𝐽𝑒𝑤𝑒𝑙

Request Open! Show Some Love

[hye-jin91]

I Am Here Now

a/n: sooo I was thinking of Go Kyung-jun and just the whole class, realistically we don't know how long they were in the game but I'm guessing for a couple of months at least, so they were missing, fully. How shocking and heartbreaking would it be for the city to find out the whole class is missing, it would be huge. So what if Go Kyung-jun had a girlfriend outside of his class?

The first time Go Kyung-jun disappeared, it was an ordinary morning.

That was the part that ruined me later.

Not the phone call. Not the police station. Not the funeral with no body, no ashes, no proof, just a framed school photo on a wooden stand and a line of white chrysanthemums wilting beneath fluorescent lights.

It was the morning before all of it, the stupid, normal, careless morning I kept returning to like a loose tooth I couldn’t stop worrying with my tongue. The kind of morning no one respects because nothing in it announces itself as the last. The sky had been pale and thin, the kind of washed-out blue that made the apartment buildings look flat and tired. My uniform collar had been crooked. I remembered that because Kyung-jun had noticed it before I did, had clicked his tongue like I was personally embarrassing him, and reached over to fix it with fingers that were too rough for something so small.

“You go out looking like this?” he’d said, like he was disgusted, like his ears weren’t turning red because we were standing close enough for me to smell the mint gum on his breath.

I’d swatted his hand away even though he was already done. “You always act like you’re my stylist.”

“Someone has to. You dress like you lost a fight with your closet.”

“You dress like you bully mirrors.” He had laughed then, sudden and loud, head tipping back a little, sharp teeth flashing under the weak morning light. Kyung-jun always laughed like he expected the world to flinch from it. Like joy, for him, was another kind of threat.

Then he had walked backward down the sidewalk, hands shoved into his pockets, his schoolbag hanging off one shoulder, too big and too broad and too careless for the narrow street. He had smirked at me when I told him to hurry up before he was late.

“You worried about me?”

“No. I’m worried your teachers might finally realize you’re a lost cause.”

“Liar,” he’d said, pointing at me like he’d caught me doing something embarrassing. “You’re obsessed with me.”

I’d rolled my eyes. He’d grinned wider. And then he’d turned around. That was it. That was the last clean thing. The last version of him I had before the world split open.

By lunchtime, he wasn’t answering my texts. By the end of school, his phone went straight to voicemail. I told myself he was being annoying. I told myself he was probably sleeping through class, probably fighting with someone, probably doing that thing where he saw messages and decided responding too fast made him look pathetic, as if I didn’t already know exactly how pathetic he could be when no one else was watching. I sent him a voice message calling him an asshole. I sent three question marks. I called once, twice, five times, then stared at the screen until the letters of his name blurred into a dark little wound.

The call from his grandmother came at 7:42 p.m.

I remembered the time because I spent months staring at it in my call history until the phone replaced it with a date, and then I stared at that too, as if time itself had done something wrong by moving.

When I answered, her voice was not a voice at first. It was breath. A broken, shallow sound, like she’d been running though I knew her knees hurt too much for running, like she was holding the phone with both hands and still couldn’t keep it steady.

“Halmeoni?” I said, already standing. She said my name once. Just once. And everything inside me went quiet.

There are certain kinds of fear the body understands before the mind does. My hand tightened around the phone until the edges dug into my palm. I could hear the television playing in the living room behind me, some variety show with canned laughter bursting too brightly through the walls. Outside, someone’s scooter whined past the building. Somewhere, a dog barked and barked, sharp and ordinary, furious at nothing.

“What happened?” I asked.

She tried to answer. I heard her inhale. I heard the wet, trembling catch of her mouth opening and closing around words that would not come out right.

“Kyung-jun,” she said. My heart kicked once, hard enough to hurt.

“What about him?”

“He’s gone.”

For one stupid second, I thought she meant he had left the house. I thought she meant he had stormed out after an argument, that he had been rude, that he had slammed a door, that he had done what he always did when something pressed too close to the soft places he kept hidden. I almost felt relief. I almost said, I’ll call him. I almost said, He’ll come back.

Then she said, “His whole class.”

My fingers slipped on the phone. “What?”

“They’re gone. All of them,” she whispered, and then the whisper broke, and suddenly she sounded very old. Older than she had that morning. Older than she had ever sounded pouring me tea, scolding Kyung-jun for eating too fast, pretending not to notice when he sat too close to me at the table and stole fish from my bowl. “The school called. The police are there. No one knows—no one knows where they are.”

I do not remember getting my shoes on.

I remember the floor tilting. I remember my bedroom doorframe under my hand. I remember saying his name, not to her, not really, but into the apartment, into the air, into whatever part of the world had swallowed him. I remember my mother asking what was wrong from the kitchen and the way I could not look at her because looking at another living person would make it real. I remember my throat closing so tightly that my first sob came out silent, my whole chest convulsing around nothing.

Then sound returned all at once.

“No,” I said, and it was ugly. Small. Childish. “No, no, no, no, no.”

His grandmother was crying. I had heard her cry once before, softly, when Kyung-jun got into a fight so bad he came home with his cheek split and blood dried black beneath his nose. She’d cried in the kitchen where he couldn’t see, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist before turning around and yelling at him for being an idiot. That cry had been tired. Worried. Human.

This was different.

This was an animal sound trapped in an old woman’s body.

“I’m coming,” I said.

I don’t know how I got there so fast. I must have run the whole way because my lungs burned by the time I reached the building, and my legs felt strange under me, too light and too weak, like they belonged to someone who had already fallen. His grandmother opened the door before I knocked. Her hair was loose from its usual careful bun. One side of her cardigan had been buttoned wrong. She looked at me, and whatever strength she had been using to stay upright simply left her.

I caught her before she hit the floor.

For a moment we stood there in the doorway holding each other like two people caught in the same wave, her hands clutching the back of my hoodie, my face pressed into the powdery smell of her shoulder. She was crying into my hair. I was crying into her cardigan. Neither of us said his name, because his name had become a door we could not open without falling through.

Inside, the apartment looked exactly the same.

That was cruel too.

His shoes were still by the entrance, kicked sideways because he never put anything away properly unless his grandmother threatened to hit him with a slipper. His jacket hung on the back of the chair. A half-empty bottle of banana milk sat on the table, the straw still punched through the silver top. His grandmother had made stew. I could smell it on the stove, warm and rich and untouched, the scent filling the little apartment like an insult.

“What did they say?” I asked, wiping my face with my sleeve because my hands were shaking too badly to do it properly.

She told me what she knew. It was almost nothing.

The class had left school. The school said there had been a planned activity, but no one could confirm the location. The bus driver had been found unconscious at a rest stop with no memory after a certain point. Phones were dead. The GPS data stopped at the same time for everyone. No ransom. No accident reports. No bodies. No wreckage. Just an entire class folded out of the world like someone had taken scissors to the day and cut them cleanly from it.

His grandmother kept repeating, “He would have called me.”

And I kept saying, “I know.”

Because he would have.

He was careless with teachers and cruel with classmates and loud enough to make strangers turn around in restaurants, but he called his grandmother if he was going to be late. Not always politely. Sometimes it was just, “I’m not dead, stop nagging,” before hanging up. But he called.

He would have called me too.

Even if it was only to be annoying. Even if it was only to send a voice message saying, “Yah, why are you blowing up my phone like a psycho?” Even if he pretended not to like it. Even if he made me want to throw my phone at a wall.

He would have answered.

After a while, I went to his room.

His door creaked the same way it always did. His grandmother kept telling him to fix it, and he kept saying he would, and then he never did because Kyung-jun lived as if every tiny responsibility was a personal attack. The room smelled like him. Laundry detergent and cheap cologne and something warm beneath it, sweat and skin and the ghost of him pressed into the sheets. His desk was messy. Textbooks open and abandoned. A pen without its cap. A receipt from a convenience store crumpled beside his keyboard. His bed was unmade, blanket twisted from the morning, pillow dented where his head had been.

I stood there staring at it until the room blurred.

Then I crawled onto his bed and broke.

Not prettily. Not the kind of crying that belongs in dramas, with tears shining silently under soft lighting. I cried like my body was trying to reject the truth before it could settle inside me. My mouth opened around sounds I could not control. My fingers twisted in his blanket until the fabric burned my knuckles. I pressed my face into his pillow and breathed him in so hard it hurt, as if there might be enough left of him in the cotton to keep him real. As if he was hiding in the smell of his own bed. As if grief was a thing I could outsmart by refusing to lift my head.

At some point his grandmother came in. She did not tell me to stop. She sat on the edge of the mattress and touched my hair with trembling fingers.

“He loves you,” she whispered. I squeezed my eyes shut.

“He’s coming back,” I said into the pillow. The words were muffled. Wet. Desperate enough to humiliate me if anyone else had heard them. His grandmother’s hand stilled.

Then she said, very quietly, “Yes.” But she did not sound like she believed it.

Six months later, the police asked the families to hold funerals.

They did not use the word ask at first. They dressed it up in gentle voices and official phrases, grief counseling language and practical advice, all those careful, padded words adults use when they have run out of answers and want their failure to sound kind. They said the investigation would remain open. They said search efforts would continue if new evidence appeared. They said absence of bodies did not erase hope, but the human mind needed ritual, closure, a place to mourn.

Closure.

I hated that word so much I felt it in my teeth.

The funeral hall smelled like flowers and polished wood and too many people breathing in one room. Every missing student had a framed photograph. Every photo had a black ribbon in the corner. Kyung-jun’s picture was one from school, his tie slightly loose, his expression caught somewhere between bored and irritated. He looked like he might step out of the frame just to complain about how ugly the photo was.

I stood in front of it for a long time.

People moved around me in dark clothes. Mothers collapsed against fathers. Fathers stared at the floor with red eyes and clenched jaws. Someone wailed from the far end of the hall, a raw sound that rose and fell until it became part of the air. The classmates’ younger siblings stood confused and frightened at the edges, dressed in black too big for them, holding white flowers they didn’t know what to do with.

Kyung-jun’s grandmother held my hand so tightly my fingers went numb.

I did not cry at first.

I couldn’t.

I stared at his face until the edges of the photograph sharpened unnaturally, until I could see the tiny strand of hair falling near his eyebrow, the slight curl of his mouth like he was about to say something mean. I kept thinking, he would hate this. He would hate the flowers. He would hate the crying. He would hate people looking at him like he was something sad and finished. He would lean down to me and mutter, “Why does everyone look so ugly when they cry?” and I would hit his arm and he would grin because he got the reaction he wanted.

Someone guided me closer with the incense.

I looked at the portrait.

My knees gave out.

It happened so suddenly that I didn’t feel myself falling until hands caught me under the arms. The sound that came out of me did not feel like mine. It was too loud. Too torn open. It scraped through my throat and filled the funeral hall, and I hated myself for it because Kyung-jun would have teased me, would have called me dramatic, would have said, “Yah, you trying to make my funeral about you?”

And then I cried harder because for one second I heard his voice so clearly I turned my head, looking for him. There was no one there.

After that, time became something I survived rather than lived in.

I graduated.

People said that like it meant something. Like walking across a stage and receiving a paper could close the year behind me. Like the world had not kept moving with a hole in it. I packed my things for university in the city and found one of his hoodies at the back of my closet, black, oversized, the sleeves stretched because he always yanked them over his hands when he was bored. I sat on the floor holding it for almost an hour. It barely smelled like him anymore.

That was the day I understood why people begged ghosts to haunt them.

For a while, I went to his grandmother’s every weekend. Then every other weekend. Then when classes got heavy, once a month. She never blamed me. She said I had to live. She said Kyung-jun would be angry if I didn’t.

“He’d say something awful,” she told me once, pouring tea with hands that had grown thinner. I smiled because she was right.

He would have called me stupid for crying. Then he would have sat beside me and nudged my knee with his until I leaned into him. He never knew what to do with softness when anyone could see it. He acted like tenderness was something embarrassing that happened to other people. But in private, when his room was dim and the city lights cut pale lines across the walls, he would hook a finger through mine and pretend it was nothing. He would rest his chin on top of my head and complain that I was heavy even though he was the one pulling me closer.

A year passed.

Then more.

His case became one of those strange tragedies people talked about in low voices when documentaries needed content. The missing class. The impossible disappearance. The cold case with no bodies and no ransom and no answers. Sometimes people at university brought it up without knowing I had loved one of the boys in the photos. I learned to sit very still when they did. I learned how to hold a pen without breaking it. I learned how to say, “Yeah, I heard about that,” in a voice calm enough to pass as indifference.

But at night, I still checked.

News articles. Police updates. Forums filled with theories so cruel and stupid I wanted to reach through the screen and shake strangers by the throat. I checked unidentified patient lists once. I checked hospitals after disasters. I checked because hope had become ugly inside me, not bright, not pretty, but stubborn and half-starved, dragging itself across every empty day with bloody hands.

I did not believe he was alive in the way happy people believe things. I believed because the alternative was a room I could not enter.

The day I saw him again, it was raining.

Not hard. Just enough to turn the sidewalks dark and make the city smell like wet pavement and exhaust, the kind of cold spring rain that clung to hair and lashes. I had left class early because the lecture hall felt too tight, too full of other people’s bodies and pencil scratches and bright laptop screens. My head hurt. My coat was thin. I stopped outside a convenience store to buy an umbrella I didn’t need, mostly because I wanted something to hold.

The bell above the door chimed when I stepped out. Across the street, an old woman stood beneath the awning of a pharmacy.

For a moment, I noticed only her. Small frame. Gray cardigan. Plastic bag hooked over one wrist. Hair pulled back in a careful bun. My body recognized her before my mind did.

Kyung-jun’s grandmother.

Everything inside me went quiet in that same terrible way it had when she called.

She looked older. Smaller. The rain made the sidewalk shimmer between us, headlights dragging long ribbons of white and red across the wet road. People passed in both directions, umbrellas bobbing like dark flowers. A bus groaned at the curb. Someone laughed behind me, bright and careless.

Then someone stepped out of the pharmacy behind her.

Tall.

Too tall.

Black hair damp at the edges. Shoulders broad under a dark jacket. One hand holding the door, the other wrapped around the strap of a bag like he was still learning how to use his own fingers. His face was thinner than it used to be. Sharper. The lines of it cut deeper, cheekbones more pronounced, jaw tight in a way that looked less like arrogance now and more like something wired beneath the skin. There was a pale mark near his temple. Another at his throat, half-hidden by his collar. His mouth was the same.

That was what destroyed me.

Not the height. Not the shoulders. Not even the eyes.

His mouth.

The same mouth that had smirked at me under the weak morning sun. The same mouth that had called me a liar, a brat, a psycho, pretty when he thought I was asleep and couldn’t hear him. The same mouth I had kissed in stairwells and behind school buildings and once in his grandmother’s kitchen when he was supposed to be taking out the trash.

It opened slightly.

He saw me.

The city stopped making sense.

For a second, neither of us moved.

His grandmother turned, following his stare, and the plastic bag slipped from her hand. Oranges rolled across the wet pavement, bright and absurd, one bumping against the curb and stopping there like the world had chosen that tiny detail to prove it was still real.

Kyung-jun stared at me as if I was the ghost.

His eyes were darker than I remembered. Not in color. In depth. Like something had been carved behind them and left open. The boy I loved used to look at the world like he could beat it into giving him what he wanted. This boy looked at me like he had crawled through hell and found my face at the exit, and now he was afraid that if he blinked, the devil would laugh and take me back.

I stepped off the curb without looking. A car horn screamed. Someone grabbed my sleeve and cursed, but I tore free, because the only thing my body knew was his name. It broke out of me before I reached him, loud enough that people turned.

“Kyung-jun!”

His whole face collapsed.

His jaw trembled once, hard, like he hated it. His eyes went wet so fast it looked painful. He took one step toward me, then another, and then I was running, shoes splashing through shallow puddles, rain needling my face, breath tearing out of my lungs in broken pieces.

He caught me so hard it hurt.

His arms came around me like a lock. One beneath my shoulders, one around my waist, lifting me off the ground with a rough sound punched from his chest. I hit him and held on. My hands clawed at the back of his jacket, bunching the fabric in my fists, searching for proof under layers of cloth and rain and impossible time. He was solid. Warm. Shaking. His hair brushed my cheek. His breath struck the side of my neck, ragged and uneven, and then his face was buried there, pressed so hard against me it felt like he was trying to disappear into my skin.

“You’re here,” I sobbed. His fingers dug into my back. “You’re here, you’re here, you’re here—”

“Shut up,” he said, but the words broke in the middle.

I cried harder.

His body jerked around a breath that was almost a laugh and almost a sob, ugly and strangled and nothing like the boy who used to laugh like a weapon. He set me down but didn’t let me go. His hands came up to my face, rough palms cupping my cheeks, thumbs dragging beneath my eyes as if tears offended him personally. He looked at me with a kind of panic I had never seen on him before, not even in old fights, not even when blood ran from his nose and he grinned through it because losing scared him less than being seen as weak.

Now he looked terrified.

His eyes moved over my face too quickly. Forehead, mouth, jaw, hair, eyes again. Like he was counting pieces. Like he had to make sure time had not taken anything from him. His thumb caught on my lower lip. He swallowed.

“Yah,” he whispered. “Why are you crying so ugly?”

A laugh tore out of me, half-sob, half-hurt.

I hit his chest with both hands.

It should have been harder. I meant for it to be harder. But the second my palms struck him, I felt bone beneath jacket, the unfamiliar sharpness of him, and my hands curled instead. His chest rose under my fingers. He was real. He was breathing. He was looking at me with rain caught in his lashes and tears sliding down his face like he was furious at them for existing.

“You died,” I said, voice splitting. “You died. They had a funeral. I had to stand there and look at your picture. I had to—”

His mouth twisted.

“I didn’t die.”

“You were gone.”

“I know.”

“You were gone.”

“I know.”

His voice snapped on the second one, not at me, not really, but because something inside him could not stand the words either. His hands slid from my face to the back of my head, fingers tangling in my rain-damp hair with no gentleness left. Not hurting. Holding. Possessive in a way that would have made me shove him before, would have made me tell him I wasn’t something he owned.

But his hands were shaking. He pressed his forehead to mine. His breath came hot against my mouth. “I tried,” he said.

The rain kept falling.

“What?”

His eyes shut. For one second, his face changed completely. The street vanished from him. The pharmacy. His grandmother. Me. He was somewhere else. Somewhere bright and cruel and endless.

“I tried to come back,” he said, so quietly I almost missed it under the hiss of tires on wet asphalt. “Every time.”

Every time.

The words dropped between us like something with teeth.

I wanted to ask. I wanted to know. I wanted to peel the truth out of him with my bare hands and also never hear a single word of it. Because whatever had happened to him lived in his face now. It lived in the way he flinched when a car horn blared again. It lived in the way his hands tightened on me when someone brushed past too close. It lived in the hollow under his cheekbones, in the swollen exhaustion around his eyes, in the strange, feral stillness of his shoulders.

Kyung-jun had always been restless. Always moving, tapping, leaning, shoving, laughing, picking fights with the air if no one else volunteered.

Now he was too still.

Like if he moved wrong, something would start over.

His grandmother was crying behind him. Quietly at first, then not quietly at all. I looked over his shoulder and saw her with one hand over her mouth, eyes fixed on us, the abandoned oranges bright around her feet. She looked like someone watching the dead return and not trusting God enough to thank him yet.

Kyung-jun noticed me looking and turned his head slightly.

“Halmeoni,” he muttered, voice rough. “Stop crying. People are staring.” She made a choked sound that might have been a laugh if grief had not ruined it.

“You awful boy,” she sobbed. “You awful, awful boy.”

His mouth trembled.

Then his face hardened like he hated that too, hated being seen, hated that his grandmother’s love could touch him where everyone could watch. He pulled me against his side without asking, one arm clamping around my shoulders, his palm spread wide over my upper arm like he had no intention of letting the city test him. He bent, picked up the bag with his free hand, then snapped at a man who had stopped too obviously nearby.

“What are you looking at?” The man looked away immediately. I almost cried again because that was him. That was my Kyung-jun, cracked down the middle and still somehow capable of being an asshole to strangers.

His grandmother wiped her face with a trembling hand. “We should go home.”

Kyung-jun did not answer right away.

His arm tightened around me.

I felt it before he said anything. The conflict running through him, sharp and silent. Grandmother. Me. Home. Hospital appointments, police questions, recovery, missing years, a life that had apparently returned without asking him if he knew how to live in it. His jaw worked once. His eyes flicked down to me.

I knew that look.

Not exactly. Not anymore. But enough.

He was asking without asking, because asking made him vulnerable and Kyung-jun would rather swallow glass than sound like he needed anything.

“You can come with me,” I said. His grandmother looked at me. Then at him.

Kyung-jun’s face closed too fast. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You never do.” His eyes flashed, and for one second, beneath the trauma, beneath the rain, beneath the impossible years between us, the old irritation sparked alive.

“Still annoying,” he said.

My throat tightened around something almost like a smile.

“Still ugly when you lie.”

His gaze dropped to my mouth.

The air changed.

It was not soft. Nothing about him was soft right then except the way his hand moved from my shoulder to the back of my neck, fingers sliding under my hair, warm against rain-chilled skin. His eyes held there, on my mouth, like he had dreamed of it so often the real thing had become dangerous. Like touching me had already ruined him and kissing me might finish it.

“Kyung-jun, go with Y/N, call me when you want to come home” his grandmother said gently.

He blinked, jaw flexing but nodding. Then he looked back at me.

“You still live in the city?”

I nodded.

“Alone?”

I nodded again.

His expression sharpened immediately. “Of course you do. Stupid.”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me.”

“You’ve been missing for two years and you’re already insulting my life choices?”

“You made bad ones while I was gone. Not my fault.”

I stared at him through tears. His mouth twitched. Not a smile. Not quite. More like the ghost of one pressing against a bruise. Then his face crumpled again, so quickly that I barely saw it before he pulled me in and kissed me.

The first touch was not careful. It was desperate enough to frighten both of us.

His mouth found mine with a sound that disappeared into my breath, and for a second there was no street, no rain, no grandmother pretending not to cry while watching us like her heart was being torn apart and stitched back together in the same moment. There was only him. His hand at the back of my neck. His other arm locked around my waist. His mouth hot and trembling against mine, tasting like rain and salt and something ruined. He kissed like someone proving a point to the dead. Like he had argued with the universe for two years and finally gotten his hands on the evidence.

I cried into it.

I couldn’t help it. Tears slipped between our mouths, wetting his upper lip, and he made a low, broken sound that would have embarrassed him if he had been whole enough to care. He pulled back just enough to breathe, forehead still pressed to mine.

“Don’t,” he rasped. I shook my head, unable to stop. “Don’t cry like that,” he said, but his own voice shook so badly the command fell apart. His thumb dragged over my cheek again, rougher now, almost angry. “You think I can handle that right now?”

A laugh scraped out of me. “Sorry my crying is inconvenient for you.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

His eyes closed. For the first time, he smiled. Small. Real. Devastating.

“I missed you too.”

My apartment looked different with him inside it.

That was the first thing I noticed when I unlocked the door hours later, after his grandmother made us come back so she could feed him first, after she pressed food on me too with shaking hands and watched Kyung-jun eat like every bite was proof, after police called twice and he ignored the second call until his grandmother slapped his arm and told him not to be rude to detectives. After he packed nothing because he had nothing from before except the clothes he’d come back in and a phone the police had given him that he kept staring at like it belonged to someone else.

He stepped into my place and made it smaller.

He had always done that. Taken up too much space. Filled rooms with shoulders and noise and bad attitude. But now there was a strange caution to him, a pause at the entrance as his eyes moved over everything: the narrow hallway, the shoe rack, the kitchen light I had left on, the stack of textbooks on the table, the blanket folded over the couch. His gaze snagged on ordinary objects like he expected them to change while he wasn’t looking.

I closed the door behind us. The click made him flinch. Only slightly but I saw it.

His head turned fast, eyes cutting to the lock, shoulders rising before he forced them down. The movement was so controlled it hurt worse than if he had jumped. Kyung-jun, who used to slam doors just to make people look at him. Kyung-jun, who used to grin when someone startled. Kyung-jun, who used to fill silence before silence could make him think.

I pretended not to notice.

“You can shower,” I said quietly. “I have towels. Clothes might be—”

“I’m not showering.”

I looked at him. His mouth set. I understood too slowly, then all at once.

He did not want a closed bathroom door between us. He did not want water loud enough to hide sounds. He did not want to be alone in a room with steam on the mirror and no way to see what was coming.

“Okay,” I said.

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you feel bad for me.” I held his stare for a second.

Then I kicked off my shoes and walked past him. “Fine. Stay dirty.”

His brows twitched.

There. A spark.

“Yah.”

“What?”

“You got mean.”

I put my keys on the counter. “You were gone for two years. I had to develop a personality.”

“You already had one. It was bad.”

I turned around.

He was still by the door, hands hanging at his sides, looking too large and too lost for the little entranceway. The overhead light carved shadows beneath his cheekbones. His hair had dried messily, falling over his forehead in dark pieces. Without rain between us, without the shock of the street, the changes in him were harder to ignore. He was thinner than before, stripped down to sharper edges. His wrists looked too bony where his sleeves rode up. There were marks near the inside of one elbow. Medical. Old bruising faded yellow-green under the skin. His lips were dry from biting.

My throat tightened. He saw me looking. Of course he did.

“What?” he snapped.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” The word landed between us differently than it had that last morning.

You’re worried about me?

No.

Liar.

I looked away first because if I didn’t, I would cry again, and he had already told me he couldn’t handle it. I went to the kitchen and filled a glass of water. My hands felt strange around the cup, clumsy and too careful. Behind me, I heard him move at last. Slow footsteps. Then nothing. When I turned back, he was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the wall near my desk.

At the photo. I had forgotten it was there.

It was small, tucked into the corner of the mirror, half-hidden behind a postcard and an old university schedule. A picture from before. One of the only ones I had printed. Kyung-jun in his school uniform, scowling at the camera because I’d taken it without warning, one hand reaching toward the lens like he was about to snatch my phone. Behind the fake annoyance, there was a smile beginning in his eyes.

He stared at it for so long the glass nearly slipped from my hand.

“That’s ugly,” he said. His voice was flat. I walked over and held the water out. He didn’t take it.

“Take the water.”

“I said it’s ugly.”

“I heard you.”

“Why’d you keep it?” The question was too sharp. Too defensive. He still wasn’t looking at me. I lowered the glass slightly.

Because it was the only thing I had that looked alive, I thought. Because after the funeral, every official photo made you look dead. Because sometimes I woke up and couldn’t remember your voice right away, but I could look at that picture and remember the exact insult you threw at me after I took it. Because forgetting one tiny thing about you felt like killing you myself.

I said none of that.

“You owed me money,” I said instead. His head turned. I shrugged. “I needed evidence.” For half a second, he only stared. Then the sound that came out of him was almost a laugh.

It broke before it could become one. His mouth twisted, his eyes shining too bright again, and he turned away like I had done something unfair by making him feel a normal thing. His hand came up, rubbing roughly over his face.

“Fuck,” he muttered. I stepped closer. He tensed.

I stopped.

The space between us suddenly felt alive. Full of everything we had not been able to say across two years and whatever nightmare had held him. Full of every unanswered call, every birthday he missed, every night I fell asleep with his hoodie twisted in my hands. Full of every time he must have woken inside that game and realized it had started again. Full of the fact that I had mourned him in black while he was somewhere dying in ways I could not imagine.

“What happened?” I asked.

He went very still.

The apartment changed with the question.

The refrigerator hummed. Rain ticked against the window. Somewhere upstairs, a chair scraped across the floor. Ordinary sounds, thin and harmless, gathering around us as if they too were waiting.

Kyung-jun’s hand dropped from his face.

For a while, he said nothing.

Then he walked past me to the couch and sat down heavily, elbows on his knees, head bowed. The posture did not suit him. Kyung-jun sprawled. Kyung-jun took space. Kyung-jun leaned back like the world had been built for his comfort. Seeing him folded forward like that made something cold slide beneath my ribs.

I sat beside him, close enough that our knees touched. He looked at the contact. Then at me. His knee pressed harder into mine.

“We didn’t go to some class trip” he said.

“I know.” His eyes flicked up. “The police said the trip records were fake,” I said. “Or planted. Or something. They never explained it clearly.”

He scoffed. The sound was automatic, bitter. “Of course they didn’t.”

“What happened?” His hands clasped between his knees. His fingers tightened until the knuckles went pale.

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try me.”

His mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. “Always so confident.”

“Kyung-jun.” The way I said his name made him look at me, like the sound of his name in my mouth pulled something in him loose.

His gaze dropped again, this time to my hands. They were folded in my lap, gripping each other too tightly. After a second, he reached over and pried them apart with rough fingers. Not gentle, exactly. Kyung-jun had never been good at gentle in a way that looked clean from the outside. He hooked his hand around mine and held on. Hard.

“There was a game,” he said. The room seemed to tilt. “Some fucking game we used to play in high school. Not like—” He stopped, jaw flexing, and let out a humorless little breath. “Not some phone game. Not a joke. We woke up in a youth center. It looked real. Felt real. People died.”

His thumb dug into the back of my hand.

“They died, there was a winning team, and then it started again.”

I did not move. I barely breathed. He kept staring at our hands as if my fingers were the only reason the room was still here.

“At first we thought… I don’t know what the fuck we thought. We didn't remember we had played it over and over until they pulled us out. Bodies started dropping and everyone started acting like animals, and every time we got close to figuring something out, it reset.” His voice thickened. He swallowed hard. “You die in there, you feel it.”

My stomach turned.

“You died?” His silence answered before he did. He laughed once. It was horrible.

“Many times.”

The air left me. He looked at me then, eyes sharp with something almost angry, like my fear hurt him and he wanted to punish the room for making me show it.

“Don’t look like that.”

“How am I supposed to look?”

“Not like that.”

“Kyung-jun—”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he snapped. The words cracked through the apartment. I flinched. He saw. His face changed. The anger vanished so quickly it frightened me, leaving something raw and young underneath. He let go of my hand as if he had burned me.

“Shit,” he muttered. “I didn’t—”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” His jaw clenched. He stared at the floor. “Don’t say that when it’s not.”

I swallowed.

That sounded like him too. Mean little mouth. Brutal honesty when softness would have been easier. But beneath it, something had shifted. Before, he snapped because he wanted control. Now he snapped because control was all he had left, and even that kept slipping.

I reached for him slowly this time, giving him space to pull away. He watched my hand like it was dangerous. When my fingers touched his wrist, his eyes shut. Just once. Briefly. But the breath that left him shook.

“I thought you were dead,” I whispered. His hand turned under mine, fast, catching my fingers before I could move away.

“I thought you forgot me.” The words were so quiet I almost didn’t understand them. Something inside me tore open all over again.

He looked furious at himself the second they were out, eyes flashing, mouth hardening like he wanted to shove the sentence back down his own throat. But it was too late. It sat between us. Small and naked and bleeding.

“You thought what?”

He stood abruptly.

I startled, looking up as he paced two steps away, then back, then stopped because there wasn’t enough room in my apartment for whatever was moving through him. His hands went to his hair, pushing it back from his face.

“It was two years,” he said. “I don’t know. In there, time was fucked. Sometimes it felt like days. Sometimes forever. Every time it started again, I remembered less at first. Faces got blurry. Voices got—” He cut himself off. His throat worked. “I kept trying to remember yours.”

My eyes burned.

He turned on me suddenly, pointing like he was accusing me of something.

“Your laugh was annoying as hell. That helped.”

A broken sound slipped out of me.

“And your face,” he continued, voice roughening around every word, “because you always looked at me like you wanted to hit me.”

“I usually did.”

“Yeah. I know.” His mouth twitched, then trembled. “I kept thinking, if I forgot that, I’d really die.”

I stood. He watched me, breathing harder now, shoulders rising and falling beneath his jacket. I crossed the little space between us. For once, he did not make a joke. For once, he did not move first.

I reached up and touched his face.

His skin was warm. Real. Slightly rough beneath my palm. A tiny muscle jumped in his jaw. His eyes stayed on mine with a desperation so intense it felt less like looking and more like being held down by it. The old Kyung-jun would have smirked. He would have said something filthy or stupid or mean to cut the tension before it could cut him.

This one only stood there and let me touch him like he needed it more than pride.

“I didn’t forget you,” I said. His lips parted. “I tried,” I whispered, and that hurt him; I saw it land. “Not because I wanted to. Because everyone kept telling me I had to live. They said I had to move on. They said I was young, that you’d want me to be happy.”

His eyes darkened.

“I would not say that.”

I let out a watery laugh. “No. You’d say something awful.”

“I’d say if you got some ugly boyfriend while I was gone, I’d haunt you.”

“There were no boyfriends.” His whole face changed. The relief was so fast, so violent, that he looked away from me as if I had caught him doing something obscene.

I should have teased him.

Before, I would have. I would have laughed and said, What, were you worried? I would have poked at him until he snapped, because that was how we loved each other then, with teeth and stupid little wounds neither of us meant to make deep.

But now I only watched the tendons in his neck shift as he swallowed.

“No one,” I said. His gaze came back slowly. “I couldn’t,” I admitted. “Not when I still—”

The word love hovered at the back of my throat, too bright, too enormous for the small room. Kyung-jun stepped into me before I could finish.

His arms went around me with a force that stole my breath. He bent over me, face pressing into my hair, one hand splayed between my shoulder blades, the other locked low at my waist. He held me like the world had already taken me once and he was not stupid enough to trust it again. His body was shaking. I felt it everywhere we touched. A tremor running beneath muscle and bone, down his arms, through his hands, into me.

“I’m not leaving,” he said. It came out harsh. Almost like a threat. My cheek pressed against his chest. His heart beat too fast under my ear.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” His hand tightened. “You don’t. You go to class, I’m going with you. You go buy water, I’m going. You go to the bathroom—”

I pulled back enough to look up at him. “Absolutely not.”

His eyes were wet again, but his mouth curled. “Why? Shy now?”

“You’re insane.”

“Yeah,” he said, and the smile vanished. “Probably.”

The honesty hit harder than any joke.

His gaze moved over my face, slower now, not counting pieces this time but memorizing them. There was hunger in it, yes, but not simple hunger. Not the easy, cocky kind he used to wear when he wanted me to blush. This was deeper. Worse. A need scraped raw by terror. He looked at my mouth like he had imagined it in the dark. Like he had survived on memory until memory wasn’t enough, and now that I was here, breathing in front of him, his body didn’t know how to be anything but starving.

“Kyung-jun,” I whispered.

“What.”

“You need sleep.”

He gave me a look. “Wow. Romantic.”

“You look like you’re about to collapse.”

“I’m fine.” I stared at him. He stared back. Then his jaw tightened. “I said I’m fine.”

The room filled with all the things that sentence could not hide. The dark crescents beneath his eyes. The way he stood too close to me and still looked afraid the distance might grow. The way he kept glancing at the door even though he had checked the lock twice. The way his fingers flexed whenever there was a sound in the hallway.

“You don’t have to be,” I said.

His expression went cold so fast it was almost impressive.

“Don’t start.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m saying you can sleep here.”

“Obviously.”

“On the couch.”

His face offended itself.

“The couch?”

“Yes.”

He looked at the couch, then back at me as if I had personally betrayed him. “After two years, you’re putting me on the couch?”

A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. His eyes caught on it. The anger in his face fell fast. For a second, he just stared, and the room softened around the edges.

“What?” I asked, wiping under my eye. His mouth pressed into a line.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.” He looked away, but not fast enough. Color had risen faintly along his cheekbones. I touched his sleeve. “What?”

“Your laugh,” he muttered. My chest hurt. He still wouldn’t look at me. “Still annoying,” he added, weaker, voice shaking slightly.

I stepped closer and wrapped my arms around his middle. He let me. More than let me. His body folded around mine almost instantly, chin dropping to the top of my head, hands finding my back again. He exhaled like he had been holding his breath since the street, since the game, since the first time he woke up and realized dying had not freed him.

“We can share the bed,” I said into his shirt. “But only sleeping.”

“Who said I was thinking anything else?” I tilted my head back to look at him. His brows lifted, almost like before. Almost. “What?” he said. “You think I’m some kind of pervert?”

“I think you’re you.”

“Exactly. So, yes.” I shoved his chest. He caught my wrist and pulled it back around him.

“No,” he said. The word was quiet. My breath caught. He looked down at where my hand rested against him, fingers curled in his shirt. “Don’t move away yet.”

There was no joke after it. No smirk. No insult to cover the soft underbelly of the request. So I didn’t move.

I stood there in the middle of my apartment, wrapped around the boy I had buried without a body, feeling his heart slam beneath my palm as if it was trying to make up for every beat I had missed. Outside, the rain kept threading silver down the window. The city moved on unaware, cars passing, people laughing under umbrellas, neon signs bleeding color into puddles. Somewhere in that same city, police reports were being written. Families were being called. A whole class was being returned to a world that had already mourned them and moved their desks and packed away their uniforms.

But inside my apartment, time narrowed to the shape of his hands.

After a while, he let me lead him to the bedroom. He hesitated in the doorway. I felt it through his hand before I saw it. The slight resistance. The way his fingers locked around mine.

“It’s just my room,” I said.

His eyes swept over the bed, the window, the closet, the lamp, every shadowed corner. “I know.”

“You can leave the door open.”

His mouth tightened. “I’m not scared.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I’m not.”

“I know.”

He glared at me, but it was ruined by exhaustion. “Stop agreeing with me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m some injured dog you found in an alley.” My eyes moved over him before I could stop them. The bruises. The scars. The hollowed exhaustion. The boy still standing because falling would mean trusting the floor. His gaze sharpened.

“Don’t,” he warned.

I looked back at his face. “Okay.”

He waited, suspicious. I squeezed his hand once and turned down the blanket. He watched like the bed might bite. Then, very suddenly, he said, “I want to marry you.”

My hands froze on the blanket. The silence afterward was enormous. I turned around slowly.

Kyung-jun stood in the doorway with his shoulders tense and his chin lifted, defensive already, like he had thrown a punch and was waiting for one back. His face was serious in a way that made my stomach drop. No teasing curve to his mouth. No theatrical arrogance. Just those dark, damaged eyes fixed on me with too much certainty for the soft yellow light of my bedroom.

“What?” I whispered.

“I said I want to marry you.” My heart lurched so hard it was almost pain.

“You just came back from being kidnapped and tortured.”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“Kyung-jun.”

“What?” His voice rose, sharp with embarrassment now, with fear disguised badly as irritation. “You want me to wait? For what? So some counselor can tell me my feelings are a trauma response? So people can say I’m unstable? I already know I’m fucked up. Congratulations. Still want to marry you.”

I stared at him.

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, angry at himself, at me, at the room, at whatever had made the words come out before he could dress them in cruelty.

“I’m not saying tomorrow,” he muttered.

“That’s surprisingly reasonable.”

His eyes flashed. “Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

I looked down at the floor, my vision blurring, my heart thumping so loud I'm surprised he hasn't complained about it yet. “I’m just...trying not to cry.” That shut him up. His face shifted again, the anger breaking at the edges.

I stepped toward him carefully. He did not step back. When I reached him, I touched the front of his jacket, smoothing nothing, fixing nothing, just laying my hands there because I could. Because once, for two years, I had only been able to touch cotton that no longer smelled like him.

“You can want that,” I said. His throat moved. “Cause I want it too. But you also need to heal.” His expression hardened. I held his jacket tighter before he could pull away. “And I’m not saying that because I don’t want you. I’m saying it because I do. I want you alive. Actually alive. Not just back.”

The words hit him somewhere deep. His eyes lowered. For a long moment, he said nothing. Then, in a voice so low I felt it more than heard it, he said, “I don’t know how.” I closed my eyes. There it was.

The thing under everything. Under the jokes. Under the snapping. Under the possessive hands and the marriage demand and the way he kept looking at me like I was the last piece of shore after a shipwreck.

I stepped into him and wrapped my arms around his neck. He bent immediately, face dropping to my shoulder.

“We’ll figure it out,” I whispered.

His laugh was bitter against my skin. “That sounds stupid.”

“Yeah.”

“Like something people say when they don’t know shit.”

“Probably.” His arms tightened around me.

“Say it again.” My eyes burned.

“We’ll figure it out.”

His breath shook. Again, I thought he might say. Again, like a boy asking for one more story before sleep. But he only held me, silent and trembling, until the worst of it passed through him.

When we finally lay down, he didn’t take off his jacket at first. He lay on top of the blanket, stiff as a corpse, eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. I lay beside him in the dim light, listening to the rain soften against the glass. The space between us was only a few inches, but it felt cruel.

“You can come closer,” I said.

“I know.”

He didn’t move.

I turned on my side. His profile was sharp in the dark, lashes lowered but not closed, mouth tense. He looked like he was bracing for something. A vote. A scream. A body hitting the floor. The start of another loop.

I reached out and touched his hand. His fingers closed around mine so fast it hurt.

“Sorry,” he muttered immediately, loosening his grip by force.

“It’s okay.”

He turned his head toward me. “Stop saying that.”

“Then stop apologizing.”

“I didn’t apologize.”

“You literally just did.”

“No, I didn’t.” I smiled despite everything. His gaze dropped to it. The room stilled again.

Slowly, as if sudden movement might shatter whatever fragile thing had survived between us, he turned onto his side. His hand came up, hovering near my face. Waiting. That, more than anything, made my chest ache. Kyung-jun had never hovered. He took, grabbed, pulled, crowded. He tested the world with his hands and dared it to complain.

Now he waited. I leaned into his palm. His breath caught.

There was something unbearable about being touched by him after so long. Not because it was new, but because it was familiar in a way my body had almost convinced itself it invented. The rough pad of his thumb beneath my cheekbone. The warmth of his palm. The faint tremor he could not quite hide. His eyes kept moving over me, over and over, like he was afraid sleep would steal the details.

“I used to think about this,” he said.

My throat tightened. “About my bed?”

“Don’t ruin it.” I almost laughed. He brushed his thumb across my cheek. “About your face. Your voice. Stupid things.” His mouth twisted. “You yelling at me. You pretending you weren’t jealous. You getting mad when I bought you coffee because I said your taste was childish.”

“You said only babies drink sweet coffee.”

“You did drink sweet coffee.”

“I still do.”

He stared at me.

Then, very softly, “Good.”

The word broke me more than it should have.

Because it meant I had stayed real in some tiny way. Because it meant the world had not taken every version of us. Because sweet coffee, crooked collars, ugly crying, stupid insults — they had survived too, buried under horror, waiting for him to come back and be cruel about them.

His hand slid to the back of my neck.

“Come here,” he said. It was not really an order. I moved closer anyway.

He pulled me into him, under the blanket this time, his body curling around mine with desperate heat. He was bigger than I remembered. Or maybe I had made him smaller in grief so I could survive the size of missing him. His chest pressed against my back, knees behind mine, arm locked across my waist. His breath stirred the hair near my ear. The whole bed seemed to hold its breath with us.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

Then, barely audible, he said, “I thought I’d never do this again.” My fingers covered his hand on my stomach. He turned his palm upward and tangled our fingers together.

“I’m here,” I whispered. His forehead pressed to the back of my neck.

“Yeah,” he said. A minute passed. Then another. His breathing did not slow. I knew he was afraid to sleep.

Maybe he knew I knew, because his hand tightened once, warning me not to say it. So I didn’t. I lay there in the dark with his body wrapped around mine and let silence do what words would ruin. The city lights shone through the curtains in thin silver lines. Rainwater tracked down the window like veins. His heart beat against my back, too fast, too alive, and every time it stumbled into a harder rhythm, I squeezed his hand until it steadied.

Sometime, when my eyes began to shut slowly, his mouth brushed the nape of my neck. Not a kiss, not quite. A touch. A check. A prayer he would deny making.

“You better not disappear,” he murmured, voice thick with exhaustion. My eyes filled again. I turned carefully in his arms.

He resisted for half a second, then let me face him. His eyes were half-lidded, dark and ruined and still so painfully him that I could barely stand it. I touched his cheek. He leaned into it before he could stop himself.

“You disappeared first,” I whispered.

His mouth twitched faintly.

“Yeah,” he said. “My bad.” A laugh broke out of me, quiet and wet. His eyes softened. Then he kissed me again. This one was slower.

Not less desperate. Never that. The desperation was still there, threaded through his fingers in my hair, in the way his body shifted closer, in the way he breathed against my mouth like every inhale had to pass through me first. But there was something else under it now. Recognition. Grief. The ache of two people touching across the grave everyone else had already built.

He kissed me like he was tired of dying. Like he was angry he had lost time. Like he loved me so much it had nowhere clean to go, so it came out in trembling hands and bitten-back sounds and his forehead pressed to mine afterward, his eyes shut tight.

By four in the morning, the room has stopped pretending to be night and has not yet become morning.

It is that strange, thin hour where the dark turns gray at the edges, where everything feels suspended and unclaimed, where the city outside my window has gone quiet enough that I can hear the building breathing around us. Pipes knock faintly behind the walls. Rainwater gathers at the window ledge and drops in uneven little taps against the metal frame. Somewhere far below, a car passes through the wet street with a soft hiss, tires dragging through puddles, then fades until there is nothing left but the low electric hum of the refrigerator and Kyung-jun’s breathing beside me.

Not sleeping. He has been lying beside me for hours with his eyes open. I know because I have been awake for all of it.

At first, I pretend not to notice. I lie still beneath the blanket with my hand trapped in his, my fingers numb from how tightly he keeps remembering I am there. Every few minutes, his grip changes. Not loosening exactly. Testing. His thumb presses into my knuckles, then slides over them as if counting. His palm warms mine, then tightens again like something inside him startles awake without warning. Once, when the pipes groan too loudly in the wall, his whole body goes rigid beside me, the muscles in his arm locking so suddenly that my wrist aches. He does not move after. Does not speak. Does not explain. He just stares at the ceiling as if something has written instructions there in the dark.

I watch him through half-lowered lashes.

His face looks worse in the almost-morning. The shadows are gentler, but somehow less forgiving. In the yellow lamp glow, he looked wounded. In this hour, he looks haunted. Like whatever brought him back forgot to return all of him. His hair is messy against my pillow, black strands falling over his forehead, and his eyes keep fixed upward, dry and too dark, the skin beneath them bruised with exhaustion. His mouth is slightly parted. Not soft. Not relaxed. Ready. As if breath itself is something he might need to fight for.

Every now and then, he blinks too fast. Like he is trying not to see something. Or trying not to sleep because sleep is where it waits. I understand it slowly. Not as a thought at first, but as a coldness spreading beneath my ribs. The game had nights.

The dying would not have waited politely for daylight. The fear would not have given them neat hours to survive in. There must have been dark rooms and locked doors and hallways too silent to trust, clocks crawling toward whatever time meant death, classmates whispering and accusing and waiting for the announcement that would ruin someone. There must have been the terrible moment before sleep, when exhaustion became a trap. When closing your eyes meant surrendering the one piece of control you still had. When waking might mean relief, or blood, or another beginning.

And now he is here, in my bed, in my apartment, in a world that insists it is real because the blanket is soft and the rain is wet and my hand is in his.

But if he sleeps—If he wakes up somewhere else—I turn my face into the pillow to hide the way my mouth trembles. Kyung-jun notices anyway. His head shifts on the pillow. His eyes move to me. Immediate.

“What?” he asks. His voice is rough from disuse and too much staying awake. It scrapes through the dark quietly, but the sharp edge of him is still there, stripped down and hoarse.

I shake my head once.

His fingers tighten around mine.

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what?”

“Act like I’m stupid.”

I look at him then.

He is already looking at me so hard it feels like being held under light. The old Kyung-jun would have smirked after saying it. Would have made some cutting little comment, something ugly enough to make me roll my eyes and forget the tenderness underneath. This Kyung-jun only watches me with a kind of brittle intensity, as if my face is a language he has been studying in the dark for two years and he still cannot trust his own translation.

I swallow.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Dangerous.”

It should be funny. It almost is.

The word comes out faintly, more habit than joke. There is no real bite behind it. He looks too tired to sharpen himself all the way. Too raw to hide under the familiar shape of cruelty. His thumb moves once over my fingers, dragging across the same place again and again until my skin tingles.

I let the silence settle. Then I begin to sit up. It happens fast. Too fast. Before I have even pulled my hand from his, Kyung-jun is upright.

The blanket twists around his waist, his hand clamping around my wrist, not enough to hurt but hard enough to stop me cold. His eyes are wide in the dim room.

Scared. It flashes across him nakedly before he can kill it.

“Where are you going?”

The words are quiet, but there is something terrible under them. A crack. A drop. A boy standing on the edge of losing the room, the bed, the girl beside him, the proof that this has not been another cruel loop designed to let him breathe before choking him again.

I freeze. My heart squeezes so hard my own fear forgets what it was doing.

“I’m not leaving.” His grip does not loosen. I say it again, softer. “I’m not leaving, Kyung-jun.”

His eyes flick over my face, then to the door, then back. His breathing has changed. He is trying to make it quiet, trying to force it down before I can hear how uneven it is, but I can hear it. I can feel it through his hand on my wrist. Each breath comes like it has to push past something lodged in his chest.

“Then where?”

“I want to take a bath.”

He stares.

I wet my lips. “I thought it might help. My nerves feel…” I stop, because the lie is not fully a lie, and that makes it harder to say. My nerves are ruined. My body feels wrung out, hollowed by shock and crying and the impossible weight of having him beside me again. But that is not why I am getting up. “The warm water might help.”

His gaze stays on mine. The room holds still. He knows.

Maybe not exactly. Maybe not the whole small, careful plan forming in my head — the salts under the sink, the big tub I used to love because it made my apartment feel softer than it was, the heat loosening his muscles, the steam making the room warm enough that sleep might creep up on him without feeling like a trap. But he knows there is something gentle in it, and gentleness is the thing that scares him most right now.

His throat moves.

“I’ll come with you.” He says it like he expects me to argue. I don’t. I nod.

Something in his face loosens so slightly I would have missed it if I had not spent two years keeping every piece of him alive in my memory. His fingers slide from my wrist to my hand. He does not apologize this time. Does not pretend he was not afraid. He just holds on and gets out of bed when I do, moving too carefully for someone his size, like the floor might shift if he trusts it too much.

My bedroom feels colder once we leave the blanket behind.

The apartment is dark except for the lamp near the couch and the faint blue wash of city light through the windows. We walk barefoot through the hallway. His hand stays locked around mine. Not romantic in the simple way it used to be when we would walk home after school and he would pretend he was holding my hand only because I was “slow” and “needed supervision.” This is different. His palm is damp. His fingers are cold. Every step he takes beside me feels measured against the possibility of waking somewhere else.

At the bathroom door, he stops. Just for a second. I glance back.

He is looking into the little room with a wariness that makes my chest ache. My bathroom is not frightening. It has never been frightening. It is small but pretty, tiled in soft cream, with a narrow window above the tub and a shelf crowded with bottles I always mean to organize. There is a separate bathtub tucked against the far wall, wide and deep, curved like something made for quiet. I bought eucalyptus salts once because the packaging looked calming and expensive, even though I knew I would probably only use them twice. A little wooden stool sits beside the tub with folded towels stacked on top. A candle I have never lit sits near the sink, dusty around the rim.

It is ordinary. Sweet, even. Kyung-jun looks at it like ordinary things cannot be trusted. I squeeze his hand. He looks down at me. Just those eyes, dark and sleepless, asking something he would rather die than put into words.

“You can keep the door open,” I say. He swallows. Then he shakes his head once.

“No.” The word is barely there. Not because he wants privacy. Because closing the door means choosing to believe nothing waits outside it. Because maybe he is tired of being afraid of doors. I nod and step inside first. He follows.

The bathroom light is too bright when I turn it on, and he flinches before he can stop himself. His jaw tightens immediately, anger rising instinctively to cover the crack, but it dies before reaching his mouth. He lowers his eyes and exhales through his nose, slow and hard.

I don’t say anything. I turn on the bath instead.

The pipes groan, then water spills into the tub, loud at first, rushing and silver under the light. Steam begins to lift almost immediately, softening the mirror, blurring the sharp edges of us. I kneel beside the tub and test the temperature with my fingers, letting the heat bite gently at my skin. Too hot. I adjust the tap. The sound fills the room until there is no need to talk, and maybe that is mercy. Maybe that is why I chose this. Water can cover silence without demanding it be explained.

Kyung-jun stands behind me.

I can feel him there.

Not touching now, but close enough that his shadow falls over my shoulder. When I reach under the sink for the salts, he shifts as if the movement startles him, then stills again. I pour a handful into the water. The crystals disappear in small white swirls, dissolving into the heat, and the faint smell of lavender and something herbal rises with the steam.

I expect him to say something. Lavender? Seriously? Are we old ladies now? Or, What is this rich-person bath nonsense? Or, You always buy useless stuff. He says nothing. That is worse. I turn. He is staring at me.

The bathroom light catches the hollows under his eyes. The steam beads faintly at his hairline. He looks too tall for the room, shoulders nearly filling the space between sink and wall, hands hanging at his sides like he does not know what to do with them if they are not holding onto me. His face has gone unreadable, but not in the old way. Not bored. Not cruel.

Bare. There is no audience here. No classmates to impress. No hallway to dominate. No game to survive by being louder than fear. Just him. Just me. Just the water filling the tub between us like something waiting to be crossed. I stand slowly.

The tile is cool beneath my feet. My oversized sleep shirt clings faintly where my palms are damp from the bathwater. For a moment, neither of us moves. The water keeps running. Steam curls upward. The mirror clouds at the edges until our reflections begin to fade, two blurred figures in a small warm room at the hour when nightmares usually have teeth.

I take one step toward him. His eyes lower to my mouth. Then back to my eyes. I lift my hand and touch his cheek. He closes his eyes.

The reaction is so immediate, so helpless, that I feel it down to my bones. He leans into my palm before pride can stop him. Enough for my thumb to feel the slight tremor in his jaw. Enough for the air to leave him like he has been standing in armor too heavy to breathe inside.

I kiss him.

Softly at first.

Because he feels like something cracked that might cut both of us if I move too quickly. His lips are still beneath mine for half a second, frozen in surprise or restraint or the exhaustion of wanting too much. Then he melts.

There is no other word for it.

His shoulders drop. His hands come to my waist, not grabbing, not claiming, just landing there like he has finally found somewhere to put all the shaking. His mouth opens against mine with a sound so quiet it disappears into the rush of bathwater. He kisses me back slowly, deeply, like speed would make it less real. Like if he rushes, the moment might tear. Like he has imagined this in so many versions of hell that now the real thing has to be handled with both hands.

My fingers slide into his hair.

He shudders.

The sound he makes then is almost nothing. A breath caught too low in his chest. It goes through me anyway, warm and painful, and my eyes sting behind closed lids because this is the boy I mourned and the boy who came back and the stranger made out of everything that happened while I was not there to hold him.

When I pull back, his eyes stay closed. His forehead rests against mine.

“Don’t stop,” he whispers. It is not seductive. It is ruined. I kiss him again because I cannot answer without breaking.

This time his hands tighten, but still not with the old carelessness. He holds me like someone trying to remember gentleness from another life. His thumbs press into my sides through my shirt. His breath shakes into my mouth. I feel him keeping himself still, feel the strain of it in every line of his body. Want and grief and terror have tangled so tightly inside him that none of them know their own names anymore.

I draw back just enough to touch the hem of his shirt. He opens his eyes. For a second, I see the question there. Not refusal. Not embarrassment. Permission. I give him time to pull away. He doesn’t. So I lift the shirt slowly.

The fabric rises over his stomach, his ribs, his chest. I keep my eyes on his face because this feels too tender to watch like discovery, too sacred to turn into anything else. His arms lift when I need them to. His breath catches when the shirt passes over his head. His hair falls messily back into his eyes after, and for one fleeting, devastating second, he looks like the boy from before, annoyed and beautiful and too proud to admit he likes being touched.

Then I see the marks.

Not all of them. Not clearly. The bathroom is warm and bright and full of steam, but my mind refuses to take him apart like evidence. Still, there are things I cannot miss. Faint bruising near one shoulder. A thin healing line along his side. Small round medical marks near the inside of his elbow. The sharpness of his collarbones where they never used to be so sharp. The places where his body has been maintained, restrained, neglected, returned.

My hands still. His gaze drops to them. Then to my face. A muscle jumps in his jaw.

“It’s ugly,” he says. Quiet. Flat. Like he has already decided what I am allowed to think. I step closer and press my mouth to the center of his chest. His entire body locks. Under my lips, his heart slams once, hard.

I stay there for a moment, my hands resting carefully against his sides, feeling the heat of him, the breath he is holding, the life beneath skin that was supposed to be gone. When I lift my face, his eyes are shining again, but his mouth is twisted with something angry and helpless.

“Don’t do that,” he says.

“What?”

He looks away.

“Make it worse.”

I touch his jaw and bring him back to me.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

“How?”

His throat works.

“You make me want to live,” he says, and looks furious the second the words leave him. The bathroom seems to go silent beneath the water. I stare at him. He stares back like he wants to fight me for hearing it.

Then his face crumples at the edges, not enough for anyone else maybe, but enough for me. Enough that the boy who once called love embarrassing stands half-undressed in my bathroom at four in the morning and cannot hide the fact that survival has left him more frightened than death did.

I reach for his hands. He lets me.

“You are alive,” I say.

His fingers curl around mine.

“For now.”

The words are barely audible. Cold slides through me.

I want to argue. I want to say no, no, don’t say that, don’t put it in the room. But I understand too well what he means. Not that he wants to die. That he does not trust life to hold. That every time something good appears, he expects the lights to change, the announcement to play, the game to start again.

So I do not correct him. I lift his hand and press his knuckles to my mouth. His eyes shut.

“You’re here now,” I whisper. He breathes out unsteadily. “For now,” I add, because maybe that is the only truth his body can accept. His eyes open. Something in them softens, breaks, stays. I let go only long enough to take off my shirt.

His gaze follows the movement, but it does not feel like being looked at in the way I remember from before, when he would stare too long just to make me blush and then grin like he had won something. This is not that. This is quieter. Reverent in a way he would hate if I named it. His eyes move over me and stop, not hungry or careless, but stunned by proximity. By trust. By skin and breath and the fact that I am standing in front of him, not a memory he had to fight to keep, not a face blurring at the edges of some nightmare loop.

Just me. Real enough to be cold in the steam. I reach behind myself to unclasp my bra. His hand moves before he thinks, then stops halfway. Waiting again. That almost undoes me.

I finish it myself, letting the straps slide down my arms. The air touches me, warm and damp. I do not cover myself. Because he looks as if any sign of shame would kill something fragile in him. Because this is not about being seen beautifully. It is about being seen safely. It is about telling him with my body what words keep failing to prove.

I am here. I trust you. You can be here too.

His eyes lift to mine. There is no smirk. No comment. No old, sharp joke to ruin the softness before it can touch him. He only whispers my name. And it sounds like something he said in the dark to keep from disappearing.

I turn off the water. The sudden quiet is enormous.

Steam drifts around us, softening the room until the edges blur. We undress the rest of the way without speaking, speech feels too rough for what is happening. Clothing falls in small, ordinary sounds. Fabric against tile. A soft scrape. The whisper of a drawer opening when I take out two towels and set them within reach. We do not look away like strangers. We do not stare like lovers about to become reckless. We simply make space for each other’s vulnerability and try not to crush it with our hands.

When I step into the tub, the heat takes me by surprise.

It closes around my ankles, my calves, then my thighs as I sink down carefully. My body, wound tight for hours, resists it at first. Then the warmth reaches my hips, my stomach, my ribs, and something inside me loosens so suddenly that my eyes fill again. I turn my face away before Kyung-jun can see.

Too late. He sees everything now. He steps in after me.

For someone so tall, he moves slowly, lowering himself into the water behind me with a careful breath. The tub is big enough, but still, he fills it. His knees bracket mine. His body settles against the curved porcelain, and for a moment he holds himself away from me, as if the last inch matters. As if even now he thinks restraint is proof of goodness. Or control. Or survival.

The water shifts around us. Warmth rises. My back is almost touching his chest. Almost. Neither of us breathes properly. Then his hands come to my waist. He pulls me back.

My body slides through the water until I am flush against him, back to his chest, his legs around me, his arms folding over my stomach like gates closing. Heat surrounds me from every side: the bathwater, the steam, his skin, the trembling breath he releases against my shoulder. His chin lowers to the curve where my neck meets my shoulder. For a second, he just holds me there. Not kissing. Not talking. Holding.

His body shakes once. Then again. I cover his forearm with both hands. The water rocks gently against the sides of the tub.

“You’re warm,” he murmurs.

The words are so small I almost miss them.

I close my eyes.

“So are you.”

His arms tighten.

“No,” he says, voice rough. “I mean… you’re warm.”

Like that is proof too.

Like in the game everything had become cold eventually. Floors. Skin. Fear. Dead hands. Reset mornings with fake sunlight and no real warmth. Like the mind can be trapped somewhere so long it forgets the simple fact of another living body.

He presses his nose into my hair and inhales.

Not in that teasing way he used to do when he would complain about my shampoo and then bury his face in my neck anyway. This is different. He breathes me in like a person starved of air. Like scent is memory made physical. Like the lavender in the bath and the soap on my skin and the faint trace of rain still clinging to my hair are all anchors he can tie himself to before the world starts drifting again.

“I forgot your shampoo once,” he says.

My fingers still against his arm. His mouth is near my ear, but his eyes are not on me. I can feel it. He is staring at the water, or through it, or at something that is not in the room.

“In there,” he continues. “I remembered your face. Your voice. The way you used to look at me like you were deciding if prison was worth it. I would look at the pictures I had of you in my phone, rewatch the videos over and over until I thought I'd be sick of your voice or laugh, but I never did,”

A breath that is almost a laugh leaves me. His mouth brushes my temple, not quite a kiss.

“But the shampoo—” He stops. His throat moves against my shoulder. “I couldn’t remember it. It was such a stupid thing. I knew it was sweet. I knew I used to say it gave me a headache. I knew I liked it. But I couldn’t remember exactly.”

My chest hurts so sharply I press his arm harder against me.

“I thought that meant you were going,” he says.

The water feels suddenly too hot.

“Like pieces of you were getting taken. First that. Then maybe the way you looked at me. Or the way you felt against me. Then one day I’d wake up and know I was waiting for someone, but not who.” His voice thins. He swallows and presses his mouth to the side of my head, hard, as if stopping himself from saying more might physically hurt less. “I got scared.”

Kyung-jun saying scared is worse than crying. It is the bravest thing I have ever heard him do. I turn in his arms.

The movement makes water spill against the sides of the tub, a soft slap against porcelain. His hands loosen just enough to let me shift, then tighten again the moment I am facing him. I settle between his legs, knees tucked around him, water lapping at my ribs. His face is close now. Too close for hiding. Steam clings to his lashes. His hair curls slightly damp at the ends. His eyes are red-rimmed, furious with himself and still unable to stop.

I touch his cheek.

“You remembered enough.”

His jaw tightens.

“You don’t get it.”

“Then tell me.”

He looks away. I wait.

The old Kyung-jun hated waiting. He would fill silence by force, slash it open with mockery, make someone else uncomfortable before discomfort could settle on him. This Kyung-jun sits in the water with me at four in the morning and lets silence gather because there are no jokes strong enough to carry what he has brought back.

When he speaks, his voice is lower.

“At night, it was worse.”

My thumb stills against his cheek. He looks past me, toward the tiled wall.

“The game had rules. Times. Votes. Executions. People screaming at each other like screaming made them less likely to die.” His mouth twists. “Everyone got ugly. Me too. Maybe I was already ugly, so it wasn’t a big change.”

“Don’t.”

His eyes flick to mine. I do not look away. His expression shifts — irritation, old and familiar, rising for half a heartbeat — then it fades because he is too tired to pretend he does not understand why I stopped him.

He exhales.

“At night, you’d sit in a locked room with someone, not knowing if they'd kill you while you were passed out. We didn't even sleep, we just dropped the second the clock turned 12. Sometimes, before it was midnight and everyone had hid I would hear crying through the wall. Or someone praying which was stupid cause God had clearly not been there to save us...” His gaze drops to the water. “Sometimes you woke up and someone right next to you was dead.”

My throat closes. The water ripples between us.

He drags his wet hand up my back, not sensual, not searching. Grounding. His palm settles between my shoulder blades. His fingers spread there.

“One time,” he says, and the words come slower now, like each one has to be pulled through something thick, “I knew I was going to die. It was already happening, and all I could think was that I hadn’t said it to you.”

The room blurs. His eyes return to mine.

“I love you.”

The words land without performance. No smirk. No defensive bite. No embarrassment twisted into cruelty. Just truth, raw and plain and almost violent in its openness.

“I love you,” he says again, as if the first one might not count if he does not carve it deeper. “I loved you before. I loved you when I was acting like a piece of shit. I loved you when I picked fights over stupid things because I liked when you looked at me. I loved you when I said you were annoying. I loved you when you cried at that movie and I pretended I wasn’t watching you instead of the screen. I loved you when I didn’t say it because I thought saying it made me look weak.”

His mouth tightens.

“I was so fucking stupid.”

I shake my head, tears slipping silently now, warm down my face despite the steam. He wipes one away with his thumb. His hand is wet, so it does nothing except smear more warmth across my skin.

“I regret that,” he says. “More than dying. I swear to God. Every time I thought it was over, that was the thing. Not the pain. Not them. Not even being scared. It was you, standing somewhere outside all of it, not knowing. Maybe thinking I didn’t love you enough. Maybe thinking I was gone with all those stupid words still stuck in my fucking mouth.”

A sound breaks in my chest. He leans forward and kisses my cheek where the tear fell. Then the other. Then my forehead.

Each kiss is slow. Careful. Heavy with something that makes my hands tremble against his shoulders. He is not trying to lead us anywhere. Not trying to turn the moment into heat because heat would be easier than grief. He is kissing me like apology can be physical. Like love, if repeated enough against skin, might erase the silence he left behind.

“You don’t have to regret it,” I whisper. He stills. “You’re here now.” His eyes close. My fingers curl at the back of his neck. “You’re here,” I say again, because he needs it more than he needs air. “And I know. I knew then too.”

His eyes open. I swallow around the ache in my throat.

“I knew you loved me.” His face changes. It twists, almost in pain. I hurry before he can look away. “Not because you said it. You didn’t. Obviously.”

A broken little breath leaves him.

“But you’d walk on the outside of the sidewalk and pretend it was because I was too dumb to avoid cars. You brought me medicine when I had a fever and left it at my door. You remembered what convenience store drink I liked but made fun of it every time you bought it. You fixed my collar. You called me annoying when I cried but stayed until I stopped.”

His eyes are full now. He looks furious at them.

“So yeah,” I whisper. “I knew.”

For a moment, his face is so open I almost cannot look at him. Then he pulls me into him.

Water surges around us, spilling over the edge in a small wave that neither of us cares about. His arms lock around me, one hand cradling the back of my head, the other spread over my spine, pressing me against him until there is no space left for grief to sit between us. My face fits into the crook of his neck. His skin is hot from the bath, damp beneath my cheek. His heartbeat hammers against my chest.

“I’m going to say it all the time now,” he mutters into my hair.

I close my eyes.

“Okay.”

“You’ll get sick of it.”

“I won’t.”

“You will. You’re like that.”

“I’m really not.”

“You are.” His voice shakes. “And I don’t care. I’ll say it anyway.”

His mouth finds my shoulder. A kiss. Then another, higher, against the curve of my neck.

He kisses like someone counting places he thought he would never touch again. Shoulder. Neck. Jaw. Temple. The corner of my eye. My forehead. He kisses the tears before they can cool. He kisses my hairline and breathes there, raggedly, like he has found shelter beneath my skin.

“I love you,” he says against my temple. My hands slide up his back. “I love you,” he says again, lower. The words tremble through him. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I begin crying harder, silently at first, then not silently. My shoulders shake. He holds me tighter immediately, one hand cupping the back of my head, fingers threading through wet hair. He does not tell me to stop this time. Does not say I look ugly. Does not panic at the sight of it. He just presses his mouth to my forehead and takes every sound like punishment he has decided he deserves.

I pull back enough to look at him.

“You don’t have to earn staying,” I say. His brows draw together. “You don’t have to say enough perfect things to make up for being gone.”

“I wasn’t gone by choice.”

“I know.”

His eyes flash.

“No,” he says. “You don’t.”

The words hit harder because they are not cruel. Only true. His hand slides from my hair to my cheek, holding me still, not forcefully but with a desperate focus that makes my breath catch.

“I tried to get out,” he says. “I tried so many times. I wasn’t just sitting there thinking about you like some sad drama lead.”

A tiny laugh breaks through my tears. His mouth curves for half a second, then disappears.

“I fought. I lied. I threatened people. I did stupid things. I did smart things too, sometimes.” His expression darkens. “I hurt people. Sometimes because I had to. Sometimes because I was scared and angry and didn’t know what else to do. And then it would reset, and they would look at me like nothing happened, and I’d forget what I’d done, or what they’d done, and everyone just kept… starting again.”

His breathing roughens. My hands tighten on his shoulders.

“Do you know how crazy that makes you?” he whispers. “Looking at someone eating breakfast after you watched them die? Hearing someone laugh after they begged? Wondering if this time they’ll kill you first, or if you’ll do it to them because you remember something they haven’t remembered yet?”

My stomach turns. He looks down.

“I wasn’t good in there.”

The confession falls between us quietly. The bathwater laps against my back.

I think of the boy he was before. Cruel, yes. Sharp-tongued. Violent. A bully when he wanted power and attention. Someone who laughed at fear because fear in other people made him feel larger. I think of what a place like that would do to him. A game built out of suspicion and death. A world where being mean might feel like armor. Where guilt would reset but memory would not always be merciful enough to vanish completely.

I touch his face again. He flinches at the tenderness, barely.

“You’re here with me now,” I say.

His eyes close like the words hurt.

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” I whisper. “It’s not.”

His lashes lift.

“I don’t know what happened in there yet. I don’t know what you did. I don’t know what was done to you.” My voice shakes, but I keep going because he deserves truth more than comfort dressed as lies. “But I know you came back carrying it. And I know you’re telling me instead of pretending nothing happened. That has to mean something.”

He stares at me for a long time. Then his face crumples.

He fights it. His mouth presses tight. His chin trembles once. His eyes shine and his brows pull together like anger can still hold the pieces in place if he just hates himself hard enough.

“I don’t want to be like before,” he says. My heart gives one hard, painful beat. His hand drops to the water, fingers flexing beneath the surface. “I don’t mean—” He stops, frustrated, searching for words he has never had practice using. “I’m still me. I’m not going to come back all nice and polite and bowing to every bastard who looks at me wrong.”

Despite everything, my mouth trembles toward a smile. His eyes catch it. A faint spark answers, then dims.

“But with you,” he says. “I don’t want to waste time being a coward.”

“You were never a coward.”

He gives me a look.

Even traumatized, exhausted, naked in a lavender bath at four in the morning, Go Kyung-jun can still make disbelief look insulting.

“I was,” he says. “With you, I was. I acted like wanting you didn’t scare the hell out of me. I acted like if I made you mad first, you couldn’t see how bad I had it. I picked fights because if we were fighting, at least you were looking at me.”

“You were terrible at romance.”

“I know.”

“You once threw a snack at my head because I said another boy was cute.”

His eyes narrow faintly. “He was ugly.”

“He was a kid.”

“He breathed through his mouth.”

I almost laugh again.

This time, he watches it happen with something like wonder and grief mixed together, like my almost-laughter is a thing he wants to put somewhere safe.

Then the softness returns to his face, solemn and stripped bare.

“I don’t want to do that anymore,” he says. “Not the stupid parts.”

“You’ll still fight with me.”

“Obviously.”

“Obviously,” I echo, and the corner of his mouth moves.

“But not like before.” His thumb traces the wet curve of my shoulder, absent and careful. “Not leaving things unsaid because saying them feels embarrassing. Not acting like I don’t care when I do. Not making you guess if I love you.”

My throat tightens. He leans forward, pressing his forehead to mine.

“I love you,” he whispers again.

I close my eyes.

The words are beginning to change the room. It doesn't erase the two years of death and impossible loops and police files and empty funerals. But it changes something. Making the bathroom warmer than the water. Making the dark outside the window less endless. Each time he says it, the silence that lived between then and now loses one small inch of power.

“I love you too,” I whisper. His breath catches. As if he did not know. As if the whole night has not been built from it.

His hand comes up to my neck, palm warm and wet, fingers curving carefully beneath my jaw. He kisses me slowly. So slowly the kiss becomes less a kiss than a place to rest. His mouth moves against mine with a tenderness that feels learned in pain. There is no hunger pushing it forward, no urgency except the urgency of staying. I can taste salt on him. Tears, maybe mine, maybe his, maybe both of ours until it no longer matters.

When he pulls back, he does not go far. His nose brushes mine.

“You really kept that ugly picture?” I let out a tiny, watery laugh. The old shape of him flickers there, fragile and familiar.

“Yes.”

“Should’ve picked a better one.”

“You wouldn’t let me take better ones.”

“Because you take pictures like someone’s grandmother.”

“Your grandmother liked that picture.” His mouth softens at the mention of her. For a moment, he looks down at the water.

“She cried a lot?”

The question is almost too quiet. I nod. His jaw tightens.

“I was all she had,” he says.

I touch his arm.

“She still has you.”

His eyes close.

“Yeah.”

But it does not sound like relief yet. It sounds like a debt. Like another person he came back to wounded by his absence. Like living has given him everyone’s grief to hold in his hands.

“She never gave up,” I tell him.

He opens his eyes.

“Neither did you,” he says. I look away before I can stop myself. His hand catches my chin, gently but firmly, turning me back. “Don’t.” I blink. “Don’t act like it was nothing.”

The words settle heavily. I try to swallow, but the ache will not move.

“You had the worse part,” I whisper.

His eyes harden.

“No.”

“Kyung-jun—”

“No.” This time there is anger in it, but not at me. At the unfairness. At the years. At the idea that pain must be ranked before it is allowed to matter. “You buried me.”

I stop breathing.

His face changes as he says it, like the words have shown him a picture he cannot bear.

“You stood there,” he says slowly. “At some funeral with my picture. People saying I was dead. You had to—” His voice breaks, and he looks away, but his hand stays on me. “Don’t tell me that was nothing.”

The bathroom blurs.

I remember the white flowers. The black ribbon. His school photo. His grandmother’s hand crushing mine. The way my knees vanished beneath me. The ugly sound I made in front of everyone. The shame of crying for someone who should have been there to mock me for it.

“I hated you a little,” I admit. His eyes snap back to mine. I wipe my cheek with the heel of my hand, but it is useless. Everything is wet in here. My face, my hands, the air itself. “Not really,” I say quickly. “Not in a way that made sense. I just… you were gone. And I didn’t know where to put it. Everyone kept looking at me like I was sad, and I was, but I was angry too. Because you left me with all this love and nowhere to put it. I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t yell at you. I couldn’t tell you I missed you. I couldn’t even be mad at you properly because everyone thought you were dead, and you’re not supposed to be mad at dead people.”

Kyung-jun stares at me. The water cools around us by degrees, but neither of us moves.

“I was mad that you weren’t there to be awful about your own funeral,” I whisper.

His mouth trembles.

“I would’ve been awful.”

“I know.”

“I would’ve said the flowers were tacky.”

“They were.”

“And that everyone looked like shit.”

“They did.”

His eyes shine.

“And I would’ve told you to stop crying.”

I nod, tears slipping again. “Yeah.”

He leans forward and kisses them.

“I wouldn’t now,” he whispers against my cheek. My breath catches. He kisses the other cheek. “I wouldn’t.” His mouth rests at my temple. “I’d let you cry,” he says, voice raw. “I’d probably be useless, probably say something stupid. But I’d stay.”

I close my eyes and fold into him.

He holds me like he is trying to prove it retroactively. Like he can somehow go back to that funeral and stand beside me, alive and warm and scowling, and undo the black ribbon on his own picture. Like if he keeps his arms tight enough now, he can reach every version of me who slept in his hoodie and woke with his name already hurting in her mouth.

The bathwater is no longer as hot.

Steam fades slowly from the mirror, revealing us in blurred fragments. His shoulder. My hair. His arm around my back. The curve of the tub. Two faces too close together to see clearly.

Kyung-jun notices the change before I do.

“You’re getting cold.”

“I’m okay.”

He gives me a look that is pure, exhausted disdain.

“You’re shaking.”

“So are you.”

His mouth tightens. Neither of us moves.

Then, after a moment, he says, “Can we stay a little longer?”

I nod immediately. His relief is quiet but visible. A small loosening around his eyes. A deeper breath against my hair.

We shift again so I am back against his chest, his arms around me beneath the cooling water. I turn the hot tap on with my foot, just enough to warm the bath again, and he huffs softly behind me.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re weirdly skilled at that.”

“I’ve had years of practice surviving without you.” The words slip out before I can soften them. His arms tighten. I feel his mouth press against the back of my head.

“Don’t,” he murmurs.

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” His voice is low. “Say things like that. I need to hear it.”

I stare at the water. It shimmers under the bathroom light, broken by our breathing.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I whisper.

“You think not hearing it makes it better?” I say nothing. His chin settles on my shoulder. “I need to know what I missed,” he says. “Even if it makes me feel like shit. I need to know you were here. That you kept going. That you hated me a little.” His breath trembles. “That you loved me anyway.”

My fingers trace the back of his hand under the water.

“I loved you the whole time.” His chest rises sharply against my back. “I hated that too sometimes,” I admit. “It felt pathetic. Like everyone else knew how to move forward and I was still standing in your room waiting for you to come home.”

His lips touch my shoulder.

“Not pathetic.”

“You would’ve called it pathetic before.”

His silence lasts long enough to answer.

Then he says, “Yeah.”

I close my eyes.

“I was an idiot.”

“You were seventeen.”

“I was an idiot at seventeen.”

“Still are a little.”

His mouth brushes my skin, and this time I feel the faintest smile there.

“Careful.”

The word has no threat in it. Only memory. Only the softest ghost of who he was before the world took him apart. The quiet stretches.

For the first time all night, his breathing begins to slow. Not sleep. Not yet. But the rhythm changes. His chest against my back rises and falls less violently. His hand stills over my stomach, fingers splayed, thumb resting near my ribs. The heat, the salts, the water, the dark hour turning slowly toward dawn — all of it begins to gather around him. Not forcing rest. Inviting it.

His head lowers until his forehead rests against my shoulder.

“I don’t want to wake up there,” he says.

The sentence is so soft I almost think I imagined it. My eyes open.

The bathroom is dimmer now, or maybe my eyes have adjusted. The light above us hums faintly. Outside the little window, the sky has begun to turn the color of watered ink.

“You won’t,” I say.

His hand tightens.

“You don’t know that.”

“No,” I whisper. “I don’t.” He goes still. I turn my head enough that my cheek brushes his hair. “But if you wake up scared, I’ll be here.” His breath shakes against my shoulder. “And if you wake up and you don’t know where you are, I’ll tell you.”

His fingers curl against my skin.

“And if you wake up and think it was a dream, I’ll be really annoying until you believe me.”

A faint, broken sound leaves him. Almost a laugh. Almost a sob.

“Promise?”

I turn in his arms again.

The water moves around us, warmer now, softer. I cup his face in both hands. His eyes are heavy but terrified beneath it, exhaustion dragging at him while fear claws him awake. He looks at me like a boy at the edge of a dark room, refusing to step in unless someone promises to hold the door open.

“I promise,” I say.

His eyes search mine.

“Say my name,” he whispers.

“Kyung-jun.”

His face tightens.

Again, his eyes say.

“Kyung-jun.”

His hands come up over mine, pressing them harder to his cheeks.

“Again.”

“Kyung-jun.” His eyes close. The breath that leaves him is not relief exactly. But it is close.

I lean forward and kiss his forehead. Then the bridge of his nose. Then his mouth, gently enough that he does not have to kiss back if he is too tired.

He kisses back anyway. Because he is Kyung-jun. Because even broken, he reaches. Because need has always been the most honest thing about him, even when he used to dress it up as arrogance. When I pull away, his eyes stay closed.

“I love you,” he murmurs.

“I love you too.”

His mouth moves faintly. “Good.”

I almost smile.

“Bossy even half-dead.”

His eyes open a sliver.

“Not half-dead.”

“No?”

“No.” His hand slides to the back of my neck, heavy and warm. “I came back.”

My throat tightens.

“Yes,” I whisper. “You did.”

He looks at me for a long moment, and something in his gaze settles. Enough that when I shift back against him, he lets his head fall to my shoulder again. His arms close around me beneath the water. The world narrows to heat and breath and the slow pale line of dawn growing behind frosted glass.

He does not sleep yet. But he rests. And for Kyung-jun, for this hour, for this first night after the dead gave him back, that is enough. His lips move against my shoulder one last time.

“If I start acting like an asshole again,” he murmurs, voice thick and fading, “hit me.”

I turn my face toward his hair.

“I already do.”

A faint breath touches my skin. This one is almost a laugh.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “Harder next time.”

Then he goes quiet.

Held against me in cooling bathwater, his heartbeat steadying slowly at my back, his fingers still tangled with mine beneath the surface like even rest has to be learned through touch. I stay awake with him as the night thins. I keep my hand over his. I keep breathing where he can feel it. And when the first gray light of morning slips into the bathroom, soft and uncertain and real, Kyung-jun is still there.

So am I.

[hye-jin91]

Easy Money

summary: reader is suho sister and she finds out wooyoung got paid to hurt him. She finds him, but he's different now, taller, bigger, and far more handsome then he was the day suho beat him when they were thirteen.

The first time I see the video, I don’t recognize him.

Not right away.

That is the worst part, I think—the delay. The small, unforgivable space between looking and knowing. The few seconds where he is only a body on a screen, all sharp movement and lazy cruelty under bad fluorescent light, a boy with broad shoulders and loose wrists and a mouth that looks like it was made to smile at the exact moment someone else realizes they’ve lost. He moves through the frame like he has grown used to being watched. Like the camera is not catching him doing something terrible, but worshipping him for it.

The video is a little grainy. Someone’s phone camera, probably. The kind held too low, shaking every time the person filming laughs or gasps or swears under their breath. The sound is ugly. Sneakers scuffing across concrete. Someone coughing. Someone saying, “Damn,” like it’s funny. Like the boy on the floor isn’t trying to breathe around a hand pressed hard to his ribs.

And then there is him.

Kong Wooyoung.

My thumb freezes over the screen before my brain has time to catch up.

He is taller than I remember.

That is the first stupid thought I have, and it hits me with such sudden force that shame follows right behind it, hot and mean and immediate. Taller. Bigger. Older in that way boys get when time decides to be cruel and generous at once, stretching them out, sharpening their faces, filling in the places that used to be all elbows and reckless confidence. His shoulders are broader now beneath a black sweatshirt, his arms heavier, his neck stronger. He has grown into himself with an ease that feels unfair, like even the years bowed down a little when they passed him. The boy I remember had been quick and loud and furious, all restless limbs and bruised pride, standing across from my brother in a competition hall with his jaw clenched and his eyes burning like he could set the mat on fire if he stared long enough.

This one smiles when he hits people.

Not a big smile. Not happy.

Worse.

It is small. Crooked. Almost bored.

The video catches him leaning back just enough for a fist to miss his face, his head tilting with a careless little sway, like the other boy is annoying him more than threatening him. Then his hand snaps out. Fast. Clean. Brutal. The sound of the impact crawls up my spine before I can stop it.

The boy drops.

Wooyoung looks down at him.

For one second, his expression changes—not into guilt, not even satisfaction. It goes blank in a way that makes my fingers tighten around my phone. Like the fight has already left him. Like the person at his feet stopped being interesting the second he stopped standing.

Then someone laughs off-camera, and Wooyoung looks toward them.

There it is again.

That smirk.

That stupid, cutting, sharp little smirk I remember from years ago, back when he still had baby fat in his cheeks and anger too big for his body, back when I sat in cold metal bleachers with my knees tucked up, pretending I was only there because Suho was competing, pretending I didn’t keep glancing across the gym every time Kong Wooyoung’s name was called.

My friend’s message sits under the link.

isn’t this the guy your brother fought years ago???

I don’t answer.

I watch another video.

Then another.

By the fourth one, my room has gone dark around me without my permission. The window reflects my face back at me in the glass, pale and half-lit by my phone, eyes fixed too hard on something I should’ve closed ten minutes ago. Outside, the city hums in the wet distance. Someone’s scooter whines past under the apartment building. Somewhere in the other room, Suho is asleep or pretending to be, because that is what my brother does when the world gets too loud—he shuts his eyes and makes his face go easy, like nothing can touch him if he refuses to react.

I used to hate that about him.

I used to envy it, too.

The next video starts automatically.

Wooyoung is laughing before the fight begins.

He rolls his shoulders like he has all the time in the world, bouncing once on the balls of his feet, loose and bright-eyed under a hanging light that swings slightly overhead. The place looks illegal in every possible way—basement walls stained with old water, concrete floor marked with shoe prints. Someone shouts something off screen.

Wooyoung hears it.

He looks over with that same sarcastic tilt to his mouth, says something I can’t fully catch, but I know the shape of it anyway. Something rude. Something funny enough to make the boys around him laugh, sharp enough to make the other fighter’s face tighten.

And there, in the dim yellow light, with his hair falling slightly over his forehead and one corner of his mouth lifted like nothing in the world has ever scared him, I remember being thirteen years old and watching him lose.

I remember the competition hall smelling like sweat, rubber mats, and vending-machine coffee. I remember Suho stretching beside me, calm as water, while I sat with his jacket folded in my lap and pretended not to look at the boy across the room.

Wooyoung had been impossible not to notice.

He was loud in a place where everyone else tried to look disciplined. He kept rolling his neck, cracking his knuckles, grinning at his friends like he was already bored. When his coach snapped at him, he only dragged his tongue along the inside of his cheek and looked away, smug and annoyed. I remember thinking he was irritating. I remember thinking he was pretty. I remember hating myself for both thoughts because Suho was standing right there and Wooyoung was the kind of boy my brother always beat without needing to make it personal.

And then Suho did beat him.

Badly.

Not cruelly. Suho was never cruel with it. That almost made it worse.

He had moved like he always did—easy, loose, untouchable. He let Wooyoung come at him, let him waste his anger, let him burn himself out against empty air and clean counters. I remember the sound of Wooyoung’s breath getting harsher. The bright red flush climbing up his neck. The way his eyes changed when he realized he couldn’t catch my brother, couldn’t scare him, couldn’t force the fight into becoming something messy enough for him to win.

When Suho landed the final kick, the whole gym seemed to exhale.

Wooyoung hit the mat.

For a second, he didn’t move.

I stood before I meant to.

No one noticed. Or maybe they did and forgot. But I remember it with the strange, humiliating clarity of a secret I never told anyone. My hand had tightened around Suho’s jacket. My heart had jumped—not because my brother won, because of course he won, but because Wooyoung was on the floor and I wanted him to get up.

Then he did.

Slowly.

Angrily.

He shoved off the mat, refusing help, refusing to look hurt, refusing everything except the fire in his own face. He spat blood into the corner of his mouth and looked at Suho like he hated him enough to live longer out of spite.

Then his eyes flicked past my brother.

To me.

Only once.

A glance, nothing more. Quick enough that I spent years convincing myself I invented it.

But I hadn’t.

Because I remember how it felt.

Like being caught with my hand too close to a flame.

Now, years later, I sit in the dark watching him break someone’s nose on video, and my throat feels tight in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with how time can take one small, stupid crush and bury it under homework, uniforms, winter mornings, family dinners, exams, and the ordinary ache of growing up—only to drag it back out years later with blood on its mouth.

I turn my phone off. The screen goes black. My reflection looks back at me. For a second, all I can see is the girl in the bleachers.

Then my phone vibrates again.

This time, it is not my friend.

It is someone from Suho’s school. A name I barely recognize, only saved because Suho once told me, lazily, “That’s Sieun. He studies too much,” and smiled in that quiet way he does when he likes someone but refuses to say it properly.

The message is short.

Too short.

Your brother might be in trouble.

My whole body goes cold before I open it.

The next messages come in uneven bursts. A location. My brother's birthday. An abandoned shopping mall. Sieun hurt. Beomseok’s name appearing in the middle of it all like a crack in glass. And then another name, typed with no idea what it will do to me.

Kong Wooyoung.

For a moment, the room disappears. It loosens at the edges. The walls blur. The shadows thicken. The phone in my hand becomes too heavy, too bright, too real. I read the message again, but the words do not change.

Paid to beat up Suho.

Paid.

As if my brother is an errand.

As if someone handed over money and pointed at him and said, hurt him, and someone else nodded.

My first breath comes shallow. The second comes worse.

Suho’s door is shut down the hallway.

Behind it, there is no sound.

My brother has always been too good at silence.

I stand.

The floor is cold under my feet. I don’t remember crossing the room. I don’t remember grabbing my jacket. I only remember the small metallic scrape of my keys in the dish by the door and the sudden, vicious brightness of the hallway light when I step outside.

The city at night feels like something holding its breath.

By the time I find the gym, morning has not quite arrived.

The sky is still bruised, caught between black and blue, with thin grey light gathering along the edges of buildings. The streets are damp from rain that must have fallen while I was on the bus. Everything smells like wet pavement, cigarette smoke, and old metal. The gym sits on a side street between a shuttered convenience store and a building with peeling signs in the windows, its entrance half-hidden down a narrow set of stairs. There is no clean sign. No polished front desk. Nothing that says people come here to become better versions of themselves.

This is not that kind of place.

This is where boys go when they want to turn pain into money.

I stand outside the door with my hand curled around the strap of my bag so tightly my knuckles ache. I can hear sound from inside—dull hits against a bag, sneakers dragging, someone laughing low. There is a rhythm to it, ugly and familiar. Impact. Breath. Impact. Breath. Like a heart learning violence instead of blood.

I tell myself to open the door.

I don’t.

For one unbearable second, I see Suho at thirteen, grinning with his mouthguard still in, hair damp with sweat, saying, “You worry too much,” like worry is a shirt I can take off if I get tired of wearing it.

Then I see him now.

Older. Taller. Still careless with himself. Still walking into danger because he thinks being strong means nothing can break him.

My hand moves.

The door opens with a groan.

Warm air hits me first, thick with sweat and old rubber and the sour, metallic smell of bodies pushed too hard. The lights buzz overhead. The room is bigger than it looks from outside, long and low-ceilinged, with heavy bags hanging like dark bodies from chains, a boxing ring shoved into the far corner, mats peeling slightly at the edges. A couple of boys turn when I come in. One of them has a towel around his neck and a bruise blooming under one eye. Another is sitting on a bench wrapping his hands, his gaze sliding over me with curiosity that makes my skin prickle.

I hate it. The way every room of boys has a temperature. The way you can feel it change when you enter.

I lift my chin anyway.

“Is Kong Wooyoung here?”

The boy on the bench smiles like he wants to be funny. “Depends who’s asking.”

I look at him.

I don’t know what my face does. Whatever it is, his smile falters just enough to make the other boy laugh under his breath.

Then a voice comes from the back.

“Who’s looking for me this early?”

The room shifts before I turn.

He is near the ring, one glove hanging loose from his hand, the other already off. His sweatshirt is gone. He wears a sleeveless black training top darkened slightly with sweat at the collar, and for one wild, stupid second, my brain gives me nothing useful. No speech. No anger. No plan.

Just him.

Kong Wooyoung, older and real and standing twenty feet away from me with sweat shining along his throat.

The videos did not do him justice.

That thought is so inconvenient I almost laugh.

He has filled out in a way the screen flattened. His shoulders are not just broader; they change the space around him. His arms are corded from training, veins faint beneath warm skin, hands rough from hitting things too often. His face is sharper now, the boyish softness burned away into angles. His hair is damp, pushed back messily from his forehead, but a few strands have fallen loose. His mouth is the same, though. That is what gets me. That mouth still looks like trouble found a body and decided to stay there.

He looks at me without recognizing me.

I feel it. The blank sweep of his eyes over my face, quick and assessing, used to girls coming in for reasons that probably have nothing to do with stopping a fight. Used to attention. Used to being wanted and feared and paid.

Then something catches.

His eyes narrow slightly.

The glove slips lower in his hand.

“No way,” he says.

It is quiet, but the boys nearby hear it.

Something flickers across his face, too fast to name. Not softness nor surprise, exactly. More like a memory putting its hand around his throat.

Then he smiles.

Slowly.

Meanly.

“Well, damn.” He tosses the glove onto the edge of the ring and starts walking toward me. “Ahn Suho’s little sister.”

I hate the way my stomach drops.

Not because he says it like an insult.

Because he remembers.

He stops a few feet away, close enough that I can smell sweat and faint soap and something sharper underneath, like cold air clinging to his skin from when he came in earlier. He looks down at me—not by much, but enough that it bothers me, because I remember when we were younger and he wasn’t this much bigger. Enough that my body notices before my pride can slap it.

His eyes move over my face again, slower this time.

I feel every inch of it.

It is not polite. It is not shy. It is not even disguised. He looks at me like he is matching the girl in front of him to one sitting years ago in metal bleachers with Suho’s jacket in her lap, and the corner of his mouth lifts like whatever he finds there amuses him.

“You grew up,” he says.

Something in my chest tightens.

“So did you.”

His smile sharpens. “Yeah? You noticed?”

There it is.

That same old irritation, sudden and bright, cutting through the tension like a match strike.

I should have expected it. I did expect it. Still, hearing him speak like that—casual, smug, like the world is a joke and he is the only one who knows the punchline—does something strange to the inside of my ribs. I remember him younger, blood at the corner of his mouth, glaring at Suho like defeat was something he could swallow and spit back out later.

He looks like he did spit it back out.

Over and over.

Until it became this.

I force my fingers to uncurl from my bag strap. “I need to talk to you.”

“You are talking to me.”

“Alone.”

One of the boys behind him makes a low sound, half-laugh, half-whistle. Wooyoung doesn’t look away from me.

For a second, his expression doesn’t change. Then his eyes flicker, just once, toward the others. “What, you guys need an invitation? Go stare at something else.”

The boy on the bench scoffs. “Hyung, seriously?”

Wooyoung turns his head slightly. He doesn’t say anything. The silence does the work for him.

The boys move, muttering, pretending they wanted to leave anyway. One disappears toward the locker area. Another goes back to the heavy bag, but even his punches get quieter. The room does not empty, not completely, but the space around us widens.

Wooyoung looks back at me.

“Alone enough for the princess?”

I almost flinch at the word. Not because it hurts. Because it is exactly the kind of thing he would say, and for some reason that makes it worse. Makes him too real. Too close to the boy I remember. Too far from him too.

I step closer.

His eyes drop briefly to my feet, then back to my face.

“I heard you were paid to go after my brother.”

The smile does not leave his mouth. But it thins. A small thing. Barely there. If I hadn’t been watching him so hard, I might have missed it.

“Straight to business,” he says. “No ‘long time no see’? No ‘how have you been, Wooyoung’? That’s cold.”

“How much?”

His head tilts. “How much what?”

“How much are they paying you?”

He lets out a short laugh through his nose, looking away like I have disappointed him. “Wow. You really are his sister.”

My jaw tightens. He sees it. Of course he sees it.

That is the thing about fighters. Real ones. They notice everything the body tries to hide. The swallowed breath. The clenched fingers. The half-step you do not take. The way your eyes betray you before your mouth can lie.

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“It means you both walk in like you already decided how the world should work.” He looks back at me, eyes bright with something old and ugly. “He did that too. Your brother. Always calm. Always looking at people like they’re making too much noise.”

My voice comes out quieter than I expect. “You’re still mad he beat you.”

His smile vanishes. It fades slowly, like light draining out of a room.

For the first time since I walked in, I see the shape of his anger without the joke over it. It is not explosive yet. Not loud. It sits behind his eyes, old and well-fed, a thing that has been kept alive for years because some boys would rather polish humiliation than bury it.

The gym feels too warm.

Wooyoung takes one step closer. I make myself stay still.

His gaze dips, catches the tiny movement of my throat when I swallow, and something sharp flickers across his face. Satisfaction, maybe. Or interest. With him, they look too similar.

“You came all the way here to tell me something I already know?” he asks.

“I came here to tell you to stop.” He blinks once. Then he laughs. It is not loud, but it is cruel enough to make my skin heat.

“To stop,” he repeats, like the words taste funny. “That’s cute.”

My nails press into my palms. “Don’t talk to me like I’m stupid.”

“Then don’t say stupid things.”

The words hit fast.

For a second, I forget the plan. Forget the careful speech I put together on the bus, staring at my reflection in the dark window while the city slid past in pieces. I forget that I came here because Suho might be in danger, because he beat Sieun so bad that he had to reach out to me, because money is moving between boys like blood under a door.

All I see is Wooyoung’s mouth.

That smirk trying to come back.

That same arrogance. That same heat. That same infuriating certainty that if he keeps standing close enough, keeps looking hard enough, keeps twisting the knife with a joke, everyone else will back down.

I lift my hand before I think. His eyes flick to it. Not scared.

Ready.

The realization makes something cold move through me.

He thought I might hit him. And some part of him wanted to see if I would.

My hand stops halfway between us. The gym noise fades around the edges.

His gaze slides from my raised hand to my face, and the air between us changes again. Slowly this time. He watches me lower it, watches the restraint happen in real time, and I can tell by the faint curve returning to his mouth that he likes it. Not because it is weakness. Because it isn’t.

Because he can see I wanted to.

Because I didn’t.

“You always look like that?” he asks softly.

My voice feels scraped thin. “Like what?”

“Like you’re trying really hard not to do something reckless.”

I hate him for saying it.

I hate him more because it is true.

Suho has always been the calm one. The easy one. The one who shrugs off blood and bruises and attention, the one who smiles like getting hurt is only inconvenient if someone makes a big deal out of it. People think that means he is careless, but they don’t understand. Suho carries danger lightly because he refuses to let it own him.

I carry it like a lit match cupped in both hands.

Careful.

Burning anyway.

“You don’t know anything about me,” I say. Wooyoung’s eyes move over my face again, slower than before, and this time his smile does not look amused.

“No,” he says. “But I remember you.”

My breath catches so slightly I pray he misses it. He doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t.

He leans a little closer, not enough to touch, just enough to make the space feel deliberate. “You were always there. Sitting behind him. Holding his stuff. Looking all worried like he was going to die in a kids’ competition.”

The memory opens under me so suddenly I almost lose my footing. Bleachers. Cold metal. Suho’s jacket in my lap. Wooyoung on the mat, getting up with blood in his mouth.

“I wasn’t worried.”

“You stood up when I hit the floor.”

The room goes very still.

He remembers.

The thought moves through me slowly, impossibly, like a hand dragging through water.

He remembers.

Not just Suho. Not just losing. Not just the humiliation he has apparently carried around like a blade tucked under his tongue. He remembers me. A girl in the bleachers. A stupid moment. One breath. One movement I spent years pretending had meant nothing.

My mouth goes dry. Wooyoung sees it, and the smirk returns, but it is different now. Less cruel. More dangerous.

“I thought that was funny,” he says. “His sister looking scared for me.”

“I wasn’t scared for you.”

“Liar.”

The word is soft.

It lands harder than if he shouted.

I look away first, and I hate that too. My eyes fall to his hands because looking at his face suddenly feels impossible. His knuckles are red. One is split slightly, a thin dark line where the skin has opened. There is tape wrapped carelessly around his wrist. I wonder if he did it himself. I wonder who used to do it for him when he was younger. I wonder why I am wondering anything at all when those hands might be used on my brother for money.

That pulls me back.

Hard.

I look up again.

“You hurt Sieun.”

Something changes.

Not guilt. I don’t think Wooyoung is built to offer guilt easily, at least not where anyone can see it. But the air cools. His eyes narrow a fraction, his posture settling back into something more guarded.

“He got in the way.”

“He’s smaller than you.”

His mouth twists. “A lot of people are smaller than me.”

“That’s not funny.”

“I wasn’t joking.”

I stare at him.

He stares back.

For a long second, neither of us moves, and the whole gym seems to breathe around us. Somewhere behind him, a bag chain creaks. Someone’s footsteps move in the locker area, then stop, like whoever it is can feel the tension and has decided they value their life too much to interrupt it.

I force myself to speak carefully.

“Whatever Beomseok is paying you, it isn’t worth it.”

Wooyoung’s expression sharpens at the name.

So I was right.

The knowledge settles sickly in my stomach. The thought of it makes my chest tighten with a colder kind of anger, one that does not flare but sinks. Suho had brought him home once. Quiet boy. Polite. Eyes too busy watching everything. I remember setting down drinks in front of them and thinking he looked like someone waiting for a door to slam.

Now he is paying people to make it happen.

Wooyoung clicks his tongue. “You’re really bad at negotiating.”

“I’m not negotiating.”

“Yeah, I can tell. Usually people offer something before telling me to walk away from easy money.”

The words hit me strangely.

Easy money.

There is something ugly and honest in how he says it. Not proud, exactly. Not ashamed either. Just plain. Like money is money, and pain is pain, and if the world is already going to make one out of the other, he might as well be the one holding the cash at the end.

For one moment, against my will, I see him outside the frame of his videos.

Not as the boy smiling over someone else’s blood.

As someone older than the kid Suho beat, but not old enough to have stopped being angry about it. Someone who found a way to make people cheer for the same violence that once humiliated him. Someone who turned losing into a business model because maybe being paid to hurt people feels better than hurting for free.

It does not excuse him.

I hate that I understand even a piece of it.

“How much?” I ask again.

His eyebrows lift slightly. “Why? You gonna pay me more?”

“If I have to.”

He laughs, but this time it comes out surprised. Then he looks at me properly. Really looks. The kind of look that makes every nerve under my skin stand at attention.

“You?” he says. “You’re gonna pay me?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

“With what? Allowance?”

My face burns.

His smile widens.

There is the cruelty again, bright and easy, and I see exactly how he uses it. A jab before anyone gets too close. A joke sharp enough to make the other person bleed first. He is good at it. Too good. He knows where to press without knowing why it hurts.

I step into his space before I can talk myself out of it.

This close, I have to tilt my head slightly to keep looking at him. It makes my pulse kick in irritation. It makes his eyes drop again, briefly, to my mouth, then back up. The movement is so fast that if I were kinder to myself, I would pretend I imagined it.

I don’t.

“I’m not here to be mocked by you,” I say, and my voice is low enough that the words feel private. “I’m here because you’re going after my brother. So tell me what you want.”

His face changes. Not softening. Never that. But his attention gathers tighter, like a fist closing.

“What I want?”

“Yes.”

He studies me.

For a second, the old Wooyoung disappears entirely. The jokes fall away. The smirk fades. What remains is worse: a boy with years of resentment sitting behind his eyes and something new catching fire underneath it. He looks at me like he has found a door he did not know was unlocked.

Then he says, “I want him to know what it feels like.”

My stomach twists.

“What?”

“Your brother.” His voice is even now. Too even. “I want him on the floor. I want him looking up at me. I want him to remember it.”

The words should make him sound childish. They don’t. They make him sound honest. That is so much worse.

I think of Suho in that competition hall, young, calm and untouchable. I think of Wooyoung hitting the mat. I think of all the years between then and now, all the ways boys teach themselves to survive humiliation by turning it into hunger.

My fingers curl.

“So that’s it?” I ask. “You’re still thirteen?”

His eyes flash.

There.

Finally.

The hit lands.

His hand moves before I realize he is going to move at all.

He doesn’t grab me. Not exactly. His fingers close around the strap of my bag near my shoulder, tugging just enough to stop me when I instinctively step back. The motion is small, controlled, but the suddenness of it sends heat racing down my spine.

The gym seems to tilt. His face is closer now. Too close. “Careful,” he says.

The word comes out almost playful. It is not. I look down at his hand on my strap. Then back at him.

“Let go.”

His eyes search mine. For one sharp second, I think he won’t. Then his fingers loosen one by one. The strap slips back against my shoulder. The place he touched feels louder than the rest of me.

Wooyoung’s jaw works once, like he is biting down on whatever he almost said. When he speaks again, the sarcasm has returned, but it is thinner. “You came into my gym, started talking about my money, my fights, and my feelings—”

“Your feelings?” I repeat before I can stop myself, a small scoff leaving my lips.

He smiles. “What, you don’t think I have any?”

“I think you pretend you don’t because it makes you feel less pathetic.”

Silence.

The whole sentence hangs between us, bright and terrible. For a heartbeat, I think I have gone too far. Then Wooyoung laughs. Not because it is funny. Because if he doesn’t laugh, he might do something else.

He turns away, running a hand over his mouth, shoulders shaking once with the sound. When he looks back at me, his eyes are bright in a way that makes my stomach drop.

“You always talk like this?” he asks.

“Only to people who deserve it.”

“Ah.” He nods, tongue pressing into his cheek. “So you missed me.”

The words are so ridiculous, so perfectly timed, that my anger stumbles. Just for a second. His gaze catches it.

“You did, didn’t you?” His smile turns wicked. “No wonder you watched the videos.”

I go still.

His eyes gleam.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “There it is.”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t what?” He leans closer again. “You didn’t watch them? You didn’t look me up? You didn’t come here already knowing I got taller?”

My face goes hot so fast I feel dizzy. It is infuriating because he isn’t entirely right, but he isn’t wrong enough.

And he knows it.

He knows it the way fighters know openings. He sees the breath I fail to take, the way my eyes flick away, the small betrayal of blood rising under my skin. His smile shifts into something slower, more fascinated than cruel now, and that is somehow worse. Cruelty I can push against. Interest gets under the skin.

“You’re disgusting,” I say.

“Maybe.” He lifts one shoulder. “But you still came.”

“For Suho.”

“Sure.”

“I came for my brother.”

“I said sure.” The calmness in his voice makes me want to hit him again. This time, he smiles like he can feel it before I move. “Go ahead,” he says.

My breath stops.

He tilts his head slightly, offering his cheek in a way that is almost lazy, almost mocking, almost intimate enough to make my heart trip over itself. “You look like you want to. Might make you feel better.”

“I’m not going to hit you.”

“No?” His eyes return to mine. “Why not?”

Because I am afraid I’ll like the sound of it.

The thought appears whole and unforgivable, and I hate myself so much for it that I nearly step back.

Nearly. Instead, I lift my chin.

“Because I’m not you.”

Something dark flickers across his face. Not anger this time. Something lower.

He looks at me for a long moment, and the air between us thickens until breathing feels like something I have to do carefully. The gym fades again. The buzzing lights. The dull thud of someone hitting a bag too far away. The damp morning light leaking weakly through a high, dirty window.

All of it pulls back.

There is only Wooyoung looking at me like he cannot decide whether he wants to laugh, fight, or ruin his own life a little.

“You really don’t remember, do you?” he says.

My brows draw together. “Remember what?” He looks almost offended. Then the expression vanishes behind a scoff.

“Forget it.”

“No. What?”

“I said forget it.”

“You brought it up.”

“And now I’m putting it down.”

“That’s not how conversations work.”

“With me, they do.”

I stare at him.

He stares back, mouth tilted, but there is something guarded now. Something he has tucked away too quickly. It bothers me more than it should. The idea that there is a memory he has and I don’t. That he has carried something from back then besides Suho’s victory. That I was in the room of his past in some way I never understood.

My voice softens before I can harden it.

“What don’t I remember?”

For the first time, Wooyoung looks away.

It is so quick most people would miss it. But I don’t. His gaze cuts toward the ring, toward the hanging bags, toward anything that is not my face. His jaw tightens once.

Then he laughs under his breath.

“Nothing,” he says. “Just funny.”

“What is?”

His eyes slide back to mine. “You coming here like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like you can save him.”

The softness in me dies.

Just like that.

It is almost peaceful, the way it goes. One second I am leaning toward a memory, and the next I am back in the cold center of why I came. Suho. Sieun. Blood on concrete. Money exchanged in shadows. Wooyoung standing between my brother and whatever ugly thing Beomseok has set in motion.

I step back.

This time, Wooyoung notices the difference.

His expression shifts.

“You don’t get to talk about him like that,” I say. His brows lift, but he doesn’t interrupt. “You don’t know him. Not really. You know one fight from years ago. You know that he beat you, and you’ve been making that everyone else’s problem ever since.”

His smile is gone now.

Good.

I keep going, because if I stop, I might hear how hard my heart is beating.

“You want him on the floor? Fine. You want him to look up at you? Fine. Maybe you get that. Maybe you hurt him. Maybe you finally get whatever moment you’ve been starving for since you were a kid.” My voice shakes once, and I swallow it down so hard it hurts. “But it won’t fix anything.”

The room is too quiet.

Wooyoung does not move.

I see something pass through his eyes, small and fast and furious. Not because I insulted him. Because I came close to something. Because the truth is only useful when it is in your own hand. In someone else’s, it becomes a weapon.

“You done?” he asks.

“No.”

His mouth twitches. Despite everything, despite the anger sitting between us like broken glass, something almost pleased crosses his face.

Of course.

Of course he likes being pushed.

That was always his problem.

“I’m not asking you to forgive him for beating you,” I say. “I’m not asking you to be a good person. I’m not even asking you to care about what happens to Sieun or Beomseok or anyone else.” My throat tightens around the next words. “I’m asking you not to take money to destroy my brother because someone else is too much of a coward to face him himself.”

Wooyoung’s eyes sharpen.

“Destroy,” he repeats.

The word sounds different in his mouth.

He takes a step closer again, slower this time. I hold my ground because I have already backed up once and I refuse to give him another inch. He stops close enough that I can see the faint scar near his eyebrow, the tiny flecks of dried blood near one knuckle, the pulse moving in his throat.

“You think I can destroy Ahn Suho?”

The question is quiet.

Dangerous.

And there, beneath it, something almost hungry.

I should say no.

I should say my brother is stronger than him. Faster. Better. I should hand him the old humiliation again and remind him why he is angry in the first place. It would be easy. It would even feel good for half a second.

But I think of the videos.

I think of the way Wooyoung moves now. I think of how Suho hasn't fought professionally in years, hasn't even been working out. He is not in shape to fight someone who hasn't gotten off the mat or out of the gym since he was thirteen.

I think of time, and money, and grudges, and boys who turn themselves into weapons because nobody stopped them early enough.

My silence answers before I do.

Wooyoung sees it.

His smile returns, but slowly. Not mocking now. Triumphant in a way that makes my stomach sink.

“Wow,” he says softly. “You do think I can.”

“I think you can hurt him.”

He leans in a fraction.

“And that scares you.”

I hate him.

I hate him for saying it gently.

I hate him for watching my face like fear is something precious. Like he wants to put his hands around it and see what shape it makes.

“My brother has been hurt before.”

“Not by me.”

The words land like a promise.

For a second, I forget what air is supposed to do.

His eyes hold mine, and I see it then—not just revenge, not just money, not just old humiliation dressed up as ambition. I see the thrill of it. The possibility. The part of him that has waited years to find out whether he has become enough to make Suho bleed properly. Enough to rewrite the memory. Enough to turn the boy on the mat into the boy standing over him.

And I see something else too. The way his gaze keeps returning to me. Like I am tangled in it now. Like part of the reward has changed shape since I walked through the door.

I step closer before I can lose my nerve. This time, I enter his space so deliberately that his expression stills.

“If you touch him,” I say, “I’ll make sure you regret it.”

His eyes drop to my mouth again.

Then back.

“How?”

It is almost a whisper. The question should sound mocking. It doesn’t. It sounds curious.

Like he genuinely wants to know what I would do. Like some terrible part of him wants me to surprise him. Wants me to become sharper, meaner, less like the girl in the bleachers and more like someone who would walk into a gym before dawn with fear in her hands and still use it like a blade.

“I don’t know yet,” I say.

His smile spreads.

Honest this time.

Delighted.

“That’s the cutest threat I’ve ever heard.”

My hand lifts again. This time, I don’t stop it. I shove him. Hard. Not enough to move him much. He is too solid now, too rooted in his own body. But his shoulder rocks back half an inch, and the sound of my palm hitting his chest cracks through the space between us.

For one second, neither of us breathes.

His eyes are wide.

Not with pain nor with anger.

Surprise.

Then something else.

Something bright and immediate and dangerous enough to make my pulse go wild.

Behind him, someone mutters, “Oh shit.”

Wooyoung turns his head slightly. “Go outside.” No one moves. His voice drops. “Now.”

This time, they do.

The gym empties in pieces. Shoes scrape. A door opens somewhere. Someone laughs nervously and gets elbowed into silence. The sounds fade until there is only the buzz of the lights and the dull city morning pressing against the high windows.

I realize too late that I am alone with him.

Fully, now.

Wooyoung looks back at me. The place I shoved him is still under my palm in memory, warm and hard and alive. He rubs his chest once, slow, like he is thinking about it. Like he wants me to watch him think about it.

“You got stronger too,” he says.

My voice comes out thin. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Do that.” His eyebrows lift. “That thing where you make everything a joke because you don’t know how to be normal.”

He laughs quietly.

Then he starts walking.

Not toward me. Past me.

For a second I think he is leaving, and panic flashes bright in my chest. But he only goes to the bench, grabs a towel, wipes the sweat from the side of his neck. His movements are unhurried now, almost too casual. It gives him the upper hand again. He knows it.

I follow him with my eyes, hating how aware I am of every shift in his body. He sits on the edge of the bench, elbows on his knees, towel hanging from one hand. The posture should make him look less dangerous.

It doesn’t.

“Do you know what’s funny?” he asks.

“Nothing about this is funny.”

“That’s what makes it funny.”

I stare at him.

He looks up at me through damp strands of hair, and the years collapse for one impossible second. I see the boy on the mat again. The blood. The glare. The way his eyes found mine afterward like he hated that I saw him fall.

“You came here for Suho,” he says. “But you keep looking at me like that.”

My stomach tightens. I don’t answer. His mouth curves. Not wide. Not cruel. Worse.

Knowing.

“I wondered about you,” he says. The confession is so sudden, so wrong in the room, that I almost miss it. My heart does something painful.

“What?”

He shrugs, looking down at his hand as if the tape around his wrist is more interesting than my face. “After competitions. Sometimes.”

The softness of it is a trick. It has to be. Wooyoung does not get to sound like that. Not here. Not after Sieun. Not after the videos. Not after taking money to hurt my brother.

But the words sink in anyway.

After competitions.

Sometimes.

I see myself at thirteen from outside my own body: knees tucked on a bleacher, hair falling in my face, Suho’s jacket in my lap. I wonder what he saw. I wonder if I looked as obvious as I felt. I wonder if he had been angry enough to notice everything, or lonely enough to keep the wrong things.

He glances up.

“There she is again,” he murmurs. I blink. His gaze is fixed on my face. “That look,” he says.

I turn away. “Shut up.”

He laughs under his breath. “Still cute.”

The word hits harder than it should.

Cute.

Not gorgeous. Not pretty. Not one of the words boys use when they are trying to get something. Cute. The way he says it is almost insulting, almost fond, almost like he resents the fact that it came out at all.

I grip the strap of my bag again.

“You’re not going to distract me.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“You are.”

“If I was trying, you’d know.”

My eyes snap back to his.

He smiles.

There is heat in my face, my neck, somewhere behind my ribs where it does not belong. I hate that he can do this while sitting in a dirty gym with split knuckles and a paid fight hanging between us. I hate that attraction does not wait for permission from morality. It rises where it wants, stupid and physical, dragging memory behind it like smoke.

I think about Suho.

The heat turns bitter.

“You hurt my brother, and whatever this is—” I gesture between us, because I don’t have a better word for the awful, electric thing in the air, “—it dies.”

Wooyoung’s smile fades. Very slowly. For the first time, I see the threat land somewhere he did not expect. He sits back. His eyes stay on mine.

“What is this?” he asks. The question is quiet. Not teasing now. My mouth opens. Nothing comes out. Because there is no honest answer that does not ruin me a little.

This is nothing.

This is a childhood crush dragged out of its grave and given a dangerous face. This is fear and memory and the body being stupid. This is me standing in front of the boy who might hurt my brother and noticing the shape of his hands.

This is him looking at me like revenge has suddenly become complicated.

I swallow.

“It’s nothing yet.” His eyes darken. The word yet sits between us like a lit fuse.

For one suspended second, I think he might stand. I think he might cross the space between us and do something reckless, something cruel or soft or both. My whole body prepares for it without my permission, breath shallow, fingers stiff, heart beating too hard against the quiet.

He doesn’t.

He only laughs once, under his breath, and looks away.

“Damn,” he says. “You really know how to make a guy lose money.”

My knees almost weaken with relief. Or disappointment. I refuse to find out which.

“Then don’t take the fight.”

He runs his tongue along the inside of his cheek, thinking. Or pretending to. With Wooyoung, even silence has attitude.

“It’s a lot of money.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” He looks at me again, and there is something colder there now. Older. “People like you never know what that means.”

My spine stiffens. “People like me?”

“Suho’s sister. Clean uniform. Good brother who wins things and smiles like life’s easy.”

The words cut because they are wrong in ways he does not know and right in ways I do not want to explain. He doesn’t know about overdue bills, about Grandma counting expenses under her breath, about Suho pretending he isn’t tired and taking two jobs to help, about all the tiny humiliations families keep private because poverty becomes uglier when someone else names it incorrectly.

But I understand enough. I understand that Wooyoung is not speaking to me, not entirely. He is speaking to every room he was ever outside of. Every coach who looked disappointed. Every opponent who laughed. Every time money turned a person into something usable.

“My life isn’t what you think it is,” I say.

His face gives nothing.

“Neither is mine,” he says.

For once, there is no joke after.

The silence that follows feels different.

Not peaceful. Never peaceful. But heavier. Less like a fight and more like two people standing on opposite sides of something neither of them built.

I take a breath.

“What did Beomseok offer you?”

Wooyoung watches me for a long moment.

"15 million won," It is worse than I thought. My stomach drops. He sees that too. “Yeah,” he says. “Exactly.”

I look down.

The floor beneath my shoes is scuffed with old marks, dark streaks from rubber soles, faint stains that might be sweat or blood or both. I think of Suho’s birthday. Of Sieun hurt in some abandoned mall. Of Beomseok with his quiet eyes and his shaking hands, buying violence because he couldn’t bear being powerless anymore.

I think of Wooyoung saying easy money. Nothing about this is easy. That is the lie boys tell themselves so they can keep doing it.

“I can’t match that,” I say.

“No kidding.”

I look up sharply.

He lifts both hands slightly, mock-innocent. “What? You wanted honesty.”

“I can find another way.”

His gaze sharpens. “What way?”

“I don’t know.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because I don’t know yet.”

“Then you’re wasting my time.”

He stands.

The movement is sudden enough that my body reacts before my mind does. He is in front of me again, close and tall and warm from training, blocking out part of the overhead light. Shadows cut along his cheekbones. His expression has hardened, but underneath it, I see frustration. Not only with me.

With himself.

“You should go,” he says.

“No.”

His jaw tightens. “Go home.”

“No.”

His eyes flash. “You think saying no enough times changes something?”

“It got you to keep talking.” For a second, he looks like he might smile. He doesn’t let himself. Instead, he steps closer until I have to tip my head back slightly.

“You’re annoying,” he says.

“You’re violent.”

“You came to a fighting gym.”

“You fight teenagers for cash.”

“They agree.”

“Sieun didn’t.”

His face hardens again. I see the exact second that lands. Not because it makes him feel bad enough. But because it takes away one of his excuses. The clean one. The one he could wrap around his knuckles and call business.

They agree.

Sieun didn’t.

I press forward because I have him there. Because I may not be able to beat him or pay him or scare him, but I can make him look at the part he would rather skip.

“He didn’t agree to be part of whatever revenge fantasy you and Beomseok are acting out.”

Wooyoung’s mouth twists. “Careful.”

“No.”

“You love that word, huh?”

“I’m learning from you. Repeating things until they get annoying.”

His eyes narrow. Then, to my surprise, he laughs.

It slips out of him before he catches it, small and reluctant and real. The sound changes his whole face for half a second. Softens nothing, exactly, but opens something. Makes him look younger. Makes the boy from the competition hall flicker through the man he is trying so hard to become.

My chest aches.

I hate that too.

He notices my face change, and the laugh dies.

“What?” he asks, sharper.

“Nothing.”

“No, what?”

“Nothing.”

His eyes search mine. Then his expression shifts into something I can’t read.

“You looked at me like that back then too,” he says. The air leaves me slowly. “In the competition hall.” I don’t move. “After I lost,” he continues, voice quieter now, almost flat. “Everyone else looked at Suho. You looked at me.”

My throat tightens.

“I was just—”

“Don’t lie.”

The words are not loud. They cut through me anyway.

He steps even closer, and this time I don’t think it is meant to intimidate me. Or maybe it is. Maybe with Wooyoung, intimacy and intimidation come from the same place, tangled too tightly to separate.

His eyes are fixed on mine.

“You looked sorry,” he says.

I barely breathe.

His mouth tightens. “I hated that.”

I understand before he explains.

Of course he hated it.

A boy like him could survive being hated. Laughed at. Challenged. Even beaten. But pity? Pity meant someone saw the wound instead of the weapon. Pity meant the fall mattered. Pity meant, for one second, he was not scary, not impressive, not untouchable.

Just a boy on the floor.

“I wasn’t sorry for you,” I whisper.

His eyes flicker.

“I just wanted you to get up.”

The silence after that is absolute.

Wooyoung looks at me like I have done something worse than insult him. Something worse than shove him. Like I have reached back through time and touched the one part of that day he never managed to turn into anger.

His throat moves once.

The gym door rattles faintly in the distance from the wind outside.

When he speaks, his voice is rougher.

“You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m still going to take the money.”

The words are supposed to land like a slap. They do. But he looks away when he says them. And that is worse, somehow.

My chest hollows out.

For a moment, I am so tired I can almost feel it in my bones. Not sleepy tired. Something older. The exhaustion of trying to put your hands between violence and someone you love, knowing violence does not care how soft your hands are.

I nod once.

Wooyoung looks back quickly, like he didn’t expect that.

“Okay,” I say.

His eyes narrow. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“That’s it?”

“No.”

I reach into my bag. He watches my hand carefully, his body going still in that fighter way again, ready for anything. It hurts a little, seeing it. How trained he is to expect the worst. How quickly softness disappears from him.

I pull out my phone.

His brows knit.

“What are you doing?”

I unlock it, open the video my friend sent me, and hold the screen up between us. His face flickers there in ugly blue-white light, younger by only a few days, maybe, but colder through the camera. He watches himself knock someone down. Watches himself smile.

For once, he does not make a joke.

“This is what you look like now,” I say. His gaze flicks from the screen to me. I keep my hand steady. “I don’t know what happened to you after that competition. I don’t know why you ended up here. I don’t know what you tell yourself before you take money to hurt people.” My voice lowers. “But this? This isn’t strength.”

His face empties.

“Don’t.”

The word is soft. Warning. I keep going anyway.

“This is just you making sure someone else ends up on the floor before you do.”

He knocks the phone from my hand. Not hard enough to break it. Not at me. But fast enough that it slips from my fingers and hits the mat with a dull thud.

The sound shocks both of us. For one second, Wooyoung looks at the phone. Then at me. His chest rises once, sharp. There it is. The anger underneath everything.

Not loud now. Not explosive. Worse. Barely contained. His eyes are bright with it, jaw clenched so hard the muscle jumps. The room seems to shrink around him.

I should be scared.

I am.

But I do not step back.

Instead, I crouch slowly and pick up my phone. My hand shakes once when I reach for it. I hope he doesn’t see.

Of course he does.

When I stand, something in his face has changed. The anger is still there. But so is something else. Regret, maybe, though he would probably rather get hit by a truck than call it that.

“I didn’t—” he starts.

Then stops. I look at him. He looks furious with himself for even trying. The smallest, saddest laugh leaves me.

“You didn’t mean to?” I ask. His mouth shuts. “Yeah,” I whisper. “That’s what everyone says after they scare someone.”

His face flinches. It is tiny. But it happens.

I put my phone back into my bag, fingers careful, movements slower than they need to be. The space between us feels ruined now, but not empty. Never empty. If anything, it is heavier. Full of all the things he almost said and all the things I am too proud to admit.

When I look up, he is watching me like he does not know what to do with his hands.

Good.

Let him feel it. Let him stand there with all that strength and no idea where to put it.

“I’m not asking again,” I say. His expression closes. “Don’t touch Suho. Don’t touch Sieun. Walk away from Beomseok’s money.”

He says nothing. The silence stretches. I wait.

For a second, I think he will refuse just to prove he can. I can see the impulse move through him. Pride first. Always pride. It lifts his chin, hardens his mouth, puts that old, ugly shine back in his eyes.

Then his gaze drops to my hand. The one still trembling slightly at my side. His jaw tightens. He looks away.

“Get out,” he says.

My heart sinks.

“Wooyoung—”

His eyes cut back to mine. “I said get out.”

The words are cold. Too cold. A door slamming before I can see inside.

I nod once because there is nothing else to do, because if I speak now, my voice might betray me, and I will not give him that. I turn toward the door with my bag strap cutting into my shoulder and my phone heavy inside it and my pulse still trapped somewhere in my throat.

I make it three steps before he speaks again.

“Hey.”

I stop. I don’t turn around right away. Behind me, he exhales like the sound annoys him.

“How’s Suho?” he asks. The question is rough. Reluctant. Almost hidden under irritation. I close my eyes for half a second. There it is. Not mercy. Not enough. But something.

“He pretends he’s fine,” I say.

Wooyoung is quiet. I turn, slowly.

He stands where I left him, one hand curled loosely at his side, the other rubbing at the tape around his wrist like he wants to peel himself out of his own skin. He does not look sorry. Not exactly. Sorry is too clean a word for his face. But he looks less certain than before, and for a boy like him, maybe that is the first crack.

“He always did that,” he says.

My chest tightens.

“Yes.”

His eyes lift to mine.

For a moment, we are back there again. Bleachers. Mat. Blood. A boy getting up because staying down would kill him in a way no one else could see.

Then Wooyoung’s mouth curves, faint and bitter.

“Tell him I said happy birthday.”

My stomach twists.

“You’re unbelievable.”

“Yeah.” His smile sharpens, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “People keep saying that.”

I stare at him.

He stares back.

The old pull is still there, awful and alive, but now it has teeth. It is not the sweet little crush I had when I was younger, when liking someone meant glancing across a competition hall and hoping no one noticed. This is different. Darker. Stupider. More dangerous. This is attraction standing too close to fear. This is memory with blood under its fingernails. This is looking at someone and knowing they might ruin something, maybe even you, and still feeling the body lean half an inch before the mind drags it back.

“I’ll come back,” I say.

Wooyoung’s expression stills. Then that smile returns, slow and helplessly pleased, as if I have just handed him exactly the wrong thing.

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

“To threaten me again?”

“If I have to.”

He nods once, eyes moving over my face like he is trying to memorize the shape of the promise.

“Good,” he says. The word is quiet. Too honest. A warning should not sound like an invitation.

I open the door.

Cold morning air spills in, clean and damp and pale. For one second, I stand there between the gym and the street, between the heat behind me and the grey light ahead, and I feel the whole world hanging by one thin thread.

Then Wooyoung calls after me, voice lazy again, almost normal.

“Y/N.” I look back. He is still watching me. Not smiling now. “Next time,” he says, “don’t come alone.”

The words settle over my skin slowly. Threat. Concern. Possession. Maybe all three. My fingers tighten around the doorframe.

“Next time,” I say, “don’t give me a reason to come at all.” His eyes brighten. Like he likes the answer. Like he hates that he likes it.

I leave before he can see what that does to me. Outside, the morning has finally broken open.

The sky is pale and cold over the rooftops, the city waking in pieces around me—shop shutters rattling up, buses sighing at curbs, early footsteps splashing through leftover rain. Everything looks ordinary in that cruel way the world always does after something inside you shifts. A woman walks past carrying coffee. A delivery scooter cuts through a puddle. Somewhere, a dog barks.

My hands are still shaking. I shove them into my jacket pockets and start walking. Behind me, beneath the city’s waking noise, the gym door stays shut. But I can still feel him there.

Kong Wooyoung, with his split knuckles and crooked mouth and years of anger sharpened into a living thing. Kong Wooyoung, who remembered me standing up when he fell. Kong Wooyoung, who took money to hurt my brother and still asked how he was. Kong Wooyoung, who looked at me like I was a problem he had no intention of solving properly.

The bus stop is half a block away.

I walk toward it slowly, the damp air burning cold in my lungs, my phone heavy in my bag with his videos still saved inside it. I should delete them. I should block every link, every search result, every stupid frame of him laughing under bad light.

Instead, when I reach the stop, I sit down on the cold metal bench and stare at my reflection in the dark glass of the advertisement board. I look older than I did last night.

My phone buzzes. For one terrifying second, I think it is Suho. It isn’t.

Unknown number.

No message at first. Then three dots appear. Disappear. Appear again. My heart kicks once, hard. Finally, the text comes through.

you still stand up when i fall?

I stare at it until the letters blur. The bus pulls up in front of me with a hiss, doors folding open, warm yellow light spilling onto the wet curb. I don’t move. Another message appears.

cute.

I should not smile. I don’t, not really. But something in my mouth softens before I can stop it, and that small betrayal feels more dangerous than the entire gym did.

Then the third message comes.

tell suho i’m thinking about it.

No promise. No surrender. No mercy wrapped neatly enough to trust. Just that. Thinking about it. From Kong Wooyoung, it feels almost like blood drawn from stone.

I get on the bus with my hands still cold and my chest still tight and my brother’s name sitting like a bruise behind my ribs. The city moves past the window in silver streaks, rainwater catching the morning light, everything blurred and trembling as if the world has not quite decided what shape it wants to be.

I type three words. Delete them. Type again. My thumb hovers over send. Then I finally answer.

Think harder.

The reply comes before the next stop.

bossy.

I look out the window before anyone can see my face.

And somewhere across the city, in a dirty gym that smells like sweat and old violence, I can almost see him smiling.

[hye-jin91]

Defend

Obsessed with this man

The bar is too warm in the way crowded places always are, all damp heat and stale perfume and spilled beer drying sticky beneath people’s shoes. It clings to my skin before I even realize I’m uncomfortable, crawling under the thin fabric of my top, gathering at the back of my neck where my hair keeps sticking no matter how many times I pull it away. The music is loud enough that the bass feels less like sound and more like something physical, something pressing a palm against the center of my chest over and over, making my heartbeat feel stupidly visible. Neon bleeds across the walls in bruised shades of pink and blue, glancing off half-empty glasses and wet tabletops and the sharp edges of people’s cheekbones, making everyone look prettier and meaner than they are.

Kyung-jun had been beside me five minutes ago.

That is the part my body remembers before my mind does. The place where he had been standing is still warm somehow, still shaped like him in the air. He had leaned down close to my ear with that lazy, careless slant to his mouth, the one that always made him look like he was either about to insult someone or kiss me just to ruin my train of thought.

“Don’t run away while I’m gone,” he’d said, already reaching into his pocket for his cigarettes.

I’d rolled my eyes at him because that was safer than smiling too much. “Why? Scared I’ll find someone better?”

He had stopped walking just long enough to look back at me.

Not dramatically. Not sweetly. Nothing soft enough for anyone else to notice. Just that narrow-eyed glance over his shoulder, cigarette caught between two fingers, mouth pulling like he found the idea personally offensive.

“Better?” he repeated, like the word tasted bad. “Are you drunk already?”

Then he’d left, pushing through the door with the same swagger he did everything with, loose-limbed and careless, like the world had never once taught him to move quietly through it. Like walls moved for him. Like people did.

And I had watched him go for one second too long.

That was my first mistake.

My second was turning back toward the bar.

Because he was there.

Not Kyung-jun. Not the boy who made every other guy in the room look unfinished by comparison. Not the boy who made me forget, with humiliating ease, that I had once cried over someone whose shoulders weren’t even that broad.

The other one.

For half a second, I don’t recognize him. My brain does that merciful thing where it refuses to place a face it knows will hurt. It lets me see him in pieces first—the dark jacket, the drink in his hand, the familiar way he leans back when he laughs, like he’s waiting for someone to admire the shape of his mouth around it. His hair is shorter than before. Or maybe I just remember it wrong. Maybe memory is generous when it wants to punish you. Maybe it smooths people out, makes them softer than they ever were, because otherwise you’d have to admit you gave something tender to someone who held it like garbage.

Then he turns his head.

His eyes find mine.

Everything in me goes very still.

Not calm. Not peaceful. Still in the way an animal goes still when it hears a branch crack in the dark. My fingers tighten around my glass, and the condensation makes the outside slick beneath my hand. I can feel the water sliding over my knuckles. I can feel the rim biting lightly into my palm. I can feel the ridiculous, awful drop of my stomach, like my body has forgotten it has survived worse things than being looked at by a man who stopped wanting me after he got what he wanted.

He looks at me for maybe two seconds.

Two seconds is enough.

Enough for my throat to remember the texts I sent that went gray and unanswered. Enough for my face to remember lying in bed with my phone glowing in the dark, refreshing nothing, pretending I wasn’t waiting for the vibration that never came. Enough for my skin to remember the way I felt afterward—too exposed, too stupid, too touched in places I suddenly wanted back. Enough for the old shame to uncoil from somewhere deep and sour and familiar, lifting its head like it had only been sleeping.

Then he looks away.

Just like that.

No surprise. No guilt. No flicker of recognition he can’t control. He sees me, knows me, remembers exactly what happened, and turns back to his friends as if I am a song he used to skip.

The sound around me seems to sharpen.

A burst of laughter from the booth behind me. Ice clinking in a glass. Someone shouting over the music. The bartender slamming down a bottle. My own pulse, hot and bright behind my ears.

I take a drink I don’t want.

It tastes like lime and alcohol and my own embarrassment.

I tell myself I’m fine because Kyung-jun is outside. Because I am not alone. Because I am not that girl anymore, the one who stared at her phone until her eyes burned, trying to make sense out of silence. I have a boyfriend now. A terrifying, obnoxious, unfairly attractive boyfriend who acts like affection is a disease he refuses to diagnose and still somehow keeps showing up whenever I need him. I have Kyung-jun, who complains about everything, who calls me stupid when I do something reckless but walks on the outside of the sidewalk without thinking, who glares at men for standing too close to me and then pretends he wasn’t doing anything when I catch him.

I am fine.

I am fine right up until his friends notice me.

The girls recognize me before he pretends not to. Of course they do. Women always remember the damage men leave behind better than the men do. One of them looks over once, then again, her eyes widening with a little flicker of uncomfortable sympathy that makes my stomach twist harder than cruelty would have.

“Oh my god,” she says when she reaches me, voice rising over the music. “Hey. I didn’t know you came here.”

I force my mouth into something that isn’t a grimace. “Yeah. Apparently I love making bad decisions.”

She laughs, but it comes out weak. Her friend, a pretty girl with glossy lips and a drink held close to her chest, glances toward his table, then back at me.

For a moment, no one says anything real.

That almost makes it worse.

The silence has shape. It has teeth. It sits between us with all the things everyone knows and no one wants to touch. I can see it in their faces—the awkwardness, the guilty knowledge, the careful way they look at me like I might crack open if they say his name too loudly.

“He’s such an idiot,” the first girl says, too quickly.

My smile becomes thinner. “Which one? You’ll have to be specific.”

She looks relieved that I made a joke. That is the thing about making people laugh when you’re hurting. They always take it as permission to stop worrying.

“No, I mean…” She shifts closer, lowering her voice, though the music swallows half her words anyway. “He was being weird earlier. Talking shit. I told him to stop.”

Something inside me tilts.

Not breaks. Not yet.

Just tilts.

My fingers loosen around my glass, then tighten again. “Talking shit about what?”

Her friend touches her arm. “Don’t.”

“No, it’s just—” The girl grimaces, like she regrets opening the door but not enough to close it. “He said you were, like… still obsessed with him. That you kept trying to get his attention after he ended things. Which is obviously stupid, I know that.”

The room moves without moving.

The neon blurs a little at the edges, turning everyone into soft, smeared color. My body does something strange with the information. It receives it quietly at first. Too quietly. My face doesn’t change. My shoulders don’t drop. I don’t gasp or laugh or storm across the room right away like someone in a movie who knows exactly what kind of person she is.

Instead, I stand there with my drink in my hand and feel the past press two cold fingers under my ribs.

He ended things.

That is what he told people.

Not that he disappeared. Not that he used silence like a locked door. Not that he let me wonder what I had done wrong, let me scroll through old messages looking for the exact sentence where I became too much, let me feel cheap in my own skin because he didn’t have the decency to say he wasn’t interested anymore.

He ended things.

Like he had been kind enough to close something.

Like I had been the one clawing at the handle.

My mouth tastes metallic. I realize I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek.

The girls are still talking, maybe apologizing, maybe explaining, but their voices slide off me. I set my glass down on the nearest table with more force than I mean to. It makes a sharp sound, glass against wood, and both girls flinch.

I smile.

That’s the worst part. I feel it happen. The smile lifts onto my face slowly, coldly, completely wrong.

“Where is he sitting?” I ask.

The first girl’s expression changes. “Wait—”

“Where?”

She doesn’t answer.

She doesn’t have to.

My feet are already moving.

The crowd swallows me in pieces. Shoulders brush mine. Someone’s elbow catches my arm. A man turns and starts to say something, then sees my face and decides he has somewhere else to look. My pulse is no longer behind my ears; it is everywhere, in my fingers, my throat, my knees, the soft hinge of my jaw. I can feel the alcohol humming beneath my skin, not enough to make me sloppy but enough to strip the varnish off my restraint. Enough that the old hurt is not tucked neatly away anymore. It is standing upright inside me, bright-eyed and bare-toothed.

He sees me coming.

That part is satisfying.

His smile falters before he can stop it. Just a little. A twitch at the corner of his mouth, a small tightening around the eyes. He recovers fast, leaning back with lazy arrogance, but I saw it. I saw the tiny moment where he remembered I was real and not just a story he could retell however he wanted.

His friend beside him looks between us. “Uh-oh.”

I stop in front of the table.

Close enough that I can smell his cologne. It’s the same one. That nearly makes me laugh, but the sound catches somewhere ugly in my chest.

He looks up at me with that expression men wear when they’re trying to embarrass you into silence. Half boredom. Half amusement. Like your feelings are a performance and he’s tired of clapping.

“Hey,” he says. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”

“No?” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I thought maybe you were inviting me personally, since apparently you’ve been saying my name so much tonight.”

His friends go quiet.

It’s beautiful, really, how fast men hate an audience when they’re not controlling it.

His mouth tightens. “What are you talking about?”

I tilt my head, and the room tilts with me. “You know, for someone who was so desperate to stop talking to me, you sure got chatty when I wasn’t around.”

A flicker moves across his face. Irritation first, then embarrassment, then something meaner. His fingers tighten around his glass.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s funny. Because your friends seem to think you did.”

One of the girls behind me says his name softly, warningly.

He ignores her.

Of course he does.

He laughs instead, but it’s not a real laugh. It’s sharp and defensive, meant to make everyone else join in so I become the ridiculous one. “Are you seriously doing this right now?”

“Yes,” I say. “I am seriously asking you to stop lying about me.”

“I’m not lying.”

“You told people I’m obsessed with you.”

His brows lift. “Are you not?”

The words land clean.

No stumble. No hesitation. He says it like a slap he has been waiting to give.

For a second, I can’t move.

Not because it hurts in the way he wants it to. Not because some secret part of me still wants him. That died months ago, quietly and without ceremony, somewhere between Kyung-jun stealing food off my plate and calling me annoying with his knee pressed against mine under a table. What freezes me is the audacity. The ease. The way he still thinks humiliation is something he owns and can hand back to me whenever he gets bored.

He looks around at his friends, gaining confidence from the silence. “You came all the way over here because you heard I said something? That’s kind of proving my point.”

The table makes a low sound. Someone mutters, “Bro.”

But he keeps going, because men like him always do when they mistake silence for victory.

“You were clingy then, too,” he says, leaning forward now. “I didn’t know how to tell you without making it a whole thing. You were intense. Like, after one night—”

My hand moves before the thought finishes forming.

There is no dramatic windup. No warning. No cinematic pause where everyone realizes what’s about to happen.

Just Kyung-jun’s voice in my memory, bored and impatient, from weeks ago in the parking lot behind his building.

“Stop swinging from your shoulder. You look like you’re trying to kill a mosquito.”

“I hate you.”

“You’ll hate getting your wrist broken more. Again.”

“I’m not fighting anyone.”

“You say that now.”

His hand over mine, repositioning my knuckles. His fingers warm, firm, careless. His mouth too close to my ear as he corrected my stance. “If you’re going to hit someone, don’t do it like a pretty idiot. Turn your hip. Hit through them. And don’t close your eyes, unless you want to look stupid when you miss.”

I don’t close my eyes.

My fist connects with a sound I feel up my arm.

Not the clean, crisp sound from movies. It’s duller than that. Wetter. More horrible. Bone and cartilage and skin giving under my knuckles. Pain flashes across my hand, bright and immediate, but it is swallowed almost instantly by the sight of his head snapping sideways, his chair scraping violently back, his body folding off balance with a shocked grunt that cuts through the music better than any scream could have.

He hits the floor.

For one suspended second, no one moves.

The whole table stares.

The girls stare.

His friend stares.

I stare, too, breathing through parted lips, my hand still curled at my side, throbbing like it has its own heartbeat now.

Blood appears beneath his nose.

Red. Real. Absurdly bright under the neon.

“Oh my god,” one of the girls whispers.

My chest rises once.

Twice.

He groans, rolling onto one elbow, one hand flying to his face. When he looks up at me, there is no arrogance left. Just shock. Humiliation. A childish, boiling disbelief that I had not stayed inside the role he assigned me.

I step back.

My voice is lower when I speak. It almost doesn’t sound like mine.

“Stop talking about me.”

Then I turn around and leave.

Not elegantly. Not slowly. I don’t get to enjoy it the way I should because the second I start walking, my body realizes what I’ve done. The heat drains out of me so fast my knees feel thin. My hand starts to ache properly now, pulsing from knuckle to wrist. The room seems too loud, too close, too full of people who saw me become someone I don’t know if I’m allowed to be.

I push through the crowd with my head down.

The air outside hits me cold.

It is almost violent after the bar, clean and sharp and damp, dragging itself into my lungs before I’m ready for it. The street is wet from earlier rain, black asphalt shining beneath the lamps, every puddle holding broken pieces of light. Cars pass in hissing streaks. Somewhere down the block, someone laughs too loudly. The night smells like smoke and rain and fried food from the place next door.

Kyung-jun is leaning against the brick wall beside the entrance, one knee bent, cigarette glowing orange between his fingers.

He looks unfairly calm.

That is the first thing I see. The line of him in the low light, tall and broad-shouldered, his dark jacket loose around him, hair falling slightly over his forehead. He has that lazy posture that makes strangers underestimate the violence coiled under it, like a knife left open on a table. His head is tipped back a little as he exhales smoke toward the sky, the line of his throat pale under the streetlamp.

Then his eyes cut to me.

Everything about him changes without changing.

He doesn’t jump. He doesn’t rush forward. He doesn’t make a scene.

He just straightens.

The cigarette lowers from his mouth. His shoulders shift. His gaze moves over my face once, fast and sharp, then drops to my hand, then back to my eyes.

“What,” he says slowly, “did you do?”

The question is so him—flat, suspicious, already irritated—that under any other circumstances I might laugh.

But my throat closes.

“I did something stupid.”

His eyes narrow. “Obviously.”

“Kyung-jun.”

“What? You came out looking like you robbed the place and lost.”

“We have to go.”

He pushes off the wall. “Why?”

“Because.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Because I punched someone.”

He blinks once.

Only once.

Then his gaze drops again to my hand, and for a fraction of a second his mouth twitches.

It is not a smile.

It is worse than a smile.

It is amusement trying very hard to survive beneath concern.

“You punched someone,” he repeats.

“Don’t say it like that.”

“How should I say it? Congratulations?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” He reaches for my wrist, not roughly, but with enough certainty that I let him take it. His thumb brushes over my knuckles, and his expression darkens at the swelling already beginning there. “Who?”

I don’t answer fast enough.

That is all it takes.

His eyes lift.

The door behind me slams open.

The sound cracks through the night.

I flinch before I can stop myself, and Kyung-jun sees that too. I know he does, because his fingers tighten around my wrist for one brief second before he lets go. Not to abandon me. To free his hands.

The guy comes stumbling out with blood under his nose and rage all over his face, one of his friends behind him with both hands half-raised like he’s already regretting every life choice that brought him here. The two girls follow too, hovering near the doorway, pale and wide-eyed beneath the bar lights spilling out behind them.

“You crazy bitch,” the guy snaps.

Kyung-jun goes very still.

Not stiff. Not startled.

Still.

Like all the warmth in him has been switched off.

His friend sees him then.

Really sees him.

The height. The shoulders. The expression. The cigarette hanging between his fingers, forgotten now, smoke curling up past his face. The kind of face that doesn’t ask whether a fight is coming. The kind that only decides how badly it’s going to end.

The friend grabs the guy’s arm. “Stop. Seriously, stop.”

“Get off me.”

“No, look at him.”

“I said get off—”

“Look at him, idiot.”

The guy shoves him away, too angry to be smart. His eyes flick to Kyung-jun and stall for half a second.

I see it happen.

The tiny hesitation.

Kyung-jun sees it too.

Of course he does.

He always notices weakness like he was born with a second pulse for it.

I move before I think. Some ridiculous instinct drags me forward, because I caused this, because my fist is the reason there’s blood on that guy’s mouth, because Kyung-jun doesn’t need another fight because of me. He has enough trouble living under his skin without me handing him more. So I step in front of him, one hand lifting slightly, like my body can somehow become a wall between two men who could probably break me by accident.

Kyung-jun looks down at me.

The silence that follows is personal.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

His voice is quiet.

That makes it worse.

“I’m handling it.”

He stares at me like I have just said the stupidest sentence ever formed in any language.

Then he takes me by the shoulders.

Not hard. Not cruel. Almost gentle, which is somehow more humiliating.

He moves me behind him like I weigh nothing, like I am a chair someone put in the wrong place.

“Stay there,” he says.

I bristle immediately. “Don’t tell me—”

He looks back over his shoulder.

Just one look.

My mouth shuts.

Not because I’m scared of him. Not exactly. I’m scared of the thing in his eyes, maybe. The focus. The cold, sharp patience. The promise that he is holding himself still by choice and that choice is thinning by the second.

He turns back.

His cigarette rises to his mouth. He takes one last drag, slow and infuriating, the ember glowing bright in the dark. Smoke leaves him in a thin stream.

Then he looks at the guy bleeding on the sidewalk.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?”

The guy laughs, but it breaks in the middle. “Who the fuck are you?”

Kyung-jun’s head tilts.

There it is.

That little tilt.

The one that means someone has started boring him and entertaining him at the same time.

“Me?” He drops the cigarette. It lands near his shoe, a tiny orange star dying on the wet pavement. “I’m the guy standing here while you come outside crying with a bloody nose.”

The friend behind the guy mutters, “Let’s just go.”

But the guy isn’t looking at him anymore.

He’s looking at me over Kyung-jun’s shoulder, and the humiliation on his face twists into something uglier.

“She hit me,” he spits.

Kyung-jun glances back at me again.

His eyes flick to my swollen knuckles.

Then to my face.

Something almost proud threatens the corner of his mouth.

He looks away before I can catch it fully.

“Yeah,” he says, deadpan. “I can see that.”

The girls near the door exchange a look. One of them presses a hand over her mouth, maybe to hide a nervous laugh.

The guy’s face darkens. “Your girlfriend’s insane.”

Kyung-jun’s expression empties.

There is no dramatic flare of rage. No shouting. No chest-puffing. It is worse than that. It is the way his face goes blank around the edges, his eyes settling into something flat and dangerous, like the bottom of a well.

“What did you call her?”

The guy swallows.

He hides it badly.

“Look, man, you don’t know what she’s like—”

“I didn’t ask for a sad little speech.”

The words cut clean through him.

Kyung-jun steps forward once.

The guy steps back before he can stop himself.

My chest tightens so sharply it almost hurts. I know this Kyung-jun. Not well enough, maybe. Not fully. But I know the air around him when he gets like this. It changes temperature. Even drunk boys with split lips can feel it. Even strangers walking past seem to drift farther to the edge of the sidewalk.

Kyung-jun’s voice lowers.

“You’re the one, right?”

The guy frowns. “What?”

Kyung-jun smiles then.

Not nicely.

“Oh,” he says, and there’s a dry little laugh under it, humorless and mean. “You’re stupid too. That makes sense.”

My stomach drops.

Because I know what he means.

I know exactly what memory has just moved behind his eyes. Me, weeks ago, sitting on the edge of his bed with my knees pulled up, pretending the story didn’t hurt because I was telling it casually. The guy before him. The ghosting. The pictures I wasn’t sure had been deleted. The awful, quiet panic of knowing someone had seen me vulnerable and maybe kept proof of it like a souvenir. Kyung-jun had listened without interrupting, which was how I knew he was furious. No jokes. No insults. No restless movement. Just him sitting beside me, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor with his jaw working like he was biting down on something alive.

He hadn’t said much then.

Only, “Give me his name.”

I hadn’t.

Because I knew him.

Because I knew enough.

Now he looks at the guy with fresh understanding, and the night seems to narrow around the two of them.

The guy scoffs, but it’s weaker now. “What the hell did she tell you?”

Kyung-jun’s eyes flick toward the blood under his nose. “Enough.”

“Yeah? Did she tell you she was all over me first?”

The words hit the air.

Something inside me recoils so violently I almost take a step back.

Kyung-jun doesn’t move.

That is the only warning.

The friend behind the guy says, “Dude, shut up.”

The girl at the door whispers, “Don’t.”

But he is too far gone. Too embarrassed. Too eager to drag me down with him because he can feel the ground shifting under his feet.

“She’s acting like I ruined her life or some shit,” he says, voice rising. “We hooked up. That’s it. She got clingy, I moved on. Not my fault she—”

Kyung-jun moves so fast the sentence dies unfinished.

He doesn’t hit him yet.

He just steps into his space.

Close enough that the guy’s words vanish.

Close enough that I see the way the guy’s chin lifts instinctively, trying to make himself taller and failing. Kyung-jun is taller. Broader. Worse because he knows it and doesn’t need to prove it.

“You already got your ass kicked,” Kyung-jun says softly. “That’s got to be enough for one night.”

The guy’s face twists.

There are moments when pride becomes stupidity. You can see the exact second it happens. See the thought leave a man’s eyes before his body follows.

He lunges.

Not well.

Not like someone who knows how to fight. Like someone who knows how to shove smaller people and mistake that for violence.

Kyung-jun sidesteps him so easily it’s almost insulting.

His hand catches the guy by the jacket and yanks him off balance. The motion is sharp, economical, nothing wasted. Then his fist drives into the guy’s stomach with a dull, sickening sound that folds him forward. Before he can recover, Kyung-jun hooks an arm around his shoulder, turns him, and slams him back against the brick hard enough that the girls cry out.

My breath catches.

Not because I haven’t seen Kyung-jun fight.

I have.

I’ve seen the aftermath more than anything—the split knuckles, the bruised cheek, the casual shrug when I ask what happened and he says, “Some idiot was begging.” But seeing him like this, seeing all that lazy arrogance sharpen into something precise, makes my entire body go hot and cold at once. It should scare me more than it does. It does scare me. But beneath it, something else opens, bright and shameful and breathless.

Because he isn’t fighting for himself.

He isn’t laughing because he wants to show off.

He is angry because that boy said my name wrong.

The guy swings wildly.

Kyung-jun ducks, catches his wrist, and twists just enough to make him gasp. Not enough to break it. Enough to remind him he could.

“You hit like that after getting punched by her?” Kyung-jun mutters. “Embarrassing.”

Then the guy, stupid even through pain, spits something I don’t fully hear.

Maybe my name.

Maybe another insult.

Kyung-jun hears it.

His face changes.

The punch that follows is clean.

Brutal.

Final.

The guy drops.

Not dramatically, not with some graceful fall. He collapses sideways onto the pavement, heavy and loose, one arm landing awkwardly beneath him. His friend lunges forward with a curse, not to fight now, but to check on him. The girls gasp again. Someone from inside the bar shouts. The door hangs open, spilling music into the street like the night itself is bleeding sound.

Kyung-jun stands over him for one second.

Just one.

Then he exhales through his nose like he’s annoyed the whole thing took effort.

“He should’ve stayed inside,” he says.

Nobody answers.

The friend looks up at him, terrified and furious and smart enough not to use either. “He’s out. He’s done.”

Kyung-jun looks at him.

The friend raises his hands. “Done. Seriously.”

Kyung-jun’s gaze lingers just long enough to make sure the message lands.

Then he turns around.

To me.

And the world, stupidly, narrows again.

His face is still hard when he looks at me, but it cracks slightly at the edges. Not soft. Kyung-jun never becomes soft all at once. He lets tenderness out like it’s contraband, in brief, grudging flashes he can deny later. His eyes drop to my hand.

“Idiot,” he says.

My throat tightens.

Of course that is what breaks me.

Not the yelling. Not the punch. Not the boy on the ground. That one word, spoken in his rough, irritated voice like it means, I was scared. Like it means, don’t make me imagine you getting hurt. Like it means, I would do worse if he touched you again.

I look down because if I keep looking at him, something humiliating will happen to my face.

He steps closer, taking my injured hand carefully. The same hand I used to hit someone. The same hand still trembling now that there’s nothing left to do with it.

“Does it hurt?” he asks.

“No.”

He presses lightly near my knuckles.

I hiss.

He gives me a look. “No?”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up. You punched him with your thumb tucked wrong?”

“I did not.”

“You kind of did.”

“I knocked him down.”

“And now your hand looks like a boiled dumpling.”

Despite everything, a laugh slips out of me.

Small. Shaky. Too close to a sob.

His expression shifts at the sound.

For a second, neither of us moves.

The street stretches around us, slick and shining. The guy groans behind him. His friend curses under his breath. The girls keep whispering near the doorway. But Kyung-jun doesn’t look back. Not once. He keeps my hand in his, thumb hovering near the swelling like he wants to touch and doesn’t trust himself to be gentle enough.

“We’re leaving,” he says.

This time I don’t argue.

He threads his fingers through mine, careful around the bruising, and starts walking. Not fast. Not running. Like he refuses to let anyone think we’re escaping. Like the street belongs to him and he’s simply done standing on that part of it. I follow half a step behind, staring at the back of his neck, the slope of his shoulders, the way his hand swallows mine.

My heart is doing something stupid.

Something young.

Something that makes me feel seventeen and reckless and alive, even though I am old enough to know better than mistaking violence for devotion. But this isn’t that. It isn’t just the fight. It isn’t the blood or the way he moved or the way the other guy folded under him like paper.

It’s that Kyung-jun knew.

He saw the pieces and understood the shape without making me explain it in front of everyone. He didn’t ask if I was telling the truth. He didn’t make me defend the old wound before believing it existed. He took one look at the boy with blood on his face and one look at me and decided where he stood.

With me.

The thought hits so hard I almost stumble.

No one has ever done that for me.

Not like that.

People have comforted me after. Told me he was a jerk. Told me I deserved better. Said all the clean, useless things people say when they want to help but don’t want to get dirty. Kyung-jun got dirty. Kyung-jun stood between me and the consequence of my own stupid fist, insulted the guy, fought him, won, and still called me an idiot like his hands weren’t shaking slightly when he checked mine.

We reach the corner.

The bar disappears behind the building, the noise dulling to a muffled pulse. The street here is quieter, darker, lit only by a flickering sign above a closed shop and the silver wash of moonlight caught in puddles along the curb. The air feels different away from everyone’s eyes. Thinner. More dangerous.

Kyung-jun stops walking first.

Or maybe I do.

I don’t know.

All I know is his hand starts to loosen from mine, and panic flares so suddenly in my chest that I move before I can swallow it down.

I grab the front of his jacket.

Both hands.

My injured knuckles scream, but I don’t care.

He barely has time to look down at me.

“What now—”

I pull him into me.

The kiss is not careful.

There is no softness at the beginning of it, no sweet hesitation, no pretty little pause where either of us pretends this is a normal way to say thank you. My mouth hits his like a confession thrown against a wall. Like if I don’t do it hard enough, he won’t understand. Like every ugly thing that happened inside the bar has become heat and pressure and his name trapped behind my teeth.

For half a second, he freezes.

Not because he doesn’t want it.

Because I think I surprise him.

I think that might be rare.

Then his hand catches my waist.

Hard.

The sound he makes is low and rough and disappears into my mouth, and then he is kissing me back like something in him has snapped clean through. His other hand comes up to the side of my neck, fingers sliding into my hair, not gentle enough to be sweet and not rough enough to hurt. Just enough to hold me there. Just enough to make it clear that if I started this, he is going to finish proving he can keep up.

My back hits the brick.

Cold shocks through my shirt.

His body follows, warm and solid and overwhelming, trapping me between the wall and him without making me feel trapped at all. My hands fist tighter in his jacket, pulling him closer even though there is nowhere left for him to go. He tastes like smoke and mint and the sharp edge of the drink he stole from me earlier. He smells like rain and cigarettes and Kyung-jun, something warm beneath all that trouble, something I’ve started recognizing before I see him.

He breaks the kiss just enough to breathe.

His forehead nearly touches mine.

His eyes are dark, unfocused in a way I have never seen them. Not drunk. Not out of control. Worse. Like control is still there, but barely, held between his teeth.

“You’re insane,” he says, voice rough.

My breath stutters.

I should say something clever. Something mean. Something that gives me back the upper hand.

Instead I stare at his mouth.

His lips are slightly swollen from mine.

That ruins me more than it should.

His gaze drops to my face, follows the line of my eyes, and his mouth curls.

Even now.

Even after everything.

That arrogant bastard.

“Oh,” he murmurs. “So now you’re quiet?”

Heat climbs my neck.

“Don’t start.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You knocked someone out.”

“He was annoying.”

“You always say that.”

“Because people are annoying.”

“You’re annoying.”

His smile sharpens, but something in his eyes stays fixed on me, too serious beneath the tease. “Yeah? You looked pretty happy about it a second ago.”

I pull him down again because I cannot survive his face when he says things like that.

This kiss is slower.

Worse because of it.

The first one was all collision, all panic and gratitude and the unbearable relief of being chosen in public and held in private. This one sinks. This one lets me feel everything I was trying to outrun. His thumb presses under my jaw, tilting my face up. His other hand spreads over my lower back, pulling me in until the heat of him steals the cold from the brick behind me. The city keeps moving somewhere beyond us, cars whispering over wet roads, distant voices rising and falling, but none of it reaches me cleanly anymore.

There is only his mouth.

His hands.

The way he kisses like he’s still mad. Like he’s mad at the guy, mad at me for getting hurt, mad at himself for caring this much, mad at the whole world for existing near me with teeth.

And underneath it, impossibly, there is something careful.

Not gentle in the obvious way. Kyung-jun does not kiss like someone trying to be harmless. But when my bruised hand shifts against his chest and I make the smallest sound into his mouth, he stops immediately.

Immediately.

He pulls back, breathing hard, eyes dropping.

“Your hand.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do.”

The words come out too fast.

He seems to realize it at the same time I do.

His jaw tightens. His eyes flick away for half a second, toward the empty street, like he can pretend the sentence went somewhere else if he refuses to look at me after saying it.

But I heard it.

My whole body heard it.

The ache in my hand becomes distant. The cold becomes distant. Even the old hurt, the ghost of the boy at the bar, shrinks into something small and pathetic at the edge of my mind. Because Kyung-jun is standing in front of me, hair mussed from my fingers, mouth bruised from kissing me, knuckles probably split from defending me, and he looks more uncomfortable admitting he cares about my hand than he did knocking a man unconscious.

Something tender and terrible gathers behind my ribs.

I hate it a little.

How much I want him.

How much worse it is than wanting. Wanting was easy. Wanting had been immediate, obvious, almost embarrassing from the beginning because of course I wanted him. Everyone with eyes would want him. But this is different. This is the kind of feeling that makes your body go quiet. The kind that makes you think of things you’re not ready to name. His jacket hanging over a chair in my room. His voice in the morning, still rough with sleep. His hand finding mine without looking. The terrifying idea that maybe I could become used to being protected and not hate myself for needing it.

My fingers loosen in his collar.

Not because I want to let go.

Because if I don’t, I might hold on too honestly.

He notices.

Of course he notices.

His face shifts, the teasing draining slowly from it. He studies me like he is trying to read something I have not given him permission to see. The flickering sign paints blue-white light over one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow, and for once he doesn’t look invincible. He looks young. Dangerous still. Beautiful in a way that makes my chest hurt. But young. Like maybe he is standing at the edge of something too and pretending he isn’t afraid of heights.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.

His tone tries for irritation.

It doesn’t land.

I swallow.

There are too many answers.

Because you believed me.

Because you didn’t laugh.

Because you were angry for me before I knew how to be angry for myself.

Because when you moved me behind you, I wanted to scream at you and cry into your chest at the same time.

Because no one has ever made me feel less stupid for having been hurt.

Because I think I’m falling in love with you, and it is the worst possible time to realize that with your mouth still close enough to ruin my life.

I say none of it.

I lift my chin instead. “Because you have blood on your cheek.”

He blinks.

Then scoffs. “That’s what you’re thinking about?”

I reach up with my uninjured hand and touch the corner of his face. There is a small smear there, dark under the streetlight. Not much. Barely anything. But my thumb brushes over it, and his expression stills.

The contact is so small after everything. Smaller than a kiss. Smaller than a fight. Smaller than the way his hand held mine as we walked away.

It feels more dangerous than all of it.

His eyes stay on mine.

The air between us tightens, quiet and unbearable.

Then he catches my wrist and lowers my hand, but he doesn’t let go.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he mutters.

“Like what?”

“Like you’re going to do something stupid again.”

My mouth curves despite the pressure in my chest. “You mean punch another guy?”

“No.” His gaze drops to my lips, then drags back up. “Worse.”

The word hangs there.

Worse.

Neither of us says what it means.

The night seems to hold its breath with us.

Then his phone buzzes in his pocket, ugly and real, and the spell cracks just enough for him to pull back. He ignores the phone. Of course he does. He looks down at my hand again, frowning like the swelling has personally insulted him.

“We’re getting ice,” he says.

“You’re bossy.”

“You’re injured.”

“You’re dramatic.”

“You punched a guy in a bar and then made out with me in an alley.”

“It’s not an alley.”

“It’s beside a closed convenience store. Very romantic.”

I laugh again, and this time it comes easier, though it still trembles at the edges.

Kyung-jun watches the sound leave me.

His face does something I almost miss. Something quiet. Something hungry in a different way than before. Like he wants to keep that sound but doesn’t know where to put it, so he hides it behind a scoff and turns his head.

“Come on,” he says.

But his hand finds mine again.

Carefully.

So carefully it makes my throat sting.

He doesn’t lace our fingers through the bruised hand this time. He takes my other one, warm palm against mine, thumb resting over my knuckles like an anchor. We start walking down the wet sidewalk, away from the bar, away from the boy bleeding into his friend’s hands, away from the version of me who once thought silence meant she deserved it.

Kyung-jun walks beside me, close enough that his shoulder brushes mine.

“By the way,” he says after a moment.

I glance up. “What?”

“You’re banned from fighting without me.”

I scoff. “You taught me.”

“Yeah. Bad decision.”

“I knocked him down.”

“You almost broke your hand.”

“But I knocked him down.”

He looks at me then, and there it is again—that almost-smile, sharp and unwilling, pride wearing the mask of annoyance.

“Yeah,” he says. “You did.”

The words settle over me warmer than they should.

I look away before he can see what they do to my face.

But his hand tightens around mine once, just once, like he knows anyway. Like he always knows the things I try hardest not to say. Like he has already seen the shape of my heart turning toward him in the dark and, for once in his stupid, violent, beautiful life, decided not to make fun of it.

Not yet.

[hye-jin91]

Mommy?

I don’t answer him because I know he wants me to.

That’s the whole point of it, really. Not peace. Not space. Not even the satisfaction of being right, though there had been a time earlier—somewhere between him saying the wrong thing with that flat, cutting little smirk and me deciding I was done wasting my voice on someone who acted like every feeling was a joke waiting to be stepped on—where being right had felt warm in my hands. Sharp, too. Like holding a match too close to the wood and pretending I didn’t know what would happen if I let it drop.

Now it is just the quiet.

The apartment has settled into that strange evening softness where everything looks gentler than it is. The sun has been gone for a while, but the last of it is still trapped in the windows, smeared thin and gold over the glass like something refusing to die properly. The living room lamp is on, turning the corners honey-warm, making the coffee table shine faintly, making the blanket over my legs look softer than my mood has any right to be. Outside, a car passes with its music low and thudding, the sound fading before I can catch the song. Inside, there is only the hum of the fridge, the occasional creak in the floorboards, and Wooyoung breathing like he’s trying to pretend he isn’t losing his mind.

He’s been pacing for ten minutes.

Not dramatically. Wooyoung would rather bite through his own tongue than look like he’s begging for attention. He’s too proud for that, too used to making people react first, too good at standing there with that lazy, cruel curve to his mouth like nothing touches him unless he decides it can. But I know him. I know the difference between him moving because he’s restless and him moving because he’s trying not to come apart at the seams. I know the way his steps get slower when he passes behind the couch, like he’s waiting for me to turn my head. I know the faint click of his tongue against his teeth when I don’t. I know the way he keeps dragging one hand through his hair, rough enough to leave it messier every time, dark strands falling over his forehead and making him look even more dangerous in the soft light, which is deeply unfair considering he’s the one who started this.

He stops near the kitchen doorway.

I keep looking at my phone.

I’m not reading anything. The screen has gone dark twice in my hand. My thumb moves like I’m scrolling, but the words blur into shapes and the shapes into nothing, because every nerve in my body is angled toward him. It is humiliating, the way silence makes you more aware of someone. The way not looking at him somehow turns him sharper. I can feel him everywhere without seeing him: the heat of him in the room, the impatience radiating off his body, the weight of his eyes on the side of my face like a hand he hasn’t earned the right to put there.

“You’re really doing this?” he says.

His voice comes out low, dry, already threaded with irritation. Not loud. Wooyoung doesn’t start loud when he’s annoyed. He starts like he’s bored. Like the whole thing is beneath him. Like he hasn’t been orbiting the couch for the last hour and a half pretending he came into the living room for water, then his charger, then nothing at all.

I blink at my phone.

He laughs once under his breath. No humor in it. Just air through his nose, sharp and mean.

“Wow,” he says. “Scary.”

I turn the phone over on my thigh, screen-down.

It is the smallest movement. Barely anything. But the room seems to catch on it, the way fabric catches on a nail. Wooyoung sees it. Of course he does. He sees everything when he wants to. He notices weaknesses the way other people notice weather.

His footsteps start again.

Closer this time.

“You know,” he says, dragging the words out, “most people stop acting like this after middle school.”

I stare at the blank television.

“Or they at least say something,” he adds. “Even something stupid. You’re good at that.”

My jaw tightens before I can stop it. There’s a pause. I hate that pause. I hate the way I can feel him smiling before I see it. Hate the little shift in the air behind me, that almost-silent recognition. He got something. Not enough. Not what he wants. But enough to make him hungry.

“Oh,” he says softly. “There she is.”

I do not move.

The couch dips slightly beside me, but he doesn’t sit. Not fully. He braces one hand on the back of it instead, leaning over just enough that his shadow falls across my shoulder. I can smell him now: clean soap, the faint bite of his cologne, something warm underneath that belongs only to him and makes my stomach pull tight before my mind can catch up enough to hate it.

“Still not talking?” he asks. I look down at my lap. His fingers tap once against the couch cushion behind me. Once. Twice. Then stop. “You’re really committed, huh?”

My silence sits between us like a lit fuse.

For a while, he lets it burn.

That is the thing about Wooyoung. People think he’s all temper because he can be cruel with his mouth, because he knows exactly how to make a room bend wrong, because there’s always that flash of violence under his skin like a blade in water. But he’s patient when it matters. Patient in the worst way. Not gentle-patient. Not kind-patient. Predator-patient. The kind that waits not because it’s calm, but because it knows waiting makes the moment worse.

He moves around the couch, slow enough that I track him through the edge of my vision no matter how hard I try not to. His shirt is wrinkled from earlier, sleeves pushed up his forearms, the veins in his hands faint under the warm light. There’s a bruise near his knuckle, old and yellowing at the edge. He always looks a little like trouble, even when he’s doing nothing. Especially when he’s doing nothing.

He stands in front of me now. I keep my gaze on the coffee table. His socks are just inside my line of sight. Black. One foot angled outward like he stopped too quickly.

“You know what’s funny?” he says.

Nothing about his voice sounds funny.

I count the fibers in the blanket. One loose thread curls near my knee. I press my thumb against it.

“You’re sitting there acting like you don’t care,” he continues, “but your face is doing that thing.”

My pulse gives one hard knock. He crouches slightly, trying to catch my eyes. I tilt my head away before he can. He exhales through his teeth, irritation finally slipping through the cracks.

“Ah, seriously. You’re so annoying.”

Good.

The thought appears before I can stop it, bright and petty and viciously pleased. Good. Let him hate it. Let him sit with the silence he deserves. Let him feel what it’s like to throw something sharp and get nothing back but a wall.

But the warmth of that satisfaction doesn’t last, because Wooyoung goes quiet again. And when he goes quiet, something in me braces.

He shifts closer.

Not touching. Not yet.

Just closer.

The lamp throws half his face into gold and leaves the other half in shadow, and he looks too pretty like that, which only makes everything worse. Wooyoung’s prettiness is never soft. It has edges. It has a cruel mouth and watchful eyes and that unbearable confidence of someone who knows exactly how much space he takes up. His hair falls forward when he leans down, and for a second I can see the faintest curve of amusement at his lips.

Then he says, mockingly, with the kind of careless cruelty he uses when he’s trying to make something ridiculous before it can become real—

“Fine, mommy. Stay mad.”

The room changes.

Not loudly. Nothing crashes. Nothing dramatic happens. The lamp doesn’t flicker, the windows don’t break, the world outside doesn’t stop moving. But inside my body, something drops straight through me, hot and sudden, like a stone into deep water.

My fingers still on the blanket.

That’s all.

Just that.

But it is enough.

Wooyoung sees.

Of course he sees.

His face freezes for half a second, the smirk caught halfway between mockery and something much sharper. His eyes narrow. Not in confusion exactly. More like he’s found a door where he thought there was a wall, and now he’s deciding whether to kick it open.

My throat goes dry.

I keep my face turned away, but the silence isn’t the same anymore. It has a pulse now. Mine. Too fast. Too loud. I can feel it in my neck, under my jaw, behind my ears. I can feel the heat trying to climb my face, and I hate it, hate the betrayal of my own skin, hate that one stupid word said in his stupid mocking voice could slip under all my careful control and pull a thread loose.

Wooyoung tilts his head.

“What?”

I hate him.

I hate the way his voice has changed.

It’s still teasing, still sharp, but slower now. Lower. Curious in that dangerous way that means he has no intention of letting this go. His gaze moves over my face with insulting precision, taking inventory of every tiny failure: the way I won’t look at him, the way I press my lips together, the way my hand has gone still against the blanket like moving might give away even more.

His mouth curves.

“Oh.”

No.

No, absolutely not.

I turn my face farther away, but he shifts with me, bending down so his eyes are level with mine even though I’m still refusing to give them what they want.

“What?” he says again, softer now, meaner because of it. “You want me to call you that?”

My stomach twists.

I should say something. I should snap at him, shove his shoulder, tell him to shut up, tell him he’s disgusting, tell him anything that might make this less obvious. But the silence I built around myself has turned into a trap, and now he is standing outside it with his hands in his pockets and that awful, bright look in his eyes like he’s decided he likes watching me panic quietly.

I swallow.

His gaze drops to my throat.

When he looks back up, the smirk is worse.

“Seriously?”

I glare at the coffee table hard enough to burn through it.

He laughs under his breath, but it’s not the same laugh as before. This one is quieter. Warmer. A little stunned, like he can’t believe I’ve handed him something this good. Like he’s delighted and irritated and already drunk on it.

“You’re unbelievable,” he murmurs.

I dig my nails into my palm under the blanket.

He takes one step closer, then another, until his knees nearly brush mine. The air between us narrows to almost nothing. I can see his hands now, loose at his sides, fingers flexing once like he’s stopping himself from reaching too fast. That restraint makes it worse. Wooyoung has always been sharper when he’s holding back. It gives every movement weight. Every breath threat.

“You’ve been sitting here for hours,” he says, “acting like you’re some kind of stone statue. Ignoring me like you’re so above it.” His hand comes down on the armrest beside me. Not touching me. Close enough that I feel the couch shift. “And that’s what gets you?”

I close my eyes for half a second.

Mistake.

The darkness makes him closer.

When I open them again, he’s already lowering himself, one knee touching the floor between my feet, then the other. The sight of it punches the air out of my chest in a way I refuse to let show. Wooyoung on his knees should look like surrender. It doesn’t. Not with his shoulders broad in the low light, not with his hands planted on either side of me, caging me in against the couch, not with that glittering expression on his face like he has never surrendered to anything in his life and doesn’t plan to start with me.

He leans in.

I press back into the cushion.

“Where are you going?” he asks.

Nowhere. There is nowhere to go. The couch is behind me, his arms are beside me, his face is too close, and every inch of him seems designed to ruin the discipline I have been clinging to all evening.

His eyes move over mine.

“Still quiet?” I hold his stare for exactly two seconds before looking away. His smile sharpens. “Cute.”

I hate the word out of his mouth. I hate how it lands, not sweet, not soft, but like a flick against bare skin.

“I didn’t know you were this easy,” he says. My eyes cut back to his before I can stop them.

There.

That’s the reaction he wanted.

Something lights in him, immediate and wicked.

“Oh, now you look at me.”

I say nothing.

His face inches closer. “Say something.”

I don’t.

“Come on.” His voice dips, almost coaxing, except Wooyoung never really coaxes. He corners. “You were so loud earlier.”

My fingers curl around the edge of the blanket.

He watches my hand. Then his eyes drag back to my face.

“What happened?” he murmurs. “Did mommy get shy?”

Heat floods me so fast I almost flinch.

His smile turns satisfied.

“That one,” he says quietly. “That one was worse.”

I can’t breathe right.

The room is too warm now. The lamp is too bright. The blanket over my legs is suddenly unbearable, too soft, too heavy, trapping the heat underneath it. Wooyoung’s cologne is everywhere. His voice is everywhere. The word is everywhere, ridiculous and embarrassing and somehow not ridiculous at all when he says it like that—mocking, yes, but not distant. Not careless anymore. Like he’s testing the shape of it against my skin. Like he’s realized it doesn’t make him smaller to say it. It makes me easier to read.

And Wooyoung loves control. He loves finding the weak point. He loves pressing his thumb there and pretending he’s just curious about how much it hurts.

“You’re really not going to talk?” he asks. I stare past him. He hums, low in his throat. “Fine.”

One of his hands lifts from the couch.

I go very still.

He doesn’t touch my face. That would be too direct, maybe too easy. Instead, he catches the edge of the blanket near my knee and slowly pulls it aside, not enough to be fall off my legs, just enough to make the air touch me differently. A small, stupid thing. Barely anything. But my body reacts like it matters. My breath catches before I can bury it.

Wooyoung’s eyes flick up.

“Oh,” he says softly. “You’re trying so hard.”

I turn my face away again, but he follows, leaning closer until his mouth is near my ear.

“Is this what you wanted?” he whispers, and the mockery is still there, curled around every syllable. “You sit here ignoring me all night, and I’m supposed to figure it out myself?”

I bite the inside of my cheek.

His breath brushes my neck.

“Should’ve just said so, mommy.”

My whole body betrays me.

It’s not much. A shiver, small and violent, slipping down my spine before I can lock it down. But he feels it because he’s too close not to. His hand braces harder against the couch beside my hip, and for one suspended second he doesn’t say anything.

Then his lips touch the side of my neck.

Warm. Slow. Almost mean in its patience.

My eyes flutter before I can stop them, and I hate myself for it so deeply that my nails dig into my palm again, grounding myself in the tiny sting. Wooyoung notices. He always notices. His other hand finds my wrist, not forcing it open, not pinning me, just closing around it with enough firmness to say he could. His thumb presses lightly over the tense curve of my knuckles.

“Relax,” he mutters against my skin. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

The softness of that almost ruins me more than the teasing.

Because that is him too, unfortunately. Not gentle in any clean, easy way. Not romantic in a way that belongs in poems or flowers or boys who know how to apologize before making things worse. But there is care threaded through him like wire, hidden under sarcasm, under attitude, under the way he turns everything tender into something sharp enough to survive being seen. He won’t say he’s sorry the right way. He’ll hover. He’ll pace. He’ll call me annoying because he missed my voice after two hours. He’ll kneel in front of me and mock me until I crack, then catch my hand before I hurt myself pretending I haven’t.

His lips press to my neck again, firmer this time. Finding the spot that makes my head spin. My breath leaves me quietly. He hears it. Of course he hears it.

“Still mad?” he murmurs.

Yes.

No.

I don’t know.

The anger is still there, somewhere. It hasn’t vanished. It sits low in me, a coal under ash, remembering every careless word from earlier, every second he acted like I was being dramatic, every flash of that awful grin when he thought he could win the argument by making me look ridiculous. But now his mouth is moving under my jaw, slow enough to make my thoughts loosen, and his hand is warm around my wrist, and the whole room feels like it has tilted toward him.

I keep my mouth shut.

Wooyoung huffs a laugh against my skin.

“Stubborn.”

His lips skim lower, to the place where my neck meets my shoulder. My shirt has slipped slightly from all my shifting, leaving a narrow line of skin exposed, and he finds it like he knew it would be there. Like he has been waiting. He kisses once, then pauses, letting the silence stretch around the heat of it.

“You know,” he says, voice muffled against me, “this would be more fun if you admitted it.”

I stare at the ceiling.

The plaster above us is washed amber from the lamp. There’s a tiny crack near the corner, thin as a vein. I focus on it like it can save me.

His mouth curves against my shoulder.

“No?” he asks. “Nothing?”

I don’t answer.

His teeth graze lightly over the skin—not enough to hurt, just enough to make my fingers twitch.

The hand around my wrist tightens slightly.

“Careful,” he says, and there’s a smile in his voice now, insufferable and pleased. “You keep reacting anyway.”

I turn my head sharply to glare at him.

Bad idea.

His face is right there.

Too close.

His eyes are dark in the lamplight, all the earlier irritation burned down into something more focused. There is still humor there, but it isn’t light. It never is with him. It’s the kind of humor that cuts because he knows exactly where to aim. His mouth is slightly parted, his lips warm-looking from being against my neck, and I hate that I notice. I hate that he can probably tell I notice.

He looks from my eyes to my mouth.

Then back.

“You want to yell at me so bad,” he says.

I press my lips together.

He smiles.

“But you won’t.”

His thumb strokes once over my wrist, and the motion is so small it almost doesn’t count. Except it does. It counts because he does it while looking at me like he’s waiting for me to fall apart one breath at a time.

“Because then I win?” he guesses.

I narrow my eyes.

His grin flickers wider.

“There it is.”

I want to shove him. I want to kiss him. I want to make him sit there and suffer for another three hours just to prove I can. I want him to say it again so badly that the wanting itself feels like a confession.

Wooyoung leans closer, his mouth near mine but not touching.

“So what now?” he asks softly. “You gonna keep pretending you hate this?”

My breath catches again.

His eyes flash.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Thought so.” Then he kisses the corner of my mouth. Barely. A cruel little almost-kiss. There and gone.

My head turns before I can stop it, chasing the contact by half an inch, and the moment I realize what I’ve done, my whole body locks with humiliation.

Wooyoung goes still.

For once, he doesn’t laugh right away.

The silence after it is worse than laughter. It’s thick, stunned, alive. I can feel my heartbeat in my fingertips. His hand is still around my wrist. His knee is still pressed into the carpet between my feet. His mouth is still close enough that if either of us breathed wrong, it would become something else.

Then his expression shifts.

Slowly.

Devastatingly.

“Oh,” he says.

I glare at him, but there is no power in it now. Not enough. Not with the heat in my face and the betrayal of my own body still hanging between us.

He tilts his head, eyes bright.

“That was embarrassing.”

My free hand moves before I think, aiming for his shoulder, but he catches it easily, like he expected it, like he wanted it. His fingers close around my other wrist, and now both my hands are held loosely in his, not trapped exactly, not enough that I couldn’t pull away if I truly wanted to, but enough that the shape of it sends another dangerous wave of warmth through me.

His grin turns vicious.

“Ah, don’t hit me now,” he says. “I’m being nice.” I give him a look that says he has never been nice a day in his life. He understands it perfectly. “Okay,” he admits, leaning in until his forehead almost touches mine. “I’m being nice for me.”

That almost gets me. The laugh rises before I can kill it, tiny and breathless, barely more than air. But he hears. His whole face changes.

Not softened exactly. Wooyoung doesn’t soften cleanly. It’s more like something guarded in him loosens by one notch, something satisfied and warm flashing under the arrogance. He loves winning, yes. He loves getting a reaction. But more than that, he loves pulling sound out of me after hours of silence. Loves knowing he can still reach me even when I’ve locked every door.

“There,” he says, quieter. I look away, but it’s too late. He’s already seen it.

His mouth brushes my cheek. Then the line of my jaw. Then the side of my neck again, slower than before, as if the tiny crack in my silence has made him bolder. Or maybe gentler. With Wooyoung, the two are hard to separate. His hands slide from my wrists to the couch on either side of my waist, caging me again, but there is no rush in him now. No frantic need to end the game. He has realized the game itself is the point.

“You’re so dramatic,” he murmurs against my throat. I close my eyes. “You piss me off,” he adds. My eyes open.

He lifts his head, looking at me with that familiar flat annoyance, like I am personally responsible for every emotion he has ever been forced to experience.

“You know that?” he says. “You just sit here, not saying anything, acting like I’m supposed to be normal about it.”

I stare at him.

His jaw shifts.

“You think I like that?”

The words land differently than the teasing.

He seems to realize it at the same time I do, because his mouth twists, annoyed with himself now. He glances away, tongue pressing into his cheek, like he regrets letting even that much out. Like admitting he hated the silence feels more humiliating than anything he’s done to me.

The room goes soft around the edges.

For a second, the tension changes shape.

Still hot. Still close. But something else too. Something with weight. Something that has been sitting under the argument all evening, under every sharp word and every deliberate silence. The ugly little truth that neither of us is good at this. Not really. Not when it matters. He makes things into jokes because sincerity feels like standing bare-handed in front of a knife. I go quiet because silence is the only weapon I trust not to shake. We hurt each other in stupid, childish ways, then orbit the damage pretending we’re not both waiting for the other to come closer.

Wooyoung looks back at me. His expression is guarded now, but his eyes aren’t. I almost say his name.

Almost.

He sees that too.

Something flickers in his face, quick and hungry and relieved.

But instead of asking gently, instead of letting the moment become too honest too fast, he leans back in with that terrible little smirk and says, “You gonna forgive me, mommy, or what?”

The air punches out of me.

And just like that, the softness catches fire again.

I shove at his shoulder, but there’s no force behind it, not enough, and he knows it. He laughs, low and delighted, catching himself with one hand on the couch while the other slides to my waist. Not grabbing. Just resting there, warm and certain, his thumb pressing lightly through the fabric of my shirt.

“There she is,” he says. I still don’t speak. He sighs like I’m exhausting him, but his eyes are alive. “Still?” He shakes his head. “You’re really trying to kill me.”

Good, I think again, but this time the thought has no teeth. It dissolves almost instantly when his mouth finds my shoulder, when his fingers curl slightly at my waist, when the word comes again, lower now, dragged against my skin like he’s learned exactly how to make it unbearable.

“Mommy.”

My breath breaks. Not loud. But enough. Wooyoung lifts his head. The look on his face is criminal.

“Oh, you’re done,” he says.

My face burns.

He leans in, nose brushing lightly along my jaw, voice dropping to a murmur meant only for the small space between us.

“You can keep pretending,” he says. “I don’t care.”

He kisses just under my ear.

“I’ll figure it out.”

Another kiss, lower.

“You’re not that hard to read.”

I grip the couch cushion beside me, needing something solid, something that isn’t him. The fabric bunches under my fingers. The room feels too small for the amount of heat inside it. Every sound becomes magnified: the soft shift of his sweatpants against the carpet, my uneven breathing, his quiet laugh when I fail to hide it, the distant rush of traffic outside like the rest of the world has the nerve to keep going.

His mouth moves slowly over my neck, then pauses.

“Say something,” he murmurs.

I don’t.

His lips curve against my skin.

“Fine.”

He kisses my shoulder again, lingering there, and when he speaks, his voice is almost lazy.

“Stay quiet.”

Another kiss.

“I like watching you lose anyway.”

My eyes close.

It should not feel like this. That is all I can think. It should not feel so good to be known in such an irritating, precise, ruthless way. It should not make my chest ache that he can be so smug and so careful at the same time, that his mouth can mock while his hands keep checking the tension in my body, that every time I go too still his thumb slows, his pressure eases, his eyes flicker up to make sure I’m still with him. He is not soft. He is not easy. He is not the kind of boy who turns love into something clean.

But he loves like he fights.

Too close. Too stubborn. Too proud to admit when something matters until his whole body has already given him away.

And I’m no better, sitting here wrapped in my silence like it can save me, when all it has done is make every unsaid thing louder.

Wooyoung pulls back just enough to look at me.

His hair is messier now, falling over his eyes. His mouth is curved, but there is a question beneath it, hidden so well someone else might miss it. I don’t. I see the thin thread of restraint in his jaw. The way his hand stays at my waist but doesn’t pull unless I move first. The way his eyes search mine like he’s pretending this is still just teasing when really he is waiting for permission in the only language he knows how to speak.

I could keep punishing him. I could hold the silence between my teeth until it cuts us both. Instead, I lift my hand and push his hair out of his eyes.

It is not forgiveness.

Not fully.

It is too quiet for that, too careful, too full of things I’m still not ready to hand over.

But his face stills under my touch.

For one second, Wooyoung looks almost caught.

Then he hides it under a scoff.

“Finally,” he mutters. “I was starting to think you died.” My hand slides down and flicks his forehead. He jerks back, offended. “Yah.”

The sound that leaves me is small, unwilling, almost a laugh.

His eyes sharpen instantly.

“Oh, so you do remember how to make noise.” I glare at him. His grin returns, slower this time. “Good,” he says.

Then he leans forward again, hands braced on either side of me, close enough that his mouth hovers just above mine. The whole room holds its breath. The warm lamp, the cooling windows, the blanket tangled around my knees, the ruined silence between us—all of it narrows to this: Wooyoung on his knees in front of me, still smirking, still impossible, still watching me like he wants to take me apart just to learn exactly how to put me back together.

His voice drops.

“Now say you’re still mad.” My lips part. He waits. I almost give in.

Almost.

Then I close my mouth again.

Wooyoung’s smile turns slow and wicked.

“Fine,” he murmurs, brushing his lips against my jaw one more time. “I can work with that.”

My fingers tighten against the couch cushion. He watches them. “See?” he says softly. “You do that every time.”

I force my hand to relax. Too late.

Wooyoung makes a quiet sound under his breath, half laugh, half scoff, the kind of sound he makes when someone has done something stupid and he’s enjoying it too much to let them live. His hand lifts from the cushion and comes to my knee, not grabbing, not yet, just resting there through the blanket, warm and heavy enough that my whole body knows exactly where he is touching me. The pressure is small. Almost nothing. But my breath shifts anyway, shallow at first, then caught somewhere behind my ribs when his thumb moves once.

Barely.

A slow stroke over fabric.

My eyes flick down despite myself.

His hand looks too real there. Too intimate in the golden dimness of the living room, the blanket wrinkled beneath his palm, my knee held under him like something he has already decided belongs in the map of the evening. His fingers spread slightly. Strong hands. Bruised knuckles. The kind of hands that always look like they’ve been in a fight or are about to start one.

I hate how much I notice.

Wooyoung’s voice drops.

“Still not talking?” I look away. His thumb moves again. “Fine.”

He leans in and kisses my neck, slow and lingering, right beneath my jaw where the skin is too sensitive and too honest. My eyelids lower before I can stop them. The silence I built around myself trembles. I feel it like glass under pressure, feel every careful wall in me strain when his mouth opens slightly against my skin, not enough to be crude, just enough to make warmth spill down my spine and settle low in my stomach.

I press my lips together harder.

“Ah,” he murmurs against my throat. “That’s cute.”

I glare at the far wall.

His fingers curl around my knee now, firmer, the teasing patience of it making something in me twist. He doesn’t pull yet. He just stays there, mouth moving lazily along the side of my neck, kissing like he has all the time in the world and every intention of using it badly.

“You really think biting your lip is going to help?” he asks. I hadn’t realized I was doing it. I stop. He laughs softly. “There you go.”

My face burns.

He lifts his head enough to look at me, and the sight of him that close almost makes me break for real. His hair is falling into his eyes, mouth faintly flushed, expression smug in a way that makes me want to slap him and drag him closer at the same time. It is unbearable, being looked at like that. Like he is entertained by me. Like he is fond of me. Like he knows exactly how angry I am and likes me more for it.

“You’re mad,” he says, even though he isn’t supposed to say it, even though the whole point is that neither of us names what is sitting between us.

I stare at him.

His smile turns sharper.

“But you’re not that mad.”

My hand moves before I decide to move it, pushing at his shoulder, and this time he catches my wrist before I can pull away. His grip is quick, easy, not hard enough to hurt, but enough to stop me. Enough to remind me that he has been letting me keep my silence because he wanted to see how long I could hold it, not because he didn’t know how to ruin it.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish,” he says.

The words are low. Almost bored.

They burn anyway.

I swallow, and his eyes drop to my throat.

There is something terrible about the way he sees everything. Something unfair. I want to be unreadable to him. I want to be stone, ice, glass, anything clear and cold and impossible to touch. Instead I am sitting on the couch with my wrist in his hand, my pulse racing under his fingers, my body betraying me in tiny, humiliating pieces while he kneels between my knees and smiles like he has been waiting all night to prove I was never as untouchable as I wanted to be.

His thumb presses lightly over the inside of my wrist. He feels it. The pulse there. Fast. Too fast. His expression changes. Just a little.

The mockery doesn’t leave him, not really. It never fully does. But something underneath it goes darker, more focused, the teasing sharpening into intent. He brings my wrist to his mouth and kisses the inside of it once, right over the place where my heartbeat is running wild.

The sound I make is tiny.

Almost nothing.

Not a moan. Not even close. Just a broken breath, barely there, gone as soon as it arrives.

But Wooyoung stills like I screamed.

His eyes lift to mine. Oh no. The silence after it is enormous. Then he smiles. Slowly.

“Was that you?” I look away so fast it’s pathetic. His laugh is quiet and mean and delighted. “No, no.” He leans closer, still holding my wrist. “Don’t hide now.”

I tug lightly, but he doesn’t let go.

“Come on,” he says. “Do it again.” I shoot him a look that should have killed him. He grins. “There she is.”

He presses another kiss to my wrist, slower this time, his mouth warm against the thin skin there. My fingers twitch. I try to pull back again, not really because I want him to stop, but because the feeling is too exposed, too precise, too much like he has found a place on my body that answers for me.

Wooyoung’s other hand slides from my knee to the edge of the blanket. I hold my breath. He pauses.

His eyes stay on my face as he slowly drags the blanket down my legs. The fabric slips over my thighs, my knees, pooling messily around my ankles, and the sudden coolness of the room hits my skin like a secret being uncovered. I don’t move. I don’t speak. But my body goes tense in a way he can feel, because he is too close, because his hand is still holding my wrist, because his eyes are on me like the sight alone is enough to make him forget whatever cruel little joke he was going to say next.

For half a second, he says nothing. That is worse. The quiet look. The one he tries not to have. Then he clicks his tongue, like he’s annoyed at himself for staring.

“You’re really testing me,” he mutters.

My stomach flips.

He lets go of my wrist only to slide both hands to my thighs, palms warm against bare skin. Firm enough that I feel the shape of each finger, slow enough that I feel the restraint behind it. His thumbs move in small circles near my knees, patient and deliberate, coaxing without kindness, teasing without hurry.

I forget, for one dangerous second, that I am supposed to be ignoring him.

My head tilts back against the couch.

His eyes sharpen.

“Oh?”

I snap my head forward again.

Too late.

Wooyoung laughs under his breath, leaning in until his mouth hovers above my knee.

“You keep making it too easy.”

I glare at him.

He kisses my knee.

It is ridiculous. It should not matter. It is just a kiss through warm lamplight on a quiet evening in a living room that suddenly feels too small to survive us. But his mouth lingers, and his hands are on my thighs, and the tenderness of the place he chooses makes my chest ache before the heat even has a chance to swallow it.

Then he looks up at me from under his lashes.

“Mommy.”

My breath catches hard enough this time that I can’t hide it. His smile appears against my skin.

“There,” he murmurs. “That one.”

I close my eyes.

He kisses higher, just above my knee, and my hands fist in the cushion again. Every part of me feels too awake. The air on my legs, the weight of his palms, the heat of his mouth, the sound of his breathing when he pauses between kisses. He isn’t rushing. Of course he isn’t. Wooyoung is too mean to give me the mercy of speed. He is going to drag this out because he knows I asked for silence and now silence is the thing choking me.

His mouth moves to the inside of my thigh. My whole body goes still. He feels it immediately. He lifts his head. “Look at you.”

I do not look at him.

His fingers tighten slightly, not enough to hurt, just enough to anchor me.

“You’re holding your breath.” I wasn’t. I am now. He grins. “Stupid.”

I open my eyes just to glare at him properly.

He looks pleased.

“Breathe,” he says, like an order, then lowers his mouth again.

This time, when he kisses the inside of my thigh, the sound catches in my throat before I can kill it. Small. Broken. Embarrassing enough that my face flames, that my hand flies up to cover my mouth as if the damage hasn’t already been done.

Wooyoung stops. Very slowly, he looks up. His eyes are dark. “Move your hand.”

I don’t.

His mouth curves, but his voice loses some of the teasing. “Don’t do that.”

My fingers press harder over my lips.

His gaze stays on my face for a long second. Then he rises slightly, still kneeling, one hand coming up to my wrist again. This time he doesn’t yank. He doesn’t force. He just wraps his fingers around my wrist and pulls gently, steadily, waiting until I let him lower my hand from my mouth.

The second it is gone, I feel naked.

More naked than I am.

Wooyoung keeps hold of my wrist, pinning it lightly against the couch beside my hip.

“There,” he says softly. “Was that so hard?”

I could spit at him.

I don’t.

His thumb strokes over my wrist again, and the gesture is almost sweet. Almost. Except his mouth is still curved like he’s waiting to ruin me, and his other hand is on my thigh, and his body is settled between my legs like he has no intention of moving until I break properly.

“You wanted to be quiet,” he murmurs. His lips brush the inside of my thigh again. My breath shudders. “So be quiet.”

Another kiss.

“But don’t cheat.”

My eyes flutter.

He looks up.

“Hands down.”

My fingers curl against the cushion, desperate for something to hold on to that isn’t him. The couch fabric digs into my nails. The lamp hums faintly. Outside, somewhere far away, someone laughs on the street, carefree and distant and belonging to a world that has no idea I am being dismantled one careful kiss at a time.

Wooyoung drags his mouth slowly back up my thigh, stopping before he reaches anywhere too sensitive, because he knows the denial is worse. His breath warms my skin. His teeth graze once, featherlight, and I jolt before I can stop myself.

He laughs.

“There it is again.”

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Don’t close your eyes,” he says.

I open them, furious.

His grin is instant. “Good girl.”

The words hit harder than they should.

And he sees that too.

His eyebrows lift slightly, amusement flashing. “Oh? That too?”

I want the couch to swallow me whole.

“No,” I snap. The word comes out before I can stop it. Rough. Breathless. Ruined. Wooyoung freezes. Then his whole face lights with victory.

“Oh my God,” he says, almost laughing. “She speaks.” I regret everything. I try to pull my wrist free, but he holds on, grinning like I’ve just handed him the whole world and he plans to be absolutely unbearable about it.

“That’s what did it?” he says. “Not the apology I didn’t give you. Not me kneeling here. That?”

I glare at him, cheeks burning.

His hand slides higher on my thigh, still careful, still watching me.

“You’re so easy to bully.”

“I hate you,” I say. It is supposed to come out sharp. It comes out too soft.

Wooyoung’s grin falters for a fraction of a second, just long enough for something warm to move behind his eyes. Then he hides it, like always, behind that insufferable mouth.

“No, you don’t.” His lips press to my thigh again. I inhale sharply. He murmurs against my skin, “You’re literally shaking.”

“I’m cold.” He lifts his head and gives me the flattest look I have ever seen.

The absurdity of it nearly makes me laugh again, but the sound turns into something else when his thumb brushes the crease where my hip meets my thigh, too close, not close enough, the kind of touch that makes thought slip. My head falls back before I can stop it. My lips part. For one second, I am nothing but sensation: warm light, rough breath, his hands, his mouth, the unbearable waiting.

Wooyoung goes still, watching.

He likes seeing it. That is the problem. He likes seeing the exact moment my control thins. He likes the proof that he can make the silence fail, that he can pull me out of whatever cold little fortress I built and leave me here, flushed and breathing too hard and unable to pretend I don’t want him closer.

His voice drops.

“Say it again.”

I swallow. “What?”

“That you hate me.” My eyes open. He is looking at me like he already knows I won’t be able to make it sound true twice. “Say it,” he murmurs, kissing the side of my knee again, almost lazily. “Come on. Be mean.”

I stare at him.

His smile turns wicked.

“Or did mommy lose her attitude?”

My mouth opens.

Nothing comes out.

Wooyoung laughs, low and quiet, and the sound trails heat over every inch of my skin.

“Yeah,” he says. “That’s what I thought.”

Then his hands slide under my thighs and pull me closer to the edge of the couch.

The movement is sudden enough that I gasp, my hands flying to his shoulders. He stops immediately—not far, not gone, but still enough that the whole room seems to wait with him. His eyes flick over my face, checking. Not asking out loud. He rarely gives care the dignity of language. But it is there in the pause, in the way his grip loosens instantly, in the way the teasing drops just enough for me to see the seriousness underneath.

My fingers tighten on his shoulders. Not pushing away. Holding. His gaze lowers to my hands, then returns to my face. The corner of his mouth lifts.

“Oh,” he murmurs. “So now you touch me.”

“Shut up.”

His smile spreads.

There is something golden and dangerous about the way he looks when he wins like this. Like a boy who has spent his whole life turning every soft thing into a weapon and has just realized this one won’t cut him if he holds it right. His hands settle under my thighs again, firmer now, pulling me just enough that my hips shift toward him and my breath breaks in my chest.

He hears.

He leans in.

“Make me,” he says.

I should answer. I should have something sharp ready. Something clever enough to wipe that smirk off his face.

But his mouth finds my neck again, and the words disappear.

This kiss is different.

Not gentle. Not slow in the same teasing way. It has more hunger under it now, more pressure, his lips moving along my throat like he’s done waiting for tiny reactions and wants the whole thing. My hands grip his shoulders, first to steady myself, then because I need somewhere to put the force of what he’s doing to me. His hair brushes my jaw. His hand slides to my waist, fingers pressing into the softness there, and when he says the word again, it is no longer a joke.

Not fully.

“Mommy,” he murmurs against my neck.

I make a sound.

This one is not small enough to deny.

It slips out of me before I can catch it, soft and broken and humiliating in the warm quiet of the room. My whole body goes hot with it. I turn my face away, but Wooyoung’s hand comes up—not rough, not forcing—just two fingers under my chin, guiding me back toward him.

His eyes are fixed on mine.

“There,” he says, voice low. “That wasn’t hard.”

I breathe through my nose, shaky.

He watches me for a second, and the teasing flickers again, but beneath it there is something almost reverent. Like he likes the sound more than he expected to. Like it does something to him too. Something he will die before admitting honestly.

So of course he ruins it.

“Honestly,” he says, “you should’ve started with that. Would’ve saved us, what, three hours?”

I smack his shoulder.

He laughs, catching my hand and pressing it back against the couch beside me.

“Careful,” he says. “You’re getting violent.”

“You deserved it.”

“Probably.” That, somehow, is the closest thing to an apology he has offered all night. It lands between us quietly. My breath slows for half a second. His eyes hold mine. The smugness softens at the edges.

“I pissed you off,” he says. Not a question. I stare at him. His mouth twitches, but he doesn’t joke this time. “I know.”

The heat in me shifts, deepens into something heavier. Not gone. Not cooled. Just tangled now with the ache that has been sitting under the anger from the beginning. Because he does know. That is the worst part. Wooyoung knows exactly when he has gone too far. He just hates admitting it so much that he’ll circle the truth for hours, throwing jokes and smirks and sharp little words, until eventually he is on his knees in front of me with his mouth on my skin, confessing in fragments because whole sentences would kill him.

“You’re still annoying,” he adds. I stare at him. He shrugs slightly. “What? I’m being honest.”

The laugh tears out of me before I can stop it. Small, breathless, not fully happy but close enough to hurt. Wooyoung watches it happen, and for one bare second, his face changes again.

There he is, I think.

Not the mouth. Not the attitude. Not the boy who mocks every feeling before it can touch him.

Him.

The one who paced for hours because silence scared him more than fighting. The one who gets mean when he doesn’t know how to say stay. The one who looks at me now like my laugh is something he dragged out of deep water and doesn’t want anyone else to see.

Then his expression shutters, because he catches himself being too obvious.

He leans forward and bites lightly at the side of my neck.

I gasp.

He smiles against my skin.

“Don’t get sentimental.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

“I hate your face.”

“No, you don’t.”

I hate that he says it so easily.

I hate more that he’s right.

His mouth trails lower, over my collarbone now, and my hands slide into his hair before I can think better of it. The strands are soft between my fingers, messy from his own restless hands earlier, and when I tug lightly—not enough to hurt, just enough to make him feel it—Wooyoung goes still.

The reaction is instant. Quiet. Dangerous. His fingers tighten at my waist. I look down at him. His eyes lift slowly.

For once, neither of us speaks.

The air turns heavy again, not with teasing this time, but with the knowledge of what my hand in his hair has done. His breathing changes. So does mine. His jaw works once, like he is biting back some comment, maybe because he knows if he says the wrong thing now I might actually make him suffer for it.

He smiles.

“You’re learning,” he murmurs. I tug his hair again. A sound leaves him this time, low and cut off, not quite a laugh, not quite a groan. The satisfaction that moves through me is so bright it almost makes me dizzy.

Wooyoung sees that too.

His eyes narrow.

“Don’t look so proud.”

I don’t answer.

His mouth curves.

“Ah,” he says softly. “So you like control too.”

My fingers tighten in his hair.

His hand slides from my waist to my hip, holding me in place, and the weight of it makes my breath catch again. He leans closer until his lips brush mine, not kissing yet, just hovering there while the silence between us trembles on the edge of breaking.

“You can pull my hair all you want,” he murmurs. “But don’t forget who made you talk.”

My stomach flips.

He kisses me then.

Finally.

And there is nothing careful about the first second of it.

His mouth crashes into mine like he has been holding back too long, like every minute of pacing, every ignored question, every glare and almost-laugh and swallowed sound has built into this one point of contact. I kiss him back before pride can stop me. My hands tighten in his hair, and he makes that sound again, deeper this time, against my mouth. It goes through me like heat lightning.

He pulls back just enough to speak.

“See?” he breathes. “Was that so hard?”

I kiss him again to shut him up.

He smiles into it.

Of course he does.

But then his hand slides up my side, slow and firm, and the smile fades into something more serious when my breath breaks against his mouth. He touches me like he is still teasing, still playing, but there is hunger underneath the patience now. His thumb brushes the curve of my ribs, his palm settling against my waist, his other hand anchoring my thigh. Every touch asks and takes at the same time, rough around the edges but never careless. He is too aware of me for careless. Too locked in. Too focused on every sound I make and every one I try to swallow.

When he pulls away, his lips are swollen.

His eyes drop to my mouth.

“Again,” he says. It sounds like an order. It also sounds like need. I hate him for that. For making both sound the same.

I kiss him again. Slower this time. Worse because of it.

His mouth softens for half a second, just enough to make my chest ache, before his teeth catch lightly at my lower lip and the ache turns sharp. I gasp, and he uses it, kissing deeper, one hand sliding up to the back of my neck. His fingers thread into my hair, not pulling yet, just holding me there as if he doesn’t trust me not to disappear back into silence if he lets go.

And maybe I would.

Maybe I am still angry enough to try.

Maybe I am not.

He breaks the kiss and drags his mouth back to my neck, breathing hard now, the teasing in his voice roughened at the edges.

“You’re making noise now,” he murmurs. I close my eyes. His hand tightens in my hair. “Don’t hide.”

My eyes open again.

He looks pleased.

“Good.”

I glare weakly.

He kisses the glare off my mouth, short and mean and affectionate in the most Wooyoung way possible.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says.

“Like what?”

“Like you still think you’re winning.”

My lips part.

He leans down, mouth near my ear.

“You lost the second you made that little sound.”

The heat that rushes through me is instant and unforgiving.

I make the mistake of shifting under him.

His eyes darken.

“Oh,” he says quietly.

His hand on my thigh moves higher, then stops again, waiting at the edge of what we both know comes next. The pause stretches. My body feels suspended inside it, every nerve leaning toward his hand, every thought narrowing to the maddening fact that he is waiting for me to react before he gives me more.

I hate the power he has in this moment.

I hate the power I have too, because when I look at him and don’t move away, when my fingers curl again in his hair and pull him closer instead of pushing him back, something in his face breaks for just a heartbeat.

Not visibly to anyone else. But I see it. The hunger underneath the mockery. The relief underneath the arrogance. The way he wants so badly it almost makes him angry.

He swallows.

Then the smirk comes back, thinner now, strained at the edges.

“You sure?” he asks, almost too quietly.

It is the most honest thing he has said all night.

I answer by kissing him.

His hand moves.

And this time, when my breath turns into a sound against his mouth, Wooyoung doesn’t tease immediately. He exhales sharply, forehead dropping against mine for one suspended second, like the sound went through him harder than he expected.

Then his mouth brushes mine.

“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Keep doing that.”

I would rather die than admit how much the roughness in his voice affects me.

So I don’t.

I just hold onto him while the room turns warmer, smaller, softer at the edges. While his hands learn where I tense and where I melt. While his mouth returns to my neck, my jaw, my shoulder, each kiss slower than the last, as if he has realized the quickest way to break me is not force but patience. He drags every reaction out of me like he has all night to collect them. A breath when his thumb moves. A shiver when his teeth graze skin. A small, helpless sound when he says it again, lower, against the curve of my throat.

“Mommy.”

It doesn’t sound like surrender. Not from him. It sounds like a weapon he has stolen and turned around in his hand, smirking as he presses the point exactly where he knows I’ll feel it.

And I do.

God, I do.

My head falls back against the couch, and this time I don’t stop the sound that slips out. Wooyoung lifts his head, eyes dark and bright all at once.

“There,” he says, almost softly. “That’s better.”

I should hate him.

I should still be silent.

But when he leans in again, when his mouth hovers over mine with that arrogant little curve and his hand tightens at my hip like he wants to keep me right there, all I can do is breathe his name.

Just once.

Quiet.

Barely steady.

“Wooyoung.”

His expression changes so fast it almost hurts.

The teasing doesn’t disappear, but something underneath it goes still. Struck. His fingers flex against me. His eyes search my face, and for once he looks like he has forgotten what sharp thing he was going to say next.

Then his mouth twitches.

“Finally,” he mutters, but his voice is rough. “Was wondering when you’d remember who I was.”

I pull his hair.

He laughs against my mouth.

And kisses me like he is done pretending the silence didn’t scare him.

[hye-jin91]

Silent Treatment 침묵의 치료

By the third day of ignoring Suho, it stops feeling necessary and starts feeling stupid, which would probably be enough to make a normal person quit. Unfortunately, I am not a normal person. I am right, deeply committed to being right, and also just petty enough to keep going even when it starts hurting me more than it’s hurting him.

The worst part is that he knows that.

Not the hurting part. I would rather die than let him know that. But the rest of it—how long I can hold out once I decide I’m angry, how I can sit two inches from someone and act like they’ve been dead for years, how the more he tries to drag a reaction out of me, the more stubborn I get.

He knows. He has known since the second month we started dating, back when he stole the last fish cake from my cup at the convenience store and then looked honestly surprised when I didn’t speak to him for six hours. He had laughed then too, all crooked mouth and bright eyes, leaning his elbows on the counter while I stared right through him like he was wallpaper. He lasted maybe three hours before he started poking my shoulder and asking if I’d forgotten how to talk.

Now he lasts longer. Now he knows I always come back. He just has to wait for me to get bored with my own temper.

I hate that he knows that too.

The classroom is loud in the way classrooms always are before the teacher comes in, chairs scraping, bags dropping, somebody yelling from the back like they were born with no awareness of indoor volume. The windows are cracked open just enough for cold air to slip in, and the sky outside is dull and pale, the kind of morning that makes everything feel a little flatter than it is. Sieun is at his desk already, head bent over a book, looking like he exists in a separate dimension from the rest of us.

Suho is half-sitting on the corner of the desk beside mine, one foot on the floor, one stretched lazily into the aisle, peeling the wrapper off a lollipop with the kind of carelessness that only works because everything about him looks careless, even when it isn’t.

I know exactly when he notices me.

He doesn’t say anything at first. He just lifts his head. His eyes meet mine for a second over the noise, and something low and bright turns over under my ribs before I can stop it. It is humiliating, frankly, that after days of being mad at him, all it takes is one look and my whole body responds like it’s been waiting.

He smiles a little. Not even a full smile. Just enough to show he’s seen me seeing him.

“Finally,” he says. “You remembered what time school starts.” I set my bag down, pull out my chair, and sit without answering. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the wrapper go still in his hands.

“Wow,” he says after a beat, quieter now, almost impressed. “Still doing this?” I take out my notebook. Flip it open. Smooth the corner of the page flat with my thumb.

Suho lets out a short laugh, but there’s no real amusement in it. It catches at the edges, dry and disbelieving. “You’re really committed.”

Sieun turns a page.

That’s all. No glance up, no intervention, no visible interest. Which, from him, is basically the same thing as stepping politely aside and letting the car crash happen in peace.

Suho nudges the side of my desk lightly with his knee. “Hey.”

I reach into my bag for a pen.

“Hey.”

Nothing.

His tongue presses briefly into the inside of his cheek. I can see it when I finally make the mistake of looking up, and the second I do, he catches me. Of course he does. His eyes hold mine immediately, dark and sharp and a little too steady, and for one stupid second I forget what I’m doing. There is always that half-second with him. That dangerous, slippery half-second where all the anger in me loosens and I remember too many things at once—his hand warm at the back of my neck when he pulls me through a crowd, his shoulder against mine on the bus, the way he says my name when he’s half asleep and not trying to be annoying.

I look away first. He exhales through his nose and sits back a little. “Unbelievable.”

I nearly answer on instinct. Nearly. The sarcasm rises warm and automatic to the back of my throat—you’ve said sweeter things to me, don’t act shy now—but I bite it down so hard it almost hurts.

He sees something move in my face. His own changes at once, just a flicker, a brief alertness, like he thinks I’m about to give in.

I lower my eyes to the notebook.

His mouth flattens.

There’s a long moment where neither of us moves. Then he unwraps the lollipop the rest of the way, shoves it into his mouth, and mutters, “Fine.”

The teacher comes in. The room settles by degrees. Chairs stop scraping. Conversations break apart. A worksheet lands on my desk and I stare at it without reading a word.

I can feel him beside me for most of the period, even after he slides back to his own seat. Not looking exactly. He isn’t obvious about it. He never is. But every now and then I catch it—that strange, physical certainty of being watched. The tiny shift in the air. The way my shoulders tighten before I even turn. The second I do, he’s already looking somewhere else, jaw resting on his fist, expression blank in a way that only makes it worse.

At lunch, the three of us sit in the same place we always do, out by the side stairs where the concrete still holds a little sun if the weather is decent. It isn’t decent today. The wind keeps getting under the edge of my blazer and finding my skin. Sieun eats in silence, Suho sprawls beside him like he’s allergic to posture, one knee up, one arm hooked over it, lunch half-forgotten in his hand. He looks at me twice before saying anything. Maybe three times. Each glance lands and leaves a mark.

“You’re still not talking to me?” I take a bite of my rice roll. He watches me chew. “Right. Good talk.”

I swallow, stare ahead at the half-dead shrubs by the fence, and feel him still looking.

There are people passing down the walkway in front of us, shoes thudding down the stairs, voices rising and falling, but all of it feels far off, blurred around the shape of him at my side. He leans closer—not enough to touch, just enough that I feel the heat of him through the cold air.

“You know,” he says lightly, “if this is your plan to make me suffer, it’s working. A little dramatic, but points for effort.” I tear another piece from the roll with my teeth and refuse to look at him.

He gives a soft scoff that turns into that laugh again. Not warm. Not really. That irritated, half-disbelieving laugh he does when I’ve pushed him exactly where he doesn’t want to go and he refuses to let me see it properly. It slides under my skin every time. It shouldn’t. It should make me more annoyed. Instead it makes something inside me go tight and fluttering.

Maybe because I know that sound now.

The first time I heard it was after we started dating, when he turned up under my apartment building one evening with a bruised cheek and that stupid look on his face like nothing in the world had happened. I’d been furious, standing there in slippers and an oversized sweatshirt, arms crossed so tight they hurt, telling him he was unbelievable, impossible, insane. He had listened for maybe ten seconds before leaning in to kiss me mid-sentence.

I’d turned my head at the last second and his mouth had brushed the corner of my jaw instead. He’d laughed then too, soft and sharp at once, forehead dropping briefly to my shoulder like he didn’t know whether I was serious or not. My whole body had gone hot so fast I thought I might actually combust right there in the stairwell.

Now I keep my face blank and make the mistake of lifting my eyes just as he’s already watching me.

There it is again.

That stupid drop in my stomach. That lightheaded, breath-caught feeling, as if my body has betrayed me before my mind can catch up. He looks tired. Not generally. Just specifically tired of me. Tired of being shut out. There’s annoyance there too, resting easy in the line of his mouth, but underneath it something quieter sits and stays.

I look away first, again.

Across from us, Sieun opens his milk carton with the same expression he would probably wear if he were disarming a bomb. “Can you two do this somewhere else.”

Suho snorts. “We’re not doing anything.”

“You are,” Sieun says, and drinks his milk. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste metal.

Suho turns his head to look at me. “See? Even he’s sick of you ignoring me.”

I dust imaginary crumbs off my skirt.

“Wow,” he says. “Ice cold.”

His shoulder bumps mine then, casual enough that he could pretend it wasn’t on purpose. It’s barely a touch. Still, every nerve along that side of my body wakes up at once. I don’t move away. That’s my first mistake. The second is letting my eyes flick sideways just in time to catch the tiny change in his face when he notices I stayed exactly where I was.

He angles closer, just a little, hidden by the way we’re all seated on the steps. His voice drops. “Are you at least going to tell me when you’re done being mad?”

I keep my eyes on the yard below us. There are boys kicking a flattened plastic bottle between them like it’s a ball. Somebody on the other side of the field is yelling. A teacher’s whistle cuts through the air.

Suho waits. I can feel the warmth of him now, close enough that if I shifted my hand even a little our knuckles would touch.

I say nothing.

He leans back at last. Not far. Just enough to take the heat with him. “Fine.”

The argument itself had been stupid. That’s the most infuriating part. If it had been something catastrophic, something that had been enough to justify this much silence, maybe I’d feel less ridiculous carrying it around. But it had started the way bad arguments always do—with one person already tired, the other already irritated, and a sentence that should have stayed inside somebody’s mouth.

He’d shown up late.

Again.

I’d been waiting outside the arcade for almost forty minutes with my arms folded and my messages left on read, watching the sky darken in the reflection of the glass. By the time he came jogging around the corner, hair damp at the temples, breath uneven, saying my name like that alone should smooth everything over, I was already too far gone to be reasonable.

He’d reached for my wrist. I’d pulled away.

He’d laughed once, short and disbelieving. “Seriously?”

I’d said something mean. He’d said something sharper back.

Then we were both standing there, staring at each other under the arcade sign, all our usual ease gone strange and stiff. People kept walking past us. Someone coming out of the convenience store glanced between us and then away. I remember the smell of rain on the pavement. I remember wanting him to grab me and apologize properly. I remember hating that want the second I felt it.

Instead, he’d shoved his hands into his pockets and looked off down the street like he was forcing himself to calm down.

“Fine,” he’d said at last.

Same word. Different face.

I hadn’t spoken to him properly since.

After school, Sieun waits for us by the gate while I pretend to be interested in rearranging the books in my bag. Suho comes down the steps with his hands shoved into his pockets, tie loose, hair falling into his eyes. He looks like he always does at the end of the day—slightly wrinkled, a little tired, unfairly good-looking in a way that makes me want to throw something heavy at him.

He stops in front of me. Not blocking my path exactly. Just there.

“You coming?” I zip my bag closed and step around him. Behind me, I hear him laugh under his breath.

We walk together anyway.

That’s the part that makes this all unbearable. I still go where we always go. I still sit with him and Sieun after school, still listen to the stupid back-and-forth between them, still follow them into the convenience store and stand under fluorescent lights while Suho steals things out of my hands like he thinks muscle memory might work faster than my anger.

I just don’t give him anything back. No answer, no smile, no roll of my eyes unless I forget myself. It would almost be easier if I left. If I made a clean break for a few days and disappeared. But I don’t want that either. I want to be near him. I want him to feel me being angry. I want him to have to sit in it.

Which would sound completely insane if I said it out loud.

The convenience store is overheated, the windows fogged at the corners. Sieun heads straight for the drinks. I drift toward the ramen shelves. Suho falls into step beside me. He reaches past me for a cup of noodles off the top shelf. His arm brushes mine. I go still without meaning to.

“Careful,” he says quietly. My eyes flick up before I can stop them.

He’s closer than I thought. Close enough that I can see the tiny scratch near his chin from yesterday, the one I’d noticed in class and then angrily pretended not to. His face is unreadable for a second. Then one corner of his mouth lifts, faint and tired.

“There,” he murmurs. “You do know how.” I look away so fast the shelf label blurs.

Heat climbs the back of my neck. My heart is suddenly beating hard enough to feel in my throat, which is deeply embarrassing for someone who has spent three days dedicated to the bit.

I grab the nearest cup at random and step away from him.

At the register, while Sieun counts change, Suho reaches over and taps the little plastic spoon tucked under the lid of my ramen. “You got the spicy one.”

I don’t answer.

“You can’t eat spicy.”

I slide the cup farther away from him.

He just stares at it for a second, then at me. His brows lift. “So now you’re going to punish yourself too?”

I pay and turn before my mouth can betray me.

Outside, the evening air hits cool and thin. The street is turning gold in places where the sun catches shop windows on its way down. Sieun is already walking ahead. Suho comes out beside me with a crinkling plastic bag in one hand. He keeps pace easily, not crowding me, not letting the distance get bigger either.

At the crosswalk, we stop with a handful of other students and office workers. The light is still red. Cars move past in blurred reflections. Somewhere down the block, a scooter rattles by.

Suho shifts beside me. “Give me the ramen.”

I keep my eyes ahead.

“You’ll cry.”

I hold the cup tighter.

A pause.

Then, softer, “Just give it to me.”

Something in the way he says it nearly undoes me. He sounds tired, more than anything, and annoyed, and still stubbornly gentle underneath it. The combination is worse than if he were angry. I can still feel his hand around my wrist from last week, tugging me out of the road before a motorbike clipped the curb. Can still hear him muttering insults under his breath while checking my elbow for scrapes, face set in that hard, quiet way he gets when he’s scared after the fact and won’t admit it. Can still remember the ridiculous tenderness of him blowing on a burn on my tongue because I’d eaten ramen too fast and then laughing when I smacked his arm for making fun of me.

I keep staring at the traffic light.

The signal changes. People start moving.

Suho steps forward with the crowd, then glances back when I don’t move immediately. For a second he just looks at me across the narrow strip of white paint and moving bodies, the evening light catching in his eyes.

The breath goes out of me so quickly it feels stolen.

There are moments with him that never get easier. No matter how many times they happen. His face turning toward mine in a crowd. His hand finding the small of my back without thinking. His eyes landing on me first when something funny happens, like some part of him assumes I should always see it too. Those moments don’t soften with repetition. They sharpen. My body learns them and still reacts like the first time.

Someone behind me mutters in annoyance and brushes past my shoulder before I finally step forward.

Suho waits until I’m beside him again. He doesn’t speak for the rest of the crosswalk. Doesn’t look at me either. His jaw is tight.

By the time we reach the bus stop, the wind has picked up. My hair keeps blowing into my mouth. Sieun stands a little apart from us reading something on his phone. Suho leans back against the shelter wall, head tipped up for a second as if he’s trying the patience thing manually, by force.

Then he straightens, pushes off the wall, and walks over.

Before I can react, he takes the ramen from my hand.

I turn to glare at him.

He is already peeling back the lid to check the label.

“Yeah,” he says. “Absolutely not.”

He swaps it with his own, plain one, like this is the most ordinary thing he has ever done. I stare at the cup now in my hands. Then at him.

He looks irritated. The kind of irritated that has been simmering all day and three days before it. His hair is moving in the wind. His fingers drum once against the cup he stole from me.

“What?” he says.

~~~

By the time we get to the karaoke place, the sky has already gone that bruised, dim color it gets right before night settles properly. The signs outside the building flicker in cheap pink and blue, half the letters burned out, half buzzing. Everything smells damp. Old rain in the pavement. Cigarette smoke caught in the cracks of the wall. Fried oil from the place next door. The entrance is narrow, the stairwell darker than it should be, and as soon as we step inside the air changes—warmer, heavier, thick with dust and stale alcohol and something sour underneath it.

Suho had told me not to come.

Not asked. Told.

He’d caught my wrist outside the school gates when Sieun mentioned where they were going, his fingers wrapping around the inside of it before I could pull away, and for the first time in days the irritation in his face had sharpened into something harder. “No.”

That was all. I had looked down at his hand, then at him, and said nothing.

He’d leaned closer, jaw tight. “It could get ugly.”

I’d slipped my wrist out of his grip and kept walking.

I didn’t look back, but I heard that dry little laugh behind me, the one that never sounds amused when it’s aimed at me now. I felt it all afternoon anyway.

Now he’s three steps ahead of me in the stairwell, shoulders set, head slightly turned as if he’s listening for movement on the floor above us. Sieun is quiet at his side. Beomseok is quieter still, but his quiet is the wrong kind tonight. Too thin. Too brittle. He keeps adjusting his sleeves, then his bag strap, then nothing at all. He looks pale under the flickering hall light.

Suho glances back once when we reach the landing.

His eyes land on me so suddenly I almost miss a step.

There’s no softness in it. No teasing. No tired half-smile like the ones that have been slipping out of him these past few days whenever I pretend not to hear him. Just a look, direct and brief and heavy enough that my breath catches before I can stop it. It’s ridiculous how fast my body still betrays me. We haven’t had a real conversation in days. I’ve dodged his mouth, ignored his voice, acted like his hand on the bus seat beside mine meant nothing. Still, one look and something warm and sickly sweet turns over low in my stomach.

I hate that he notices everything.

His gaze flicks down the stairwell behind me, then back to my face, like he’s checking whether he can physically drag me home without causing a scene.

I lift my brows at him. Go ahead, I think. He stares for one second more, then looks away and keeps walking.

The room they’re in is worse than the hallway—bigger, but only technically. The walls feel close anyway. Cheap black leather benches shoved along the edges. A low table sticky with rings from old bottles. A karaoke machine glowing in one corner with the volume turned down, the idle screen washing the room in shifting color. Red. Blue. Purple. Red again. The lights catch on glass and metal and the wet shine of someone’s lower lip. There are too many boys crammed into a space this small, all of them trying too hard to look comfortable.

The second we walk in, the room changes shape around Suho.

It always does.

He steps in like he belongs wherever he puts his feet, and everyone else has to adjust around that. The former bullies look at him first, then at each other, then at Beomseok. One of them tries for a smirk that doesn’t quite form all the way.

I stay near the door at first, one shoulder against the wall, arms folded. The safest place in rooms like this is usually where you can see everyone. Also the easiest place to pretend you don’t care.

Suho stands in the middle of the room with that loose, grounded posture of his that never looks tense. One hand flexes once at his side. His chin lifts toward the boy sitting closest to the table.

“Apologize.” His voice isn’t loud. That’s what makes it land. No performance. No shouting. Just flat enough to strip all the air out of the room.

Something deep in my chest gives the smallest, most humiliating little turn.

God. Not now. Not here.

I stare at the floor for a second as if that will help, but it only makes the sound of him worse—his voice low and steady under the buzzing lights, the scrape of someone shifting on the bench, the faint tinny melody still humming from the karaoke machine in the corner. I can feel him without looking. The line of his back. The stillness in his shoulders. The way he gets when he’s angry and forcing it to stay controlled.

It drags up a memory so quickly it feels physical. His hand closing over mine outside the convenience store a month ago because I’d nearly stepped into traffic while I was yelling at him. The sharp pull of my body against his chest. His mouth right by my temple when he said, very quietly, “Watch it.” My stomach had dropped embarrassingly fast.

The boy across from him lets out a short laugh he clearly doesn’t mean. “What—”

Suho cuts across him without raising his voice. “You heard me.”

The room goes still again. I look at him then.

His hair is slightly mussed from the damp outside, a few strands falling low over his forehead. His mouth is set in a straight line that makes him look older somehow. Not older exactly. Sharper. The kind of face that doesn’t ask twice unless it’s giving you a chance you don’t deserve.

He doesn’t know I’m staring. Or maybe he does. With him it’s impossible to tell. My pulse climbs anyway, quick and traitorous, and I fold my arms tighter over myself so no one can see the way my body has suddenly gone strange and light.

Across the room, one of the boys mutters something under his breath. Sieun doesn’t move, but his head tilts almost imperceptibly in that way he has when he’s taking everything in. Beomseok is standing a little behind Suho, breathing too fast through his nose, eyes fixed on the boy in front of him with a kind of blank fury that doesn’t feel stable.

Finally the bully glances at Beomseok and says it. A sorry so forced it sounds almost chewed up on the way out. Beomseok’s expression doesn’t change.

“I want to hit him,” he says. His voice is smaller than the words.

Suho turns his head slightly. “Don’t.”

Beomseok keeps staring at the boy. “Just once.”

“Nah,” one of the others says from the bench, trying for something casual and ugly at the same time. “Let him. Might be funny.”

My shoulders go cold. The room shifts before it moves. One second of everyone holding still in the wrong way. Then Beomseok steps forward and swings.

It isn’t a clean punch. More emotion than technique. His fist catches the other boy badly, enough to snap his head to the side but not enough to drop him. There’s a split second of silence after it—raw and bright and wrong.

Then the bully swings back.

The crack of it is ugly in the small room.

Beomseok stumbles, then all at once something in him gives.

He launches himself forward without any rhythm to it, arms flailing, fists landing wherever they can, not fighting so much as breaking open. It’s frantic and messy and hard to watch, precisely because it isn’t controlled. He doesn’t look angry in any clean way. He looks gone. Like the wire finally snapped.

Suho moves instantly.

He hooks an arm around Beomseok from behind and drags him back so hard the soles of his shoes scrape against the floor. “Enough.”

Beomseok keeps trying to surge forward.

Suho tightens his grip. “Stop.”

The bully is yelling now, face red, spitting curses across the room while Beom-seok twists in Suho’s hold. Si-eun steps in, grabs Beom-seok’s arm, says his name once—sharp, clipped—and between the two of them they get him moving toward the door. He fights them for half a second longer, then lets himself be pulled, chest heaving, eyes glassy and bright.

The door jerks open. The hallway light spills in.

For a moment all I can see is Suho’s hand gripping the back of Beom-seok’s jacket, veins standing out beneath the skin, the tendons in his wrist drawn tight. Then Si-eun gets Beom-seok into the hall and the angle shifts and Suho is just there in front of me again, breathing harder now, the room thrown into violent colors by the karaoke machine—red over one cheekbone, blue across his throat.

He looks furious. It feels worse than if he were shouting.

He turns to follow them—and one of the boys near the bench looks straight at me. I know the type before he opens his mouth. The lazy lean. The eyes too loose. The grin already half-filthy.

He says something about me that makes the air on my skin curdle.

For one second I don’t react at all. My body does that horrible thing where it stills before the feeling catches up—like the disgust has to travel the length of me before it lands properly. Then heat crawls up my neck, sharp and immediate.

Suho stops moving. He turns his head. I have seen him angry before. I have seen him bruised, annoyed, laughing through blood, leaning over someone he’d already dropped with that lazy, unimpressed look on his face. But this is different. Smaller. Meaner. All the looseness disappears out of him at once.

He crosses the room in two steps. The punch is so fast I only really understand it by the sound. A blunt, clean crack. The boy hits the floor before the rest of them even flinch. His chair skids sideways and slams into the bench. He doesn’t get back up.

Silence. Suho stands over him, chest rising once, twice. His fist stays clenched at his side. Then he looks up at the others.

“Anybody else?” His voice is low enough that everyone hears it. No one moves.

One of them swallows and shakes his head almost before Suho finishes the sentence. Another looks anywhere but at him. Someone near the machine mutters, “No.”

My heart is beating so hard it feels clumsy. Thudding against my ribs like it wants out. My mouth has gone dry. Heat and cold keep changing places under my skin.

He turns toward me.

And there it is again—that unbearable, breath-stealing thing his eyes do to me when they land full on mine.

The anger is still there, but not pointed at me. It lingers around him like heat off metal. Under it there’s something else now, tight and watchful, checking me over so quickly most people would miss it. My face. My posture. My hands. Whether I’m shaken. Whether I’m hurt. Whether that bastard’s words actually touched me anywhere deeper than the surface.

For a second neither of us moves.

I remember him in the alley behind school with blood drying at the corner of his mouth, grinning at me while I tried not to panic. I remember him stealing my scarf in winter just to wrap it back around my neck himself. I remember the rough pad of his thumb brushing a crumb off my lower lip so absentmindedly I almost forgot how to stand.

The room feels too small around us. He steps forward and grabs my hand. His fingers close around it firmly, warmth and callus and pressure, like he doesn’t even think about whether I’ll pull away. Like he’s decided for both of us that this is happening.

“Come on.”

I go. Of course I go.

The hallway feels colder after the room, the stairwell louder with the sound of our footsteps. Somewhere above us people are actually singing, badly, their voices muffled through the walls in a way that would almost be funny if my pulse would calm down enough to let anything be funny. Suho doesn’t let go of my hand on the first landing. Or the second. He keeps me slightly behind him without seeming to, body angled just enough that if someone came down the stairs too fast they’d hit him first.

Outside, the night hits like water.

Cool air. Wet pavement. City noise rushing back all at once. Cars passing. A scooter whining somewhere down the street. Somebody laughing near the convenience store on the corner. The neon from the karaoke sign washes his face pink, then blue, then leaves it in shadow again as we stop just beyond the entrance.

He finally lets go.

The sudden absence of his hand feels louder than the traffic.

He looks up the street first, toward where Si-eun and Beom-seok must have gone, then back at me. Up close I can see the faint flush still high in his cheekbones, the tightness around his mouth, the way he’s trying to get himself under control before he says anything he’ll regret.

I should say something.

A joke, maybe. Something sarcastic. Something like wow, romantic as always, beating people unconscious in karaoke bars. Something sharp enough to cut the strange, dizzy softness building in my chest. Something that gets me back on familiar ground.

Nothing comes out.

He notices that too.

His gaze drops briefly to my mouth, then back to my eyes. It is such a quick movement I could almost pretend I imagined it, except the memory of all the kisses I’ve dodged these past few days arrives at once—his mouth nearly brushing mine outside the bus stop, my head turning at the last second, the little angry laugh he gave into the space between us; his hand cupping the back of my neck one afternoon behind the gym, the warmth of his palm staying there long after he let go; the stupid way he smiles against my lips when he knows I’m about to lose an argument.

He inhales slowly.

“Are you okay?” His voice is different now. Lower. The edges sanded down. For a second I just look at him.

The streetlight above us flickers weakly, painting his face in a dull gold that catches on the edge of his cheekbone and the faint redness still blooming across his knuckles. His hair has fallen slightly into his eyes from the fight, damp from the mist in the air. His chest is still rising harder than usual, breath evening out little by little.

The city hums around us—cars passing, the distant rattle of a train somewhere beyond the buildings—but it all feels strangely far away, like the sound has been pushed behind glass.

I don’t answer. Instead my hand moves before my brain does. I grab the front of his shirt.

The fabric bunches in my fist, rough cotton twisting under my fingers as I yank him toward me hard enough that his balance shifts forward half a step. His eyes widen a fraction, surprised—actually surprised, which almost never happens with him—and then my other hand is already sliding up the back of his neck.

His skin is warm under my palm. My fingers tangle into the short hair there and pull. His head dips instinctively with the motion.

And then I kiss him. I crash into him like I’ve been holding my breath for days and this is the first air I’ve found. For a split second he freezes—just long enough for his body to catch up to what’s happening—and then his hands are on me.

Everywhere.

One arm wraps around my waist so fast it knocks the air out of me, dragging me flush against him. The other hand grabs my jaw, fingers sliding into my hair as he angles my face and kisses me back like he’s been waiting to do it for days.

Which he has.

His mouth is warm and firm and a little rough in the way that always makes my knees feel like they’ve suddenly stopped belonging to me. He kisses like he does everything else—decisive, hungry, like hesitation has never once occurred to him. My grip tightens in his shirt as he pulls me closer, his body solid and steady against mine, and a sound slips out of me before I can stop it.

A soft, helpless moan. He feels it. The reaction is immediate.

His fingers tighten in my hair, his other hand sliding lower along my back as if he’s trying to anchor me there. His breath catches against my mouth, a sharp inhale that trembles slightly before he kisses me deeper, slower now but somehow more intense, like he’s savoring the fact that I’m finally letting him.

God.

The world tilts slightly. My knees soften so suddenly it’s embarrassing. He feels it instantly.

His arm tightens around my waist, hauling me closer so my weight tips into him instead of the pavement. My hands slide up from his shirt to his shoulders without thinking, gripping hard. The muscle under my palms shifts as he steadies me, broad and solid, and the sensation sends a ridiculous rush of warmth through my chest.

His shoulders are strong. They always have been.

I remember leaning against them on the bus one afternoon, half asleep, the slow rise and fall of his breathing under my cheek while he pretended not to notice.

Now those same muscles move under my hands as he adjusts his grip, fingers digging lightly into the curve of my waist.

My hands slide higher. Into his hair. I grab a fistful of it and pull.

A rough sound leaves his throat. Not loud. Just a small, broken breath against my mouth that sends a sharp wave of heat straight through my chest.

His grip tightens instantly.

His other hand moves from my jaw to my neck, thumb brushing the underside of it as he tilts my head and kisses me again, deeper this time, slower but somehow more desperate. His breathing isn’t steady anymore. I can feel it against my lips—short, uneven bursts that hitch whenever I pull his hair again.

The tremor in him is subtle. Most people wouldn’t notice it. But I do. It runs through his shoulders, through the arm holding me, through the hand tangled in my hair. Not weakness. Not hesitation.

Just restraint stretched thin.

Something low in my stomach flips hard.

I press closer without thinking, fingers sliding from his hair down to his arms, gripping there instead. His sleeves are pushed up slightly from earlier, and the heat of his skin bleeds straight into my palms. The muscle under my fingers tightens when I squeeze, solid and warm, and the feeling sends a rush of dizzy warmth up my spine.

He exhales against my mouth again. A shaky breath this time. That does something to me I cannot reasonably explain.

The boy who just knocked someone unconscious without blinking is standing here trembling slightly under my hands.

For me.

My stomach drops in that dangerous, fluttering way again.

His mouth softens briefly against mine, the kiss slowing for half a second like he’s catching his breath. When I open my eyes slightly I catch his gaze already on me, dark and focused and a little wild in a way I don’t see often.

The look alone sends another wave of heat through me. I kiss him again before my brain can finish the thought.

This time he laughs softly against my mouth, breath warm, the sound rough at the edges like he can’t quite believe this is happening.

“You’re unbelievable,” he murmurs against my lips.

“Took you long enough to notice.” My voice comes out breathless.

He huffs something that might be a laugh again, shaking his head slightly, and pulls me closer until my chest is pressed fully against his.

For a second we just stand there like that. My hands still gripping his arms. His arm still locked around my waist. The neon sign from the karaoke building flickers across his face in shifting color, pink then blue then dark again.

My pulse is still racing. My lungs still feel like they haven’t quite caught up. But the silence between us isn’t empty anymore.

And when his thumb brushes lightly along the side of my neck again, slow and absentminded, a new wave of butterflies spreads through my chest so suddenly I almost laugh.

Days of silence.

And this is how it ends.