MO @momnjam - Tumblr Blog

7 years apart

Pairing: Heeseung × reader Themes: slow burn, fluff, miscommunication, subtle jealousy, student!au Type: originally a oneshot, but it turned into a two-part story Disclaimer: All stories are fictional. Any resemblance to real places or events is coincidental. The characters, their thoughts, and actions are products of imagination and do not represent real individuals. If inspired by other works, proper credit is given. Spelling or grammar errors may appear—thank you for your understanding. Word count: 13.5k

PART 2 HERE

It’s been a week since you first stepped foot in this school.

A week doesn’t sound like much. Seven days is barely a handful of mornings, a few alarm clocks ringing, a couple of breakfasts eaten in a hurry, and that same familiar ache in your stomach that always appears when you remember you’ll never return to your old routine. For you, this week has dragged on as if it were much longer. As if, from the moment you moved, you’ve been living in a place that doesn’t know your name.

You still wake up with the reflex to reach for your phone to check your messages, and only after a moment you remember that no one checks to see if you’re late for school anymore. For a split second, you still expect that someone next to you in the classroom will laugh as loudly as they did at your old school. That someone will roll their eyes. That someone will touch your shoulder and ask if you’ve forgotten to hand in your assignment again.

The new town isn’t ugly. It’s even worse. It’s indifferent. The buildings stand here as if they’ve always been there, but none of the streets hold your memories yet. You walk along them every day and still feel as if you don't belong there. The move was supposed to be a fresh start, but in practice it felt more like being torn from the ground and planted in someone else's rocky soil, which won't accept you for a long long time.

When you were packing your things, you tried not to ask questions. Your parents already had enough tension between them, and the last thing you wanted was to be another reason for an argument. In the end, everything happened fast, too fast. Unspoken words, heavy glances, suitcases, boxes, closed doors. The word ‘better’ was mentioned, but no one ever said better for whom exactly. Eventually, you stopped asking. Sometimes it’s easier to take what’s left and move on than to dwell on every crack that can’t be fixed anyway.

The hardest part wasn’t even that you had to change schools. The hardest part was that you had to start pretending that this change wasn’t taking something important away from you. It didn’t matter that in your old school you knew every corner of the corridor, every face and every classroom. Everything there was familiar. Even if it was sometimes noisy, chaotic and simply exhausting, at least it was yours. And here you’re just a new kid who stares out of the window for too long and says ‘hi’ too quietly.

You’re now sitting at a desk in the third row, closer to the window, because only there do you feel the air is a little less heavy. On the desk lies your pencil case, a physics notebook, and a book you haven’t really had time to open yet. Your fingers trace aimlessly along the edge of your notebook. You do it almost instinctively, as if this small movement might calm you down.

In your old school, you wouldn’t be sitting alone.

In your old school, Sunoo was almost always sitting next to you.

Just thinking of him makes you feel a little warmer. Not enough for all the tension to suddenly vanish, but enough for you to breathe a sigh of relief for a moment. Sunoo was a friend who could lighten even the gloomiest day with a single silly comment. He always talked a lot, always had something to add, and always looked as though he absolutely had to share some absurdly important observation about life with you. With him around, even the most boring lessons seemed bearable.

Especially physics.

At your previous school, the physics teacher was practically made for letting the class drift along at its own pace. He didn’t care if anyone was taking notes on every word, as long as there was no noise. Thanks to that, Sunoo could spend half the lesson telling you something completely off-topic, and you’d reply in a whisper, pretending to be deadly serious.

Here, nobody laughs during lessons.

Here, the physics teacher stands by the blackboard with his spine straight and a gaze that effectively kills any desire to do anything other than sit up and write down everything twice as carefully as would be necessary. He is stern in a way that immediately makes you keep your lips sealed. He doesn’t raise his voice, he doesn’t need to. It is enough for him to look at the class as if every moment of distraction were a personal insult to learning.

“Open your textbooks to page fifteen.” he says.

A few people reach for their books right away. The pages rustle. The chairs creak. You open your textbook too, though for a second you feel as though your fingers are a little too stiff. The topic seems familiar, but that doesn’t help as much as it should. At your old school, physics was just a subject. Here, it becomes yet another reminder that you have to learn it all over again, understand it all over again, endure it all over again. You can feel that familiar tightness building in your throat. You don’t like that feeling. Not because it’s new, but because it’s all too familiar. It was already there when your parents first stopped talking to each other normally. When you came home and sensed that something in the air was heavier than usual. When you began to realise that adults can talk about the future as if there were no longer any room for a shared present. Now it returns with every lesson, every new face, every question.

You rest your hand against your cheek and try to focus on the blackboard, but your thoughts scatter in all directions like broken glass.

You think about how much you’d love to have someone by your side, who’d know you without asking. Who’d know that when you’re silent, it doesn’t mean you don’t want to talk. That when you’re staring out of the window, it doesn’t mean you don’t care about what’s going on around you. Someone who would simply sit down beside you and say something so silly that you wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face yourself.

You have someone like that, even if distance separates you right now. Your phone vibrates quietly in the pocket of your jumper.

You shouldn’t check it, but for a brief moment you just stare straight ahead until the teacher turns around. Then you carefully pull your phone out from under the desk and see a name that instantly changes something inside you.

Sunoo

A small smile appears on your lips, almost imperceptible, but genuine.

Do you have any friends there yet?

You roll your eyes, though you’re not really annoyed. It’s more of a reflex than an emotion. Sunoo has always been able to write as if he were right beside you, even if the distance between you is now huge. He could sense when your patience was running out, and when you simply needed someone to remind you that you’re not alone.

You reply quickly.

Not exactly.

Almost immediately, another message arrives.

So still no boyfriend?

You stare at the screen for a moment, then a snort of laughter gets stuck in your throat. Even here, in this unfamiliar classroom, Sunoo can make you feel a little lighter for a second. Before you have time to think, you send him an emoji of a hamster rolling its eyes.

And perhaps that’s what distracts you enough to let yourself glance around the classroom for a moment.

Someone is muttering to themselves, while another is hunched over a notebook with the look of someone who lost all motivation to study long ago. They all look as if they’ve known each other for years. As if they have their own rhythms, their own places, their own little habits that form something you haven’t yet managed to build. You still feel a bit as if you’ve arrived at a performance just as the curtain has long since risen and everyone else knows their part.

Even so, your gaze lingers on the boy sitting at the front, on the other side of the classroom.

You notice him sitting up straight, but not stiffly, as if he were doing everything with a natural confidence that has nothing to do with arrogance. Then you notice that he is indeed taking notes, though his hand moves slowly and his head occasionally leans slightly over his notebook. It’s only a moment later that it dawns on you that he’s simply very handsome.

Your gaze lingers a little too long. Because in the next second, the boy seems to sense that someone is looking at him. He slowly turns his head.

And looks straight at you.

You feel as though your heart stops beating for a moment.

Not because he looked surprised. Not because he looked nervous. On the contrary, his face lights up with a slight, almost carefree smile that appears naturally.

You look away so quickly that it makes you feel hot under the collar.

Great.

Just great.

As if it wasn’t enough that you’re new, lost and still trying not to look like someone who’s quietly panicking in every lesson. Now you’ve gone and been caught staring.

You feel your cheeks burning slightly, so you glance at your phone again, as if you could hide behind the screen from the whole world.

Sunoo has already replied.

Well? Someone, then?

You grimace and roll your eyes again, this time more out of frustration than amusement. Your fingers type out a reply before you’ve had a chance to think properly.

Don’t start this.

You don’t even know if it’s because of the text message or that one glance from the boy in front, but you feel both amused and flustered at the same time. And before you’ve had a chance to regain your full concentration, the physics teacher suddenly turns away from the blackboard.

His gaze settles on you.

“You. Answer the previous question.”

Your heart skips a beat, and your mind goes blank, just like that, so suddenly and completely that for a second you feel as though someone has swept all your thoughts out of your head in one go. You straighten up automatically, though it does no good. You feel your face is already too warm, and your fingers tighten around the pen, which suddenly seems slippery and unnaturally small.

You look at the blackboard.

Then in your notebook.

Then back at the blackboard.

You’re not bad at physics. You never have been. It’s just that right now you have no idea where you are, what the question was, or why everyone is looking at you. And above all, why did this have to happen right now, when you can barely keep track of your own thoughts as it is.

“I… haven’t finished it yet,” you say quietly, with clear uncertainty in your voice.

The teacher looks at you for a moment with a gaze that’s meant to be neutral, but in your head it sounds like a subtle reprimand.

“Please focus.”

You nod, though you feel like sinking into the floor beneath your desk. You say nothing more. You don’t explain that you’ve only been here a week. That you still can’t walk down the corridors without thinking twice about which way to turn. That you still mix up faces and classroom numbers. You don’t say that every moment like this leaves a small, quiet prick of shame inside you, because you don’t want to be the one asking about everything.

Sitting stiffly at your desk, you have only one, very uncomfortable feeling. He’s caught you staring. The whole class can see that you can’t answer the simplest physics question. And all this in the span of three minutes!

You feel the urge to glance at the boy in front of you one more time for a split second, but you stop yourself at the last moment. It’s bad enough as it is.

Your phone vibrates again under the desk. The only thing you can see is a sticker of a fox sticking its tongue out.

You exhale through your nose, almost laughing at your helplessness. And then, despite everything, your gaze returns to the front of the class.

It’s been a few days since your chat with your homeroom teacher, but her words are still stuck in the back of your head, hard to shake off and not entirely comfortable. They weren’t unpleasant. In fact, quite the opposite. She spoke calmly, with a clear desire to help, as if she genuinely wanted to make sure you didn’t feel completely lost here.

Your Physics grades have dropped more than you’d like to admit.

Not dramatically. Not enough to raise the alarm straight away. But enough for the teacher to decide you shouldn’t be left to deal with this on your own. The homeroom teacher gave you a few names.

Someone who’s good at the subject.

Someone who can help you.

Someone from your class who won’t make a fuss about it.

You nodded along, because it wouldn’t have been proper to do anything else. But in your head, everything was blending into a single blur. The new names keep slipping from your memory. The new faces haven’t yet stuck to specific spots in your mind. Not enough time has passed for you to have really managed to remember them all.

That’s why now, during a break, you’re sitting with your notebook, trying to piece it all back together. You stare at the names the teacher has written down, then go back to the first one again. It’s not because you chose it. Rather, it’s because it was the first one to catch your eye, and you instinctively wrote it down in your notebook so as not to get even more lost. You circle it once with your finger, then a second time, as if that alone were to make it suddenly clearer, easier to understand.

Lee Heeseung

How are you supposed to approach someone and ask for help if you’re not even sure you’ve matched their face to the right name?

For a moment, you consider other names, but none of them seem quite right. One you faintly remember belongs to someone who always sits at the back. The second sounds completely unfamiliar. The third slipped your mind the moment you first heard it. You grip the pen lightly between your fingers.

You don’t manage to reach any sensible conclusion, because suddenly you hear a chair scraping right in front of you. You catch a glimpse of movement, someone’s legs, a shadow shifting across the desk in front of you. The boy who was sitting here earlier was just leaving the classroom, mentioning something about today’s lunch in the canteen. You didn’t even pay much attention to it. Only now does it occur to you that someone has taken his place. You lift your gaze a little more slowly than you’d planned.

The boy is sitting opposite you, turned slightly in your direction. It takes you a moment to recognise that face. It’s the same boy who sat further forward in Physics. The same one who looked at you back then, when you’d been staring at him for too long. The same one whose smile has stuck in your memory more than you’d care to admit.

Now he looks just as calm. As if it were perfectly natural that he’d moved to sit right here.

You look at him for a moment, slightly surprised, and he just straightens up slightly in his chair, as if he really did want to say something. You don’t look particularly prepared for someone to suddenly sit so close. For some reason, your heart skips a beat for a second.

“Heeseung.” he introduces himself calmly, with a hint of softness in his voice. “Lee Heeseung.”

For a moment, you just stare at him. You instinctively look down. And immediately regret it.

In your notebook, just below a few clumsy notes on physics, his name appears. Circled. Circled again. And once more, as if you were trying to make sure it didn’t get lost among the rest.

You see Heeseung’s gaze falling exactly where it shouldn’t.

On your notebook.

On his name.

On that unfortunate, not particularly discreet circle, which now seems to be glowing right in your face like a neon sign of embarrassment.

In an instant, you feel hot, as if someone had suddenly turned up the temperature in the whole room. You sit up straight, too quickly, almost reflexively closing the notebook, though it’s already too late. It must look really bad. Very bad. Maybe even suspicious. Maybe as if you were doing some kind of absurd investigation in your notebook. Or were one of those creepy people who write someone’s name down and then stare at it for the whole break. Or, worse, as if you were a stalker.

“I don’t… I mean…” you begin, and the words get tangled in your throat before you can string them into anything senseful. “The teacher… gave me a few names because… because I’m struggling with Physics and… and I just—”

You stop, because it sounds less and less sensible with every passing second. You can feel your face turning completely red, and you’re clenching your fingers on the cover of your notebook so tightly that your knuckles are turning white.

Heeseung looks at you in silence for a moment. Then a slight twitch appears on his lips, which very quickly turns into a quiet laugh. Not loud. Not a mocking one. But that’s exactly what you feared most. That he’d laugh. That he’d find it strange. That at best he’d think you were terribly awkward, and at worst, that you really did look like a suspicious character. Your heart sinks with embarrassment, and you suddenly feel like disappearing under the desk, taking your notebook, pen and anything else that might give away just how badly you’ve messed up.

He stops laughing, seeing the look on your face. As if he’s realised that what looked funny to him has, in an instant, turned into a disaster for you.

“No, no,” he says quickly, with a gentle wave of his hand. “I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant.”

You look at him with obvious tension, as if you’re still not sure whether this is really a correction or just a polite way of saying ‘yes, it is actually strange’.

Heeseung tilts his head slightly, and his gaze softens.

“It’s just… it’s funny.”

You look at him, completely puzzled.

“I mean…” he adds after a moment, seeing your obvious confusion. “The whole situation is just funny. Not you.”

You feel your cheeks growing hot. Because he’s still sitting there. He’s still not moving away. He’s still looking at you as if you weren’t someone weird, but someone who was just a little nervous.

“I just…” you start again, more quietly this time. “The teacher said I could ask someone in the class for help with Physics. And… I was just… trying… to memorise the names.”

You sound as if you barely believe this explanation yourself. Heeseung looks at you for a moment, as if giving you space to sort out the thoughts that were definitely too much just a moment ago.

“So…” he begins calmly, “you wanted to ask me about that?”

The question hits exactly the right spot. It's simple. Straightforward. Without all the chaos you’ve created in your own head.

For a moment, you look at him in silence, as if making sure he’s really asking that. And then you nod, this time without the earlier panic.

“Yes,” you reply, a little lower than usual, but clearly. “I mean… yes. For physics.”

For a moment, you’re afraid he’ll back out. That he’ll say something like ‘I actually don’t have time’ or ‘maybe someone else would do a better job’ After all, you don’t even know him. It’s just as strange a situation for him as it is for you.

But he just nods slightly, as if it were all completely obvious.

“I can help.”

You feel something in your chest relax a little. The tension you’ve been carrying since your conversation with the homeroom teacher suddenly loses its intensity, as if someone had gently pushed it aside.

He leans over your notebook for a moment, flipping through a few pages to quickly figure out where to start. He mutters something under his breath, more to himself than to you, then straightens up again. In the meantime, quite casually, you exchange phone numbers.

The bell cuts everything short.

The sound echoes through the classroom, summoning people back to their seats, cutting short the conversations, bringing to a close that brief, slightly strange moment which, just a moment ago, seemed cut off from the rest of the day.

Heeseung gets up from the seat, as if only now remembering where he should be. He gives you a smile and returns to his seat. Chairs scrape back, someone comes back into the classroom, conversations merge into one.

And that’s it.

As if it were just an ordinary conversation.

And yet, for a moment, you find it hard to focus on anything else.

You really shouldn’t be spending so much time in front of the wardrobe. You really shouldn’t. It’s just a study. Just Physics. Just a meeting in a café with someone from your class who simply agreed to help you. And yet you’ve been standing there for a good few minutes, staring at your clothes as if something far more important than just whether you’ll be comfortable depended on it.

You’ve changed your mind three times.

You’re trying too hard.

You’re not trying hard enough.

It looks as if you’re trying to impress.

It looks as if you don’t care at all.

In the end, you choose something in between. And even so, you feel it’s the wrong choice.

The walk to the café doesn’t help either. The city still feels new to you. The streets look familiar only until you have to turn into that one specific street. You slow your pace a few times, checking the route on your phone, once you turn back because you think you've gone the wrong way. When you finally arrive, you're slightly late. And a bit out of breath.

The café is warm. The first thing you notice is the smell of coffee and something sweet, perhaps vanilla. The light is soft, dimmed, spilling across the wooden tables and white walls. In the background, someone is talking quietly, someone is laughing by the window, someone is tapping a spoon against a cup. You pause for a moment at the entrance, looking around.

And then you see him. He’s sitting at a table off to the side, with a mug in front of him and a notebook spread out on the table. He looks like he’s been waiting for a while, but he doesn’t seem annoyed at all.

When you approach, he looks up.

“I’ve got lost.” you say straight away, before you’ve had time to think.

He smiles slightly.

“It’s all right.”

And he says it in such a way that you really believe him.

You sit down opposite him, placing your bag beside you. For a moment, you adjust your sleeves, arrange your notebook, doing anything to keep your hands busy and not think about the fact that this is the first time you’ve been alone together outside of school.

You get started quickly. Heeseung turns the notebook towards you and begins to explain some questions that seemed completely beyond your understanding just this morning. He speaks calmly, step by step, without rushing, as if he has endless patience for your pauses, hesitations and moments when you stare at the page a little too long.

“It looks harder than it is,” he says at one point.

You raise your eyebrows.

“Really?”

“Really. I couldn’t get my head round it either, at one point.

You look at him suspiciously. You don’t quite believe it. He definitely doesn’t look like someone who’s ever had a problem with Physics. He sits opposite you so calmly, as if explaining such things were the most ordinary thing in the world. As if he’s always been able to take a complex topic, break it down into parts and present it to you in such a way that it finally starts to make sense.

That should annoy you. Instead, it just makes your shoulders relax a little.

“Sure.” you mumble under your breath, then instinctively give a half-smile, more out of embarrassment than confidence.

Heeseung notices, but doesn’t comment. He just moves the notebook a little closer to you, as if he wants to make the task easier for you, rather than point out that a whole range of emotions has just flashed across your face.

‘Okay, one more time,’ he says calmly. ‘First you simplify it, then you rewrite it and. . .’

You lean over the page, trying really hard to concentrate. You try not to think about how close he’s sitting. You try not to pay attention to his voice, which sounds so patient that you feel ashamed you don’t understand a thing.

You feel his presence. When he leans closer, the air around you seems to shift for a moment. The fact that he sits so casually, as if he’s in no hurry, whilst you feel you’re sitting too stiffly, too aware of your own movements. And only after a moment do you notice something else.

Your knees are touching.

It’s barely a brush. An accident. Not enough room under the table. No big deal. And yet, for a split second, you feel that touch running all the way up your neck.

You don’t move your leg away. Not because you don’t want to. Rather because you’ve suddenly felt too hot at the very thought of doing so. As if every gesture were too obvious, too easy to notice. As if he could immediately understand that this is exactly what you’re thinking.

So you sit there motionless, pretending nothing has happened. You focus on his words, but it takes more effort than you’d care to admit.

“So, here?” you ask a moment later. Your voice comes out a little weaker than you planned.

Heeseung immediately leans in closer, looks at your notes and nods.

“Yes. Right here.”

“And then?”

“Then just this...”

He doesn’t finish, because someone is approaching the table.

“Really?”

You look up, a little startled by the sudden voice. Three lads are standing next to you. One is leaning against the back of Heeseung’s chair, another is leaning over the table with the look of someone who’s just caught someone doing something suspicious, and the third is looking between you as if he’s not sure whether he wants to laugh or be upset. You recognise one of them. The second one looks somewhat familiar. The third… you think you’ve seen him in the hallway before, but you’re not sure.

“What are you doing here?” asks the first, furrowing his brow. “You were supposed to be busy.”

Heeseung doesn’t even look up.

“I’m busy.”

“Well, we can see that,” interrupts the second one, glancing at your notebook. “But that’s not what we planned.

“We were supposed to go,” adds the third.

“To karaoke,” adds the first, as if it were a matter of life and death.

“Exactly.” says the second. “And it was supposed to be ‘right now’.”

‘‘Right now’ doesn’t mean ‘sitting here quietly doing Physics with some girl’.” states the third.

This makes you feel something tense up inside you. Not in a bad way, more out of surprise. Suddenly, you get the feeling everyone is looking at you and you don’t know what to do with your hands.

Before you’ve had a chance to say anything, however, the first boy sits down next to you without a hint of shyness. The second follows right after him. The third plops down into a free chair as naturally as if it had belonged to him all along. In an instant, it feels cruder, noisier and far less peaceful.

“You left us.” says the first, with exaggerated resentment.

“Abandoned,” corrects the second.

Heeseung sighs under his breath, but there’s amusement in his eyes.

“You’re exaggerating.”

“We are?” The first places a hand on his chest with an exaggeratedly offended expression. “We’re completely indifferent.”

“Very much so.” agrees the second.

“Extremely so.” adds the third.

You feel like smiling, but you hold back because you still feel a bit out of place in this sudden burst of energy. On the other hand… it doesn’t sound bad. Just loud. Too loud for a moment that was so calm just a short while ago.

“We had a playlist.” says the first.

“A whole playlist. And a plan.” adds the second.

“What plan?” asks the first, turning to him.

“A plan… well, just a plan.”

“That doesn’t sound like a plan.”

“Because you always complicate everything.” mutters the third.

“Me?” the first raises his eyebrows.

“Yes, you.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is true.”

Heeseung leans back in his chair and, for a moment, looks as though he’s not even trying to argue with them anymore. To your surprise, this makes you feel a little more at ease. As if you’ve suddenly realised that you’re not the only one who might feel slightly out of place.

Finally, the first boy turns his head towards you.

“Who are you?”

The question isn’t rude, but you still feel a sudden warmth on your cheeks.

“I…” you begin, then hesitate for a second.“He helps me with Physics.

For a moment, all three of them look at you, then the first one bursts out laughing.

“Right, so it’s a romance after all.”

“What?” Heeseung immediately sits up straight in his chair, but does nothing to correct his friends’ mistake.

“Even a very serious romance.” says the second one, completely seriously.

“Not at all.” you reply instinctively, before you’ve had time to think whether that even makes sense.

That doesn’t seem to help, because now they’re all laughing. You feel yourself getting warm with embarrassment, but at the same time you can’t stop yourself from smiling slightly. Because they’re not laughing at you. More at the whole situation. At Heeseung. At their own exaggeration. At how dramatically they can react to something so ordinary.

“We were supposed to be at karaoke,” reminds the first, returning to the main topic.

“We were.” confirms the second, looking knowingly at Heeseung.

“And snacks.” adds the third.

“What snacks?” asks the second immediately.

“Well, the ones that…”

“What ‘ones’?” the second turns to him, intrigued.

“Never mind,” cuts in the third. “There were snacks.”

“That’s very important,” says the first one with complete seriousness.

For a moment, everyone speaks at once, interrupting each other, correcting themselves, finishing each other’s sentences and changing the subject so quickly that you can barely keep up.

And yet… you don’t feel bad. There’s something strangely light about this chaos. Something alive. As if they were pulling you into their own world.

“You’re coming with us too,” the first one, turns to you.

You blink.

“To karaoke,” he adds, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You can’t sit around solving physics problems your whole life.”

“That would be a very sad ending.” adds the second.

“And very boring.” says the third.

“And unhealthy.” chimes in the first.

You look at them, a bit dazed, a bit amused, and a bit grateful that no one is expecting an immediate, perfect answer from you. Heeseung glances at you quickly. There’s no pressure in his gaze. Just quiet patience and something that makes you feel less nervous. As if he’s really leaving the choice up to you.

“We can finish this later.” he says calmly.

That single sentence is enough to let some of the air out of your lungs. You look at the notebook, then at him. But eventually you nod slightly in agreement. And I suppose that’s enough, because the first boy’s face immediately lights up with a triumphant smile.

“I knew it.”

“You didn’t.” replies the second.

“I did.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Not at all.”

Heeseung just shakes his head slightly, but a hint of a smile appears on his lips.

Suddenly, everyone moves at once, and you get the feeling that before you’ve had time to think, you’ll already be on the other side of the street, walking with people you barely knew a moment ago.

Heeseung picks up your notebook and sets it aside, carefully, as if to let you know that you really will come back to it.

The walk to the karaoke bar passes more quickly than you expect. On the way, you learn their names: Jay, Jake, Sunghoon. The guys are talking non-stop, interrupting each other, laughing, correcting one another, and you walk alongside them, listening to the chaos and feeling that with every passing minute, things are getting a little easier for you.

Two months have passed. Sometimes you get the feeling that it’s impossible for so much to have changed in such a short time. And yet, when you look back at yourself from a few weeks ago, it seems as though you were a slightly different person back then. Still the same person, but more withdrawn, more cautious, as if everything around you were still unfamiliar and you had to learn to breathe in this new place first, before you could even begin to pretend you belong here. It’s still not quite your home. You still find yourself hesitating at crossroads, you still sometimes take the wrong route to the shop. But there are also things that are slowly ceasing to be unfamiliar. Familiar faces. Familiar voices. Seats in the classroom you no longer need to remind yourself of. And that group of lads who burst into your life a bit too loudly, a bit too suddenly, and then simply stayed.

Jay speaks his mind, sometimes too honestly, but never with bad intentions. He always manages to make a comment that makes everyone laugh when things get too quiet, and he seems like someone you can rely on. Jake is his complete opposite. He’s energetic, full of movement and words that sometimes get ahead of his thoughts. He has a warmth about him that easily draws people in, and you too. Sunghoon, on the other hand, seemed like the epitome of calm, but it soon turned out that his introverted nature didn’t mean he was just a quiet lad sitting at the back of the classroom. Heeseung… Heeseung was different from all of them. Calm, attentive, patient. With him, learning ceases to be just learning. Even if you still often don’t understand half of what he explains, you don’t feel inferior because of it when you’re with him. He doesn’t make you want to fall silent. On the contrary, it’s much easier to ask another question when you’re with him, even if it sounds silly. And perhaps that’s precisely why these meetings of yours have started to mean more to you than you wanted to admit.

Though of course you don’t have time to think about it for long, because someone’s always coming round. Someone’s always coming up with something. Someone’s always suddenly turning up with a plan that’s supposed to ‘only take a moment’, and it ends up with your notes left open and you going off with them somewhere completely different. One time to the cinema, another time for food, another time just ‘for a moment’ to the shop, which turns out to be halfway across town. And then you’re simply with them. Just like that, as if it was meant to be that way from the start.

And perhaps that’s what surprises you the most.

Because for the first time in ages, you don’t feel like you have to squeeze in somewhere. That you’re an extra. Or someone who’ll disappear in a moment, because it’ll be easier that way. With them, everything happens too fast, too loudly, too chaotically, but still, it’s happening around you, not beside you.

“Hey.”

You lift your head automatically, a little surprised, before you’ve even had time to think who it might be.

Jake is sitting on the seat in front of you and turns so casually that for a moment your faces are really close together.

Too close.

You freeze for a second, completely unprepared for this closeness. Jake, on the other hand, looks as though he doesn’t realise it, or simply doesn’t consider it worth noticing. As if being close to people is something natural to him, as ordinary as breathing.

“I wanted to tell you about a film for tonight.” he says, before you’ve had a chance to say anything, and immediately holds his phone out towards you.

You look at the screen, but you’re not really reading anything. You just see the bright display and a fragment of the description of some science fiction movie, which flashes before your eyes too quickly for you to take it in.

“Apparently it’s really good. More… well, you know, action-packed, but not too heavy.”

You want to say something, anything, but before you even have a chance to take a breath, someone else suddenly appears beside you.

Heeseung.

He doesn’t burst in. He doesn’t need to. All he has to do is stand between you and Jake, and everything immediately changes in a way so subtle it’s hard to put into words. With one hand, he gently covers Jake’s eyes, with the other, he pushes his head away from you, surprisingly gently, but firmly enough to break this moment that’s become too intimate.

Jake protests straight away.

“Hey, dude!

Heeseung doesn’t even flinch. He simply steps between your desks and rests lightly against the back of Jake’s chair, partially shielding him from you with his own body. As if it were the most natural reflex in the world. As if he’d simply decided it was better this way.

You feel your heart doing something strange in your chest. It isn’t exactly pleasant. More surprising, really. Too significant for something so small.

“So? How did the last physics test go?” Heeseung snaps you out of your thoughts.

It’s no big deal. Just a simple sentence. But something inside you freezes. Because, of course, you remember. Just the memory of that feeling when you sat over the paper and every subsequent problem started to look the same, until eventually nothing made sense anymore.

You feel something warm and unpleasant creeping up your face. Shame. That quiet but persistent feeling that always pops up when someone sees something you’d rather hide. You lower your gaze to the table, as if that might somehow protect you, shield you from his gaze. Suddenly, you’re all too aware of your own body. Too visible. And yet, strangely small.

“Not too good.’ you finally admit quietly, almost under your breath, as if saying it out loud might make it even more real.

Heeseung has noticed the change in your voice. That brief hesitation, that slight drop in volume, which reveals more than the answer itself.

He doesn’t press you. He doesn’t try to pick it apart or make you feel even more exposed to his gaze. Instead, he simply changes the subject.

“But a film sounds like a good idea.” he says calmly, as if nothing had happened. As if he’d just given you space, rather than taking it away. He turns slightly towards Jake, leaning in with that casual ease that always looks so natural when he’s around. “It’s a nice break from studying.”

“So, are you coming with us?” Jake asks after a moment, turning back towards you.

His posture is natural again, too close, too carefree, as if he’d completely forgotten that a moment ago you were more reserved.

“Sure.”

A few hours later, after the final school bell, you’re on your way to the cinema. You rush onto the train at the very last minute. The doors close with a characteristic hiss right behind you, and you catch your breath, still panting slightly. It’s crowded inside. Too many people, too many sounds, too much of everything at once. Someone’s standing too close, someone’s pushing their way through, someone’s laughing louder than they should. The boys’ conversations mingle with the noise of the train.

You sit there, slightly leaning back against the seat, listening to parts of the conversation rather than the whole thing. Some things sink in, some slip away, and some make you smile to yourself, even if you’re not quite sure why.

Heeseung sits next to you as if the spot had been his from the start. When Jay raises his voice yet again, and Jake starts arguing with him about something as absurd as usual, Heeseung glances at you for a moment. Then, without a word, he pulls one earbud out of his pocket and hands it to you with a slight raise of his eyebrow, as if asking if you want to escape the noise.

You take it without thinking.

The music is quiet, but enough to separate you, if only for a moment, from all the hustle and bustle. It doesn’t really matter what comes on first, because more than the sound, you feel the moment itself. Your shoulders are almost touching. His presence, calm and warm, suddenly becomes more distinct than the rest of the conversation. For a brief moment, you look out of the window at the streets growing dark and it feels like everything around you is slowing down.

By the time you finally reach the cinema, it’s quite late, and the entrance glows brightly against the evening sky. Inside, you’re immediately greeted by the familiar smell of popcorn, sweet drinks and air-conditioned air. The boys take their time choosing their popcorn, teasing poor Jay, who paid twice for the drinks.

Later, everyone actually makes it into the movie room. For the first few seconds, there’s that characteristic pre-film chaos. The rustling of jackets, muffled comments, quiet laughter, the sound of doors closing, and that short tension that always hangs in the air before the lights go out. And then the room falls into darkness. The screen lights up the faces of the people sitting around you, and you settle more comfortably into your chair, holding your cold drink carefully. At first, you try to focus on the film with genuine sincerity. You want to give it a chance. The opening scenes look promising, the music goes well with the images, and everything has that sheen that usually foreshadows something bigger. Except that after a few minutes, you realise your attention is starting to drift off somewhere else. Not because the movie is bad. It just doesn’t hold your attention the way it should.

The flickering light from the screen reflects off the faces of the guys next to you. Every now and then, Jake leans over to Sunghoon, whispers something to him, and then they both chuckle in a completely inappropriate moment. Jay immediately turns to them and scolds for the noise, only to find himself drawn into commenting on the movie with them.

And yet, more often than not, your gaze returns to Heeseung. He sits next to you so naturally, occasionally reaching for the popcorn between you. When he watches the film, he has the same look of concentration on his face that you’ve seen before, but now, in the dim light of the cinema, it looks different. Quiet. Almost soft.

It’s a bit annoying how easily he catches your attention.

And apparently, he notices it sooner than you’d like to admit.

“Do you want to go out?” he whispered.

You turn your head. For a split second, you just look at him, surprised by the suggestion itself, but you nod.

“Sure.”

A barely visible shadow of relief crosses his face, as if he’s just heard the answer he was expecting and decided that’s enough.

He gets up first.

The light from the screen sweeps across his face, along the bridge of his nose, over his slightly lowered eyelashes, and onto the hand he holds out to you when he sees you stumble while walking across the row. His fingers touch yours for just a moment. Long enough for you to feel it. Short enough not to make it awkward.

He guides you down the hall. Slowly, but surely, as if he knows exactly where he’s going. You’re so focused on the fact that he’s walking beside you that you barely notice when he turns not towards the exit, but to the side, towards the next door.

You pause for a second.

“Where…?” you begin, but trail off, because you already understand.

Heeseung opens the door and lets you in as if nothing unusual is happening. As if you’d simply come for a different screening, rather than slipping from one room to another in the semi-darkness, among quiet footsteps and the hum of the movies from the hallway.

This movie room is completely different. Fewer people. Less noise. A softer dusky light, a calmer atmosphere. Another rom-com is just starting on the screen. You can tell from the very first shots. A different pace, different glances, a different vibe, more lighthearted than dramatic.

You pause at the entrance for a few moments, suddenly very aware of your surroundings.

Couples sitting close together. Hands held without a second thought. Heads resting on each other’s shoulders. The atmosphere is gentle. Intimate. Almost silent. As if everything in this place were breathing more gently.

And standing next to you is Heeseung. As relaxed as ever. But here, in this room, his presence suddenly means more.

You sit down shortly afterwards. The screen casts cool and warm lighting on your faces, depending on the scene. You try to watch the film, you really do try, but you soon realise that it isn’t the screen that’s catching your attention the most.

It’s him.

He isn’t doing anything out of the ordinary. He doesn’t keep turning around. He doesn’t speak. He isn’t trying to draw attention to himself. And yet you are painfully aware of his every little movement.

The way he rests his head on the back of the chair. The way his hand rests casually on the armrest between you. The way he sometimes glances at the screen, then at you, just a quick glance, as if he’s just checking that everything’s alright.

Every time a couple standing too close together appears on screen, or someone instinctively smooths someone else’s hair, you feel a strange sensation beneath your skin.

The rest of the movie passes almost unnoticed. The plot flashes through your mind like something soft and effortless, though it’s mainly the atmosphere of the moment that sticks in your head. The film ends, the lights slowly come back on, and people start to gather to leave.

And then, just as you step out, you bump into the rest of the group.

“Look who’s back,” Jake’s voice rings out first. “We thought you guys ran off.”

His tone is exaggeratedly offended, but there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eyes that immediately gives away that he’s not really angry.

Jay immediately points at you and Heeseung with overconfident assurance, as if he’s just connected all the dots in his head and arrived at the most interesting version of events.

“Oh, look at that,” he says with a broad smile. “A date, perhaps?”

“Seriously?” Heeseung replies straight away, but there isn’t even a hint of irritation in his voice. Just amusement. It’s a brief, quiet amusement that sounds almost more dangerous than outrage, because it makes the whole situation even more clear.

Jay isn’t giving up.

“Well, what else could it be?” he raises his eyebrows, with the look of a man who’s just won something very important. “A separate room. A romantic film. It smells fishy.”

Jake picks up on the topic straight away, as if he’d been waiting for just such an opportunity.

“You were probably sitting there quoting cheesy lines from films to each other.”

“Or gazing deeply into each other’s eyes.” Jay adds without the slightest hesitation, and you almost immediately feel the heat rising to your cheeks.

“Will you leave me?” Sunghoon mocks in a dramatic, overdramatic tone, then laughs, showing his fangs.

“I’ll never leave you.” adds Jay, imitating a melodramatic voice so earnestly that it becomes laughable.

Their voices start to overlap, one over the other, and you stand in the middle of it all with your face growing hotter by the second, feeling that you’re about to burst out laughing any moment now, though you’re still trying to preserve what little dignity you have left.

Heeseung seems to have had enough of their comments too, because before Jake can add anything even more embarrassing, he turns to you and, without warning, grabs your hand. Your fingers tingle reflexively, but his hand is warm and steady, so you don’t even try to pull away. You’ve barely had time to register it when he’s already moving forward.

“Heeseung?” you blurt out in surprise, more out of instinct than genuine curiosity.

But he just squeezes your hand and runs. And you do the same.

For a second, everything is happening too fast for your thoughts to keep up. You can still hear Jake’s burst of laughter behind you, Jay’s offended ‘hey!’, and something unrecognizable from Sunghoon, but it already sounds as if from a different distance, as if it’s been left behind by a whole few steps, a whole lifetime.

There is only him in front of you. His posture, his movement, the rhythm of his steps. And your own wrist in his hand. You run after him down the cinema hall, feeling how, with every step, the pressure slowly gives way to something completely different. Surprise. Relief. Laughter that first gets stuck somewhere in your throat, then bursts out, light and uncontrollable.

“Have you gone mad?” you laugh, trying to keep up with his pace.

He turns his head just for a moment. Just long enough for you to see his smile.

“Maybe a little.” he replies, and in his voice you hear amusement that he makes no attempt to hide.

It makes you laugh even more. The corridor flashes past your eyes. Lights, posters, reflections in the windows, people stepping out of your way. Everything blends into one pleasantly chaotic haze. Heeseung doesn’t let go of your hand, and you don’t even think about pulling it away. Right now, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. As if this is exactly how it was meant to be.

Outside the library window lies snow. Not that first, light and tentative snow, but the real winter stuff, piling up at the edges of the pavements and melting where the sun still remembers it exists. Inside, it’s warm and peaceful, smelling of paper, wood and slightly damp jackets hanging over the backs of the chairs opposite you.

Yours is still cool from the snow that soaked into the fabric on the way. His has also had time to dry out a bit, but it still carries that heavy, wintry weight that reminds you that everything outside is harsh, and here, at the table, it’s completely different.

The public library has become one of those places that has simply become part of your everyday life. You didn’t choose it on purpose at the start. It was just that one day one of you decided it would be quieter, and then one meeting turned into another, and another, until eventually it became one of your places.

Today was supposed to be just like any other day. You, Heeseung, Physics, and a few more problems that have been trying to convince you since the start of the year that they’re simpler than they look. You’re sitting next to him, not opposite, because that’s been more comfortable for you for ages. Closeness is no longer something you have to prepare yourself for. It simply became part of all this studying, notes, drinks from the vending machine and the silent turning of pages.

Heeseung shows you another solution, and you try to concentrate without pretending. And yet, something inside you has been behaving differently since the start of the session, as if it’s been waiting for something more for the last few minutes.

For the moment when you can give him something. A small gift, nothing special. Actually, a bit crooked, because you made it yourself and you’re not particularly good at it. It was just meant to be a little something before the Christmas break, something handmade, something personal, something that doesn’t have to mean more than a simple gesture right away. You’d prepared little gifts for the other boys earlier, at school, on other occasions, but for him you wanted to save something different. Not to make a big deal out of it. More because… it just popped into your head.

The bracelet is now tucked away at the bottom of your backpack, wrapped in a piece of paper.

Silly, you think at times. Really silly.

And yet every time you let your mind wander to it, your heart beats a little faster. You tell yourself it’s nothing. That Heeseung was simply the first person here who made you feel truly safe. Your first friend in a new place. Someone who made this city stop feeling like a foreign place. It’s only natural that you want to give him something special, isn’t it? Only natural that you want to give it to him in private, without a crowd, without the laughter of others, without all that fuss.

You watch his hand as he flips through the page. For a moment, you forget what he was just about to explain.

“Earth to you.” he says with that calmness of his, which always sounds more like concern than a scolding.

Instinctively, you sit up a little straighter.

“I’m here.”

It’s not entirely true, but you return to your notes before it sounds any more suspicious. Heeseung just smiles slightly, as if he knew your attention had drifted for literally a few seconds, and didn’t see it as a problem.

That’s why you like him. That calm patience of his. That ability to give you space.

You sit like that for a while longer. Time passes quietly. Too quietly. All you can hear is the rustle of paper, the distant tapping of someone’s keyboard, the occasional creak of a chair. You’re just beginning to think that maybe this time you’ll really manage to finish this session without a problem, when the library doors open and let the chill from outside in.

You don’t even need to look up to know who it is. You recognise the way Jay speaks even before he’s fully in view. You recognise Jake’s tone, which sounds as if he’s been laughing for ages. You also recognise Sunghoon’s calmer, more direct way of speaking.

And then you hear Jake’s voice.

“What are our lovebirds up to?”

You look up a moment later, already knowing full well that this peace is about to be forgotten.

Jake looks far too pleased with himself, as if just walking in were reason enough to smile. Jay stands beside him with the expression of someone who probably knew from the start that a show was about to begin, and Sunghoon is looking at you, but you can tell his mind has already wandered away from here. At least he managed to do so.

Heeseung immediately looks up from notebook.

“First of all, no love birds,” he says, without even raising his voice. “Secondly, what do you want?”

Jake steps closer, without a hint of embarrassment, as if the library weren’t a place where people come for peace and quiet.

“We’ve come to check if you’re still alive. And to make sure you’re not planning to hide out here until the Christmas break.”

Jay immediately fires off a short, dry reply, which you barely catch because Jake is already speaking again:

“This is the last chance before the break. You won’t see us for the whole time after that. So you absolutely have to come with us.”

Sunghoon sighs softly, as if this discussion were all too familiar to him and he was already bored of it, but not enough to cut it short.

“We’re just out to grab a bite to eat,” he adds more calmly.

“Sure, ‘no big deal’,” mutters Jay, a hint of amusement in his voice. “Every time Jake says ‘no big deal’, it ends up being a few hours of wandering around town.”

Jake shrugs.

“Those are the best plans.”

Under normal circumstances, you’d probably have laughed. You might even have agreed right away, because these sort of spontaneous outings with them were nothing out of the ordinary. But this time, something’s holding you back.

This was supposed to be your last quiet get-together before the break. This was supposed to be the moment when you’d finally give him that gift. You wanted to slip him that bracelet without a bunch of people around, without commentary, without all the chaos that usually surrounds the group. You wanted it to be simple and quiet. And now, in a single second, you feel it all falling apart.

You don’t let it show on your face. You simply run your hand along the edge of your notebook and try to look calm, though inside something is tightening. Not in a way anyone would notice at first glance. More like a quiet regret that doesn’t need a voice to be real.

Heeseung glances at you briefly. Not for long. Just enough, though, for you to get the strange feeling that something about your expression doesn’t quite sit right with him. But he says nothing. He just turns back to the rest of the group, as if he doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that, for a moment, you were a little quieter than usual.

Jake, on the other hand, has no intention of stopping.

“Come on, guys.” he says, resting one hand on the chair. “Last night before the break. We’ve got to celebrate it.”

“That sounds like an invitation to trouble.” Sunghoon blurts out.

“Because it is.” Jay responds.

Everyone laughs. You too lift the corners of your lips, a little too fast, a little too politely. It’s not a real smile, more of a reflex. At the same time, you feel Heeseung looking at you again, but for a bit longer.

And that’s what bothers you the most. Because no one else but him notices it. Or maybe they do notice, they just don’t say anything. Jake is already showing reviews of some café on his phone, Jay starts asking where exactly it is, and Sunghoon, with the same calm expression, nods his head as if the list of plans didn’t matter in the slightest, as long as the rest agree on something.

You sit motionless for a brief moment. You don’t want to leave. And it’s not even about leaving itself. It’s that something is waiting for him. It’s that now it’s all disappearing somewhere.

But you don’t say that. You don’t pull out the bracelet. You don’t protest. You simply close the notebook, as if you were closing this moment along with it, and stand up slowly, with the same peacefulness you’ve already learnt to use around everyone.

Maybe later, you think. Maybe after we’ve left. Maybe there’ll still be a chance. But even that thought sounds somehow less certain now than it did a few minutes ago.

You leave the library together. The cold air hits your face the moment the doors open. Outside, snow still covers the sidewalks, and the city looks soft and quiet, as if it too were getting ready for a break. You walk alongside them, listening to fragments of conversation, but your thoughts are still partly on the bracelet.

And on Heeseung.

For a brief, very quiet moment, you feel like something inside you has stayed there, at that table, along with the unfinished study session, the plan you didn’t manage to carry out, and that one strange feeling you can’t quite put a name to yet.

Christmas passed faster than you’d have liked, and perhaps that’s precisely why it left behind a strange, not entirely pleasant aftertaste. Everything was warm and cosy, with the lights, the smells of food, the familiar hum of the TV and the peaceful atmosphere of the season, but for most of that time your thoughts kept drifting back to one person. To Heeseung. Not in a way that could be easily described, not at first. You simply found yourself increasingly caught up in memories: his voice, his patience, the way he could be there without pushing himself on you. And every time you thought that maybe you’d simply got too used to his presence, Sunoo would speak up. You talked a lot. Almost every day. Sometimes briefly, sometimes for so long that you’d fall asleep with the phone in your hand. At first, of course, he was joking.

“That sounds like being in love.”

“Stop it.”

“No, seriously. You talk about him as if he’s the main character in your life.”

You’d burst out laughing then, roll your eyes, and tell him he was exaggerating. That it was simply because Heeseung was the first person to really help you, that he was nice, that it was easy to study with him, that thanks to him everything at this school had become a little less unfamiliar. Those were logical arguments. At least, that’s what you thought.

But Sunoo didn’t let it go for long. And when one evening he stopped laughing and fell silent on the other end of the line, you felt that something was changing.

“Are you serious?” he finally asked, more quietly.

You didn’t answer. Because suddenly you weren’t sure any more whether you understood what you were supposed to say to him. You were staring at the dark window of your room, at the reflection of your own face and the flickering light of the lamp reflected on the glass, and you just stayed silent. And in that silence, something began to dawn on you that you hadn’t been able to notice before, or simply hadn’t wanted to notice.

You remembered that evening after the library, when you left too late and it suddenly started raining. You were running down the wet street then, laughing, a bit too fast, a bit too loud, with your hair sticking to your face and your breath catching from laughter. Your heart was beating faster then, too. Not because it was cold, not because you were running. Simply because Heeseung was beside you, and the whole scene suddenly seemed like something you wanted to hold on to a little longer.

Then came the memory of Friday, when Jay offered to walk you home under his umbrella. It was nice. Really nice. The sort of gesture that makes you smile and feel grateful. You walked quietly, he said something light-hearted, and the rain tapped softly against the fabric. You felt safe, but different than with Heeseung.

Another evening, Heeseung tried to teach you how to play basketball. It was late, as no one else had time, it was just the two of you and the empty court. You laughed when the ball slipped from your hands, and he patiently explained to you once again how to position your hands and where to look. You remembered how he stood opposite you, calm and focused, and how much you wanted to do well.

And when Sunghoon tried to teach you to ice skate, everything was different in yet another way. Sunghoon held your hand lightly, explaining how to place your foot so you wouldn’t fall, and although there was something warm about it, after a moment you realised it wasn’t the same. Not that kind of flutter inside. Not the same tension that appeared with Heeseung, even when he was simply sitting next to you and explaining the problems to you.

All those memories came flooding back to you one by one, until finally they began to form something you could no longer ignore. Sunoo on the other end of the phone sighed deeply.

“Well?” he finally asked.

You swallowed. Your heart was beating a little faster than usual, but not because of confusion anymore. More like something resembling fear of your own answer.

“I…” you began, then stopped short, because suddenly it all sounded too clear.

Sunoo didn’t rush you this time. He just waited. And you finally said it almost in a whisper, more to yourself than to him.

“I think… it’s not just friendship.”

There was silence on the other end for a second. Then you heard Sunoo exhale with relief.

“Well, finally.” he muttered, but without a laugh. This time his voice was steady, almost warm. “I was afraid I’d have to keep telling you this until your high school graduation.”

You rolled your eyes, though despite everything you felt something inside you soften. Not because it made things easier for you. Rather because someone already knew. Someone had put a name to it before you were ready to do so yourself.

The next day came too quickly. The snow crunched under your feet as you walked the familiar route to school. The thoughts of yesterday’s conversation refused to go away. They kept coming back, creeping into your mind against your will, as if each one wanted to remind you of something you hadn’t quite managed to accept yet.

Lost in thought, you were walking a little slower than usual. And you didn’t hear someone calling your name straight away. It wasn’t until the third time that you looked up, and you froze almost immediately, because Heeseung was walking a few steps behind you, clearly trying to catch up with you.

“I was calling you.” he said with a hint of amusement as he matched your pace. “Where did your mind wander off to?”

You felt a rush of heat.

“I… I was just daydreaming.” you replied, and your own words sounded strangely flat, as if they didn’t belong to you.

Heeseung looked at you more closely for a moment, as if he sensed something was wrong. He didn’t press the subject, but that made it even harder for you to breathe. Suddenly, you were all too aware of everything: how close he was standing, the fact that yesterday’s conversation with Sunoo was still on your mind, the fact that his presence was affecting you completely different from before.

You have to back off. Right now. Before you give yourself away.

And then you spot Jake, who, a few metres ahead of you, is just turning towards the school entrance. That’s enough. You seize the moment.

“Oh, Jake!” you blurt out too quickly, perhaps a little too loudly, and before you’ve had time to think about what you’re doing, you’re already walking towards him.

Jake turns around, surprised, but before he can say a word, you grab his sleeve.

“You’re coming with me.”

“What?” he blinks, clearly taken aback.

“Later.” you cut him off, pulling him gently along behind you.

He pauses for a moment, looking at you with growing bewilderment, but lets himself be led. You feel the weight of Heeseung’s gaze on your back and don’t even need to turn around to know he’s standing there, confused, probably trying to figure out what just happened. You don’t want to see that. Not now. Not when your thoughts are already loud enough.

Jake walks beside you, still asking what’s going on, but you just shake your head and mutter something evasive, something about how you just felt like walking with him. It sounds completely unbelievable, even to you. And yet you don’t stop.

Two weeks have gone by, and you still haven’t got used to how much a single glance can give you away. With Heeseung, everything suddenly becomes too obvious. The warmth on your face. Your heart is beating too fast. The deep breath you have to take whenever he stands next to you. It’s not even something you could hide well, because you feel as though your whole body reacts faster than you do.

That’s why you started avoiding him. At first just a little, almost unnoticed. Then more deliberately. You change your route in the hallway, your replies are shorter, and when the time for your study sessions approaches, excuses start popping up.

You’re not feeling well.

You’ve got a lot to do.

You need to get home early.

At first, it seemed like a good plan. Easy enough that you wouldn’t have to explain anything. Safe enough that you wouldn’t have to look him in the eye and wonder if he’s noticing that tension that’s cropping up between you more and more often. Except lies don’t last as long as you’d like. Especially when they involve someone as observant as Heeseung.

The second time you texted him to say you weren’t feeling well, you didn’t even expect a reply. You thought he might write something like ‘okay, another time’. But he turned up at your door with a bag of things you hadn’t expected at all.

Medicines. Sweets. Instant noodles.

He stood there for a moment with wide eyes, a slightly puzzled expression as if he didn’t think it was a big deal at all. As if he’d simply done something that was natural. And you looked at him and felt a wave of guilt wash over you. But instead of admitting that all that ‘I’m feeling unwell’ was just an excuse, you reacted even worse. You said something about infecting him, about how it might be better if he didn’t come in, that he probably shouldn’t come near you. It sounded absurd, even to your own ears, but it was too late to salvage it. Heeseung was a little confused. He left behind the things he had brought, looked at you once more with a look that hurt you more than you should have admitted, and left.

It was only when the door closed that it hit you that you had said you had a headache. Not an illness. Not something contagious. A headache. That thought came back to you several more times that day, and each time it made you want to bury yourself under the blanket.

The days passed, and you continued to avoid Heeseung. More and more effectively. Less and less naturally. And more and more painfully.

Sunoo, of course, listened to everything you were doing. When you spoke on the phone in the evening, he didn’t laugh as much as he had at the start. He was more serious, more attentive, as if he himself had realised that this wasn’t just some passing whim of yours or a silly bout of embarrassment.

“You should tell him.” he said one evening.

You sighed deeply then, letting your back fall onto the bed.

“It’s not that simple.”

“I know. But by running away, you’re only making things worse.”

You didn’t answer right away, because you knew he was right. And that was exactly why it was so uncomfortable. Because maybe you were already ruining everything, only you were doing it quietly. Maybe every step backwards was pushing you farther away from him than any honest word you were so afraid to say.

And yet fear still won. If you tell him the truth, you might ruin your friendship. If you don’t, you might ruin it anyway, just more slowly. That thought sat inside you for the next few days like something heavy and stubborn. On top of that came your Physics grades, which started to drop faster than you wanted to admit, even to yourself. Without your study sessions together, the material began to slip away. Problems that you’d been able to handle with his help not long ago now looked like they were written in an alien language again. It wasn’t just irritating. It was embarrassing. And with every failure, it reminded you more and more that avoiding Heeseung had a price.

Eventually, you decided you needed a new solution. One that seemed less terrifying than facing your own feelings.

Jake was the first person you thought of. He was good at Physics, and with him you didn’t have to be so careful about every glance, every hesitation, every breath. With him, you didn’t feel as though your heart was about to jump out of your chest.

You found him after lessons, as he was leaving the classroom with his phone in his hand and the look of someone already thinking about something completely different.

“Jake.” you said, before you could change your mind.

He turned around immediately, a slight look of surprise on his face.

“Is something wrong?”

It was a normal question. An ordinary one. And yet you felt a slight pang in your stomach, because you knew you were about to have to broach a subject you really didn’t want to discuss.

“I need help with Physics.” you said quickly, before your emotions could stop you.

Jake blinked a few times, then his gaze shifted somewhere over your shoulder, as if he were trying to figure out for himself why that sounded so odd. For a moment, he looked genuinely surprised.

“What about Heeseung?” he asked carefully. Not accusingly.

You feel like saying it’s none of his business. That it just happened that way. That you don’t feel like talking about it. But instead, you just shake your head.

“Don’t push it.” you say quietly. “Just… Can you help me or not?”

Jake looks at you for a moment longer. Not much, but long enough for you to feel he can see more than you’ve told him. Eventually, he lets it go. He doesn’t ask any more questions. He just nods and puts his phone in his pocket.

“Sure, I can,” he says. “But seriously, whatever it is… it’s better to talk it through than to bottle it up.”

You don’t reply because suddenly you have a picture in your head of Heeseung asking himself what he did wrong. And suddenly you start to wonder if any of this makes sense. You bury it inside. You run away. And the more you run away, the more everything starts to fall apart.

Jake must see that something has shifted in you, because his tone softens.

“You don’t have to tell me now. But if it’s important, don’t keep it to yourself for too long.”

You nod, but you feel that it's not enough. Because you already know it's not just about Physics. It was never just about that. And yet it is Physics that is now becoming the easiest excuse not to look any further at what you fear most.

The snow that had been lying on the pavements and at the edges of the lawns just a short while ago had begun to melt away. The first leaves were appearing on the trees. You still needed a jacket in the mornings, but during the day the air was already gentler. Warmer. More pleasant.

You weren’t quite the same as you had been a few weeks ago either. Not in a way that could be explained to an outsider. You simply started to feel more things at once and found it harder to make sense of them. Sunoo’s words from the Christmas break would sometimes come back to you completely out of the blue, as if someone had left them in your head and forgotten to take them away. The worst part was that the more you tried to push them away, the more clearly you could hear your own heart when Heeseung was nearby.

You no longer avoided him as openly as before. It wasn’t possible. Not with the group, not in lessons, not during all those moments that always seemed to bring you together anyway. But you started behaving differently. You were more absent-minded, more cautious, less confident in his company. The silence between you was no longer just silence. Sometimes it became heavy and uncomfortable, and you couldn’t tell if it was because of you or because of him. Maybe because of both of you.

You were studying with Jake. He wasn’t a bad teacher. In fact, he explained everything surprisingly well in his own way, even if his method was more chaotic than Heeseung’s. With Jake, you didn’t feel that tense in your shoulders. Your cheeks didn’t flush like crazy, nor did your voice break from nerves. It was only when you came home after one of these tutoring sessions that you felt a strange emptiness you couldn’t quite put your finger on.

Because you knew it wasn’t the same. And you also knew that you missed Heeseung more than you should. That was the worst part. You still couldn’t bring yourself to tell him the truth. But every time you saw him, it reminded you that you were only escaping temporarily. That eventually you’d have to go back to what you’d tried to avoid for weeks.

You walk down the hallway with papers in your hands, trying to think of something else. These are your Physics mock tests, graded by Jake.

Most of them were done quite well, except that you could still see little notes in his handwriting next to some of the answers. Minor corrections, brief explanations, arrows pointing out where your mistakes were. You didn’t notice when someone stepped into your path.

You bumped into him with a soft, harmless thud, but enough to send the papers scattering across the floor.

“Sorry.” you blurted out immediately, before you’d even had a chance to look up.

You bent down instinctively, cursing your own carelessness in your mind, and almost immediately saw that the other person was doing the same. They crouched down beside you, reaching for one of the sheets of paper, the very one you were just about to grab. Your fingers touched.

You looked up only to see Heeseung. Your heart immediately began to beat faster, foolishly, dangerously, just as it always did in his presence. Your face grew hot almost instantly, and you felt like even the skin on the back of your neck was burning. Heeseung, however, looked calm. A smile appeared on his lips. Exactly the same one you remembered from your first days at school. Gentle, warm, a little charming, as if he’d known from the start that he could throw you off balance without any effort.

‘I’m the one who’s sorry.’

The embarrassment came so quickly that you barely had time to react. You gathered up the papers one by one, too conscious of your own movements, too aware of his presence, too aware that you’d just bumped into him in the silliest way possible. Heeseung picked up one of the sheets and looked at it for a moment before handing it back to you. That was when he noticed what you were holding.

Physics tests with Jake’s clear corrections.

His gaze lingered on it a little longer than you’d have liked him to notice.

“Did you study with Jake?” he asked at last, still calm.

You nodded, because that seemed like the easiest answer.

“Yes.”

Heeseung looked away for a moment, as if sorting things out in his head. The smile hadn’t completely vanished from his face, but it had grown a little weaker, more restrained.

“I’ve seen you two together a lot lately.”

You didn’t know what to say, so you just picked up a few more pages from the floor and pressed them to your chest.

“Jake explains things well.” you added after a moment, as if that would settle everything.

It sounded ordinary. Neutral. Safe. Heeseung nodded, but his gaze grew a little more brooding.

“You guys seem close.” he said quietly.

For a moment, you didn’t quite understand what he meant. Because, of course. You were close, after all. You were all close. Jay, Jake, Sunghoon, Heeseung and you. It was quite obvious. You spent time together, talked, walked around town together, laughed at things that would once have been strange to you. So you replied without thinking, a bit too quickly:

“We are.”

Heeseung said nothing for a brief moment. And then, perhaps just for a moment, his face changed, as if something inside him had faded.

Heeseung moved the papers away from him and handed them all back to you at once.

“That’s good.” he said at last, still calm, but without the previous lightness. “At least your grades will get better.”

You nodded, still trying to make sense of what had just happened.

“Yes.”

For a moment, you stood in silence, while other students moved past you in the hall, someone laughed somewhere in the distance, someone opened a locker, someone called out a friend’s name. The usual school noise. Only between you, things were different now.

Heeseung looked at you one more time. As if he wanted to say something. As if he was checking if he could. But in the end, he just nodded slightly.

“Next time, watch your steps.” he said with the same smile, which still had something familiar about it, though now it seemed a little smaller.

And he walked away. You were left standing in the middle of the corridor with papers in your hands and a heart that was still racing after that encounter.

You walked on a few minutes later, still thinking about that one moment. The touch of his fingers. His smile. That brief hesitation on his face. And your own words, which now seemed more innocent than they should have been. Completely unaware, you walked on down the hall, feeling only one thing: that whatever it was, it had just become a little more complicated.

Notes: Finally getting around to posting this! It honestly took me forever to finish writing and even longer to actually publish, but here we are. Just a quick heads-up: even though Heeseung has left the group, I’ll still be writing for him using this name instead of Evan. I’m so happy for him and truly wish him the best with his solo career. Also a little shoutout to my friend @mimin1100 because that last scene was written specifically at her request (even though she probably doesn't even remember that conversation anymore 😂). Just a warning that I’m a pretty slow writer, so please don’t expect part 2 to be out anytime soon as I like to take my time with the process. That being said, if you’d like to be tagged when the next part is ready, just let me know in the comments! Thanks for reading!

💌: @kyunlov @mimin1100

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