PAIRING: switch!bf!jimin x awkward!f!reader. anonreq
Tags: explicit sexual content, fluff, sub!jimin💢, but he also talks her through it??😵💫, she’s very hesitant since she never topped him b4, so he SNAPS(very gently), JIMIN’S SENSITIVE NIPS, she’s very curious and into it it’s adorable, praising, lots of begging, i lied i made him a switch throughout the fic, handjob, this is very romantic it’s annoying, aftercare ❤︎
He would be laying on the bed, his chest naked wearing only his pajama pants on. He’s waiting for you to sleep together. You’re getting ready for bed as usual, as he watch with a sleepy, loving eyes.
After you put on your favorite nightgown, you crawl on the bed towards him, his soft smile slowly forming on his pretty, full lips. His chest rose and fell with each breath, his nipples are visibly hard because of the cold summer night. His tattoo adorned his skin under his lower chest. He looks gorgeous like this, all splayed out on the bed with his arm lazily open, inviting you in so warmly.
“There you are, pretty girl.” He whispered as you lay your head down on his chest, pressing a soft kiss on your temple, snuggling so tightly against his side.
Your hands are itching to touch his body, you wanna feel all of him, kiss every inch of his soft skin. But jimin had a really long day today, came in exhausted and sleepy. After dinner, he immediately went to shower and collapsed on the bed wearily. You thought you would find him already asleep, but jimin always waited for you to get in bed, he always did.
“Jimin.”
“Yes, baby.”
“Are you going to sleep?”
“Hm.. maybe in a little bit. And you?.” He murmured against your head, his palm moved in slow soothing strokes over your waist, his thumb shyly tracing under your breast.
“..maybe in a bit too,” You mumbled, almost absentmindedly. Your gaze is focused on the waistband sat low on his hips, hinting at the faint V-shaped lines disappearing beneath the fabric. Lord. You want to touch his hips and delicate waist. The itch was getting harder to ignore, hes laying beside you so beautifully like a Greek god, you want to worship him so badly, but you really don’t wanna keep him up.
“Jimin.” You really don’t wanna..
“Hm.”
“Are you tired”
“What is it, my love.” The hand that was stroking your waist, slowly slide up your chin, titling your head making you look up at him. His eyes were so droopy and soft, his gaze drifting between your eyes and lips with quiet fondness. His thumb caressing your cheek oh so gently it made you melt in a puddle.
“What got you so flustered right now, hm?.” God. His gentle whispers sing to you like a melody. There wasn’t a single coherent thought in your head right now. You were utterly defeated under the gentlest amount of affection. But no. You don’t wanna make it about you tonight, you want him to feel good and comfy. But you’re so embarrassed to ask, you never took charge in bed. He’s always been the one who take care of you and makes you feel so good you forget how to breathe for a second. And you wanna make Jimin feel the same way he makes you feel. You want to. You have to try.
“Can i.. maybe touch you?.” You murmured, looking at his lips unable to look him in the eyes.
“Yeah?, you wanna touch me?” Purring softly, a teasing smile playing on his lips.
“How do you wanna touch me?”
“Like make you feel good and cozy..” god why is it so hard to ask for this, it’s not like you never touched him before.
He didn’t say anything, but his hand wrapped around yours, guiding it down his chest to his stomach.
“Touch me then.” He whispered so quietly you barely heard him. The hand guiding yours on his body made your heart skip a beat. His body was lean muscle— firm beneath your hand, yet impossibly soft to the touch.
Jimin let out breathy sighs, enjoying your warm hand on his spent body. You start kissing your way up to his neck, sucking on his delicate collarbone enough to not leave any marks there, your tongue darting out your lips as you settle on the side of his neck.
Your hand never stopping the desperate touches on his body, your thumb hesitantly brushing under his dark areola, wanting to touch his nipple.
“can i-“
“y/n, please.”
His voice shaking, you didn’t notice his heavy breath, or his hand tightening on your back, fingers gripping your nightgown so tightly. He’s deeply affected, and you didn’t even notice that.
“Please.. touch me everywhere, i want you to, i need you to.”
Intentionally, you stroke his nipple gently, testing if it’s okay to go this far.
“That’s it, touch me however you like. Good girl” he whispered in your hair, his hips rolling sensually into the air, as if desperately looking for any friction to relieve his aching throbbing cock.
You can see it jerk in his pants. The reaction was fascinating, every time you flick his bud, his cock flinch from the impact. This got you spring up. Making Jimin stay still for a second until he realized why the sudden movement; you throw your leg over his toned thighs, straddling his lap as you reach over his chest and flick both his nipples, making him arch towards your hands, loving your abrupt confidence.
“Ahh fuck.. keep going, you doing so well,”
His head is thrown back, your fingers twisting his hard buds making his breath hitching violently. He never thought you would be into this, considering how much you love being submissive, and since he loves his nipples being touched, he didn’t want to scare you off by asking you too much, always taking things so slow and thoughtfully.
Your hips reflexively rocking on his lap, his cock twitching with every sway. He’s trying to keep his voice down, you can hear it in the way he mewls, biting so hard on his lip. You love his little noises so much, but you want to hear it more clearly.
As selfish as it sounds, you still lean your head towards his chest, taking his left nipple between your lips, while tugging at his right bud. Making him yelp so loud you flinch away from him,
“Did i hurt you?? Im so sorry! Im sorry! I should’ve asked b-“
“No no it’s okay, please keep doing that,” holding your hands back to his chest, “you just caught me off guard, i loved it.”
“Are you sure?” Hesitant for a moment, “you sounded like you’re in pai-“
In a swift quick motion, he pulls your face down to his lips, shutting you up with a rough kiss. His mouth moving so fast you can barely keep up with him, but it felt so good. Sucking your lower lip into his mouth, sticking his tongue in your wet mouth, his hand threading through your hair, tilting your head to the side, deepening the kiss. Hes devouring you. Both of you breathing in each other’s face, moans and lip smacks filled the quiet room.
“Please.. im okay .. just..” his lips struggling between kissing your sweet lips and talking to you.
“I loved it so much,” he leaned his forehead against yours, hands guiding yours on his chest again.
“Please” he’s almost crying now, very frustrated by the lack of attention your mouth has given, “your mouth on me.. please..”
Nodding your head once, you wrapped your lips around his nipple again, swirling your tongue around the taut bud, lapping at it, then suckling gently. Your hips proceeded its sensual pace, pressing harder on his pulsing cock, as your hands slide up and down his waist.
You switched to the other nipple, giving it the same lavish attention, sucking and laving until it was glistening and reddened. You experimented, grazing your teeth ever so lightly over the hypersensitive tip.
He screamed. A short, sharp, utterly unfiltered sound of overwhelmed pleasure. “Fuck! Do that again, please, I need it, I need you to—”
You do it again, a little less carefully, and his whole world seemed to short-circuit. His thighs are shaking, arms wrapped so tight around you, trying so hard to keep his voice low but failing. He’s shaking so hard you think he’s about to come.
You lifted your head, your lips wet, your own breathing ragged. You stared at the evidence of your effect on him, A wild spark igniting inside you. The sight of him all helpless and vulnerable, made you wonder if you’ll ever go back from this.
You looked down from his desperate, flushed face down to his visible bulge tenting his pants.
“Take it off for me,” gesturing toward his pants, you immediately obliged, sliding his pants down enough to free him. His cock sprang upwards, slapping against his hard stomach. Hes so pretty, thick and flushed a deep, angry red, the head already slick with pre-cum. You’d seen him hard before, felt him inside you, but never like this—on blatant, vulnerable display, completely at the mercy of your gaze and your touch. He was magnificent.
Tentatively, you reached out and wrapped your fingers around the base. The skin was silken hot, the shaft iron-hard beneath. You gave an experimental stroke, from root to tip, using the pre-cum as lubrication.
A ragged, punched-out groan tore from his throat. His eyes rolled back. “Yes. Just like that. A little tighter, baby. Squeeze harder.”
You adjusted your grip, firming your hold, and began to move your hand in a slow, steady rhythm. You were utterly focused, studying every minute reaction; the jump of a vein under your thumb, the way his balls drew up tight, the flutter of his stomach muscles with every pass of your hand over the sensitive head.
“Talk to me,” he begged, his voice cracking. “Please, tell me what you’re thinking. Tell me how I feel.”
You were so deep in your concentration you’d forgotten to speak. “You’re… so hard,” you murmured, your voice sounding foreign to your own ears. “So hot in my hand. You’re leaking everywhere.” You swiped your thumb over the slit, spreading the moisture, and he cried out, his hips bucking up into your touch.
“More,” he sobbed. “Please, more of that. Use your other hand. Touch my balls, be gentle, just cradle them…”
You obeyed, your movements becoming more confident as you followed his desperate, explicit directions. You learned the rhythm he liked—a twist of your wrist on the upstroke, a teasing press under the head. You learned where he was most sensitive—the frenulum, which made him sob when you rubbed it, and the tight seam of skin connecting his balls to his shaft, which made his whole body convulse when you stroked it.
“I’m not gonna last,” he warned, his words slurring together. “You’re too good. You’re milking me so good, just with your hands. Please, baby, I wanna come. Can I come? Please let me come.”
The sight of him bubbling and begging for you to let him come is so addictive, makes you want to give him all the pleasure he deserves.
“Come for me, jiminie,” you heard yourself say, your voice low and surprisingly steady. “Let me see it.”
It was all the permission he needed. With a shattered cry that was more sob than shout, his back arched violently off the bed. Thick, hot stripes of white painted his stomach and chest in frantic pulses, some even reaching his heaving pecs, mixing with the sheen of sweat and saliva already there. His body shook through the violent aftershocks, his thighs trembling, his toes curling.
You kept your hand moving, gently, through the very last tremor, until he was oversensitive and whimpering, pushing weakly at your wrist. You released him, sitting back on your heels, your own heart hammering, your core throbbing with a sympathetic, aching need. You looked at your hand, sticky and glistening, then back at him.
He was a vision of utter debauchery. Spent, panting, covered in the evidence of his own release, his sensitive nipples still peaked and wet from your mouth. His eyes were closed, long lashes fluttering against his cheeks. He looked completely, utterly ruined.
“Wait.” Before he can question you, you jumped out of the bed, pattering across your dresser, reaching for the wipes cleaning your hand, then came back hovering over him again.
“Stay still,” you murmured. He obeyed immediately, his body going slack beneath your touch. A tiny smile tugged at his lips as you cleaned him up with slow, careful strokes.
Hes in awe, how adorable and gentle you take care of him, he didn’t know he could possibly fall even more in love with you, but right now he’s utterly and completely obsessed with you.
“Baby you don’t have to-“
“You always clean me up afterwards,” you murmured.
He laughed under his breath, cheeks warming. “As I should.” His smile softened as he watched you. “But… seeing you do it for me feels unfairly nice.♡”
A/N: it’s my bday!!! Posting this as a gift for me and it would be even more nicer if i shared it with yall 💕
Hope y’all enjoyed!! Im absolutely obsessed with the reader!! I love awkward and shy characters.
you might be the one to take away the pain and let my mind go quiet
/// sleep token, emergence
pairing: yeonjun x fem!reader
summary: sometimes love and hate exist on opposite ends of the map. other times, on separate floors of the same building.
genre: ex!yeonjun / enemies to lovers au / neighbour au
warnings: slow burn, angst, toxic parents, MUTUAL PINING, some strong language, suggestive themes, helpless flirting of course, some fluff too
words: 14.5k
[ ! ] this is a sequel to equilibrium
masterlist / read from the beginning
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 7 AM
Yeonjun didn’t get much sleep that night. He hadn’t needed your text about Violet at seven in the morning; he’d already been awake, staring at the dim ceiling above his bed and actively dreading what he had to do today.
He tried to pinpoint the exact moment when he’d woken up and settled on shortly after three, when something had crashed in the storage room outside his bedroom. One of his old mattresses, as it turned out. It had been standing against the wall for weeks before evidently deciding it’d had enough. It hit the floor with a thud heavy enough to startle Violet into investigating.
Yeonjun had joked about Soobin’s poltergeists the night before, but at three in the morning he was considerably less amused.
For a while, he wondered whether it was a bad omen.
Eventually, deciding he’d lain there long enough, he climbed out of bed. The curtains in his flat made it impossible to judge the hour, but Violet had rattled the window frame not long ago. She kept a strict schedule, he knew.
He reached for his phone underneath his pillow and sat on the edge of the bed.
At least he had work today. Had to collect the car from the parking lot by the corner shop, too. He couldn’t wait to get outside.
But first, he had to get this done.
Drawing a slow breath, he scrolled through his contacts until he found his mother’s number and pressed call.
The line rang.
He rested his elbows on his thighs and stared at the floorboards beneath his feet. They were cold. A little dusty, too. He really ought to clean them. He’d been meaning to for days—
“Hello?”
He flinched at his mother’s voice.
He couldn’t tell whether she knew it was him calling. Objectively, she should have; his name would’ve been on the screen. But it had been so long.
“Hi, Mum,” he said.
“Hello, darling.” Her voice was as soft as he remembered. He felt as if he’d swallowed a stone. “You sound a bit muffled. Are you ill?”
Yeonjun cleared his throat.
“No. I’m—no.” He took another breath. “Listen, uh—I was thinking… have you and Dad got time?”
“Time for what, son?”
“For—well, for me.”
God, that sounded stupid. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his thumb against his forehead.
“I was thinking we could get a meal together sometime,” he amended. “Lunch, maybe.”
For a second, all he heard was static on the other end. He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had hesitated. The pause, brief as it was, caught somewhere in his throat.
“That sounds wonderful, darling,” she said at last, her voice every bit as bright as before. “We’re free today at three.”
Yeonjun tried to breathe past the pressure gathering in his chest. He’d have preferred next week so he could mentally prepare.
Actually, that wasn’t true. He’d have preferred the next lifetime.
“Sure,” he forced the word out. “Three sounds great.”
“Perfect. We’ll see you soon.”
He nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “Yeah. See you.”
He remained where he was for several long seconds after the call ended, phone hanging loosely from one hand, staring at his reflection in the dark, faintly smudged screen.
Then he stood.
The rest of the morning dissolved into disconnected fragments: steam fogging the bathroom mirror, water splashing against the shower tiles. The smell of his mint shampoo. The apple skin getting wedged between his front teeth as he left his flat.
Did he lock the door?
He climbed back up the two storeys to check.
He had.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a proper breath.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 2 PM
Leaving the racetrack after work, Yeonjun slipped into his Mercedes. It took him three tries to turn the key in the ignition. Once the engine caught, he wrapped both hands around the wheel for a moment, feeling it vibrate against his palms.
Above him, the sky was heavy and grey. As he had feared, his wrist had begun throbbing again, each twinge travelling up his forearm.
He’d hoped to lose himself in the chaos of work—and there were plenty of distractions, to be fair—but he remained unsettled anyway. He’d dropped his breakfast bagel three times before he gave up. Now he was anxious and hungry.
He dialled Soobin’s number the moment the Mercedes rolled away from the curb.
“Hi,” he said when Soobin’s groggy voice filled the car. “Did I wake you?”
Silence.
Then:
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
Yeonjun considered that.
“What’s up?” Soobin added.
Yeonjun kept his gaze on the empty road ahead. Even the buildings around him looked duller than usual, as though the entire world had turned its saturation down.
“Guess where I’m going,” he said.
“Where’re you going?”
“To see my parents.”
Soobin was quiet for so long that Yeonjun glanced at the dashboard to check the call hadn’t disconnected.
“What?” Soobin finally asked. “Why?”
Yeonjun let out a slow breath. “Trying to fix what I still can.”
Rustling crackled through the speakers.
“Fix—fix what?” Soobin asked.
“I cut them off without ever setting a clear boundary first.” Yeonjun’s stomach grumbled, and he shuffled in his seat. “Mostly that.”
The city gradually receded behind him. Blocks of flats gave way to warehouses and garages, then open fields, dotted with clusters of trees. They stood motionless on the side of the road, as though watching him.
“Wasn’t cutting them off the boundary?” Soobin asked, his voice growing increasingly agitated.
Yeonjun lifted a hand to rub his jaw before his wrist reminded him of itself. Hissing, he returned both hands to the wheel.
“Don’t think it was,” he said. “The way Mum answered the phone, it sounded like she’d been waiting for me to call.”
Soobin sighed.
For nearly a minute, he didn’t say anything at all. Then he asked if this was about you.
Yeonjun felt something cold move through his chest, even though he’d expected the question from the start.
“It’s about everything,” he said.
“It’s—alright, look.”
More rustling.
Yeonjun pictured Soobin stepping out of the room, perhaps so Reina wouldn’t overhear him getting worked up. A door clicked shut.
“Alright,” Soobin said at last. “I thought—thought you and I had an understanding.”
Yeonjun glanced down at the steering wheel. He remembered Soobin’s warning to behave around you. Just the memory alone made him sink a little lower into his seat.
“We do,” he said.
“Right. So, then help me understand,” Soobin said. “Because from where I’m standing, it seems like you’d spent months trying to get away from your family. Then you start talking to her again, start going everywhere together, and now—now, all of a sudden, you’re driving back to see your parents.”
The tyres suddenly seemed louder against the asphalt. Yeonjun sensed that the worry in Soobin’s voice was amplifying his own.
“Tell me,” Soobin went on, “you’re not turning your whole life upside down because you think that’ll undo what happened in grad school.”
Yeonjun did not tell him anything.
“Because I will kick your ass if you are,” Soobin added. There was genuine hurt in his voice. “And I really don’t want to kick your ass.”
A reluctant smile tugged at Yeonjun’s lips as the car shifted gears. “Don’t worry. Your girlfriend sort of already did.”
“My—Reina?”
“Yeah. Why, you’ve got another one?”
Soobin groaned so loudly that the distorted sound through the speakers made Yeonjun wince.
“She’s my fiancée,” Soobin said.
“Alright. Your fiancée, then.” Yeonjun was smiling properly now. “She and I had a chat. She made a great point. Gave me a proper fright, not going to lie. Think it brought us closer.”
Soobin snorted. “Doubt Reina would agree with that.”
Yeonjun clicked his tongue.
“Now, why would you say that to me,” he said, “when I’m already so vulnerable?”
“Alright, get over yourself.” Yeonjun could practically see Soobin rolling his eyes. “Are you sure seeing your parents is a good idea?”
The navigation glowed on Yeonjun’s phone. A turn in six kilometres, then straight ahead for another ten.
He found himself wondering how often his parents saw each other now that he wasn’t there to pull them all back to the old house. Perhaps they held weekly meetings about him, comparing notes. It seemed likely. Or perhaps they’d hired someone to keep tabs on him.
He’d found everyone suspicious lately.
There was this guy at work, Franco—an engineer, technically, yet inquisitive as though he worked for the national intelligence. Then there was Mr Jung, your neighbour, who seemed to crack his door open every single time Yeonjun came upstairs to pick up Violet.
“No,” Yeonjun admitted finally. A few clouds parted, making room for the sun, and he squinted. “But avoiding them doesn’t seem like a good idea, either.”
Soobin didn’t respond. The indicator clicked twice before Yeonjun realised he hadn’t meant to turn yet, and he clicked it off.
“And this isn’t something I’m doing for her,” he added. “It’s something I should’ve done years ago. I’ve just been ignoring it all this time, but it—my parents are still there. So the problem is still there. I can’t live with the constant threat.”
Another sigh drifted through the speakers.
“I still don’t like this,” Soobin said.
Yeonjun let out a quiet breath. “I know.”
“Your mum’s not going to take this well at all.”
“She probably won’t.”
Soobin was quiet for another half a minute. Yeonjun heard his doubts in the silence; he knew Soobin didn’t think this would make a difference.
Yeonjun suspected he might be right. But this was the first step in his plan to finally stand up for himself. He’d find another way if this didn’t work.
“Promise me something,” Soobin said.
Yeonjun glanced at his rearview mirror; the road behind him was empty. “What?”
“The second you start apologising for shit that’s logically not your fault,” Soobin said, “you’ll stand up and leave. You won’t stay because you think you owe them something, or because your mum starts crying—you’ll just leave.”
Yeonjun closed his eyes for a second before opening them again.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. I’ll leave.”
“You—you’re allowed to disappoint them. They’ll survive.”
Glancing at his navigation again, Yeonjun exhaled.
That had sounded right; he just wasn’t certain if he’d fully internalised it yet. He supposed he was about to find out.
“Yeah,” he said, and didn’t manage anything else.
“And come home alive, would you?”
One corner of Yeonjun’s lips twitched. “I’ll try, yeah.”
The road ahead was grey and desolate; just him and a handful of crows hopping between distant fence posts and electrical wires, conducting, clearly, very important crow business.
Yeonjun and Soobin sat in silence for another minute without hanging up. It was their way of saying I love you to each other.
After another minute, Yeonjun finally smiled. “Alright. Later, then.”
“Yeah.” Soobin exhaled. “Text me when you’re done. Good luck.”
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 3 PM
It wasn’t supposed to be a particularly grand occasion.
Really, it was only a meal.
And still, the dining room looked as though his parents were expecting to host a banquet or perhaps a wedding. Yeonjun found himself peering through the window toward the neighbouring house, just to make sure he wasn’t accidentally getting married to anyone living there today.
Neither of his parents said a word after they sat down.
His distance from them had started as his New Year’s resolution. Back then, cutting his parents off had seemed like the sensible thing to do. He’d just returned home after months in Campbeltown and realised he couldn’t force himself to see them again.
In the beginning, his mother had tried to reach out every day. After four days of unanswered calls and unread messages, she’d stopped. Yeonjun had assumed she’d understood.
In truth, a part of him had suspected he’d end up back here eventually. He knew he’d have to look them in the eye and explain why he didn’t want to do this anymore.
Still, he’d been afraid they wouldn’t hear him. Wouldn’t listen.
But then he realised he’d been afraid that you wouldn’t listen, either, and you had.
He owed himself to try here, too. He thought he’d grown a lot over the past year.
Yet, sitting opposite his parents in the old dining room, Yeonjun discovered the house hadn’t changed enough to let him believe he had either. Everything here, from the polished marble floor to the silver-framed family photographs, still felt performative and lifeless.
He watched the warped reflections in his spoon and thought about how funny this was. The clock in the corridor behind him still ticked; the same one he’d broken when he was twelve and, bored at home, attempted to skateboard down the stairs. His mother had been livid. Rightfully so, probably. It was a very nice clock.
Yeonjun felt as though he’d never truly left.
“Well.” His father’s voice startled him. “It’s been a while since we’ve all sat down together like this. The whole family.”
Yeonjun reached for his water. Over the rim of the glass, he caught the briefest flicker of irritation on his mother’s face. It was gone a moment later.
“Sure,” he said, meeting his father’s gaze. “Been a while since we’ve actually been a family, too.”
His father blinked. The words seemed to fold him inward, his shoulders sagging.
His mother, on the other hand, straightened in her chair across the table, her chin lifted.
“What was that, darling?” she asked. Her smile remained immaculate.
It struck him that he’d become part of her performance. She’d never bothered to perform for him before.
So it really had been a while.
“Nothing,” he said, setting his glass down carefully. The pounding in his ears had long since drowned out the ticking clock. “Just saying it feels like we don’t even know each other.”
His mother’s smile reflected in the glossy porcelain of her untouched plate.
“Ah.” She tilted her head almost sympathetically. “Well, if you visited more often, son, perhaps you wouldn’t feel that way.”
Yeonjun smiled. He’d been expecting this one.
Across the table, his father drained his water in a single swallow. His white shirt looked almost yellow beside his wife’s flawless cream dress.
“I don’t really know what reason I’ve got to keep visiting,” Yeonjun said. He kept his eyes fixed on his mother. “I’d probably get more warmth talking to a stranger at a bus stop.”
For the first time, her lips twitched at the corners. Her eyes narrowed.
Then, with a small lift of her eyebrows—a trick he’d seen many times before—she reset her expression.
“Well then, darling,” she said, “there’s clearly something the matter with you.”
“There is.” His words were out before she’d finished speaking. “I never had a normal family. That’s what’s the matter with me.”
His mother opened her mouth. Before she could speak, his father suddenly shoved his chair back. The wooden legs shrieked across the marble, forcing the sound to ricochet through the room.
“Son,” he said. He sounded genuinely alarmed. “Where—what is this? Where is all this coming from?”
For one dangerous moment, Yeonjun felt guilt tighten his throat—efficient, as always. He hadn’t meant to make him worry and felt a reflexive urge to take everything back.
But then he watched his parents exchange a glance. Watched his mother shrug, as though she was answering the question for him. As though she could explain him better than he could.
No.
He wouldn’t let her speak for him.
“It’s always been there,” Yeonjun said. His father turned back to him. “Let’s be honest, we’ve never had a real relationship. You’ve never been part of my life. Not when I was growing up, and certainly not now.”
His father’s brows furrowed. “That’s not—”
“That is true,” Yeonjun cut in. “You think you were there because you’ve seen the photographs. But someone else took them. The nannies, the cooks. Whoever was around. You were never there, not even to ask how I was doing. The only people I had real relationships with in this house were the ones you called staff.”
The dining room was suddenly smaller. Heat settled over the three of them, thick and stale, until Yeonjun felt like he was sitting inside an oven. He became acutely aware of his parents opposite him.
“Darling, please.” His mother’s voice promptly restored the distance. She sounded tired now, as though this conversation was already running longer than she’d expected. “What is this sudden tantrum? We’re all adults. Of course our relationship as a family is different now.”
Yeonjun let out a breath. Predictably, she’d missed his point.
“Yeah.” He nodded once, smiling without humour. “The relationship we have now exists because you believe families are supposed to spend time together, so we perform the ritual, too. But it’s not real. S’never been real. It—”
His voice fractured. He inhaled sharply, felt the air fill his lungs like heavy, damp wool, and nodded to himself.
No one spoke until he did.
“That’s it,” he said. “S’enough. I’m not going to keep pretending we’re a family. I came here to tell you I’m done.”
His mother’s smile disappeared.
Yeonjun couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the straight line of her lips. She looked older at once. Beautiful, of course, always, but aged almost beyond recognition.
It was his father clearing his throat that pulled Yeonjun’s attention away from her.
“W-what exactly are you saying here, son?” he asked.
He tried to smile, perhaps to reassure Yeonjun or just himself, but it never reached his eyes.
“I’m saying we stop this theatre production,” Yeonjun said. “If you can’t accept me for who I am, or accept the people who matter to me, we’re never going to be a family. Can’t fake our way into becoming one.”
“That—” His father barely managed the word before a sharp flick of his mother’s wrist cut through the air.
She didn’t even look at him. “Could you leave us alone for a moment?”
Silence settled over the room.
Then, to Yeonjun’s surprise, his father remained seated. He looked at him.
“Do you want me to leave, son?” he asked.
Yeonjun simply stared. His father had never asked what he wanted before, not when his mother could answer for him.
“Please,” his mother said, her voice cool. “This is obviously between Yeonjun and me.”
Still, his father waited.
It was such a small gesture, yet it felt enormous. Something tightened between Yeonjun’s eyes.
“S’okay, Dad.” He lowered his gaze. “Won’t take long anyway.”
Hesitant, his father glanced towards his wife.
Yeonjun realised he no longer recognised what had passed between them. Either their language had changed, or his understanding of it had.
Finally, his father stood. This time, his chair scraped softly against the marble.
Yeonjun watched the folds of the white tablecloth as his father left the table. Across from him, his mother did the same. Her lips were pursed as if she was exhaling smoke from a cigarette. He wondered whether she still pretended not to smoke whenever he visited.
His father’s footsteps faded into the corridor. Neither of them moved until a distant door clicked shut.
Then his mother rose from her chair.
“It’s the girl,” she said. “Isn’t it? That’s what this is really about.”
Yeonjun swallowed.
You’d been right, then. She hadn’t forgotten you.
Why would she, really? Yeonjun hadn’t forgotten either, and clearly they were more alike than he’d ever wanted to admit.
“Actually,” he said, standing as well, “this is about you and me.”
His mother rolled her eyes. “Are the dramatics necessary, Yeonjun?”
The name caught him off guard. He wasn’t darling, dear, or son to her right now. Just Yeonjun.
Strangely, it was the most honest she’d sounded for as long as he could remember.
“Funny you should call that dramatic,” Yeonjun said. “Personally, I don’t think it comes anywhere close to threatening to have my girlfriend kicked out of university and shipping her to a different continent just to keep her away from me.” He tilted his head. “That, I think, was a masterclass in dramatics. Compared to you, I’m still a beginner.”
The muscles around his mother’s mouth tightened. That was confirmation enough; she’d organised all of it.
“Is she your girlfriend, then?” she asked.
Yeonjun ran his tongue across the back of his teeth. He watched her step around the dining table with measured, unhurried movements until she reached the edge of the raised platform beneath it. Even angry, she carried herself like she knew she had an audience.
“She isn’t, actually,” Yeonjun said. “Thanks to your hard work.”
His mother clicked her tongue—in a way she couldn’t stand in other people—and turned away.
“Now,” she said, “don’t pin this on me. You and I have talked about it, and you—”
“No, we haven’t, actually.”
She spun back towards him so sharply that outrage flashed across her face before she could smooth it away.
Yeonjun understood; how dare he interrupt.
“You talked to me,” he continued anyway. His jaw ached from how tightly he’d been clenching it. “I listened. Didn’t think I was in any position to disagree with you.”
“But you think you are now?”
The mockery in her expression, one eyebrow raised, lips gently pursed, was remarkably elegant.
“I think I always was,” he said, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice. “I just didn’t have the courage to stand up to you. You’re supposed to be my mother.”
Her eyebrow lowered. “I am your mother.”
Yeonjun released a breath so slowly that he could almost hear the air leaving every corner of his lungs. He looked down at the pale marble beneath his shoes.
“I don’t think parents should hurt their children,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
When he finally dared to raise his eyes, her lips had parted almost imperceptibly. Her eyes fluttered shut for a fleeting second. Then she was perfectly composed again.
“We’ve already discussed this,” she said. “Everything I do is for your own good. I’d have hoped you’d realised that by now.”
He lifted his head. A pulse beat against his throat.
“It’s for your own good, Mum.” His hands had curled into fists before he’d noticed. “None of this has ever been for me. You handcrafted my entire life. Every opportunity, every friendship.” His voice roughened. “You kept sanding away every part of my life that didn’t fit your ideal. But my relationships aren’t your toys. They’re not your—not your fucking projects.” He watched her flinch at the language, but couldn’t bring himself to stop now. “And I’m not someone you get to mould into whatever perfect fantasy you’ve got in your head. I’m not a doll.”
She watched him without blinking. He didn’t recognise the expression in her eyes.
“Whether you want to or not, Yeonjun,” she said, the quiet superiority never leaving her voice. “We are a family. And that is no way to speak to your family.”
“I think it’s very obvious that we aren’t.” He watched the sunlight catch the sharp line of her profile. “And we never will be, not while you refuse to see me as a person.”
Her brows furrowed into a brief frown. “You’re my son.”
He clenched his teeth. “Mhmm. And what does that mean to you?”
“It—”
“You think it means I’m your property,” he said before she could answer. “Means you can do whatever you want with me, and I don’t get to resist. Means I’m yours to bend. And if I don’t let you, I’m ungrateful and rude.”
Her gaze stayed fixed on him for a long moment before turning towards the wall of windows overlooking the garden. The leaves on the trees outside shifted lazily in the afternoon breeze. Even they had been planted exactly where she’d wanted them.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said.
Yeonjun almost laughed. “Are you?”
“Of course,” she said. “As a mother, it hurts me to hear that my child feels like this.”
He searched her face: the crease between her brows, the quiet indignation behind her eyes.
He realised that they still weren’t having the same conversation at all.
“How do I feel?” he asked.
Her frown deepened. “What?”
“Repeat it back to me.” His throat was dry. “What I’d just said.”
The silence in the dining room stretched.
He waited, even though he knew she’d never admit, not even in his own words, that she’d treated him like something to be managed. He half-expected her to roll her eyes.
Instead, she lowered her gaze.
“You feel,” she said, “that I haven’t been a good mother.”
His eyes flashed.
“No.” His fingernails dug deeper into his palms. “I never said whether you were good or not. I said you see me as something you can show off. Said you need to control every single part of my life, because you think it all reflects on you.”
“So you’re telling me I should stop caring about what happens to my own child, then.”
“No,” he said.
He wanted to leave.
“No,” he repeated.
He wanted to leave.
“I’m telling you what it felt like,” he said, “to be the child you were raising. It didn’t feel—didn’t feel like I got to be a child at all. Just an extension of you.”
His mother crossed her arms, then uncrossed them again. She smoothed one sleeve down and adjusted the golden band on her fourth finger.
It felt odd, seeing her restless. Perhaps this was another thing he’d inherited from her.
Eventually, she turned away, staring at the edge of the windows rather than looking through them.
“That still means you’re unhappy with me, then,” she said, so quietly that Yeonjun felt his stomach tighten. “Seeing as we’re having this conversation right now.”
He forced himself to take a slow breath and think about what Soobin had said on the way here.
He didn’t owe her reassurance. Didn’t owe her comfort.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I am unhappy.”
“I see.”
She looked down.
Yeonjun followed her gaze. To his surprise, he recognised that the shoes she was wearing were the deep black Jimmy Choos he’d got her for her birthday years ago. The crystal straps around the ankles looked like frost under the lights.
He couldn’t remember ever seeing her wear them.
“You don’t understand what it is like,” she said. Her voice became smaller, and his gaze snapped back to her face. “To spend your whole life working to build a happy life for your child. And then miss the moment your child grows up because you were w-working.” She pressed her trembling fingers against her lips. “Everyth—everything I did, I did it for you.”
The sob seemed to catch even her off guard. Within seconds, tears were running freely down her face.
Yeonjun was so startled that he could hardly move.
“I did everything so you’d have a good life,” she managed between ragged breaths. “So hearing you talk about it like it meant nothing—it’s extremely hurtful. I don’t understand how you can—how you can believe I’ve never had your best interests at heart.”
Yeonjun swallowed hard. He had seen her cry before, at charity events, funerals, arguments where she believed she’d been treated unfairly. This time, though, she wasn’t watching him to check his reaction.
It unsettled him.
“I believe that’s what you believe, Mum,” he said. “But they weren’t my best interests. They were your—”
“No,” she cut across him, and this was the closest she’d ever come to shouting. “They were for you. So nobody could ever dismiss you. So doors would open for you, because people would know you came from a respectable family. They’d look at you and see that you’d been brought up by good, hard-working people.”
Yeonjun tried not to smile at the irony.
He had been brought up by good, hard-working people. They just hadn’t been his parents.
“But do you hear what you’re saying, Mum?” he asked. “You’re talking about people looking at me, but seeing you.”
The vast dining room seemed to shrink another inch around him. With every word, the minimal certainty that had brought him here ebbed further.
He felt seven years old again, standing in the doorway of his mother’s office with both hands held out.
Can I please have a hug, Mum?
Not right now, darling. I’m busy.
He straightened his fingers.
“I’m not your property,” he said. “Not your mirror. I’m a—I’m a person.” His eyes stung. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth until the tightness went away. “And if you’d ever taken the chance to know me, you might’ve actually liked who I became.”
His mother hiccuped, and a fresh sob escaped before she could stop it.
For nearly a minute, she said nothing. The clock in the corridor seemed absurdly loud now.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He stood beside her, with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides and a knot forming slowly in his stomach.
It seemed to him she was crying because his pain wounded her pride. Because his feelings contradicted her reality. He knew he owed it to himself to say all of it. But she was still his mother, and she was crying.
A terrible guilt reached places inside him that anger couldn’t touch. He forgot Soobin’s warnings.
He was already on the verge of apologising when she lowered herself onto the edge of the platform and covered her face with both hands.
His words died in his surprise.
After a long while, he sat carefully beside her. The marble felt cool beneath his trousers.
“When did this start?” she whispered, lowering her hands and rubbing them together. “When did you start feeling like I—like I wasn’t treating you like my son?”
Yeonjun looked out at the garden. The trees swayed gently beyond the glass.
It had always been that way, he thought. As far back as he could remember. She’d displayed him like a prize-winning horse from the moment he could walk.
But if he said that now, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say anything else afterwards. She was asking him questions. He had to give her answers.
“I think after Alain left,” he said, looking down at his hands. “He was… he was the closest thing to a brother I’ve had. The one person who understood that growing up in a family like this looks wonderful from the outside, but it isn’t. And then… you—you just chucked him out.”
“You—” She hiccuped again. “W-we thought you wanted him gone, too.”
Yeonjun felt a sharp pang in his chest.
“Why would I, Mum?” His voice stayed gentle. “He and I were fighting. That—it happens sometimes. It didn’t mean I wanted him out of my life.”
Something shifted in her expression. Fresh tears gathered in her eyes.
“You never said anything,” she whispered.
You didn’t ask, Yeonjun wanted to say. You never asked.
“I know,” he ended up saying. His fingers found the cuff of his sock and tugged at it. “I didn’t think it would’ve made a difference. I was young. Suppose a part of me thought my parents knew best.”
His mother inhaled. As she lowered her head, a mascara-darkened tear slipped from her cheek and landed on the marble between them. The stone darkened.
Yeonjun found himself waiting for her to stand up and call someone to clean it, but she didn’t seem to realise the stain was there.
“You don’t think that anymore,” she said.
“No.” He rubbed a hand along his ankle. “I don’t.”
Outside, the peonies bowed beneath the weight of their blooms, their branches brushing against the neighbouring roses.
“And it’s the same now,” his mother said eventually. “With this girl.”
Yeonjun watched the window. He could see their reflections floating faintly in the glass: his mother’s white dress, his white shirt. Even sitting apart, they looked strikingly similar.
Slowly, he said, “I love her, Mum.”
His mother breathed out and didn’t speak for a long time.
Yeonjun wondered what was happening inside her head, but didn’t ask. He knew he’d earned this conversation, but he hadn’t earned her thoughts.
“There’s nothing I can say,” she murmured finally. “Is there?”
He shook his head. “Not if you want me to come back.”
The tears had stopped. Mascara clung beneath her eyes in uneven smudges, but she made no attempt to wipe them away.
“I knew this would happen,” she said quietly.
Yeonjun felt a hundred responses surge into his throat, every argument and every scream he’d swallowed over the past year.
“Why did you do it, then?” he asked, quieter than he’d intended. He’d lost all sense of his limbs. “If you knew what it’d do to me, why’d you call me that morning and force me to make that choice for us?”
She closed her eyes, drawing in a sharp breath.
It was the us that undid her, he knew. She still couldn’t accept that you and him could be one unit.
“I was protecting you,” she said, and he heard the distant echo of her voice on the phone at his old house, over a year ago, while you’d been blissfully unaware of it all upstairs. “I am always protecting you, son.”
“From what?”
“From making mistakes. She—”
“I made a mistake anyway,” he said. She opened her mouth, but he continued before she could speak: “By listening to you and choosing one of your options.”
He felt her stiffen beside him on the platform. Her gaze flickered towards him before slipping away again, as though she was afraid of what she’d find sitting beside her.
She didn’t speak.
“She’s back now,” Yeonjun continued. “And I’m trying really hard to make things right.”
His fingers tapped against the edge of the platform in a nervous rhythm.
He braced for another threat, another ultimatum, but his mother still did not move.
“A-and I need you to understand,” he added, looking down, “that I will always keep trying. If you can’t accept that—then, that’s it. I’ll leave. And I really won’t come back this time.”
She turned towards him. He looked away before he could meet her eyes.
She understood anyway. Everything she’d spent decades building for him—the inheritance, the name, the status, the connections—he’d leave behind without looking back.
Her gaze returned to her hands. She stared at them for a long moment.
“You have to understand,” she said, “that this isn’t easy for me.”
His heart lurched.
The tapping against the marble grew louder until he realised it was his own fingers still drumming against the platform.
“S’not easy for me, either,” he said. “But I’m—m’not asking your permission, Mum.”
Her jaw was tight. “So this is it, then?”
Yeonjun thought it was. Then he thought that he didn’t want it to be. He wanted, quite desperately, for her to simply stand up, hug him, and tell him she understood.
He realised that, despite everything he’d told himself on the drive over, some stubborn part of him had still come here hoping he’d have a home to come back to.
“I-I want you in my life,” he said. “But as my support system. I need to be the one making decisions about what happens in my life.”
She tried to inhale, but her breath caught halfway. Parting her lips, she tried again.
“But you know there are conditions,” she said, her voice thinner now, “that come with being part of this family—”
“No.” He gave a firm shake of his head. “Being a family doesn’t come with conditions.”
She folded her hands together over her knees. “It isn’t that simple. We’ve never been people who could simply do whatever we wanted. We have to think about how we’re seen. And I understand that you’re sensitive about this, but—”
“I’ve spent my whole life being seen, Mum,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level. “And I don’t care about being impressive. Never have.”
A sorrowful expression crossed her face. “Surely you realise how childish that sounds, son.”
Clicking his tongue, Yeonjun turned back towards the garden. The neighbouring house just beyond the trees glowed a brilliant white in the late afternoon sun.
“Look,” he said, brushing his palm against the edge of the platform. “All I’m saying is just let me be, okay? I know myself. I’ll work hard. I’ll build a career. I’ll make mistakes; probably plenty of them. But I’ll be alright in the end. Have been so far, despite everything.”
His mother swallowed heavily beside him.
She studied the reflection of his face in the window and tried to look past the version she’d introduced at charity events and described to her colleagues.
Her son.
The mere thought of his mistakes backfiring on him made something inside her itch with a familiar intensity. She knew it well. She’d spent years doing everything she could to make sure every choice he made was safe, productive, and beneficial.
But the choices hadn’t been his.
He wanted them to be his.
“You…” Her eyes dropped to the lines running through the marble beneath her heels. “You’ve grown into someone I don’t know anymore.”
He felt her words press into his chest.
She hadn’t meant it as a compliment; she’d sounded wounded. He felt inexplicable pride blooming inside him anyway.
“I’d like to show you who I am,” he said. “But I need you to trust me.”
The silence between them returned.
She’d never thought about trust inside a family.
She knew she trusted her parents, but she’d never considered whether they trusted her. They gave her this life, she knew – they’d introduced her to her husband, planned the wedding, discussed how many children she’d have.
They didn’t ask what she wanted or if she was ready. They didn’t have to. She knew she had to do what was expected. And she’d done it – she’d worked hard, been responsible. She’d been grateful.
And now she was sitting on the floor of a beautiful house she’d spent years building but barely lived in, beside the son she’d spent almost twenty-seven years raising, feeling as though she’d never spoken to him before.
It’d been over nine months since she’d seen him last.
She’d felt every day, every twenty-four hours, of those nine months.
“I feel,” she said slowly, “like I have to walk on eggshells around you now.”
Yeonjun let out a weary breath. “You don’t, Mum.”
“The way you’ve been talking, it sounds as though I do.” She shook her head. “You’re choosing someone else over your own mother.”
“I’m—” He turned his head to look at her, a wrinkle between his brows.
She wasn’t looking at him, and he grew very frightened very quickly. This wasn’t what their conversation had been about; he couldn’t understand how they’d got here all of a sudden.
“Why is it a competition?” he asked.
“It’s not a—”
“No, but you—you’re pitting yourself against her,” he said. “Why?”
She looked up and held his gaze.
After a minute, the silence between them started to echo inside him.
“You’re my mother,” he said, almost apologetically.
She looked away.
Another quiet minute passed before she spoke again.
“I don’t know how to be your mother,” she said, “if this is how you want things now.”
He closed his eyes and tried to exhale. Everything inside him was pressing into his very bones, each of his old wounds pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
“It is how I want things now,” he said.
They spent another minute in the company of the ticking clock.
His mother found herself thinking about the way he’d looked when he was little. Hardly two years old and already bruised head to toe because he refused to ride in the pram and insisted on walking everywhere.
She’d stood behind him with both hands half-raised, ready to catch him if he went down harder than usual. But she’d let him stumble. Skinned knees healed quickly.
She remembered the way he’d look back at her whenever he fell, just to check if she was there. Then he’d push himself back up again.
He’d been alright in the end. Despite everything.
Finally, his mother drew a careful breath.
“I’ll have to learn, then,” she said.
Yeonjun looked up.
There was a tremor of doubt in her voice, as if she didn’t quite understand what the words meant.
But she said them anyway.
“You will?” he asked.
She swallowed visibly. “I can try.”
Yeonjun felt his heart respond—thud-thud-thud—three times before he caught his breath.
“Thank you,” he said.
His mother lowered her hands to her sides, unsure where to go next. For one absurd second, they looked at each other as though they’d truly only just met.
Yeonjun thought about hugging her.
She thought about hugging him.
Perhaps one day one of them would.
For now, they sat on the platform, while the house remained silent and unchanged around them.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 6 PM
When Yeonjun returned home, you still hadn’t texted about picking up Violet, and evening had already settled over the city.
He stared at your chat on his screen for a long moment, thumb hovering over the keyboard. He couldn’t decide how to ask about her. There were several good options, he knew—how’s Violet? chief among them—but every version sounded needy somehow. Everything felt loaded today.
Yeonjun decided he’d just show up.
He remained perfectly happy with that plan until approximately the fourth floor. Then he remembered that the last time he’d come to collect Violet, you’d invited him in for a conversation. But a week before that, the two of you had hardly spoken at all.
Granted, that had mostly been his fault. Silence had seemed preferable to getting trapped in an endless cycle of polite small talk that never actually went anywhere.
And still, he felt an old wave of anxiety.
By the time he reached your door, his heart was battering against his ribs.
In fact, he became convinced it was his heartbeat that alerted you to his presence, because he couldn’t remember knocking or ringing the bell. One second he was staring at your door, wondering what the fuck was wrong with him today, and the next the door swung open.
You didn’t look surprised to find him here.
“Hi,” you said. “Violet’s napping in the flower pot. Come see.”
Yeonjun blinked. “She—in the flower pot? Inside of it?”
Truthfully, this wasn’t even the part that really threw him. It was rather the way you looked, eager and enthusiastic, as you gestured inside.
All his anxiety dissipated at once.
As it turned out, Violet had indeed wedged herself into the flower pot. She’d curled into a little loaf atop the decorative white pebbles, paws tucked beneath her chest, snoring under the broad leaf of your monstera.
“I was about to send you a picture,” you said, your phone still in hand, “when you knocked.”
Yeonjun crouched beside the pot, a smile on his lips.
Violet’s ear twitched against the leaf. She didn’t open her eyes to acknowledge him.
“You’d think she’d stay clear of damp surfaces,” he murmured.
“You’d think.” You smiled. “She’s been eyeing the pot all day, I didn’t know what to make of it. Now we know, I guess.”
Yeonjun pulled out his phone.
The fading evening light bathed Violet’s fur in a soft gold, making her mottled back blend almost seamlessly into the pebbles beneath her. You saw him lining up the shot and stepped aside, leaning one shoulder against the balcony doors. His hands, you noticed, were trembling slightly.
The cat continued snoring. Yeonjun couldn’t help snickering as he snapped a few pictures. One accidentally caught the edge of your hand.
Suddenly, a dull thunk sounded somewhere behind him. He glanced up.
Violet cracked one eye open, then the other, evidently checking if the sky wasn’t falling. She’d already had enough inconvenience from the mattress earlier this morning and the odd, prolonged sounds coming from somewhere inside your flat.
“The kettle,” you explained to them both, nodding towards the kitchen. “I was making tea. Would—would you like a cup?”
Surprised, because he’d been dismantling twenty-six years of family history just a few hours earlier and now you were offering him tea while his cat slept inside your flower pot, Yeonjun didn’t immediately respond.
“Uh.” Excellent start. “Sure, yeah. Tea is—it’s great. My favourite. Love tea.”
Immediately, he felt a profound kinship with Chandler Bing declaring chewing gum to be perfection.
“Great,” you said over your shoulder. “Good you’ve got such strong opinions.”
Nose scrunched, Yeonjun left Violet under her leafy canopy and followed you into the kitchen.
You reached into a cupboard and pulled down two mugs. Just then, a long mechanical groan drifted out of the corridor, slightly muted but creepy nonetheless. It almost sounded like the screech of a sea lion suffering from bronchitis.
“What on earth was that?” Yeonjun asked, glancing towards your corridor. He leaned his hip against the kitchen island.
You sighed as you set the mugs down.
“My washer,” you said without looking up. “It’s leaking again. My grandad came round to fix it, but it still sounds like that every time I use it.”
Yeonjun knew this problem well; he’d used his own washing machine exactly once after moving in. It had roared so loudly that he’d expected you to knock on his door again.
His wasn’t leaking, but he’d still been dry-cleaning all his clothes like some pompous tosser anyway.
“S’the plumbing,” he said. “Mine’s constantly backing up, too. Can’t even do the dishes half the time.”
You reached for the teabox on the counter by the kettle. “S’that bad?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Got a plunger in my kitchen now. Never had one before.”
Laughing, you reached behind the microwave and triumphantly showed him your own. “I’ve got one, too!”
Yeonjun laughed. It felt miraculous he still knew how.
“Want me to take a look at it?” he asked, glancing back towards the corridor.
“The washer?”
“Yeah.”
You returned the plunger to its hiding place and regarded him sceptically.
“Do you even know anything about washing machines?” you asked.
“No,” he admitted. “But I work with cars, so it—”
“Oh, right, yeah.” You nodded. “And I take my washer out for a drive every Saturday night. The brakes are shot, but the engine’s great.”
Pressing his lips together, Yeonjun gave you his most convincing glare.
“Can’t be that different,” he insisted.
“I think it can.”
“Let me look.”
You let out another sigh, though there was amusement behind it, and gestured towards the corridor.
“Alright. Go on.” You inclined your head. “Can hardly make it worse. Bathroom’s just down the corridor, on the right.”
Yeonjun nodded and followed the noise down the corridor. As he passed the open door to your bedroom, he caught sight of the window Violet must’ve been using to sneak inside every morning. There seemed to be faint paw prints dusted on the windowsill.
The whirring grew louder as he rounded the corner and pushed open the last remaining door.
The bathroom was small, lined with teal tiles on the walls that immediately reminded him of films from the nineties, ones he’d only watched on old VHS tapes. They had colour to them back then, the bathrooms.
Your washing machine sat beside the sink, vibrating with an alarming intensity. An empty plastic basket on top of it was performing slow pirouettes and contributing generously to the dreadful racket.
You appeared in the doorway just as he removed the basket and crouched beside the machine. It had already shuffled several inches away from its usual spot by the wall.
“Aha!” Yeonjun announced, raising his voice over the noise. He hadn’t heard you come up behind him. “The hose is loose!”
“Again?” He flinched at the nearness of your voice. “My grandad only just fixed it.”
Carefully, he reached behind the machine until his fingers found the connection. The hose rattled against his hand. He tried to squeeze it tighter.
He pulled back, standing to his feet. “Let’s see here now.”
He turned on the sink tap. Water rushed into the basin and stayed there. The drain gurgled unhappily.
“Right.” He shut off the tap and waited for nearly a minute until the water reluctantly spiralled away. “The drain’s clogged, so that probably loosens the hose every time the washer empties. The water struggles to go somewhere, builds up the pressure and shakes the hose loose. The noise’s got to be that, too.”
“That’s wonderful.” You’d already figured as much and stared at the washing machine accusingly. “Any solutions?”
“Don’t wash anything.”
You clicked your tongue. “Besides that.”
Snickering, Yeonjun crouched to peer under the machine. A few drops had already gathered on the tiles.
“Nothing else you can do, probably,” he concluded, leaning back on his heels. “Keep an eye on the hose to make sure water doesn’t gather under it, but it—” The machine let out another low moan. “—it’ll probably continue to sound like this.”
“Lovely, then.” You rested a hand against the doorframe. “Don’t think anyone lives upstairs at the moment, and Mr Jung seems to like me, so you’re the only person who can complain about the noise.”
Yeonjun smiled. Mr Jung clearly did not extend his affection to everyone in the building.
“I will try not to,” he said.
“Kind of you.”
He stood, dusting his palms together. “I know. S’just how I am.”
You rolled your eyes and turned away before he caught the smile threatening the corners of your mouth. “Come back to the kitchen before the tea gets cold.”
“Coming, love.”
He rinsed his hands under the cold water from the tap. It sputtered again as it drained.
When he joined you in the kitchen, you were pouring hot water into the mugs. Steam curled slowly into the air.
Yeonjun climbed onto one of the stools by the island and drew in a slow breath. The whole kitchen smelled of lemon and honey. He found himself smiling before he realised he was doing it.
“Were you coming back from somewhere, by the way?” you asked, nodding towards his suspiciously crisp white shirt as you set the kettle back on its base.
He looked down at himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “I, uh—I went to see my parents today.”
“Oh.” You looked at him. “Already?”
“Yeah.” He snickered. “Wasn’t planning on today, necessarily, but, uh—my mum likes doing everything quickly.”
You remembered as much from your own dinner at their house.
Deciding you didn’t particularly want to revisit that memory, you turned instead to the cupboard beside the plates. It held two bottles inside. You grabbed the pink one.
“Raspberry liqueur for the occasion, then,” you said, showing him the handwritten label. “From my gran. Should go well with tea, I reckon.”
Yeonjun felt his chest become lighter.
You’d told him you’d have drinks.
“Yeah,” he said. “Can’t see why it shouldn’t.”
You tugged at the cap. The sugar around the neck of the bottle had glued it shut.
“How’d it go, then?” you asked, through an effortful groan. He noticed that you weren’t quite looking at him anymore.
While you searched for two glasses, he wrapped both hands around the mug and took a sip. The tea scalded the roof of his mouth. He took another few sips anyway.
“Good, actually,” he said, lowering the mug. “Better than I expected. My mum cried.”
Your brows rose. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He smiled, though there wasn’t much amusement in it. “She weaponises that a bit, I think. But she listened.”
You poured the liqueur into two dark blue glasses and slid one towards him across the island.
The kitchen seemed quieter now, even the steam from the mugs had slowed. It was a familiar feeling; you and Yeonjun had sat in this exact silence before. You hadn’t missed it.
You lifted your glass and took a small sip. For just a moment, you were back in your grandmother’s garden, fingers stained pink from the raspberries left too long in the summer sun.
“How do you feel now?” you asked.
Yeonjun let go of the mug and picked up the little glass instead. The liqueur tasted deceptively sweet, then it punched him squarely behind the eyes.
He coughed in surprise.
“Sh-shit.” He stared at the pink liquid. “This is stronger than I thought.”
“Yeah.” You grinned. “My gran doesn’t mess around.”
Laughing, he took another sip. He was prepared this time and welcomed the warmth into his chest. His cheeks, he could feel, had coloured anyway.
“I actually don’t know how I feel,” he said, watching the liqueur catch the faint light from the windows. “The same as before, I guess. Thought maybe I’d feel relieved, because it went sort of well. But I don’t.”
You rested an elbow lightly against the island. “Why not?”
Yeonjun glanced towards Violet in the flower pot and considered the question.
The silence he’d carried out of his parents’ house still sat inside him. His mind was empty. It had been a while since he hadn’t had a thousand thoughts rushing through his head, and this emptiness felt eerie. Like standing in the middle of a deserted city, surrounded by traces of life that had once filled every street.
“I don’t know,” he ended up saying. “Maybe it’s too soon. Think a part of me’s still sitting in that dining room. Doesn’t really feel like anything happened yet.”
You nodded slowly. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
“Yeah.” He rolled the glass between his palms. “She said she’d try to let me make my own decisions, though. Let’s see how that, uh—how it goes for her.”
You caught the ambiguous arch of his eyebrows. “Going to test her?”
“Maybe.” A small smile ghosted across his lips as his gaze drifted back towards the living room. “Think I’ll tell her about Violet first.”
Your gaze followed his. Violet was now gazing out the window from beneath the leaf, her tail tracing slow patterns through the pebbles.
“She doesn’t know?” you asked.
“No,” he said. “She’s not much of an animal person. But m’thinking I’ll start small. Violet’s cute, she should win her over.”
You smiled into your glass and politely swallowed back all comments about people who didn’t like animals.
“That sounds like a sensible place to start,” you said.
“Yeah,” Yeonjun murmured. Slowly, his thoughts were coming back to him. “A-and then we’ll see what comes after that.”
You sipped the liqueur.
You couldn’t imagine what it had cost him to sit across from his mother and force his way through years of conversations that had never happened. You wanted to ask what she’d said, wanted to know more, but suspected that reliving it all might be as agonising as living through it.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” you said instead. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
Yeonjun looked up. For a moment, he only watched you.
Then he reached for his mug, taking a few careful sips of the tea to dilute the lingering sweetness of the raspberry. He didn’t think he’d ever had tea with liqueur before. It worked surprisingly well. He already felt nice and warm and a bit sleepy.
“Yeah,” he said eventually. His voice had quietened. “I knew I needed to do it, just one last time, if nothing else. And I’m glad I did. But it—yeah.” He let out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Wasn’t easy. I actually had to go to work today, and everything that could go wrong went wrong. Thought it’d distract me. Very naïve of me.”
“It didn’t, then?”
“Not even a little.” He yawned, and his eyes seemed a little brighter.
You decided to steer the conversation in this direction. “Can’t remember if I ever asked whether you’re part of a team or just do general work.”
“Oh, yeah, no, I’m in a team.” He wrapped both hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into his still stiff fingers. “We’re on a massive losing streak.”
You took a sip of tea and immediately regretted it; it was still too hot. Frowning, you ran your tongue across the roof of your mouth.
“Are you that bad at your job?”
Yeonjun snorted so suddenly that he nearly spilt his tea. He set the mug down.
“Well, there’s only so much I can do,” he said. “My data’s always state of the art. S’the idiots behind the wheel who ruin everything.”
Your smile widened a touch. “Wish you were one of them?”
His eyes drifted, almost unconsciously, toward his left wrist. The ache had stabilised now; if he wasn’t thinking about it, he hardly felt it.
“Sometimes,” he admitted, rubbing absentmindedly at the handle of the mug. “But I like where I am now as well.”
You took another sip of the tea, deliberately keeping your eyes above his wrist. You were glad, you realised, that he wasn’t racing anymore.
Across the room, Violet was now hanging halfway out of the pot. Her back paws rattled the pebbles as she slipped. You both turned to look.
She landed on the floor and gave a decided shake of her head before settling in front of the window.
“What’s it like, then?” you asked. “Your races.”
Yeonjun turned back to you.
“Well,” he pondered for a moment, “loud.”
“Very different from uni?”
He smiled. He remembered bringing Beomgyu to one race a few months ago (Taehyun had meant to come too, but he’d cancelled because he’d had a date; Yeonjun realised he’d forgotten to tease him for that). Beomgyu had been so energetic the entire time that he’d practically talked his way into one of the cars before Yeonjun interfered.
“Not really,” he said. “Less alcohol, maybe. More hot dogs.”
You nodded thoughtfully. “Sounds fun.”
He scratched the back of his head.
“I could, uh—could take you with me one day.” His eyes flicked to yours. “We’ve got a race next week.”
Your eyebrows lifted. “You’re allowed guests?”
“I’m allowed anything I want.”
You laughed.
“Okay,” you said. “I’d like that. Always been curious about professional racing.”
Yeonjun thought he’d had a bit too much of the liqueur.
For a fleeting second, he was back in grad school, talking to you, for what he thought was the last time, outside Administration. How he’d wished to dissolve the tension between you then, to get you to roll your eyes at him, to make you laugh.
Now he was sitting in your kitchen, doing exactly that.
His stomach did not know what to do with itself.
“You—you’d enjoy it, I think,” he said.
He already knew you liked speed. Honestly, after watching you handle icy roads in his Mercedes, he’d suspected that his team might’ve finished a few places higher with you behind the wheel.
“Yeah?” you said. “Your data, or the actual racing?”
He grinned. “Both, I hope.”
Smiling, you took another sip of tea.
Yeonjun lifted his mug before the joy on his face grew too obvious. The tea had cooled enough now that he could finally taste the honey beneath the lemon. He reached for the liqueur then.
He wanted to say something else, but wasn’t sure he could bring himself to disturb the lightness that had settled in the kitchen.
After another slow sip of the liqueur, he decided he could.
“My mum… she, uh—I talked to her about Alain today,” he said, lowering the glass onto the island. “She said she thought I wanted him gone, too.”
Your brows drew together. “Why would she think that?”
He breathed out slowly.
“She assumed I shared all her opinions, I guess,” he said. “He and I argued, and she must’ve thought I’d had enough of him, because she had. I finally said I didn’t, but it—” He shrugged. “S’partly on me, probably. I never told her what Alain meant to me before.”
Something tightened behind your ribs, and you lowered your gaze to the island. There were things you couldn’t swallow back.
“I think it was fairly obvious that you and Alain were close,” you said.
“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “I know that was her problem. But still. It also made me think that I haven’t said this to him, either. We made up, of course, but, uh—aside from wishing him a happy birthday back in April, I haven’t actually reached out since.”
“How come?”
He traced a fingertip across the grey veins in the island countertop. “Don’t want to make him uncomfortable.”
You frowned again. “Why would he be uncomfortable?”
Yeonjun shrugged. “S’been years. He might feel obligated to see me, even if he doesn’t actually want to.”
You took a sip of the liqueur and studied him over the rim of your glass. “Would he, really?”
Yeonjun looked away first.
“I don’t know.” He sighed quietly. “I feel like I don’t really know how to talk to people half the time.”
You failed to catch your smile before it escaped. “You’re managing quite well at the moment.”
He smiled at that. “Yeah. M’trying. Just feel like there’s loads of unfinished things from back in the day. And now I’m probably too old to finish them. So it’s—I don’t know.”
“What things?”
Yeonjun took the final sip of tea from his mug. It barely got a chance to get cold.
“Well, uh,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “back in the day, Alain and I had a list of things we wanted to do. A, uh—Coolest To-Do List Ever, I’d called it.” He caught your smile from the corner of his eye. “Don’t laugh.”
You pressed your lips together. “I would never.”
“I was thirteen when we made it.”
“Prime age for lists.”
“Mhmm.” Snorting, he leaned back on the stool. “Anyway. I hadn’t looked at that list since he left. But I’ve been thinking about it lately. Sucks that I never finished it.”
You rested your chin lightly against your palm. You suspected this wasn’t really about the list at all, but everything it held: the childhood he’d wished he had, the future he’d wanted.
“You still could, though,” you said.
He gave a faint shake of his head.
“Don’t think I’d feel comfortable asking Alain now,” he said. “Could’ve done those things alone, I suppose, but that’s lame. Guess I could’ve asked Bin or Gyu, or anyone, to finish that list with me, too. But—I don’t know. Think I’ve sort of convinced myself that if I looked at it again, I’d lose another friend the way I lost Alain.”
Your gaze softened.
Some objects held that power, you knew. The scarf at the bottom of your wardrobe was one of them.
“Have you got that list with you?” you asked.
He blinked down, mentally tracking the location of his phone to his back pocket.
“Yeah,” he said. “Probably somewhere in my email.”
“You could read it to me.”
He looked at you, feeling heat creep unexpectedly into his face. He couldn’t remember half the things on that list anymore, but now he suspected that thirteen-year-old him had been a spectacular loser, after all.
“You sure?” His smile turned awkward. “If I read it and it turns out the list is cursed, and we—”
“Promise I’m not leaving.”
Yeonjun lowered his gaze. There was something lodged in his throat, and he took a moment to swallow to clear it.
Without saying anything, you reached across the island and refilled his glass.
His eyes followed your hand as you pulled back.
“Thanks.” He looked up at the bottle between you.
There was something very warm swelling in his chest. Maybe just the liqueur.
“I, uh—I should remind you again,” he said, “I was thirteen when we made the list.”
You nodded. “I’d love to know what thirteen-year-old you considered cool. Curious whether you’ve matured at all.”
“I’ve matured,” he said, indignant all of a sudden. “But admittedly, I might not come across as particularly cool on this list.”
“That’s alright.” You topped up your own glass. “You don’t come across as particularly cool in real life, either.”
His hand flew dramatically to his chest. “Okay—first of all, that’s very rude. And second of all, that’s objectively not true. I’m very cool.”
“Mhmm.”
He set his phone down. “Tell me I’m very cool.”
Your lips stretched against your better judgment. “Read your list, Cool Boy.”
Huffing, Yeonjun opened his email on his phone.
The two of you finished your drinks in silence while he scrolled and scrolled to the bottom of his Sent folder, eyes skimming old receipts and university essays. He vaguely remembered emailing the list to himself before forwarding it to Alain.
Across the island, you watched him frown at the screen. You remembered, abruptly, one of your first dates back in grad school. He’d asked for your feedback and started a note on his phone, titled DATE ACTIVITIES. You didn’t think he’d written down much, but now you wondered whether he’d always been making lists for the future.
“Alright,” he said finally.
The document on his phone opened slowly, and the formatting was atrocious: at least three different fonts, several random colours. He almost regretted bringing this up.
“This is, uh—this is actually worse than I remember,” he said.
You perked up immediately. “Oh, I cannot wait.”
Trying not to grimace, he searched for the beginning.
“Alright,” he said again. “First up is a Lord of the Rings marathon. In, um—in a pillow fort, apparently. Alain has left a comment here, which just says: with pizza.”
Your lips curved. “That’s not so bad. Sounds fun.”
His embarrassment eased by about three per cent.
“Next is excellent,” he said, eyes dropping to the next line, split mid-word due to the large font. “A midnight picnic.”
You watched him, waiting for more.
He did not give you more, too busy zooming in on the lowercase letters underneath.
“A midnight picnic,” you repeated.
“Yes,” he said, squinting at his screen. “With—oh, you’ll love this. With sweets and chocolate syrup. On top of the sweets, I’m assuming.” He made a thoughtful pause before looking up at you. “Notice how I, too, preferred chocolate syrup over whipped cr—”
“Mhmm.” You’d grown louder now. He snickered. “Why midnight, then?”
“Think I had a ten o’clock curfew. So midnight was basically criminal activity for me.”
“Ah. Living on the edge, I see.”
“Yes.” He grinned. “Hey, turns out I’m cooler than I gave myself credit for.”
Smiling, you stretched your legs out across the floor. “What’s next?”
His eyes dropped lower on the screen. “Next is competing to win the biggest stuffed toy at a fair.”
“Always a competition with you.”
“Well—” He was forced to abandon his defence as he found the next item. “Yeah, fair enough. I’ve got lawnmower racing here, too.”
You raised your eyebrows. “What, just pushing lawnmowers across a field?”
“No, we had the big ones at the house, the ride-on ones.”
“Oh!” You brightened. “My grandparents have those. Never occurred to me to race on them.”
“You’ve missed out.”
“Sounds like I have.”
He scrolled down. The glow from his phone reflected faintly in his eyes. Slowly, his smile began to widen.
“M’realising,” he said, “I’ve accidentally completed several of these.”
You found yourself smiling, too. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He turned the phone towards you, and you leaned over the island to see better. “Racing in Dad’s old Chevy, for example. I’ve crashed that now, so this one’s basically crossed off twice.”
You gave him a look. “Incredible.”
“Wasn’t very entertaining, to be honest.” He lowered the phone for a moment. “This was after Alain left. Thought I’d keep racing, since, clearly, I was naturally gifted. You can laugh.”
You snorted. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, love.” He nodded. “Anyway, I’d hardly got off our property when I drove straight into a bin, and this massive black rubbish bag ended up plastered across the windscreen. I ended up in a field with two wheels hanging off.”
You let out a long breath, shaking your head.
“How many car accidents have you had in your life?”
He waved the question away. “This one hardly counts. Didn’t even feel anything.”
You clicked your tongue, which filled him with an odd warmth. Only then did he realise he’d been holding his phone in his left hand, and his wrist had been completely calm.
“Oh, I’ve done the road trips as well,” he said, pointing at another item further down on his list. “Gyu and I took Kai skiing a few years ago, so that’s done, too. And the cabin—Soobin and I used to go there together.”
“That’s nice.” You watched him scroll further. Some of the tension he’d arrived carrying had eased enough for the smile lines beside his lips to return. “Halfway through the list then, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I see the last one’s not crossed off, though.”
“What is it?”
“This one’s a bit ambitious.”
You placed both palms flat on the marble island and drew an exaggeratedly solemn breath. “I’m ready.”
“Matching tattoos.”
Your eyebrows climbed. “Wow. When you were thirteen?”
“Yeah.” He snorted. “I remember Alain objected, so we—”
“Reasonable man.”
“Yeah, but not because I was thirteen,” Yeonjun said. “He just didn’t want tattoos.”
“Oh.”
“So we settled on getting the fake ones, from gum wrappers.” His voice was warm. “We were supposed to find a matching pair and wear them on our arms.”
The image was absurdly earnest, and you couldn’t stop the smile spreading on your face.
“You could’ve drawn them on, too,” you said, lifting your hand and rotating your wrist.
Yeonjun grinned, remembering the heart he’d drawn there once. He remembered the rush from feeling your pulse right under his fingertips, too. Remembered the smell of the rain in the air and the look in your eyes when he placed a cherry biscuit between your lips.
“Uh—true, yeah,” he said, glancing away from you. He’d lost all track of the conversation. “But they’ve got to be matching or it won’t—shit.” He looked up again. “I should’ve drawn you a spider web.”
“Oh, it would’ve counted then?”
“Yeah,” he said sadly.
Laughing softly, you nodded at his phone.
“Well, that’s a solid list anyway,” you said. “All of it sounds genuinely fun.”
Yeonjun exhaled, somewhat wistfully, as he locked his phone and set it down on the island. It clicked softly against the marble.
“Yeah,” he said. “S’been on my mind. Not much on there, I know, but it used to be something I looked forward to every day.”
“Hmm.”
You watched his face change.
For a few minutes while he read his list, he’d looked younger, less guarded, as though he really was thirteen again. But slowly, little by little, guilt had returned to his expression—as though he didn’t think he deserved to indulge in nostalgia for too long. Didn’t deserve to remember those days with as much fondness as he had.
You disliked that guilt immediately and fervently.
“Well,” you said, resting your forearms on the island. “You could still finish all of that. With me.”
Yeonjun looked up, parting his lips.
“You’d—” He cleared his throat. “You’d do those things with me?”
The surprise in his voice made you unexpectedly self-conscious. Perhaps you’d overstepped.
“Sure,” you said. “I don’t mean to replace Alain or anyth—”
“You wouldn’t.”
His gaze remained locked on you.
Startled, momentarily, by the certainty in his voice, you dropped your eyes to the island.
“Great, then.” You held up a hand and began ticking items off on your fingers. “So, Lord of the Rings, midnight picnic, fair, lawnmowers. And matching tattoos. S’five things.”
Yeonjun swallowed, only to realise he couldn’t really feel his throat anymore. He wondered if he could quietly add another hundred items to the list.
“Right,” he managed. “Yeah.”
“We’d get through it a lot quicker if there was a fair in town.” You tipped your head back, gaze drifting up towards the ceiling. “But we can improvise, I’m sure.”
“Just, uh—just so you know,” he said, “you don’t have to do any of this. It’s just a—”
“Don’t do that,” you said gently. He quieted at once. “I don’t mind. We said we’re friends.”
Yeonjun dropped his gaze.
He still hadn’t got used to the word. He wondered if he ever would.
“Alright,” he said. “Thank you, friend.”
Your amused smile was a mirror of his own.
“Any time,” you said, “friend.”
As your gazes lingered on each other a heartbeat longer than either of you intended, smiles spreading against your will, you realised that this felt a bit like the beginning of a new game.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 8:30 PM
After Yeonjun had left, giggling all the way down the stairs with Violet cradled in his arms, already tipsy on your grandmother’s raspberry liqueur, you finished tidying the kitchen. You swept Violet’s white hairs off the floor, wiped down the counters, rinsed the mugs and glasses, and once the flat looked livable again, you settled at your desk.
A notification lit up your phone before your laptop managed to wake.
Reina had sent you a photo from her co-worker’s birthday dinner. Apparently, Henry, your old classmate from university, had been there as well. He was dating the birthday girl’s best friend now and, according to Reina’s commentary, had spent the first half an hour pretending not to recognise her.
Snickering—Henry had always been painfully pretentious—you zoomed in on his face. He hadn’t changed much in the year since you’d last seen him; still red in the face after a single glass of wine.
The tiny burst of nostalgia proved surprisingly infectious.
Almost without thinking, you wandered into your own gallery and, before you knew it, you were at the very top.
There were photos from your first Christmas home from university: your grandparents smiling in their vast kitchen beside a crooked tree that your uncle had chopped down himself, nearly sacrificing a finger in the process (his own).
Your thumb slowed as you scrolled down to the photos of the neighbour’s horse, who’d somehow befriended Violet—your Violet—through the fence. He’d wandered across the pasture just to lie beside her, picking her from a sea of other, mildly offended cows.
Even now, the picture made you snicker.
Further down were tons of pictures from Beomgyu’s birthday during second year.
You scrolled through thirty-four of his selfies with Reina after he’d stolen your phone, followed by thirty more of him holding his birthday cake out at arm’s length as though presenting a newborn lion to the kingdom.
You paused at one of the group photos.
In it, Reina stood beside you. Soobin, naturally, stood on Reina’s other side. Beomgyu was in the middle, grinning despite his eyes being screwed shut against the sunlight. Henry was there, too.
Yeonjun, in the meantime, was in the opposite corner, standing about as far away from you as the camera allowed.
You smiled despite yourself.
You remembered that birthday.
Beomgyu had made a flag for the occasion: red and blue, with his name painted across it in thick black letters, large enough to be identified from orbit. He’d attached it to a pole liberated from his then-roommate’s drying rack and had planted it triumphantly outside his dormitory window.
Years later, after moving in with Kai, he would hang the thing from the tree outside their house every birthday.
That year, however, to celebrate the flag’s debut, he’d marched everyone outside into the parking lot and announced a game of Capture The Flag (with only just this one flag; he’d hidden it on the outside windowsill of an abandoned building further down the street).
It was mid-March, but felt like early January. You’d worn two pairs of gloves and still couldn’t feel your fingers. Frankly, you’d been much more interested in capturing a warm cup of tea.
Beomgyu had split everyone into teams.
Outrageously, he’d separated you from Reina (you suspected he was punishing you for accidentally wearing the same shade of pink as him). Yeonjun, unfortunately, had ended up on your team.
The game dissolved into chaos as soon as it started. Someone tackled someone as though this was a game of rugby. Half the players forgot who their teammates were. At one point, Yeonjun slipped on the ice and lay flat on the asphalt for nearly a minute—it was, without question, the happiest minute of your day.
Beomgyu, in the meantime, sat on the roof of his Audi—broken, even back then—and sipped champagne straight from the bottle, shouting instructions and jailing players for using words he’d secretly designated as forbidden (‘fuck’ turned out to be one of them; you’d been jailed four times before you realised).
Eventually, you and Yeonjun spotted the flag and found yourselves locked in a heated argument over who should make the run for it without attracting the other team’s attention. You argued it should be you, seeing as you hadn’t yet eaten gravel. Deeply offended, Yeonjun retorted that your jacket sleeve was ripped and ran off the moment you glanced down.
You launched after him.
Both of you reached for the flag at the exact same time.
And then, horribly, your earring had hooked itself through the loose weave of his jumper. He staggered backwards from the windowsill, dragging you into him.
Are you kidding me? you’d yelled, dropping the flag.
Would you stop moving? he’d snapped back. Your earring’s going to stab me.
I’ll stab you if you don’t get the hell—
Your hair is literally up my nose.
Don’t breathe, then.
Would you stay still, for fuck’s—
You’re pulling my fucking hair!
By then, Beomgyu had arrived. One look at the two of you tangled together was enough to send him into hysterics. He doubled over, clutching his knees as he tried to ask what had happened.
Finally, he leaned forward to help.
His first attempt had torn a neat hole through Yeonjun’s jumper, which, understandably, prompted Yeonjun to yell directly into your ear.
His second attempt had been to remove your earring, which, understandably, resulted in him nearly removing your ear instead.
Eventually, yelling and cussing, you’d managed to unclasp the earring yourself, abandoning it somewhere inside Yeonjun’s jumper.
You owe me an earring, you’d said, rubbing your aching ear.
I’ll give you two, Yeonjun said, absently touching the ones in his own ears. What do I get for the extra one?
A punch on the nose.
He’d laughed. You’re not getting my earrings, then.
You’d bent to retrieve the abandoned flagpole lying on the asphalt.
Least I got the flag, you’d said.
Yeonjun dropped his hands from his ears. I got the flag.
What? I literally grabbed—
You didn’t grab anyth—
I grabbed the fucking—
Beomgyu cut in, planting a hand squarely between each of your shoulder blades with two loud, stinging smacks.
He’d done that just in time. Your fingers had started to itch with the urge to strangle Yeonjun.
Your team had ended up winning, after all, but there was another murderous occasion shortly after that.
This one came during a Philosophy seminar that had come perilously close to sucking your very soul out. The auditorium had been small: a few built-in seats lining the walls and one oval table in the centre with barely ten chairs around it.
Through some biblically fucked luck, Reina had ended up sitting across the table from you that day, and you were stuck next to Yeonjun for the entire hour and a half.
Shortly after starting the seminar, the professor announced that she’d secured a presentation slot at a conference next month and, in a burst of astonishing optimism, had decided that her students should present their barely rehearsed assignments to actual scientists.
You’d been horrified by the absolute waste of everyone’s time—no one in the class cared about the field, and you doubted anyone cared about listening to undergraduate Sociology students.
You didn’t say any of that.
Instead, you hunched over your notebook, scribbling increasingly aggressive notes about everything you needed to fix in your slides. The pen squeaked against the paper.
Beside you, Yeonjun looked offensively relaxed.
He’d already decided he wasn’t giving the presentation—not like the professor could drag him into the conference. So he lounged in his chair with one ankle hooked over the opposite knee, staring at the table and nudging you occasionally with his thigh.
You mind? you’d asked him at one point. Some people are trying to study here.
Hm? He’d turned to you. Oh, well, you shouldn’t bother them, then, love.
Pressing your lips together, you returned to your notebook.
You’d only realised his arm had been resting across the back of your chair when you leaned backwards. Startled, he jerked it away. Your jacket immediately slid off the chair and landed on the floor.
You looked at him.
He looked at the jacket, then back at you.
Your jacket fell, he’d said.
You dropped it.
Can’t recall doing that.
Grinding your teeth, you bent to retrieve it.
By the time you straightened again, Yeonjun was openly reading your notebook.
Your handwriting’s lovely, he’d said. Slightly concerned you’ve written ‘fuck this’ three times just there—your Fs are a bit wonky, by the way—but lovely, still.
Thanks, you’d replied. Learnt cursive in primary school. I assume you wouldn’t know.
I wouldn’t. Care to teach me?
Busy.
Another time?
You rolled your eyes. He turned back towards the professor with a proud smile tugging at one corner of his lips.
It had truly been extraordinary: both, his ability to make you seethe and your own restraint from tackling him.
You remembered another time, already in grad school, after yet another discussion where Yeonjun had earned extra points for simply repeating something you’d already said, only backwards and in fancier words.
You’d always assumed he was showing off when he did that, just trying to upstage everyone. Now you wondered if he simply didn’t know any other way and collected approval anywhere he could find it.
It had frustrated you back then, though. You’d stopped speaking altogether.
When the professor stepped outside to answer a phone call, leaving everyone to discuss the assignment in groups of five—something about the impact of culture on aviation safety—you’d folded your arms and stayed quiet.
Yeonjun, turned around in his chair to see you better, noticed almost immediately. Mid-conversation, he raised a hand to quiet the rest of the group.
What do you think? he’d asked you.
You didn’t even look at him.
Why’s it matter? you’d replied. Can’t come up with anything yourself?
He’d shrugged with his usual ease. Just wanted to hear your thoughts.
‘Cause you’ve got none of your own, yeah?
He rolled his eyes. But with the rest of your group snickering softly around you, there was already the beginning of a smile on his lips.
Bit childish, if you ask me, he’d said. But if silent treatment’s the route you want to take—
Oh, this isn’t silent treatment. You’d smiled pleasantly. This is me preserving my energy.
We’re trying to finish an assignment.
Then finish it.
He watched you with his eyebrows raised.
Would be nice if you actually completed something for once, you’d added.
By then, everyone else had quietly resumed the discussion without either of you. That rankled you further; the two of you were now not participating together.
Okay, Yeonjun had said eventually. What’re you actually bothered about?
You.
M’hounoured, love. He nodded. Anything in particular today?
So glad you asked. You glared at him. S’your admirable talent for stealing everyone else’s credit.
Another eye roll. You really care about the half point I got?
I care about your incompetence.
You shouldn’t. Much healthier for your blood pressure if you learn to forgive and forget.
I don’t forget.
No?
No.
He considered that for a second.
Alright, he’d said then, a small smile on his lips. I’ll check.
At the time, you hadn’t understood what he’d meant.
You found out that evening.
Professor Myers had been hosting one of her monthly gatherings at the local bar. Your entire cohort had crammed into a booth, with Taehyun and Kai invited despite being two years below—Kai as Beomgyu’s roommate, and Taehyun as your biggest reason for not dropping out.
A few beers in, Yeonjun had leaned over Soobin—who was sitting between the two of you—with cheeks gently pink and eyes noticeably brighter.
D’you still remember? he’d slurred.
You gave him a flat look. I do.
Hm. He nodded thoughtfully before absentmindedly patting Soobin’s knee. I see.
Soobin had looked between the two of you. Remember what?
Yeonjun nudged him with his shoulder. Don’t worry about it, love.
Twenty minutes later, you were pulling your jacket from the coat stand before going outside for a cigarette break when someone stopped behind you. You turned to find Yeonjun leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.
Still remember? he’d asked.
I do.
Good.
Then he wandered back towards the booth before you could think of anything clever to shout after him.
Outside, Nara entertained you and Taehyun for five minutes straight with an alarmingly accurate impression of a seagull. Her throat hurt by the end of it. Yours did, too.
You were still laughing when you came back inside.
Yeonjun looked up from his beer at once. Memory still working?
It is.
He nodded once, apparently satisfied.
Five minutes later:
Still remember?
I do.
Ten minutes after that:
You still remember?
Yes! My God.
By then, even Soobin had started laughing. It was the first time he’d done so all evening—Reina was home with a cold, so naturally, he saw no point in living.
Eventually, near closing time, you were searching your handbag to make sure you hadn’t lost your keys when Yeonjun stopped in front of you. He didn’t say anything, but waited, head tilted, until you looked up.
You still remember?
You sighed. I do.
A slow, deeply pleased smile spread across his face. Good. Knew you couldn’t forget me.
Then he wandered off to find Beomgyu before you could answer.
He’d actually annoyed you to the brink of insanity.
But looking back now, it was almost absurd. You’d spent so much of that time counting marks, arguing over assignments and trying to get credit that you’d barely looked at him. Barely looked at yourself, either.
And then he’d made you fall in love with him in two weeks.
You found yourself wondering, with the group picture on your phone still zoomed in on Yeonjun’s face, what would happen now.
you might be the one to take away the pain and let my mind go quiet
/// sleep token, emergence
pairing: yeonjun x fem!reader
summary: sometimes love and hate exist on opposite ends of the map. other times, on separate floors of the same building.
genre: ex!yeonjun / enemies to lovers au / neighbour au
warnings: slow burn, angst, toxic parents, MUTUAL PINING, some strong language, suggestive themes, helpless flirting of course, some fluff too
words: 14.5k
[ ! ] this is a sequel to equilibrium
masterlist / read from the beginning
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 7 AM
Yeonjun didn’t get much sleep that night. He hadn’t needed your text about Violet at seven in the morning; he’d already been awake, staring at the dim ceiling above his bed and actively dreading what he had to do today.
He tried to pinpoint the exact moment when he’d woken up and settled on shortly after three, when something had crashed in the storage room outside his bedroom. One of his old mattresses, as it turned out. It had been standing against the wall for weeks before evidently deciding it’d had enough. It hit the floor with a thud heavy enough to startle Violet into investigating.
Yeonjun had joked about Soobin’s poltergeists the night before, but at three in the morning he was considerably less amused.
For a while, he wondered whether it was a bad omen.
Eventually, deciding he’d lain there long enough, he climbed out of bed. The curtains in his flat made it impossible to judge the hour, but Violet had rattled the window frame not long ago. She kept a strict schedule, he knew.
He reached for his phone underneath his pillow and sat on the edge of the bed.
At least he had work today. Had to collect the car from the parking lot by the corner shop, too. He couldn’t wait to get outside.
But first, he had to get this done.
Drawing a slow breath, he scrolled through his contacts until he found his mother’s number and pressed call.
The line rang.
He rested his elbows on his thighs and stared at the floorboards beneath his feet. They were cold. A little dusty, too. He really ought to clean them. He’d been meaning to for days—
“Hello?”
He flinched at his mother’s voice.
He couldn’t tell whether she knew it was him calling. Objectively, she should have; his name would’ve been on the screen. But it had been so long.
“Hi, Mum,” he said.
“Hello, darling.” Her voice was as soft as he remembered. He felt as if he’d swallowed a stone. “You sound a bit muffled. Are you ill?”
Yeonjun cleared his throat.
“No. I’m—no.” He took another breath. “Listen, uh—I was thinking… have you and Dad got time?”
“Time for what, son?”
“For—well, for me.”
God, that sounded stupid. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his thumb against his forehead.
“I was thinking we could get a meal together sometime,” he amended. “Lunch, maybe.”
For a second, all he heard was static on the other end. He couldn’t remember the last time his mother had hesitated. The pause, brief as it was, caught somewhere in his throat.
“That sounds wonderful, darling,” she said at last, her voice every bit as bright as before. “We’re free today at three.”
Yeonjun tried to breathe past the pressure gathering in his chest. He’d have preferred next week so he could mentally prepare.
Actually, that wasn’t true. He’d have preferred the next lifetime.
“Sure,” he forced the word out. “Three sounds great.”
“Perfect. We’ll see you soon.”
He nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see him. “Yeah. See you.”
He remained where he was for several long seconds after the call ended, phone hanging loosely from one hand, staring at his reflection in the dark, faintly smudged screen.
Then he stood.
The rest of the morning dissolved into disconnected fragments: steam fogging the bathroom mirror, water splashing against the shower tiles. The smell of his mint shampoo. The apple skin getting wedged between his front teeth as he left his flat.
Did he lock the door?
He climbed back up the two storeys to check.
He had.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken a proper breath.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 2 PM
Leaving the racetrack after work, Yeonjun slipped into his Mercedes. It took him three tries to turn the key in the ignition. Once the engine caught, he wrapped both hands around the wheel for a moment, feeling it vibrate against his palms.
Above him, the sky was heavy and grey. As he had feared, his wrist had begun throbbing again, each twinge travelling up his forearm.
He’d hoped to lose himself in the chaos of work—and there were plenty of distractions, to be fair—but he remained unsettled anyway. He’d dropped his breakfast bagel three times before he gave up. Now he was anxious and hungry.
He dialled Soobin’s number the moment the Mercedes rolled away from the curb.
“Hi,” he said when Soobin’s groggy voice filled the car. “Did I wake you?”
Silence.
Then:
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
Yeonjun considered that.
“What’s up?” Soobin added.
Yeonjun kept his gaze on the empty road ahead. Even the buildings around him looked duller than usual, as though the entire world had turned its saturation down.
“Guess where I’m going,” he said.
“Where’re you going?”
“To see my parents.”
Soobin was quiet for so long that Yeonjun glanced at the dashboard to check the call hadn’t disconnected.
“What?” Soobin finally asked. “Why?”
Yeonjun let out a slow breath. “Trying to fix what I still can.”
Rustling crackled through the speakers.
“Fix—fix what?” Soobin asked.
“I cut them off without ever setting a clear boundary first.” Yeonjun’s stomach grumbled, and he shuffled in his seat. “Mostly that.”
The city gradually receded behind him. Blocks of flats gave way to warehouses and garages, then open fields, dotted with clusters of trees. They stood motionless on the side of the road, as though watching him.
“Wasn’t cutting them off the boundary?” Soobin asked, his voice growing increasingly agitated.
Yeonjun lifted a hand to rub his jaw before his wrist reminded him of itself. Hissing, he returned both hands to the wheel.
“Don’t think it was,” he said. “The way Mum answered the phone, it sounded like she’d been waiting for me to call.”
Soobin sighed.
For nearly a minute, he didn’t say anything at all. Then he asked if this was about you.
Yeonjun felt something cold move through his chest, even though he’d expected the question from the start.
“It’s about everything,” he said.
“It’s—alright, look.”
More rustling.
Yeonjun pictured Soobin stepping out of the room, perhaps so Reina wouldn’t overhear him getting worked up. A door clicked shut.
“Alright,” Soobin said at last. “I thought—thought you and I had an understanding.”
Yeonjun glanced down at the steering wheel. He remembered Soobin’s warning to behave around you. Just the memory alone made him sink a little lower into his seat.
“We do,” he said.
“Right. So, then help me understand,” Soobin said. “Because from where I’m standing, it seems like you’d spent months trying to get away from your family. Then you start talking to her again, start going everywhere together, and now—now, all of a sudden, you’re driving back to see your parents.”
The tyres suddenly seemed louder against the asphalt. Yeonjun sensed that the worry in Soobin’s voice was amplifying his own.
“Tell me,” Soobin went on, “you’re not turning your whole life upside down because you think that’ll undo what happened in grad school.”
Yeonjun did not tell him anything.
“Because I will kick your ass if you are,” Soobin added. There was genuine hurt in his voice. “And I really don’t want to kick your ass.”
A reluctant smile tugged at Yeonjun’s lips as the car shifted gears. “Don’t worry. Your girlfriend sort of already did.”
“My—Reina?”
“Yeah. Why, you’ve got another one?”
Soobin groaned so loudly that the distorted sound through the speakers made Yeonjun wince.
“She’s my fiancée,” Soobin said.
“Alright. Your fiancée, then.” Yeonjun was smiling properly now. “She and I had a chat. She made a great point. Gave me a proper fright, not going to lie. Think it brought us closer.”
Soobin snorted. “Doubt Reina would agree with that.”
Yeonjun clicked his tongue.
“Now, why would you say that to me,” he said, “when I’m already so vulnerable?”
“Alright, get over yourself.” Yeonjun could practically see Soobin rolling his eyes. “Are you sure seeing your parents is a good idea?”
The navigation glowed on Yeonjun’s phone. A turn in six kilometres, then straight ahead for another ten.
He found himself wondering how often his parents saw each other now that he wasn’t there to pull them all back to the old house. Perhaps they held weekly meetings about him, comparing notes. It seemed likely. Or perhaps they’d hired someone to keep tabs on him.
He’d found everyone suspicious lately.
There was this guy at work, Franco—an engineer, technically, yet inquisitive as though he worked for the national intelligence. Then there was Mr Jung, your neighbour, who seemed to crack his door open every single time Yeonjun came upstairs to pick up Violet.
“No,” Yeonjun admitted finally. A few clouds parted, making room for the sun, and he squinted. “But avoiding them doesn’t seem like a good idea, either.”
Soobin didn’t respond. The indicator clicked twice before Yeonjun realised he hadn’t meant to turn yet, and he clicked it off.
“And this isn’t something I’m doing for her,” he added. “It’s something I should’ve done years ago. I’ve just been ignoring it all this time, but it—my parents are still there. So the problem is still there. I can’t live with the constant threat.”
Another sigh drifted through the speakers.
“I still don’t like this,” Soobin said.
Yeonjun let out a quiet breath. “I know.”
“Your mum’s not going to take this well at all.”
“She probably won’t.”
Soobin was quiet for another half a minute. Yeonjun heard his doubts in the silence; he knew Soobin didn’t think this would make a difference.
Yeonjun suspected he might be right. But this was the first step in his plan to finally stand up for himself. He’d find another way if this didn’t work.
“Promise me something,” Soobin said.
Yeonjun glanced at his rearview mirror; the road behind him was empty. “What?”
“The second you start apologising for shit that’s logically not your fault,” Soobin said, “you’ll stand up and leave. You won’t stay because you think you owe them something, or because your mum starts crying—you’ll just leave.”
Yeonjun closed his eyes for a second before opening them again.
“Okay,” he said. “Yeah. I’ll leave.”
“You—you’re allowed to disappoint them. They’ll survive.”
Glancing at his navigation again, Yeonjun exhaled.
That had sounded right; he just wasn’t certain if he’d fully internalised it yet. He supposed he was about to find out.
“Yeah,” he said, and didn’t manage anything else.
“And come home alive, would you?”
One corner of Yeonjun’s lips twitched. “I’ll try, yeah.”
The road ahead was grey and desolate; just him and a handful of crows hopping between distant fence posts and electrical wires, conducting, clearly, very important crow business.
Yeonjun and Soobin sat in silence for another minute without hanging up. It was their way of saying I love you to each other.
After another minute, Yeonjun finally smiled. “Alright. Later, then.”
“Yeah.” Soobin exhaled. “Text me when you’re done. Good luck.”
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 3 PM
It wasn’t supposed to be a particularly grand occasion.
Really, it was only a meal.
And still, the dining room looked as though his parents were expecting to host a banquet or perhaps a wedding. Yeonjun found himself peering through the window toward the neighbouring house, just to make sure he wasn’t accidentally getting married to anyone living there today.
Neither of his parents said a word after they sat down.
His distance from them had started as his New Year’s resolution. Back then, cutting his parents off had seemed like the sensible thing to do. He’d just returned home after months in Campbeltown and realised he couldn’t force himself to see them again.
In the beginning, his mother had tried to reach out every day. After four days of unanswered calls and unread messages, she’d stopped. Yeonjun had assumed she’d understood.
In truth, a part of him had suspected he’d end up back here eventually. He knew he’d have to look them in the eye and explain why he didn’t want to do this anymore.
Still, he’d been afraid they wouldn’t hear him. Wouldn’t listen.
But then he realised he’d been afraid that you wouldn’t listen, either, and you had.
He owed himself to try here, too. He thought he’d grown a lot over the past year.
Yet, sitting opposite his parents in the old dining room, Yeonjun discovered the house hadn’t changed enough to let him believe he had either. Everything here, from the polished marble floor to the silver-framed family photographs, still felt performative and lifeless.
He watched the warped reflections in his spoon and thought about how funny this was. The clock in the corridor behind him still ticked; the same one he’d broken when he was twelve and, bored at home, attempted to skateboard down the stairs. His mother had been livid. Rightfully so, probably. It was a very nice clock.
Yeonjun felt as though he’d never truly left.
“Well.” His father’s voice startled him. “It’s been a while since we’ve all sat down together like this. The whole family.”
Yeonjun reached for his water. Over the rim of the glass, he caught the briefest flicker of irritation on his mother’s face. It was gone a moment later.
“Sure,” he said, meeting his father’s gaze. “Been a while since we’ve actually been a family, too.”
His father blinked. The words seemed to fold him inward, his shoulders sagging.
His mother, on the other hand, straightened in her chair across the table, her chin lifted.
“What was that, darling?” she asked. Her smile remained immaculate.
It struck him that he’d become part of her performance. She’d never bothered to perform for him before.
So it really had been a while.
“Nothing,” he said, setting his glass down carefully. The pounding in his ears had long since drowned out the ticking clock. “Just saying it feels like we don’t even know each other.”
His mother’s smile reflected in the glossy porcelain of her untouched plate.
“Ah.” She tilted her head almost sympathetically. “Well, if you visited more often, son, perhaps you wouldn’t feel that way.”
Yeonjun smiled. He’d been expecting this one.
Across the table, his father drained his water in a single swallow. His white shirt looked almost yellow beside his wife’s flawless cream dress.
“I don’t really know what reason I’ve got to keep visiting,” Yeonjun said. He kept his eyes fixed on his mother. “I’d probably get more warmth talking to a stranger at a bus stop.”
For the first time, her lips twitched at the corners. Her eyes narrowed.
Then, with a small lift of her eyebrows—a trick he’d seen many times before—she reset her expression.
“Well then, darling,” she said, “there’s clearly something the matter with you.”
“There is.” His words were out before she’d finished speaking. “I never had a normal family. That’s what’s the matter with me.”
His mother opened her mouth. Before she could speak, his father suddenly shoved his chair back. The wooden legs shrieked across the marble, forcing the sound to ricochet through the room.
“Son,” he said. He sounded genuinely alarmed. “Where—what is this? Where is all this coming from?”
For one dangerous moment, Yeonjun felt guilt tighten his throat—efficient, as always. He hadn’t meant to make him worry and felt a reflexive urge to take everything back.
But then he watched his parents exchange a glance. Watched his mother shrug, as though she was answering the question for him. As though she could explain him better than he could.
No.
He wouldn’t let her speak for him.
“It’s always been there,” Yeonjun said. His father turned back to him. “Let’s be honest, we’ve never had a real relationship. You’ve never been part of my life. Not when I was growing up, and certainly not now.”
His father’s brows furrowed. “That’s not—”
“That is true,” Yeonjun cut in. “You think you were there because you’ve seen the photographs. But someone else took them. The nannies, the cooks. Whoever was around. You were never there, not even to ask how I was doing. The only people I had real relationships with in this house were the ones you called staff.”
The dining room was suddenly smaller. Heat settled over the three of them, thick and stale, until Yeonjun felt like he was sitting inside an oven. He became acutely aware of his parents opposite him.
“Darling, please.” His mother’s voice promptly restored the distance. She sounded tired now, as though this conversation was already running longer than she’d expected. “What is this sudden tantrum? We’re all adults. Of course our relationship as a family is different now.”
Yeonjun let out a breath. Predictably, she’d missed his point.
“Yeah.” He nodded once, smiling without humour. “The relationship we have now exists because you believe families are supposed to spend time together, so we perform the ritual, too. But it’s not real. S’never been real. It—”
His voice fractured. He inhaled sharply, felt the air fill his lungs like heavy, damp wool, and nodded to himself.
No one spoke until he did.
“That’s it,” he said. “S’enough. I’m not going to keep pretending we’re a family. I came here to tell you I’m done.”
His mother’s smile disappeared.
Yeonjun couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the straight line of her lips. She looked older at once. Beautiful, of course, always, but aged almost beyond recognition.
It was his father clearing his throat that pulled Yeonjun’s attention away from her.
“W-what exactly are you saying here, son?” he asked.
He tried to smile, perhaps to reassure Yeonjun or just himself, but it never reached his eyes.
“I’m saying we stop this theatre production,” Yeonjun said. “If you can’t accept me for who I am, or accept the people who matter to me, we’re never going to be a family. Can’t fake our way into becoming one.”
“That—” His father barely managed the word before a sharp flick of his mother’s wrist cut through the air.
She didn’t even look at him. “Could you leave us alone for a moment?”
Silence settled over the room.
Then, to Yeonjun’s surprise, his father remained seated. He looked at him.
“Do you want me to leave, son?” he asked.
Yeonjun simply stared. His father had never asked what he wanted before, not when his mother could answer for him.
“Please,” his mother said, her voice cool. “This is obviously between Yeonjun and me.”
Still, his father waited.
It was such a small gesture, yet it felt enormous. Something tightened between Yeonjun’s eyes.
“S’okay, Dad.” He lowered his gaze. “Won’t take long anyway.”
Hesitant, his father glanced towards his wife.
Yeonjun realised he no longer recognised what had passed between them. Either their language had changed, or his understanding of it had.
Finally, his father stood. This time, his chair scraped softly against the marble.
Yeonjun watched the folds of the white tablecloth as his father left the table. Across from him, his mother did the same. Her lips were pursed as if she was exhaling smoke from a cigarette. He wondered whether she still pretended not to smoke whenever he visited.
His father’s footsteps faded into the corridor. Neither of them moved until a distant door clicked shut.
Then his mother rose from her chair.
“It’s the girl,” she said. “Isn’t it? That’s what this is really about.”
Yeonjun swallowed.
You’d been right, then. She hadn’t forgotten you.
Why would she, really? Yeonjun hadn’t forgotten either, and clearly they were more alike than he’d ever wanted to admit.
“Actually,” he said, standing as well, “this is about you and me.”
His mother rolled her eyes. “Are the dramatics necessary, Yeonjun?”
The name caught him off guard. He wasn’t darling, dear, or son to her right now. Just Yeonjun.
Strangely, it was the most honest she’d sounded for as long as he could remember.
“Funny you should call that dramatic,” Yeonjun said. “Personally, I don’t think it comes anywhere close to threatening to have my girlfriend kicked out of university and shipping her to a different continent just to keep her away from me.” He tilted his head. “That, I think, was a masterclass in dramatics. Compared to you, I’m still a beginner.”
The muscles around his mother’s mouth tightened. That was confirmation enough; she’d organised all of it.
“Is she your girlfriend, then?” she asked.
Yeonjun ran his tongue across the back of his teeth. He watched her step around the dining table with measured, unhurried movements until she reached the edge of the raised platform beneath it. Even angry, she carried herself like she knew she had an audience.
“She isn’t, actually,” Yeonjun said. “Thanks to your hard work.”
His mother clicked her tongue—in a way she couldn’t stand in other people—and turned away.
“Now,” she said, “don’t pin this on me. You and I have talked about it, and you—”
“No, we haven’t, actually.”
She spun back towards him so sharply that outrage flashed across her face before she could smooth it away.
Yeonjun understood; how dare he interrupt.
“You talked to me,” he continued anyway. His jaw ached from how tightly he’d been clenching it. “I listened. Didn’t think I was in any position to disagree with you.”
“But you think you are now?”
The mockery in her expression, one eyebrow raised, lips gently pursed, was remarkably elegant.
“I think I always was,” he said, surprised by the steadiness of his own voice. “I just didn’t have the courage to stand up to you. You’re supposed to be my mother.”
Her eyebrow lowered. “I am your mother.”
Yeonjun released a breath so slowly that he could almost hear the air leaving every corner of his lungs. He looked down at the pale marble beneath his shoes.
“I don’t think parents should hurt their children,” he said.
She didn’t answer.
When he finally dared to raise his eyes, her lips had parted almost imperceptibly. Her eyes fluttered shut for a fleeting second. Then she was perfectly composed again.
“We’ve already discussed this,” she said. “Everything I do is for your own good. I’d have hoped you’d realised that by now.”
He lifted his head. A pulse beat against his throat.
“It’s for your own good, Mum.” His hands had curled into fists before he’d noticed. “None of this has ever been for me. You handcrafted my entire life. Every opportunity, every friendship.” His voice roughened. “You kept sanding away every part of my life that didn’t fit your ideal. But my relationships aren’t your toys. They’re not your—not your fucking projects.” He watched her flinch at the language, but couldn’t bring himself to stop now. “And I’m not someone you get to mould into whatever perfect fantasy you’ve got in your head. I’m not a doll.”
She watched him without blinking. He didn’t recognise the expression in her eyes.
“Whether you want to or not, Yeonjun,” she said, the quiet superiority never leaving her voice. “We are a family. And that is no way to speak to your family.”
“I think it’s very obvious that we aren’t.” He watched the sunlight catch the sharp line of her profile. “And we never will be, not while you refuse to see me as a person.”
Her brows furrowed into a brief frown. “You’re my son.”
He clenched his teeth. “Mhmm. And what does that mean to you?”
“It—”
“You think it means I’m your property,” he said before she could answer. “Means you can do whatever you want with me, and I don’t get to resist. Means I’m yours to bend. And if I don’t let you, I’m ungrateful and rude.”
Her gaze stayed fixed on him for a long moment before turning towards the wall of windows overlooking the garden. The leaves on the trees outside shifted lazily in the afternoon breeze. Even they had been planted exactly where she’d wanted them.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” she said.
Yeonjun almost laughed. “Are you?”
“Of course,” she said. “As a mother, it hurts me to hear that my child feels like this.”
He searched her face: the crease between her brows, the quiet indignation behind her eyes.
He realised that they still weren’t having the same conversation at all.
“How do I feel?” he asked.
Her frown deepened. “What?”
“Repeat it back to me.” His throat was dry. “What I’d just said.”
The silence in the dining room stretched.
He waited, even though he knew she’d never admit, not even in his own words, that she’d treated him like something to be managed. He half-expected her to roll her eyes.
Instead, she lowered her gaze.
“You feel,” she said, “that I haven’t been a good mother.”
His eyes flashed.
“No.” His fingernails dug deeper into his palms. “I never said whether you were good or not. I said you see me as something you can show off. Said you need to control every single part of my life, because you think it all reflects on you.”
“So you’re telling me I should stop caring about what happens to my own child, then.”
“No,” he said.
He wanted to leave.
“No,” he repeated.
He wanted to leave.
“I’m telling you what it felt like,” he said, “to be the child you were raising. It didn’t feel—didn’t feel like I got to be a child at all. Just an extension of you.”
His mother crossed her arms, then uncrossed them again. She smoothed one sleeve down and adjusted the golden band on her fourth finger.
It felt odd, seeing her restless. Perhaps this was another thing he’d inherited from her.
Eventually, she turned away, staring at the edge of the windows rather than looking through them.
“That still means you’re unhappy with me, then,” she said, so quietly that Yeonjun felt his stomach tighten. “Seeing as we’re having this conversation right now.”
He forced himself to take a slow breath and think about what Soobin had said on the way here.
He didn’t owe her reassurance. Didn’t owe her comfort.
“Yeah,” he said at last. “I am unhappy.”
“I see.”
She looked down.
Yeonjun followed her gaze. To his surprise, he recognised that the shoes she was wearing were the deep black Jimmy Choos he’d got her for her birthday years ago. The crystal straps around the ankles looked like frost under the lights.
He couldn’t remember ever seeing her wear them.
“You don’t understand what it is like,” she said. Her voice became smaller, and his gaze snapped back to her face. “To spend your whole life working to build a happy life for your child. And then miss the moment your child grows up because you were w-working.” She pressed her trembling fingers against her lips. “Everyth—everything I did, I did it for you.”
The sob seemed to catch even her off guard. Within seconds, tears were running freely down her face.
Yeonjun was so startled that he could hardly move.
“I did everything so you’d have a good life,” she managed between ragged breaths. “So hearing you talk about it like it meant nothing—it’s extremely hurtful. I don’t understand how you can—how you can believe I’ve never had your best interests at heart.”
Yeonjun swallowed hard. He had seen her cry before, at charity events, funerals, arguments where she believed she’d been treated unfairly. This time, though, she wasn’t watching him to check his reaction.
It unsettled him.
“I believe that’s what you believe, Mum,” he said. “But they weren’t my best interests. They were your—”
“No,” she cut across him, and this was the closest she’d ever come to shouting. “They were for you. So nobody could ever dismiss you. So doors would open for you, because people would know you came from a respectable family. They’d look at you and see that you’d been brought up by good, hard-working people.”
Yeonjun tried not to smile at the irony.
He had been brought up by good, hard-working people. They just hadn’t been his parents.
“But do you hear what you’re saying, Mum?” he asked. “You’re talking about people looking at me, but seeing you.”
The vast dining room seemed to shrink another inch around him. With every word, the minimal certainty that had brought him here ebbed further.
He felt seven years old again, standing in the doorway of his mother’s office with both hands held out.
Can I please have a hug, Mum?
Not right now, darling. I’m busy.
He straightened his fingers.
“I’m not your property,” he said. “Not your mirror. I’m a—I’m a person.” His eyes stung. He pressed his tongue to the roof of his mouth until the tightness went away. “And if you’d ever taken the chance to know me, you might’ve actually liked who I became.”
His mother hiccuped, and a fresh sob escaped before she could stop it.
For nearly a minute, she said nothing. The clock in the corridor seemed absurdly loud now.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
He stood beside her, with his hands hanging uselessly at his sides and a knot forming slowly in his stomach.
It seemed to him she was crying because his pain wounded her pride. Because his feelings contradicted her reality. He knew he owed it to himself to say all of it. But she was still his mother, and she was crying.
A terrible guilt reached places inside him that anger couldn’t touch. He forgot Soobin’s warnings.
He was already on the verge of apologising when she lowered herself onto the edge of the platform and covered her face with both hands.
His words died in his surprise.
After a long while, he sat carefully beside her. The marble felt cool beneath his trousers.
“When did this start?” she whispered, lowering her hands and rubbing them together. “When did you start feeling like I—like I wasn’t treating you like my son?”
Yeonjun looked out at the garden. The trees swayed gently beyond the glass.
It had always been that way, he thought. As far back as he could remember. She’d displayed him like a prize-winning horse from the moment he could walk.
But if he said that now, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to say anything else afterwards. She was asking him questions. He had to give her answers.
“I think after Alain left,” he said, looking down at his hands. “He was… he was the closest thing to a brother I’ve had. The one person who understood that growing up in a family like this looks wonderful from the outside, but it isn’t. And then… you—you just chucked him out.”
“You—” She hiccuped again. “W-we thought you wanted him gone, too.”
Yeonjun felt a sharp pang in his chest.
“Why would I, Mum?” His voice stayed gentle. “He and I were fighting. That—it happens sometimes. It didn’t mean I wanted him out of my life.”
Something shifted in her expression. Fresh tears gathered in her eyes.
“You never said anything,” she whispered.
You didn’t ask, Yeonjun wanted to say. You never asked.
“I know,” he ended up saying. His fingers found the cuff of his sock and tugged at it. “I didn’t think it would’ve made a difference. I was young. Suppose a part of me thought my parents knew best.”
His mother inhaled. As she lowered her head, a mascara-darkened tear slipped from her cheek and landed on the marble between them. The stone darkened.
Yeonjun found himself waiting for her to stand up and call someone to clean it, but she didn’t seem to realise the stain was there.
“You don’t think that anymore,” she said.
“No.” He rubbed a hand along his ankle. “I don’t.”
Outside, the peonies bowed beneath the weight of their blooms, their branches brushing against the neighbouring roses.
“And it’s the same now,” his mother said eventually. “With this girl.”
Yeonjun watched the window. He could see their reflections floating faintly in the glass: his mother’s white dress, his white shirt. Even sitting apart, they looked strikingly similar.
Slowly, he said, “I love her, Mum.”
His mother breathed out and didn’t speak for a long time.
Yeonjun wondered what was happening inside her head, but didn’t ask. He knew he’d earned this conversation, but he hadn’t earned her thoughts.
“There’s nothing I can say,” she murmured finally. “Is there?”
He shook his head. “Not if you want me to come back.”
The tears had stopped. Mascara clung beneath her eyes in uneven smudges, but she made no attempt to wipe them away.
“I knew this would happen,” she said quietly.
Yeonjun felt a hundred responses surge into his throat, every argument and every scream he’d swallowed over the past year.
“Why did you do it, then?” he asked, quieter than he’d intended. He’d lost all sense of his limbs. “If you knew what it’d do to me, why’d you call me that morning and force me to make that choice for us?”
She closed her eyes, drawing in a sharp breath.
It was the us that undid her, he knew. She still couldn’t accept that you and him could be one unit.
“I was protecting you,” she said, and he heard the distant echo of her voice on the phone at his old house, over a year ago, while you’d been blissfully unaware of it all upstairs. “I am always protecting you, son.”
“From what?”
“From making mistakes. She—”
“I made a mistake anyway,” he said. She opened her mouth, but he continued before she could speak: “By listening to you and choosing one of your options.”
He felt her stiffen beside him on the platform. Her gaze flickered towards him before slipping away again, as though she was afraid of what she’d find sitting beside her.
She didn’t speak.
“She’s back now,” Yeonjun continued. “And I’m trying really hard to make things right.”
His fingers tapped against the edge of the platform in a nervous rhythm.
He braced for another threat, another ultimatum, but his mother still did not move.
“A-and I need you to understand,” he added, looking down, “that I will always keep trying. If you can’t accept that—then, that’s it. I’ll leave. And I really won’t come back this time.”
She turned towards him. He looked away before he could meet her eyes.
She understood anyway. Everything she’d spent decades building for him—the inheritance, the name, the status, the connections—he’d leave behind without looking back.
Her gaze returned to her hands. She stared at them for a long moment.
“You have to understand,” she said, “that this isn’t easy for me.”
His heart lurched.
The tapping against the marble grew louder until he realised it was his own fingers still drumming against the platform.
“S’not easy for me, either,” he said. “But I’m—m’not asking your permission, Mum.”
Her jaw was tight. “So this is it, then?”
Yeonjun thought it was. Then he thought that he didn’t want it to be. He wanted, quite desperately, for her to simply stand up, hug him, and tell him she understood.
He realised that, despite everything he’d told himself on the drive over, some stubborn part of him had still come here hoping he’d have a home to come back to.
“I-I want you in my life,” he said. “But as my support system. I need to be the one making decisions about what happens in my life.”
She tried to inhale, but her breath caught halfway. Parting her lips, she tried again.
“But you know there are conditions,” she said, her voice thinner now, “that come with being part of this family—”
“No.” He gave a firm shake of his head. “Being a family doesn’t come with conditions.”
She folded her hands together over her knees. “It isn’t that simple. We’ve never been people who could simply do whatever we wanted. We have to think about how we’re seen. And I understand that you’re sensitive about this, but—”
“I’ve spent my whole life being seen, Mum,” he said, fighting to keep his voice level. “And I don’t care about being impressive. Never have.”
A sorrowful expression crossed her face. “Surely you realise how childish that sounds, son.”
Clicking his tongue, Yeonjun turned back towards the garden. The neighbouring house just beyond the trees glowed a brilliant white in the late afternoon sun.
“Look,” he said, brushing his palm against the edge of the platform. “All I’m saying is just let me be, okay? I know myself. I’ll work hard. I’ll build a career. I’ll make mistakes; probably plenty of them. But I’ll be alright in the end. Have been so far, despite everything.”
His mother swallowed heavily beside him.
She studied the reflection of his face in the window and tried to look past the version she’d introduced at charity events and described to her colleagues.
Her son.
The mere thought of his mistakes backfiring on him made something inside her itch with a familiar intensity. She knew it well. She’d spent years doing everything she could to make sure every choice he made was safe, productive, and beneficial.
But the choices hadn’t been his.
He wanted them to be his.
“You…” Her eyes dropped to the lines running through the marble beneath her heels. “You’ve grown into someone I don’t know anymore.”
He felt her words press into his chest.
She hadn’t meant it as a compliment; she’d sounded wounded. He felt inexplicable pride blooming inside him anyway.
“I’d like to show you who I am,” he said. “But I need you to trust me.”
The silence between them returned.
She’d never thought about trust inside a family.
She knew she trusted her parents, but she’d never considered whether they trusted her. They gave her this life, she knew – they’d introduced her to her husband, planned the wedding, discussed how many children she’d have.
They didn’t ask what she wanted or if she was ready. They didn’t have to. She knew she had to do what was expected. And she’d done it – she’d worked hard, been responsible. She’d been grateful.
And now she was sitting on the floor of a beautiful house she’d spent years building but barely lived in, beside the son she’d spent almost twenty-seven years raising, feeling as though she’d never spoken to him before.
It’d been over nine months since she’d seen him last.
She’d felt every day, every twenty-four hours, of those nine months.
“I feel,” she said slowly, “like I have to walk on eggshells around you now.”
Yeonjun let out a weary breath. “You don’t, Mum.”
“The way you’ve been talking, it sounds as though I do.” She shook her head. “You’re choosing someone else over your own mother.”
“I’m—” He turned his head to look at her, a wrinkle between his brows.
She wasn’t looking at him, and he grew very frightened very quickly. This wasn’t what their conversation had been about; he couldn’t understand how they’d got here all of a sudden.
“Why is it a competition?” he asked.
“It’s not a—”
“No, but you—you’re pitting yourself against her,” he said. “Why?”
She looked up and held his gaze.
After a minute, the silence between them started to echo inside him.
“You’re my mother,” he said, almost apologetically.
She looked away.
Another quiet minute passed before she spoke again.
“I don’t know how to be your mother,” she said, “if this is how you want things now.”
He closed his eyes and tried to exhale. Everything inside him was pressing into his very bones, each of his old wounds pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
“It is how I want things now,” he said.
They spent another minute in the company of the ticking clock.
His mother found herself thinking about the way he’d looked when he was little. Hardly two years old and already bruised head to toe because he refused to ride in the pram and insisted on walking everywhere.
She’d stood behind him with both hands half-raised, ready to catch him if he went down harder than usual. But she’d let him stumble. Skinned knees healed quickly.
She remembered the way he’d look back at her whenever he fell, just to check if she was there. Then he’d push himself back up again.
He’d been alright in the end. Despite everything.
Finally, his mother drew a careful breath.
“I’ll have to learn, then,” she said.
Yeonjun looked up.
There was a tremor of doubt in her voice, as if she didn’t quite understand what the words meant.
But she said them anyway.
“You will?” he asked.
She swallowed visibly. “I can try.”
Yeonjun felt his heart respond—thud-thud-thud—three times before he caught his breath.
“Thank you,” he said.
His mother lowered her hands to her sides, unsure where to go next. For one absurd second, they looked at each other as though they’d truly only just met.
Yeonjun thought about hugging her.
She thought about hugging him.
Perhaps one day one of them would.
For now, they sat on the platform, while the house remained silent and unchanged around them.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 6 PM
When Yeonjun returned home, you still hadn’t texted about picking up Violet, and evening had already settled over the city.
He stared at your chat on his screen for a long moment, thumb hovering over the keyboard. He couldn’t decide how to ask about her. There were several good options, he knew—how’s Violet? chief among them—but every version sounded needy somehow. Everything felt loaded today.
Yeonjun decided he’d just show up.
He remained perfectly happy with that plan until approximately the fourth floor. Then he remembered that the last time he’d come to collect Violet, you’d invited him in for a conversation. But a week before that, the two of you had hardly spoken at all.
Granted, that had mostly been his fault. Silence had seemed preferable to getting trapped in an endless cycle of polite small talk that never actually went anywhere.
And still, he felt an old wave of anxiety.
By the time he reached your door, his heart was battering against his ribs.
In fact, he became convinced it was his heartbeat that alerted you to his presence, because he couldn’t remember knocking or ringing the bell. One second he was staring at your door, wondering what the fuck was wrong with him today, and the next the door swung open.
You didn’t look surprised to find him here.
“Hi,” you said. “Violet’s napping in the flower pot. Come see.”
Yeonjun blinked. “She—in the flower pot? Inside of it?”
Truthfully, this wasn’t even the part that really threw him. It was rather the way you looked, eager and enthusiastic, as you gestured inside.
All his anxiety dissipated at once.
As it turned out, Violet had indeed wedged herself into the flower pot. She’d curled into a little loaf atop the decorative white pebbles, paws tucked beneath her chest, snoring under the broad leaf of your monstera.
“I was about to send you a picture,” you said, your phone still in hand, “when you knocked.”
Yeonjun crouched beside the pot, a smile on his lips.
Violet’s ear twitched against the leaf. She didn’t open her eyes to acknowledge him.
“You’d think she’d stay clear of damp surfaces,” he murmured.
“You’d think.” You smiled. “She’s been eyeing the pot all day, I didn’t know what to make of it. Now we know, I guess.”
Yeonjun pulled out his phone.
The fading evening light bathed Violet’s fur in a soft gold, making her mottled back blend almost seamlessly into the pebbles beneath her. You saw him lining up the shot and stepped aside, leaning one shoulder against the balcony doors. His hands, you noticed, were trembling slightly.
The cat continued snoring. Yeonjun couldn’t help snickering as he snapped a few pictures. One accidentally caught the edge of your hand.
Suddenly, a dull thunk sounded somewhere behind him. He glanced up.
Violet cracked one eye open, then the other, evidently checking if the sky wasn’t falling. She’d already had enough inconvenience from the mattress earlier this morning and the odd, prolonged sounds coming from somewhere inside your flat.
“The kettle,” you explained to them both, nodding towards the kitchen. “I was making tea. Would—would you like a cup?”
Surprised, because he’d been dismantling twenty-six years of family history just a few hours earlier and now you were offering him tea while his cat slept inside your flower pot, Yeonjun didn’t immediately respond.
“Uh.” Excellent start. “Sure, yeah. Tea is—it’s great. My favourite. Love tea.”
Immediately, he felt a profound kinship with Chandler Bing declaring chewing gum to be perfection.
“Great,” you said over your shoulder. “Good you’ve got such strong opinions.”
Nose scrunched, Yeonjun left Violet under her leafy canopy and followed you into the kitchen.
You reached into a cupboard and pulled down two mugs. Just then, a long mechanical groan drifted out of the corridor, slightly muted but creepy nonetheless. It almost sounded like the screech of a sea lion suffering from bronchitis.
“What on earth was that?” Yeonjun asked, glancing towards your corridor. He leaned his hip against the kitchen island.
You sighed as you set the mugs down.
“My washer,” you said without looking up. “It’s leaking again. My grandad came round to fix it, but it still sounds like that every time I use it.”
Yeonjun knew this problem well; he’d used his own washing machine exactly once after moving in. It had roared so loudly that he’d expected you to knock on his door again.
His wasn’t leaking, but he’d still been dry-cleaning all his clothes like some pompous tosser anyway.
“S’the plumbing,” he said. “Mine’s constantly backing up, too. Can’t even do the dishes half the time.”
You reached for the teabox on the counter by the kettle. “S’that bad?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Got a plunger in my kitchen now. Never had one before.”
Laughing, you reached behind the microwave and triumphantly showed him your own. “I’ve got one, too!”
Yeonjun laughed. It felt miraculous he still knew how.
“Want me to take a look at it?” he asked, glancing back towards the corridor.
“The washer?”
“Yeah.”
You returned the plunger to its hiding place and regarded him sceptically.
“Do you even know anything about washing machines?” you asked.
“No,” he admitted. “But I work with cars, so it—”
“Oh, right, yeah.” You nodded. “And I take my washer out for a drive every Saturday night. The brakes are shot, but the engine’s great.”
Pressing his lips together, Yeonjun gave you his most convincing glare.
“Can’t be that different,” he insisted.
“I think it can.”
“Let me look.”
You let out another sigh, though there was amusement behind it, and gestured towards the corridor.
“Alright. Go on.” You inclined your head. “Can hardly make it worse. Bathroom’s just down the corridor, on the right.”
Yeonjun nodded and followed the noise down the corridor. As he passed the open door to your bedroom, he caught sight of the window Violet must’ve been using to sneak inside every morning. There seemed to be faint paw prints dusted on the windowsill.
The whirring grew louder as he rounded the corner and pushed open the last remaining door.
The bathroom was small, lined with teal tiles on the walls that immediately reminded him of films from the nineties, ones he’d only watched on old VHS tapes. They had colour to them back then, the bathrooms.
Your washing machine sat beside the sink, vibrating with an alarming intensity. An empty plastic basket on top of it was performing slow pirouettes and contributing generously to the dreadful racket.
You appeared in the doorway just as he removed the basket and crouched beside the machine. It had already shuffled several inches away from its usual spot by the wall.
“Aha!” Yeonjun announced, raising his voice over the noise. He hadn’t heard you come up behind him. “The hose is loose!”
“Again?” He flinched at the nearness of your voice. “My grandad only just fixed it.”
Carefully, he reached behind the machine until his fingers found the connection. The hose rattled against his hand. He tried to squeeze it tighter.
He pulled back, standing to his feet. “Let’s see here now.”
He turned on the sink tap. Water rushed into the basin and stayed there. The drain gurgled unhappily.
“Right.” He shut off the tap and waited for nearly a minute until the water reluctantly spiralled away. “The drain’s clogged, so that probably loosens the hose every time the washer empties. The water struggles to go somewhere, builds up the pressure and shakes the hose loose. The noise’s got to be that, too.”
“That’s wonderful.” You’d already figured as much and stared at the washing machine accusingly. “Any solutions?”
“Don’t wash anything.”
You clicked your tongue. “Besides that.”
Snickering, Yeonjun crouched to peer under the machine. A few drops had already gathered on the tiles.
“Nothing else you can do, probably,” he concluded, leaning back on his heels. “Keep an eye on the hose to make sure water doesn’t gather under it, but it—” The machine let out another low moan. “—it’ll probably continue to sound like this.”
“Lovely, then.” You rested a hand against the doorframe. “Don’t think anyone lives upstairs at the moment, and Mr Jung seems to like me, so you’re the only person who can complain about the noise.”
Yeonjun smiled. Mr Jung clearly did not extend his affection to everyone in the building.
“I will try not to,” he said.
“Kind of you.”
He stood, dusting his palms together. “I know. S’just how I am.”
You rolled your eyes and turned away before he caught the smile threatening the corners of your mouth. “Come back to the kitchen before the tea gets cold.”
“Coming, love.”
He rinsed his hands under the cold water from the tap. It sputtered again as it drained.
When he joined you in the kitchen, you were pouring hot water into the mugs. Steam curled slowly into the air.
Yeonjun climbed onto one of the stools by the island and drew in a slow breath. The whole kitchen smelled of lemon and honey. He found himself smiling before he realised he was doing it.
“Were you coming back from somewhere, by the way?” you asked, nodding towards his suspiciously crisp white shirt as you set the kettle back on its base.
He looked down at himself.
“Yeah,” he said. “I, uh—I went to see my parents today.”
“Oh.” You looked at him. “Already?”
“Yeah.” He snickered. “Wasn’t planning on today, necessarily, but, uh—my mum likes doing everything quickly.”
You remembered as much from your own dinner at their house.
Deciding you didn’t particularly want to revisit that memory, you turned instead to the cupboard beside the plates. It held two bottles inside. You grabbed the pink one.
“Raspberry liqueur for the occasion, then,” you said, showing him the handwritten label. “From my gran. Should go well with tea, I reckon.”
Yeonjun felt his chest become lighter.
You’d told him you’d have drinks.
“Yeah,” he said. “Can’t see why it shouldn’t.”
You tugged at the cap. The sugar around the neck of the bottle had glued it shut.
“How’d it go, then?” you asked, through an effortful groan. He noticed that you weren’t quite looking at him anymore.
While you searched for two glasses, he wrapped both hands around the mug and took a sip. The tea scalded the roof of his mouth. He took another few sips anyway.
“Good, actually,” he said, lowering the mug. “Better than I expected. My mum cried.”
Your brows rose. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He smiled, though there wasn’t much amusement in it. “She weaponises that a bit, I think. But she listened.”
You poured the liqueur into two dark blue glasses and slid one towards him across the island.
The kitchen seemed quieter now, even the steam from the mugs had slowed. It was a familiar feeling; you and Yeonjun had sat in this exact silence before. You hadn’t missed it.
You lifted your glass and took a small sip. For just a moment, you were back in your grandmother’s garden, fingers stained pink from the raspberries left too long in the summer sun.
“How do you feel now?” you asked.
Yeonjun let go of the mug and picked up the little glass instead. The liqueur tasted deceptively sweet, then it punched him squarely behind the eyes.
He coughed in surprise.
“Sh-shit.” He stared at the pink liquid. “This is stronger than I thought.”
“Yeah.” You grinned. “My gran doesn’t mess around.”
Laughing, he took another sip. He was prepared this time and welcomed the warmth into his chest. His cheeks, he could feel, had coloured anyway.
“I actually don’t know how I feel,” he said, watching the liqueur catch the faint light from the windows. “The same as before, I guess. Thought maybe I’d feel relieved, because it went sort of well. But I don’t.”
You rested an elbow lightly against the island. “Why not?”
Yeonjun glanced towards Violet in the flower pot and considered the question.
The silence he’d carried out of his parents’ house still sat inside him. His mind was empty. It had been a while since he hadn’t had a thousand thoughts rushing through his head, and this emptiness felt eerie. Like standing in the middle of a deserted city, surrounded by traces of life that had once filled every street.
“I don’t know,” he ended up saying. “Maybe it’s too soon. Think a part of me’s still sitting in that dining room. Doesn’t really feel like anything happened yet.”
You nodded slowly. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
“Yeah.” He rolled the glass between his palms. “She said she’d try to let me make my own decisions, though. Let’s see how that, uh—how it goes for her.”
You caught the ambiguous arch of his eyebrows. “Going to test her?”
“Maybe.” A small smile ghosted across his lips as his gaze drifted back towards the living room. “Think I’ll tell her about Violet first.”
Your gaze followed his. Violet was now gazing out the window from beneath the leaf, her tail tracing slow patterns through the pebbles.
“She doesn’t know?” you asked.
“No,” he said. “She’s not much of an animal person. But m’thinking I’ll start small. Violet’s cute, she should win her over.”
You smiled into your glass and politely swallowed back all comments about people who didn’t like animals.
“That sounds like a sensible place to start,” you said.
“Yeah,” Yeonjun murmured. Slowly, his thoughts were coming back to him. “A-and then we’ll see what comes after that.”
You sipped the liqueur.
You couldn’t imagine what it had cost him to sit across from his mother and force his way through years of conversations that had never happened. You wanted to ask what she’d said, wanted to know more, but suspected that reliving it all might be as agonising as living through it.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” you said instead. “That couldn’t have been easy.”
Yeonjun looked up. For a moment, he only watched you.
Then he reached for his mug, taking a few careful sips of the tea to dilute the lingering sweetness of the raspberry. He didn’t think he’d ever had tea with liqueur before. It worked surprisingly well. He already felt nice and warm and a bit sleepy.
“Yeah,” he said eventually. His voice had quietened. “I knew I needed to do it, just one last time, if nothing else. And I’m glad I did. But it—yeah.” He let out a short laugh, shaking his head. “Wasn’t easy. I actually had to go to work today, and everything that could go wrong went wrong. Thought it’d distract me. Very naïve of me.”
“It didn’t, then?”
“Not even a little.” He yawned, and his eyes seemed a little brighter.
You decided to steer the conversation in this direction. “Can’t remember if I ever asked whether you’re part of a team or just do general work.”
“Oh, yeah, no, I’m in a team.” He wrapped both hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into his still stiff fingers. “We’re on a massive losing streak.”
You took a sip of tea and immediately regretted it; it was still too hot. Frowning, you ran your tongue across the roof of your mouth.
“Are you that bad at your job?”
Yeonjun snorted so suddenly that he nearly spilt his tea. He set the mug down.
“Well, there’s only so much I can do,” he said. “My data’s always state of the art. S’the idiots behind the wheel who ruin everything.”
Your smile widened a touch. “Wish you were one of them?”
His eyes drifted, almost unconsciously, toward his left wrist. The ache had stabilised now; if he wasn’t thinking about it, he hardly felt it.
“Sometimes,” he admitted, rubbing absentmindedly at the handle of the mug. “But I like where I am now as well.”
You took another sip of the tea, deliberately keeping your eyes above his wrist. You were glad, you realised, that he wasn’t racing anymore.
Across the room, Violet was now hanging halfway out of the pot. Her back paws rattled the pebbles as she slipped. You both turned to look.
She landed on the floor and gave a decided shake of her head before settling in front of the window.
“What’s it like, then?” you asked. “Your races.”
Yeonjun turned back to you.
“Well,” he pondered for a moment, “loud.”
“Very different from uni?”
He smiled. He remembered bringing Beomgyu to one race a few months ago (Taehyun had meant to come too, but he’d cancelled because he’d had a date; Yeonjun realised he’d forgotten to tease him for that). Beomgyu had been so energetic the entire time that he’d practically talked his way into one of the cars before Yeonjun interfered.
“Not really,” he said. “Less alcohol, maybe. More hot dogs.”
You nodded thoughtfully. “Sounds fun.”
He scratched the back of his head.
“I could, uh—could take you with me one day.” His eyes flicked to yours. “We’ve got a race next week.”
Your eyebrows lifted. “You’re allowed guests?”
“I’m allowed anything I want.”
You laughed.
“Okay,” you said. “I’d like that. Always been curious about professional racing.”
Yeonjun thought he’d had a bit too much of the liqueur.
For a fleeting second, he was back in grad school, talking to you, for what he thought was the last time, outside Administration. How he’d wished to dissolve the tension between you then, to get you to roll your eyes at him, to make you laugh.
Now he was sitting in your kitchen, doing exactly that.
His stomach did not know what to do with itself.
“You—you’d enjoy it, I think,” he said.
He already knew you liked speed. Honestly, after watching you handle icy roads in his Mercedes, he’d suspected that his team might’ve finished a few places higher with you behind the wheel.
“Yeah?” you said. “Your data, or the actual racing?”
He grinned. “Both, I hope.”
Smiling, you took another sip of tea.
Yeonjun lifted his mug before the joy on his face grew too obvious. The tea had cooled enough now that he could finally taste the honey beneath the lemon. He reached for the liqueur then.
He wanted to say something else, but wasn’t sure he could bring himself to disturb the lightness that had settled in the kitchen.
After another slow sip of the liqueur, he decided he could.
“My mum… she, uh—I talked to her about Alain today,” he said, lowering the glass onto the island. “She said she thought I wanted him gone, too.”
Your brows drew together. “Why would she think that?”
He breathed out slowly.
“She assumed I shared all her opinions, I guess,” he said. “He and I argued, and she must’ve thought I’d had enough of him, because she had. I finally said I didn’t, but it—” He shrugged. “S’partly on me, probably. I never told her what Alain meant to me before.”
Something tightened behind your ribs, and you lowered your gaze to the island. There were things you couldn’t swallow back.
“I think it was fairly obvious that you and Alain were close,” you said.
“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “I know that was her problem. But still. It also made me think that I haven’t said this to him, either. We made up, of course, but, uh—aside from wishing him a happy birthday back in April, I haven’t actually reached out since.”
“How come?”
He traced a fingertip across the grey veins in the island countertop. “Don’t want to make him uncomfortable.”
You frowned again. “Why would he be uncomfortable?”
Yeonjun shrugged. “S’been years. He might feel obligated to see me, even if he doesn’t actually want to.”
You took a sip of the liqueur and studied him over the rim of your glass. “Would he, really?”
Yeonjun looked away first.
“I don’t know.” He sighed quietly. “I feel like I don’t really know how to talk to people half the time.”
You failed to catch your smile before it escaped. “You’re managing quite well at the moment.”
He smiled at that. “Yeah. M’trying. Just feel like there’s loads of unfinished things from back in the day. And now I’m probably too old to finish them. So it’s—I don’t know.”
“What things?”
Yeonjun took the final sip of tea from his mug. It barely got a chance to get cold.
“Well, uh,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, “back in the day, Alain and I had a list of things we wanted to do. A, uh—Coolest To-Do List Ever, I’d called it.” He caught your smile from the corner of his eye. “Don’t laugh.”
You pressed your lips together. “I would never.”
“I was thirteen when we made it.”
“Prime age for lists.”
“Mhmm.” Snorting, he leaned back on the stool. “Anyway. I hadn’t looked at that list since he left. But I’ve been thinking about it lately. Sucks that I never finished it.”
You rested your chin lightly against your palm. You suspected this wasn’t really about the list at all, but everything it held: the childhood he’d wished he had, the future he’d wanted.
“You still could, though,” you said.
He gave a faint shake of his head.
“Don’t think I’d feel comfortable asking Alain now,” he said. “Could’ve done those things alone, I suppose, but that’s lame. Guess I could’ve asked Bin or Gyu, or anyone, to finish that list with me, too. But—I don’t know. Think I’ve sort of convinced myself that if I looked at it again, I’d lose another friend the way I lost Alain.”
Your gaze softened.
Some objects held that power, you knew. The scarf at the bottom of your wardrobe was one of them.
“Have you got that list with you?” you asked.
He blinked down, mentally tracking the location of his phone to his back pocket.
“Yeah,” he said. “Probably somewhere in my email.”
“You could read it to me.”
He looked at you, feeling heat creep unexpectedly into his face. He couldn’t remember half the things on that list anymore, but now he suspected that thirteen-year-old him had been a spectacular loser, after all.
“You sure?” His smile turned awkward. “If I read it and it turns out the list is cursed, and we—”
“Promise I’m not leaving.”
Yeonjun lowered his gaze. There was something lodged in his throat, and he took a moment to swallow to clear it.
Without saying anything, you reached across the island and refilled his glass.
His eyes followed your hand as you pulled back.
“Thanks.” He looked up at the bottle between you.
There was something very warm swelling in his chest. Maybe just the liqueur.
“I, uh—I should remind you again,” he said, “I was thirteen when we made the list.”
You nodded. “I’d love to know what thirteen-year-old you considered cool. Curious whether you’ve matured at all.”
“I’ve matured,” he said, indignant all of a sudden. “But admittedly, I might not come across as particularly cool on this list.”
“That’s alright.” You topped up your own glass. “You don’t come across as particularly cool in real life, either.”
His hand flew dramatically to his chest. “Okay—first of all, that’s very rude. And second of all, that’s objectively not true. I’m very cool.”
“Mhmm.”
He set his phone down. “Tell me I’m very cool.”
Your lips stretched against your better judgment. “Read your list, Cool Boy.”
Huffing, Yeonjun opened his email on his phone.
The two of you finished your drinks in silence while he scrolled and scrolled to the bottom of his Sent folder, eyes skimming old receipts and university essays. He vaguely remembered emailing the list to himself before forwarding it to Alain.
Across the island, you watched him frown at the screen. You remembered, abruptly, one of your first dates back in grad school. He’d asked for your feedback and started a note on his phone, titled DATE ACTIVITIES. You didn’t think he’d written down much, but now you wondered whether he’d always been making lists for the future.
“Alright,” he said finally.
The document on his phone opened slowly, and the formatting was atrocious: at least three different fonts, several random colours. He almost regretted bringing this up.
“This is, uh—this is actually worse than I remember,” he said.
You perked up immediately. “Oh, I cannot wait.”
Trying not to grimace, he searched for the beginning.
“Alright,” he said again. “First up is a Lord of the Rings marathon. In, um—in a pillow fort, apparently. Alain has left a comment here, which just says: with pizza.”
Your lips curved. “That’s not so bad. Sounds fun.”
His embarrassment eased by about three per cent.
“Next is excellent,” he said, eyes dropping to the next line, split mid-word due to the large font. “A midnight picnic.”
You watched him, waiting for more.
He did not give you more, too busy zooming in on the lowercase letters underneath.
“A midnight picnic,” you repeated.
“Yes,” he said, squinting at his screen. “With—oh, you’ll love this. With sweets and chocolate syrup. On top of the sweets, I’m assuming.” He made a thoughtful pause before looking up at you. “Notice how I, too, preferred chocolate syrup over whipped cr—”
“Mhmm.” You’d grown louder now. He snickered. “Why midnight, then?”
“Think I had a ten o’clock curfew. So midnight was basically criminal activity for me.”
“Ah. Living on the edge, I see.”
“Yes.” He grinned. “Hey, turns out I’m cooler than I gave myself credit for.”
Smiling, you stretched your legs out across the floor. “What’s next?”
His eyes dropped lower on the screen. “Next is competing to win the biggest stuffed toy at a fair.”
“Always a competition with you.”
“Well—” He was forced to abandon his defence as he found the next item. “Yeah, fair enough. I’ve got lawnmower racing here, too.”
You raised your eyebrows. “What, just pushing lawnmowers across a field?”
“No, we had the big ones at the house, the ride-on ones.”
“Oh!” You brightened. “My grandparents have those. Never occurred to me to race on them.”
“You’ve missed out.”
“Sounds like I have.”
He scrolled down. The glow from his phone reflected faintly in his eyes. Slowly, his smile began to widen.
“M’realising,” he said, “I’ve accidentally completed several of these.”
You found yourself smiling, too. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He turned the phone towards you, and you leaned over the island to see better. “Racing in Dad’s old Chevy, for example. I’ve crashed that now, so this one’s basically crossed off twice.”
You gave him a look. “Incredible.”
“Wasn’t very entertaining, to be honest.” He lowered the phone for a moment. “This was after Alain left. Thought I’d keep racing, since, clearly, I was naturally gifted. You can laugh.”
You snorted. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, love.” He nodded. “Anyway, I’d hardly got off our property when I drove straight into a bin, and this massive black rubbish bag ended up plastered across the windscreen. I ended up in a field with two wheels hanging off.”
You let out a long breath, shaking your head.
“How many car accidents have you had in your life?”
He waved the question away. “This one hardly counts. Didn’t even feel anything.”
You clicked your tongue, which filled him with an odd warmth. Only then did he realise he’d been holding his phone in his left hand, and his wrist had been completely calm.
“Oh, I’ve done the road trips as well,” he said, pointing at another item further down on his list. “Gyu and I took Kai skiing a few years ago, so that’s done, too. And the cabin—Soobin and I used to go there together.”
“That’s nice.” You watched him scroll further. Some of the tension he’d arrived carrying had eased enough for the smile lines beside his lips to return. “Halfway through the list then, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I see the last one’s not crossed off, though.”
“What is it?”
“This one’s a bit ambitious.”
You placed both palms flat on the marble island and drew an exaggeratedly solemn breath. “I’m ready.”
“Matching tattoos.”
Your eyebrows climbed. “Wow. When you were thirteen?”
“Yeah.” He snorted. “I remember Alain objected, so we—”
“Reasonable man.”
“Yeah, but not because I was thirteen,” Yeonjun said. “He just didn’t want tattoos.”
“Oh.”
“So we settled on getting the fake ones, from gum wrappers.” His voice was warm. “We were supposed to find a matching pair and wear them on our arms.”
The image was absurdly earnest, and you couldn’t stop the smile spreading on your face.
“You could’ve drawn them on, too,” you said, lifting your hand and rotating your wrist.
Yeonjun grinned, remembering the heart he’d drawn there once. He remembered the rush from feeling your pulse right under his fingertips, too. Remembered the smell of the rain in the air and the look in your eyes when he placed a cherry biscuit between your lips.
“Uh—true, yeah,” he said, glancing away from you. He’d lost all track of the conversation. “But they’ve got to be matching or it won’t—shit.” He looked up again. “I should’ve drawn you a spider web.”
“Oh, it would’ve counted then?”
“Yeah,” he said sadly.
Laughing softly, you nodded at his phone.
“Well, that’s a solid list anyway,” you said. “All of it sounds genuinely fun.”
Yeonjun exhaled, somewhat wistfully, as he locked his phone and set it down on the island. It clicked softly against the marble.
“Yeah,” he said. “S’been on my mind. Not much on there, I know, but it used to be something I looked forward to every day.”
“Hmm.”
You watched his face change.
For a few minutes while he read his list, he’d looked younger, less guarded, as though he really was thirteen again. But slowly, little by little, guilt had returned to his expression—as though he didn’t think he deserved to indulge in nostalgia for too long. Didn’t deserve to remember those days with as much fondness as he had.
You disliked that guilt immediately and fervently.
“Well,” you said, resting your forearms on the island. “You could still finish all of that. With me.”
Yeonjun looked up, parting his lips.
“You’d—” He cleared his throat. “You’d do those things with me?”
The surprise in his voice made you unexpectedly self-conscious. Perhaps you’d overstepped.
“Sure,” you said. “I don’t mean to replace Alain or anyth—”
“You wouldn’t.”
His gaze remained locked on you.
Startled, momentarily, by the certainty in his voice, you dropped your eyes to the island.
“Great, then.” You held up a hand and began ticking items off on your fingers. “So, Lord of the Rings, midnight picnic, fair, lawnmowers. And matching tattoos. S’five things.”
Yeonjun swallowed, only to realise he couldn’t really feel his throat anymore. He wondered if he could quietly add another hundred items to the list.
“Right,” he managed. “Yeah.”
“We’d get through it a lot quicker if there was a fair in town.” You tipped your head back, gaze drifting up towards the ceiling. “But we can improvise, I’m sure.”
“Just, uh—just so you know,” he said, “you don’t have to do any of this. It’s just a—”
“Don’t do that,” you said gently. He quieted at once. “I don’t mind. We said we’re friends.”
Yeonjun dropped his gaze.
He still hadn’t got used to the word. He wondered if he ever would.
“Alright,” he said. “Thank you, friend.”
Your amused smile was a mirror of his own.
“Any time,” you said, “friend.”
As your gazes lingered on each other a heartbeat longer than either of you intended, smiles spreading against your will, you realised that this felt a bit like the beginning of a new game.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 5, 2026. 8:30 PM
After Yeonjun had left, giggling all the way down the stairs with Violet cradled in his arms, already tipsy on your grandmother’s raspberry liqueur, you finished tidying the kitchen. You swept Violet’s white hairs off the floor, wiped down the counters, rinsed the mugs and glasses, and once the flat looked livable again, you settled at your desk.
A notification lit up your phone before your laptop managed to wake.
Reina had sent you a photo from her co-worker’s birthday dinner. Apparently, Henry, your old classmate from university, had been there as well. He was dating the birthday girl’s best friend now and, according to Reina’s commentary, had spent the first half an hour pretending not to recognise her.
Snickering—Henry had always been painfully pretentious—you zoomed in on his face. He hadn’t changed much in the year since you’d last seen him; still red in the face after a single glass of wine.
The tiny burst of nostalgia proved surprisingly infectious.
Almost without thinking, you wandered into your own gallery and, before you knew it, you were at the very top.
There were photos from your first Christmas home from university: your grandparents smiling in their vast kitchen beside a crooked tree that your uncle had chopped down himself, nearly sacrificing a finger in the process (his own).
Your thumb slowed as you scrolled down to the photos of the neighbour’s horse, who’d somehow befriended Violet—your Violet—through the fence. He’d wandered across the pasture just to lie beside her, picking her from a sea of other, mildly offended cows.
Even now, the picture made you snicker.
Further down were tons of pictures from Beomgyu’s birthday during second year.
You scrolled through thirty-four of his selfies with Reina after he’d stolen your phone, followed by thirty more of him holding his birthday cake out at arm’s length as though presenting a newborn lion to the kingdom.
You paused at one of the group photos.
In it, Reina stood beside you. Soobin, naturally, stood on Reina’s other side. Beomgyu was in the middle, grinning despite his eyes being screwed shut against the sunlight. Henry was there, too.
Yeonjun, in the meantime, was in the opposite corner, standing about as far away from you as the camera allowed.
You smiled despite yourself.
You remembered that birthday.
Beomgyu had made a flag for the occasion: red and blue, with his name painted across it in thick black letters, large enough to be identified from orbit. He’d attached it to a pole liberated from his then-roommate’s drying rack and had planted it triumphantly outside his dormitory window.
Years later, after moving in with Kai, he would hang the thing from the tree outside their house every birthday.
That year, however, to celebrate the flag’s debut, he’d marched everyone outside into the parking lot and announced a game of Capture The Flag (with only just this one flag; he’d hidden it on the outside windowsill of an abandoned building further down the street).
It was mid-March, but felt like early January. You’d worn two pairs of gloves and still couldn’t feel your fingers. Frankly, you’d been much more interested in capturing a warm cup of tea.
Beomgyu had split everyone into teams.
Outrageously, he’d separated you from Reina (you suspected he was punishing you for accidentally wearing the same shade of pink as him). Yeonjun, unfortunately, had ended up on your team.
The game dissolved into chaos as soon as it started. Someone tackled someone as though this was a game of rugby. Half the players forgot who their teammates were. At one point, Yeonjun slipped on the ice and lay flat on the asphalt for nearly a minute—it was, without question, the happiest minute of your day.
Beomgyu, in the meantime, sat on the roof of his Audi—broken, even back then—and sipped champagne straight from the bottle, shouting instructions and jailing players for using words he’d secretly designated as forbidden (‘fuck’ turned out to be one of them; you’d been jailed four times before you realised).
Eventually, you and Yeonjun spotted the flag and found yourselves locked in a heated argument over who should make the run for it without attracting the other team’s attention. You argued it should be you, seeing as you hadn’t yet eaten gravel. Deeply offended, Yeonjun retorted that your jacket sleeve was ripped and ran off the moment you glanced down.
You launched after him.
Both of you reached for the flag at the exact same time.
And then, horribly, your earring had hooked itself through the loose weave of his jumper. He staggered backwards from the windowsill, dragging you into him.
Are you kidding me? you’d yelled, dropping the flag.
Would you stop moving? he’d snapped back. Your earring’s going to stab me.
I’ll stab you if you don’t get the hell—
Your hair is literally up my nose.
Don’t breathe, then.
Would you stay still, for fuck’s—
You’re pulling my fucking hair!
By then, Beomgyu had arrived. One look at the two of you tangled together was enough to send him into hysterics. He doubled over, clutching his knees as he tried to ask what had happened.
Finally, he leaned forward to help.
His first attempt had torn a neat hole through Yeonjun’s jumper, which, understandably, prompted Yeonjun to yell directly into your ear.
His second attempt had been to remove your earring, which, understandably, resulted in him nearly removing your ear instead.
Eventually, yelling and cussing, you’d managed to unclasp the earring yourself, abandoning it somewhere inside Yeonjun’s jumper.
You owe me an earring, you’d said, rubbing your aching ear.
I’ll give you two, Yeonjun said, absently touching the ones in his own ears. What do I get for the extra one?
A punch on the nose.
He’d laughed. You’re not getting my earrings, then.
You’d bent to retrieve the abandoned flagpole lying on the asphalt.
Least I got the flag, you’d said.
Yeonjun dropped his hands from his ears. I got the flag.
What? I literally grabbed—
You didn’t grab anyth—
I grabbed the fucking—
Beomgyu cut in, planting a hand squarely between each of your shoulder blades with two loud, stinging smacks.
He’d done that just in time. Your fingers had started to itch with the urge to strangle Yeonjun.
Your team had ended up winning, after all, but there was another murderous occasion shortly after that.
This one came during a Philosophy seminar that had come perilously close to sucking your very soul out. The auditorium had been small: a few built-in seats lining the walls and one oval table in the centre with barely ten chairs around it.
Through some biblically fucked luck, Reina had ended up sitting across the table from you that day, and you were stuck next to Yeonjun for the entire hour and a half.
Shortly after starting the seminar, the professor announced that she’d secured a presentation slot at a conference next month and, in a burst of astonishing optimism, had decided that her students should present their barely rehearsed assignments to actual scientists.
You’d been horrified by the absolute waste of everyone’s time—no one in the class cared about the field, and you doubted anyone cared about listening to undergraduate Sociology students.
You didn’t say any of that.
Instead, you hunched over your notebook, scribbling increasingly aggressive notes about everything you needed to fix in your slides. The pen squeaked against the paper.
Beside you, Yeonjun looked offensively relaxed.
He’d already decided he wasn’t giving the presentation—not like the professor could drag him into the conference. So he lounged in his chair with one ankle hooked over the opposite knee, staring at the table and nudging you occasionally with his thigh.
You mind? you’d asked him at one point. Some people are trying to study here.
Hm? He’d turned to you. Oh, well, you shouldn’t bother them, then, love.
Pressing your lips together, you returned to your notebook.
You’d only realised his arm had been resting across the back of your chair when you leaned backwards. Startled, he jerked it away. Your jacket immediately slid off the chair and landed on the floor.
You looked at him.
He looked at the jacket, then back at you.
Your jacket fell, he’d said.
You dropped it.
Can’t recall doing that.
Grinding your teeth, you bent to retrieve it.
By the time you straightened again, Yeonjun was openly reading your notebook.
Your handwriting’s lovely, he’d said. Slightly concerned you’ve written ‘fuck this’ three times just there—your Fs are a bit wonky, by the way—but lovely, still.
Thanks, you’d replied. Learnt cursive in primary school. I assume you wouldn’t know.
I wouldn’t. Care to teach me?
Busy.
Another time?
You rolled your eyes. He turned back towards the professor with a proud smile tugging at one corner of his lips.
It had truly been extraordinary: both, his ability to make you seethe and your own restraint from tackling him.
You remembered another time, already in grad school, after yet another discussion where Yeonjun had earned extra points for simply repeating something you’d already said, only backwards and in fancier words.
You’d always assumed he was showing off when he did that, just trying to upstage everyone. Now you wondered if he simply didn’t know any other way and collected approval anywhere he could find it.
It had frustrated you back then, though. You’d stopped speaking altogether.
When the professor stepped outside to answer a phone call, leaving everyone to discuss the assignment in groups of five—something about the impact of culture on aviation safety—you’d folded your arms and stayed quiet.
Yeonjun, turned around in his chair to see you better, noticed almost immediately. Mid-conversation, he raised a hand to quiet the rest of the group.
What do you think? he’d asked you.
You didn’t even look at him.
Why’s it matter? you’d replied. Can’t come up with anything yourself?
He’d shrugged with his usual ease. Just wanted to hear your thoughts.
‘Cause you’ve got none of your own, yeah?
He rolled his eyes. But with the rest of your group snickering softly around you, there was already the beginning of a smile on his lips.
Bit childish, if you ask me, he’d said. But if silent treatment’s the route you want to take—
Oh, this isn’t silent treatment. You’d smiled pleasantly. This is me preserving my energy.
We’re trying to finish an assignment.
Then finish it.
He watched you with his eyebrows raised.
Would be nice if you actually completed something for once, you’d added.
By then, everyone else had quietly resumed the discussion without either of you. That rankled you further; the two of you were now not participating together.
Okay, Yeonjun had said eventually. What’re you actually bothered about?
You.
M’hounoured, love. He nodded. Anything in particular today?
So glad you asked. You glared at him. S’your admirable talent for stealing everyone else’s credit.
Another eye roll. You really care about the half point I got?
I care about your incompetence.
You shouldn’t. Much healthier for your blood pressure if you learn to forgive and forget.
I don’t forget.
No?
No.
He considered that for a second.
Alright, he’d said then, a small smile on his lips. I’ll check.
At the time, you hadn’t understood what he’d meant.
You found out that evening.
Professor Myers had been hosting one of her monthly gatherings at the local bar. Your entire cohort had crammed into a booth, with Taehyun and Kai invited despite being two years below—Kai as Beomgyu’s roommate, and Taehyun as your biggest reason for not dropping out.
A few beers in, Yeonjun had leaned over Soobin—who was sitting between the two of you—with cheeks gently pink and eyes noticeably brighter.
D’you still remember? he’d slurred.
You gave him a flat look. I do.
Hm. He nodded thoughtfully before absentmindedly patting Soobin’s knee. I see.
Soobin had looked between the two of you. Remember what?
Yeonjun nudged him with his shoulder. Don’t worry about it, love.
Twenty minutes later, you were pulling your jacket from the coat stand before going outside for a cigarette break when someone stopped behind you. You turned to find Yeonjun leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.
Still remember? he’d asked.
I do.
Good.
Then he wandered back towards the booth before you could think of anything clever to shout after him.
Outside, Nara entertained you and Taehyun for five minutes straight with an alarmingly accurate impression of a seagull. Her throat hurt by the end of it. Yours did, too.
You were still laughing when you came back inside.
Yeonjun looked up from his beer at once. Memory still working?
It is.
He nodded once, apparently satisfied.
Five minutes later:
Still remember?
I do.
Ten minutes after that:
You still remember?
Yes! My God.
By then, even Soobin had started laughing. It was the first time he’d done so all evening—Reina was home with a cold, so naturally, he saw no point in living.
Eventually, near closing time, you were searching your handbag to make sure you hadn’t lost your keys when Yeonjun stopped in front of you. He didn’t say anything, but waited, head tilted, until you looked up.
You still remember?
You sighed. I do.
A slow, deeply pleased smile spread across his face. Good. Knew you couldn’t forget me.
Then he wandered off to find Beomgyu before you could answer.
He’d actually annoyed you to the brink of insanity.
But looking back now, it was almost absurd. You’d spent so much of that time counting marks, arguing over assignments and trying to get credit that you’d barely looked at him. Barely looked at yourself, either.
And then he’d made you fall in love with him in two weeks.
You found yourself wondering, with the group picture on your phone still zoomed in on Yeonjun’s face, what would happen now.
i could drown myself in someone like you, i could dive so deep i never come out
/// nothing but thieves, impossible
pairing: yeonjun x fem!reader
summary: sometimes love and hate exist on opposite ends of the map. other times, on separate floors of the same building.
genre: ex!yeonjun / enemies to lovers au / neighbour au
warnings: slow burn, mutual pining, strong language, LOTS of flirting and teasing and quiet yearning, little shit!jjun is back, fluff (!), some lotr spoilers
words: 11.7k
[ ! ] this is a sequel to equilibrium
masterlist / read from the beginning
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 7, 2026. 4 PM
The next week returned to normal, and you were forced to admit that, these days, normal meant finding Yeonjun loitering in the lobby every time you came home from university.
His excuse on Monday was a delivery. He claimed to be waiting for a very important parcel, and the courier, the bloody idiot, was running late.
Nodding sympathetically, you dropped your bag onto the small table beneath the noticeboard. The surface was carved through with initials and obscene drawings that did not look particularly anatomically correct.
“Well, in that case,” you said, “I’ll wait with you.”
Yeonjun pressed his lips together the moment he felt the corners trying to betray him.
“Thank you,” he said gravely. “I appreciate your support in my time of need.”
“You’re welcome. What’d you order?”
He launched into a wholly incomprehensible explanation about online shopping: the misleading product photos, the contradictory reviews, the fictional delivery windows. He spoke with such determination and at such speed that there wasn’t a gap wide enough to interrupt. By the time he began a passionate indictment of courier companies on the whole, you’d almost forgotten what you’d asked.
Several of your neighbours passed through in the time you’d been standing there, checked their letterboxes, and headed upstairs—notably, all of them avoided the lift. A few older ladies shot the two of you curious glances as they went. You smiled politely while Yeonjun continued to state his case.
Half an hour later, the courier still hadn’t come.
“Think he’s just lost track of time,” Yeonjun insisted, glancing at his phone. “I say we wait another half an hour, just to be on the safe side.”
Sighing, you jerked your head towards the stairs. “Come on.”
“But what about my parcel?”
“You’ll get another call.” You gathered your backpack. “We’ve got a film to watch.”
His expression finally surrendered to a smile as he pushed himself off the wall.
The lobby had been perfectly nice—although there had, of course, never been any parcel to begin with—but Yeonjun was far more thrilled by the prospect of a few more hours with you upstairs.
Today was the day of your Lord of the Rings marathon.
As it turned out, building the pillow fort exactly as described in his childhood bucket list wasn’t difficult. Yeonjun didn’t own a single table or much furniture at all, but, for some reason, he had enough mattresses to furnish a small hotel. He brought them in from the storage room, his wardrobe, from behind doors, and even from the balcony.
The pizzas arrived somewhere in the middle of this operation, and all you could do was hold the boxes and stare at him. “Yeonjun.”
He glanced up. “Hm?”
“How—how many of those have you got?”
Grinning, he dropped another mattress onto the growing pile. “Well, a few.”
“Mhmm.”
You left the boxes on the kitchen island and grabbed one end of the nearest mattress, pulling it upright to form a wall.
An odd scent lingered in the flat under the tomato sauce and melting mozzarella—buttery and sweet, faintly caramel-like. It wafted through the room whenever the breeze stirred the curtains hanging over the cracked balcony door.
You sniffed the air distractedly.
Yeonjun paused on his way back to the storage room.
“Baked earlier,” he explained. “Strawberry tart.”
You looked up from the mattresses.
It still made your brain stall a little, hearing him mention baking. It seemed like a hobby for patient people. Slow-living people. People who, perhaps, did not hoard mattresses.
“How’d you start baking, then?” you asked, stepping carefully over Violet, who had arranged herself in the middle of the floor as the Head Supervisor. No one crossed the room without obtaining a permit first.
Yeonjun lugged another mattress inside, blowing a loose strand of hair out of his eyes.
“Just happened, sort of,” he said. “Usually haven’t got time to cook, but baking is—s’ten minutes of chucking everything together, and then you just wait forty-five minutes for it to finish. S’easy. And soothing, I guess. Bit like meditation.”
He caught the mattress against his knee when it slipped. His arms were beginning to complain.
You crouched beside him, catching the opposite corner.
“Thanks,” he huffed.
Together, you manoeuvred the mattress into place in front of the projector, which was balanced on an upturned cardboard box, its lens aimed at the blank white wall of his living room.
“Must’ve had a lot of practice,” you said, “if you can get everything measured and mixed in ten minutes.”
A grin spread across his face. “Natural talent.”
Then he disappeared onto the balcony again and returned with yet another mattress.
You were becoming increasingly reluctant to ask why he owned so many. The last time you’d been here to find a place for his fern—which was still alive, against all odds—you hadn’t paid enough attention to notice any of them. Now you were worried they were breeding somewhere just out of sight.
Yeonjun adjusted the mattress against his shoulder.
“I used to do my homework in the kitchen,” he said, letting the latest addition fall with a soft thump against the floor. Then he heaved it upright to shape the opposite wall. “Nina, our chef back then, always baked desserts in the afternoons. I watched her a lot. Didn’t think much about it again until about a year ago, when I couldn’t shut my brain off.”
Your gaze drifted to the floor, where Violet was inspecting the mattresses.
You were thinking about all the rituals you had built over the past year: losing yourself in books, in research, in work. You supposed you’d come close to picking up baking, too.
“Alcohol didn’t help anymore,” Yeonjun went on, “and I still had that plan not to become an alcoholic before m’thirty.”
The corners of your lips twitched. “Right.”
You squatted beside Violet and nudged the mattress at the back a few inches to the left until the walls resting against it stopped wobbling.
“So I tried baking instead,” Yeonjun said. “Started with a pound cake, I remember. Tasted like sandpaper because I’d left it in too long. Kept sticking toothpicks in it, and they kept coming out damp. I don’t know.”
You smiled, bringing a hand over Violet’s chin before you stood again. “That happens. The edges get burnt, but the middle stays soft.”
“Exactly, yeah.” He dragged the mattress upright to brace the back wall, then stepped away to assess the angle. “But—anyway. I kept going and got the hang of it eventually. Turns out my old oven was rubbish. Then I moved here and the oven’s brilliant. Turns out it’s my whisking that’s shit now.”
You looked up at him. “You’re doing alright, though. The cobbler was great last time. And the biscuits.”
Yeonjun looked at you over the top of the mattress. Something softened almost imperceptibly in his gaze—you’d have missed it if you hadn’t been looking.
You’d been looking.
“Yeah?” A small smile tugged at his mouth before he glanced away. “I’m glad. Let’s put a roof on this.”
The two of you threw the largest blanket—thick and grey with faded white stripes—over the standing mattresses. It billowed for a moment, caught in the draft, then settled across the top, dipping slightly in the middle and casting the inside of the fort into shade.
The arrangement looked very respectable.
Yeonjun thought that thirteen-year-old him would’ve been very proud.
He switched on the projector. The fan whirred softly before a pale rectangle appeared across the opposite wall, filling the flat with flickering light. Dust drifted lazily through the beam.
Tilting your head, you surveyed the fort. “Have you got any pillows? Or did they not make it into the mattress budget?”
Snorting, Yeonjun raised a finger and disappeared down the corridor. You heard cupboard doors banging open in his bedroom, then something heavy dropping, followed shortly by a muffled ow, shit.
“Y’alright?” you called out.
“Perfect, love! The rolling pin—forgot I’d left it here.”
He reappeared a second later with his face barely visible behind an armful of pillows. One slipped free. He made an attempt to catch it with his foot and nearly demolished the western wall of the fort in the process.
“Shit.” He straightened. You reached out to grab the top few pillows from him. “Thanks.”
“Right, then.” You tossed them onto the mattresses on the floor. “Reckon you’ve got enough stuff to furnish three bedrooms with all this. Opening up a B&B in the future, or what?”
He laughed and, impressively, still didn’t explain. Instead, he dumped the remaining pillows into the fort and leaned down to arrange them.
Violet, understandably, climbed aboard to test it out first. After several thorough sniffs, she declared the fort structurally sound and returned to the kitchen to investigate the pizza boxes as well, hopeful that one might open up if she was just persistent enough.
Yeonjun intercepted before she succeeded, carrying the boxes and the cans of cola over to the fort. You followed with two slices of strawberry tart. The crust was still warm when you pressed a fingertip against it to stop the slice from sliding across the plate.
The living room looked ridiculous now with the mattresses covering most of the floor. The blanket on the roof nearly grazed the ceiling. It smelled of something distinctly comforting, though: fresh laundry, warm pizza, strawberries, and beneath it all—faint enough that you only noticed when Yeonjun leaned past you to set the boxes down—apricot, for some reason.
It felt lived in now, the flat. Cosy.
Without quite realising it, you smiled as you settled beside him under the blankets.
The first film started quietly.
The two of you talked in low voices, instinctively leaning closer as though there was someone else in the fort you might disturb.
Violet was the only other occupant of the fort, and she was not disturbed. She stretched luxuriously across the pillow between you, indifferent to the hobbits but inexplicably riveted by Gollum’s brief appearances. Her whiskers were faintly pink from the strawberry she’d stolen off Yeonjun’s plate.
She looked very satisfied with her evening.
You propped yourself up on your elbows and reached for your second slice of pizza. It came out painted green by the projector light.
“Have you got a favourite character?” Yeonjun asked about half an hour into the film.
“Aragorn.”
That made him look over. “Wow—just off the top of your head, then?”
Shrugging, you took a bite. Cheese stretched between the slice and your teeth before finally snapping. It tasted spectacular, just acidic enough from the tomato sauce.
“Didn’t like The Fellowship the first time I saw it,” you admitted once you’d swallowed. “My cousins made me watch it. Aragorn was the only reason I stuck with it.”
Yeonjun hummed in understanding. He’d fallen asleep during his own first attempt at the trilogy, too.
“Not Legolas, then?” he asked, picking up another slice while gently steering Violet’s investigating nose away from the box with his wrist.
You brushed a few crumbs onto your joggers.
“No,” you said. “Always thought something’s off about hair that pretty. Never trusted him.”
Yeonjun snorted into his pizza.
Then he straightened.
“Hang on.” He lowered the slice. “Is my hair not pretty?”
Your gaze drifted to his neatly parted fringe—save for the single rebellious strand that tumbled over his forehead every few minutes, testing your self-control each time.
You turned back to the film. “I’ve always found you suspicious too, to be fair.”
His laughter bounced off the blanket roof, bright enough to fill the fort. Your own smile spread despite Frodo’s increasingly worried face on the wall ahead.
“Have you got a favourite, then?” you asked.
Yeonjun watched the screen for several thoughtful seconds.
“Pippin, I think,” he decided.
“Yeah? Not Merry?”
“Merry’s too serious.” He smiled when you snorted. “Always preferred Pippin’s whimsy.”
“Alright, yeah.” You nodded, reaching for another slice. “Pippin’s great.”
As the Fellowship set off from Rivendell on the screen, Yeonjun launched into an explanation of the complete evolution of his favourite characters – from Gandalf when he’d been six, because his nanny, Leigh, always put on fantasy films and had a soft spot for the wizard, to Sam briefly in secondary school, and finally to Pippin around his mid-twenties.
“I did briefly dabble in Aragorn,” he admitted. “But he’s too cool for me, I feel. Too collected.”
“Gandalf isn’t?”
“No, he’s got crazy eyes.”
You laughed and, somewhere during the conversation, stopped paying attention to the film altogether. It didn’t feel like much of a loss.
The first pizza box emptied not long afterwards.
“Have you got a favourite film in the series?” you asked, lifting your can of cola while distant mountains lingered on the screen, throwing dark, faintly indigo shadows over Yeonjun’s face.
He drained the last mouthful from his own can and clicked his lips thoughtfully.
“The first one, I think.” He folded the empty can into his palm. “Mostly because I’ve seen it most times.”
“Hmm.”
“What about you?”
“Definitely not the first one.”
His eyebrows rose. “Why not?”
“Boromir dies.”
His eyebrows fell again. “Ah, shit. Yeah.”
“I was eleven the first time I watched it,” you recalled, “and I refused to watch the other two films for months.”
He smiled faintly. “Yeah, s’fair. That one hurt.”
You took a sip from the can. The cola prickled lightly against your tongue, sharper than you were used to. You’d been too responsible lately—too much water, not enough joy. You’d missed fizzy drinks.
“Think Return of the King’s my favourite,” you decided finally. “I like happy endings.”
Yeonjun looked at you for a second longer than he’d planned to before speaking.
“Aragorn gets married, though,” he said.
You nodded, smiling again.
“That used to be my favourite part,” you said. “Always rooted for him and Arwen.”
He considered that for a moment before returning his attention to the screen. Aragorn, as though summoned, strode across the projection.
“Really?” he said. “I figured, with him as your favourite, you’d have wanted to be the one to marry him.”
You shook your head. “I was a very self-aware child. Knew I couldn’t marry a fictional character.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. So I planned to marry Zayn from One Direction instead.”
Yeonjun laughed so suddenly that his elbow slipped on the mattress. He caught himself by throwing a leg over the edge.
“Yeah, that—” The mattress dipped beneath him anyway, and he rolled down into the pile of pillows and blankets with a muffled yelp.
Your burst of laughter prompted Violet to lift her head.
As Yeonjun fought his way back to the surface, he felt her cold paws pressing into his ankles, not quite helpful, possibly even vindictive. He suspected she wanted him to suffer a while longer for denying her the pleasure of a second strawberry.
“You need help?” you asked, leaning closer.
Something unintelligible emerged from beneath the blankets. A moment later, he made his way back onto the mattress, shoving a pillow off his face. Bored, Violet abandoned him to sniff at your ankles instead.
“M’great.” He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair and returned to roughly his original position. “S’a very nice fort we’ve got. Very nice.”
You devoted your best efforts to not laughing again.
“Anyway.” He pointed at you. “Yes. One Direction’s obviously a lot more realistic.”
“Yes. I thought so, too.”
He breathed out a wistful sigh and eased his head back onto the pillows. Above him, the blanket roof rippled whenever the breeze drifted in through the balcony door. The projector painted forests and distant mountains across the fabric. It felt a bit like a portal into Middle-earth.
“I wasn’t that self-aware as a kid,” he said.
“No?”
He shook his head.
“Which character did you want to marry?” you asked.
“The female robber from the third Home Alone film.”
It took you a few moments to place the film: the remote-controlled toy, the hopeless 911 calls.
Watching your eyebrows climb in recognition, Yeonjun grinned.
“Why her?” you asked.
“Well,” he scratched thoughtfully at his jaw, “first of all, eight-year-old me thought she was really fit.” He glanced over to watch you snicker. “And she actually knew what she was doing. I’m convinced if it hadn’t been for the idiots with her, she’d have pulled the whole thing off.”
You pressed your lips together and nodded a few times, trying to keep your expression neutral.
“Mhmm. Right.” You took a long breath. “I can see the appeal.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Wasn’t she a bit mean, though?”
Yeonjun clicked his tongue. “Have I not made it clear by now that that’s very much my type?”
You turned back to the film before you could laugh again.
“My bad,” you said. “Definitely makes sense.”
Smiling to himself, he folded one arm beneath his head.
“Why Lord of the Rings, then?” you asked, nodding towards the projection. “And not Home Alone? You could’ve updated your list.”
Yeonjun shrugged. “Watching films just because I’ve got a crush on one of the characters isn’t very cool.”
You tsked. “Clearly, you’ve never known what’s cool.”
He looked across to you. “Yeah? So, did you agree to watch Lord of the Rings just for Aragorn, then?”
“No.” You met his eyes. “I did it for you.”
He opened his mouth automatically, then discovered he’d lost his voice. Warmth climbed his neck before he had any chance of stopping it.
He turned back to the film with sudden, renewed interest, watching the raging blizzard while he tried to school his expression back into something dignified.
“I see,” he managed. “That’s gr—good.”
One corner of your lips lifted into a smirk. Yeonjun watched it through his peripheral vision and thought that he was having, by all means, the best night of his entire year.
Soon, the first film blurred into the second one. With Yeonjun’s blackout curtains drawn across the windows, it was difficult to tell the time. You had no idea where you’d left your phone; it didn’t even occur to you to look for it.
By then, the two of you were talking too much to pay attention to the screen.
“Are you sick of being back at uni yet?” Yeonjun asked, brushing tart crumbs from his palms.
You watched the changing landscape wash across the blanket roof.
“Honestly, a bit.” You exhaled. “The other doctoral students are all about ten years older than me, and surprisingly conceited, too. I wasn’t expecting that, after our lot.”
His lips stretched into a soft smile. “Yeah. We got lucky with our year.”
You hummed in agreement.
It was lonely, sitting through seminars without someone beside you to exchange glances with whenever the professors drifted into a topic they’d already covered half a dozen times that month. No Beomgyu nudging your shoulder to borrow chewing gum. No Soobin coughing politely whenever you and Reina started giggling too loudly. No Yeonjun, either.
Taehyun and Kai were your only reprieve whenever you happened to cross paths in the corridors nowadays.
“Speaking of our year, though.” You shifted slightly against the pillows to face him. “Have you decided what you’re doing for your birthday?”
Yeonjun sighed so deeply that the blanket overhead stirred with the force of it.
“Suppose I’ll round everyone up over the weekend and pass drinks around as always.” He picked absentmindedly at the edge of his cola can label until it peeled away in thin silver strips. “Some music on. You know.”
“The usual, then.”
He shifted on the mattress. The back of his hand brushed yours where it rested between you on the pillow. Neither of you moved.
“Probably.” His eyes flicked to your fingers before he settled back and returned his attention to the projection, careful not to move too far away from you. “Definitely not organising a dinner, that’s more Nara’s thing. We’ll go to a bar, I guess. Or a club. There’s this place not too far from here, said they rent private rooms.”
You nodded, watching Aragorn and Legolas cross the plains of Rohan, shades of green and grey flickering across the room.
It was almost comfortable how easily his birthday party had become part of your schedule, too.
“Oh.” Yeonjun glanced over again. “Amy’ll probably come as well.”
You looked back at him. You hadn’t heard anything about Amy in so long that, for a moment, you weren’t sure what to make of that at all.
“Yeah?” you said. “You’re still in touch?”
“Sort of.” He ran his fingers over the seam on the pillowcase between you. His left hand remained pressed against the side of yours. “Less now that I don’t really speak to my parents. She’s engaged now, by the way—don’t think I told you.”
Your eyebrows lifted. “Really?”
“Yeah, to the bloke she’d been seeing in grad school.”
“I thought they’d split up.”
“They had, yeah.” He nodded. “Got back together last summer. Engaged this June.”
You let out a quiet breath. “Wow.”
It brought a strange sort of familiarity, this news. Amy almost felt like a distant acquaintance at this point; a small part of your life without ever directly being in your life.
“Yeah,” Yeonjun said, a crooked smile on his lips. “My parents were devastated. Amy said they’d even stopped by her parents’ place to ask if they were certain their daughter’s making the right choice.”
Humming, you nudged your empty plate farther from Violet. She lingered between you and Yeonjun, waiting for just one lapse in concentration. The smell of pizza was testing the limits of her polite restraint.
“Right,” you said, stroking Violet’s back as she brushed past you. “Some things never change, I guess.”
“Hmm. Hopefully some others do, though.”
The projector washed Yeonjun’s face in shifting bands of blue when you glanced at him. His eyes lingered somewhere beyond the film. He combed his fingers through his hair, only for the same strand to fall back across his forehead again.
You turned away.
“You don’t sound very excited about your birthday,” you pointed out.
He sighed again. “Yeah. I don’t know. Been thinking there are better ways to spend it.”
“The mead again?”
He snorted.
“Yeah. Maybe. But also—” He lifted his hands to gesture at the pillows, the projector. Violet, sitting at the edge of your mattress. You. “This.”
You followed the direction of his hands. “Watching Lord of the Rings?”
His hands dropped back into his lap. “Just talking to you.”
You looked at him for a second, just long enough to feel each beat of your heart echo around your ribcage, as though it had briefly lost its way home.
Yeonjun looked back at you, feeling as though the lost beats of your heart were responsible for the extra ones crowding into his own.
Then your gaze drifted to the pizza boxes scattered between the mattresses and the crumbs littering the floor.
“We can talk at your birthday, too,” you said, tucking your feet under the blanket. “Doesn’t have to be constant drinking.”
“Yeah.”
The word came out quieter. He didn’t quite know what else to add after it.
Perhaps it was the novelty of this—spending time with you in this easy, unhurried way—that had made him start having these thoughts.
Then again, he suspected that even years ago—especially years ago—if given the choice between a crowded room where he could drink until his thoughts dissolved into static, and a dimly lit flat where the two of you discussed Legolas’ hair, he’d have picked you every time.
That wasn’t very friendly of him, he realised.
He cleared his throat and straightened, one shoulder nudging the mattress at the back.
“D’you remember Professor Javez’s class in undergrad?” he asked eventually.
You tore your attention away from the projection and glanced down at Violet, now sprawled on her side with one paw stretched imperiously across the mattress.
“Which one?” you asked. Then realised. “Oh, watching films every class?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “This kind of reminds me of it. Still my favourite elective I’ve ever taken.”
You smiled, turning back ahead.
“I thought it was a waste of time,” you admitted. “Waking up at seven just to watch films for an hour and a half.”
He laughed. That was fair, admittedly; he’d wanted to drop the class every time he heard his alarm. But he’d still loved every minute of it. He could even remember exactly where you’d sat: right by the door, so you could always be the first to leave (and you usually were).
“I remember you slept on your desk most of the time,” he said, his grin widening. “I sat right behind you. It was the best part of my week.”
You gave him a look. “Was your life that boring?”
He smirked.
“It was actually very stressful.” He sank deeper into the pillow. “That class was the only time I could relax and just watch the films. And the way you were drooling onto your desk.”
You scoffed with enough indignation to startle Violet again. “I did not drool.”
Laughing again, Yeonjun brought his hand over the cat’s back until she settled again.
“M’not accusing you of anything, love,” he said. “Merely recalling historical events.”
“Slander isn’t a historical event.”
He snickered. “You were asleep, how would you know if you’d drooled or not?”
“I’d feel drool on my face.”
“It was on your desk.”
You snorted despite yourself, but shook your head anyway. Truthfully, you hardly remembered the class anymore. Perhaps you really had slept through most of it.
Unexpectedly, you found yourself remembering the look on Yeonjun’s face, back in his car, after your first night at his house, when you’d told him he snored. He’d protested with exactly the same wounded determination you imagined you were using now.
Come to think of it, lying across these mattresses felt strangely similar to his old guest bedroom, too.
It’d been cold in his house, you remembered; you’d set the thermostat in the room to a temperature that finally let you stop shivering. Then you’d woken up with his arm slung over your waist.
Yeonjun’s current flat, by contrast, was very warm.
“I can open another balcony door,” he said.
Only then did you realise you’d lifted a hand to fan yourself.
You dropped it a touch too quickly. “No, it’s alright.”
His smile softened. He wondered if he’d been any part of whatever thought had put that faraway look in your eyes.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Yeah.” You cleared your throat and shifted upright, pressing your palm into the pillow beside you. “Tell me something instead.”
“What?”
“What’s with all the mattresses? Honestly.”
Yeonjun laughed.
“Well.” He pushed himself up a little straighter, too. “When Bin and I moved out, someone had to take them. We’d bought all the furniture ourselves, and we ended up leaving most of it there. But Soobin insisted on saving the mattresses. Said new owners usually throw them out anyway, and mattresses are expensive.”
He picked a loose thread on the blanket draped over his knees.
“Fair enough, I figured. But the house had five bedrooms.” He shook his head, a smile already spreading on his lips. “Some of them had single mattresses on the beds, stacked on top of each other.”
You frowned. “Four per bed?”
He nodded.
“Soobin took two,” he said. “That already tested Reina’s patience, considering their flat has one bed with one mattress right now. So I had to take all the rest.”
Your gaze travelled slowly around the fort: the mattresses reinforcing the walls, the ones lining the floor. It looked like a proper padded cell.
So much for joking about psychiatric wards.
“Mhmm.” You gave a contemplative nod. “So, now you’ve got one bed and about fifteen mattresses.”
He laughed, gathering a loose pillow onto his lap.
“Yeah, give or take.” He glanced towards his bedroom, forgetting momentarily that he couldn’t see through the mattress wall. “I keep most in the corridor outside my room, but bring them all out whenever Soobin comes over. Just—” He gestured around with both hands. “—spread them out. He’s the one who insisted we keep them, so he should be pleased to see them thriving here.”
Soobin had mentioned once that he couldn’t stand spending too much time at Yeonjun’s flat. You’d sympathised back then; you hadn’t had much patience for Yeonjun, either.
Really, he must’ve meant the mattresses.
“And is he pleased, then?” you asked, lips twitching.
“No, never.”
You both laughed. The projector fan seemed to hum louder, as though joining in.
“He said my flat looks like a wealthy pig furnished its own pigsty,” Yeonjun said, pausing while you laughed harder. “Said it gives him the creeps. S’why I make sure the mattresses are out every single time he’s here.”
You covered your mouth, still snickering, and Yeonjun found himself absurdly fond of the mattresses all of a sudden. For the first time, he was grateful Soobin had been so stubborn.
“But, hey.” You nodded towards the blanket roof above you. “They’ve found a purpose, after all.”
Yeonjun looked up, too. “Yeah. Happy for them.”
When he looked back down, you were already watching him. It sent you both straight into a fresh fit of laughter.
It made sense, you realised, to think about his old house, then. These were the same mattresses.
The soundtrack filled the flat, strings swelling beneath the occasional crackle of the projector, while Yeonjun searched for the right words to bring up something he’d been thinking about all morning.
He’d got distracted by the imaginary parcel back in the lobby. Had to do it now.
“By the way, um…” He rubbed his thumb across his lower lip, his gaze lingering on the screen even after you’d looked over. “Remember the race I mentioned the other day? S’this Thursday.”
You nodded. “Okay. In the evening?”
“Yes,” he said and looked at you with enough hope in his eyes to make you pause.
You thought you’d already agreed to come with him the last time he’d mentioned it. But looking at him now, you wondered whether this invitation meant something more than just watching cars drive around in circles.
Your eyes drifted briefly to the suit jacket he’d left hanging from the balcony door handle. The edges of the sleeves were painted blue from the projector.
You wanted to go regardless of what the invitation meant.
“Alright, then,” you said. “I’d like to see this alleged work you do.”
He scoffed, though excitement robbed him of any proper comeback.
“Right, mhmm.” He fought a grin that refused to stay hidden. “I’ll text you the details later after I’ve checked.”
“Okay.”
The plan lingered quietly between you, almost tangible now. Oddly, it didn’t pull either of you out of the moment. It was remarkably easy to stay in the present when the present already felt like something you’d been looking forward to.
The film went on.
Somewhere near the beginning of The Return of the King, Yeonjun shifted in search of a more comfortable position. His left ankle had gone completely numb. His arm brushed yours and, after only the briefest hesitation, he let his head drop to your shoulder.
You didn’t move, aware, suddenly, of every breath. Aware, too, of the comforting weight of him beside you.
For once, the two of you watched the film in silence.
By the middle of the film, he’d gradually slid lower until his head rested across your thighs instead, one arm folded loosely over his stomach.
This time, you couldn’t resist smiling.
“Comfortable?” you asked.
He only grinned.
You adjusted your legs slightly beneath him so he wasn’t lying against the sharp edge of your knee. The projector painted midnight blue forests across his face; he was almost part of the film now.
Before you’d consciously decided on it, your fingers drifted to his hair, sliding the strand off his forehead, away from his eyes. Your other hand came to rest lightly over his collarbone.
Already half asleep, Yeonjun registered only the warmth. His hand lifted slowly until it covered yours, heavy enough for you to feel the steady rhythm in his chest.
Sleep had been avoiding him for months. He wished it’d been slower now that he found it.
“Thank you,” he murmured, squeezing your hand gently, “for this.”
Your throat tightened. For several seconds, you sat without moving, feeling your pulse respond to the steady rhythm beneath your palm.
Then you swallowed. “Happy to.”
He squeezed your hand one more time, making sure it was still there.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 8, 2026. 4 PM
Yeonjun’s excuse for waiting in the lobby on Tuesday was that he was stretching his legs.
“Been sitting in front of my screen too long,” he explained, rubbing the small of his back. “I’m moulding into the shape of my chair.”
You looked him up and down. “Hm. Perhaps a quick jog would help?”
“I tried. Didn’t work. I’m already too chair-shaped.”
You snorted. He grinned.
“Walking around in circles down here seems to do the trick, though,” he said.
“Interesting.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. “Yes, quite.”
“Can you manage the climb upstairs, then?” you asked. “Or would you rather walk some more?”
He glanced around the lobby, pondering. You watched the pale pink of his T-shirt catch the feeble light from the lobby windows.
“Would you walk with me?” he replied. “Just in case I have a back-related emergency and need help?”
“I would not.”
“I can manage the climb upstairs.”
Snickering, you made your way to the stairwell.
By now, this had become part of your routine as well. Even on days when university left you so exhausted that every step felt twice as steep, you realised you were almost looking forward to the pointless arguments. Today, it was about the exact number of steps in each flight of stairs (Yeonjun counted out loud, determined to prove you wrong—he didn’t; he’d been off by two steps).
Violet was waiting on the doorstep when you unlocked your stubborn door. She twined her tail around your ankles before moving to Yeonjun.
She’d been exploring your wardrobe again, you noticed; there was a trail of blue-and-white socks leading all the way from your bedroom to the front door.
“Have you been up to no good again, love?” Yeonjun asked, bending to scoop her into his arms.
Violet meowed in response.
Yeonjun gasped. “You have? What’d you do?”
Another meow.
“Violet,” he said sternly, “you’ll have to apologise.”
He turned her in his arms until she faced you. You were already smiling.
Looking mildly perplexed by the proceedings—she’d have liked a lawyer—Violet meowed once more.
“You’re good, sweets,” you said, reaching out to scratch under her chin.
Purring softly, Violet arched into your touch.
“That’s better.” Yeonjun leaned down to press a kiss between her ears before looking up at you. “See you tomorrow, then?”
“Yeah.” Your smile lingered. “Tomorrow.”
Left alone as the two of them headed down the stairs, you slipped into your flat, closed the door, and dropped your backpack beside the sofa.
It was quiet here. Calm. Your original plan to spend the rest of the afternoon mindlessly scrolling through your phone seemed considerably less appealing all of a sudden.
You wanted to sleep. You haven’t had a chance to get much of it lately; Professor Lee needed you in at eight every morning.
Exhaling, you slipped out of your shoes, gathered the scattered socks, and stretched out across the sofa for a quick nap before dinner.
About an hour later, you woke to music.
For several sleepy seconds, you couldn’t work out where it was coming from. The living room had grown noticeably darker, the setting sun striping the floor tiles with long bands of golden light. Your phone didn’t seem to be vibrating, yet the melody kept drifting through the flat.
You sat up.
It was a piano.
The notes blurred into each other, softened by the building before they reached you. They were coming, undeniably, from downstairs.
You remembered the piano in Yeonjun’s flat and remembered, too, him saying that these days he could only bear playing when he was in a good mood. Pissed him off otherwise, he’d said.
You wondered what made him play today.
Digging your phone from between the sofa cushions, you unlocked it and opened your messages. Then paused. Asking him, or even mentioning the music at all, you suspected, might make him stop playing.
The melody wandered on around you, unfamiliar; it faltered in places, then found itself again like he was remembering it in real time.
You didn’t want him to stop.
Yawning, you climbed off the sofa. The kitchen stool scraped softly across the floor as you pulled it away from the island and sat down. The music sounded clearer here, somehow, the floor carrying the vibrations more cleanly than the sofa had.
Your laptop still sat abandoned on the worktop; you’d been too tired to carry it back to your desk after finishing your reading the night before.
The cursor blinked patiently on the Google search bar.
You’d been meaning to find something for Yeonjun’s birthday. You suspected that the chewing gum he’d mentioned, with the tattoo stickers, would make an objectively funny present. Meaningful, too, in a ridiculous way.
As the search results began filling the screen, you remembered something else.
Once, back in grad school, on the morning he’d insisted you wear his scarf before walking you home to pick it up, Yeonjun had joked that he’d happily wear one of yours in return. You’d rummaged through your drawer for the most embarrassing scarf you owned and realised that none were nearly terrible enough.
You’d promised, you remembered, to get him one for his birthday.
Perhaps this was the birthday.
By the time the piano fell silent nearly half an hour later, you’d found a white-and-pink Hello Kitty scarf that ought to do nicely.
The chewing gum, on the other hand, proved much harder to track down. Most of the websites that still stocked it either didn’t deliver to your area or charged so much for postage that you almost expected the Prime Minister to hand-deliver it himself.
You’d reached the third page of Google, a hopeless place by any measure. None of the results had anything to do with what you were looking for.
You were just about ready to surrender when a familiar shop name caught your eye among the stockists listed on another website.
You sat up straighter.
It was the little sweet shop on the ground floor of Reina’s office building. You and Reina sometimes stopped there after your Friday lunches for some chocolate; you remembered the bright pink logo with cheerful yellow lettering.
They had the chewing gum; they just didn’t deliver.
Suddenly hopeful, you copied the link, sent it to Reina, and added a message underneath.
YOU [6:20 PM]
could you get this for me please? venmoing the money rn
The transaction had barely gone through before your phone buzzed.
REINA [6:22 PM]
sure
ran out of orbit?
Biting gently into the tip of your tongue, you texted her back and quickly set your phone beside the laptop again—as though the mention of Yeonjun would start burning your fingers if you held onto your phone longer.
YOU [6:23 PM]
it’s for yeonjun
birthday gift
Without the piano, the flat suddenly felt much quieter. You hadn’t realised how comfortably the music had settled into the background before.
You filled the kettle and switched it on, letting its hiss fill the room instead, then reached into the cupboard for a saucepan and a dark blue packet of penne.
Your phone vibrated against the worktop behind you.
REINA [6:27 PM]
should i ask why gum
You picked up the phone to answer.
YOU [6:27 PM]
no
thank you!!
Her reply came a minute later.
REINA [6:28 PM]
right
be careful you little freaks
You paused with the packet of pasta half open.
The defensive part of your brain began generating explanations of the ‘it’s really not what you think’ kind, but the increasingly troublesome part—the one that had been laughing far more easily than usual lately—interrupted before it got very far.
It’d genuinely been entertaining, finding the present for him. You didn’t want to defend it.
You set your phone back down and poured the penne into the saucepan.
✦ • ─── SEPTEMBER 9, 2026. 4 PM
On Wednesday, Yeonjun claimed he was in the lobby because he was just returning home from the shops. To his credit, he really did look the part: black cap, dark blue denim jacket, matching jeans, and a faint flush across his cheeks.
Before you had the chance to ask what he’d bought (he wasn’t carrying any bags, nor did his pockets look remotely full—details he’d hoped you’d miss), he held up his phone. “Have you seen this?”
You stepped closer. On the screen was Reina’s mother’s Facebook profile, opened to a newly uploaded photo album from Reina and Soobin’s engagement party.
“I haven’t.”
You lowered your backpack beside the noticeboard and fished your own phone from your jacket pocket. Yeonjun stepped a little closer until your shoulders were almost touching as the two of you looked down at the screen.
The photographs loaded one by one.
You smiled at the very first one. In it, Reina was laughing so hard she’d folded almost in half, one hand pressed to her stomach. The pink dress she’d worn looked just as stunning as it had beneath the changing-room lights earlier, perhaps even more so. Beside her, Soobin already had tears in his eyes.
Then there were several shots of Nara waving her champagne flute, her eyes bright. Taehyun dancing with Reina’s mother, looking flustered, yet oddly proud. Beomgyu smiling solemnly in the background while Reina and Soobin drank champagne from each other’s glasses.
Soon, you reached a photo of yourself. You were standing in front of Kai, clearly mid-conversation, lips parted, hands raised in a quiet gesture. Yeonjun stood beside you, his head tipped slightly back, his gaze focused on you.
The lobby faded for a second.
Yeonjun realised he’d forgotten how striking your blue dress had been. Seeing it again made him briefly wonder whether he’d forgotten how to breathe, too. He took a careful breath, just in case.
“You looked nice in that suit,” you said. “Shame you’d been wasted all night.”
Remembering very well some of the other things that had happened that night, he turned to look at you.
“Yeah?” he said. “What would’ve happened if I hadn’t been?”
You looked up from your phone, unamused. “I would’ve told you you looked nice earlier.”
“Mm.” Still smirking, he glanced back down. The blue of your dress still filled the screen. “Shame.”
You scrolled on.
The final photos in the album were Reina’s mother’s attempts at group selfies—all of them came out blurry, but you could still make out Soobin’s parents in the background, glasses raised, looking progressively more relaxed from one picture to the next.
You were there, too, Yeonjun saw. A blur of blue.
He found himself thinking about all the salmon facts he’d kept in his mind that night, in case he needed help prolonging conversations with you.
“Nice night,” you said eventually, unable to help the smile on your face.
“It was,” he said, unable to help his wandering gaze. “Very.”
You slipped your phone back into your pocket. The silver charms on your bracelet caught briefly on the zipper.
“We still on for today, then?” you asked.
Yeonjun took a polite step away from you. He was a little dizzy.
“Yeah.” He glanced towards the stairs. “Let me just get Violet home first, or she’ll forget where she lives.”
Together, you started upstairs.
As usual, your door resisted. Yeonjun had already slowed, expecting the familiar battle. You leaned your shoulder into it and rattled the handle until the lock finally surrendered with its usual begrudging click.
The noise summoned Violet. She peered around the edge of the door with patient, blue eyes.
“Sorry, little one.” You crouched to scratch behind her ears. “Dreadful noise, wasn’t it?”
She answered with a single meow and padded over to Yeonjun. He gathered her into his arms, still distracted by the winds in his thoughts. He was going to go home, he knew, and look through the Facebook photo album another dozen times.
In the meantime, the two of you exchanged nods and agreed to meet back in the lobby in a couple of hours.
The plan for the evening was the arcade.
Strictly speaking, the item on Yeonjun’s Coolest List specified winning the biggest toy at a fair. Unfortunately, there weren’t any fairs nearby. You decided the claw machines at the retro arcade downtown were close enough.
Before leaving your flat, you’d raided every drawer and jacket pocket for loose change. By the time you reached the lobby, you were jingling like an overly enthusiastic elf at Christmas.
Yeonjun laughed before patting his own jacket. Coins clinked in reply, equally as unserious.
The arcade was only ten minutes away, standing beside a café that had already closed for the evening, its neon blue coffee cup still glowing softly in the window.
The noise, once you stepped inside, took a few minutes to get used to.
Electronic music blasted from every direction. Buttons clicked. Victory fanfares erupted every few seconds, interrupted by the high-pitched jingles of other machines and even higher-pitched screams of children. One machine blasted a horrid nightcore version of I-I-I, I’m Your Little Butterfly. It was stuck in your head for the rest of the night.
To your surprise, you and Yeonjun weren’t the oldest people there. A grey-haired couple were locked in a ferocious game of air hockey nearby (the woman in a gorgeous bright pink dress was demolishing her husband). A little further along, a middle-aged man threw both fists into the air after winning a racing simulator, then high-fived his colleagues.
You liked it here immediately.
You saw Yeonjun glance at the racing simulators once, twice, as you walked past, an almost palpable longing in his eyes. Before you could mention it, he gently nudged your shoulder and pointed ahead.
The claw machines lined the back wall, glowing pink and blue from afar. Not one of them was taken.
The two of you headed there.
The machines charged more per attempt than either of you had expected. Still, after the trash-talk you’d exchanged on the drive over, Yeonjun thought that a handful of extra coins felt like a reasonable price for the privilege of beating you and claiming the biggest toy—at first glance, that appeared to be the enormous pink bears wedged into the bottom corner of every machine.
“I’m beginning to think we were very optimistic,” you said, rolling your sleeves to your elbows before taking up position at the claw machine opposite his. “We’re assuming we’ll actually win enough toys to compare sizes.”
“Aw.” He slipped a coin into the slot. The machine swallowed it with an enthusiastic beep. “Losing faith in your skills already?”
You scoffed, one hand settling around the joystick. “No. Just questioning how long we’re about to imprison ourselves here.”
You nudged the controls. The claw drifted over the mountain of plush animals with no sense of urgency whatsoever.
“Should we set a time limit?” you asked. Neon blue flashed rhythmically across your face as you lined the claw up above an upside-down pig with tiny legs. “I’ve got a lecture tomorrow morning.”
“Right.” Yeonjun leaned closer to his own machine. “And then we’ve got my race in the evening. Hope you didn’t forget.”
“I didn’t.”
You pressed the button. The claw descended, closed around nothing, and floated back up again.
The machine let out an electronic neigh loud enough to make you jump.
“Oh, for fuck’s—” You blinked at it. “This thing’s obnoxious.”
Yeonjun snorted, veering his joystick forward. “Off to a great start, yeah?”
“Hmm.” You checked the time on your phone. “Let’s say 11 PM is the deadline, alright? Gives us about three hours.”
Beside you, he completely missed the thirty-second timer. His claw barely brushed the toy he’d been aiming for before it leapt up again.
Another triumphant neigh echoed around the arcade.
Yeonjun recoiled. “Jesus.”
You looked over, grinning. “Nice, wasn’t it? It vibrates when you lose, too.”
“Right, yeah.” He glanced back at you. “Wait—so you want to do this for three hours? I love being here with you, love, but m’afraid we’ll both go deaf by then.”
“I’m saying three hours is the limit.” You pointed at him with another coin. “If you still haven’t beaten me by then, there’s no hope for you. We’ll go home.”
A grin spread across his face. “Confident.”
“Of course.”
“Alright.” He fed another coin into the slot and cracked his knuckles. “11 PM it is. Doubt I’ll need that long, but sure.”
You glanced sideways without letting go of the joystick. “Confident.”
“Mhmm.” He nudged his joystick into position. “Birthday week and all. Has to be my lucky streak.”
Your machine screamed again.
With a frown, you reached for another coin. “Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because your birthday’s coming up.”
He leaned around the side of his machine, cheeks stretching. “Don’t think I’ll go easy on you just because of your concerning skills.”
Ignoring that, you guided the claw towards the giraffe waiting in the opposite corner, its sides painted blue from the lights.
Yeonjun, in the meantime, overshot. He realised too late that he’d been watching your machine instead of his own. It shuddered, rewarding his failure with another neigh.
Cursing, he inserted another coin, pointedly ignoring your laughter as he wrapped his hand around the joystick. The claw seemed to be living its own independent life. He’d have to learn its moods.
The first half an hour passed surprisingly quickly.
All the two of you had managed was concluding that the claw machines were financial scams, likely someone’s preferred method of laundering money.
Your pockets were growing noticeably lighter.
You stepped back after the fifteenth attempt—or sixteenth; you’d lost count shortly after Yeonjun gasped so dramatically that you briefly thought he might need an ambulance.
“Right, then,” you said. “Going to the loo. Have to reconsider my financial choices.”
“Come back soon.” Yeonjun kept his eyes fixed on the claw. “Let’s see if I don’t break this while you’re gone.”
“Let’s see if it doesn’t break you while I’m gone.”
“Love—” The machine screeched. He groaned. “Please. I need you to be on my side a little bit. This thing’s cursed.”
“It is.” You patted his shoulder as you walked past. “Stay strong. Don’t win.”
Snickering at the wounded sigh behind you, you cast one last longing glance at the pink bear before turning the corner towards the restroom.
When you returned, Yeonjun was leaning casually against his machine. There was a grin on his face that immediately made you suspicious.
You slowed. “What?”
Without a word, he reached behind his back and produced a small grey rabbit.
Your face fell. You stepped closer and grabbed it from him, turning it over in your hands. It was ridiculously soft; nothing like the cheap toys you remembered winning in your childhood.
“How’d—” You looked up. “You didn’t bring this from home, did you?”
Yeonjun frowned. “Of course not. Who do you take me for?”
“A cheater.”
He scoffed. “I won it fair and square.”
You handed it back to him, not entirely convinced.
“It’s tiny,” you said.
“Yes.” He carefully placed the toy on top of his control panel—for luck. “But it’s still one more than you’ve got, so I’m winning.”
Huffing, you returned to your own machine. The neon lights seemed brighter as you approached, almost threatening.
“Leave you alone,” you muttered, dropping another coin into the slot, “and apparently you discover how this thing works.”
Yeonjun’s grin returned. “S’what happens when you abandon me.”
“I was gone for two minutes.”
“And if you leave me again,” he said, “I might actually win the pink bear.”
Your grip tightened around the joystick. The bear continued smiling smugly from the corner of the machine.
“Not a chance.” The familiar jingle began again. “Never leaving you alone again.”
Yeonjun’s hand stalled. He hoped that you wouldn’t notice what you’d just said and immediately take it back.
You didn’t. Your gaze was already locked on the claw.
Satisfied, Yeonjun proceeded to lose another dozen times in a row.
Beside him, you came very close to winning, and he swore he felt his heart fall through his stomach as he watched the giraffe’s head thud against the edge of the prize chute. Then it dropped back into the pile of toys.
For a second, your groan—and his subsequent laughter—drowned out the arcade noise.
Another half an hour later, the two of you called a temporary truce. Your wrists ached, and the toys were starting to cost far more than they were worth. Neither of you had won anything worth boasting too much about anyway (you said as much to Yeonjun after he dramatically stuffed the rabbit into his jacket pocket).
There was a café in the corner of the arcade, beside the racing simulators and the entrance to the neighbouring PC gaming room. It seemed as good a place to recover as any.
You ordered brownies (with extra chocolate) and milkshakes (with extra ice cream), and carried your trays to a small table beside the low partition separating the two spaces.
It wasn’t much quieter here. The machines continued to chime every few seconds, people laughed, basketballs kept bouncing somewhere nearby. A girl walked right past your table with something in her bag that looked like a golden Chihuahua; its eyes blue from the neon lights.
It felt a little magical.
The brownies were still warm enough for the chocolate filling inside to stretch in glossy ribbons each time you lifted your fork.
“This is better than a fair, m’thinking,” Yeonjun said, glancing around. “My list might’ve been wrong.”
You smiled. “Yeah?”
“Mhmm.” He took another bite from his plate. “Glad I’ve waited this long to complete it.”
Your heart lifted at that, guileless.
“I’ve been thinking about that, actually,” you said, gathering the crumbs on your plate into a little pile.
He leaned forward instinctively. “You have?”
“Yeah. I’m planning to go home soon,” you said. “To see my grandparents.”
He paused. “Right.”
“Next week, probably.” Your fingers wrapped around the milkshake glass. The straw tapped against the side. “And I thought—uh, would you like to come with me?”
“I—” Yeonjun sat upright so quickly that his chair edged backwards on the carpet. “With you?”
You nodded. “Yeah. We’ve still got the lawnmowers and the picnic on your list. Got enough grass for both back at the farm, I reckon.”
His mind had suddenly forgotten the list altogether. It had caught, instead, on come with me.
“Right, yes,” he said. “Tw—two birds, one stone.”
“Yeah.”
His eyes stayed on you, bright yet strangely unfocused.
You shifted in your chair.
Perhaps it had been a strange thing to ask. Going to the arcade was fine, but your village might’ve been too much.
You almost explained that you’d bought every one of your friends home at some point—even Taehyun had sneezed his way through a weekend there, allergic to half of your grandparents’ garden. But the explanation caught somewhere in your throat.
If he didn’t want to come, he shouldn’t have to.
Yeonjun, meanwhile, was dealing with the sudden suspicion that he’d gone deaf. He couldn’t hear the music or the machines, the basketballs or the chatter.
After a few bewildered seconds, he realised that the dull rushing in his ears was only his own heartbeat.
“I would—I’d really like that,” he said, and then repeated it, for no reason other than his inability to stop himself, “I’d really like that.”
Your shoulders loosened.
Yeonjun noticed and frowned.
Surely, he thought, you weren’t worried about him refusing. Surely, you knew that if you’d asked him to follow you across the country—or straight into hell, for that matter—he’d have already been looking for his car keys.
Where were his car keys, actually?
Discreetly, he patted his pockets.
“Yeah?” you said. “That sounds alright?”
“Of course, yeah.” He leaned back into the table, cut off another piece of his brownie, then forgot to eat it. “As long as your grandparents don’t mind me.”
You dismissed the concern with a wave of your hand so immediate that Yeonjun finally felt himself smile again.
“Not at all,” you said. “My gran will talk your ear off if you let her, though. Be mindful of how many follow-up questions you ask.”
“Okay,” he said, knowing very well that he was going to sit and listen to everything your grandmother had to say, and perhaps take notes.
“You sure you’d like to come, though?” you asked. “You looked—a bit doubtful, I guess.”
“Oh—I—no.” With an embarrassed laugh, he slapped both palms lightly against his thighs. “Guess I’m just realising I’ll meet your Violet. S’a big deal.”
“Oh, yeah!” You laughed. “And Britney! She’s been limping this past week because she’d stepped on a bee. But Grandad says she’s getting better now.”
Yeonjun remembered Britney, the cat, supposedly Violet’s best friend. The lightness inside him expanded.
“Britney, too, then,” he said. “Quite a lot of pressure.”
You smiled.
“Don’t worry.” You took another sip of your milkshake. It was cold enough to make your temples announce themselves. “They’ll love you.”
Yeonjun raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? You sound awfully sure, considering the first impression I’d made on you.”
You leaned back in the chair.
“Well,” you said, “don’t try to prove my cows will fall in love with you in two weeks, and you’ll be alright.”
He pursed his lips. “Right, right. You don’t think I’d succeed?”
“Think you’d struggle finding the time to date all of them while you’ve still got to complete the list with me.”
“Ah.” He grinned again. “Well, you’ve got nothing to worry about, then. You’ll always be my first priority, love.”
You scoffed, turning back to your plate.
“Mhmm.” Your lips were determined to curve; you poked your tongue into your cheek to keep them straight. “Thank you ever so much. Big honour.”
“You’re very welcome.”
You returned to your brownie. Finally, Yeonjun remembered his own.
“So, then.” You nodded back towards the arcade. “What would you do with the big toy if you won it?”
“The pink bear?”
“Yeah.”
“Sell it,” he said, still chewing. “And use the money to go on holiday. To the sea, m’thinking.”
“Nice, nice.” Your smile finally won against your restraint. “The bear’s obviously worth a fortune.”
“Obviously, yeah.” He took another bite. “I’d take you with me. To the sea.”
You raised your eyes from your plate. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said, a fresh grin spreading across his face. “Out of pity that you lost.”
An affronted noise escaped you. Yeonjun laughed hard enough to inhale a brownie crumb and had to cough into his fist, still laughing through it.
“We’ll see about that.” You pushed your empty plate aside and wrapped both hands around your milkshake. “Still got another few hours left.”
“What would you do with the pink bear, then?” he asked.
You considered it as you sipped from the straw. The paper was already soft around the edges; you could taste cardboard more than strawberry.
“Hm.” You pushed the glass back. “I’d keep it on my doorstep. To remind you I’d won every time you came over.”
Yeonjun nodded with enthusiastic approval. He very much enjoyed the thought of becoming part of your doorstep.
“Reckon Violet would love it,” he said.
“Yeah, I think she would.” You could already picture Violet abandoning the monstera pot in favour of the bear. “One of us has to win it for her.”
“Well.” Yeonjun stirred the melting ice cream in his glass with his straw before taking another sip. “Not me, then, ‘cause I’m selling it.”
“Got to be me, then. To show Violet who actually loves her.”
“Hey—no.” He pulled back from the table, his lips shifting into an impressive pout. “S’not fair. Don’t bring love into this now.”
You scoffed, leaning forwards in your seat—the two of you looked absurdly like two ends of a seesaw now.
“You’re the one who brought it into it,” you said. “Said she’d love the bear.”
“I meant she’d love having it on your doorstep.”
“Which means I’ve got to win it,” you countered, “to get it on said doorstep.”
“It doesn’t mean I love her less if there’s no bear at all.”
“Yes, it does, actually.”
“No, it—”
A deafening pop cut him off.
You both jumped. For one second, you were convinced one of the machines had exploded. Instead, a shower of balloons burst across the ceiling. Triumphant music erupted from somewhere near the racing simulators. A cluster of teenagers shrieked in delight.
Apparently, someone had just broken the arcade’s high score.
Balloons drifted lazily through the room. Children abandoned their games halfway through, and even the adults joined in—one man sprinted after a balloon skimming across the floor as though it was a lucky lottery ticket.
Smiling, you turned back and finished the last of your milkshake.
Across from you, Yeonjun bent under the table.
You leaned sideways to glance down. “What’re you doing?”
“Hang on.” His voice came muffled. “Just—”
A second later, he resurfaced holding a bright red, heart-shaped balloon by its ribbon. He examined it for a second. Then pressed it to his chest.
You watched him, your eyebrows rising. His expression remained perfectly solemn. A second later, he bumped the balloon softly against his chest, then once more.
“Think I’ve got tachycardia,” he said.
Your lips twitched. He thumped the balloon against his chest until you finally snorted, shaking your head.
He grinned, extending it towards you. “For you, love.”
You leaned closer to inspect the balloon. “You’re giving me your tachycardia?”
“Yes. I’ll cope without it.”
“Keep it.”
“No.” He pushed the balloon towards you again. “Take it, or I’ll pop it.”
Snorting again, you accepted it. The rubber creaked softly beneath your fingers.
“Popping your own heart would probably hurt,” you said, turning it over in your hands. It smelled of latex.
“Probably.” He grinned. “So I’m trusting it to you.”
The words were ridiculous. Your own heart, somehow, even more so. You thought he really had given you tachycardia.
Determined not to look at him, you busied yourself with winding the ribbon once around your wrist. The balloon bobbed against your jacket sleeve.
“Alright.” You gave it an experimental tug. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to it.”
“Good.”
You finally glanced up. Yeonjun was still smiling. The corners of his eyes had relaxed, his lashes appearing darker in the dim light of the arcade.
Your composure lasted for two seconds. Snickering quietly, you dropped your gaze again.
Yeonjun leaned back in his chair. He felt so light that he might as well have drifted away with the rest of the balloons.
When the two of you returned to your designated claw machines another ten minutes later, the arcade had mostly been cleaned. Tiny flecks of red, blue and silver rubber still glittered across the dark carpet whenever the neon lights caught them.
You and Yeonjun started the second round.
The machine reminded you why you hated it at once: every time you pushed the joystick left, the claw lurched slightly right first. You pushed it forwards; it seemed to contemplate the suggestion, wasting precious seconds before it crept half an inch forward and stopped.
The machine neighed.
You groaned.
Competing here had been an appalling idea. Unfortunately, you’d already invested too much money, too many hours, and far too much pride to admit defeat now.
You fed in another coin.
Another attempt, another failure. And another, and another.
Your concentration was beginning to fray under the monotony. Only once did you manage to lift the leg of a frog plushie; it slipped free almost instantly.
Soon, your attention wandered to the balloon tied loosely around your wrist, the red heart bobbing gently against the machine whenever you moved. Then you looked up at Yeonjun beside you.
The neon from your machine washed him blue, his own painted the other side of his face pink. Every so often, another cabinet flashed gold behind him, briefly outlining his jaw.
It was terribly distracting. You almost wanted to—
A dreadful miracle occurred.
Yeonjun’s claw machine broke. He moved the joystick, and for the first time all evening, it actually obeyed.
“What—” He hardly managed the word.
The timer expired, but the claw kept moving regardless.
You looked at him just as his mouth slowly spread into a grin. He guided the claw over the pink bear.
“Yeonjun,” you warned.
“Think I’ve frightened it,” he said.
“It just glitched, use a diff—”
“Oh, wait, wait—” He inhaled in theatrical anticipation while the claw descended.
It missed the bear.
Yeonjun squinted; he’d been off the bear’s ear by half an inch.
You cleared your throat and turned back to your own machine.
“Can’t even win with a broken claw,” you murmured. “Sounds about right—”
Yeonjun’s claw jumped to the top. The machine continued jingling in support. He nudged the joystick without inserting a new coin; the claw moved again.
You turned back to him, eyes narrowing. His claw finally managed to catch the bear by the ear and, most horribly, lift it. You held your breath.
The bear wobbled. It dropped before Yeonjun was ready to let go.
He cursed. You exhaled.
The bear caught against the edge. Bounced off another toy. Then, with one final clunk, it dropped straight into the prize chute.
You weren’t breathing.
The machine erupted into a triumphant tune that made you momentarily consider smashing it to pieces. The fucking Little Butterfly played even louder somewhere behind you.
You stared in complete silence while Yeonjun bent and lifted the enormous bear from the compartment. It barely fit past the little doors.
“This—that doesn’t count,” you said. “The machine broke.”
He looked from the bear to you.
“I’ve won the bear,” he said.
“The machine—”
“I’ve won the bear.”
His delight echoed loudly enough for a couple by the Pac-Man machines to glance over.
You lowered your voice. “It doesn’t count.”
“The bear,” he announced, lifting it triumphantly above his head, “belongs to me.”
“It wasn’t supposed to—”
“Listen, love, I’ll make you a deal.” His grin turned positively threatening as he stuffed the toy under his arm. “I’ll give you the bear. You can put it on your doorstep or give it to Violet—but on one condition.”
You didn’t trust this for a second.
“What condition?”
“You admit defeat.”
You stared at him. “But you didn’t even—”
“You admit defeat,” he spoke over you, hoisting the bear again, “and you admit that I’m much better at claw machines than you will ever be—”
“No.”
“—and that it has been the greatest honour of your life to compete against me.”
“No.”
“You may also compliment my technique, though, of course, that’s voluntary.”
You scoffed, folding your arms across your chest.
“You had no technique,” you said. “The machine broke. And even then, you couldn’t get it on your first—”
“Don’t be a sore loser, love.” He wiggled the bear in his arms; it nearly slipped in his excitement. Laughing, he caught it again. “Come on.”
You turned away to gather your coins from the control panel. As annoyed as you were, it was good not to have to waste more money.
“I don’t care about the bear,” you said.
“Not even a little?”
“No.”
Yeonjun laughed again.
You heard his footsteps before you felt him. One of his arms settled lightly across your shoulders as he wedged the bear between your arms and your chest.
He caught the familiar roses of your perfume and realised he couldn’t reasonably force himself to pull back. His chin hovered beside your shoulder, his cheek brushing yours for the briefest moment—warm enough to send your pulse stumbling out of rhythm.
“You didn’t even want the bear,” you mumbled, relaxing your arms to take hold of the toy.
“I know.” He made no move to step away, his chest solid against your back. “I’m excellent at getting things out of spite. What else do you want while I’m on a winning streak? The frog looks—”
You turned around and pressed the bear back into his arms.
“Alright,” you said. “Keep your stupid, illegal bear. M’perfectly content knowing that you’d never win a toy in a fair fight.”
He snorted.
“All due respect, love…” He balanced the bear under one arm and reached into his jacket pocket for the grey rabbit. “I got two stupid toys today. How many have you got?”
You clicked your tongue, then deliberately raised your balloon. It dipped under your wrist.
“Well, I’ve got this,” you said before nodding towards him, “and I’ve got you. So that brings us to the same number of stupid things we’ve got.”
He was glowing. Being included in your list of possessions delighted him far more than the bear had.
Trying to suppress the twitching at the corners of your mouth as Yeonjun laughed beside you, you zipped your pockets and turned towards the exit.
He caught up within a few strides, still chuckling, and draped an arm across your shoulders. You leaned into him automatically so the two of you—and the absurd bear between you—could squeeze through the doors.
It was dark outside, but the air felt cleaner away from the stale warmth of the arcade. It was lovely not to have your ears assaulted by the noise, too.
All you could smell now was Yeonjun’s cologne. All you could hear was his attempts to stop laughing.
The bear, yours, really, just like every other stupid thing he owned, was entirely beside the point now.
