big dreams. Minghao’s an artist still waiting for his big break. You meet by chance and fall into something quiet, comforting, and...real. But when your career takes off and his doesn’t, everything starts to shift. You both want to hold on—but chasing dreams sometimes means letting go.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> 100 Days by @esrione
Pairings: Boo Seungkwan x reader
Warning(s): fluff, angst, sci-fi, enemies to lovers troop, horror, mentioned of death, explosion and fire flames, robotics
W/C: 11.6k+
Summary: A detective awakens in an abandoned, eerie facility with no memory of how he got there. Armed with a mysterious gameboy-style device, he must navigate dangerous floors filled with hostile robotic maids. As he searches for hidden remote controls to unlock the building’s secrets, every step brings him closer to a truth he never expected.
Teaser | ↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> Lowkey, What Are We? by @vampsol
Pairings: Hansol Vernon Chwe x reader
Warning(s): fluff, angst, smut, fwb!au, brother's best friend!au, college au, feat! joshua hong and kwon soonyoung of seventeen and yang jeongin of stray kids, jealousy trope, two idiots in love but unwilling to admit it
*Smut warning(s): oral (m + f receiving), handjob, praise kink, pet names (baby, sweetheart, etc), unprotected sex, creampie
W/C: tbd
Summary: Your brother's best friend wasn't exactly the perfect guy to start a sexual relationship with, but it's too late to turn back. Your heart may already be too entangled to let him go, no matter your rules, for better or worse.
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺
-> The Way The Cookie Crumbles by @studioeisa
Pairings: Lee Chan x food journalist!reader
Warning(s): Mentions of food, disease (which neither mcs have). cussing/swearing. themes of food and memory.
W/C: est. 5k
Summary: You need one good story to get your career off the ground. Lee Chan is on a mission to try every chocolate chip cookie in Seoul. Better start somewhere, right?
⭐ starring: lee chan
💌 genre: fluff, crack | wc: 1.1k
💬 preview: the campus lifeguard loves you and he never fails to show you just how far that love goes: deeper than the ocean and further than any sea.
cw/tw: college au, lifeguard!chan x surfer!reader, mutual pining, declarations of love, part of the svt university au, timeskip
🪽 fic rating: pg
☁️ masterlist & a/n: bday fic for the lovely, lovely tiya (@gyubakeries)! I love, love, love you– deeper than the ocean and further than any sea :3
now playing: sailor song by gigi perez
If there was one thing Chan loved more than the ocean– it’d be the ocean’s lover.
He liked sitting on the perch of his lifeguard tower. It gave him the most perfect view of the beach and all its inhabitants, including you: the center of all his attention, his thoughts and desires.
You looked best next to the water, and with the amount of time you spent down at the campus beach, the working lifeguards had all named you the ocean’s lover. How the ocean seemed to bend and sway to your will, carrying you through the waves on your surfboard.
“You’ve got to stop staring at her and start actually doing your job, Chan.” Mingyu nudges his leg, catching his attention for the next shift rotation. “Or just go talk to her.”
Chan shakes his head. “She’s way out of my league, bro.”
He hops off the lifeguard tower and onto the warm sand beneath him, sinking his toes into its grains. His eyes unconsciously flitted back to you, watching as you lounged on your surfboard, floating near the shallow end.
He’s been watching you for long enough to know you’re parched by the way your lips purse and your gaze falls back on the shore when you’d usually never acknowledge land while on water.
He rethinks Mingyu’s words before grabbing a bottle of water and making his way to you.
You notice him walking towards you rather quickly, as your eyes scanned the shoreline and noticed a lifeguard making his way to you.
You recognize him: the boy that shined like the summer sun, with curls that made any ocean wave jealous.
He wades through the waters until his hand rests on the edge of your surfboard, the other holding out a bottle of water for you to take.
“Thank you.” You raise an eyebrow at the kind gesture, accepting it nonetheless. “Are lifeguards usually this attentive to every beachgoer's needs?”
Chan shakes his head and water droplets fall from his hair onto his tanned skin. “Only the pretty ones.”
You laugh. “Been watching me a lot, Chan?”
He blinks, more caught off by the use of his name than the light accusation. “You know my name?”
“I have class with Seokmin and he’s mentioned you and Mingyu work down by the beach for summers instead of going home.”
He lets out a sound of realization and smiles at you, arms supporting himself on your surfboard while he floats next to you. “Will you let me take you out then?”
Your eyebrows raise once again. “You’re very bold.”
He laughs and the waves grow in intensity, rocking the two of you to its own rhythm. “Not usually.”
There’s a whistle from the shore and Chan turns to wave at his partner. “Well, duty calls.” He raises himself out from the water with his hands on your surfboard, leaning over and planting a soft kiss to your cheek. The water droplets from his hair land on you and you laugh as he pulls away. “Think about it, okay?”
You watch him swim away with a sort of awe, watching as the ocean seemed to bend and sway to his every movement.
Chan waits for you by the docks as the clock on his watch strikes midnight. The moon is out, painting reflections on the ocean waters, still and silent in the night. The wind is strong tonight, but Chan doesn’t feel cold, chest warm with the anticipation of your arrival.
“Chan!”
He turns when he hears his name being called and watches you run along the shoreline towards him. He laughs a little when you stumble on the sand, his breath hitting the summer air in a wisp of smoke.
He knows he loves you now. It could never have been any clearer.
“Don’t laugh at me!” You poke his chest once you skid to a stop in front of him, an equally happy smile on your face as you attempt a glare at him. “I could’ve really fallen.”
“And it would have been equally funny.” He quips, moving away when you smack his arm.
He grabs a hold of your hand, pulling you closer. “Come. I want to show you something.”
Chan walks with you beside him, his feet on the wet sand, inhaling the scent of the ocean’s salts. He feels suddenly full and incredibly lucky.
You’re laser-focused on the pace of Chan’s breathing as the two of you neared the end of the shore and he turned to face you at the edge.
“Where are you taking me?” You ask, a little nervous as you walk further from campus.
He gives you a reassuring smile. “It’s a little hidden, but the boys and I used to come here often during our first year.”
He motions for you to go first, helping you over the rocks that spread over the tiny streams of water and into a cave.
It’s small enough for light to still overpower the dark, as Chan pulls out a blanket from one of the nooks in the rock, laying it out on the sand and motioning you over.
You sit, and he pulls you closer. He smells like the ocean– like love.
“Look.” Chan points at the dark horizon.
You hum. “The ocean looks like it goes on forever.” You lean your head on his shoulder and you feel him relax under your touch.
“That’s the point.” Chan murmurs, voice low. “The ocean is forever. Continuous, endless, reliable and always there.”
You turn your head and find him already looking at you, faces inches away from each other, eyes glinting underneath the moonlight.
You half-wish for him to lean in for a kiss, but he doesn’t– not in the way you thought he would. Instead, he pulls you just a little bit closer, pressing a light kiss to your cheek.
You get the sudden feeling that Chan wants to relish the feeling of loving you– sinking into the waves of your love and slowing time down.
The events of the first summer with Chan repeat: again, again, as your time together flies by no matter how slow the two of you try to make it.
You love Chan for one summer, then two, then three, then forever. And he does the same.
He sinks to his knees on the beach one summer night, similar to those you’ve spent with him years ago. On just one knee this time, although you see a hint of a wicked smile on his face as he recalls the times he used to kneel for you on the beach for other purposes.
You cup his chin and he looks up at you.
He says his vows, words of loving you like the ocean– endless, forever, as deep and wide as the waters will go.
And while the other elements of life may rust and fall, Chan’s love for you stays. He’ll love you so long as the ocean never dries. And even then, he’d fill up the dried ocean, bucket by bucket, if it meant staying next to you for a little longer.
here holds the collection of stories where love bloomed on the campus of 17 university, in the midst of youth and laughter.
all fics are connected and referenced in the same universe. each can be read as a standalone or as one big read.
KWON SOONYOUNG // PACKING IT UP - coming soon.
the resident tiger of House SEVENTEEN is stuck loving his best friend-- soonyoung watches you stumble through life, waiting for the day you finally see him– the silent protector of heart.
JEON WONWOO // EXAM SWAP - class schedule here.
the smartass of House SEVENTEEN is rendered useless at the sight of his academic enemy. amidst the chaos of this year's major swap, wonwoo is forced to swallow his pride-- or lose you.
LEE SEOKMIN // WHEN SEOKMIN FALLS IN LOVE - class schedule here.
House SEVENTEEN grapples with the idea that their resident bachelor might be in love…as all the signs start to show up.
KIM MINGYU // BACK TO FRIENDS - class schedule here.
Mingyu has spent enough time loving you to know you were never going to love him back. He returns to House SEVENTEEN for one last party years later...and one final chance with you.
LEE CHAN // COVERED IN HIS FAVOUR - class schedule here
The campus lifeguard loves you and he never fails to show you just how far that love goes: deeper than the ocean and further than any sea.
a/n: this came as a welcomed surprise-- all these fics were written for various projects/standalones, but as i began to picture all these stories revolving around the same universe on campus, the more i fell in love with the idea of it. here's 17 university! enjoy!
dont apologizeee you;ve been pumping out fics consistently for tha past few weeksss we're very grateful that you're writing so much for usss <33
ee thank you! i love getting back into the rhythm of pumping out fics left and right, although i will be taking a quick break this + next week to focus on some big life events + milestones. mwah ily
how many fics do you have plannedd becayse you're pumpingg themm out consistentlyyy thank youu queen
god... if you saw my wip list... i'm lucky that inspo and motivation has been consistent for now, although i will be taking a quick break this + next week to recharge and get through a couple big life events :)
as for how many fics exactly... well...
packing it up with kwon soonyoung
covered in his favour (sailor song) with lee chan
more additions to svt 10th anniversary event
number one girl with lee jihoon
