SYNOPSIS all you want is to be seen and loved by your future husband, two of the very things park jongseong has no idea about. but through unspoken protection and warm tension, jongseong lets himself love again.
OR, jongseong falls for you when a series of events pushes you both closer
GENRE arranged marriage au, angst, fluff, hurt & comfort, ‘she fell first but he fell harder’ vibe (?) slowburn-ish
PAIRING cold fiance! park jongseong x female! reader ( ft. other characters )
WARNINGS mention of bruises and fighting, alcohol, arguments, skinship, kissing, underlying misogyny ( not from jay ), crying, alcohol mention and use
WORDCOUNT 19.5k words / 19,557 words
AUTHORS NOTE hey precious readers! i would like to start this special message by an apology because one i am posting this a month late and two this is my first ever long fic. so you know the drill, i havent quite mastered to flow of long fics, so im sorry in advance if there is any type of mistakes in the story TT that being said, i chose a pretty easy topic to work with this time, so im hoping you guys will like it! arranged marriage aus and jay is definitely one of my fav combos, and i hope it delivered it well >< please enjoy and happy reading :3
FEEDBACKS AND REBLOGS ARE VERY APPRECIATED
PARK JONGSEONG HAS NEVER KISSED YOU.
Maybe you have never even felt his touch, the mere sensation of fingers brushing innocently against each other was unknown to you.
And as you realise it, your chest tightens, and you dig your fingernails way too deep into your palms until they form little red crescents which burn. You realise he’d never seen you shed your tears as well, so you keep them at bay, praying that it’ll be enough to hide the storm brewing inside you.
Park Jongseong is your fiancé, an arranged marriage. Bound to you by the weight of expectation, tradition, and a polished ring that sparkles mockingly on your finger.
To anyone else, you might seem like the perfect couple—well-dressed at formal dinners, walking side by side at events, exchanging polite smiles that barely reach your eyes. But behind closed doors, the gap between you feels insurmountable.
Sometimes during those boring and forced events, all you want to do is to pull Jongseong closer by his arm. You want him to look at you and smile, to hold you by the waist and kiss you, to at least, acknowledge your presence in a room.
But Park Jongseong is careful, too careful.
His words are measured, his actions restrained, as though every interaction is scripted. When he walks beside you, there’s always a polite distance, just enough to make it clear he’s near but never close enough to feel his warmth. Even when he hands you something—a pen, a glass of water—his fingers never brush yours.
It’s like he’s built an invisible wall between you, one that neither of you has dared to tear down.
“Ah—!” he winces in pain as you dab the medicated damp cotton a little too hard over his bruise on his cheeks.
“S-sorry, I had something on my mind,” you stutter, immediately discarding the cotton into a trashcan.
“Its fine,” Jongseong whispers.
“Wait let me see—” you reach your trembling, careful hand towards Jongseong’s bruise, in high hopes to cure it.
“Its okay I'm fine,” Jongseong reiterates, slapping your hand away in a hurried motion.
Ouch. Does he not want you touching him?
You gulp. The previous plaguing thoughts dawning over you once again. Doubt, insecurity and disturbance hurls at you at a threatening velocity once again, and you can feel yourself falling into a black void.
You gulp again, your throat suddenly dry, your fingers tightening around the edge of the bathroom sink. You wish you had something to hold onto, something solid or real. Because standing here, staring at your fiancé, you felt like you were slipping into something dark and unknown.
Jongseong sits on the marble countertop, his long legs spread apart, hands resting on either side of him like he was trying to keep himself steady. His crisp white dress shirt rumpled, the top buttons undone, revealing the faintest hint of a bruise blooming against his collarbone. His knuckles are scraped raw, his lip slightly swollen, and yet, god, yet he still looked unfairly handsome. Even now, even like this.
You wish he would just kiss you.
Just once.
Just so you could taste something other than this awful, gnawing suspicion twisting in your gut.
“How’d you hurt yourself?” you finally ask, your voice quiet but firm, pushing past the lump in your throat. The words feel too small in the vast space between you.
Jongseong exhales sharply through his nose, shifting where he sat, as if he suddenly found the countertop beneath him unbearably uncomfortable. He lifts a hand, raking it through his raven-black hair, the strands falling messily over his forehead. His dark eyes never met yours.
“Just fell first on my face,” he mutters, his voice tinged with forced nonchalance. “I was late to the office.”
The explanation is simple. Too simple. Like a script he had rehearsed and rewritten a thousand times before finally presenting it to you. His words echo in the cold, tiled room, but they lack weight. Lack of honesty.
Your fingers clench at the fabric of your sleeves as you nod slowly, pretending, for now, that you believed him. But the walls around you felt thinner, and the air between you was suffocating.
Because deep down, you know.
Jongseong is lying.
You nod slowly, trying to process his words, but they feel so hollow, so rehearsed. Jongseong doesn't even meet your eyes as he speaks, his gaze fixed on the tiled bathroom wall behind you.
“You should be more careful,” you sigh, ultimately rearranging all the medicines back to the first aid kit, with all your hopes of holding a long conversation with Jongseong slipping away into the trash can, “Its okay if you're late to office one day—”
“How'd you get this?” Jongseong mumbles, his hand was flying slowly towards you from your peripheral vision.
In a moment he stands up, easily towering over you. You can't dare to look in his eyes, so you settle yours at the loose buttons of his shirt. Your heart thumps faster as he moves in closer, a concerned yet bored tone in his voice.
And then it finally happens, the impact takes place. The rough, calloused yet gentle pads of his fingers touch the apple of your cheeks.
An electric shock runs through your veins— Park Jongseong touches your face.
“Uhm- I uh I was-” you stutter, unable to form a proper sentence.
“Weird,” Jongseong scoffs, retracting his hand. You wince at the absence of his touch, wishing it’d lasted longer. Jongseong continues, “we got hurt in the same place.”
Your breath hitches.
The warmth of his fingers lingered on your skin, even though the touch had been fleeting. Insignificant, maybe, to him. But to you? It was enough to leave your thoughts spiraling, to send your heart into a frenzied rhythm you couldn’t control.
Jongseong’s expression doesn’t change. It’s still composed, unreadable, but there was something else in his eyes now. Not warmth, not affection, but something bordering on curiosity. As if he were piecing together a puzzle, one he didn’t quite care enough to solve.
You force out a shaky breath, forcing yourself to meet his gaze. “It’s just a coincidence,” you mutter, lying through your teeth. Because, just like him, you aren’t being honest either.
Because your bruise wasn’t an accident.
And neither was his.
For a second, just a brief second, the two of you stand there in silence. The space between you feels suffocating, but not because of proximity. It was the weight of everything left unsaid. The doubts, the unspoken questions, the invisible wall that had existed from the very start.
You want to reach for him, to bridge the gap. To ask him what had really happened, to tell him you weren’t as blind as he might think. But the words die in your throat when Jongseong took a step back, like he had just realized he’d gotten too close.
“I should go,” he says flatly, rolling his shoulders as if shaking off some invisible burden. His hand brushes over his lip, pressing lightly against the swelling before he turns toward the door.
“Jongseong—”
He pauses. Just barely. Not enough to turn around, not enough to give you hope.
You clench your fists at your sides. “Be careful next time,” you finish, your voice softer, weaker than you wanted it to be.
There was a moment where you thought—hoped—he might say something back. But instead, he simply nods once before slipping out of the bathroom, leaving you standing there, alone with your own reflection.
Your fingers reach up, tracing the ghost of his touch on your cheek.
Park Jongseong had never kissed you.
And at this rate, you aren't sure if he ever will.
THE EVENING AIR BUZZES WITH CONVERSATION AND CLINKING GLASSES.
You sit rigidly at the long aok dining table, forcing a smile.
Jongseong is beside you, distant even in proximity, his fingers lightly tapping against the stem of his wine glass. You steal glances at him when you think he’s not looking, searching for any crack in his polished mask.
Across the table, your cousin Daisy leans forward, a mischievous glint in her eyes.
“So…” she begins loudly enough to catch everyone’s attention, “how’s the arranged love story going? Still playing house or have we upgraded to actual feelings yet?”
The table erupts into laughter. You stiffen, your heart dropping into your stomach.
You try to laugh along, but it comes out awkward and brittle.
“You know, busy schedules. Hard to plan our fairy tale ending around board meetings and conference calls.”
The words taste sour in your mouth.
You glance sideways at Jongseong, silently begging him with your eyes— Say something. Tell them it’s more. Tell them I’m more to you.
He simply chuckles, a soft, detached sound, and lifts his glass. The knot in your stomach tightens.
“Work always comes first,” he says, voice smooth, almost rehearsed.
There’s a pause. A small, hollow space opens inside your chest, which Jongseong manages to disturb.
Daisy snickers. “So romantic. Truly the love story of the century.”
Someone else jokes about putting bets on how long the marriage will last. More laughter, even more jokes. Insensitive and overlooking.
You feel your face heating up, but it's not embarrassment, it’s humiliation. And Jongseong, just sits there. Smiling politely, like he’s miles away.
You press your lips together tightly, stabbing your fork into a piece of roasted vegetable.
The moment passes, conversation flowing into safer topics, but your appetite is gone. All you can taste is the bitter disappointment.
As dessert is served, Jongseong’s phone vibrates on the table. He glances at it quickly, then tucks it away without a word. The tiny movement feels monumental. Another reminder that there's always somewhere else he'd rather be.
Finally, after what feels like hours, people start gathering their things, pulling on coats, exchanging hugs and goodbyes.
You and Jongseong step out into the chilly night. The cold air slaps your cheeks, a stark contrast to the stifling warmth inside.
You walk side by side in silence towards the car.
You can't hold it in any longer.
“Why didn’t you say anything back there?” you blurt, voice trembling despite your best effort to stay calm.
Jongseong stops walking. Turns to you slowly. His face is unreadable under the dim porch lights.
“About what?” he asks, feigning innocence. Oh, how you hate that face.
“About us,” you snap, your voice cracking under the weight of it all. “When they joked, when they implied we’re just business partners?”
He shrugs. “It was just a joke. Why give them more to gossip about?”
You stare at him, blinking rapidly to keep the sting of tears at bay. “Because it’s not just a joke to me.”
He exhales, raking a hand through his hair in frustration. “You’re overthinking it, Y/n.”
You laugh bitterly. “Am I? Because it feels pretty real when you don’t even try to correct them. When you act like you’re fine with everyone believing this marriage is just some... some arrangement you’re tolerating.”
His jaw tightens. “What would you have wanted me to say? That we’re madly in love? That we’re inseparable? That I can’t breathe without you?” His voice is low, cutting. He snaps, “Would that have made you feel better? Lying to everyone?”
You flinch like he slapped you. The hurt pools behind your eyes.
“I don’t need you to lie,” you whisper. “I just—”
The words hang between you, heavy, fragile.
For a second, just a second, something flickers across his face. Regret? Guilt? You can't tell.
But just as quickly, he turns away, walking briskly to the car. “Let’s not do this here,” he says sharply. “It’s late.”
You stand there for a moment, heart pounding, watching his back retreat from you like a closing door.
When you finally move, your feet feel like lead. You climb into the passenger seat without a word. The ride back home is suffocating. Silent. A chasm grows wider with every passing streetlight.
You want to reach out, to grab his hand, to say something, anything, that will fix whatever's breaking between you.
But you’re too afraid you’re the only one who still wants to fix it.
So you stare out the window, watching your reflection blur against the passing night.
And beside you, Jongseong drives on, his hands tight on the wheel, his face carved in stone.
Park Jongseong is giving up, maybe you should too.
PARK JONGSEONG THOUGHT HIS TO BE WIFE HAD FORGOT HIS BIRTHDAY.
But then he reminds himself, all these months of carrying a diamond ring of mockery on his hand— a symbol of bondage, marriage —he had never felt the fleeting touch of his soon to be wife.
And so he doesn't bother to kiss her goodbye, maybe pull her closer by her waist, whisper something not so innocent in her ears to watch her face flush in enticement, and leave for work with the motivation to come back to his fiancé’s arms.
No. He does nothing.
Park Jongseong doesn't even take the day off and stays at home. He leaves in a hurry, first thing in the morning. He doesn’t like celebrating birthdays anyway, it’s just a year closer to his demise, nothing to like about it.
He packs his briefcase in silence as he steals one last glance of you, groaning lazily as you make your way to the washroom. Of course, you have your job too, and Jongseong expected even less. It’s just a birthday, nothing too much.
9:30 am, he reaches his office building.
The heir to the prestigious, Park Company. The weight of expectation hung in the air like a finely spun chandelier, too delicate to touch, too grand to ignore. After all, he wasn’t just any director. He was Park Jongseong. The upcoming CEO. The heir.
The revolving glass doors of the company building spun to a slow stop behind him. Jongseong adjusted the cuffs of his suit jacket, eyes half-lidded, movements precise. He could hear the echo of his polished shoes as he walked through the marble tiled lobby, his reflection following him in the towering glass panels.
“Good morning, Vice President,” several voices chorused as he passed, accompanied by clipped bows and tight smiles.
He gave them all the same nod. Unbothered. Distant.
The elevator doors open and steps out alone, the silence laying on him like a second skin. The floor is cool and quiet, save for the typical office noises. He reminds himself that it's just another day, just another date on the calendar which could be overlooked without any problem. His team gathers up to the front door, clapping and smiling at him. Some senior executives push a forced smile in front of their young boss, the juniors more enthusiastic about someone they fear athough Jongseong doesn’t know if theirs are forced or natural.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY JONGSEONG,” they all sing song as confetti pops out in the air and paper freckles of his least favourite colours flutter down on him.
A distant banner said: TO THE FUTURE CEO. He shrugs, a polite smile on his face.
Among the crowd he spots Sunghoon, his first cousin as he steps out with a jovial smile and hands still clapping. He was in line to be the CEO as well, before he put down the offer to be COO instead, saying he's not a natural leader like Jongseong is.
“To the youngest CEO our company has ever seen!” he exclaims to the crowd as he stands beside Jongseong, pulling him to an encouraging hug. “What?” he snickers, “don't like the celebration?”
“No, I love it,” Jongseong hopes his smile is not too fake looking as he faces his team, not all of them are happy to be here, some are bored and waiting for their shift to be over. He sighs, “thank you guys for this, it means a lot to me.”
A celebration follows, and Jongseong does what is needed. A polite tight lipped smile, respectful bows and a small speech. Said the expected words. Cut the cake, nodded through small talk, and endured hugs from coworkers who’d never even dared to speak to him before today.
When noon rolls around, someone chirps, “We ordered lunch in! Come eat with us, Vice President Park!”
But Jongseong shakes his head.
“I’ll stay in,” he says, voice as smooth as glass. “I have calls to take.”
He turns, walks into his office, and shuts the door behind him.
Silence falls like a blanket. The cheers and loud noises quickly fade as the second Jongseong pulls the door close to his office, making slow and steady steps to his chair. He sits down on it, sighing as he lets out a shaky breath.
Birthday.
The word still rolls bitterly in his mind, not festive, not celebratory—just sharp edged and cold. A reminder of time ticking forward, dragging him further into a life that never felt like his own. A year older, a year deeper into expectations that weren’t his to begin with. The title. The company. The marriage.
He remembers the uncomfortable tight-fitting tuxedos, blinding camera flashes, tight lipped smiles of relatives he didn’t know and as usual, a script.
A script he had to learn every year, which is now installed in his brain. Jongseong just has to open his mouth and utter the same, mechanical and monotonous words in front of everyone as his parents would reassure him after, of how well he did, how well he behaved. And before he even knew it, birthdays meant nothing to him.
But then again, it was made cold and unbearable to him by the world. By his parents.
“Whatever,” he sighs and shrugs his blazer off him. And just as he’s about to throw it on his desk, he notices something.
A lunch box, covered neatly in pink satin cloth. A small note on top.
Jongseong doesn’t want to make assumptions, but he does anyway. What if it's from you? What if you really remembered his birthday? With a gulp, he steers his chair closer to his desk and picks up the lunch box, opening his cloth and reading the note in his hands, holding it up close.
Hope you like it. Happy birthday Jongseong, from y/n.
His breath falters, you remember.
His name in your handwriting. A little crooked, like you were in a rush, or were nervous. His throat tightens as he peels the lid off the top container.
And the scent hits him instantly.
Curry.
Rich, warm, and spiced exactly the way he likes it. Not the kind served at expensive restaurants with dainty portions, but the real kind. Homemade. The kind that sticks to your ribs. The kind that reminds him of chilly weekends in Seattle when he was small enough to sit on the kitchen counter, swinging his legs while his grandmother stirred the pot.
Something coils in his chest.
Carefully, he lifts the second container. The rice is shaped into a perfect flat surface. Neatly pressed, fluffy, hot. And across it—seaweed sheet, hand-cut with meticulous patience—spells out three letters.
JAY
Jongseong feels his heartbeat faltering. He winces as his offices’ air conditioning hits the bruise on his cheeks. He carefully sets the curry down on his table, before gaping at the rice again.
It indeed spells, JAY.
He scoffs at this weird feeling. The more he stares at it the more his heart burns and coils.
Only his grandmother had ever called him that. Not his father. Not his mother. No one in the stiff, lacquered halls of his youth had bothered to learn the name that made him feel… human. Small. Loved.
And now here it was. Cut delicately in seaweed. Sitting quietly in a box on his birthday.
By you.
“You’re really not going to join us for lunch?” Sunghoon barges in his office, striding towards Jongseong's desk.
Jongseong hurriedly tries to close the lunchbox, but it’s too late. Sunghoon’s eyes have already zeroed in on it like a hawk spotting prey.
“Is that curry?” Sunghoon gasps, leaning over the desk like an excited child. “Oh my god, it smells amazing. Who got you that? Is it from that expensive place across the street? Is that seaweed spelling your name? That’s so cute—”
“Get your hands away from it,” Jongseong snaps, dragging the lunchbox closer to his chest like it’s a newborn baby he’s sworn to protect with his life.
Sunghoon’s hand freezes mid-reach. His eyebrows shoot up.
“Wow. Wow. Possessive much?”
“This is mine,” Jongseong mutters defensively, clutching the lunchbox tighter. “You guys have a whole lunch downstairs. Go eat that.”
“But that’s communal food,” Sunghoon whines, poking the air toward the lunchbox. “This looks special. Homemade. You should share. It’s what Grandma Jay would’ve wanted.”
Jongseong glares at him.
“Grandma Jay would’ve wanted you to mind your own business.”
Sunghoon snickers, undeterred, and tries to lunge for a bite. Jongseong immediately swivels his chair away, putting his entire body between Sunghoon and the precious lunch like a shield.
“Jesus, you’re like a dragon hoarding treasure,” Sunghoon laughs, hands on his hips. “You’re gonna die alone with that lunchbox in your arms.”
“Good,” Jongseong says without missing a beat. “But I'm not going to share.”
Sunghoon makes one last dramatic, fake sob attack at the lunchbox. Jongseong kicks at him under the desk until he stumbles back, defeated.
Grumbling, Sunghoon heads for the door, shooting Jongseong a betrayed look over his shoulder.
“You’ve changed, man,” he says dramatically. “Fame, fortune… personalized seaweed letters. You’re not the same Jongseong I knew.”
Jongseong just smirks to himself as the door swings shut again.
Finally, blessed peace.
He opens the lunchbox once more, the smell of curry filling the room, and the sight of your careful seaweed letters warming a space inside him he didn’t even know was still hollow.
A dull sting pulses along his cheek as he chews, and his hand drifts to the bruise you both pretended not to see. He clicks his tongue, annoyed. Coincidence, he tells himself. Nothing more. But the throbbing settles under his skin like a reminder—of you, of your quiet lies, of his own.
But this time, when he takes the first bite, he laughs under his breath.
YOU DESERVED A BETTER GRATITUDE THAN A JUST SIMPLE THANK YOU.
Park Jongseong sighs as he stares at the window of his car, watching the raindrops race against each other. His fingers drum restlessly against the steering wheel, the soft patter of rain against metal filling the silence inside the car.
He leans back against the headrest, staring at the road.
“thank you for the lunch, y/n.” he said last night, “it was so delicious.”
He remembers the tension between your brows, how they knotted up gently and relaxed a second after. Disappointment. He was offhand, rushed and sudden with his words, not even looking into your eyes as he said how warm the meal was. So why wouldn’t you be disappointed? Jongseong remembers the way you rolled your shoulders back, a small sigh escaping you as if you had to physically push the disappointment out of your body, tuck it somewhere he wouldn’t notice.
“you’re welcome,” you said simply, unmuting the ignored show playing on the tv with a soft clenched jaw, which Jongseong wished he wouldn’t notice.
He knew that your welcome wasn’t genuine. And maybe he could’ve tried to find the stars in your eyes to make things better, maybe he shouldn’t overthink.
But he also remembers the way you took a second glance of him when he stood there like a robot, holding his almost empty briefcase in his hands, wanting to say something else than just a thank you.
Your eyes were cold then. Faint traces of tears sticking to your lashes, catching the soft glow of the overhead light as you looked at him like you were trying to read him one last time. He thought you would say something, maybe shout or scoff at his posture.
But nothing came out of your mouth except a tired sigh as you abandoned your discomfort and disappointment on the cold couch as you made your way towards the shared bedroom, agonizingly slow.
Maybe you had that pace intentionally, for him to call you back and say something real. Cause fuck, you remember his beloved nickname which was lost, you remember how he liked his curry, you remember him.
Lost in own thoughts, something interesting catches Jongseong’s eyes.
Is that you?
Jongseong gets startled at the sight. You, in this heavy and cold rain, trying to cross the road with your blazer above your head, which does nothing to keep you dry.
“Shit,” he curses under his breath, quickly starting his car as he drives across the road, stopping just beside the pavement.
“Y/n!” He shouts your name clear in the heavy rain, loud enough for you to turn around to his voice, “get in, you’re going to get sick!”
You pause mid-step at his voice, blinking through the rain as you turn to face him. The car idles beside the curb, headlights casting a pale glow across the drenched street. His figure leans across the seat, the passenger door wide open like a quiet plea.
But you stay rooted where you are, water soaking through your shoes, the cold seeping deeper beneath your skin. Your hands clench at your sides.
“I’m fine,” you call out, loud enough for him to hear but it’s tough at the edge, shaking, “go home, Jongseong—”
“Y/n please,” he pleads, although it doesn’t sound like one, “you’re soaking wet, just shut up and get in!”
“I’m- I’m fine,” you snap. You don’t want to get in the car just because he happens to see you and is inviting you to stay dry. That’s the only case, isn’t it? Jongseong is here by coincidence, he wouldn’t deliberately check your location to pick you up in this awful weather. Would he?
“I can go by myself, the rain is not too bad.”
You can hear him sigh, as he gets out of his car, slamming the door behind him.
“Get in,” he steps into the rain, the downpour immediately plastering his shirt to his skin, darkening the fabric, “You will fall sick, y/n. Get in the car.”
He steps even closer, his hair now sticking to his forehead by this insufferable rain as he narrows his eyes. “If you want to be sick so bad, do this another day.”
Your throat tightens. You want to scream at him, shake him, ask him why he always waits until things fall apart before showing up. Why he only steps into the rain once you’re already drenched.
But instead you force your chin up, press your lips into a tight smile as you gather your blazer tighter around yourself.
“Don’t act like you care if i’m sick, Jongseong,” you didn't want to say that, but do anyways.
He blinks. For a second, his expression falters. Barely. “Why not?,” he says quietly, almost like he’s confessing something he hadn’t intended to say aloud. But then his gaze hardens again, guarded. “You’re freezing, Y/N. Stop being stubborn.”
The wind blows past you both, cold and biting. You shiver, teeth clattering as you try to recover whatever warmth the soaked blazer has to give.
“I won’t go—”
“As much as I would love to argue with you right now,” Jongseong cuts off, standing so close that your hands could meet, “I can't let you get sick.”
Your lips part, another protest rising, but before you can speak, Jongseong’s fingers curl around your wrist, not harsh, but firm. His brows draw together, rain sliding down his temples, his lips a tight line.
“I said get in the car,” he repeats, lower this time. His voice carries an edge, not pleading, not begging—commanding. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
You glare at him, heart wrenching in the cold rain as it seeps into your work clothes.
“You only come when it’s convenient for you,” you try to hold it together.
He steps closer, raindrops sliding down the sharp lines of his face. “You think this is convenient for me?” he says bitterly, tone low, controlled. “You think standing here like an idiot in the rain for you is easy?”
The proximity hits you suddenly. He’s standing close, too close, as the rain damps his shirt next. Jongseong’s grip around your wrist tightens, indicating he’s not going back home without you in his car.
And somehow that warms you a bit in this coldness.
His eyes are direct, confronting as they try to soften into yours. Try, you can see it, how his eyebrows lift and slowly fall, trying to find the ease in the situation to gently pull you into the car with no trouble, with no one getting sick.
“Y/n…” he whispers your name, as if for the last time when he finally eases his brows, “get in the car. Please.”
You gulp at his seriousness, a droplet of rain rolls from his chin to fall on your cheeks. It’s cold, making you flinch.
“And if i don’t go?” you test the waters, voice trembling as you watch him roll back his shoulders.
“Then I’ll carry you,” he says without hesitation, his gaze hardening. “Don’t test me right now.”
Something in his tone makes your breath hitch. He’s not bluffing—you know that.
You swallow, lips pressing into a thin line as you hesitate, your pride warring with the exhaustion creeping into your bones. But just as another gust of wind leaves you shivering, your resolution breaks.
You look away first, “You are a very bad liar—”
Jongseong doesn’t speak, doesn’t smile or smirk or gloat. He just scoops you up before you can finish the sentence.
Your breath leaves you in a sharp gasp as Jongseong’s arm slides under your knees and the other wraps firmly around your back, pulling you against him. Your soaked blazer slips uselessly from your shoulders, rain immediately lashing against your skin, but his body blocks most of it. He’s solid, unyielding, warm in a way that makes your chest ache.
“Jongseong—!” you protest, instinctively gripping the front of his damp shirt. His name tears out of you softer than you intended.
“I warned you,” he mutters, jaw clenched as he turns toward the car. His grip tightens reflexively when you shift, as if afraid you’ll fall or run. “Stop fighting me.”
He reaches the car and nudges the passenger door open with his knee, maneuvering you inside with careful precision.
When he slides back into his seat, drenched and stoic, he doesn’t look at you immediately. Just stares ahead as the engine hums softly beneath the rain. And with that, he pulls the car into drive, headlights cutting through the downpour, his hand steady on the wheel even if everything else between you trembles on the edge of falling apart.
“Take this,” he says, reaching towards the backseat and grabbing his dry blazer, “you’ll be cold.”
“T-thanks,” you don’t argue much as your teeth clatter together, quickly draping the blazer over your damp clothes.
“Y-your clothes are soaked too,” you gulp, voice soft and nervous. You glance at Jongseong’s side profile as he drives, “you’ll get sick—”
“I’ll be fine,” he says, his voice low and steady, almost too calm, “I’m not the one shivering. And it’s just a little rain.”
“So much for the guy who didn’t let me walk home in the rain,” you giggle softly, hoping to elevate his mood but his expressions remain stoic, indifferent.
You pull the blazer tighter around yourself. It smells like him. espresso, cologne and ironically, like home.
“Thank you for—” you clear your throat, taking time to rethink your gratitude towards him when he himself barely shows it. He’s always words, one or two, never sentences like you. But at the end of the day, someone has to express something.
“Thank you for the blazer, and for picking me up anyways. I know you didn’t mean to and I’m sorry for being a nuisance—”
“You’re not a nuisance,” he admits, eyes still on the road. Your heart stops. “I’m not that big of a jerk to let my fiance come home with a fever.”
There’s a silence that stretches long and sharp, the rain outside tapping impatient fingers against the windows. You sink deeper into the passenger seat, your hands curling in your lap. His words aren’t romantic. They aren’t sweet. But they tear through something inside you, a part that’s been holding itself together with hope and delusion.
It’s the bare minimum. It’s something, and something is better than nothing. Right?
“Really?” you whisper, unsure if you really heard that right.
He nods slightly, still focused on the road ahead. “What’s there to question? If you don’t want me picking you up next time, just say so.”
Your heart tugs, this is coming from him. You don’t need anything more than this quiet ride, the shared space between you, the knowledge that he’s here. Whether it’s out of obligation or something deeper.
Jongseong reaches forward, turning on the car’s heating system inside.
“You can keep the blazer,” he mumbles.
You leave it here for now, basking into the silence with his cologne around you, questioning whether or not you really have space in his heart.
RAIN ALWAYS MAKES HIM SOFT.
Not in the obvious way. Not the cinematic way where he confesses or reaches for you or lets himself be held. It makes him quiet first—eyes lingering on windows, fingers tapping restlessly, shoulders drawn tight like he’s bracing for something unseen. You notice it the moment you step onto the rooftop, the smell of wet concrete clinging to your coat, droplets sliding down the glass doors behind you.
It’s Sunghoon’s birthday, technically, though no one is really treating it like one. You almost didn’t come. Long days at work, the quiet tension waiting for you at home. But Sunghoon had called, cheerful and insistent, saying it would be “good for everyone,” which usually meant good for Jongseong.
You arrive later than Jongseong and spot him near the bar, surrounded by men in expensive suits. Business partners, maybe friends, you don’t linger long enough to figure it out. After greeting Sunghoon and handing him a gift you picked up last minute, you drift toward the railing instead, letting the city stretch beneath you.
The air is cold. Damp. The kind that creeps under your skin.
He doesn’t see you at first.
Or maybe he does, and pretends he doesn’t. He stands with a glass in his hand, ice melting faster than he drinks it, head tilted just enough to listen without really engaging.
You watch him from the corner of your eyes. Careful, as he would have been. You watch the way his jaw tightens when someone laughs too loudly, his thumb rubs the rim of his glass over and over—a nervous habit he probably doesn’t realize he has. His jacket is off, sleeves rolled neatly to his forearms.
He looks up suddenly, eyes catching you the first thing he looks at besides his drink, as if rehearsed.
You look away quickly. Ever since he rescued you from the rain, he’s gotten quieter. Maybe shy. You notice how quickly he looks away from your eyes, how he hums shakily in response to your soft thank yous, how his cheeks filled with color when you wore his blazer home, rain soaked and cold.
You hope none of that was your imagination.
Sunghoon’s laughter rings behind you, bright and careless, and you force a smile as someone hands you a drink. The rooftop is warm, string lights overhead, music low and conversation easy. You lean against the railing.
That’s when someone steps beside you.
“Didn’t think you’d make it,” a familiar voice says.
You turn. Sim Jaeyun—coworker, colleague, friend, whatever fits best these days. Casual clothes, sleeves pushed up, hair slightly messy like he doesn't care. He smiles easily.
“Neither did I,” you admit. “Long week.”
“You look tired.”
“You have no idea.”
He says your name gently. He asks about work, complains about his boss, makes you laugh with a stupid story about getting lost. At some point, without thinking, he brushes a strand of hair away from your face, fingers grazing your temple.
You don’t pull away.
You don’t notice the shift in the room.
But Jongseong does.
He notices the untouched drink, the way your sleeve keeps slipping, and he sure as hell notices someone else standing in front of you. Touching you. Smiling with you.
The sound around him dulls, like someone turned the volume down. He sees the touch, the way you tilt your head, the smile he doesn’t think he’s ever earned. Something hot and sharp coils in his chest.
He downs his drink.
“Vice President Park, what are your thoughts—”
He doesn’t hear it.
Another glass appears in his hand. He gulps it down. His throat burns.
The weather crawls under his skin. Anger blurs into something uglier, something dangerously close to fear.
Why are you smiling like that?
He tells himself it’s none of his business. He has no claim. You’re his fiancée by contract, not by touch, not by confession.
And yet his feet move before his thoughts catch up.
He doesn’t storm. He detaches himself from the circle, sets his glass down with too much force, and walks. Slow. Measured.
You feel it before you see him.
The air tightens. Jaeyun is mid sentence when your gaze flickers past his shoulder and lands on Jongseong.
He’s coming toward you.
Tie loosened. Hair disheveled. Jaw set hard. Alcohol makes him tipsy, but his intentions are clear.
Your heart stutters.
You straighten, fingers curling around your glass. Jaeyun notices, glances back.
“Uh,” he clears his throat. “Is that—”
Jongseong stops beside you.
Too close.
Close enough that you smell him—whiskey, rain, something bitter underneath. Close enough that his presence redraws the space.
“Vice President Park,” Jaeyun replies, straightening.
Jongseong’s gaze slides back to you. Lingers on your face, the loose strand by your temple, the slipping sleeve.
“Didn’t know you were coming,” he says to you. You swallow. “I told you earlier.”
He blinks, like he’s replaying the memory too late. “You did.” A beat of silence.
Jaeyun shifts, uncomfortable. “I was just keeping her company,” he says lightly, attempting to diffuse. “Didn’t mean to intrude.”
Jongseong hums low. His eyes don’t leave you.
“You don’t have to,” he says. Then, softer, but sharper. “I’ve got her. She’s taken.”
Your breath catches.
Jaeyun hesitates, glancing at you. You open your mouth, but Jongseong’s hand lifts first.
Not entirely touching you.
Hovering at the small of your back, close enough that you feel the heat through your dress. A careful, controlled claim.
“I’ll… grab another drink,” Jaeyun says. “Nice seeing you.”
When he leaves, the space collapses.
You’re alone with Jongseong.
Silence stretches, heavy with everything unsaid. He looks away first, dragging a hand through his hair, fingers trembling.
“I can— can talk better than him,” he hiccups.
“Seriously, how much did you drink?” he basically reeks of alcohol and slightly sways side to side as you guide him down the stairs to the empty hallway.
“Are you—,” your sentence is left unfinished a Jongseong cages you against the wall, shaking hands on each side of your head.
He’s close, too close. His eyes are red, unfocused, flickering between your eyes and your lips. His breath is warm but reeking of whiskey. His hands stay planted on the wall, shaking, fingers flexing like he’s reminding himself not to touch.
“You shouldn’t let—” he starts, then hiccups softly, the sound almost humiliating in how it breaks his authority. He squeezes his eyes shut for a second, reopens them, tries again. “Let someone who is not your h-husband touch you like that.” The words come out crooked, slurred at the edges, but the intent behind them is painfully clear.
You stare at him, stunned, then a breathy laugh slips out despite yourself. “God,” you murmur, “you’re so drunk.” His brows knit together immediately, offended and wounded in the same breath.
“So what I’m— drunk?” he demands, swaying closer before catching himself, forehead knocking lightly against the wall beside your head. “Did I say something wrong?”
“Yes,” you say, heart thudding. “Jongseong. You did.” You lift your chin, meeting his gaze even as your voice trembles. “You’re not my husband. You’re only my fiancé. And I can have my own friends.”
For a second, something hollow flashes across his face. Then he laughs, short, disbelieving.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head too hard. “No one else w-would check the—” another hiccup, quieter this time, “—weather and deliberately get wet in the rain just to bring you home safe.”
The words hit you harder than you expect, sinking deep and slow, like cold seeping through fabric. For a moment, you can’t breathe properly. You remember the rain too well. The way you’d laughed it off, the way he hadn’t, how he’d checked the rain twice and still stepped outside without an umbrella, coat already darkening at the shoulders because you hated walking alone.
“I would do that,” he continues, voice lower now. “As your— fucking fiancé or husband. Not Jaeyun. Not— not anyone else.”
His hands leave the wall. They hover instead, uncertain, fingers twitching in the space near your waist like he’s begging himself for restraint. He leans in despite it, forehead nearly brushing yours, breath warm and unsteady against your cheek.
“I would do it in a heartbeat,” he whispers.
Your chest tightens, a quiet ache blooming behind your ribs, because no one else has ever noticed the weather for you, has ever overlooked their own comfort for yours, yet some voice in the back of your head insists that he's just drunk.
But the way he says it hurts worse than any confession.
“I didn’t like him,” he admits. “Near you.”
“Why?” you whisper.
He doesn’t answer right away. His hand comes up to his chest again, fingers pressing there like he’s trying to steady something beneath his ribs. His breathing is uneven now, shallow.
“Jongseong,” you say, alarm creeping in. “Are you okay?”
He nods too quickly. “I’m fine.”
“I’m fine,” he repeats.
But he isn’t.
You see it when you guide him to the parking lot, cold wind tugging at your hair. He leans too much on you, apologizing under his breath.
“Sorry—sorry, I’m— I’m heavy,” he mumbles, fumbling for the car keys before giving up and letting you take them from his shaking fingers.
“You’re drunk,” you say gently. “Not dying.” He huffs out a weak laugh. “Feels close enough.”
The drive home is quiet, wipers sweeping rhythmically. Jongseong slumps in the passenger seat, eyes fluttering close like he’s afraid of what happens if he lets them stay closed. His breathing evens out only when the car stops at red lights, like only motion keeps him awake.
At one point, he murmurs your name. Just once. Soft. Unconscious.
Your hands tighten on the steering wheel.
Getting him inside is harder than you expect. He insists he can walk, immediately proves he can’t, nearly folding until you hook an arm around his waist.
“Easy,” you murmur. “I’ve got you.”
“I know,” he says. “You always— always do.”
You ease him onto the bed. He collapses face first into the pillows. You tug off his shoes, straighten the blanket, careful not to linger.
When you turn away, it feels like stepping back from something fragile. You make it two steps toward the door.
His hand closes around your wrist. Not rough but enough to stop you.
“Don’t,” he murmurs, barely awake, eyes still closed. His grip tightens slightly, like his body knows what he wants even if his mind can’t form it. “Cold.”
He tugs again, weak but insistent, pulling you down to the edge of the bed. He shifts, arm draping around your waist, face pressing into your side like he’s searching for warmth.
“Rain,” he mumbles into your dress. “Hate it when you’re out in it.”
You freeze.
His words dissolve into half formed apologies, your name tangled with quiet plead. His breathing slows, forehead resting against your stomach like it’s the safest place he knows.
You don’t move.
Because for the first time, his softness isn’t guarded or conditional. It’s just him, clinging in his sleep like he trusts you not to disappear.
And you realize, with startling clarity, that rain doesn’t make him weak.
It makes him tell the truth.
YOU WONDER IF YOU CARE TOO MUCH SOMETIMES.
Because no matter what you do for Park Jongseong, it never feels like enough to quiet the ache that lives with you. Loving him feels like holding something fragile and priceless in your bare hands, knowing that even your gentlest grip might hurt him, knowing that letting go might destroy you both.
You care in a way that feels reckless. Although you do see the consequence of it, that has now finally for once, in your favour.
Jongseong doesn’t pull away after that night.
If anything, he does the opposite.
He lingers.
At first, it’s subtle enough that you convince yourself it’s coincidence. He waits for you in the mornings, jacket already in hand even when the forecast promises clear skies. He sits closer at the dining table, knee brushing yours beneath the polished surface, never once apologizing for the contact. When you move around the apartment, he follows. Not hovering, not watching, just present.
You tell yourself it’s temporary. That he doesn’t remember what he said. That the drunken softness was a one-time fracture.
After all, this whole thing is arranged, and you’ve managed to gaslight yourself into thinking this softness is just obligation wearing a kinder face. That this is him playing his part better now.
You repeat it like a rule. Like something that can keep you at bay.
But rules blur when he learns your steps.
He starts matching his pace to yours without realizing it. Slowing when you slow, pausing when you hesitate, turning back when you forget something even if it makes him late. When you sit on the couch, he chooses the space beside you instead of across the room. When you’re tired, he quietly rearranges his schedule around yours, meetings shifted, calls taken later, priorities subtly rewritten.
It’s never announced. Never even whispered.
It just happens.
And it scares you more than it comforts you. Because this is what you wanted, wasn’t it? For him to care, to notice, to stay. But now that it’s happening, it feels unfamiliar in your hands. It feels like obligation. Plain obligation.
Still, sometimes you catch him looking at you with something like relief. Other times, something closer to fear.
That’s when it starts to bleed through.
In the way his fingers tighten around your sleeve when you mention staying late at work. In the way his jaw sets when your phone lights up with unfamiliar names.
At night, he sleeps closer.
Not always touching, sometimes just angled toward you, arm thrown over the empty space between your bodies like he’s reserving it. Other nights, he curls into you without thinking, forehead pressed to your shoulder, breath steadying only once you’re there. When he stirs from whatever restless place his dreams take him, his hand finds you first. Barely there. But always you.
You start waking before him just to watch.
The way his brow smooths in sleep. The way his lips part slightly when he exhales. The faint tension that never fully leaves his body, even at rest. You notice the moments when his breathing stutters, when his hand presses briefly to his chest before settling again. So subtle you wonder if you imagined it.
You don’t ask, even when you know you should.
Instead, you slip out of bed quietly, careful not to disturb the way Jongseong’s arm lies over your hand, loose but deliberate, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear. You peel his fingers away one by one, apologizing in your head for a crime you haven’t committed yet, and pad toward the kitchen.
The apartment is still. Morning light spills softly through the curtains, pale and forgiving. You make coffee the way he likes it now, without thinking about when you memorized that detail. The realization only hits after the mug is already warming your palms.
You’re setting plates on the counter when the bedroom door opens.
Jongseong stands there, hair mussed, shirt half-buttoned, eyes heavy but searching. He looks relieved when he finds you in the kitchen, like something in his chest loosens at the sight.
“You’re up,” he says, matter-of-fact.
“So are you,” you reply.
He hums and drifts closer, leaning his shoulder against the counter beside you. He doesn’t say anything, just watches you move, each small action tracked like he’s afraid to miss it.
Sunlight catches the faint shadows beneath his eyes.
“You didn’t sleep well,” you say without thinking.
He stiffens for half a second, then shrugs. “Didn’t want to wake you.”
That alone feels like a confession.
The moment lingers too long, fragile, exposed. Jongseong seems to realize it too, because his shoulders tense, his gaze drops, and the softness retracts all at once.
“Schedule’s tight this week,” he says abruptly, voice clipped. “Might come home late.”
You nod, even though you know that’s not the reason the air has cooled.
Breakfast is quiet after that.
He sits across from you instead of beside you, answers short, eyes fixed anywhere but your face. When you pass him the toast, your fingers brush, and he flinches.
It’s barely noticeable.
But you notice.
You lift your mug, letting the warmth settle your nerves. The coffee tastes familiar, comforting in a way that makes your chest ache. You don’t realize he’s staring until he turns back to the counter and starts brewing coffee again.
“You already have one,” you say.
“I know.”
He pours it into a different mug. A plain one. You ask, very confused, “Why are you using a different cup?”
He pauses, then nods toward your hands. “Because you’re holding mine.”
You freeze, eyes dropping to the mug. His mug. Heat rushes to your face.
“I— I’m sorry,” you say quickly, already standing. “I didn’t realize—”
“Hey.” His voice is gentle. He steps closer, stopping you with a light touch to your wrist. “It’s fine.”
You look up at him, still braced.
“It’s just a cup,” he adds, softer.
Something in your chest loosens. “Isn’t it your favorite?” you murmur.
He pours milk into his coffee, hesitates, then adds a little more—your preference, not his. When he notices you watching, he clears his throat.
“I can share,” he says.
You smile, small and careful. This time, he doesn’t look away.
But to your luck, softness doesn’t last.
It creeps into the days quietly, settles into routines, hides in shared cups and matching steps. Until one evening, it snaps under the weight of everything neither of you is saying.
Jongseong comes home late.
You know it the moment the door opens, not because of the time, but because of the way it opens. Sharper. With a thud.
You’re on the couch, half curled into the corner with your laptop abandoned beside you, the apartment lit only by a lamp you forgot to turn off. You look up instinctively.
He doesn’t greet.
His tie is loosened, jacket still on, hair slightly damp like he washed his hands too aggressively and dragged his fingers through it afterward. His expression is shut tight, jaw clenched in a way that makes something in your chest tighten in response.
“You’re late,” you say. Not accusing. Just stating.
“I know,” he replies, cold.
He doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t take his jacket off. Just stands there like he hasn’t decided whether to stay or leave.
Something prickles.
“You said you’d text,” you add, softer now.
His eyes flick to yours. There’s irritation there, not fully directed at you, but sharp enough to cut.
“I was busy.”
The way he says it feels deliberate.
You close your laptop slowly. “You’ve been busy every night this week.”
Silence.
You stand as if to confront him. The distance between you shrinks without either of you meaning it to.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” you say, carefully. “But don’t shut me out either.”
His laugh is quiet. Humorless. “I’m not shutting you out.”
“You are,” you say, firmer now. “You come home exhausted, you won’t talk, you won’t let me ask if you’re okay—”
“I am okay,” he snaps.
The sharpness makes you flinch before you can stop yourself.
He sees it.
Something dark flashes across his face—regret, anger, fear, all tangled together.
“I didn’t mean—” He stops. Swallows. “You’re overthinking.”
The words land badly.
“You hate it when I watch you,” you say quietly. “But you hate it more when I stop.”
His hands curl into fists at his sides.
“You don’t get to psychoanalyze me,” he says. “You don’t know what it’s like—”
“Then tell me,” you cut in. Your voice shakes despite your effort. “Stop standing five steps away from me like I’m a stranger in my own house.”
That does it.
He crosses the space between you in three strides.
Too fast. Too close.
You barely have time to inhale before he’s there. Towering, breathing unevenly, the air between you charged and dangerous. His hands come up, bracing against the wall on either side of your head.
The sound it makes is soft.
The effect is not.
Your heart slams against your ribs. You can feel his warmth now, feel the tension vibrating off him, feel how hard he’s fighting himself. His face is inches from yours, so close you can see the faint pulse at his jaw, the way his eyes flicker down to your mouth before snapping back up.
“Don’t,” he says hoarsely. Not a command, but warning to himself.
“Don’t what?” you whisper, breath catching.
“Look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
He gulps, as if holding back very specific words. “Like I owe you something I can’t give.”
Your chest aches. “I’m not asking for anything.”
“Yes, you are,” he says, voice low, strained. “You ask just by standing there. By—” His breath stutters. “By caring.”
You don’t move.
You can feel his breath on your cheek. Warm. Unsteady. His lips are dangerously close now, close enough that the slightest tilt would end everything you’ve been holding apart.
“I can’t,” he whispers. “You don’t understand what you’re asking me to risk.”
“Then why are you here?” you ask, tears threatening. “Why do you come back to me every night if you’re so afraid?”
His eyes darken.
Because he wants to kiss you.
Because you can see it. The way his mouth softens, the way his body leans in despite his mind screaming no. His forehead dips, brushing yours. He gulps again, eyes glued to your lips. For half a second, you think he’s going to give in.
You think this is it.
Then he pulls back.
Abrupt. Violent in its restraint.
He steps away like he’s been burned, dragging a hand through his hair, breathing hard. He doesn’t look at you when he speaks again.
“I need air,” he says, voice rough. “I can’t do this tonight.”
He grabs his jacket off the chair, pauses at the door just long enough for you to think, hope, he might turn back.
He doesn’t.
The door closes behind him, leaving you alone in the charged silence, lips still tingling from a kiss that never happened, heart aching from how close he came.
And how far he ran.
PARK JONGSEONG SMOOTHENS HIS TIE IN FRONT OF THE MIRROR.
He does it twice. Then a third time. Slow, precise movements, like repetition might quiet the unease sitting low in his chest. The mirror reflects a version of him he knows how to wear, pose and pretend. The heir. The fiancé. The man who never falters.
Except his fingers hesitate at his collarbone.
Just for a fraction of a second.
He exhales, steadying himself, and reaches for his cufflinks. The room smells faintly of cologne and starch and something warmer beneath it. Home, he thinks, before he can stop himself.
The bedroom door opens softly behind him.
“Jongseong?”
Your voice.
He straightens instinctively, shoulders squaring before he turns around.
You stand there in the doorway, light spilling in behind you, and for a moment he forgets how to breathe.
The dress drapes over you like it was designed with patience, soft fabric, gentle lines, nothing loud. It doesn’t demand attention. It invites it. The kind that lingers. The kind that stays. Your hair falls neatly over your shoulders, collarbones catching the light, skin warm and real in a way that makes something twist uncomfortably in his chest.
You shift your weight, suddenly self conscious beneath his stare.
“So?” you ask, trying to sound casual. “How do I look?”
The question hangs between you.
Jongseong opens his mouth. But then closes it back.
His eyes trace you—too slow to be polite, too careful to be careless. He notices everything: the way the fabric settles at your waist, the slight dip at your collarbone, the way your hands fidget like you’re bracing for something. For him. Because of him.
Because the last thing he remembers clearly is your breath on his lips and the way he walked away like a coward.
“You look—” Jongseong gulps, the words getting stuck between his throat and his heart. His eyes dart away from your eyes and he opens his mouth again.
“You look—”
“Sir,” the driver’s voice cuts in from the hallway. Why, the perfect timing. “The car is ready.”
The moment collapses.
Jongseong nods once, grateful and irritated all at the same time. “We’ll be right there.”
The door closes again, leaving the words unsaid. You smile at him, understanding, and he hates himself for not being fast enough with his words
----
The family house is already alive when you arrive.
Laughter spills from the open doors. The clink of glasses. Familiar voices layered over one another in practiced warmth. Jongseong’s mother greets you first, eyes sharp and appraising, a practised smile.
“You look lovely,” she tells you, hands light on your shoulders. “Perfect.”
Jongseong’s father nods at him from across the room, just acknowledging his presence with his perfect wife. But he doesn’t come up to you both for once.
“Do you want to sit?” he asks quietly, leaning in just enough that no one else hears. His voice is neutral, but his shoulders are tense.
“I’m fine,” you reply. Then, after a beat, softer, “Are you?”
He exhales through his nose. “I will be.”
That’s not an answer.
You drift toward the window under the pretense of admiring the garden lights. Jongseong follows a moment later, stopping beside you.
“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” he murmurs, leaning a little closer to your ears.
You keep your eyes forward. “Which part?”
His jaw ticks. “All of it.”
“That’s convenient,” you say, not unkindly, just bored.
He glances at you then, eyes dark. “This isn’t the place.”
“No,” you agree, nodding. “It never is.”
Dinner starts shortly after. What is meant to be a family gathering feels like business meeting soon.
Everyone takes their seats, chairs pulled back in unison, napkins folded just so. Jongseong sits beside you, close enough that his knee brushes yours beneath the table, a small anchor in a room that already feels too large.
Conversation starts harmless.
Someone comments on the weather. Another praises the dishes. Jongseong’s uncle talks about a recent business acquisition, his voice carrying authority. You nod when appropriate, smile when addressed, keep your posture perfect.
But then the atmosphere shifts.
“So,” one of his aunts says, swirling her wine, eyes flicking to you with something like curiosity, “have you settled into married life yet?”
Not yet married, you want to say, You know that.
Instead, you smile. “We’re adjusting.”
She hums. “That’s good. It’s important to learn flexibility early. Especially for women.”
Another voice joins in, you don’t recognizethe face. “You still plan on working after the wedding, right? Or is this just, a phase?”
You open your mouth, then hesitate. Choose your words carefully. “I enjoy my work.”
“Of course,” someone else laughs lightly. “But family should always come first. Jongseong’s responsibilities are already immense.”
The implication lands quietly. You are not one of them.
You glance down at your plate, appetite gone. Your hands curl slightly in your lap, nails pressing into skin just enough to ground you.
“But it must be nice,” his cousin adds, smiling sweetly, “to have everything taken care of. Some people don’t realize how fortunate they are.”
Fortunate.
The word lands softly, almost politely—and still, it sinks its teeth into you. It curls somewhere behind your ribs, sharp and humiliating, because you know exactly what they mean by it. Not lucky. Not loved. Arranged. Chosen for you. Your hands rest neatly in your lap, fingers folded just right, posture perfect, because this is what fortune looks like from the outside.
You smile because you’re supposed to, because anything else would be impolite. Your chest tightens anyway. They don’t see the waiting, the wanting, the nights spent staring at a ceiling beside a man who won’t touch you. They don’t see how much of yourself you’ve learned to shrink just to fit into this version of “enough.”
You’re just another asset for them. A doll beside Jongseong.
Your eyes burn, vision blurring just slightly, and you lower your gaze before anyone notices. Because crying here would be unforgivable.
Jongseong’s fork stops moving.
It doesn’t clatter. He doesn’t drop it. He simply stills and puts it down.
He looks at you. Really looks this time.
The way your shoulders have gone rigid. The way your smile hasn’t quite reached your eyes. The way your head tips lower, lashes casting shadows over cheeks that are just a little too flushed, eyes shining with something dangerously close to tears.
“That’s enough,” Jongseong says.
The words aren’t loud. They don’t need to be. They cut through the table cleanly, like a blade sliding between ribs.
Conversation falters. Glasses pause halfway to lips.
His aunt blinks. “Jongseong, we were just—”
“You were being disrespectful,” he interrupts, voice steady and controlled. His hand moves under the table, fingers brushing your knee once. “And you’re not going to continue.”
His cousin scoffs softly. “Oh, come on. We didn’t mean anything by it.”
“I know exactly what you meant,” he says. His glare flicks across the table, sharp and unyielding. “And you don’t get to talk about her like she’s a convenience. Or something handed to me.”
The silence thickens.
His mother opens her mouth, but hesitates.
His father clears his throat. “Jongseong,” he says carefully, in a warning tone. “That’s enough. This is a family dinner.”
Jongseong turns to him slowly.
For a moment, his expression falters. Not with doubt, but with something older and buried.
“Just because you never said anything to defend Mom,” he says, voice low and shaking, “doesn’t mean I’ll do the same for my—”
He stops. Breathes shakily.
“—my wife.”
The words lands heavy. Your head snaps up to Jongseong, tears almost running down.
“She is not fortunate,” he continues, eyes never leaving his father’s. “She is capable. She is intelligent. And she does not owe anyone gratitude for being here.”
A pause.
“If you can’t respect that,” he finishes, “then this dinner is over.”
Your throat tightens painfully.
You stand before anyone can respond, chair scraping softly against the floor.
“Excuse me,” you say, voice thin but steady. “I need some air.”
You move before anyone can stop you.
The chair scrapes softly against the floor as you stand, the sound far too loud in the thick silence Jongseong has carved open. Your hands tremble, but your spine stays straight.
No one stops you. No one knows how.
You walk out before the tears can fall.
The hallway feels endless. Too bright. Too quiet. Your heels click too fast against the marble as you head toward the garage, breath coming shallow, chest tight like it’s caving in. You tell yourself not to cry. You’ve done this long enough. You can do this too.
You don’t hear him at first.
“Y/n—!”
Jongseong’s voice cuts through the space, urgent in a way you’ve never heard before. You turn just as your foot slips, heel catching awkwardly on the edge of the concrete ramp.
You twist your ankle, pain shooting up.
You gasp, stumbling forward, but arms catch you.
Strong. Jongseong absorbs you without hesitation, one arm braced around your waist, the other gripping your forearm.
“Shit—” he breathes, crouching instantly. “Don’t move.”
Your ankle throbs, hot and pulsing. You bite your lip hard, tears finally spilling over.
“I’m fine,” you whisper.
“No,” he says, “You’re not.”
He doesn’t ask for permission.
Jongseong lifts you into his arms. Your face presses briefly into his shoulder, the scent of his cologne grounding you despite everything.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, voice low and steady. “I won’t drop you.”
He carries you to the car, sets you down gently, buckles you in himself with shaking hands. When he slides into the driver’s seat, his jaw is tight, eyes dark with something fierce and protective.
Neither of you speak as he pulls out of the driveway.
The house disappears behind you.
THE APARTMENT IS QUIET WHEN YOU GET THERE.
Muted, like it’s holding its breath with you. Jongseong helps you inside without a word, arm firm around your waist, movements careful in a way that feels practiced and panicked all at once. He sits you down on the couch, kneeling immediately in front of you, jacket discarded somewhere behind him.
“Let me see,” he says, voice low.
You hesitate. “It’s probably not that bad—”
“Please,” he cuts in, gentler now. “Just… let me.”
He slips off your heel slowly, like he’s afraid even the air might hurt you. His hands are warm, steady despite the tension still living in his shoulders. When his fingers brush your ankle, you flinch.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs instantly, retreating. “I’ll be careful.”
He fetches the first aid kit, crouches again, and wraps your ankle with slow precision. His brows knit together, jaw tight, focus unwavering.
The silence stretches.
“You didn’t have to say that,” you whisper suddenly. “Back there.”
He doesn’t look up. “I did.”
“I could defend myself—”
“I know.” His hands pause. Then he looks at you. Really looks at you. “But I wanted to.”
Something in his expression fractures then. Eyebrows relaxes, shoulder dropping. His thumb lingers at your ankle a second too long, like he’s forming words.
You swallow. “You didn’t have to,” you say, even though part of you aches because he did. “Not against your family like that—”
“Yes,” he replies immediately. Too quickly. “I did.”
Your gaze drops to his hands, still hovering around your ankle, fingers warm and careful. He exhales through his nose, steadies himself, and resumes wrapping the bandage, slower now, like he’s afraid any sudden movement might make something crack.
“Maybe they were right,” you murmur, fidgeting with your fingers, warm agaisnt your lap. “About me being fortunate.”
His looks up, immediately. “Don’t.”
“It’s fine,” you add quickly, reflexive. “I’m used to it.”
That makes him stop again.
“No,” he says, quieter. “You shouldn’t be. They were wrong about everything.”
You laugh under your breath, bitter. “Jongseong—”
His thumb presses lightly into your ankle, apologetic and voice soft. “Does it hurt?” he asks.
“A little.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, and you can’t tell what he’s apologizing for anymore.
“You didn’t push me,” you try. “I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
“I should’ve been there faster.”
You look at him then. “You caught me.”
“Still,” he insists, a crease forming between his brows. “I should’ve—” He cuts himself off, breath hitching slightly. His hand shifts, pressing briefly to his own chest before he seems to realize you’re watching.
His hand lingers at his chest for half a second longer than necessary.
Then Jongseong straightens.
The shift is subtle but unmistakable. He rises to his full height, standing between your knees, close enough that your breath catches. From where you’re sitting on the counter, he feels impossibly tall, shoulders tense, frame rigid like he’s holding himself together by force alone.
You tilt your head up to look at him.
His expression is unreadable at first. Guarded. Then something in it gives way, like a crack spreading through glass that was never meant to be unbreakable. His jaw clenches. His eyes soften, dark and conflicted, flicking over your face as if he’s memorizing you again.
“I’m okay,” he says quietly.
You don’t answer.
Jongseong finishes securing the bandage. The movement puts him directly in front of you, close enough that his knees brush yours, close enough that you have to tilt your head back to meet his eyes.
He reaches up hesitantly, knuckles brushing your cheek. His thumb wipes at the corner of your eye before you even realize tears have slipped free.
“You’re crying,” he murmurs, voice rough.
You laugh weakly, giving up. “I think it just… caught up to me.”
His gaze lingers on your face, your red rimmed eyes, the tension in your jaw, the way you’re trying so hard to stay composed even now. Something in him gives way.
“I hate that they made you feel small,” he says quietly. “I hate that you let them.”
You swallow, looking down as if it solves something. “I didn’t want to cause trouble.”
“You didn’t,” he says, “They did.”
His hand stays on your cheek, warmer now, more certain. He uses his other thumb to brush under your other eye. Your heart thumps loud, you hate it and yet you crave it.
“You shouldn’t have to be strong all the time,” he adds. “Not here. Not with me.”
Your chest tightens. “Then why do you keep pulling away?”
The question is soft. Careful. It lands anyway.
His jaw flexes. He looks down at you, then away, then back again.
“Because if I don’t,” he says, voice dropping, “I won’t know how to keep this… contained.”
“Contained from what?”
“From wanting more,” he admits, voice shaking at its edges. “From wanting you.”
“Do you really want me?” you whisper louder than you meant to.
That’s all it takes.
He leans in slowly, as if giving you every chance to change your mind. His forehead brushes yours first, breath warm against your lips. You can feel the trembling tension in him.
When his lips finally meet yours, it’s soft.
Almost reverent.
The kiss is hesitant at first, like he’s afraid you’ll disappear if he presses too hard. His lips move against yours slowly, learning, relearning. When you sigh into it, his control fractures.
He kisses you deeper then, still gentle but unmistakably desperate, like he’s been starving quietly for too long. His hand slides up your back, fingers spreading between your shoulder blades, pulling you closer until there’s no space left to doubt what this is.
He trails a hot line from your lips down your jaw, then to the hollow under your ear, and you arch without realizing, breath hitching.
“Jongseong—” you whisper, when his mouth finds the tender skin at your neck. The sound breaks somewhere between his teeth and the small gasp that slips out of you trembles against his chest.
“I—” he says, voice swallowed by another kiss. “I’ve wanted—”
“Don’t,” you whisper, pleading, yet a part of you wants him to finish the sentence.
Between his kisses, your thoughts scatter and then narrow to an aching truth—you had wanted this for so long it almost hurts to finally have it.
You don’t know why, because you have always yearned for Jongseong’s warm touch. But right now, you can only hope that you won’t wake up from this.
He pauses, forehead against your temple, eyes dark and vulnerable. “I don’t know if I have the right to want,” he admits, so quiet you almost miss it. Then, louder, “But I do.”
His mouth finds your pulse at the base of your throat and presses, the kiss wet and demanding. Your hands go up, tangling in his hair at the nape of his neck, fingers threading through his strands as he deepens the kiss.
He lifts you without fussing and carries you towards the bedroom. The movement is fluid, as if he’s imagined this a thousand times and finally stepped into it. You wrap your legs around his hips instinctively.
“Careful,” you murmur, breathless, face burning up with shyness.
“I am,” he answers, voice low. “Always.”
He lays you down gently, not breaking the kiss until his forehead rests against yours and you both are dizzy with it. He leans over you lips roaming—down your throat, to the soft slope between collarbone and shoulder—leaving a trail of heated kisses like a map.
“Say my name,” he murmurs against your skin, “Call me Jay, please.”
“Jay,” you answer.
He lifts his head, mouth quirking into something close to a smile. “Good,” he says, and it’s a laugh with no humor.
Jongseong feels himself fading quietly, the way a man does when he’s held something back for too long. Every brush of your lips against his reminds him how close he is to losing the careful distance he built to survive
He’s terrified by how easy it is to forget everything else when you sigh against him, by how instinctively his body leans closer to you and the guilt eats him alive because he never allowed himself to touch you.
“Why didn’t you kiss me earlier?,” you say at one point, trying not to cry, awkward under the weight of his closeness.
“I’m sorry” he simply says, voice hoarse. “I was... scared.”
“Of what?”
He doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he brings his soft, wet lips to yours again, capturing you into another kiss.
MORNING ARRIVES QUIETLY.
The morning light slips in through the opaque curtains and fills the space in the bedroom. The city outside is awake, but your apartment isn’t, not really. It’s suspended in that soft in between where the night hasn’t fully let go yet.
You wake first.
For a few seconds, you don’t move. You just register. The warmth at your back. The steady rise and fall of his chest against you. His arm draped over your waist, heavy and protective, with his face nuzzled deep in your neck.
Last night comes back to you in fragments rather than a rush—his mouth at your neck, the way he carried you like something precious, the way his voice broke when you said his name. The way he held you afterward, forehead pressed to yours, breathing uneven but calm, like he’d finally stopped being cold.
You turn slowly, careful not to wake him.
Jongseong looks different in sleep.
Softer. Younger. His brows aren’t drawn together like they usually are, his mouth slack, lashes resting against his cheeks. There’s no heir, no expectation, no weight in the way he rests right now. Just a man who looks tired in a way that makes your chest ache.
Jongseong stirs when you shift slightly, his arm tightening instinctively around you. He hums, drowsy and half audible, and presses his lips to your hair without opening his eyes.
“Morning,” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.
You smile before you can stop yourself. “Morning.”
He opens his eyes slowly, dark lashes lifting, and for a split second you see it, his eye are actually soft this time. Then his expression even warms when he focuses on you.
“Did I wake you?” he asks quietly.
“No,” you whisper. “I was already up.”
He hums again, eyes drifting shut as he pulls you closer, forehead resting against yours. His breath is warm, steady. You can feel the way his body relaxes when you don’t pull away, when you fit into him like this is something practiced rather than new.
“Stay,” he murmurs, like it’s a reflex.
You smile, your hands resting against his chest, “I’m not going anywhere.”
That makes his eyes open again.
Something passes over his face. Relief, maybe, or something more fragile. His hand tightens at your waist just a little.
“You’re warm,” he says, almost distracted. “Did you sleep?”
“A little,” you admit. “You?”
He exhales softly, a sound that’s almost a laugh. “Better than I usually do.”
There’s a pause. Not an uncomfortable one. Just space.
He presses a kiss to your temple, then your cheek, unhurried. It feels different in the daylight. His thumb brushes gently under your eye.
“You’re staring,” you tease quietly.
“Let me,” he replies. “I don’t do it enough.”
Its crazy to think how only just a week ago, this softness intimacy with your own fiance was just a dream, something that you could only imagine. Back then, his touch felt like a concept rather than a reality, his warmth something you imagined in quiet moments before sleep, never something you expected to wake up to, wrapped in it.
Now he’s here, breathing against you, holding you as if he always did, as if he was never any cold to you.
Your chest aches with a cautious kind of hope, the kind that blooms slowly, afraid of being noticed, because part of you is still bracing for him to pull away, for the walls to rise again.
He presses another kiss to your forehead, lingering, like he’s memorizing the shape of you.
“I’ll make coffee,” he says finally. “Don’t move.”
You laugh softly. “I won’t. Promise.”
He disappears into the kitchen, barefoot and rumpled, sleeves pushed up, hair still tousled from sleep. The sight of him like this, unguarded and domestic, fills you with a warmth that almost hurts.
You sit up on the bed, glancing around the bedroom as you wait.
As the duvet cover pools around you, you can’t help but wonder how he must have felt last night, after sleeping with his back turned to you for months, after restricting your touch for months. You remember the way his voice trembled when you said his name, the way his breathing finally evened out only when you were tucked against him, and you realize he must have been carrying something heavy for a long time.
Maybe, just maybe, he was yearning for you the same way you were yearning for him.
And you let yourself believe that. You believe that mornings will be like this from now on. Soft and domestic. Romantic, even.
You glance around the bedroom as you wait, trying to find to pull you out of your thoughts.
That’s when you notice the folder.
Tucked beneath the edge of the coffee table, partially hidden, beige and unassuming. You wouldn’t have paid it any attention if not for the bold hospital logo printed across the corner.
Your stomach twists.
You tell yourself not to touch it. You really do.
But something twists in your gut, sharp and familiar, the same feeling you had when he pressed his hand to his chest last night. The same unease that’s been following him like a shadow for months.
You stand.
Your bare feet barely make a sound against the floor as you walk over. The folder is thin. You hesitate with your fingers resting against it, heart already racing like it knows what’s coming.
You pull the paper free.
Your eyes skim at first, unfocused.
The papers inside are neatly stacked, clipped together. Medical reports. Test results. Dates. Charts.
You scan the first page. And then the words blur.
Diagnosis: Atherosclerosis.
Your breath leaves you all at once, like someone punched it out of your chest.
Atherosclerosis, a condition in which plaque builds up inside your arteries, which overtime hardens narrows the arteries.
You read the other pages. Slower this time. Clinical language. Risk factors. Progression. Treatment plans that sound too careful, too conditional. Phrases like advanced, monitor closely, high risk.
Your fingers tremble as you keep reading, as if slowing down might somehow soften the meaning.
But it doesn’t.
Is this why he always kept you at an arms' distance? Why he always left you wondering for his love? Never touched you, or held or kissed only until last night? He doesn’t actually have limited time, does he?
A quiet, broken sound leaves your throat before you even realize you’re crying. You clamp a hand over your mouth, but it doesn’t help. Tears spill freely now, dropping onto the papers in dark, blurry spots. Your shoulders shake as you try to breathe through it, try to make sense of the hurricane hurling towards you.
Footsteps sound behind you.
“Coffee will be ready in—”
The sentence dies in his throat.
You hear it. The way his voice stops, the way the air shifts. You don’t look up. You can’t. You’re staring at the paper like it might rearrange itself into something less devastating if you keep looking.
“Y/n…” Jongseong says carefully, slowing down at the threshold of the bedroom.
When you finally lift your eyes, he’s frozen near the doorway, mug in hand, color draining from his face. His gaze drops from your tear streaked cheeks to the papers in your hands.
“You weren’t supposed to see that,” he says quietly.
The words land softly, but they split something open inside you.
Your fingers tighten around the papers, knuckles white, the thin sheets trembling with you. Your throat burns the moment you try to speak, like your body already knows what your heart is refusing to accept.
“H-how long?” you ask, the question barely holding together. It comes out thin. Fragile. Like if you press any harder, you’ll shatter completely.
He doesn’t answer.
That silence is worse than anything he could have said. It stretches heavy, filling the space between you until your chest feels too tight to breathe.
“How long, Jongseong?” you ask again, louder this time, tears spilling down without restraint. Your voice cracks right down the middle. “How long have you known?”
He sets the mug down slowly on the counter, like even that small sound might break you further. The coffee sloshes dangerously close to the rim, unnoticed. His shoulders rise and fall once, a controlled breath that looks rehearsed. Like he’s done this alone, over and over.
“A while,” he admits.
The words feel vague on purpose. Cowardly.
“A while?” you echo, disbelief laced with hurt. Your laugh is short and broken, more like a sob caught in reverse. “What does that even mean, Jongseong? Weeks? Months?”
His jaw tightens. He drags a hand through his hair, fingers shaking just enough that you notice. He looks away from you—toward the window, the wall, anywhere but your face.
“Years.”
The word drops into the room like a blade.
For a moment, everything goes quiet. Not muted, but gone. Like your ears are ringing after an explosion.
“Years?” you whisper, the syllable barely surviving your lips.
Your knees feel weak. Your chest aches so sharply it almost feels physical, like something is crushing your ribs from the inside. You clutch the papers harder, as if they might anchor you to the floor.
“You’ve been—” Your voice gives out. You swallow, forcing the words through tears. “You’ve been sick this whole time?”
“Yes.”
The answer is immediate. Too immediate. Like he’s tired of lying, or maybe tired of carrying it alone.
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” The hurt finally spills into anger, your voice rising, shaking, raw. “You didn’t think I deserved to know?”
He turns back to you instantly, panic flashing across his face, all that carefully built composure cracking at the edges.
“That’s not—” he starts, stepping toward you.
“Then what was it?” you cut in, backing away without realizing it. Your chest heaves, every breath uneven. “What was all that distance? All those nights you wouldn’t touch me, wouldn’t even look at me?”
Your voice breaks again, softer now, more wounded than angry. Memories flood back uninvited, the cold space between you in bed, the way he always kept a careful inch of distance, the way his hands would clench like he wanted to reach for you and stopped himself.
“You made me feel unwanted,” you whisper. “Like I was asking for too much just by loving you.”
His face twists at that, pain cutting through his features so sharply it almost scares you.
“I was trying to protect you,” he says, voice strained. “I was trying to protect us.”
“By shutting me out?” you snap, tears blurring your vision. “By letting me think I wasn’t enough?”
“That’s not what it was,” he insists, stepping closer again. “I couldn’t— I didn’t know how to let you get attached when I don’t even know how long I—”
He stops himself.
Your heart stutters. “When you don’t know how long what?” you take a shaky breath in, “Why after all this time—”
“Because Im dying, okay?” Jongseong snaps.
The words don’t land right away.
They snatch the land away from right beneath your feet, and for a second you feel falling down. For a moment, all you can hear is your own heartbeat beating way too loud agaisnt your ribcage.
“What…?” Your lips move, but the sound barely comes out. “What did you say?”
He looks like he regrets it the instant the words leave him. Like they tore out of him without permission. His shoulders tense, jaw clenched so tightly you can see the muscle jump beneath his skin. His eyes are glossy. Hes not crying yet.
“I said I’m dying,” he repeats, quieter now. Hoarse, and you know that hurts him. “Eventually. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not this year. But it’s there. Hanging over everything.”
You shake your head slowly, as if that might undo it. As if disbelief alone could rewind time to ten minutes ago, when the world still made sense.
“No,” you whisper. “Don’t say that like it’s—like it’s already decided.”
He laughs under his breath, bitter and exhausted. “It kind of is.”
Your chest tightens painfully. “Then why are you standing here?” you demand, tears streaming freely now. “Why are you pretending this is just another argument we can talk through?”
“Because I didn’t want you living your life around a countdown,” he says, voice breaking despite his effort to keep it steady. “Because I didn’t want to be the reason you wake up one day alone, wondering why you stayed.”
You clutch the papers to your chest like they’re the only thing keeping you upright. “So you thought hurting me would be better?”
“I thought distancing myself would make it easier when I leave,” he says quietly.
“When you—” Your breath stutters. “When you what?”
“When I go away,” he admits. “Anytime, Y/n. My whole life is unsure. I don’t get guarantees. I don’t get to plan ten years ahead like everyone else.”
He drags a hand down his face, the movement slow, weary, like the mask is finally too heavy to hold up.
“I didn’t want this marriage,” he says suddenly, the confession sharp and honest. “I didn’t want a wife whom I can just leave behind.”
The words gut you.
“Then why did you agree?” you ask, voice small despite everything tearing through you. “Why stand there beside me, say vows you didn’t believe in?”
His eyes lift to yours then, and something raw breaks open in them.
“Because I didn’t know how not to,” he says. “Because everyone kept telling me it was the right thing. My family wanted stability. I—”
He stops. Swallows hard.
“Because part of me hoped I was wrong,” he finishes. “That maybe I’d get lucky. That maybe if I kept my distance, I could survive it without hurting you.”
Your chest feels like it’s caving in on itself.
You want to scream at him for keeping something this devastating from you, for deciding on your behalf what you could and couldn’t handle. You want to cry for the months you spent feeling unwanted, for the nights you lay beside him wondering what you’d done wrong, for every time you swallowed your need for affection because you thought you were asking for too much.
And beneath all of that, cutting deeper than the rest, is fear.
Your mind keeps replaying every small moment from the past days. The way he would sometimes pause mid-step, fingers pressing briefly to his chest before he noticed you watching. The exhaustion he tried to hide behind clipped answers and silence. He was living life on borrowed time. And now it all makes a horrifying kind of sense. The distance wasn’t indifference. It was fear. Fear of attachment. Fear of leaving you behind. Fear of loving you too much when he wasn’t sure how long he’d be allowed to.
Your hands shake as you clutch the papers, the thin sheets crumpling slightly under your grip. You don’t even notice. All you can feel is the way your chest feels too small for everything trying to live inside it at once.
Anger. Fear. Grief. Love.
Love, most of all.
You take a step toward him before you realize you’ve moved. Your legs feel unsteady, like they might give out at any second, but you keep going until you’re standing right in front of him. He looks braced, like he’s expecting you to push him away, to scream, to tell him you’re done.
Instead, your voice comes out broken and soft.
“So you decided for me,” you say. Not accusing. Just devastated. “You decided that I couldn’t love you through this. That I couldn’t stay.”
His jaw tightens. “I didn’t want you trapped.”
“I wasn’t trapped,” you whisper. “I was confused. I was lonely. I was wondering every day what I did wrong.”
That hits him harder than shouting ever could.
Jongseong’s shoulders sag, like something finally gives up holding itself together. He closes his eyes briefly, breath shuddering as it leaves him.
“I know,” he says hoarsely. “I know I hurt you.”
The word hangs in the air between you.
Dying.
It doesn’t sound real. It feels like a foreign language, like something meant for hospital rooms and strangers, not the man standing in front of you with his jaw clenched and his eyes shining like he’s trying not to break apart in front of you.
Your breath stutters. Your fingers loosen around the papers, and they slip from your grasp, fluttering to the floor.
“You—” Your voice comes out hoarse. You clear your throat, but it doesn’t help. “Don’t say it like that. Don’t say it so casually.”
Jongseong exhales sharply, like the word tore its way out of him. “I’m not being casual. I’m being honest for once.”
The room feels too small. The walls press in. You take a step toward him without even realizing it, your chest aching with something that feels too big to fit inside you.
“You really did decide a huge part of my life without asking me,” you whisper.
His gaze flickers to your lips and then back to your eyes, conflicted, raw. “Because it hurts more than anything to know I might leave you behind.”
The words knock the breath out of you.
“You already did,” you say softly. “Every time you made me doubt your love.”
His shoulders sag, like the fight drains out of him all at once. “I cared too much,” he admits. “That was the problem.”
You’re close enough now to feel the warmth of him, the tension vibrating through his body like a live wire. Your hand lifts on instinct, fingers brushing the fabric of his shirt at his chest. You feel his heart beneath it, beating hard and fast, like it’s trying to run from the truth too.
“You should’ve told me,” you say, your voice breaking. “I would’ve stayed. I would’ve chosen you anyway.”
His breath shudders. “I didn’t pity.”
“You really think that?” you say, tears blurring your vision. “It would’ve been love.”
That does it.
Something in his expression finally gives. The careful distance he’s kept for months collapses in a single moment. He reaches for you like he’s been holding himself back from doing it for far too long, one hand coming up to cradle your face, his thumb brushing under your eye where your tears spill over.
“Don’t say that,” he murmurs, voice low and unsteady. “If you say that, I won’t be able to pretend anymore.”
“Then don’t pretend,” you whisper. “Not with me.”
For a second, he just looks at you. Really looks at you. Like he’s memorizing every line of your face, every fragile breath you take.
Then he leans in.
The kiss isn’t gentle at first. It’s desperate, like all the words he’s swallowed are finally finding a way out through his mouth instead. His lips press into yours with a quiet, aching intensity, and you gasp against him before melting into it, your hands clutching at his shirt like you’re afraid he might disappear if you let go.
His breath mingles with yours, warm and uneven. The kiss deepens, not rushed but heavy, loaded with everything unsaid—regret, longing, fear, love. His hand slides from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair, pulling you closer until there’s barely any space left between your bodies.
“God,” he exhales against your lips, the word breaking like a confession. “I shouldn’t—”
You don’t let him finish. You kiss him again, softer this time, slower, like you’re grounding him, reminding him that you’re real, that this moment is real. Your forehead rests against his when you finally pull back, breaths mingling, your noses brushing.
“I don’t care about anything,” you whisper. “I only care about you.”
His eyes search yours, dark and vulnerable in a way you’ve never seen before. His thumb brushes over your lower lip, lingering, like he’s fighting the urge to kiss you again and losing.
“You make this so hard,” he murmurs.
“Sorry” you reply quietly.
He lets out a breath that sounds like surrender. His forehead drops to yours, his eyes closing briefly as if he’s bracing himself for the weight of what he’s about to say next.
He opens his eyes then, and they’re wet now, shining dangerously. “I didn’t think I’d survive watching you look at me like this every day. Like I was your future.”
Your heart twists painfully.
“You are my future,” you say without thinking.
The words hang in the air, fragile and terrifying.
He shakes his head immediately. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?” you demand, voice cracking. “Because it scares you?”
“I can’t promise you anything,” he says sharply, desperation bleeding through his restraint. “I can’t promise you years. I can’t promise you safety. I can’t even promise you tomorrow.”
He gestures vaguely to his chest, frustration and fear tangled together. “My body could fail me at any point. I live knowing that. I didn’t want you living like that too.”
You step closer, until there’s barely any space left between you.
“I would’ve chosen it,” you whisper. “If you’d told me, I would’ve chosen you anyway.”
His breath stutters.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” you say fiercely. “Because I already did. Every night you turned away, every morning I woke up hoping you’d look at me differently. I stayed even when I didn’t understand why you were pulling away.”
Your voice softens, trembling. “Do you know how much it hurts to feel unwanted by the person you love?”
He winces like you’ve struck him.
“I never didn’t want you,” he says immediately. “God, Y/n, that was the problem.”
Silence falls again, thick and heavy.
You wipe at your tears with the back of your hand, inhaling shakily. “Then say it,” you challenge quietly. “Say what you were so afraid to say.”
He stares at you, chest rising and falling unevenly, like he’s standing at the edge of something irreversible.
“I was afraid,” he admits finally. “Afraid that if I let myself love you the way I wanted to, it would destroy me when I leave.”
“When you die?” you whisper, hating the word even as it leaves your mouth.
His face tightens, but he nods once.
Your knees feel weak again. You reach out instinctively, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, grounding yourself against him.
“And the wedding?” you ask suddenly, voice trembling with the weight of the question. “Will you— will you not—”
He doesn’t let you finish.
“I will marry you, Y/n.”
The certainty in his voice steals your breath.
He cups your face gently, thumbs brushing your cheeks where tears keep falling, like he’s memorizing the shape of you, like he’s afraid this might be taken from him too.
“I will marry you,” he repeats, softer now. “Not because I have to. Not because anyone expects me to. But because I want to. Loving you is the one thing in my life that feels real.”
Your lips tremble. “Then why were you pushing me away?”
“I don’t know,” he admits, voice breaking. “maybe because I have limited time.”
Something inside you shatters completely at that.
You press your forehead to his chest, listening to his heartbeat, strong and terrifying and precious all at once. Your tears soak into his shirt as you sob quietly, fingers gripping him like if you let go, he might disappear.
Jongseong wraps his arms around you tightly, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other firm at your waist. He holds you like he’s afraid the world might steal you away too.
“I didn’t want to give you a life full of hospitals and waiting rooms,” he murmurs into your hair, his palms caressing your back slowly. “I didn’t want to be the reason you’re scared all the time.”
You pull back just enough to look at him, eyes red and swollen. And then press your face against him again.
His breath catches.
“If I miss someone the most in this world,” he says suddenly, voice thick with emotion, “then it is my grandma.”
You still, listening.
“She wanted to see me grow up. Be successful. Be happy.” His lips tremble as he speaks. “She wanted to share her blessings with my future wife.”
He swallows hard. “But she couldn’t. She didn’t get to see any of it.”
Your heart aches as he continues, voice barely holding together.
“If she’d be here, you would love you,” Jongseong’s voice cracks, but he lets out a melancholic laugh through it. It cracks, brings water to his eyes.
He lets out a shaky breath, eyes dropping to look at you.
“I...” His voice drops to a whisper. “I love you, Y/n.”
Your chest tightens painfully.
“I love you,” he repeats, like he needs to hear himself say it. You bring your head up to see him again. A tear slips past his cheeks, enhancing his now flushed features. Jongseong’s breath hitches, “I’m sorry for being a bad fiancé, I’m sorry I made you doubt. But I love you, god, I do.”
A broken laugh slips out of you through your tears.
“I love you enough that it hurts,” he continues, pressing his forehead to yours. “And I should have said this sooner to you.”
You cup his face with both hands, thumbs brushing away the tears he’s finally letting fall.
“It’s okay,” you whisper, smiling through tears, “Just don't love me halfway anymore.”
He nods slowly, eyes closing as he leans into your touch. “Then stay,” he murmurs. “Even if it’s scary.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” you say, echoing your words from this morning, but now they carry weight. Promise. Choice.
He kisses you then. Again. Not desperate like last night. Not restrained like before. But full and trembling and honest, like he’s finally stopped running from the truth.
And when he holds you afterward, arms tight and protective, you don’t care about anything else in this world.
Park Jongseong has finally kissed you, heck, he's even holding you. And even if he can't do that forever, it’s all that you ever wished for.
EPILOGUE
The wedding does not feel like how weddings are described in stories.
There is no loud music spilling into the street, no crowd pressing in on every side, no overwhelming spectacle. It is small, intimate to the point of fragility, held in the quiet hall of an old heritage house on the outskirts of the city, where the windows are tall and the light filters in pale and gentle, as if even the sun is careful not to intrude too loudly on something this delicate.
Both your families wanted a huge crowd, too many heads to feed in the wedding; but much to their bad luck, Jongseong had stood his ground. He’d said it calmly, without raising his voice, without the sharp edge he used when he was tired or in pain. He didn’t want a stage. He didn’t want a day that felt like it belonged to everyone except the two of you. He wanted something small enough to breathe in. Something that wouldn’t exhaust him before the vows were even spoken, that would feel like yours.
So here you are.
The guest list is trimmed down to the people who matter, the people who know—at least partly—what this day costs him and what it means. There are no distant relatives you barely recognize, no business acquaintances pretending this is a celebration more than a formality.
Except Sunghoon brought in his whole friend group back from his college days, to which Jongseong knew he couldn’t say no to.
Your mother had argued, of course. His family had too. There were expectations. But Jongseong had only said, “Y/n doesn’t want crowds, and I want us to live our wedding day and not rehearse it.” And that had been the end of it.
The hall is simple. Old wood floors that creak softly under careful steps. White fabric draped along the walls. A narrow aisle lined with lilies that smell clean and faintly sweet. The kind of place that feels more like a promise.
You stand at the far end of the aisle, hands folded in front of you, trying to steady your breathing.
Your dress is lighter than you expected it to be, the fabric falling in soft lines instead of stiff layers. You wanted something you could move in. Something that wouldn’t weigh you down. Something that felt like you. The veil brushes your shoulders, and for a moment you close your eyes, just to take it in.
This is real.
When you open them, you see him.
Jongseong is already at the front, standing beside the officiant, posture straight but not rigid. He looks.fragile, in a way that makes your chest tighten. The suit fits him perfectly, but you can see the faint signs of fatigue he never quite manages to hide. The slight hollowness beneath his eyes. The careful way he holds himself, like he’s measuring his energy even now.
And still, when he looks at you, everything else falls away.
His expression changes the moment your eyes meet. The tension in his shoulders eases, just a little. His lips part, like he forgot to breathe for a second. There’s something raw there. Something open. Something that makes your throat ache.
You start walking.
Each step feels slow, because your body seems to understand the weight of this moment better than your mind does. The quiet hum of the room wraps around you. You’re vaguely aware of people watching, of soft movements, of the way the light catches in the tall windows, but mostly, there’s just him.
With every step, memories rise up uninvited.
The distance that used to sit between you like a wall. The silence. The nights you lay awake wondering what you had done wrong. The day you found the papers. The way his voice broke when he said he was dying. The way he looked at you like he was both terrified and relieved that you knew.
And then the nights after that. The long talks. The quiet understanding. The way he started reaching for you again, slowly, like he was relearning how to trust himself with your heart.
You stop in front of him.
Up close, you can see the way his hands are clasped together, fingers tight, knuckles pale. You can see the faint tremor in his breath. But you can also see the way his eyes soften when he looks at you, like you are the only steady thing in a world that keeps shifting under his feet.
For a moment, neither of you speak.
The officiant clears their throat gently and begins, their voice low and respectful, as if they, too, understand that this is not a day for grand speeches. The words drift around you—about love, about commitment, about choosing each other not just when it’s easy, but when it’s hard.
“In sickness and in health” lands heavier than the rest.
Your fingers twitch at your sides, and Jongseong notices. His gaze flickers to your hands, then back to your face, and he gives you the smallest nod. Like he’s reminding you. Like he’s reminding himself. We’re here. We’re still here.
When it’s your turn to speak, your heart is hammering so hard you’re afraid your voice will shake.
But when you look at him, really look at him, the words come out steadier than you expect.
His eyes shine, but he doesn’t look away.
When it’s his turn, he swallows hard before speaking.
“I spent a long time trying not to want this,” he admits. “I thought distance would protect you. I thought if I didn’t let you get too close, it would hurt less when…” He stops, breath catching, then continues more softly. “When I leave. I was wrong. All I did was waste time I could have spent loving you properly.”
His voice steadies, just a little.
“I can’t promise you forever. I wish I could. But I can promise you honesty. I can promise you every day I’m given. I can promise you that as long as I’m here, you won’t face anything alone.”
Your eyes burn, but you don’t look away.
When the rings are exchanged, his fingers linger around yours, like he’s afraid of letting go even for a second. When he leans in to kiss you, it’s gentle, unhurried. Not a performance. Not for the room. Just for you.
And when the officiant declares you married, there’s no thunderous applause. Just soft clapping. Warm smiles. A quiet, collective exhale.
The room exhales around you, a collective softening now that the vows have been spoken and the weight of them has settled into something real. There’s a quiet shuffle of movement as people begin to rise from their seats, the soft murmur of congratulations beginning to bloom through the hall. The light shifts as a cloud passes outside, turning the windows briefly dimmer, then bright again.
Jongseong’s hand is still wrapped around yours.
His palm is warm, his grip a little too tight, like he’s anchoring himself to the reality of this moment. You squeeze back, a silent reassurance, and he looks down at you with something fragile and bright in his eyes. Relief, maybe. Or disbelief that he’s actually here, standing beside you, that the day did not break apart before it could begin.
“You okay?” you whisper, leaning in so only he can hear.
He nods. “Yeah. Just… give me a second.”
You recognize the tone. The carefulness. The way he’s learned to pace himself, even in moments meant to be joyful. You don’t press. You just stay close, your shoulder brushing his arm, your presence a quiet support rather than a demand.
The officiant steps aside, offering you both a small, gentle smile. Someone from the back laughs softly—Sunghoon, probably—trying to cut through the heaviness with something familiar. Your mother wipes at her eyes, her expression torn between pride and worry. His family watches him closely, too closely, like they’re counting his breaths without realizing it.
You and Jongseong take a step forward together.
The motion is small, but you feel the shift in his balance immediately. It’s subtle, you feel it in the way his fingers tighten around yours, in the way his shoulder brushes yours a little harder than before.
“Jongseong?” you murmur.
“I’m fine,” he says automatically, the words practiced. He gives you a faint smile, the kind he uses when he doesn’t want to worry you. “Just stood up too fast.”
You search his face. The color has drained a little, leaving him paler than before. There’s a sheen of sweat at his temple that wasn’t there moments ago. Your chest tightens with a familiar, creeping fear.
“Do you want to sit for a bit?” you ask quietly. “We can—”
“I don’t want to sit,” he replies, more firmly than you expect, though his voice is still gentle. “I want to walk out with you. Just… slow, okay?”
So you walk slowly.
Each step is measured, careful. The old wood floor creaks beneath your feet, a soft, grounding sound. The lilies lining the aisle blur in your peripheral vision. You keep your attention on him, on the steady rise and fall of his chest.
His inner world feels loud in a way you can almost sense without him saying anything. There’s a stubborn pride in him, a refusal to let this moment be overshadowed by his body’s limits. He has fought for this day. He has insisted on being here, standing, choosing this with you. The thought of needing help, of letting weakness show in front of everyone, presses against something old in him.
And yet, even as he tries to hold himself together, there is a quieter fear threading through him. A whisper that this might be too much. That joy, even when it is gentle, still costs him something.
Your own thoughts are no less tangled.
Part of you is floating, still wrapped in the soft glow of being married, of hearing him say vows that felt like a promise against the dark. Another part of you is coiled tight with worry, hyper-aware of every change in his breathing, every slight falter in his step. Loving him has taught you this strange duality, how joy and fear can exist side by side, neither fully eclipsing the other.
You reach the middle of the aisle.
There’s a soft ripple of applause, gentle and restrained, as people make space for you to pass. Someone murmurs congratulations. Someone else whispers his name, concern threading through the sound. The room feels warmer than before, or maybe that’s just your nerves making everything feel too close.
Jongseong exhales, long and slow.
“I’m glad we did it like this,” he says under his breath. “Small. Quiet.”
You smile up at him, though your heart is beating too fast. “Me too.”
His gaze lingers on you, something tender and aching in it, like he’s trying to hold onto this exact version of you in this exact moment. Married. Here. Alive in front of him.
“You look…” he trails off, then shakes his head slightly, eyes glues on yours. “You look like something I don’t deserve.”
You start to protest, but the words die in your throat when you feel his grip falter.
It’s subtle at first, the tension in his fingers loosening, his hand slipping slightly in yours. His step stutters. His breath catches.
“Jongseong?” you say, louder now.
The room seems to tilt.
For a second, he’s still standing, eyes unfocused, like he didn’t expect this to happen now, of all times. His inner world fractures in that moment.
“I’m okay,” he tries to say, but the words come out wrong, thin and unconvincing.
Then his knees buckle.
The world lurches forward in a rush of motion and sound. You feel his weight shift suddenly, too heavy, too fast. Your grip tightens instinctively as you reach for him, calling his name as the room erupts into startled gasps, chairs scraping back, someone shouting for help.
Your arms wrap around him as he falls, your body bracing against the impact, heart slamming painfully against your ribs.
“Jongseong—!”
The lilies blur into white streaks at the edge of your vision. The quiet hall fractures into chaos, voices overlapping, footsteps rushing closer. You sink to the floor with him, cradling his head against your chest, your hands trembling as you search his face.
His eyes are half-lidded, breath shallow but there, still there. His brow is drawn, like he’s fighting to stay with you.
“Stay with me, please,” you whisper, the words pouring out like a plea. “A-Always” Jongseong breaths out.
Around you, the room is a blur of motion and worry, but your world has narrowed to the feel of his weight in your arms, the fragile warmth of his skin against yours, the uncertain rhythm of his breathing.
AUTHORS NOTE hello hello again! thank you so so much for reading this all the way and making it through here 💗 i decided for the ending to be open because making jay pass away would be too sad and i couldnt think of any other endings 😞 so for my angst ending haters, you can just pretend that the epilogue never happened!!! phew, its finished and i definitely took way more time than i should've, but like i was sooo confused on this one. anyways, please let me know how it was and reblog to support! see you in my next long fic 😛
edit: and now to clear up some doubts about the ending, jay doesn't actually passes away in the ending! its just shown that he collapses to the ground, and whatever happens after that is left to your imagination, making this an open ending! once again, thank you for reading <3
❝ I once believed love would be black and white But it's golden ❞
°❀࿔ PAIRINGS. (이희승) x 𝒻 !reader
°❀࿔ SUMMARY. You came to Castillo Creek, Texas with a suitcase and a job offer you took because it was the furthest thing away from everything you knew. You didn’t come for the man who owns Sunrise Ranch and has the gorgeous smile. You didn’t come for his gap-toothed, too-perceptive young boy. But Castillo Creek has a way of giving you what you need before you know you need it. And some people, it turns out, are worth staying for.
°❀࿔ WARNINGS. angst with resolution, mild angst, brief mention of a broken engagement, past relationship, brief emotional manipulation from an ex, themes of running from your past, slow burn tension, explicit sexual content (+18 minors dni), penetrative sex, kissing, soft domestic content, found family themes, mentions of abandonment, fluff to the max
°❀࿔ WORD COUNT. 29.6k
°❀࿔ LACEYS NOTE. this has been brewing in my drafts for at least a week and i finally bothered to finish it. took me so long bc of the news about heesueng but i wish him well on his solo journey and will still support him! ENHAOT7! anyway, i hope this fic heals something within you all and the domestic bliss of it makes me so happy and giddy. comments, feedback, reblogs and likes keep me writing, feel free to send ask too! enjoy honies!
The bus drops you at the edge of nowhere.
That’s not entirely fair — the sign reads Castillo Creek, Pop. 412 in sun-bleached letters, and there is, technically, a street. One of them. It runs maybe four blocks before it gives up and dissolves into dust and open sky, flanked on either side by a hardware store, a diner with a hand-painted sign, a church with a crooked steeple, and a general store with a rocking chair out front that currently holds an old man who has not looked up from his newspaper since the bus wheezed to a stop.
You step down onto the road and the heat hits you like a physical thing.
Chicago in September is crisp. Leaves turning, wind off the lake, the smell of the city sharpening into something almost bearable. You have lived your whole life in that particular kind of autumn and you are standing here now in what should by all rights be the tail end of summer and the ground is baking. The sky is enormous. There are no buildings tall enough to interrupt it, nothing to cut the blue into manageable pieces, and for a moment you just stand there with your suitcase at your feet and your hat in your hand and feel very, very small.
“You the new schoolteacher?” You turn. A young man — can’t be more than nineteen — is leaning against the side of the bus stop with his arms crossed and his dark hair falling into his eyes. He’s got a look on his face that isn’t quite a smile but is clearly thinking about becoming one.
“That obvious?” you say.
“You’ve got a suitcase and a look on your face like you’re trying to figure out if you made a terrible mistake.” He pushes off the wall and picks up your larger bag before you can protest. “Riki. I work out at Sunrise Ranch but I’m in town most days. Mr. Lee sent me to check if you’d arrived.”
You blink. “Someone was expecting me?”
“Mrs. Calloway at the boarding house would’ve had your room ready since Tuesday,” he says, already walking. “Small town. News travels.”
You pick up your smaller case and follow him. Mrs. Calloway. The name lands somewhere behind your sternum and sits there, inert. Just a name. A common enough name. You are done flinching at common names. “I’m Y/N,” you say.
“I know,” Riki says, not unkindly. “Everyone does.”
—
Main Street — the only street, really, though two dirt roads branch off it like afterthoughts — is quiet in the way that feels inhabited rather than empty. A woman sweeps her front step and nods at you. Two men outside the hardware store pause their conversation to watch you pass with open, unapologetic curiosity. A little girl with two braids chases a dog around the side of the church and neither of them pays you any attention at all, which you find oddly comforting.
The diner is called Park’s and it has a specials board in the window that reads Tuesday: Peach Pie in chalk letters, and through the glass you can see red vinyl booths and a long counter with spinning stools and a man behind it who catches your eye through the window and raises a coffee pot in greeting like he’s been expecting you too. “That’s Jay,” Riki says, following your gaze. “He’ll want to talk your ear off. I’d give yourself a day before you go in or you’ll never get unpacked.”
“Is everyone here this—” you search for the word.
“Friendly?” Riki offers.
“I was going to say informed.”
He considers this. “Yeah,” he says. “Both.”
The boarding house sits at the end of the main street where the road widens slightly, a two-storey white clapboard building with a porch and a wind chime and flower boxes in the windows. It is, you think, the most aggressively quaint thing you have ever seen in your life. You grew up in an apartment on the fourth floor of a building that smelled like other people’s cooking and city rain and you are trying very hard not to let your face say anything impolite about wind chimes.
Mrs. Della, the landlady — not a Calloway, you exhale quietly — is a broad warm woman in her sixties with silver hair and flour on her apron who opens the door before you knock and says “There she is” like you’re something she ordered and is pleased to find arrived undamaged. “Come in, come in, you must be half dead from that bus.” She takes your smaller case clean out of your hand. “Riki, you staying for supper?”
“Can’t,” he says, setting your larger bag inside the door. He looks at you briefly, something almost like reassurance in it. “You’ll be alright here,” he says, which is a strange thing to say and which you believe immediately, and then he’s back down the porch steps and heading up the road with his hands in his pockets.
“Good boy,” Mrs. Della says, watching him go. “Lee Heeseung took him in two years back, gives him work and a roof. That man would give you the shirt off his back.” She says it the way people say things that are simply true, established fact, no elaboration required, and ushers you inside before you can ask who Lee Heeseung is.
Your room is small and clean and has a window that looks out over the back garden and a field beyond it and then nothing but flat land and sky all the way to the horizon. The bed has a quilt on it in yellow and white. There is a writing desk and a lamp and a hook on the back of the door.
You sit on the edge of the bed and let the quiet settle around you. In Chicago there is always noise — traffic and neighbours and the radiator banging in winter and the el train every twelve minutes rattling the windows. You have slept to that noise your whole life. This quiet is a different texture entirely. Crickets, somewhere. Wind moving through something dry. The distant low sound of what might be cattle.
You think about the apartment you gave up. The life you gave up — or that was given up on — and the way the story circulated, the whispers at the school where you’d taught for three years, the way your mother had said maybe if you’d been less difficult, Y/N, as though your own broken engagement was a character flaw you’d displayed in public. You’d applied for twenty-seven jobs in towns you’d never heard of. Castillo Creek, Texas was the one that wrote back.
You lie back on the yellow quilt and look at the ceiling and think: New soil. See what grows.
In the morning Mrs. Della makes you eggs and biscuits and coffee so strong it makes your eyes water and tells you that the schoolhouse is two blocks north, that school starts Monday which gives you four days to settle, that the previous teacher Miss Hargrove retired to be closer to her sister in San Antonio and left her lesson plans in the desk drawer, and that if you need anything at all you are to ask and not to be proud about it. “We don’t stand on ceremony here,” she says, refilling your cup. “You’ll find people are plain. They say what they mean.”
“That’s refreshing,” you say, and mean it more than she knows.
“You’ll fit in fine,” she says, in the same tone Riki used last night, that same easy certainty, and you don’t know yet whether Castillo Creek is simply a town full of optimists or whether they can see something in you that you can’t currently see in yourself.
After breakfast you walk the street. Slowly, no destination, just learning the shape of the place. The hardware store is run by a man named Gus who shakes your hand and calls you ma’am and means it respectfully. The general store has everything from canned peaches to horse liniment arranged with cheerful illogic on its shelves. The church noticeboard has a harvest dance announced for the first week of October, hand-lettered on card. A tabby cat sleeps on the post office step and does not move when you step over it.
You end up at Park’s because you are not made of stone and the peach pie in the window has been watching you since yesterday. The bell above the door chimes when you push it open. The diner smells like coffee and something frying and woodsmoke and the particular warm smell of a place that has been feeding people for a long time. Three of the booths are occupied — two older men playing cards over the remains of breakfast, a young woman nursing a baby and reading a magazine, a teenager staring out the window like he’s being paid for it.
The man behind the counter looks up and grins like you’ve just won something. “There she is,” he says, which is apparently how everyone in this town greets you. He’s handsome in an easy, untroubled way — dark eyes, an apron over his shirt, the kind of smile that has probably never caused him a day’s trouble because it is entirely, disarmingly genuine. “Jay Park. Welcome to Castillo Creek, and more importantly, welcome to my diner. Sit anywhere. Coffee?”
“Please,” you say, sliding onto a counter stool. “Y/N.”
“I know.” He’s already pouring. “The whole town knows. Don’t let that spook you — it’s not menacing, we’re just starved for news.” He sets the cup in front of you. “You surviving Mrs. Della’s biscuits?”
“They’re extraordinary.”
“Don’t tell her I said this but mine are better.” He leans on the counter. “How are you finding it so far?”
“I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours.”
“First impressions.”
You wrap your hands around the coffee cup. Outside the window the main street sits quiet in the morning sun, dust turning gold where the light hits it, a man on horseback moving slow at the far end of the road, hat low against the glare. “It’s very quiet,” you say.
“City girl.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“The accent gives you away a little,” he says, not unkindly. “Chicago?”
“Born and raised.”
He nods like this explains something. “You’ll either love it here or you’ll be back on the bus in a month. There’s not usually an in-between.” He tilts his head, studying you with the frank, comfortable curiosity of a man who talks to everyone and has learned to read them quickly. “My money’s on love it.”
“Why?”
“You ordered coffee before you ordered pie,” he says. “Practical. And you’re still here instead of back at the boarding house wondering what you’ve done. Means you’re the kind of person who walks toward things.”
You look at him for a moment. “You do this with everyone?”
“Do what?”
“Make them feel like you’ve known them for years.”
Jay grins, unabashed. “Only the interesting ones.” He reaches under the counter and produces a plate with a slice of peach pie on it, sets it in front of you without asking. “On the house. Welcome to town.”
You eat the pie. It is, genuinely, one of the best things you’ve ever tasted, which you tell him, and he looks so pleased about it that you find yourself smiling for what feels like the first time in a long time — the real kind, not the composed kind you’ve been wearing since spring.
You are still there an hour later when the bell above the door chimes and a man walks in. You notice the hat first. Worn tan leather, shaped by years and weather, pushed back just enough to see his face.
Then the face — and it is, unfairly, a lot of face: dark eyes, jaw that belongs in a painting, and a smile that appears when he spots Jay like the sun deciding to come out from behind something. He is tall and lean in the way of men who work with their bodies, wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled and boots with actual dust on them, and he moves through the diner like a man who is completely comfortable taking up space, not arrogantly, just — naturally. Like the room fits him.
Half the diner looks up when he walks in. You notice this and then notice that he doesn’t seem to notice it. “Heeseung,” Jay says. “You’re late.”
“Riki let one of the mares out this morning,” the man says, dropping onto the stool two down from you. “Had to get her back in before she ate the garden.” His voice has the particular warm drawl of a man who has lived in Texas his whole life, the vowels long and unhurried. He glances over — and for just a moment, before the smile arrives, you see him register you. A quick, frank, unguarded look. Then the smile.
It is, you think distantly, a remarkably good smile. “You must be the new schoolteacher,” he says.
“So I’ve been told,” you say.
He huffs a quiet laugh and extends a hand across the empty stool between you. “Lee Heeseung. I run Sunrise Ranch, out east of town.” A pause, then, easy as breathing: “Welcome to Castillo Creek, darlin’.”
The darlin’ lands warmly, casually, the way he probably says it to everyone. You shake his hand. His grip is firm and his palm is calloused and he lets go at exactly the right moment. “Y/N,” you say.
“Pretty name,” he says, and turns back to Jay to ask about the lunch special, and that is that.
You finish your pie. You say goodbye to Jay, who tells you to come back tomorrow, and nod to Heeseung, who tips his hat slightly without looking up from his coffee, and you push out into the dry Texas morning with the bell chiming behind you and the sky enormous overhead. You think: new soil.
You walk back toward the boarding house and do not think about the smile. (You try.)
—
The schoolhouse is a single rectangular building painted white, sitting back from the road behind a low wooden fence with a gate that sticks. There is a bell above the door on a rope, a covered porch with two steps, and six windows along each side that let in long rectangles of morning light. Inside: four rows of desks, a blackboard, a bookshelf with a sadly depleted top shelf, a globe with a crack running through the Pacific, a teacher’s desk at the front with a chair that wobbles on its left leg, and the lesson plans Miss Hargrove left in the drawer, written in such small precise handwriting that you have to hold them close to the lamp to read them.
You spend the weekend getting acquainted with it. You rearrange the desks slightly — four rows feels regimented for fourteen children ranging from five to eleven — into a looser configuration that won’t make the little ones feel like they’re waiting to be sentenced. You find chalk in the wrong drawer and a box of coloured pencils in the right one. You fix the gate with a piece of wire you find coiled on the porch. You read Miss Hargrove’s lesson plans and her notes on each child, written in the margins in that same small hand: Clara D. — very bright, reads above her level. Tommy H. — struggles with numbers but never says so. Eli L. — clever, restless, tests limits. Handle firmly but don’t let him know you’re doing it.
You read that last one twice. Eli L.
You’d heard the name once already, briefly, the way you hear a lot of names in a town like this — someone mentioning someone else in passing, the social web of a small place where everyone is connected to everyone by approximately two degrees. Riki worked at Sunrise Ranch. Sunrise Ranch belonged to Lee Heeseung. Lee Heeseung had a son. Clever, restless, tests limits.
You put the lesson plans back in the drawer, look at the rearranged desks.
Monday morning arrives with the particular clarity of a sky that has not clouded in weeks. You are at the schoolhouse by seven-thirty. You write your name on the board — Miss Y/N — and you stand at the front and look at the empty desks and do something you haven’t let yourself do since you stepped off that bus: you feel, briefly and privately, afraid. Not of the children, not of the job — you have been a teacher for three years and you are good at it, this you know — but of the starting over. Of the standing in a room and introducing yourself to people who don’t know you yet and hoping that this time, in this place, what they learn about you is something you’ve chosen.
You take a breath. You put your composed face on. You go stand on the porch to watch them arrive.
They come in ones and twos, mostly walked by mothers who linger at the gate with polite curiosity to get a look at you, a few by fathers, one or two on their own who are clearly old enough to have decided they don’t need walking. The little ones are solemn and wide-eyed. The older ones are watchful. They file onto the porch and past you with varying degrees of shyness, and you smile at each of them and say good morning, and most of them say it back.
The boy who doesn’t say it back arrives at eight on the dot, alone. He is small for seven — wiry and dark-haired with his father’s eyes and a gap where one of his front teeth used to be — and he walks through the gate with his lunch pail swinging and his chin up with the specific energy of a child who has decided in advance that he is not going to be impressed. He stops at the foot of the porch steps and looks up at you.
You look down at him. “Good morning,” you say.
He considers you. His gaze is frank and assessing in a way that reminds you immediately, disconcertingly, of his father. “You talk funny,” he says.
Behind him, two of the other children go very still in that particular way children do when someone has said the thing everyone was thinking. “I do,” you agree pleasantly. “Good morning.”
He blinks — he was expecting something else, you can tell — and then, almost against his will: “Morning.” He goes inside. You allow yourself precisely one second of satisfaction and then follow him in.
Their names, as you learn them through the morning: Clara, Tommy, Ruth, Beau, Ida, Jesse, Mae, Henry, Grace, Daniel, Lottie, Patrick, Susie, and Eli. Fourteen children, five to eleven, in one room with one teacher, which is simply the way of it in a town this size and which you knew going in and which presents itself as exactly the specific beautiful chaos you anticipated.
The little ones need different work from the older ones, the older ones need to be trusted enough not to resent the time you spend with the younger, and the whole arrangement requires a kind of orchestrated independence that takes most new teachers a month to establish.
You have it running by lunch. This is not arrogance. It is three years of practice and the lesson plans of Miss Hargrove, who clearly knew what she was doing, and the children themselves, who are — beneath the shyness and the staring — genuinely good. Clara reads to the two youngest while you work arithmetic with the middle group. Tommy, who struggles with numbers and has clearly been told by someone who loves him to hide it, relaxes visibly when you kneel beside his desk and show him the same problem three different ways without making it a thing. Grace, who is eleven and takes her seniority seriously, helps you hand out the coloured pencils for the afternoon drawing exercise with the gravity of someone performing a civic duty.
Eli sits in the second row and does exactly enough work to be technically compliant and spends the rest of the time studying you like you’re a puzzle he’s deciding whether to bother solving. He is not disruptive. He does not cause trouble, exactly. He just — watches. And occasionally says something, not quite under his breath, that makes the children near him stifle laughter, and when you look at him he is already looking at the ceiling or his pencil or the middle distance, expression perfectly innocent.
At half past two he raises his hand for the first time. You are, cautiously, relieved. “Yes, Eli?”
“How come you don’t say cahn’t like us?” he says. “You say can’t like it’s short.” The room goes quiet with interest.
“Because I grew up in Chicago,” you say. “People talk differently there.”
“Why?”
“That’s a good question. Different places develop different ways of speaking over time depending on who settled there and where they came from originally. It’s called a dialect.”
He turns this over. “So you’re not talking wrong, you’re just talking different.”
“That’s exactly right.”
He seems to file this away somewhere. He looks at his desk, then back up at you. “My dad says Chicago’s real big.”
“It is.”
“Did you like it?”
There is nothing loaded in the question — he is seven, he is simply curious — but the room is listening and you have a composed face for exactly this and you use it. “I did,” you say. “But I like it here too. Different things to like.” You hold his gaze for just a moment. “Good question, Eli.” He ducks his head in a way that might, if you’re reading it right, be pleased.
You let them out at three o’clock. They pour off the porch like water and scatter in every direction — some toward the main street, some down the side road, a few collected by waiting parents at the gate. You stand on the porch and watch them go with the pleasant exhausted satisfaction of a good first day, the kind where you know the shape of things now even if the details are still forming.
The last child through the gate is Eli, lunch pail swinging again, cap pushed back on his head. He pauses at the gate and turns back. “Miss?” he calls.
“Yes?”
He looks at you for a moment, that assessing look. Then: “You fixed the gate.”
“It was sticking,” you say. He nods, apparently satisfied with this. And then he’s gone, off down the road at a trot, and you lean against the porch post and look at the empty yard and the long afternoon light making everything gold and think that clever, restless, tests limits is right but that the note should have also said watching everything, deciding what to do with it.
Jay brings you pie. Not in the diner — he appears at the boarding house at half past five with a covered plate and the energy of a man who has been wanting to ask you about your day since approximately eight that morning. Mrs. Della lets him in with the equanimity of someone accustomed to Jay Park appearing with baked goods and sets an extra cup on the table. “Well?” he says, sitting down across from you with the plate between you, which you note he has not uncovered, clearly operating on the pie as leverage.
“Well,” you say.
“First day.” He tilts his head. “Good? Bad? You still here, which is promising.”
“Good,” you say honestly. “They’re good kids.”
“They are.” He uncovers the plate — cherry, this time. “Any trouble?”
You think of dark eyes and a gap-toothed grin and you talk funny. “Nothing I couldn’t handle.”
Jay smiles, something knowing in it. “Eli Lee give you a hard time?”
“He was perfectly behaved.”
“That’s almost worse, honestly.” He leans back in his chair. “He’s a good kid. He just — tests people. Wants to know if you’re going to stay.” He says it lightly but you hear something underneath it, something careful. “His last teacher, Miss Hargrove, he adored her by the end. Took him a month.”
“I’ve got time,” you say.
Jay looks at you the way he did that first morning at the counter, that frank easy assessment. “You know Heeseung came into the diner after you left Friday,” he says, with the absolute casualness of a man deploying information he has been sitting on for days.
You cut into the pie. “Did he.”
“Asked how you seemed. Whether you looked settled.” Jay’s expression is the picture of innocence. “Just being neighbourly.”
“That’s nice of him.”
“Mm.” Jay drinks his coffee. “He doesn’t usually ask.”
You eat your cherry pie and look at Jay Park over your fork and decide that you like him enormously and that he is also going to be an absolute menace and that these two things are entirely compatible. “Thank you for the pie,” you say.
Jay grins. “Anytime, darlin’.”
The word lands differently in his mouth — friendly, careless, the way you’d expect. The way it probably sounds from everyone. You eat your pie and don’t think about the way it sounded Friday morning on a counter stool two seats down from you, unhurried and warm, like the man saying it had all the time in the world.
Wednesday afternoon you are erasing the board after the children have gone when you hear the gate. You turn, chalk dust on your hands, and Heeseung Lee is coming through it.
He has his hat in his hand this time — held at his side, the gesture you will come to learn is his version of courtesy, the small deliberate thing he does when he’s on someone else’s ground. He is in his work clothes, boots dusty, shirt with the sleeves rolled like the first time you saw him, and he is looking at the schoolhouse with a particular quiet expression that you can’t read yet. “Mr. Lee,” you say from the porch.
He looks up. “Miss Y/N.” The smile comes easy and unhurried, the same one from the diner, and you are annoyed to find that it works just as well the second time. “Hope I’m not disturbing.”
“Not at all.” You dust the chalk from your hands on your apron. “Is something wrong?”
“No, ma’am.” He reaches the foot of the steps and stops there, which you note — he doesn’t come up onto the porch uninvited, just stands at the bottom with his hat in his hand. “Eli mentioned you fixed the gate.”
You blink. “It was sticking.”
“I know. I kept meaning to get to it.” He looks at the gate briefly and back at you. “Just wanted to thank you. And to say — he told me about the dialect conversation.”
“Oh?”
“He came home and used the word dialect four times at supper.” Something warm moves through his expression. “He hasn’t stopped asking questions about Chicago.”
You lean against the porch post. “He’s very bright.”
“I know,” Heeseung says, quietly, the way parents say things about their children when they’re proud and trying not to make a production of it. “He can be a handful.”
“He’s been fine,” you say, and mean it. “He’s testing me. I don’t mind being tested.”
Heeseung looks at you for a moment — that same brief, unguarded register you caught in the diner, there and then gone. “Miss Hargrove said the same thing about him.” A pause. “She was right, and so are you.” He puts his hat back on, settling it with the ease of long habit. “I won’t keep you. Just — thank you. For the gate and for the patience.”
“It’s my job,” you say.
“The gate wasn’t,” he says simply, and tips his hat, and walks back through it — and you notice, as he goes, that he lifts the handle the right way so it doesn’t stick on him. He knew how it worked. He just hadn’t gotten to it.
You stand on the porch for a moment after he’s gone, chalk dust still on your apron, the afternoon light going gold and long across the schoolyard. Alright, you think. But it’s a different alright than the one on the bus.
—
You learn the rhythms of Castillo Creek the way you learn anything new — by paying attention. Monday through Friday the main street wakes slowly, the diner first, Jay’s lights on before six and the smell of coffee reaching the boarding house if the wind is right. The general store opens at seven, the hardware store at eight. The church bell rings at nine for no reason anyone can explain except that it always has.
Afternoons are quiet in the way that heat makes things quiet, everyone retreating into shade, and then around four the street comes back to life — horses at the post, trucks pulling in, the sound of voices carrying in the dry air. Evenings on the boarding house porch: crickets, the occasional distant sound of music from the diner where Jay sometimes puts a record on after hours, the sky going colours you don’t have names for yet.
Weekends the ranch hands come into town. This is when you first understand that Sunrise Ranch is not a small operation. Saturday morning and there are three trucks parked outside the general store and Jay’s counter is full and the voices are different — louder, easier, the particular looseness of men at the end of a working week. You are becoming a recognisable figure on the main street now, two weeks in, and people nod or wave or say morning, Miss Y/N with the comfortable familiarity of a town that has decided you belong, or is at least willing to extend the provisional assumption.
Riki finds you at the general store on the second Saturday, reaching for a tin on a high shelf. “Here,” he says, getting it down for you without ceremony.
“Thank you.” You put it in your basket. “How’s the mare?”
He blinks, then remembers. “Back in her paddock. She does it once a month like clockwork.” He falls into step beside you toward the counter, hands in his pockets. “How’s Eli?”
“Getting there,” you say.
Riki’s mouth twitches. “He told me you knew what a dialect was.”
“He told his father the same thing four times at supper, apparently.”
“Five times,” Riki says. “I was there. Mr. Lee made him use it in a sentence correctly before he could have dessert.” Something soft moves through his expression — fond and private, the look of someone describing a home. “He does that. Makes it a game so Eli doesn’t know he’s being taught.”
You look at him. “You live at the ranch?”
“Have done for two years.” He picks up a paper bag of something from the counter and adds it to your basket without asking, then pays for it along with his own things before you can protest. “Mr. Lee offered me the room off the stable when I first got here. Said I could work it off.” A pause. “I haven’t worked it off yet. I don’t think he’s keeping count.”
You think of the gate. Of a man standing at the foot of porch steps with his hat in his hand, not coming up unless invited. “He seems like a good man,” you say, carefully.
Riki looks at you with the frank, uncomplicated assessment of a nineteen-year-old who has not yet learned to be oblique. “He’s the best man I know,” he says simply. And then the door opens and two of the other ranch hands come in and Riki’s face shifts back into something easier and the conversation moves on, but you carry that best man I know out of the store with you and into the bright Saturday morning and find that you believe it without quite knowing why.
The invitation comes through Eli. It is a Thursday, three weeks into term, and Eli has — incrementally, perceptibly, in the way of a child who makes decisions slowly and then commits to them entirely — decided that you are acceptable. This has manifested in: asking you approximately forty questions about Chicago over the course of various lunchtimes, showing you a drawing he did of his horse with the air of someone bestowing an honour, correcting Tommy’s arithmetic before you can get there and then looking at you to see if you’ll mind, and most recently appointing himself the unofficial distributor of coloured pencils, a role Grace has had to be diplomatically persuaded to share.
On Thursday he stays behind after the others have gone.
You are at your desk reviewing the week’s work when you become aware that he is still in his seat, lunch pail on the desk in front of him, regarding you with his father’s eyes and an expression of elaborate casualness. “Yes, Eli?” you say, without looking up.
A pause. “My dad says you should come see the ranch.”
You look up. He is studying his lunch pail. “He said if you wanted. He said don’t make it a thing.” He glances up at you briefly. “I’m supposed to say it like it’s my idea.”
You press your lips together very firmly. “Whose idea was it?”
Eli considers the ethics of this for a moment. “Both,” he decides. “I said you’d like the horses and he said he’d been meaning to ask.” He picks up his lunch pail. “Saturday morning. Riki said he’d make sure the good horses are out.”
You look at this seven-year-old boy with his gap-toothed earnestness and his father’s dark eyes and the absolute transparency of a child who is not yet old enough to be a convincing liar and feel something in your chest do something inconvenient. “Saturday morning,” you say.
Eli nods, satisfied, and slides off his chair. At the door he pauses. “Miss?”
“Yes?”
“Dad said wear boots if you have them.” A beat. “Do you have boots?”
“I’ll manage,” you say. He looks doubtful but lets it go.
You do not have boots.
Mrs. Della solves this problem on Friday evening by producing a pair from somewhere in the back of a wardrobe that fit you well enough and have clearly belonged to several people before you, worn in and comfortable in the way of things that have been used properly. She does not make a fuss about it. She sets them by your door and says “for your visit to the ranch” with the serenity of a woman who knew this was coming before you did, which you are beginning to understand is simply Mrs. Della’s relationship with information.
Saturday morning is cooler than usual, a thin cloud cover cutting the worst of the heat, and you walk the road east of town with Mrs. Della’s boots on your feet and the particular feeling of a person going somewhere they haven’t decided how to feel about yet.
Sunrise Ranch announces itself before you reach it. The land opens up, the scrub giving way to fenced pasture, horses moving slow in the morning light — four, five, you count seven in the near paddock — and then the gate with Sunrise in iron letters across the top, and beyond it a long low ranch house in weathered timber, a stable block, a water tower, a barn with its doors open, and the general cheerful disorder of a working property.
Eli appears from nowhere, running. “You came,” he says, like this was uncertain, and then immediately: “You have boots.” He looks at them. “They’re okay.”
“Thank you,” you say gravely.
“Come see Maple.” He is already walking, assuming you’ll follow, which you do. “Maple’s mine. Dad got her for me last year. She’s brown.” He says this last detail with enormous authority, as though colour is the primary criterion for horse quality.
“Is she,” you say.
“She’s the best one.” He pushes open the stable door. “Don’t tell Riki’s horse.”
The stable smells of hay and horses and something warm and animal that is not unpleasant, and the light comes through the high windows in long dusty bars, and Maple is indeed brown and does indeed regard you with the large patient eyes of a creature who has learned that humans are mostly harmless if you wait them out. Eli shows her off with the proprietorial pride of a small boy who has been trusted with something real, and you let him lead you through every detail — her feeding schedule, her preferred brushing side, the way she does something with her ears when she’s happy — and listen properly, because he is telling you something important about himself by telling you about the horse. “She’s beautiful,” you say, and mean it.
Eli glows. “Yeah,” he agrees. He strokes her nose. “Dad taught me to ride on her. Well — on her and Scout. Scout’s too big for me yet but I can get on him if someone helps.”
“Who’s Scout?”
“Mine,” says a voice behind you. You turn. Heeseung is in the stable doorway, hat on, a coffee cup in one hand, backlit by the morning in a way that is doing no one any favours. He looks at you with that easy unhurried expression and then at Eli. “You showing her around properly?”
“I was getting to the rest,” Eli says, with dignity.
“Sure you were.” Heeseung’s gaze moves back to you. “Morning. Glad you came.” He says it simply, no particular weight on it, and holds out the second coffee cup that you hadn’t noticed he was holding. “Mrs. Della said you take it black.”
You take the cup. “She told you that?”
“Jay told me. Mrs. Della told Jay.” He lifts a shoulder. “Small town.”
You drink the coffee. It is good — strong and dark and made by someone who takes it seriously. “Thank you.”
“Thank Eli,” he says. “It was mostly his idea.”
“He told me,” you say.
Heeseung looks at his son with an expression of fond resignation. “Did he.” Eli, sensing this conversation is edging toward accountability, has become very interested in Maple’s left ear.
He shows you the ranch himself, Eli orbiting ahead and behind like a satellite, Riki appearing occasionally from whatever task he’s been given and nodding at you with the quiet approval of someone whose opinion you hadn’t realised you were seeking.
Heeseung walks beside you with his coffee and talks about the land with the ease of a man who has known it his whole life — the pasture his father planted, the fence line he extended six years ago, the water table, the horses by name and temperament, the rhythm of the seasons out here where seasons are more about rain than temperature. He is not performing. That is the thing you notice, watching him from the corner of your eye as he points out the far ridge where the light hits different at sunset. He is simply telling you, the way people talk about things they love when they’re comfortable enough to let it show. “How long has your family been here?” you ask.
“Three generations,” he says. “My grandfather broke the land. My father ran it until—” a brief pause, easy enough that you’d miss it if you weren’t paying attention “—until I was ready to.” He looks out at the pasture. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else.”
“I used to think that about Chicago,” you say, before you mean to.
He glances at you. “What changed?”
The morning light is warm on the fence rail where you’ve stopped. The horses move slow in the paddock. Eli is attempting to convince Riki to let him ride something he’s probably not supposed to, and Riki is maintaining a very patient no. “Things do,” you say. “Change.”
It is not an answer and you both know it. But Heeseung doesn’t push — just nods once, slow, and looks back out at the pasture, and the silence that follows is the comfortable kind. The kind you don’t feel obligated to fill.
“Scout,” he says, after a moment. You follow his gaze. A large grey horse has appeared at the paddock fence — appeared is the right word, horses move quietly for their size, you’re learning — and is regarding you with the same patient assessment as Maple, though with more authority behind it.
“He’s enormous,” you say.
“He’s a gentleman,” Heeseung says. “Come here.” You follow him to the fence. Scout watches you approach with ears forward. Heeseung holds out his hand and the horse drops his nose into it with the ease of long familiarity, a small exhale of breath like a greeting. “Give him your hand,” Heeseung says. “Palm up.”
You do. Scout sniffs your palm, his breath warm and grass-scented, and then shifts his nose slightly to nudge at your wrist, which makes you laugh — actually laugh, surprised out of it, the unguarded kind. Heeseung is watching you when you look up. He looks away just a moment too late, back to Scout, and settles his hand on the horse’s neck. “He likes you,” he says.
“Or he wants something.”
“Same thing, with horses.” The corner of his mouth lifts. He rubs Scout’s neck once and steps back from the fence. “You ride?”
“No.”
“You want to?”
You look at Scout. Scout looks at you. He is very large and very calm and the morning is soft and there is coffee going warm in your hand and no one in this field knows anything about you except that you fixed a gate and knew the word dialect and took your coffee black. “Yes,” you say.
He doesn’t put you on Scout — that comes later, he says, and something in the later is easy and assuming in a way that you notice and don’t examine — but on a smaller bay mare named Honey who is, in Eli’s expert opinion, basically a chair, she’s so calm, which Heeseung overrules diplomatically.
He helps you up with one hand steadying the stirrup and one hand briefly at your waist — functional, impersonal, the practiced efficiency of someone who has helped people onto horses many times — and then steps back and talks you through it. Heels down. Hands soft. Don’t grip with your knees. Breathe.
You walk Honey around the paddock twice with Heeseung at her head and Eli on the fence calling encouragement that is mostly suggestions about how you’re holding the reins wrong. By the third pass Heeseung drops back and lets you go alone, and there is a specific feeling in that — in him deciding you’re ready, stepping back, watching from the fence with his arms resting on the top rail and his hat low — that you don’t have a name for but that sits somewhere behind your sternum and stays there. “You’re a natural,” he calls.
“She’s a chair,” you call back, and hear him laugh from across the paddock, a real one, the kind that alters the whole shape of his face.
Eli says “I said that” with great indignation.
You stay until noon. It isn’t planned. It is the accumulation of small things: Eli deciding you needed to see the barn cat’s new kittens, the kittens being an objectively compelling argument for staying, Riki appearing with a plate of something Mrs. Lee — Heeseung’s housekeeper, an iron-haired woman named Bea who has been with the ranch for twenty years — had left covered on the kitchen table. You all eat on the porch in the late morning sun, Eli wedged between you and Heeseung with a kitten in his lap that he has named Chicago with the satisfied look of someone cementing an inside joke.
It is — easy. Unreasonably easy for a woman who has spent two months being careful about everything.
Heeseung sits with his ankle crossed over his knee and doesn’t push any conversations and doesn’t fill silences that don’t need filling and listens when you talk in the particular way that makes you feel actually heard rather than waited out. Once, when Eli says something that makes you laugh, he catches it — the laugh — in that peripheral way, not staring, just noticing, and then looks deliberately at something else. You notice him noticing. You look at something else too.
He walks you back to the gate at noon. Eli has been redirected to afternoon chores with the selective enthusiasm of a child who has negotiated the terms. Riki raises a hand from the stable door. The horses stand easy in the afternoon quiet.
At the gate Heeseung stops and holds it open — it swings cleanly, well-oiled, this one — and tips his hat. “Thank you for coming,” he says. “Eli’s been talking about this since Thursday.”
“Only since Thursday?” you say.
He smiles. God, that smile. “Since Tuesday,” he admits. “I told him to wait.”
You step through the gate and turn. He’s on the other side of it, hat tipped forward, the morning light going warm gold over the ranch behind him. Scout visible in the paddock beyond, Maple beside him. “Thank you for the coffee,” you say. “And the riding lesson.”
“Anytime,” he says. And then, easy as breathing, the way he always does it, like it costs him nothing: “You’re welcome here, darlin’. Any time you want.”
You walk the road back to town with the borrowed boots and the feeling of a morning that opened up something you hadn’t known was closed. Behind you the gate swings shut, clean on its hinge. New soil, you think. See what grows.
—
October arrives like an exhale. The heat doesn’t break exactly — you’re learning it doesn’t really break here, not the way it does in Chicago where summer ends with a week of storms and then suddenly you need a coat — but it softens. The mornings are cooler now, the light coming in at a different angle, and the scrub on the edge of town goes colours you weren’t expecting: amber and rust and a dry pale gold that isn’t quite like anything you’ve seen before. Mrs. Della puts a second quilt on your bed. The church noticeboard updates the harvest dance announcement with a date: Saturday, October 12th. All welcome. Bring a dish.
You have been in Castillo Creek six weeks. You know, now, which floorboard in the schoolhouse creaks and how to avoid it during silent reading so you don’t startle the little ones. You know that Tommy is left-handed and was made to switch and that this is why his numbers come out backwards sometimes, and you have quietly, without making it a thing, begun letting him work with his left hand and watching his shoulders drop two inches with relief. You know that Clara will read anything you put in front of her and that the shelf of books in the schoolhouse is genuinely inadequate and that you have written to the county school board about this and received in response a letter of such elaborate non-commitment that you have started a separate fund from your own salary, small but growing. You know that Eli Lee will behave perfectly for four days and then on the fifth do something just left of the line — not malicious, never malicious, just testing — and that the correct response is to look at him steadily and say his name once, and he will subside, and on day six he will be angelic in a way that is clearly an apology.
You know that Jay’s cherry pie is better than his peach, that Riki takes his coffee with enough sugar to make your teeth hurt, that Bea at the ranch makes the best biscuits in Texas and would probably agree with you about this if you said so, that the tabby cat on the post office step is named Gerald and will accept exactly one ear scratch before moving to bite you. You know that Heeseung Lee tips his hat to every woman on the main street and that it means something different when he does it to you, and you have not examined this too closely because you are being careful and new soil takes time and you are not here to start anything. You are just noticing. That’s all.
Eli asks you about your family on a Tuesday. It is lunchtime, the other children spread across the yard in the October sun, and Eli has taken to eating his lunch on the porch steps near where you stand with your coffee. This started without announcement — one day he was in the yard, the next he was on the steps — and you have not remarked on it because remarking on it would make him self-conscious about having done something soft. “Do you miss Chicago?” he asks, through a mouthful of whatever Bea has packed him.
“Sometimes,” you say. It’s true. You miss the lake. The particular smell of the city in November. The diner near your old apartment that made pierogi on Thursdays.
“What do you miss?”
“The lake,” you say. “Lake Michigan. It’s enormous — like an inland sea. You can stand at the edge and not see the other side.”
Eli processes this. “We have the creek,” he offers.
“I know. I like the creek.”
He nods, satisfied that the comparison comes out even. Then: “Do you have family there?”
“My parents,” you say. “A brother.”
“Do they visit?”
You think of your mother’s voice on the telephone — the one call you’ve made since arriving, standing in the general store with the receiver pressed to your ear, your mother saying when are you coming home in the tone that meant you’ve made your point now. “Not yet,” you say.
Eli swings his feet against the step. “My grandma visits sometimes. Dad’s mom. She lives in Austin.” He picks at his lunch. “I don’t have a mom,” he says, with the casual directness of a child who has been saying this long enough that it no longer feels like a wound, just a fact. “She went away.”
Your chest does something careful and quiet. “I know,” you say, gently. “I’m sorry.”
“Dad says she got sick,” Eli says. “But I think—” he stops. Looks at the yard. Starts again: “I think that’s not the whole story. But he doesn’t want me to be sad so he says it that way.” He looks up at you with those dark perceptive eyes. “Do you think that’s bad? To say a not-whole story?”
You look at this seven-year-old boy who is so much older than seven in the specific ways that loss makes children old, and you think about not-whole stories and composed faces and she wanted a simpler life and how many versions of the truth are actually just the parts you can bear to carry in public.
“I think,” you say carefully, “that sometimes people tell not-whole stories because they’re trying to protect someone they love. And I think when you’re older you’ll understand the rest, and your dad will tell it to you when you’re ready.” You meet his eyes. “Does that make sense?”
Eli thinks about it seriously, which is the only way he thinks about things. “Yeah,” he says. Then: “You’re smart.”
“Thank you.”
“Dad thinks so too.” He says it with absolute offhand innocence and takes a large bite of his sandwich and looks at the yard, and you look at the middle distance and drink your coffee and say nothing at all.
The thing about a small town is that the architecture of people’s lives is visible in a way it never is in a city. In Chicago you could live next door to someone for three years and know nothing about them. Here the walls are thin by design — not maliciously, just the natural result of everyone’s business being conducted in the same four blocks, the same diner, the same church on Sundays, the same post office queue. You learn things about people without trying. You learn them through Jay, who is a font of town history delivered in the register of casual conversation, and through Mrs. Della, whose knowledge of Castillo Creek extends back forty years and who shares it in the same tone she uses to describe the weather — matter of fact, no particular drama.
This is how you learn that Heeseung Lee has been running the ranch alone since he was twenty-six. That his father died the year before Eli was born, and his mother moved to Austin to be near her sister, and Heeseung stayed because someone had to and because the land was in him the way some things get into people.
That Clara — his wife, Eli’s mother — left when Eli was two. Jay tells you this on a Wednesday evening when you’ve stayed past closing, helping him wipe down the counter because you were in the middle of a conversation and neither of you wanted to stop it, and he says it quietly, without the gossipy relish he sometimes deploys for lesser information. He says it like he’s trusting you with something.
“She wasn’t unhappy,” Jay says, wiping the same spot twice. “Or — she was, but not because of him. She was a person who needed more than this place could give her and she stayed too long trying to want what she had and then she left.” He sets down the cloth. “Eli was two. Heeseung — he didn’t fall apart. That’s the thing about him. He just. Kept going.” He looks at the counter. “He hasn’t let anyone close since. Not like that.”
You are quiet for a moment. “Why are you telling me this?”
Jay looks at you with his frank dark eyes and the expression of a man who has thought carefully about what he’s going to say. “Because you’re going to be around for a while,” he says. “And I think you should know who he is. The real shape of him.” A pause. “And because he asked about you again today.”
“Jay—”
“He asked if you seemed settled,” Jay says. “Same question as before. He asks it like it’s nothing.” He picks the cloth back up. “Heeseung doesn’t ask about people, is the thing. He notices them. He listens. But he doesn’t ask.” He looks at you. “He’s asking about you.”
You go home to the boarding house and sit at your writing desk for a long time without writing anything.
—
The week before the harvest dance, Eli presents you with a drawing.
This is not unprecedented — he has given you two previous drawings, one of Maple and one of what you eventually identified as the schoolhouse, rendered in the bold confident lines of a child who draws from feeling rather than observation. This one he places on your desk at the end of Friday with the elaborate casualness he deploys for things that matter to him.
You wait until the room is empty before you look at it. It is two figures. One small, one tall. The small one has a gap in its teeth rendered in careful pencil. The tall one has long hair and is wearing — you look closer — a dress with a collar, which is clearly you. They are standing in front of something you take a moment to identify as the paddock fence, and between them, taking up most of the page, is a horse. Brown. Maple, you think, though the horse has been given an expression of benevolent authority that transcends species.
At the bottom, in the large uneven letters of a child still mastering the relationship between thought and handwriting: MISS YN AND ELI. FRIENDS.
You sit with that for a long moment. Then you take a piece of tape and put it on the wall beside the blackboard, where you can see it from your desk, and you go home for the weekend with something warm sitting in your chest that you don’t try to name.
Saturday, the day before the harvest dance, you are in Jay’s diner mid-morning when Heeseung comes in. This is not unusual. He comes in most Saturday mornings, sometimes with Riki, sometimes alone, and you have in six weeks arrived at a kind of comfortable parallel presence with him — you are often there, he is often there, you talk easily when you talk and don’t force it when you don’t, and Jay watches the whole thing with the serene satisfaction of a man who has predicted an outcome and is waiting for everyone else to catch up.
Today he comes in alone and sits at the counter and orders coffee and then turns to you with his hat on the stool beside him and says: “You going to the dance tomorrow?”
“Mrs. Della seems to think I’m obligated,” you say.
The corner of his mouth. “She’s not wrong. First harvest dance as a Castillo Creek resident is non-negotiable.” He turns his coffee cup in his hands. “It’s good. They do it right.”
“Do you go every year?”
“Every year.” He pauses. “I usually take Eli for the first part. He passes out around nine and I bring him home and come back.”
“Who looks after him?”
“Bea stays late.” He glances at you sidelong. “She has opinions about the dance. Mostly that someone should be dancing and it might as well be me.”
You smile. “Sound advice.”
“Mm.” He is quiet for a moment in the comfortable way he does quiet. Then: “Would you want to — go over together? You and me and Eli. He’d like that.”
The way he says it: simple, direct, no particular performance of casualness but no weight on it either. Just an offer, made plainly. You look at him. He is looking at his coffee cup with the expression of a man who has said the thing and is now waiting without making it a big deal either way. “Yes,” you say. “I’d like that.”
He nods, once, and drinks his coffee, and Jay behind the counter turns to do something at the back shelf that absolutely does not require his attention, and the diner is warm and smells of coffee and something frying and outside the Texas October is going gold in the morning light.
That afternoon you go back to the boarding house and sit on the edge of the bed and look at the window.
Outside: the field, the flat land, the sky. You think about Richard. You do this less than you used to — the thinking about Richard — which is itself a kind of measurement of how much has shifted in six weeks. He is still there, the way a bruise is there: faded but present when you press on it, the particular combination of shame and anger that comes from having your own story told about you rather than by you. The thing he did was not dramatic. That is almost the worst of it. He simply — ended the engagement, and then explained it in a way that made people look at you, and you could not stay in a city where everyone was deciding what version of you to believe.
You think about what Jay said: He asks about you. You think about Eli’s drawing on the wall beside the blackboard. You think about a gate that swings clean on its hinge, and a man who knew how it worked all along.
You are being careful. You are allowed to be careful. A woman who has had her story taken from her is allowed to be careful about who she gives it back to. But you are also — and this is newer, tentative, growing in the way things grow in new soil when they finally get enough light — you are also here. Present, in this room, in this town, in this life that is beginning to feel less like a retreat and more like an arrival.
You look at the field and the sky until the light goes gold and then rose and then the soft dark blue of a Texas evening. Tomorrow there is a dance. Heeseung Lee is going to take you and his son and bring you home after, and this is a simple thing, a neighbourly thing, a Castillo Creek thing where everything means less than it would mean somewhere else.
Or it means exactly as much as it means, and you’re just going to have to find out.
Eli arrives at the boarding house at six o’clock exactly.
You hear him before you see him — the gate, then footsteps on the porch, then a knock that has clearly been practiced for being the right amount of grown-up. You come downstairs to find Mrs. Della already at the door with the expression of a woman who has been waiting for this moment since approximately Tuesday.
Eli is in a white shirt with the collar buttoned and his hair combed flat in a way that will not survive the evening. He is holding his hat in both hands the way his father holds his, you notice — at his side, turned slightly. He looks up at you and his face does something he can’t quite control, a brightness that he immediately tamps down into dignity. “Dad’s outside,” he says.
“You look very smart,” you tell him.
He stands slightly taller. “Bea made me tuck in,” he says, in the tone of a man who has suffered and endured. Behind you Mrs. Della makes a sound that is definitely not a laugh.
You have worn the blue dress. You own three dresses suitable for an evening out and the blue one has a collar and buttons down the front and a skirt that moves when you walk and it is the one that makes you feel most like yourself, which is the only criterion that matters tonight. You have your hair down, which you don’t do at school, and Mrs. Della’s good earrings which she pressed on you with the firmness of a woman who will not be argued with about earrings.
You step out onto the porch. Heeseung is at the foot of the steps. He is in a dark shirt, clean boots, his hat. He looks up when you come out and there is a moment — brief, unguarded — where his expression does something he doesn’t quite catch before the easy steadiness comes back. His eyes move over you once, quickly, and then he looks at Eli.
“Hat,” he says. Eli puts his hat on. “Good.” Heeseung looks back at you, and the corner of his mouth lifts. “Miss Y/N,” he says. “You look real nice.”
“Thank you,” you say. “So do you.”
He makes a small sound, not quite dismissive, like a man who doesn’t know what to do with a compliment offered plainly and has decided not to examine it. He offers his arm — an old-fashioned gesture, natural on him — and you take it, and Eli immediately takes your other hand with the confidence of someone who has decided this is simply how the arrangement works, and the three of you walk down the road toward the lights and the music already drifting from the community hall at the end of the street.
The harvest dance is, as advertised, done right. The community hall is a low timber building you’ve walked past without knowing what it was, and tonight it is strung with lanterns and smells of sawdust and food and the particular excitement of a town that doesn’t get many occasions. Tables along the walls hold enough food to feed Castillo Creek twice over — Mrs. Della has contributed a peach cobbler, which you carried over earlier, and it is already half gone. A four-piece band is set up at the far end: fiddle, guitar, upright bass, a woman on piano who plays with her whole body. The dancing has already started, couples moving on the cleared floor, children weaving between adult legs at the edges.
The town turns to look when you walk in. Not unpleasantly — it is the small-town version of a head-turn, curious and warm, the collective noting of Heeseung Lee with the new schoolteacher that you can feel passing through the room like a current. Several women note it with expressions ranging from warmly approving to something more carefully neutral, which tells you what Jay has already told you about the general feeling toward the man beside you.
Heeseung appears to notice none of it. He steers you toward Jay, who is leaning against the far wall with a plate of food and the expression of a man who has been looking forward to tonight for reasons that are entirely about watching other people. “Well,” Jay says, looking between you with magnificent restraint, “don’t you both clean up nice.”
“Food’s good,” Heeseung says, ignoring this.
“I made the cornbread.”
“I know. I already had some.” He looks at Eli, who has been scanning the room with the efficient tactical assessment of a child locating friends. “Stay where I can see you.”
Eli is already gone. Heeseung watches him go with the particular expression of a parent who knows better than to fight it and has positioned himself where he can see the whole room.
The evening unfolds the way good evenings do: without agenda, in the accumulation of small moments. You eat. Jay introduces you to people you haven’t met, which turns out to be fewer than you expected — you know more of Castillo Creek than you realised, the six weeks of main street mornings and school gate conversations having done their quiet work. Mr. and Mrs. Holt from the farm to the north, who have a daughter in your class — Ruth, the one who does everything left-handed and ambidextrously, a fact you have been admiring for weeks. Old Pete from the hardware store, who shakes your hand and says “you fixed the school gate” with the respect of a man who rates practical competence above most other virtues. The minister’s wife, who is warm and enormous and has clearly decided you are good people and broadcasts this to the room through sheer force of conviction.
Heeseung stays near you without being beside you constantly — he moves through the room the way you’ve noticed he does, at ease everywhere, known to everyone, the smile given genuinely and the name remembered for everyone he talks to. Women approach him with the practised ease of long familiarity and he is warm and kind to all of them and doesn’t linger with any of them and drifts back in your direction after each one with the reliability of water finding level. Jay watches this and eats his cornbread and says nothing, which from Jay is extremely loud.
Eli reappears at intervals to report on things of importance: that Tommy has had four pieces of pie, that someone’s dog has got in and is under the far table, that the fiddle player has a hole in his boot which Eli finds compelling for reasons he can’t fully articulate. Each time he appears he is slightly more dishevelled — the collar loosened by degree, the hair no longer remotely flat, a smear of something on his cuff that you choose not to investigate.
The ninth time he appears he is pulling someone by the hand. “Miss Y/N,” he says, with great ceremony, “this is my friend Cody. Cody, this is my teacher. She’s from Chicago and she knows what a dialect is.”
Cody, who is approximately Eli’s age and has the look of a child who has eaten too much pie, nods with solemnity. “What’s a dialect?” he asks you. You explain it, briefly, and both boys listen with their heads slightly tilted, and Heeseung beside you makes a sound very low in his chest that is a laugh he has decided not to have.
The boys disappear again. You look up at Heeseung. He is already looking somewhere else, but his mouth is still doing the almost-laugh. “He’s been telling people that for weeks,” he says. “The dialect thing.”
“I know,” you say. “Grace told me he explained it to the minister’s wife.” The laugh escapes this time, quiet and genuine, and the shape it makes of his face is something you file away without meaning to.
The band shifts tempo around eight. The faster songs have been running for most of the evening — the kind of music that makes your feet move without asking — and now the fiddle drops into something slower, longer, the bass underneath it steady and low. Couples move differently on the floor. The children at the edges drift toward the food tables.
You are by the lantern at the far wall when Heeseung appears beside you. “Dance with me,” he says.
Not would you like to or may I have this — just dance with me, quiet and direct, the way he says most things, like an offer that trusts you to say no if you want to. You look at him. The lantern light is warm on his face, the hat casting a slight shadow, and he is watching you with the patient steadiness that is simply how he is — unhurried, undemanding, there. “Alright,” you say.
He takes your hand and leads you to the floor and puts his other hand at your waist, and you are aware of the warm weight of it through the blue dress, and you put your hand on his shoulder and you dance.
He is good at it. Not showy — he doesn’t have the look of a man who thinks about whether he’s good at things — but easy and sure, the same way he moves through everything. He leads without being heavy about it, and after the first few measures you stop thinking and just follow, and the music goes slow and the lanterns are warm and the whole room is soft at the edges. “You’re surprised I can dance,” he says.
“A little,” you admit.
“My mother’s doing.” Something fond in it. “She said a man who can’t dance is a man who doesn’t know how to listen.” He tilts his head slightly. “She’s right about most things.”
“She sounds formidable.”
“She’d like you.” He says it simply, without apparent awareness of what it implies, and you think: he means it exactly as plainly as he said it, which is somehow more significant than if he’d been trying.
You dance without talking for a while. The fiddle goes somewhere low and sweet. Around you other couples turn slowly, and across the room you can see Jay watching with the expression of a man witnessing the inevitable and finding it satisfying. “Can I ask you something?” Heeseung says.
“Yes.”
“Why Castillo Creek?” He looks at you — not the look he uses on everyone, the warm social look, but something quieter and more direct, the look you’ve caught a few times when he doesn’t know you’re watching. “Of all the places.”
“It was the furthest,” you say. You’ve given this answer before, half-answer that it is, and you feel him register the incompleteness of it.
He doesn’t push. He nods once, slow. “Were you running from something?” he asks. Gently. No judgment in it, just the question, open-handed.
The music turns. You consider him — the steadiness of him, the patience, the careful way he holds you on the dance floor like something he doesn’t want to break but also doesn’t want to handle too gingerly. “Yes,” you say. First time you’ve said it plainly.
He absorbs this. “You don’t have to tell me what,” he says.
“I know.”
“But if you ever want to—” he stops. Starts again. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I’m not going anywhere. Said so simply, with no particular weight on it, just a fact, and yet it lands in you somewhere deep and quiet and stays there like something settling.
“Thank you,” you say. He nods. You dance.
Eli falls asleep in a chair at half past eight. Not gracefully — he is mid-sentence, apparently, Cody reports, about something to do with the dog, and then he simply isn’t anymore. He is curled in the chair with his hat over his face in a pose of complete unconscious dignity, and Heeseung looks at him for a moment with an expression that is purely and simply love, uncomplicated by anything else. “I’ll take him home,” he says.
“Of course.” You help him get the boy upright — Eli stirs briefly, says something about the dog, and goes back under — and Heeseung lifts him with the ease of long practice, the boy’s head dropping onto his shoulder.
“Come back,” Jay says, appearing from nowhere.
“Give me twenty minutes,” Heeseung says. He looks at you over Eli’s sleeping head. “Will you—” a pause, something careful in it. “Will you still be here?”
“Yes,” you say. He holds your gaze for a moment. Then he nods, and carries his son home through the warm October night, and you go back to Jay and the music and the lanterns and the feeling of a hand at your waist that you can still feel even though it’s gone.
“Well,” says Jay.
“Don’t,” you say. He puts his hands up, peaceable, and hands you a glass of lemonade. But he is smiling.
Heeseung is back in eighteen minutes. You are talking to Mrs. Holt when you see him come through the door, hat resettled, and he finds you in the room immediately — doesn’t scan for you, just finds you, the way you find a light when you walk into a dark room. He comes over and Mrs. Holt makes a gracious excuse and leaves, and he stands beside you and accepts the glass of lemonade you’ve been holding for him without either of you remarking on why you knew to have it.
The band starts something slow again. Heeseung looks at you. You look at him. “Again?” he says.
“Again,” you say.
This time when he puts his hand at your waist you don’t catalogue it, don’t file it, don’t hold it at a careful distance to examine later. You just — let it be what it is, warm and steady and real, his hand and your shoulder and the fiddle going slow and the lanterns burning low, and if the space between you is slightly less than it was the first time then neither of you mentions it.
You dance until the band stops for a break and then you get food and eat it on the hall steps in the cool October night and talk — easily, unhurriedly — about nothing much and everything, the ranch and the classroom and things you’ve read and things you’ve seen, the way a conversation goes when two people discover they have more to say to each other than they anticipated.
At some point you become aware that the music has started again inside and neither of you has moved to go back in. At some point after that you become aware that your shoulders are nearly touching on the step and neither of you has moved apart.
The night is clear, stars enormous in that Texas sky that has too much room in it, the music muffled through the wall, and Heeseung is talking about the ranch in winter and you are listening and also listening to the warm unhurried sound of his voice and the night is soft and something is very quietly happening, the way things happen in new soil: without announcement, without drama, just the steady irresistible work of growing.
He walks you home at eleven. The street is quiet, the dance still going distantly, the air cool and smelling of dust and something dry and sweet. He walks beside you with his hands in his pockets and you walk with your arms crossed against the chill and at the boarding house gate you stop. He is looking at you.
The porch light is on — Mrs. Della — and in it his face is all warm shadow and that particular steadiness, and you are aware that this is a moment, the kind that has a before and after, and that you are both standing in it. “I had a good night,” you say.
“Me too,” he says. Quiet. Sincere. A pause. The street is empty. The stars are doing what they do.
He reaches out — slowly, deliberately, giving you every opportunity — and tucks a strand of hair back from your face, his fingers barely grazing your cheek, and it is such a small thing, so careful, and it takes your breath in a way that no grand gesture ever has. He drops his hand. “Goodnight, darlin’,” he says. Soft. Just yours.
“Goodnight,” you say. He tips his hat and walks back down the street and you watch him go and then you go inside and you sit on the edge of your bed in the dark and you press your fingers to your cheek where his hand was.
Outside the stars are enormous. New soil, you think. Something’s growing.
—
Nothing is said. This is the thing about Heeseung Lee — he does not press. He does not arrive at the schoolhouse the next morning with declarations or at Jay’s diner with meaningful looks or at the boarding house gate with anything that requires you to respond to it formally. He simply — continues. Being present in the way he is always present, warm and steady and unhurried, and the only difference after the harvest dance is a slight calibration in the frequency with which he finds reasons to be near you, and the way the darlin’ sounds when it’s only the two of you, lower and more deliberate, like a word that has been renegotiated.
You continue also. Teaching, reading, eating Jay’s pie, watching the season turn. But you are aware of him now in a way that has moved past noticing into something more like — waiting. Not anxiously. Just the particular heightened attention of a person who has begun to understand that something is being built, slowly, with care, and who has decided to trust the pace of it.
Eli notices. Of course Eli notices. He is seven and perceptive and he has his father’s eyes. He doesn’t say anything directly — he is too clever for direct — but the quality of his watching changes. He begins positioning himself as a reason for the two of you to be in the same place. Dad, can Miss Y/N come see the new foal. Miss, Dad says you should have Bea’s recipe for the cornbread. The transparent architecture of a child conducting an operation he believes to be covert, and which you and Heeseung have both silently agreed to treat as such because he is seven and it is working and no one is going to be the one to make him stop.
The new foal is three weeks old when Eli invites you to see it, and it has not yet decided what its legs are for. Eli brings you to the ranch on the second Saturday of October — I asked Dad and he said yes and also that it was fine if you were busy but you’re not busy, right? — and the foal is in the small paddock nearest the stable, bewilderingly long-limbed, a dark bay that will probably lighten as she grows. She looks at you when you approach the fence with the expression of a creature that has been in the world twenty-one days and has not yet accumulated the patience to find humans interesting. “She doesn’t have a name yet,” Eli says. “Dad said I could name her.”
“What are you thinking?”
He has clearly been thinking about it for days and has not decided, which is unusual for him — he is not generally a boy who holds back opinions. He leans on the fence rail and watches the foal with unusual gravity. “It has to be right,” he says.
“It does,” you agree. Heeseung is on the other side of Eli, his arms resting on the fence, watching the foal with the particular quiet warmth he reserves for the ranch and for his son. He glances over Eli’s head at you and something passes between you — amusement, tenderness, the shared appreciation of a child being serious about something — and it is so easy, so natural, that for a moment you don’t know what to do with how easy it is.
“What about Chicago?” Eli says. Casually. You look at him. He is studying the foal. “The horse you name,” Heeseung adds. “The barn cat?”
“The barn cat’s name is Chicago,” you tell Heeseung.
“I know,” he says. He is looking at the foal. His mouth is doing the thing. “He named it the day you came to the ranch.”
Eli has achieved maximum innocence, his face a study in disinterest.
“I think Chicago is a good name,” you say. The foal, as if in response, takes three uncertain steps and sits down abruptly.
Eli looks at his father. His father looks at you. You look at the foal, sitting in the dirt with its legs at improbable angles and its ears pricked forward as if this was entirely the plan. You all three start laughing at the same moment.
Riki makes coffee. This has become a thing — the coffee on the porch, the late morning sun, the ranch quiet around you. You have been to Sunrise Ranch four times now and each time it has arranged itself into the same comfortable shape: Eli showing you something, Heeseung nearby, Riki appearing and disappearing like a benevolent ghost, Bea’s food involved at some point, the afternoon light eventually demanding that you walk back to town.
Today Riki sits on the porch steps with his cup and looks out at the paddock where Chicago the foal is attempting, again, to organise her legs. “She’s going to be good,” he says, about the foal. “Look at the shoulder on her.”
“You know horses?” you ask.
“Mr. Lee taught me.” He says it simply, the way he says most things about Heeseung, with that uncomplicated weight of someone describing a fact that is also a debt he’s decided he’s glad to owe. “When I first came here I didn’t know anything about any of this. I just needed work.” He drinks his coffee. “He didn’t ask a lot of questions. He said: here’s the work, here’s the room, the rest we’ll figure out. And then he just — showed me things. Every day. How to work the land, how to read a horse, how to fix what breaks.” A pause. “He does that. Shows rather than tells.”
You think of the riding lesson. Heels down. Hands soft. Don’t grip. Breathe. And then stepping back and watching from the fence to see what you’d do on your own. “Yes,” you say. “He does.”
Riki glances at you with his dark eyes and the particular directness of someone who is not quite nineteen yet and hasn’t learned to be oblique about what he observes. “He’s happy,” he says. “More than usual. I thought you should know.”
You look at your coffee cup. The morning is warm and still.
“Thank you, Riki,” you say. He nods and goes back to watching the foal, and the matter is settled, and you sit on the porch of Sunrise Ranch in the October sun and feel the particular quiet terror of something you want very much beginning to feel possible.
—
The almost-kiss happens on a Wednesday. It is not planned. It is not even exactly an almost-kiss, which is perhaps the most honest thing about it — it is more a moment in which a kiss becomes a possibility that both of you become aware of simultaneously, and the awareness itself is so charged that it amounts to nearly the same thing.
You have stayed late at the schoolhouse marking reading assessments, the kind of work that requires the particular quiet of an empty room, and you are still there at five when you hear the gate and look up to see Heeseung coming through it with something in his hand. He stops at the foot of the steps. “Bea sent this.” He holds up a cloth-wrapped parcel. “She made too much.”
Bea, you have come to understand, always makes too much. This is not accidental. “Tell her thank you,” you say.
“You tell her. She likes you more than she likes me.” He comes up the steps — this is newer, the coming up the steps, the crossing of the porch — and you open the door and he follows you inside because the light is going and neither of you suggests he leave.
He sets the parcel on your desk and looks at the wall beside the blackboard. Eli’s drawing. He looks at it for a long moment without saying anything. “He gave it to me on a Friday,” you say. “I put it up that evening.”
Heeseung is quiet. In the low afternoon light his profile is — you don’t look directly. You tidy the papers on your desk. But you are aware of him in the specific physical way you have been aware of him since the harvest dance, a warmth that doesn’t require proximity to function, that exists simply because he is in the room. “He doesn’t give drawings to people,” Heeseung says, finally.
“I know.”
“He gave one to Jay once.” A pause. “Jay cried.”
“Did he?” You let out an amused breath.
“He’ll tell you he didn’t.” He turns from the wall and the small distance of the schoolroom is between you, both of you standing in the last of the afternoon light through the windows, the assessment papers on the desk and Bea’s parcel beside them and the drawing on the wall. “You’ve been good for him,” he says. “For Eli.”
“He’s been good for me,” you say. Heeseung looks at you. The directness of it, steady and warm and something beneath it that is no longer entirely hidden from you — something careful and wanting and very, very controlled.
He takes a step. Just one. The room is small and one step is a significant renegotiation of the space between you, and you are aware of your own stillness, the way you are not moving away, the way you are — you realise — leaning, fractionally, toward him.
His hand comes up. The same gesture as the gate night — slow, deliberate, no ambiguity about the intention — and his fingers brush your jaw, not your cheek this time but your jaw, tilting your face up very slightly. He looks at you. You look at him. The moment is right there, the exact shape of it, and you can feel his breath and the warmth of his hand and the whole quiet room holding itself still— the gate.
You both hear it. A second later: footsteps on the porch, and Eli’s voice, Dad? Riki said you came here, and the door opens.
Heeseung’s hand drops. He steps back — not hastily, not guilty, just back — and turns toward the door as Eli comes through it with his schoolbag still on his shoulder from wherever he’s been, looking between the two of you with eyes that miss nothing.
“Bea sent food,” Heeseung says.
Eli looks at the parcel. Looks at you. Looks at his father. He is seven years old and he has the perceptive assessment of someone three times that age and you watch him put something together behind his eyes and decide, with great and deliberate charity, not to say it. “Okay,” he says. He drops his bag. “Can I have some?”
—
November comes in quietly. The cold arrives properly now, the mornings sharp, the light later. You have a proper coat from the general store — Castillo Creek wool, practically indestructible, Mrs. Della’s recommendation — and your own boots now, bought from the hardware store with the heel worn to fit your foot. You are, you realise one morning walking to the schoolhouse in the frost, no longer performing belonging. You just — belong. In the small ordinary way of someone who knows which floorboards creak and which gate sticks and which order to say good morning to the main street in. This is a thing you didn’t know you needed until you had it.
The children change too — they are yours now, fully, in the way a class becomes yours when they’ve stopped watching you to see if you’ll stay and started simply assuming you will. Tommy does his arithmetic left-handed and his numbers come out clean. Clara has read everything on the bookshelf and you’ve started lending her your own. The new books arrived last week from the county — three boxes, more than you expected, apparently the board received two letters — and the morning you unpacked them Eli said did you write two letters? and you said the second one was more strongly worded and he looked at you with pure satisfaction and said good.
Grace organises the shelf. Eli helps whether or not he’s asked. The little ones treat the new books with the reverence of sacred objects, which is the correct response.
The second time it almost happens is on your porch. Heeseung walks you home from the diner on a Friday — you’ve fallen into this, the Friday evenings at Jay’s that end with him walking you the two blocks home — and at the gate he stops, as he always does, and you turn, as you always do.
But tonight is different. Maybe it’s the cold, the way it makes the air sharp and close. Maybe it’s the week that’s been — Eli had a difficult day on Tuesday, something about a boy from another farm saying something about his mother, and he’d been quiet for three days until this evening when he’d appeared at Jay’s with Heeseung and been loud enough to make up for it, and you’d watched Heeseung watch his son come back to himself and felt something in your chest pull tight with feeling.
Maybe it’s just that you’re tired of the careful distance and your body is making decisions your head hasn’t approved.
You are at the gate and he is looking at you and the cold is making your breath visible between you and you say, before you’ve decided to: “You could come in.” He goes still. “For coffee,” you say. “Mrs. Della makes it before bed. She won’t mind.”
He looks at you for a long moment. The street is empty and dark and cold and the porch light is on and he is — you watch him weigh something, watch the careful consideration of a man who has learned the cost of moving without thinking, and you wait, and you don’t take it back.
“Not tonight,” he says. Quietly. Not as a rejection — the quality of it is entirely different from rejection, warm and regretful and something else, something that sounds almost like not yet. His eyes hold yours. “But—” he stops.
“But?” you say.
His hand finds yours, briefly, in the cold — not holding, just his fingers over yours for a moment, warm against the chill, a contact so small it might be nothing and is absolutely not nothing. “Soon,” he says.
You look at your hands. His fingers over yours. “Okay,” you say.
He squeezes once and lets go and steps back. Tips his hat. “Goodnight, darlin’.”
“Goodnight.” You go inside. You stand in the hallway for a moment with your hand held against your chest. Soon, you think.
Outside, his footsteps on the road, going home.
Tuesday in the third week of November, after school, after everyone has gone, the room is empty and the light low and you are at your desk and Heeseung has come — ostensibly to fix the wobbling chair leg, he appeared with a tool and a particular determined expression — and has fixed it and straightened up and you are still at the desk and the room is quiet and the space between you is approximately nothing.
He looks at you. You look at him. You say: “Heeseung.” Just his name. No question in it, no instruction, just the sound of it in the empty room, and something in him — the careful controlled something — gives way.
He crosses the room and his hands find your face and he kisses you.
Gently. Almost unbearably gently for a man who has been waiting this long — his mouth soft on yours, one hand curved around your jaw and one in your hair, the kiss slow and thorough and so tender that you feel it behind your eyes. He kisses you like he has all the time in the world and intends to use it, like he’s been thinking about exactly this and is in no hurry now that he’s here.
You make a sound, quiet and involuntary, and his hands tighten slightly in your hair — controlled, so controlled — and then he pulls back just enough to look at you, your face between his hands, his forehead almost touching yours. “Been wanting to do that,” he says, low, “since the diner.”
“The first morning?” you say. Your voice is not entirely steady.
“The first morning,” he confirms.
You pull him back down. This kiss is different — less tender, more certain, the both of you having established the territory now and moving through it with more confidence. His hands stay in your hair and at your jaw and you have one hand in his shirt and one on his arm and the chair leg is fixed and the school room is empty and the afternoon is going dark outside the windows.
Eventually — reluctantly — you separate. He rests his forehead against yours. His breathing is not entirely steady either, which you find deeply satisfying. His thumb moves along your jaw, once. “Eli’s at the ranch,” he says.
“I know.”
“Riki’s with him.”
“I know.” He pulls back enough to look at you properly. The expression on his face is something you haven’t seen before — open, unguarded, the steadiness still there but with something warmer beneath it, something that has stopped being controlled.
You look at him. This man who fixes things slowly and holds gates open and walks beside you without filling every silence and has been waiting, you realise, as carefully as you have — the both of you circling something real at a respectful distance because you both know the cost of getting it wrong. “Not here,” you say. “Not yet.”
He nods immediately, no argument, no pressure. “No.” He straightens. His hand drops from your jaw to your shoulder, rests there for a moment. “Soon.”
“Soon,” you agree.
He kisses you once more — brief, deliberate, a punctuation — and steps back and picks up his tool from the floor. At the door he pauses with his hand on the frame. “Fixed the chair,” he says.
“Thank you,” you say.
The corner of his mouth. He puts his hat on. He goes. You sit in the fixed chair in the empty schoolroom with your fingers at your lips and the particular feeling of someone standing at the very edge of something they’ve been walking toward for a long time.
You don’t see him come in — you’re at the schoolhouse, mid-morning, working fractions with the older children while the little ones do their letters — but the town sees him, which amounts to the same thing. A black car, which is the first thing, because nobody in Castillo Creek drives a black car, everyone drives trucks with dust on them, and a black car with city plates sitting outside the boarding house is the kind of thing that travels the length of the main street in approximately four minutes.
Jay tells you at lunch. He appears at the schoolhouse gate during the midday break with his hands in his apron pockets and the expression of a man who has information he doesn’t want to deliver but will, because not delivering it would be worse. “Someone checked into Mrs. Della’s this morning,” he says.
You are eating a sandwich on the porch steps. “Who?”
“Man from Chicago.” He watches your face. “Name of Calloway.”
The sandwich stops being something you’re interested in. Jay sees it — the thing that happens to your face, the quick controlled shutting-down of it, the composed face coming up like a shutter. He sees it and his expression does something careful and angry on your behalf. “Richard,” you say. Not a question.
“Mrs. Della said he asked for you by name.” Jay’s voice is even, but only just. “Said he was an old friend.”
You set the sandwich down on the step beside you. In the yard the children are playing — Eli is attempting to teach Cody something that involves a great deal of running, unclear objective, self-invented rules — and the sound of them is bright and ordinary and very far away from the thing that is happening in your chest. “How long is he staying?” you say.
“Didn’t say.” Jay pauses. “You don’t have to see him. I mean it. You don’t have to do a single thing.”
“I know, Jay.” You look at the yard. Eli has apparently won whatever the game was and is explaining this to Cody with both hands. “Thank you for telling me.”
Jay looks at you for a long moment with the expression of a man who wants to say more and knows you well enough to know not to. “I’ll be at the diner,” he says. “All night if you need.” He goes. You sit on the steps and watch the children play and breathe.
You see Richard in town at four o’clock. You don’t plan it — or rather you plan to not plan it, to go home the back way and avoid the main street, but you have never been a person who runs from things indefinitely, which is different from a person who retreats to regroup, which is what Castillo Creek was supposed to be, and the distinction matters to you.
So you walk the main street at four. He is outside the general store. Six months since you’ve seen him and he looks exactly the same, which is the particular cruelty of certain kinds of men — Richard Calloway at thirty has the same easy handsomeness he had at twenty-five, the good jaw and the good clothes and the way of standing that broadcasts money without appearing to try. He is talking to Mr. Gus from the hardware store with the particular charm he deploys on strangers, warm and attentive, and Mr. Gus, who is a perfectly reasonable man, appears to be finding him perfectly reasonable.
Richard sees you at the same moment you see him. “Y/N,” he says. He says it the way he’s always said your name — with a kind of ownership, like the name is his to use, like he coined it. Six months ago that sound did something to you. Now it does something different: a cold clarity, like being fully awake.
“Richard,” you say. Mr. Gus, sensing something, makes a gracious excuse and goes inside.
Richard crosses the distance between you with that easy unhurried gait. He is looking at you the way he always looked at you — the assessing look, cataloguing, deciding what he’s working with. He looks at your coat, your boots, the dust on them. “You look well,” he says.
“What are you doing here?”
No preamble. His expression flickers — he expected something else, you can tell, some version of the composed uncertainty he knew how to work with — and then recalibrates. “I wanted to see you.” He tilts his head. “I’ve been worried. Your mother has been worried.”
“My mother knows where I am.”
“She knows where you are.” He glances around — the main street, the hardware store, the distant sound of the diner — with an expression that is almost too carefully neutral. “She’s less certain about why.”
“I am,” you say. “Certain about why.”
Something moves through his expression. Not hurt — Richard doesn’t do hurt, exactly, he does the performance of it — but something more like recalculation. He has come here with a script and you are not following it and he is deciding which page to go to next. “Can we talk?” he says. “Properly. Not — here.”
“Not today,” you say.
“Y/N—”
“I need to get home,” you say. “I have work to do.” You walk past him. You feel his gaze on your back the whole length of the street and you keep your spine straight and your pace even and you do not look back, and you turn the corner to the boarding house and you stand in the hallway for thirty seconds with your hand flat against the wall.
Then you go upstairs and sit at your desk and write lesson plans for the following week with the particular furious focus of a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing and exactly why.
He stays.
This is what you didn’t account for — or what you knew, somewhere, and didn’t want to know: that Richard Calloway does not come somewhere and leave without getting what he came for, because Richard Calloway has not, in thirty years of life, not gotten a thing he came for. He is patient in the manner of a man who has never had to be truly patient, which is a different thing from Heeseung’s patience — Heeseung’s patience is the patience of someone who understands that good things take the time they take. Richard’s patience is the patience of someone who is simply waiting for the situation to arrange itself correctly.
He is in the diner on Friday morning when you come in. He has clearly been there a while — Jay’s expression when you walk in tells you everything, the tight professional smile of a man maintaining composure in his own establishment — and Richard stands when he sees you with the automatic courtesy of old money and gestures at the booth across from him like you’ve just arrived somewhere he owns.
You sit at the counter instead. Jay puts coffee in front of you without being asked and goes to the back. Richard slides onto the stool beside you. “Your friend doesn’t like me,” he says pleasantly.
“Jay doesn’t know you,” you say. “He’s good at people.”
A flicker. “I see you haven’t lost your—” he pauses, finds the word “—sharpness.”
“I’ve been busy,” you say. “Teaching.”
“Yes.” He turns his cup in his hands. This is a gesture you know — he does it when he’s choosing his approach, the hand movement while he thinks. “You’re a good teacher, Y/N. You were always good at it. You could be doing it in Chicago. Somewhere with—” he doesn’t finish it but you hear it: resources, standing, people like us.
“I like it here,” you say.
“You’ve been here two months.”
“Ten weeks.”
“Ten weeks,” he says. “In a town with four hundred people.” He looks at you sidelong. “Is this really what you want? Or is it just — the furthest you could get?”
The question lands because he knows you well enough to know it might. You drink your coffee.
“Both,” you say. “And then it became what I wanted.”
He is quiet for a moment. Then, lower, the charm dialed back, something more direct underneath: “I made a mistake.” You look at him. “The way I handled things,” he says. “The way I — let people talk.” He meets your eyes. “I should have been clearer. About what happened.”
“What did happen, Richard?” you say. “Tell me your version.”
Something careful moves through his face. “We weren’t right for each other. I should have said that, instead of—”
“Instead of implying that I was unstable,” you say pleasantly. “Instead of telling your mother that I had become erratic, which she told her friends, which—” you stop. The composed face. “You know what was said. You know what it cost me.”
“That’s why I’m here,” he says. “I want to make it right.”
“By coming here,” you say. “To this town with four hundred people where I have managed, without your help, to make a life.”
He looks at you. His jaw is set slightly. “Come home,” he says. “That’s all I’m asking. Come home and we can—”
“No,” you say. Quietly. No drama. Just no, the way you should have been saying it for the two years you spent trying to become something that would satisfy him.
You finish your coffee. You put the money on the counter. You stand. “I hope you enjoy the rest of your visit,” you say. “The peach pie is very good.” You walk out. Behind you the bell chimes.
You don’t tell Heeseung. This is the thing you’ll come back to later — not telling him. It’s not deception, exactly, or you tell yourself it isn’t. It is the particular guarded instinct of a woman who has had her story taken from her once and is not ready yet to hand it to someone else to hold, even someone she trusts, even someone whose hands are the careful kind.
But Castillo Creek is four hundred people and a black city car parked on the main street and Richard Calloway has his father’s charm and the town is talking.
Jay doesn’t tell him either — you don’t have to ask, Jay simply knows — but Jay also cannot control what a town talks about, and towns talk.
You are outside the schoolhouse at half past four, gate latched behind you, walking toward the main street, and Richard is there.
He has been doing this — appearing at the edges of your day, not enough to be a confrontation, enough to be a reminder. Outside the general store, at the end of the street when you’re walking from the diner, once at the boarding house gate, though he didn’t approach that time, just stood at the end of the road as you went in.
Today he is at the corner near the schoolhouse and when you come through the gate he falls into step beside you. “I need you to stop,” you say.
“I just want to talk.”
“We’ve talked.”
“Y/N.” He takes your arm. Not hard — he’s never hard, that’s not how he operates, Richard operates through persistence and charm and the slow rewriting of reality until you can’t find the original — his hand on your arm, a familiar gesture from a thousand ordinary moments, the gesture of someone who knows where your arm is.
“Let go,” you say.
He does. Immediately, palms up, the gesture of a reasonable man. “I’m sorry. I just—”
“Richard.” Quietly. Firmly. “Go home.”
You step around him and walk. You don’t see Heeseung at the end of the street. But he sees you.
He doesn’t come to the diner on Friday. This is the first Friday in all the weeks you’ve been here that he doesn’t come. Jay notices — of course Jay notices, Jay notices everything — and he watches the door and watches you and keeps your cup full and doesn’t say anything, which from Jay means he is thinking very carefully about what not to say. You notice the absence like a change in weather. A front coming in.
He doesn’t come on Saturday either. Eli is in town — you see him outside the general store with Riki, who gives you a look you can’t fully interpret, something complicated — and Eli waves but doesn’t run over, which is so unlike him that something cold and certain settles in your stomach. You go to Jay. “What does he think he saw?” you say.
Jay is wiping the counter. He wipes it for a while. “Man from the city with his hand on your arm,” he says finally. “Outside the schoolhouse.”
“Richard grabbed my arm. I told him to let go. He did.”
“I know that.”
“Heeseung doesn’t.”
Jay sets down the cloth. He looks at you with the expression of a man who cares about two people who are being stupid at each other and has to navigate this carefully. “He didn’t ask me,” he says. “Which tells you something. If he thought it was nothing he would’ve asked.” You look at the counter. “He’s not angry,” Jay says. “He’s just — he’s gone back inside himself. The way he does.” He pauses. “You know about Clara.”
“I know she left.”
“He watched her talk to someone for a week before she told him she was going. He came home one day and she was packed.” Jay says it plainly, not for drama, just because you need to know the shape of what’s happening. “He doesn’t — he doesn’t do this consciously. It’s just where he goes. When it looks like someone’s about to leave.”
“I’m not leaving,” you say.
“I know.”
“He doesn’t know why Richard is here.”
“No.”
You are quiet for a moment. The diner is warm around you, the smell of coffee and the distant sound of the radio, and outside the window the main street is grey and cold under the November sky. “I should have told him,” you say.
“Yes,” Jay says, not unkindly. “You should have.”
—
Riki appears at the boarding house in the early morning of Sunday with his hands in his pockets and the look of someone who has decided to do something and is committed to seeing it through. You sit on the porch together in the cold and he looks at the street. “He’s not eating properly,” Riki says.
“Riki—”
“I’m not saying it to make you feel bad. I’m saying it because you should know what’s happening over there.” He looks at his hands. “He got up at four this morning and went out to the fence line and I don’t know when he came back.” He pauses. “Eli asked him why you hadn’t visited and he said you were probably busy. Eli didn’t believe him. He’s seven and he didn’t believe him.” You close your eyes briefly. “The man from the city,” Riki says. “Who is he?”
“My ex-fiancé,” you say. “He came here to bring me back. I told him no. What Heeseung saw—” you stop. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
Riki is quiet for a moment. “He won’t ask,” he says. “He’ll just—” he does a gesture, a closing-in, both hands coming together. “He’ll just decide it’s already over and start making peace with it. He does it fast. He had a lot of practice.”
The cold is sharp on the porch and the street is empty and you think about a man up at four in the morning walking a fence line alone. “I’m going to the ranch,” you say.
Riki stands. “Good,” he says. Simply. And goes back down the porch steps and up the road, and you watch him go and then you go inside and put your coat on.
The ranch is quiet in the Sunday morning. Heeseung is at the paddock fence when you come through the gate — you know his shape at this distance now, the particular way he stands, the hat — and he turns when he hears you and goes very still. You walk toward him. The cold air is clean and the horses move slow in the paddock and the sky is white and enormous.
You stop at the fence beside him. He looks at you — that careful, closed look, the inside-self look that Jay described, and underneath it something that is trying very hard to be nothing and isn’t.
“His name is Richard Calloway,” you say. “He was my fiancé. He ended our engagement and made sure the story that circulated made me look like the problem. I came here because I needed to be somewhere no one knew that story.” You look at the paddock. “He came here to bring me back. I told him no. What you saw — he took my arm. I told him to let go. He did. And then I walked away.” Heeseung is very quiet beside you.
“I should have told you he was here,” you say. “I know that. I was—” you stop. Find the honest word. “I was holding it. My own story. I’ve had it taken from me before and I wasn’t ready to hand it to someone else yet, even someone I—” you stop again.
The paddock. The white sky. Chicago the foal, visible at the far end, picking her way through the grass. “Even someone I trust,” you finish.
A long silence. “He’s gone?” Heeseung says. His voice is careful. Controlled.
“He left yesterday morning,” you say. “Mrs. Della told me.”
Another silence. You can hear him breathing beside you, and the sound of it — the slight unevenness of it — tells you more than anything he’s said. “I thought—” he starts. Stops. Jaw tight. Starts again: “When I saw him with his hand on your arm I thought—”
“I know what you thought,” you say, gently. “I know why you thought it.”
He looks at you then. The inside face, still there, but cracking slightly at the edges. “I don’t do this well,” he says. “The—” he stops. “I’m not good at trusting that people—” another stop. He takes his hat off and turns it in his hands, looking at the brim. “I had six years of practice at being fine on my own and I got good at it.”
“I know,” you say.
“And then you came here,” he says. Quietly. “And Eli drew you on his wall.” Your chest does the thing it does. “And I started—” he stops again. The hat in his hands. “Getting bad at being fine on my own.”
You reach out and put your hand over his on the fence rail. Just your hand over his, the way he did at the boarding house gate in the cold, that same small warm contact. He looks at your hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” you say. “I fixed the gate. I’m staying.”
Something in him — the closed, careful, six-years-practiced something — gives. Not all at once, not dramatically. Just a breath, long and slow, and his hand turning under yours so his fingers can close around it. “Okay,” he says.
You stand at the fence in the cold white morning with his hand around yours and the horses moving slow in the paddock and the whole quiet ranch around you.
“I have to tell you something else,” you say.
“Alright.”
“I’ve been in love with you since approximately the harvest dance,” you say. “Possibly since the coffee in the stable. I’m not sure of the exact date.”
Heeseung is quiet for one moment. Then he makes a sound — low and startled and something that becomes a laugh, helpless, the kind that alters his whole face — and he pulls you toward him, one hand at the back of your head, and presses his mouth to your hair, your temple, and holds you there against the paddock fence in the November cold. “The coffee in the stable,” he says, into your hair.
“You’d already made two cups,” you say. “You knew I was coming.”
He laughs again, quieter. His arm is around you and his chin is on your head and across the paddock Chicago the foal is watching you both with enormous disinterested eyes. “Since the diner,” he says. “The first morning.”
“I know,” you say.
“You know?”
“You looked at me before you smiled,” you say. “Just for a second. Before the smile came. That’s when I knew.”
He pulls back enough to look at you. His expression — open, unguarded, the steadiness still there but warm all the way through now, nothing held back. “Lord,” he says softly. “You see everything.”
“I’m a teacher,” you say. “It’s the job.”
He kisses you. Right there at the paddock fence in the cold, his hand in your hair and yours in his coat, and it is nothing like the gentle kiss in the schoolroom — it is certain and warm and long and he kisses you like a man who has been holding something carefully for a very long time and has finally been told he can put it down.
When you separate, eventually, you are both slightly breathless. “Darlin’,” he says, low, the word doing what it does when it’s just yours.
“Yes?” you say.
“Come inside,” he says. “Bea made enough breakfast for six people and Eli is going to absolutely lose his mind when he sees you.”
You laugh. You take his hand. You go inside and Eli does, in fact, lose his mind. Not loudly — he is not a loud child, not in the way of tantrums or theatrics — but in the specific Eli way, which is a brightness that takes over his whole face before he can manage it, and then the immediate, instinctive suppression of it into dignity, and then the dignity failing completely because he is seven and some things are too good to be dignified about.
He is at the kitchen table with Bea when you come through the door behind Heeseung, still holding his hand, which Eli clocks immediately with the particular alertness of a child who has been waiting for exactly this data point. His eyes go to your joined hands. Then to your face. Then to his father’s face. Then back to your hands.
Bea, who misses nothing and reacts to nothing, sets a plate on the table. “Sit down,” she says. “Food’s hot.” Eli sits down. He is vibrating slightly.
You sit across from him. Heeseung sits beside you, easy, his knee against yours under the table. Bea puts coffee in front of you without being asked and goes back to the stove. Eli looks at you. “Hi,” you say.
“Hi,” he says. Carefully. Then, unable to help it: “Are you staying for breakfast?”
“If that’s alright.”
“It’s alright,” he says, very quickly. He picks up his fork. He puts it down. He looks at his father with the expression of a child requiring confirmation of something he doesn’t want to ask directly. Heeseung looks at him steadily. “Yes,” he says.
Eli picks up his fork again. He eats a bite of egg with enormous composure. Then: “I told Cody you’d probably end up friends.”
“Did you,” Heeseung says.
“I said probably.” He cuts a piece of biscuit with careful precision. “Cody said maybe.” He looks at you. “I was right.”
“You usually are,” you say.
This pleases him so deeply that he has to look at his plate to manage it. Bea, at the stove, makes a sound that is not quite a laugh but contains one.
Breakfast at Sunrise Ranch on a Sunday morning. This is what it is: the kitchen warm from the stove, the windows fogged slightly at the corners, Bea moving with the unhurried authority of someone who has run this kitchen for twenty years and will run it twenty more. Eli eating and talking and eating and talking, a stream of school information directed primarily at you — Tommy can do multiplication now and Clara finished the new books already, both of them and Grace thinks she should be in charge of the globe but the globe has a crack in it so it seems unfair — and Heeseung beside you, knee against yours, drinking his coffee and listening to his son with that expression, the open unguarded one, the love-without-complication one.
Once, while Eli is telling you about the globe, Heeseung’s hand finds yours under the table. He doesn’t look at you when he does it. He is looking at Eli. His thumb moves once across your knuckles and stays. You look at Eli and listen about the globe.
After breakfast Eli disappears outside — Riki materialises to take him to the stable, the easy choreography of a household that has its rhythms — and Bea goes to do something elsewhere in the house with pointed discretion, and you are alone in the kitchen with Heeseung and the remains of breakfast and the Sunday morning quiet.
He refills your coffee. He sits back down, closer this time, turned toward you slightly, his arm along the back of your chair. “Tell me about him,” he says. “If you want. Richard.”
You look at your cup. “I don’t want to spend the morning on Richard.”
“No,” he agrees. “But I want to understand what he did. What you were carrying when you came here.” His voice is even. “Not for any reason except I want to know what it cost you. Because I think it cost you a lot and I don’t think many people asked.”
You look at him. The steadiness of him, and underneath it now, openly, the warmth. You tell him. Not everything — there is no everything yet, some things need more time and more trust before they become speakable — but the shape of it: the engagement, the ending of it, the way the story moved through their social world with Richard’s fingerprints invisible on it, the school where you’d taught finding reasons to see you differently, your mother’s voice on the phone saying maybe if you’d been less. The twenty-seven job applications. Castillo Creek writing back.
Heeseung listens the way he always listens — completely, without filling the pauses, without deciding what your story means before you’ve finished telling it.
When you’re done he is quiet for a moment. “He came here thinking you’d go back,” he says.
“Yes.”
“And you—”
“I was never going back.” You look at him. “I think I knew that before he arrived. I think Castillo Creek stopped being a retreat and started being — this — weeks ago. I just hadn’t said it out loud yet.”
Heeseung nods, slow. He reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind your ear with the same careful deliberateness he always uses — the gesture that gives you time to move away, that assumes nothing — and leaves his hand curved at your jaw. “He doesn’t get to have this,” he says. Quietly. “What happened to you back there. He doesn’t get to have the last word on it.”
“He doesn’t,” you agree.
“You fixed a gate,” Heeseung says. “You wrote two letters to the school board. You put a drawing on your wall.” His thumb at your jaw, the lightest movement. “You’re not someone who needed rescuing.”
“No,” you say. “I’m not.”
“Good,” he says. And kisses you, soft and brief, like a conclusion.
—
The weeks that follow are the best of your life.
You will think this later and it will surprise you — not the fact of it but the simplicity of it, that best can be made of such ordinary material. Morning coffee. The schoolhouse. Eli’s questions at lunch. Jay’s diner on Friday evenings. The ranch on Saturdays, your boots by the stable door, your coffee cup with the small chip in the handle that has become yours without anyone saying so.
Heeseung walks you home from the diner on Fridays and comes in now — Mrs. Della receives him with the satisfaction of someone whose predictions are being validated in real time — and they drink coffee at the kitchen table, all three of them, and talk until late, and then he walks back to the ranch and you watch him from the porch.
He kisses you in ordinary places: at the boarding house gate, in Jay’s diner when Jay has turned to the back shelf, at the paddock fence with one arm over the rail and one around you. He kisses you like someone who is very aware of what he has and intends to be careful with it. Tender, deliberate, thorough. You are, you think, going to have to do something about the thorough.
It happens on a Saturday in early December. Eli is in town with Riki — a deliberate arrangement, you’ll think later, with the particular transparency of a child who is also operating a long game — and Bea has gone to her sister’s for the weekend, and the ranch is quiet and cold and yours.
You come over in the morning with the box of marking you’d told yourself you’d do at the kitchen table, which is true, and which you do, for approximately forty minutes while Heeseung works at the desk in the adjoining room doing ranch accounts. The domestic ordinariness of it — the scratch of his pen, the occasional sound of a horse outside, the winter light — is the kind of thing you want to press into memory and keep.
Then the pen stops. You hear his chair. His footsteps. He appears in the kitchen doorway and leans against the frame and looks at you. “You’re not working,” you say, without looking up.
“I finished,” he says.
“I haven’t.”
“How much is left?”
You look at the stack. “Some.”
“Y/N.” You look up. He is in the doorway with his arms crossed and that expression — the warm one, the open one, the one that has nothing controlled about it — and the morning light behind him and the whole quiet ranch around you.
“Come here,” he says. You put your pen down. You go.
He kisses you in the hallway, backed against the wall with one hand braced beside your head and one at your waist, and it is immediately different from all the careful public kisses — there is nothing held back in it, nothing managing itself, just his mouth on yours and the warmth of him and the knowledge that there is no gate, no Eli, no diner bell, nowhere either of you needs to be.
You pull him closer by the front of his shirt. He makes a sound low in his chest — something between a groan and an exhale, the sound of a man whose patience has run its full course — and his hand moves from your waist to your hip and presses there, firm and deliberate. “Heeseung,” you say, against his mouth.
“Yeah,” he says. Like he knows.
“Bedroom,” you say. He pulls back enough to look at you — checking, the way he always checks, that you mean what you say — and you look back at him clearly, no ambiguity, and he makes that sound again and takes your hand and takes you there.
His bedroom is the ranch made interior: worn timber, a quilt in faded colours, the window looking out over the paddock. Clean and spare and entirely his. It smells like him — something warm and outdoor and specific, the smell you’ve catalogued without meaning to over months of being near him.
You sit on the edge of the bed and he stands in front of you and you reach up and take his hat off and set it on the nightstand. He looks down at you with that open expression, the warmth all the way through. “You’ve wanted to do that for a while,” he says.
“Since the diner,” you say. “The first morning.”
He laughs, surprised out of it, and cups your face in both hands and tilts it up and kisses you — but then he slows, and the kiss goes gentle again, the unbearable gentleness, and you feel it in your throat. “I want to take my time,” he says, against your mouth. Low. Deliberate. “That alright?”
You think about six months of composure and careful distances and soon and not yet. “Yes,” you say. “But you should know I’m not going to be patient about it.”
The corner of his mouth, close to yours. “That a fact.”
“Fair warning.” He kisses the corner of your mouth, your jaw, the soft place below your ear, taking his time as advertised and apparently fully at peace with the consequences of this, and you grip his shirt and close your eyes and let him.
He undresses you slowly.Each button on the front of your dress — his fingers finding each one, unhurried, like he has nowhere to be in the world except here — and watching his face while he does it: the focus, the deliberateness, the slight tension in his jaw that tells you the patience is real but not effortless. “You’re staring,” you say.
“Yes,” he agrees, without apology. When the dress is off he looks at you in the winter light from the window and the expression on his face — unhidden, unmanaged — does something to you more immediately than any touch. “Lord,” he says, soft. Same word as the paddock. Different weight.
“Your turn,” you say, and reach for his shirt buttons. He lets you. He watches you work through them with the stillness of a man exercising enormous self-control, and when you push the shirt off his shoulders you let your hands sit on his chest for a moment — warm skin, the steady beat of his heart beneath your palms — and look up at him.
“Hi,” you say. Something breaks open in his face. He pulls you up and against him and holds you there, skin to skin, his arms around you and his face in your hair, and you feel him breathe.
“Hi,” he says. Into your hair. Low and wrecked and yours.
He keeps his word about taking his time. He lays you back and moves over you and learns you slowly — his mouth at your throat, your collarbone, lower, taking inventory with the thoroughness of a man who intends to know exactly what he’s doing and is not embarrassed about the methodology. He finds the places that make you make sounds and stays there, patient, deliberate, until you are gripping the quilt. “Heeseung—”
“Mm,” he says. Not a response. A sound of someone occupied.
“I said I wouldn’t be patient—”
“I heard you.” He looks up at you from where he is, and the look on his face — dark-eyed, certain, that half-smile with intent behind it — dismantles you completely. “I’m getting there, darlin’.”
The darlin’. In that voice, in this room, low and deliberate. Just yours. “You are going to be the death of me,” you say.
“Not the plan,” he says, and goes back to what he was doing.
When his fingers find you you are already slick and wanting, six months of tension and patience and soon and careful distances arriving at this, and the sound you make is entirely involuntary. He stills. “Okay?” he says.
“Yes,” you say. “Please.”
He watches your face while he works — that focused look, reading you the way he reads everything, paying attention — and his fingers are skilled and patient and exactly right, and you are aware of him watching you come apart under his hands and aware that you don’t mind, that the composed face is nowhere and you don’t miss it. “That’s it,” he says, low, when your hips lift toward him. “There you go.” The voice. The drawl. The absolute certainty of him.
You come with his name in your mouth and his hand at your hip steadying you and his eyes on your face the whole time, and he works you through it with the same thoroughness he brought to everything else, and when you’re done he presses his mouth to your temple and stays there. “Good?” he says.
“Don’t be smug,” you say.
He laughs. “Not smug.”
“You’re a little smug.”
“Maybe a little.” He pulls back to look at you, and the smugness is there, yes, but underneath it something so warm and open that it cancels the smugness out entirely. “You’re beautiful,” he says. Simply. The way he says things that are just true. You reach up and pull him down. You have him on his back.
This is where you reclaim the pace — you swing your leg over and sit up and look down at him and watch his face do something entirely new, an expression you haven’t seen before: surprise, quickly followed by want, and underneath both of them something that is trying to be collected and isn’t. “Hi,” you say.
“Hi,” he says. His hands find your hips. He is, you note with satisfaction, not as composed as he was.
You move — slowly, deliberately — and watch his jaw set and his hands tighten on your hips and his head press back into the pillow. There is a specific pleasure in this that has nothing to do with the physical, or not only — the pleasure of watching Lee Heeseung, who is patient and steady and controlled, lose every one of those things because of you. “Lord,” he says, choked.
“Mm,” you say. His own syllable, returned.
“Y/N—”
“I heard you,” you say. “I’m getting there.”
He makes a sound that is half a groan and half a laugh and his grip on your hips tightens and his hips roll up to meet you and the laugh is gone, replaced by something lower and more urgent. “You’re—” he starts.
“I know,” you say.
“No, I mean you’re—” he stops again, jaw tight, eyes dark, looking up at you with the expression of a man whose vocabulary has been significantly reduced. “God, darlin’—”
His hand leaves your hip and finds your hair and pulls you down and kisses you deep and then his arms wrap around you and he rolls you over and you go, laughing, and then the laughing stops because he is looking at you with that expression still, wrecked and warm, and moves and you stop thinking about anything at all.
Afterward the ranch is quiet around you. You are in the faded quilt and his arm is around you and your head is on his chest and you can hear his heartbeat, slower now, and outside the paddock the horses move in the winter afternoon. His hand is in your hair, a slow absent movement. “That wasn’t what I expected,” he says.
“What did you expect?”
A pause. “Not that,” he says, and you can hear the smile in it.
You prop yourself up to look at him. He is looking at the ceiling with an expression of serene disbelief. “You look like a man who’s had a revelation,” you say.
“Something like that.” He looks at you, and the expression shifts into the warm open one, the real one. “You’re something else,” he says.
“Is that a complaint?”
“No,” he says. Definitively. “Not even close.”
You lie back down. His arm comes back around you. “Eli’s back at four,” you say.
“I know.”
“I should probably be at the kitchen table with my marking.”
“Probably,” he agrees, and makes no move to change the current arrangement. You lie in the quiet ranch afternoon and listen to his heartbeat and the horses and the winter silence and feel — you take inventory carefully, the way you do when something feels too good to trust yet — feel, genuinely and completely, right. In this room, in this town, in this life that was built from the furthest-job-offer and a broken gate and a man who made two cups of coffee because he knew you were coming.
“Heeseung,” you say. “I’m staying,” you say. “I know I said it at the fence. I’m saying it again.”
His arm tightens. Just once. “I know,” he says.
“I want you to know it,” you say. “Really know it. Not — hope it. Know it.”
A silence. His heartbeat steady under your ear. “I know it,” he says. Quietly. And then: “I’m not going anywhere either.”
I’m not going anywhere. First time he said it, at the harvest dance, it was an offer. Now it is something else — an answer, a matching of weight, the both of you putting the same thing down on the same table and deciding to trust it.
Outside: the paddock, the winter sky, Chicago the foal grown enough now to move with some authority, her dark coat catching the low December light.
Inside: the quilt, the heartbeat, the quiet. New soil, you think, for the last time that way. Because it isn’t new anymore. It’s just — yours. The roots are in. The thing has grown.
You stay exactly where you are until three forty-five, and then you get up and go back to your marking, and when Eli comes home at four and finds you at the kitchen table with your papers and his father making coffee at the stove he looks between you both with the assessment of a child who has gotten what he wanted and finds the result satisfactory.
He sits down across from you and opens his schoolbag. “I have reading,” he announces.
“Do it, then,” his father says.
Eli opens his book. You mark your papers. Heeseung brings coffee and goes back to the stove. The kitchen is warm and smells like dinner starting and outside the winter light is going gold over Sunrise Ranch. Eli reads three pages and then looks up. “Miss?” he says.
“Mm?”
“Are you staying for dinner?”
You look at Heeseung. He is at the stove and not looking at you but the back of his neck says everything. “If that’s alright,” you say.
Eli looks back at his book with an expression of profound satisfaction. “It’s alright,” he says.
—
December in Castillo Creek is cold and clear and strung with the particular quiet of a place that doesn’t make much noise about the holidays but means them deeply. The church puts candles in its windows. The general store gets a pine wreath on the door. Jay hangs lights along the diner’s front awning — coloured glass, old, the kind that have been on the same string for fifteen years and still work because Jay is meticulous about the things that matter to him. Mrs. Della bakes for a week straight and distributes the results to the whole street, appearing at doors with tins and brooking no argument.
The schoolhouse gets a paper chain. This is Eli’s doing — he arrives one Monday in the first week of December with a paper bag of coloured strips and announces to the class that they are making a paper chain, his tone suggesting this is non-negotiable, which it is. Grace organises the distribution of strips by colour. Tommy figures out the interlinking system and explains it to the little ones with unexpected patience. Eli and Clara argue about whether it should go across the windows or along the beams and settle on both, and by Friday afternoon the schoolhouse has been transformed by fourteen pairs of hands into something festive and faintly chaotic and entirely theirs.
You stand at the back of the room on Friday and look at it. Two months, you think. Ten weeks. The number Eli’s father said and you corrected, that first confrontation with Richard outside the general store that feels like it happened to someone in a different chapter of a different book.
You have been here three months now. You look at the paper chain and the drawings on the wall — Eli’s has been joined by two others, unsolicited offerings left on your desk on separate Mondays, one from Lottie of what appears to be you and a horse, one from Tommy of the schoolhouse with everyone standing outside it, their names printed carefully above their heads — and something in your chest is so full it has nowhere to go. You put your coat on and lock up and walk home in the cold.
Heeseung takes you riding properly for the first time on a Saturday in the second week of December. Scout this time — not Honey, not the chair — and you get on him in the yard with Heeseung holding the bridle and talking you through it, that same teaching voice, patient and specific and trusting you to get there. Scout is large and entirely calm and turns out to have a gait so smooth it borders on considerate.
“Told you he was a gentleman,” Heeseung says, walking beside you for the first few minutes.
“You can let go,” you say.
“I know.” He does. Steps back. Watches. You ride Scout to the end of the paddock and back, and then around the perimeter, and somewhere in the second circuit you stop thinking about what your hands are doing and just ride, and the feeling of it — the size of the animal beneath you, the cold air, the ranch open around you in the winter morning — is the kind of feeling you didn’t know you were missing until it arrived.
Heeseung is at the fence when you come back, arms resting on the rail, watching you with that expression he gets when he’s pleased about something and not performing it. “Well?” he says.
“He’s better than Honey,” you say.
“Don’t let Honey hear that.”
You dismount — not elegantly, but functionally, which is an improvement — and Scout drops his nose to Heeseung’s shoulder in greeting and Heeseung rubs his neck without looking away from you. “There’s a place I want to show you,” he says. “If you’re up for a longer ride.”
“How long?”
“Hour out. Hour back.” He tilts his head. “Worth it.”
You look at Scout. Scout looks at you with patient equine agreement. “Alright,” you say.
He takes you east, past the fence line, up into the low hills where the land changes from flat scrub to something rougher and more interesting, the winter grass pale gold, the sky enormous and white-edged. They ride side by side where the terrain allows and single file where it doesn’t, Heeseung ahead on the narrow parts, and he doesn’t talk much on the way, just rides, and you learn something about him in the riding — the ease of it, how completely at home he is moving through this land, how he and Scout communicate in small adjustments with no visible negotiation.
The place he wants to show you is at the top of the second hill. It is, simply, a view: the whole of the valley below, Castillo Creek visible as a cluster of shapes in the distance, the ranch a paler geometry of buildings and fence lines to the west, and beyond everything the flat enormous Texas horizon going all the way to where the sky meets the earth. You sit on Scout at the top of the hill and look at it. “Oh,” you say.
“Yeah,” he says.
The winter light is doing something particular to the valley — low and golden and very clear, the kind of light that makes everything look more itself than usual. You can see the creek, barely, a dark thread through the scrub. You can see, or imagine you can see, the white corner of the schoolhouse.
“My father used to bring me here,” Heeseung says. Beside you now, Scout and his horse standing easy. “When I was Eli’s age. Said if you ever got confused about what mattered you could come up here and look at it.”
“Does it work?”
“Every time.” He looks at the valley. “I came here a lot after Clara left. Trying to—” a pause “—get the proportion of things right.”
You look at him. He is looking at the valley with that quiet expression, the one that belongs to this land and this ranch and the private life he’s lived in them. “Did it help?” you say.
“Eventually.” He glances at you. “Took a while.”
You look back at the valley. Castillo Creek in the winter light. The white edge of the sky. “I want to bring Eli here,” you say. “When he’s old enough to—” you stop, aware suddenly of what you’ve just said — the assumption in it, the future in it, the easy taking-for-granted of a thing that is still, technically, new.
But Heeseung isn’t looking at the valley anymore. He is looking at you. “He’d like that,” he says. Simply. No performance of casualness, no careful management. Just the statement, meaning everything it means.
You look at him. He looks at you. The horses stand easy in the winter wind. “I love you,” you say. First time, on a hilltop in December with the whole valley below you, because it is true and it has been true for long enough that not saying it has become its own kind of dishonesty.
Heeseung is quiet for a moment. Then he reaches across the space between the horses and finds your hand and holds it, his thumb moving across your knuckles in the way it does. “I love you,” he says. “Been a while since I said that to anyone.” He looks at your joined hands. “Feels different this time.”
“Different how?”
He considers this with the seriousness he brings to things that matter. “Steadier,” he says. “Like saying something I already knew instead of something I was hoping would be true.”
You look at the valley and his hand around yours and the winter sky and the whole quiet particular life you have landed in, with its paper chains and borrowed boots and gap-toothed boy and a man who makes two cups of coffee because he knows you’re coming. “Steadier,” you agree.
Christmas at the ranch. This is not planned either — or it is planned by everyone except you, you discover, Mrs. Della and Bea and Jay all operating in quiet coordination, the whole thing arriving complete and inevitable on Christmas morning when Heeseung appears at the boarding house at ten with Eli and Riki and the truck and says “come to the ranch” in the same simple offering voice he uses for everything. Mrs. Della has already sent the cobbler ahead.
The day is the kitchen and the table extended to fit everyone — Jay materialises at noon with cornbread and the particular satisfaction of a man in his preferred social configuration — and Eli opening things with the focused efficiency of a child who has been patient about this for weeks, and Riki eating more than anyone else and not being asked about it, and Bea’s food, and the fire in the front room where you end up in the afternoon, the cold coming down outside and the ranch warm and close around you all.
Eli falls asleep in the armchair at four, his new book open on his chest. Jay catches your eye across the room and very deliberately does not look at Heeseung beside you on the sofa, which is Jay at his most ostentatious.
Riki carries Eli to bed with the long-practiced ease of someone who has done it before. Bea goes home to her sister. Jay stays for dinner and then takes himself off with the timing of a man who knows exactly when he’s no longer needed, and then it is just you and Heeseung in the front room with the fire going low.
He has his arm around you. Your feet are tucked up on the sofa. Outside the ranch is quiet and cold and dark. “Good day,” he says.
“Very good day,” you say.
He presses his mouth to your hair. “Stay,” he says. “Tonight. Eli’s asleep. You can take the—”
“Yes,” you say.
A pause. “I was going to say the spare—”
“I know what you were going to say,” you say. “Yes.” His arm tightens. He laughs, low and warm, into your hair. You don’t take the spare room.
—
January comes cold and clear. The new year settles over Castillo Creek with the quiet confidence of a place that has seen many of them and expects to see many more. The schoolhouse reopens the second week of January and the children arrive back with the particular energy of people who have been inside for two weeks and have run out of patience with it. Eli is approximately three inches taller, which you mention, and he tells you seriously that Bea measured him on the door frame and he grew one inch and you are not to exaggerate.
Tommy’s numbers are clean and confident now, left-handed from the start, and you watch him work through a column of addition with the ease of someone who has finally been given the right tool for the job, and feel the specific satisfaction of a teacher who has solved the right problem.
Clara has started writing stories. She brings you the first one on a Thursday in a folded piece of paper, her best handwriting, three pages, a story about a girl who goes on a journey and comes back changed. She stands by your desk while you read it and doesn’t pretend not to care about your response, which you respect enormously. It is good — genuinely good, the instinct for story already there, the voice already hers. “This is wonderful,” you tell her.
“Really?” she says, in the voice of a child who already knows but needs to hear it.
“Really.” You set it on the desk. “Have you shown your parents?”
“Not yet.” She folds the paper back up carefully. “I wanted to know if it was good first.”
“It’s good,” you say. “Show them. And write me another one.” Clara goes back to her seat with her story in her hand and the particular glow of a person who has been given something real to carry.
On the last Friday in January, Jay closes the diner early. He does this without explanation, just turns the sign and pours three glasses of something that is not coffee and sets them on the counter, and looks at you and Heeseung on opposite stools and says: “I want to make a toast.”
“Jay,” Heeseung says.
“I’m serious. I’ve been waiting for the right moment and I’ve decided this is it.” He picks up his glass. “To the new schoolteacher. Who fixed the gate,” Jay says, overriding you. “And stayed when she didn’t have to. And who—” he stops, and something moves through his expression that is not the easy social warmth but something deeper and more real “—who is good for this town. And for the specific people in it who needed good things to happen to them.”
He looks at Heeseung when he says the last part. Heeseung is looking at the counter. The back of his neck does the thing. “To Castillo Creek,” Jay says. “And to people who stay.”
You pick up your glass. Heeseung picks up his. “To Castillo Creek,” you say.
Jay grins. You all three drink. “Right,” Jay says, setting his glass down with a decisive click. “Now. Heeseung. Are you going to ask her or are you going to make me wait another six months.”
The diner goes very quiet. Heeseung looks at Jay with the expression of a man who is going to have a word with his best friend at a later date. Jay looks back with the expression of a man who has no regrets. “Ask me what?” you say.
Heeseung turns to you. He is — you watch the careful management dissolve, replaced by something undefended, the real face he’s been showing you more and more since December, since the hilltop, since steadier. He looks at you for a moment and then he does something you haven’t seen him do: he reaches into his shirt pocket. “I was going to do this differently,” he says.
“Jay ruined it?”
“Jay ruined it,” he agrees, without looking at Jay, who has the good grace to say nothing.
What’s in his pocket is not a ring box — not the velvet-and-presentation kind. It is a ring wrapped in a piece of cloth, unwrapped in his palm: gold, simple, a small band with a detail you can’t quite see yet. His mother’s, you’ll learn later. The one his grandmother brought from her own mother and passed down and which his mother pressed into his hand the Christmas before last and said when it’s right, you’ll know. He holds it in his palm and looks at you. “I know this is fast,” he says.
“It’s not,” you say. “It’s been since the diner.”
The corner of his mouth. “Since the diner,” he says. “I’ve been—” he stops. Tries again. “I don’t have a speech. I thought I’d have one by now but I don’t.” He looks at the ring in his hand. “I know what kind of person you are. I’ve watched you for four months and I know.” He looks up at you. “You fixed things that weren’t yours to fix. You stayed when it would have been easier to go. You put a drawing on your wall.” He closes his hand briefly around the ring, then opens it again. “My son thinks the sun rises and sets with you, which is—” his voice does something “—which is not a small thing. Coming from him.”
You are doing everything in your power to hold your face together and succeeding imperfectly. “I love you,” he says. “And I would very much like you to stay. Not just in the town. Here. At the ranch.” He holds the ring out toward you, steadily, his hand not moving. “With us.”
The diner. The coloured lights along the awning. Jay, very carefully, looking at the ceiling. You look at Heeseung Lee with his mother’s ring in his palm and his whole face open and waiting and none of the patience effortless anymore, all of it visible, the hope and the care and the barely-controlled terror of a man asking for the thing he wants most. “Yes,” you say.
Jay makes a sound. Heeseung lets out a breath that has been held since approximately November.
He puts the ring on your finger — it fits, which is either luck or fate or Bea, who you will later determine took one of your gloves to a jeweller in the next town, bless her — and then he holds your hand and looks at it and then at you, and the expression on his face is something you will carry for the rest of your life: unguarded and certain and entirely, quietly, happy. “Finally,” says Jay, with enormous feeling.
“I’m going to fire you,” Heeseung says.
“You don’t employ me.”
“I’m going to stop eating here.”
“You were here yesterday and you’re here now.” You are laughing, you realise. Both of you are laughing, your hand in both of his, and Jay is pouring more of the not-coffee and the diner lights are warm and outside Castillo Creek is cold and dark and going about its business.
Eli knows before you tell him. You don’t know how — this is simply a thing about Eli, that he knows things — but when you and Heeseung sit down with him on Saturday morning at the kitchen table with the specific parental gravity of people who have something to say, he looks at you both and then at your hand and then back at you and says: “Are you going to live here now?”
“If you’re alright with it,” you say.
He looks at his cereal. He stirs it. He does this for long enough that something uncertain stirs in you, the awareness that this is a seven-year-old boy whose mother left and whose life is about to change and who is allowed to have feelings about that. “Eli,” Heeseung says, gently. “You can say whatever you’re thinking.”
Eli looks up. His face is doing several things. “I just,” he starts. Stops. “I named the foal Chicago,” he says. “Before. I named it before because—” he stops again. Stirs his cereal. “I wanted you to stay from the beginning,” he says, quickly, like getting a thing out before he can change his mind. “I knew you were good before Dad did. I told Riki.”
“What did Riki say?” you ask.
“He said he knew too.” Eli looks at you. “Are you going to be my—” he stops at the word, turns it over, decides something. “Are you going to be my mom?”
The kitchen is very quiet. You look at this boy — gap-toothed, dark-eyed, too perceptive for his own good, who named a foal after a city to make you feel at home, who put FRIENDS at the bottom of a drawing in careful uneven letters — and your composed face is absolutely nowhere to be found. “I would very much like to,” you say. “If you want that.”
Eli looks at his cereal for a moment. Then he gets down from his chair and comes around the table and climbs into your lap, which he has never done before, and sits there with the specific decision of a child who has made up his mind. “Okay,” he says. You put your arms around him.
Across the table Heeseung has his hand over his mouth and is looking at the ceiling, which is the composed face losing, and you have never loved him more than right now. Eli, from your lap: “Can I still call you Miss at school?”
“You have to call me Miss at school,” you say.
“Good,” he says. “’Cause Cody would be weird about it.”
Riki takes the news with characteristic economy. He looks at your hand. He looks at Heeseung. He looks at you. He nods once, slowly, like a man confirming a long-held suspicion. “I told Eli in October,” he says. “That you were going to stay.”
“You told me in October,” you say. “That he was happy. More than usual.”
Riki looks between you both. “Yeah,” he says. He picks up his coffee and goes back toward the stable. Then, over his shoulder, not quite casually enough: “About time.”
February. The foal is four months old and has decided what her legs are for and uses them constantly, her dark coat catching the winter light where it falls across the paddock. Eli visits her every day before and after school and maintains a detailed running report on her progress that he delivers at the dinner table with the authority of someone who considers herself the foremost expert on Chicago specifically.
Your things have migrated slowly from the boarding house to the ranch over the course of January, the natural movement of a life toward where it belongs — books first, then the rest, Mrs. Della receiving each removal with the particular warm satisfaction of a woman who considers herself personally responsible for the outcome and is not incorrect.
Your coat is on the hook by the ranch door. Your coffee cup — chipped handle, yours — is in the cupboard. Your books are on the shelf in the front room, mixed in with Heeseung’s without ceremony, which is the most domestically intimate thing you’ve ever done and which undoes you slightly every time you look at it.
The drawing is still on the schoolhouse wall. It will stay there. You’ve decided this. Miss Y/N and Eli. Friends. Let every child who comes through that room see it — the evidence that teachers are people who belong somewhere, that belonging is a thing that can be built, that a drawing on a wall can be the most important document in a room full of books.
The last Friday in February, you and Heeseung are at Jay’s after closing. This is the usual arrangement — Jay with his counter, you on the stools, the diner warm and the street dark outside. But tonight Jay has put a record on, something slow, and the coloured lights along the awning are on outside, and it is, you think, the same scene as nearly five months ago except that nothing is the same at all. “Dance with me,” Heeseung says. The same words as the harvest dance. The same quiet directness. You get off the stool.
He takes your hand and you dance in Jay’s empty diner to the slow record, your hand on his shoulder and his at your waist and the ring on your finger catching the light when you turn. Jay watches from behind the counter with the expression of a man who has everything he wanted from this situation and finds it entirely satisfactory. “First dance,” you say. “You said your mother taught you.”
“She did.”
“I want to meet her.”
His hand at your waist, warm and firm. “She’s coming in March,” he says. “She’s been asking since October.”
“October,” you say.
“Eli told her about the dialect conversation.” His mouth at your temple. “She said anyone who could get Eli to use the word dialect correctly in a sentence was worth meeting.”
“High bar,” you say.
“For her, yes.” He pulls back slightly to look at you. The expression — open, warm, steady all the way down. “She’s going to love you.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” he says. Simply. “She knows people. Runs in the family.”
You think of a seven-year-old boy naming a foal Chicago in October. Knowing before anyone else. “Apparently it does,” you say. He smiles — the real one, the full one, the one that you catalogued on a diner stool on your first morning in Castillo Creek and have been cataloguing ever since, the one that is different when it’s just yours — and turns you slowly on the diner floor.
Outside: Castillo Creek, cold and clear, the stars doing their enormous Texas thing. The main street quiet, the church dark, the boarding house where you no longer live, the schoolhouse with its paper chain long since taken down and its drawing still on the wall. Inside: the music, the lights, the man, the ring, the dancing. New soil, you think, for the very last time and immediately think: no. Not new anymore. Just home.
—
Spring comes to Castillo Creek the way it comes to places that have earned it. Not dramatically — no single morning where you wake and everything is different — but incrementally, the way the best things happen: a degree warmer each week, the scrub going from pale gold to something greener at the edges, the creek running higher with the snowmelt from somewhere distant and northern. The horses grow restless in the way of animals that can smell a season changing. Chicago the foal gallops the length of the paddock every morning for no reason except that the air tastes different and her legs are finally, fully hers.
The schoolhouse gets its windows opened for the first time since October. This is a significant event. The children treat it as such, orienting their desks subtly toward the new rectangles of warm air, their attention drifting pleasurably to the sounds coming in — birdsong, wind, the distant sound of someone on the main street calling to someone else. You allow this. Spring arriving through classroom windows is an education of its own kind.
Eli sits at his desk on the first warm Friday and tilts his face toward the window with his eyes closed and the expression of a person receiving something they’ve been waiting for. “Eli,” you say.
“I’m thinking,” he says, without opening his eyes. You carry on.
Margaret Lee arrives on a Tuesday in the second week of March. She is not what you expected, which means you had built an expectation without realising it — some composite of your own mother and the idea of a woman who raised Heeseung, formidable and warm. Margaret Lee is both of these things and also neither of them, which is the way of people who exceed the categories you’ve prepared.
She is small. This is the first surprise — Heeseung is tall and she is small, barely to his shoulder, which he accommodates with the automatic ease of someone who has been bending toward her his whole life. She has grey-streaked hair and her son’s dark eyes and the particular posture of a woman who has decided exactly who she is and arranged herself accordingly. She steps down from the bus and looks at the main street of Castillo Creek and then at you, standing beside her son at the bus stop, and her face does something quick and assessing and then opens entirely. “There she is,” she says.
Heeseung looks at you. You look at Heeseung. “I feel like people keep saying that to me,” you say.
Margaret Lee laughs — genuine and sudden, the same quality of laugh as her son’s, the kind that alters the whole face — and takes both your hands in hers. “Lee Heeseung has been talking about you since October,” she says, without preamble. “He didn’t know he was doing it. He thought he was just giving me news from the town.” She pats your hands and releases them and looks at her son. “He mentioned you in every single letter.”
“Mama,” Heeseung says.
“The schoolteacher fixed the gate,” she says, in a perfect impression of neutrality. “‘The schoolteacher came to see the ranch. The schoolteacher can ride.’” She picks up her bag. “Every letter, Lee. Every one.”
“I’m aware,” he says.
“He thought I didn’t notice,” she tells you.
“I’m standing right here,” he says.
“I know, baby.” She pats his arm and walks toward the truck. You fall into step beside her and catch, from the corner of your eye, Heeseung’s expression — the exasperated tender helpless expression of a man who loves his mother and is entirely at her mercy and has made his peace with both of these facts. You like her immediately and completely.
She stays two weeks and in those two weeks she does the following: reorganises the kitchen at the ranch in a way that Bea approves of and Heeseung adapts to without complaint, teaches Eli three card games of increasing moral dubiousness, tells you four stories about Heeseung’s childhood that he would prefer you not to have, sits with you on the porch every morning with coffee and talks to you the way women talk when they’ve decided to trust each other — plainly, without ornament.
On the fourth morning she says: “Tell me about before.” You look at the paddock. Chicago the foal. The pale spring sky. “Before Castillo Creek,” she says. “If you want. You don’t have to.”
You think about before. The specific weight of it, which has changed — not lighter exactly, but different, the weight distributed differently now, held up by more points of contact so no single place takes all of it. You tell her.
She listens the way her son listens — completely, without deciding what it means before you’re done. When you finish she is quiet for a moment. “My husband left me once,” she says. “Heeseung’s father. We were young, we had a fight about something I can’t even remember now, and he left and I thought — that was that.” She looks at the paddock. “He came back in three days. But those three days I understood something I didn’t know before. That some people leave to see if you’ll chase them. And some people leave because they’re gone.” She looks at you. “The man you described sounds like the second kind.”
“He is,” you say.
“Good,” she says. “Those ones you let go.” She drinks her coffee. “My son is the staying kind. In case you didn’t know.”
“I know,” you say.
She looks at your ring. “My mother wore that for fifty-three years,” she says. “She said the secret was that you had to choose each other every day. Not just at the beginning.” She looks up at you. “Can you do that?”
“Yes,” you say. Without hesitation.
She nods. She looks at the paddock. “Good,” she says again. And that is that, and you drink your coffee together in the spring morning, and when Heeseung appears in the doorway looking for his mother she looks at him with the expression of a woman who has conducted her own assessment and is satisfied with the results, and he looks between you both with the wariness of a man who knows he has been discussed and decides not to ask.
The last week of March brings something you didn’t anticipate: a letter from the county school board. You open it at your desk on a Thursday afternoon while the children are doing their reading, and it takes you two passes through it to understand what it says, and then you put it down flat on the desk and look at the middle distance.
“Miss?” Eli, from the second row. The class has the particular sharpening of attention that occurs when a teacher does something unexpected.
“Keep reading,” you say. You pick up the letter and read it a third time.
A school is being built. A larger one, two rooms, in the next town along — not Castillo Creek, but a town of similar size twenty miles east. The county board is expanding provision across the region. They need a head teacher for the new school. They have, they write, been impressed by the correspondence and the results from Castillo Creek. They are writing to offer the position to you. You fold the letter.
You teach the afternoon out. You fix a disagreement between Patrick and Beau about a coloured pencil. You listen to the little ones read and hear in Grace’s oral assessment that her comprehension has jumped significantly since January and make a note to tell her parents. You let them out at three and stand on the porch and watch them go.
Then you go home to the ranch. Heeseung is at the paddock fence when you arrive. He turns when he hears the gate and reads something in your face immediately — not worry, just attention, the way he attends to you when something is different. “What happened?”
You hand him the letter. He reads it. His face is careful while he reads, the deliberate neutrality of a man withholding response until he understands what he’s responding to. He folds it when he’s done and holds it and looks at the paddock. “Twenty miles,” he says.
“Yes.”
“Head teacher.”
“Yes.”
He turns the folded letter in his hands. He looks at the horizon, the flat Texas line, and then at you. “What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know yet,” you say honestly. “I only just read it.”
He nods. He unfolds the letter and folds it again the other way, a thinking gesture. “It’s a good offer,” he says.
“I know.”
“The children here—” he starts.
“Would have a new teacher,” you say. “Someone good. Someone who needs a start.”
Like you needed a start. Neither of you says it but it’s there. “Twenty miles is a commute,” he says. “Not impossible.”
“No.”
He looks at you steadily. “Whatever you want to do,” he says. “I mean that.”
“I know you do.” You take the letter back, fold it into your pocket. “I need to think.”
He nods. He turns back to the paddock and after a moment his arm comes around you, easy and present, and you stand at the fence together while Chicago runs the length of the paddock for the joy of running and the spring evening comes down gold over Sunrise Ranch.
You think for three days. You think about the schoolhouse and the paper chain and Tommy’s clean left-handed numbers and Clara’s stories and Eli’s drawing on the wall. You think about fourteen children who have become yours in the particular way children become yours when you’ve solved them, when you know which problems are the real ones underneath the presenting ones, when you know who reads above their level and who is covering for a difficulty and who is going to do something surprising one day.
You think about what it would mean to build something from the beginning. Two rooms. New intake. The particular freedom and weight of being the person who sets the tone before there is a tone. You think about twenty miles and a commute and a husband with a ranch and a son who is eight in May. You think about what you came here to do and whether you’ve done it and what comes next.
On the third evening you tell Heeseung. “I’m going to turn it down,” you say.
He is at the kitchen table. He looks up. “Because of us?” he says, carefully.
“No,” you say. “Because of me.” You sit down across from him. “I came here to start over. And I have. And this—” you gesture, vaguely, at the kitchen, the ranch, the everything “—this is what I was starting over toward, even when I didn’t know it. I’m not done here. Castillo Creek isn’t done.” You look at him. “Clara is going to be a writer. I’m not done with Clara.”
Heeseung looks at you for a long moment. “You’re sure?” he says.
“I’m sure.”
He nods. Something in him settles — not the relief of a man who was afraid you’d go, because he’s past that, but the quieter thing, the satisfaction of a man watching someone he loves make a choice that is fully hers. “Write them a good letter,” he says.
“I will,” you say. “Strongly worded.” The corner of his mouth.
You write the letter on Saturday morning at the kitchen table, Eli doing his homework across from you with the focused efficiency of a child who has been told that homework-before-fun is a rule and has decided to take it seriously, Heeseung somewhere on the ranch, the spring morning coming through the window.
You thank them. You decline clearly. You recommend, in the final paragraph, that they consider expanding the library provision at existing schools before building new ones, and include three specific data points about reading outcomes, because some habits are simply who you are now. You seal the envelope. Eli looks up. “Done?”
“Done,” you say.
“What was it?”
“A job offer,” you say. “A bigger school.”
He looks at you. “Are you going?”
“No.”
He looks back at his homework. He does another line of arithmetic. Then, without looking up: “Good,” he says, in the tone of a person confirming the correct outcome. You put the letter in your pocket and drink your coffee and watch the spring morning come through the window, and outside Chicago the foal runs the paddock in the new warm air, her legs entirely hers, her name written on the sky.
May brings Eli’s birthday. He is eight. This is a serious number, he has informed you, because eight is when you can help with the real work on the ranch, not just the small stuff, and Heeseung has responded to this with the expression of a man who knows his son and has been quietly preparing for this specific negotiation for some time.
Riki gets up at dawn to decorate the stable on the day — this is Riki’s doing entirely, streamers in the ranch colours, a sign that says 8 in letters that are clearly Riki’s work and not a calligrapher’s but are heartfelt — and Eli discovers it at six-thirty when he goes to check on Chicago and comes back into the kitchen with the expression of a person who has been given something real.
Jay brings cake. Margaret, who has come back for the occasion — this is not a small thing, the coming back, and you watch Heeseung receive his mother at the bus stop with the quiet particular gratitude of an adult child who is still his mother’s, will always be — Margaret brings a present wrapped in brown paper and a ribbon, which Eli opens with the concentrated focus of someone who intends to remember the opening.
Inside: a pocket watch, old and gold, with an inscription on the back. Eli reads it. His lips move. He looks at his grandmother. “What does it say?” you ask him, gently.
He holds it out to you. You take it and read the back: Go steady. Go kind. Go far.
“It was your grandfather’s,” Margaret says. “And his father’s before that.”
Eli takes it back. He holds it in both palms and looks at it for a long moment with that Eli expression, the one where he is processing something bigger than seven-going-on-eight years of life have quite prepared him for. Then he closes his hands around it and looks at his grandmother and says: “Thank you.” No gap-toothed performance. No dignity management. Just the real thing, plain and clear.
Margaret cups his face in one hand. “You’re welcome, baby,” she says. Heeseung, beside you, takes your hand.
After the cake and the streamers and the stable and Riki being beaten at three card games by an eight-year-old, after Margaret and Jay have gone and Riki has taken himself off to give the evening its shape, you are at the paddock fence with Heeseung in the last of the May light.
Eli is with Chicago. He has had his horse for a year now and the relationship has settled into its permanent form: mutual trust, complete understanding, the particular bond between a child and an animal that is its own language. He is telling her something, pressed to her neck, and she is standing completely still with her ears forward in the way that means she is listening. “He’s going to be extraordinary,” you say.
Heeseung looks at his son. “He already is,” he says. He says it simply, no performance of it, just the fact. You lean into him. His arm comes around you.
The May evening is warm and going golden, the long Texas light doing what it does to the land, making everything more itself, more vivid, more worth looking at. The ranch in the evening — the fence lines, the water tower, the barn with its doors open, the horses in the paddock, Chicago standing still for an eight-year-old boy who is telling her his secrets. “Thank you,” you say.
“For what?”
“For the coffee,” you say. “That first morning. For making two cups.”
He looks at you. The smile — the full one, the real one, the one that is different when it’s just yours, that has been yours since a diner stool in September. “You noticed that,” he says.
“First morning,” you say. “I noticed everything first morning.”
He shakes his head slightly, the almost-laugh. His arm tightens around you. “Jay cried when I told him,” he says. “About the coffee.”
“Jay cried about Eli’s drawing.”
“Jay cries about a lot of things,” Heeseung says, affectionately.
“He does,” you agree. “It’s one of his best qualities.”
Eli has turned from Chicago now and is watching you both from across the paddock with the expression of a child conducting a quiet and ongoing assessment of the results of his work. He catches you looking and raises one hand in a small wave. You raise your hand back. He turns back to Chicago. Heeseung presses his mouth to your temple. Stays there. “Darlin’,” he says.
“Mm.”
“Come inside,” he says. “Bea left dinner.” You stay exactly one more minute — the warm arm around you, the evening light, the boy and the horse, the whole quiet extraordinary ordinary life of it — and then you go inside together, through the gate that swings clean on its hinge, into the ranch that smells like dinner and woodsmoke and home.
Behind you the sun goes down over Castillo Creek in all the colours you don’t have names for yet.
You’re staying. You’ll learn them.
This is home.
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SUMMARY: When L/N Jiwoo and Lee Sooah set foot into Evercore School, they became inseparable. At 4, they shared everything from crayons to secrets. At 18, they cried in each other's arms upon realizing they would attend Harvard together. At 25, they built their houses next to each other. So when Y/N and Heeseung were born, their friendship was inevitable. If their mothers had it their way, they would one day marry. Y/N and Heeseung were inseparable, and everyone knew they were in love—until the summer before 9th grade, when everything changed. Before Y/N could make sense of it, Heeseung went from the sweet, shy boy who never missed any of her recitals to one who skipped school to get high with his friends and joined the football team just to sleep with the cheerleaders. The same Evercore staircase where Y/N once bandaged his scraped knees and rested on his shoulder when she was too tired to play at recess had become the place they walked past each other without a single glance. Y/N thought she could leave that painful chapter behind after high school—until she finds out Heeseung would be at Harvard too—where the truth begins to unravel.
WC: 29K
PAIRING: ex-childhood bestfriend!heeseung x fem!reader
GENRE/WARNINGS: mdni ꩜ nsfw ꩜ unprotected sex (don't do it) ꩜ oral (fem receving) ꩜ spitting ꩜ overstimulation ꩜ ex-childhood best friends ꩜ college au ꩜ elite private school ꩜ high society ꩜ y/n and heeseung are chaebols ꩜ cliques (heeseung becomes a popular jock) ꩜ angst ꩜ jealousy ꩜ resentment ꩜ family secrets ꩜ partying ꩜ drinking ꩜ smoking ꩜ cursing
A/N: hey loves! this is a re-upload of my fic before i deleted my account, which was way before heeseung left enhypen :( due to being busy with my internship. i have a lot to say about heeseung's departure, but i'm going to believe it was his decision despite the suspicious timing. i don't even know if i should be re-uploading this, but i'm not going to erase heeseung. let's continue to support him and the boys!!! miss my dada sm ugh. also, i had no idea there were so many grammatical mistakes lol. i made some edits, but i gave up so sorry if there's still a lot! when i initially uploaded this fic, it was so rushed because i was being ambushed in my inbox lol and i added and took some stuff last min. anyway, enjoy and i miss you so much hee <3
Seven Years Ago
Your hair is pulled into a bun so painfully tight it tugs at your scalp, stretching your eyes upward. Your limbs tremble as your teacher has spent the last hour etching into your brain that, “Your toes curl like a damn gecko. How many times do I have to remind you to point them properly?” as if you're stupid. Your tutu is delicate and soft, a stark contrast to the bodice cinched so tightly you swear it's rearranging your ribs, forcing your posture straight and perfect. Always perfect.
Perfection extends beyond ballet. It’s your life. But you love ballet because as hectic and unforgiving as it is, it makes you feel instrumental, not ornamental. In the media, you’re reduced to a spoiled chaebol—heiress of your father’s international conglomerate. And your mother? She's the granddaughter of the man who shaped modern Korea, controlling the land, the capital, and the industries that help put Korea's economy on the map. Your family isn't just wealthy, they're ingrained into Korea's foundations and history.
So it's only natural that there are always people lurking, watching, waiting for you to slip. Even at fourteen, you’re expected to smile perfectly, speak perfectly, and dress perfectly. Mistakes are simply not allowed. You learned early on to be careful, even when you don't want to be. Every word is analyzed. Every reaction is observed. Even now, it’s hard to tell whether someone wants to know you or if they just want access to your world. But in ballet class, your teachers are indifferent to your family’s status. They’ll still heckle you to your face when correcting your mistakes, and on stage, you’re not an accessory. You're an integral part of the art.
But most of all, it’s the way Heeseung looks at you when you’re pouring your heart into your performances. His gaze is undivided, conveying love, devotion, and something far more personal, far more intimate. It would be foolish to say you dance for him. You don't do anything for a boy. Still, there's something grounding about knowing he's there, watching. Seeing you not as the heiress, not the legacy, not the expectation, but just Y/N, the talented, passionate ballerina. And also the girl he's been in love with since before he could name the feeling. It's funny because every time you ask him when he started having a crush on you, he gives the same answer. "I don't know," he says. "I think I've always had one."
Heeseung has never been late or missed a performance of yours. Until today. There are 10 minutes left before you go on stage, and you still haven’t seen him in the audience. Worse, you haven't heard from him in over a week. The frustration coils tight in your chest, tangled with confusion, adding to your nerves. Of all days, he chooses this one to be absent? Tonight, you're performing your solo at the Varna International Ballet Competition, one of the most selective ballet competitions in the world, inviting only the top companies to participate. To be chosen to represent your company at such a prestigious, career-defining competition is an honor few ever receive.
Maybe it’s childish to rely on Heeseung’s presence for reassurance, but if he can show up for every other performance, why on earth wouldn't he be here for this one? With all this added pressure from your teachers and teammates, you need his support more than ever.
As you begin to walk on stage, you scan the audience for him, but you only recognize your family and friends. Before the song plays, doubt creeps in. Then your eyes land on your parents and your mother’s best friend, Sooah, who also happens to be Heeseung’s mother. They're all perched at the edge of their seats, pride written all over their faces as they wait for your performance to begin. Your mother and Sooah wink at you, while your father gives you two enthusiastic thumbs up. The smiles on their faces immediately puts you at ease. God, you love them so much.
Then you spot your friends. Yunjin is fiercely cheering you on, howling your name repeatedly as heads turn toward her in disbelief. You can’t blame the people who are baffled by her behavior. Ballet is meant to be graceful and refined, her behavior anything but. You shove down your laugh. Beside her sits Sunoo. As a model and actor, he always looks impossibly polished, yet he looks so exhausted today, but you know why. He spent the entire week trying to track down Heeseung, making sure he’d show up today. Before your stomach can twist further at the thought of Heeseung, you notice Sunoo smacking Niki’s arm as he makes the most ridiculous, borderline grotesque expressions imaginable. Niki is a year younger than than the rest of you and definitely acts like it. He’s silly and never spares a moment to be unserious, but you know he’s doing it to make you smile, to distract you from the pressure and Heeseung’s bizarre absence. Then you notice Jungwon recording you. It's touching, especially when he’s too busy with his side projects to leave his house as an optimistic fourteen year old kid with a freak brain. The fact that he's here feels like a miracle. Still, when it comes to you four, Jungwon always shows up.
Despite the anger and betrayal simmering and ready to burst, you remind yourself that you can't allow Heeseung to affect your performance, not when so many people believe in you. After all, you're one of the few dancers who were selected by your ballet company to represent them here. With that surge of confidence, you execute your routine flawlessly. And yes, you did point your feet exactly the way your teacher wanted. Cheers erupt as you hold your last pose, your gaze immediately seeking out your family and friends. Still, even after dancing so well, you can’t stop thinking about Heeseung, about how he's usually first to stand, the loudest to cheer. You try to push these thoughts aside and exit the stage with practiced elegance. Once you're fully covered by the curtains backstage, you collapse into your teacher's and teammates’ arms.
When you meet up with your parents, Sooah, and your friends, they immediately surround you, showering you with praises. After handing you your favourite flowers, pink tulips, Sooah's expression softens with something unmistakably sad. “You did amazing, kiddo. Uncle Minsuk’s busy with work and couldn't make it… but I'm so sorry about Heeseung. I know how much you wanted him here, but he’s been so down lately—shutting everyone out, even his father and me. I know this doesn’t make it any less disappointing, but please don’t take it personally. You know how much he loves you.” You nod quickly, fighting the tears threatening to spill.
“God, he’s such a dick—oh. No offense, Mrs. Lee,” Yunjin blurts. Your parents facepalm. Sunoo shoots her the nastiest side eye imaginable. Jungwon shakes his head, and Niki starts cackling so loudly, drawing attention from others nearby. You shoot Yunjin a pointed look before nudging her, warning her to apologize to Sooah. Sooah just laughs. “Don’t apologize, Yunjin! I totally agree. Teenage boys can be a nightmare.”
After catching up with everyone, you head back to the stage as the award ceremony is about to begin. As you’re walking away, you hear your mother’s concerned voice. “Sooah…what’s going on with Heeseung? He’s never been like this.”
“I don’t know what to do, Jiwon. He hasn’t left his room all week,” Sooah replies, completely tired and defeated.
—
You've never competed against this many high-caliber dancers before. Even though your confident in your dancing, the competition is brutal with talent everywhere you look. You're dedicated and disciplined, but not entirely certain you even want to become a professional ballerina. So, when it comes to placing, you don't let yourself hope too much. As the judges begin announcing the top five solo performances, you start to drift off into your thoughts when your teacher nudges you. Third place. You won third place!
Your family and friend are already on their feet, cheering. Applause fills the auditorium before the shock even registers. You stand, blinking as you walk up to accept your award. Still, your heart aches as you think about how Heeseung should’ve been here. He should've been the first one standing, the first one clapping—pink tulips in hand, smiling at you with that soft expression he only ever wore for you. Before hurt and resentment can twist your face, you force a smile and pose for photos with the judges.
—
Later, at home, exhaustion crashes over you. Your feet are filthy, coated in brown residue from hours of practicing backstage barefoot. Your hair is stiff with gel and hairspray. You’re aching all over, and you can barely keep your eyes open. You know you should shower and collapse into bed before you can get any more delirious. But instead, you walk to your window. After both graduating from Harvard, your mother and Sooah bought houses right next to each other with Heeseung's bedroom window across from yours.
Heeseung's window is closed with the blinds drawn, just like it's been for the past week. Although you two live next door and see each other everyday, you and Heeseung made this makeshift telephone a couple years ago, connecting from your window to his with string and paper cups on each end because “you both wanted to stay connected even when you couldn’t be right beside each other”. You lift your mouth to the paper cup, but before you can say anything, your mouth quivers. You're about to cry again, except this time, you finally let the tears fall. You clear your throat to try to hide the fact that you’re practically sobbing at this point and call out to him softly.
No answer. You try one more time. No answer.
You remember the late night confessions, him telling you he loves you, and that he’ll always be there for you. You remember believing him. It makes you so resentful that you chuck your paper cup outside the window, leaving the telephone hanging entirely from Heeseung’s window now. You don’t understand why he’s doing this to you. A week ago, when summer break started, Heeseung dragged you out of your house to show you the new dual bike his parents gifted him. He’d been wanting it forever for the sole purpose of riding it with you. Now, he won’t even leave his house, answer his door, or respond to any calls or messages from your friends.
—
It’s been three weeks since the dance competition. You’ve spent everyday rotting in bed, replaying the same thoughts and memories. Today is no different as you lie in bed, flipping through the yearbook. Then you see it, a picture of you and Heeseung, both of you were smiling with his arm wrapped around you. You were voted “Best Duo” for the tenth year in a row. You and Heeseung have always won that title since you started at Evercore as kindergartners.
Tears begin to well in your eyes when someone starts pounding on your door non-stop. A sassy voice cuts through the noise. “Stop it Yunjin. We’re here for her, which means we wait until she’s ready,” followed by a loud yelp from Yunjin, which you assume is from Sunoo smacking her. Niki fails to stifle his cackles, and Jungwon sighs before his soft, concerned voice follows. “Y/N, are you okay? We’re really worried about you.”
But you stay quiet, unable to utter a word. So Yunjin pleads, “Y/N, please let us in! You can’t spend your last summer before high school curled up in bed when we need a huge makeover and new wardrobes. Plus, Niki made himself useful for once and brought pad thai from your favourite Thai place.” Before Niki can start bickering with Yunjin, you open the door. “Holy shit—you look and smell like—OUCH,” Niki shrieks after Yunjin kicked his leg and Sunoo smacked his head. Niki rubs the aching spot while handing you the food. “Sorry, you know I’m joking, Y/N. Eat first, then talk if you want to.”
While you eat, they try to cheer you up. Yunjin and Sunoo offer to give you a manicure and a pedicure, Jungwon asks if you want him to grab anything else, and Niki recounts a disgusting story he thinks is hilarious, making you lose your apetite. You all end up laughing and gagging until you remember how Heeseung should be here too, sitting right beside you like he always does. Your laughter fades, and your friends immediately notice.“I don’t understand. We never fought… unless I did something wrong, and I just don’t realize,” you whisper.
Yunjin scoffs, “You did nothing wrong, Y/N. He’s the asshole who left to go to football camp and hang with those pompous idiots, Ja—.” “Yunjin!” the boys yell in unison. Your head jerks up so fast it spins, and your mouth goes dry. “Go on,” you say, eerily calm. Yunjin’s eyes widen. “Oh shit—I’m sorry Y/N," she says, looking down to her lap. "Maybe you’re not ready to hear this, but you deserve to know that Sunoo went to check on Heeseung last week… and saw him walking home with Jake, Sunghoon, and Jay, in football gear,” she says gently, squeezing your hand.
Something in your chest sinks. Disappointment floods in, with hurt following. You can’t bring yourself to speak. You just sit there, frozen, as the betrayal slowly eats you alive.
—
It’s the first day back at school, and the first day without Heeseung by your side. You take extra long ironing your uniform so you have an excuse to leave a little later and avoid running into him. When you arrive and make your way towards your friends, you can see the worry on their faces. Before they can say anything, you force an enthusiastic tone. “Please don't look at me like that. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”
As you head to your first class, you almost manage to forget about Heeseung—until you reach the same Evercore staircase where you once bandaged his scraped knees after a rough game of tag, where he used to let you rest on his shoulder when you were too tired to play at recess. You're lost in those memories when loud, obnoxious laughter cuts through them. You look up, and the color drains from your face. Your body goes numb, and your heart aches all over again.
Heeseung is laughing with Jake, Sunghoon, and Jay. You see him, but you don’t recognize the boy you fell in love with. Heeseung traded his glasses for contacts. His left ear is pierced, and his hair has grown into a curtain mullet. You remember how he used to keep it short and simple so it wouldn't distract him or tickle his face. The once quiet, sensitive boy who only ever laughed around you like it was meant for your ears only, like you owned his laughter,
now laughs in a way that didn’t belong to you anymore.
But that isn’t what makes your breakfast threaten to make a messy reappearance. It’s the way his newly muscular arm is wrapped around Giselle, the girl you absolutely despise, who’s everything you’re not. Heeseung has been slipping away for months, but it doesn't fully hit until now, when he walks past you without sparing a single glance. No hesitation, and no flicker of recognition. Your vision blurs. Your ears ring, and heat floods your face.
—
You don’t even wait for the school bell to ring before bolting out of your class, sprinting home as fast as you can so no one can see you crying. You’re grateful your parents aren’t home to witness you choking on sobs and slamming your bedroom door so violently that one of the family portraits slips and hangs crooked from the impact.
All you feel is fury and disgust from Heeseung’s hypocrisy. He used to hate Jake Sim as much as you did. You joked about it, rolled your eyes together whenever Jake opened his entitled mouth. And now Heeseung’s hanging out with him? Jake Sim. The devil spawn. The most popular boy in school and an entitled aristocrat. He believes he owns Evercore since his great grandfather’s name is etched into the plaque in the main corridor as one of the founding fathers. He never misses a chance to point out when someone is wearing a luxury brand under his family’s conglomerate. You'll admit his family dominates most of the luxury market, but you go out of your way to avoid their brands. So Dior is your safe haven. Thank god the Sim family hasn’t gotten their greedy hands on it.
Then there’s Giselle, the female version of Jake, except without the intellect. Jake is infuriatingly smart, which makes him worst. But Giselle? She's just as cruel, but an airhead.
They’re exactly the kind of people Heeseung used to mock. Looking back, it makes you wonder if his disdain was ever real. Maybe it was jealousy, a desire to be a part their clique.
Although Evercore is one of the world's most elite private schools, with students coming from some of the wealthiest families in the world, cliques and hierarchies still exist. Old money, new money, political influence, and corporate power each carry a different weight at Evercore, and everyone knows where they stand on the hierarchy. Scholarship students are at the bottom of the food chain, at least to your snobby classmates. Not to you. Scholarships are given to the most exceptional applicants, but to Jake, Giselle, and their circle, they're an insult to Evercore’s prestige. They never miss a chance to make them feel small.
You still remember when you were six and Jake tried to make fun of Sunoo for appearing in the same popular kid shows all of them watched. Before anyone could react, Yunjin kicked him somewhere she definitely shouldn’t have known to kick, and he ran off crying for his mom. After that, Jake never bothered your friends again. Serves that bastard right.
So seeing Heeseung with them makes your stomach turn. You bite your lip hard enough to taste blood. You tear your room apart, removing any trace of him. Every photo is torn up, every note is shredded, and every birthday gift is tossed onto the growing pile of memories. When you reach his hoodies, your hands freeze. His scent still lingers, warm, familiar, and devastating. Even after everything he’s done to you, you still love him. You still want him. Your heart still aches for him, and it makes you feel pathetic. It doesn’t matter because your relationship is like the telephone you threw out the window. Once a precious lifeline between you two, now just trash lying on the pavement.
—
Three Years Ago
"I got my hands up, they're playin' my song. I know I'm gonna be okay. Yeah, it's a party in the U.S.A,” you and Yunjin half-sing, half-shout. “Miley Cyrus was such a bad bitch. Girl went from Disney to rocking a pixie cut and sticking up her middle finger every chance she got,” Yunjin says in awe.
You nod in agreement. “She really was ahead of her time.”
You apply one last coat of mascara, smooth out your skirt, and give yourself a final once-over in the mirror. “Are you ready for our last first day of high school, Yunnie?” Yunjin rolls her eyes so hard you thought they’d get stuck. “Let’s just get this over with,” she groans.
You grab your bags and head downstairs to eat something before leaving, but when you reach the dining room, you find your parents already seated at the table with Heeseung’s parents. “Good morning, mom, dad. Oh—good morning Auntie Sooah and Uncle Minsuk. I didn’t know you were over."
“Ah, good morning, Auntie Jiwon, Uncle Sungmin. Good morning, Mrs. Lee and Mr. Lee,” Yunjin greets.
“Good morning my gorgeous girls,” Sooah beams. Yunjin, I already told you to call us Auntie Sooah and Uncle Minsuk. No more of that Mrs and Mr. Lee nonsense,” Sooah scolds.
“Sorry, Auntie Sooah. I’m still getting used to it,” Yunjin laughs.
“You girls look beautiful,” your mother says, setting down her fork. “Are you ready for your senior year? It’s a very important one.”
“I think so. I still can’t believe it’s our last year of high school, but it’s one step closer to being at Harvard… well, if I even get in,” you say solemnly.
“And I can’t wait to go home and sleep,” Yunjin mutters, earning a round of laughter.
“You will get into Harvard, honey. I’ve never been more certain. We’re so proud of you two,” your dad assures, smiling softly.
“I remember when Jiwon and I were at Evercore, stressing about our future just like you two,” Sooah adds, smiling at your mother. “When we found out we were going to spend the next four years together at Harvard, we broke down crying so hard in each other’s arms. It was one of the happiest moments of my life,” her voice hoarse as she tears up.
“I think the neighbours thought someone had been murdered with the way we were screaming and crying. It was one of the happiest moments of my life too,” your mother laughs softly, reaching across the table to squeeze Sooah’s hand.
Sooah wipes her eyes. “Sorry girls… I didn’t mean to get so emotional this early in the morning.”
Your father and Minsuk chuckle. “Moving on… ” your father chirps, then turns to Yunjin. “Aunt Sooah and I got you something.”
“You didn’t have to—now I feel bad,” Yunjin says, already unwrapping it anyway. “A Tiffany Notebook with a matching pen?” Yunjin screams. "Oh my god, thank you so much! I love you guys!"
You snort. Now she’s finally awake.
“We love you too, Yunjin. We know you're running out of pages in your old notebook. Now, you finally have more space to document your art,” your mother says as Yunjin embraces her and your father, cheeks turning pink. She always pretends her passion for art is just for fun, but everyone knows she’s a complete nerd for it. She’s quietly working towards Harvard’s Art History and Architecture program like her mother. Her parents are rarely home as their work moves them from city to city so your parents stepped in. Somewhere along the way, Yunjin has her own bedroom in your house, her toothbrush found its place beside yours, and her shoes lined are up by the door. She isn’t just your best friend. She’s family.
Warmth spreads through your chest—until your mother suddenly asks, "How is Heeseung, by the way? We haven't seen him in so long. Is he ready for the first day?" The table stills. Sooah’s smile falters. Minsuk clears his throat and gives Sooah a look. You swallow hard, looking away. Even after four years, his name still feels like a dagger to your heart. You’d be lying if you said you were over what happened.
“H-he’s been staying at Jake’s house for the past couple of weeks,” Sooah mumbles, eyes lowered to her lap. “He didn’t answer my call this morning, but I think he said he was ready a few days ago,” Sooah adds disappointingly through her clenched teeth.
Your mother glances at you apologetically. She doesn’t have to explain. You know she asked out of politeness. Your family avoids mentioning Heeseung because they understand the scar is still fresh.
Your father clears his throat, attempting to change the suffocating atmosphere. “You girls should head to school before you’re late. Chef Kim made some breakfast burritos. Here—eat them on your way to school.” He hands one to you and Yunjin. Yunjin accepts with an awkward smile.“Thanks, Uncle Sungmin.” You nod a quiet thank you as your mother stands to smooth your collar the same way she has done since you were little. “Have a good first day, sweetie. Keep doing your best."
Your father notices how sad you look so he grabs one of his many car keys and hands it to Yunjin. "Take my Porsche 991 today You'd better not dent it."
“What? Really?" Yunjin squeals. "I swear I will not fuck this up. I will drive like a senior citizen. A very respectful one."
“Language, Yunjin,” your mother giggles, kissing her cheek.
“Let’s go, Y/nnie,” Yunjin cheers, linking her arm through yours as she drags you out the door before you can respond. Somehow, she gets you to school in one piece without damaging your dad’s car. You meet up with the boys before class, and as you head toward your classroom, your principal walks straight towards you. “Hi, Y/N. It’s good to see you! How are you doing?”
You blink, confused. “Hello, Mrs. Brown. I’m doing well. How can I help you?”
“I have wonderful news regarding Harvard that I think you'll be very happy to hear. Let’s go to my office and talk more about it,” she exclaims, gesturing for you to follow her.
When you walk out of Mrs. Brown’s office, the world doesn't feel real as you're completely and utterly dazed. You’ve been invited to an exclusive coffee chat with Harvard’s dean?
"Congratulations, Miss Y/N! Although it’s not an official decision, an invitation like this indicates a high chance of acceptance, provided your conversation goes well." Your heartbeat accelerates as you replay the words, a mix of excitement and anxiety clouding your head. Then suddenly—you crash into a firm body.
“Watch where you’re fucking going,” a familiar voice grunts, making you freeze.
You look up instinctively, locking eyes with Heeseung's bloodshot ones. Then it hits you—the heavy stench of weed. Bile rises from your throat, partly from the nauseating smell and partly from a pang in your chest you refuse to acknowledge.
When Heeseung realizes it’s you, he backs away so fast, he practically trips over nothing. “Watch where you’re going next time,” he mutters, already walking away like he can’t stand your presence.
“Well maybe you shouldn’t get high before coming to school late and knocking people over,” you laugh bitterly, the words slipping out before you can stop.
Heeseung’s steps come to a halt. He turns his head just enough for you to see his jaw tighten before whipping back around. You almost miss it, but he shakes his head slightly and keeps walking, as if you’re not worth it.
Every time you see Heeseung, it makes your heart crack in ways you wish it didn’t. Seeing him high. Seeing him stumble into class late when he actually bothers to show up. Seeing his arms around different girls after every football game. Seeing girls boast about finally getting to spend a night with him. It's like a stranger wearing Heeseung’s face. You start to wonder if the long, buried memories were ever real at all. But what hurts the most is watching him drown while catching glimpses of the kid he used to be, the kid you can’t seem to forget no matter how hard you try. The worst part is, he won’t let you swim close enough to try and save him.
As you stand there frozen, the good news you heard a few minutes ago is replaced by a wave of humiliation and anger.
Prom
“Can you pass me the hair pins, Yunnie,” you ask, combing through your hair for what feels like the hundredth time.
“Here—oh my god, your makeup and hair looks so good! You’re gonna be the hottest bitch at prom,” Yunjin squeals.
“No way! We’re gonna be the hottest bitches at prom,” you giggle, bumping shoulders with your best friend.
“You’re not wrong,” she smirks, just as there's a knock at your bedroom door.
“Hello, my dears. Do you mind if we come in?” your mother asks.
“Yes, come in!” you call out.
“We have a gift for you, sweetheart. Here—open it,” your father says as your mother hands you a ribbon tied box.
You carefully unknot the bow and lift the lid, your breath catches instantly. “No… this isn’t what I think it is.”
“It is, honey,” your mother gushes.
“I—is this the custom pink Dior Venus gown I sketched when I was like ten?” you whisper in disbelief. “W—what? How did you guys know? And when did you guys even have this made?”
“We remember taking you to the de Young Museum. You kept circling back to the Venus gown. We practically had to drag you out of there to get home!” your mother laughs softly. “A week later, I went into your room and saw your your sketches. Oh—and let’s just say someone at Dior owes me big a favor,” your mother winks. “They started making this dress last year.”
“You remembered something like this from eight years ago?” you blink, stunned, though it shouldn’t surprise you. Your parents have always been impossibly astute, quietly taking notes of the things you love even when you forget them yourself.
“This must've been so hard to make. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I love you guys—ugh—I’m gonna cry,” you say, throwing your arms around them.
“You're welcome, dear, and don’t ruin your lovely makeup,” your dad murmurs.
“Wait—what do I do with my Jimmy Choo Atelier dress?” you ask, suddenly remembering your original prom dress.
“Wear it to the charity gala next month” your mother replies as if it’s obvious.
“Two couture dresses? This is why I always raid your closet,” Yunjin whispers, leaning closer to inspect the dress. “No, but this is seriously insane. You're going to look like a princess. Go put it on!”
After changing, your parents take far too many photos, sending them to Yunjin's parents as well. “You girls look so beautiful… and all grown up,” your mother says, voice wavering. “Please don’t cry, Auntie, or we’re gonna cry too,” Yunjin pouts. You pull them into a tight hug. “I love you guys so much.”
“We love you too,” they say in unison.
Suddenly—a loud honk cuts through the moment from outside. “It’s probably Sunoo and Jungwon. Go have fun, but not too much fun,” your father says, directing the last part mostly at Yunjin.
You and Yunjin step outside to a ridiculously long limousine. The driver opens the door, and the moment you climb in—“I'm gagged. You look like a literal princess, Y/N! Is that a custom Dior gown?” Sunoo gasps.
“Yes! It's a custom Venus gown,” you laugh.
“Girl, how—oh, and you cleaned up decently, Yunjin,” Sunoo teases. She flips him off. “I’m kidding! You look really really hot!"
“You guys look very pretty,” Jungwon says genuinely.
“Of course we do. We always do!” Yunjin shoots back.
“And you boys look amazing too!” you smile, glancing around the limousine “Isn’t this limo a little too big for just four people? Maybe we should’ve joined the others?”
“I like when it’s just us. I wish Niki could’ve come though,” Sunoo frowns.
“It is a shame. Niki really wanted to give the seniors a proper sendoff to college by letting them see his ‘sexy figure’ in a fitted suit,” you snort. “He’s probably sulking at home right now." You FaceTime him immediately. After showing him all of your outfits, you bid him a dramatic farewell as the limousine rolls to a stop. The venue looks like a fairytale with a castle-like exterior, cherry blossom trees scattered across the front garden, lush flowers lining the bushes, and fountains framing either side of the grand entrance. Students who haven’t gone in yet are draped in designer gowns and tailored suits.
Sunoo’s jaw drops. “Okay, but why does this look like the Met Gala? Who on earth has taste this exquisite?”
“PTA moms trying to outdo last year,” Yunjin mutters, reapplying her lip gloss.
The chauffeur opens the door, and Sunoo jumps out first. “Presenting Sunoo in Prada!” he announces with his hands on his hips. “Oh—Keeho. Be a peach and take some pictures for us, will you?” Sunoo says, shoving the camera into Keeho's hand.
Jungwon sighs, smoothing the front of his perfectly tailored black Armani suit. “I don’t do pictures,” he insists, but poses anyway when Sunoo shoots him a deathly glare.
You lace your fingers with Yunjin’s and join them. Yunjin looks unbelievably sexy in the iconic Spring/Summer 2005 gold Versace dress that Daria Werbowy wore on the runway.
Sunoo claps dramatically. “You two are totally shutting this whole place down. These bitches are not ready.”
Inside, the music fades as heads turn when you walk in. You immediately hear the whispers.
“Is that vintage Dior? Y/N looks insane! That gown is unreal." The crystal light catches every curve of your gown—the silver detailing on the petals scatters soft reflections across the marble floor as you continue walking into the venue. Your fellow classmates pause mid-sentence just to stare.
Sunoo leans in and whispers, “Told you. You’re shutting the whole place down.”
You’re adjusting the hem when suddenly—you collide with a solid body. You gasp, stumbling forward until a hand shoots out, catching your waist before you can fall. The cologne hits you first, familiar and painfully nostalgic—Heeseung. When you look up, he’s already staring. His eyes drag over you slowly, from the neckline to your face. “Watch where you’re going,” he says, but his voice isn’t annoyed like last time. It’s strained.
“Seriously?” Giselle cuts in, heels clicking. “You just got here, and you're already causing problems.” Her eyes skim your gown with a tight smile, trying to be discreet, but failing miserably.
Yunjin mutters under her breath, “She’s fuming. I love it.”
Despite his date’s fuss, Heeseung doesn’t look at Giselle. Not once. You pull away from his arm, breaking his hold. “Sorry,” you say softly. Heeseung’s lips part like he wants to say something, but Giselle steps closer, tugging at his sleeve. “Come on, we’re leaving.” He hesitates for a second, long enough to make your chest tighten, then he drops his gaze and follows Giselle, jaw tight and shoulders stiff.
Before you turn towards your friends, you catch Giselle shooting one last glare your way. “If envy was a person, Giselle would be the human form,” Sunoo says, trying to stifle his laugh as Jungwon nods, agreeing. “And did you see Heeseung? He was totally in awe,” Yunjin adds, linking arms with you. But you can’t say anything. All you can think about is the way Heeseung looked at you—like the memories were never buried at all.
You continue dancing for the next three hours, screaming along to songs while Yunjin drags you around to take pictures with different circles. Your feet feel like they’re being stabbed through your heels. You lean in and whisper into Yunjin’s ear, “My feet are going to fall off if I keep dancing. Can we please go home?” Yunjin nods and waves Sunoo and Jungwon over.
As the two boys approach, Sunoo suddenly lights up. ‘Let’s have an after-party sleepover at someone’s place. I volunteer Y/N because her house is the closest.”
“Fine—but we have to leave now then,” you demand.
“I’ll tell Niki to come,” Jungwon adds.
Yunjin links her arm through yours as you head toward the exit. “Our sleepover is going to be way better than prom, but please tell me you finally have access to your parents’ alcohol cabinet."
“Yunjin, I literally saw you taking way too many swigs from Lara’s ‘secret’ flask—but yes, I do,” you laugh softly, glancing over your shoulder. You take one last look at prom, the night everyone swears is unforgettable. But you don’t see him. Not Heeseung. Not her. Not his rowdy football team that's usually hard to miss.
Yunjin nudges you gently. “Come on. Niki’s already on his way.”
You take one last look at where he caught you before turning around and following your friends into the cool night, leaving prom and whatever Heeseung was thinking behind.
When you get home, you immediately change into comfy pajamas and wash your makeup off while your friends argue downstairs about whether to watch She’s the Man or The Notebook. Before you head down to join them, something makes you pause. A stupid, instinctive pull. You walk to your window and glance across the yard toward the house you’ve avoided looking at for far too long. Heeseung’s room is dim, lit only by the warm glow of his lamp. Your breath catches—his blinds facing directly toward your window are open for the first time in years. You don’t even know what you expect to see. Maybe nothing. Maybe him hunched over this desk. Maybe him still in the suit that made your stomach twist at prom. But when your eyes shift slightly to the left—the sight knocks the air right out of you. Giselle’s hands are tangled in his hair. Their bodies are pressed together. His mouth is on hers, the kiss is hungry, messy, and careless.
You freeze, heart dropping into your stomach. You can't stop staring at the scene that's unfolding right before you—and then he meets your gaze. His expression is cold and indifferent again, a cruel contrast to the way he looked at you at prom. Strangely, his eyes flick downward, toward your cheeks. You lift your fingers, only to realize they're wet. You're crying. Mortified, you turn away immediately, wiping your face with trembling hands. You force a deep breath, to steady your heart, to pretend it didn't just split open all over again.
When you look back, Giselle is gone. Heeseung stands alone, buttoning up his shirt. What you don't see is how abruptly he pulled away from her, making her jerk back startled. How his hands dropped from her like they burned him. How their kiss ended without any hesitation. How she stormed off, furious and humiliated. But you were too busy trying to control your breathing. Too busy blinking away tears. You reach out to shut your blinds, but before you do, you see him drag a hand through his hair, his other fist clenched so tightly his knuckles turn white.
—
Graduation
“Yunjin Huh will be attending Harvard, studying Art History and Architecture. Elizabeth Irvine will be attending Yale, studying English Language and Literature. Sunoo Kim will be attending Harvard, studying Theatre, Dance, and Media. Sebastian Miller will be attending Oxford, studying Biomedical Sciences. Lara Raj will be attending NYU, studying Vocal Performance. Jungwon Yang will be attending MIT, studying Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.” As your Principal continues down the list, the crowd claps politely during each name.
“Finally, our Valedictorian, Y/N L/N.” Mrs. Brown pauses, allowing the audience to applaud. “Y/N is our Class President, among various other extracurricular activities. She graduates with the highest academic standing among the Class of 2023 and will be attending Harvard, studying Economics.” Cheers erupt even louder than before. “I will now turn it over to Y/N for her valedictorian speech.” You rise from your chair and walk across the podium towards Mrs. Brown. Mrs. Brown shakes your hand firmly before handing you the microphone. “Congratulations, Y/N” she whispers, smiling warmly. “Thank you, Mrs. Brown.”
As you begin your speech, your other hand hidden behind the lectern is balled into a tight fist. Your nails dig into your palm, carving crescent moons into your skin. Because what the audience doesn’t know is that one of the names called before yours nearly knocked the air from your lungs. “Heeseung Lee will be attending Harvard University, studying History.” You had to clap along with everyone else. Professional. Poised. Unbothered.
When you deliver your final line, the auditorium explodes with cheers, whistles, and applause. Mrs. Brown dismisses Evercore’s Class of 2023 for the last time. Caps go flying and navy tassels spin through the air like confetti. The sound is deafening with laughter, screams, and the scrape of chairs fill the room.
You step down from the stage, immediately jumping into your friends’ arms. All around you are the classmates you’ve known since you were four. The same kids who once sat cross-legged together in Mrs. Jones's class, sounding out the alphabet. Now they cling to one another, crying, laughing, and taking final photos. Hugs linger longer than they used to. Goodbyes sound heavier. This is the last time most of you will ever be in the same room together. A chapter ends right here and a new one begins, pushing all of you towards futures that seem thrilling and terrifying at the same time.
And out of all the things you imagined about that future, you never once pictured that Heeseung would be coming with you.
—
Present
It’s the first day of your Corporate Finance class, a notorious course at Harvard for aspiring business students. Not because the professor has a 1.0 on Rate My Professors. Not because the class is impossible to pass. But because of the final project, a case analysis for Goldman Sachs, where students are grouped into pairs. The professor selects the student with the better grade from the highest-scoring pair for a summer internship at Goldman. One spot. One career-defining opportunity. It’s brutal. Students show up twenty minutes early to claim a front-row seat as if it’s a battlefield. Goldman is nearly impossible to break into, and every student in this room would sell their soul for this internship.
After introductions, the professor is about to go over the syllabus when the door opens. You glance back without thinking like you always do when someone walks in late. Jake Sim walks in first and right behind him is—Heeseung. What? He shouldn’t be here. Jake is practically in all of your classes as he's also an Econ student (unfortunately), but Heeseung is a history major. This class has absolutely nothing to do with his track. For the first two years of college, you’ve managed to avoid Heeseung surprisingly well. Although it’s a relatively small school, your paths didn’t intertwine as much as you feared it would. Your schedules only overlapped once in a mandatory first-year economics course that both Econ and History students had to take. That lecture was massive, and you could barely find your own friends, let alone Heeseung. Assignments were all individual, so avoiding him was effortless. Occasionally, you’d catch glimpses of him around campus, usually with Jay, Jake, Sunghoon, or the Harvard Football team. You'd see him at crowded study spaces, popular hangouts spots, and even at parties, but you never spoke, and you were perfectly fine with that.
Your shoulders stiffen and your breath catches as you hear Heeseung trudging down the steps with a faint jingle of his backpack. His footsteps slow, then stop. You don't need to look, you can feel him behind you. You don't dare to move as he settles into the seat directly behind, creaking as he pulls the desk out. The air around you shifts. Every sound is sharper and your pulse is suddenly too loud in your ears. Why did he choose to sit right behind you? You glance around the lecture hall to check for empty seats, but of course, this class is packed with every row nearly filled. It means nothing. Once again, you feel pathetic at how you heart lurches at the smallest proximity, overthinking every situation you two end up in together while he's probably not thinking about you at all. You grip your pen a little too tightly as you remind yourself that it's been years and you're no longer fazed when your professor proceeds with explaining the syllabus after the brief interruption.
"As you may already know, the case makes up a significant portion of your grade. 60% of your final mark comes from your case project and the remaining 40% is from your midterm grade. I'm aware that most of you are here for the internship opportunity, so I won't waste time on anything unnecessary. You'll be working in pairs for the case and each team will have to submit a written report detailing your analysis and proposed solution. You'll also deliver a 10 minute presentation followed by a 10 minute Q&A session. Two representatives from Goldman and I will evaluate your cases. From the highest scoring pair, we will select the student with the higher midterm grade for the internship. I recommend all of you begin early. With that said, I'll be announcing the pairs."
This is your chance. The one opportunity to prove you got here on your own. You refuse to follow in your parents' footsteps, refuse to have your last name dismissed as nothing more than a spoiled, nepo baby who only got in because of her daddy. You're walking a path that's entirely yours. As your professor moves down the list, you silently hope for Sophia, your roommate who should be sitting right next to you, but isn't back from summer vacation yet. She's smart, reliable, and professional, which is exactly what you need for this project.
"Y/N L/N and Heeseung Lee." The words hit you before you can even process them. Behind you, you hear his breath hitch, quiet, but unmistakable. Your heart is stuck in your throat as you're rooted in you're seat. You just stare straight ahead, refusing to turn around and give him even a slightest bit of reaction. How is this even fair? You know almost everyone in this class, countless people you'd rather be paired with, and yet the moment Heeseung walks in, you get partnered with him? You're fuming at how the universe has a proven track record of torturing you with the one person that had your whole heart and crushed it.
"I'll let everyone exchange contact information with their partners. You're dismissed early today," your professor says.
You don't move an inch until you hear Heeseung clear his throat behind you. "Hey," he hesitates before continuing, "What's your number… or has it changed after all these years?" You scoff. "No, let's just communicate with our school emails." But the question lands harder than it should. Has it changed after all these years? A simple, practical question that needed to be asked, and yet it feels like a reminder. A reminder that maybe you're still the same girl you were seven years ago. The girl who still searched for him in the hallways when he was skipping school to hookup with other girls. The girl who cried too easily when he was involved. The girl who never mattered to him as much as he mattered to you.
"You want us to communicate through email? No one checks their email as often as their messages," Heeseung says, already annoyed, clicking his tongue. "Look, I'm going to be late for football practice. Let's not make this any harder than it has to be, Y/N," he sighs as he reaches for his phone. Your nostrils flare at his tone. It's condescending as if he's explaining something to a toddler. "How dare I waste the star quarterback's time," your sneer, voice dripping with sarcasm. Heeseung clicks his tongue once again, and you swear you almost lunged forward to rip his obnoxious tongue out. "Yeah, okay… real funny," he says, bored.
The urge to strangle him is so strong, but you force yourself to take a deep breath. You're better than this. You're not fourteen anymore, waiting for him at your recital with pink tulips in his hands. You're not seventeen anymore, waiting for him to come back to you, hoping he'd finally choose you over all those girls and the partying. You're not that girl anymore and once this project is over, your life will go back to normal. Back to the version of yourself you've been rebuilding all these years, one that doesn't flinch at the sight of him around campus. "Fine. It's the same number." you mutter, meeting his eyes for a second before lowering your gaze to the floor. Before he can say anything else, you turn around and head towards the exit.
You're almost at the door when Jake's obnoxiously loud voice cuts in. "Bro, what's her problem? She's hot though—if she wasn't so annoying, I'd probably—" Before you can turn back around and strangle the shit out of him, his words are cut off abruptly, but you don't turn around. You don't want to know if it was Heeseung who stopped him. You don't want to get your hopes up. Not again. Not like that night at prom. Because Heeseung doesn't care about you. He never did.
—
As you open the door to your apartment, you find Yunjin and Manon sprawled on the couch, watching The Summer I Turned Pretty. "Did she seriously just accept his proposal after finding out he cheated?" Yunjin gasps. "He could've at least gotten her a ring with a rock that wasn't as nonexistent as my love life." "Ugh, I'm so done with this show, Yun. Please stop making me watch this shit with you," Manon groans, horrified at the scene on the TV.
Sophia is on the floor beside the couch, unpacking her luggage. Her eyes go wide when she sees you. "Oh my god, Y/N. I missed you so much!" she squeals, attempting to launch herself in your arms for a hug, but you dodge it. "You traitorous hoe… I thought you were supposed to be back yesterday," you sulk, sporting an exaggerated pout. "I'm sorry, love. I was so jet lagged after my flight, so I ended up staying the night at home," she laughs softly, mirroring your pout. "Will you forgive me if I told you I got you a bunch of gifts," Sophia says with a sly smirk, knowing you too well. "Fine, but don't ever leave me alone in class again," you mutter. "I want someone to hit my head really hard so I can forget about what happened today," you groan.
Yunjin and Manon wander over after Manon aggressively shuts off the TV, completely over the show. "Whoa—what happened?" Yunjin asks, raising her brows. "How do you already look so annoyed this early in the morning," she chuckles. "Oh please, you're one to talk," Manon cuts in. "This is you literally everyday." Yunjin gasps as she smacks Manon's arm, offended. "Hey! I'm a ray of sunshine."
Yunjin, Sophia, and Manon are your roommates. You met Sophia in first year when you realized you both had the same classes as Econ majors. You two instantly clicked over your shared love for overpriced matcha lattes, complaining about your 8 AM tutorials, and absolutely crushing the arrogant guys in class discussions. She's outspoken, witty, and impossible not to love. You and Yunjin met Manon in a Psych elective. She boldly walked up to the two of you, dropped her backpack onto the desk, and asked, "So when are we meeting?" "For the group project," she clarified, unfazed when the two of you stared at her like she was crazy. "It's a group of five, and I'm guessing your group isn't full yet." Manon is laid back and effortlessly confident until there are flashing lights, booming music, and drinks involved. Then she becomes completely unhinged, the kind of chaotic energy and passion for partying that is frighteningly similar to Yunjin.
Somehow, the four of you have settled into each other's lives without even noticing. You know each other's habits, late night cravings, and academic breaking points. You know who shuts down during exam season, who stress-eats (Yunjin), who stress-cleans (Sophia), who stress-smokes (Manon), and who stress-bakes (you).
They also know about your history with Heeseung. You were completely blindsided when you found out he was also attending Harvard. You never thought he would even end up here with you. Not with how often he skipped school. But being born into an elite family with a Harvard-educated mother has its perks. He was practically guaranteed an acceptance. And it certainly didn't hurt that he was one of the best high school football players in the country, recruited to play for Harvard's team.
During your freshman year, the entire campus scrambled to get tickets for the first football game of the year. Most of the excitement centered around the new players, Heeseung, Jake, and Sunghoon. During orientation, girls were already following them on Instagram, memorizing their practice schedules, and every dining hall sighting turned into gossip. Sophia and Manon were no exception. Although they weren't nearly as obsessed as the other girls, they were still drawn to the trio's so-called charm. "I want to ride Sunghoon's abs," Manon smirked, scrolling through a photo of him at practice. "I wish I were the ball," Sophia sighed dramatically. You practically had to pinch Yunjin to stop her from shouting obscenities every time the two of them thirsted over the boys.
They tried numerous times to drag you to the ticket booth, but Manon and Sophia grew confused by your unwavering protests. You eventually told them the truth and they immediately understood why watching Harvard's newest star quarterback wasn't exactly on your bucket list. Their excitement dimmed, replaced with protective looks. "We're definitely not going then, babe," Manon said gently, squeezing you hand. "He's not even hot anyway." "And we're so sorry for talking about him in front of you this whole time. I swear I'll throw my matcha latte at him the next time I see him," Sophia added, her face morphed into disgust. "I'm totally on board with that!" Yunjin cheered. "It's about time you guys realized how fucking ugly those assholes are." She gagged so dramatically you'd think she was more furious than you. But then again, Yunjin always has your back.
"No no no… there's no need for that, but I love you guys to death for being so understanding," you chuckle, waving your hand dismissively. "And seriously, go to the football game if you want. I don't want to stop you guys just because of our history. Plus—I really don't mind." "What do you take us for?" Sophia gasped dramatically, hand flying to her chest like you just insulted her. "We want nothing to do with Heesuck now. You come first before all these boys."
The memory fades when you realize the three of them are staring at you impatiently like hungry kittens waiting to be fed."I got paired with… him for the case project," you swallow harshly, dropping your gaze to the floor. "I've been looking forward to this since forever ago, and now it feels like everything is crashing down. Am I dramatic for letting this get to me? I mean, I thought I moved on from everything that happened, but it's feels like—" You cut yourself off because if you continue your words, saying it will make your feelings real.
Manon's jaw drops first. "You're kidding, right?" she breathes. "Harvard has like thousands of business student—hell, half the student body is practically in business, and they still paired you with Heesuck, a random History major? Why is he even in this class? That's actually criminal." Sophia slams her hands against the kitchen counter. "I knew Dr. Schmidt was evil all along. Nobody should trust a man who wears loafers without socks. Nobody," she emphasizes for the second time. Yunjin's eyes are already blazing by this point. "Dramatic? You? No. If anything, you're being too calm about this. I would've packed my bags and dropped the class immediately after catching wind of his face," She huffs. "Actually, give me like five minutes, and I'll write the drop-out email." Their protective reactions almost make you laugh, but the tightness in your chest doesn't subside, and they notice.
Sophia immediately softens, pulling you to the couch. "Hey," she murmurs, nudging your shoulder gently. "You don't have to pretend this doesn't hurt." Manon nods vigorously. "Yeah, this isn't typical boy drama. It's much deeper than that, and you have every right to feel this way." Yunjin immediately melts into your side, wrapping her arm around you. "Exactly. Besides, I was joking about dropping the class. You've worked so hard for this, and you're genuinely the smartest person I know. Don't give up just because of him. He doesn't deserve the satisfaction of ruining something you've wanted for years." She squeezes your shoulders, her voice soft but firm. "He's just an inconvenience, but if you put everything aside, you'll get the internship for sure. Without a doubt." Yunjin reassures.
"Hey! What about me?" Sophia feigns hurt with an exaggerated pout, clearly just trying to cheer you up. "You'd better watch out, Sophia because I'm not holding back," you stick out your tongue, finally laughing. "Thank you. I mean it. I'm not sure what I'd do without you guys," your mouth quivers, and you lean your head on Yunjin's shoulder. The weight of everything easing a little. "I think I'm going to take a nap before dinner with the boys," you say, tired from waking up at the crack of dawn and your unexpected reunion with Heeseung.
"Sure, babe," Yunjin nods gently, giving you a soft smile. "Do you guys want to come? Jay's making steak to celebrate him and Jungwon landing venture capital for their startup," Yunjin asks, turning to Sophia and Manon. "Nah, it's a special moment you should enjoy alone. Besides, I convinced Sophia to come with me to a frat party at Northeastern tonight," Manon smirks, proud of herself for convincing Sophia to come, who absolutely hates frat bros with every fiber of her being. "I swear to god, if any frat bro tries to press up against me like last time, I'm fucking knocking his teeth out," Sophia threatens, already regretting her decision. You shake your head and laugh at how Sophia will probably end up punching one anyway with her short-temper before heading into your room.
As you try to fall asleep, your mind constantly drifts back to Heeseung, wondering what you should do. The last thing you want is it be stuck in a tiny room with him for the entire semester, pretending the past doesn't exist while you work on a project that decides your future. You toss and turn in your bed at the unpleasant memories you haven't thought about in years until your eyes finally grow heavy.
—
You and Yunjin arrive at the boys' doorstep, each of you holding warm, freshly made side dishes even though Jay told you not to bother. Compared to your cozy, homey, brownstone, Sunoo, Jungwon, and Niki live in a sleek modern condo with floor-to-ceiling windows. They live about a ten minute walk from your place, making sure you all live in close proximity to each other. It's not hard considering you all go to school in Cambridge with Sunoo and Niki both attending Harvard for Theatre, Dance, and Media. Jungwon is effortlessly brilliant, accepted to MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science program. Since MIT is practically next door to Harvard, it only made sense for him to live with the boys.
Jay also goes to Harvard for Computer Science but lives with Heeseung, Jake, and Sunghoon. Technically, anyway because he's basically living with Jungwon since they're always holed up working on their growing startup, Pathify. The two of them became close due to their shared passion for tech and eventually started Pathify together. Jay is like the older brother you've always wished for. Thankfully, he's completely different from Jake and Sunghoon. He doesn't go around acting like a pompous asshole who's still clinging to his high school ways—constantly partying and sleeping around as if it's some kind of extracurricular activity. When Jay's not too busy with Pathify, he spends his days cooking, experimenting with new recipes, taking photos of literally anything that catches his eye, and talking endlessly about Max Verstappen, the Dutch F1 Driver who he's obsessed with.
Yunjin has interrogated him countless times about why he still hangs out with them. But he always gives the same answer. "Our fathers were best friends growing up, so naturally we are too. You know how it works with people like us. You grow up together your whole lives, tolerate their flaws, and make excuses for them." As much as you hate to admit it, you know Jay's right. People like you didn't always choose your childhood friends. You inherited them. You grew up side by side, learned to overlook their worst qualities, and convinced yourself it wasn't worth the drama to question any of it. So you stick by these people because they're the only ones who truly understand your world or because parents insists these connections are good for business. Thankfully, your parents never cared about any of that.
The door swings open, and you're greeted by Jay , still wearing his apron and a pair of cooking gloves. Yunjin snorts. "Wow, look at you. Gordon Ramsay would be shaking in his boots." Jay rolls his eyes but steps aside to let you both in. "Oh please, Ramsay wishes he had my knife skills." Yunjin leans in and whispers loudly, "I've seen toddlers with Play-Doh who chop straighter." "Alright, cut it out, Yunjin," you chuckle, nudging her shoulder. "Thank you for having us and making dinner, Jay! Congratulations on the venture capital! Pathify is going to be huge." Jay's expression softens immediately with pride. "Thank you, Y/N. I'll give you access to unlimited pro features," he winks. "And I told you guys not to bring anything. You should be more like the guys who contributed absolutely nothing," Jay snickers, taking the mashed potatoes from you and the bread from Yunjin as you both slip off your shoes.
"Hey! You're using our kitchen by the way," Niki heckles from the dining room. You shake your head at the chaos. "You know we could never show up empty handed." You all settle into the dining room as Jay finishes plating the food."Enjoy, everyone," Jay announces as he sets the final dish in the center of the table. The aroma alone makes you feel more at ease compared to this morning.
"Wait!" Sunoo interjects. "We need to make a toast to Jungwon and Jay for their success with Pathify! To Pathify," He beams proudly as he raises his glass of wine. "To Pathify!" you all repeat in unison. "Thank you, guys," Jungwon and Jay say, exchanging proud glances before lifting their own glasses.
As everyone digs into the Michelin Star level food, you all update each other on recent events—Yunjin recounting how someone tried to plagiarize her artwork. Sunoo complaining that his skin has been breaking out ever since he got back to Cambridge. Niki ranting about how stinky his dance partner smells after rehearsal. Jungwon explaining what happened during their latest investor meeting, and Jay interrupting every few minutes to ask if the seasoning is good. It feels warm and familiar, enough to make you forget about the stress sitting at the back of your mind—until you're asked about your classes. "Oh—Y/N, how's that finance class going? Are you ready for the case?" Sunoo asks suddenly, looking at you with innocent curiosity as he pops a roasted carrot into his mouth. The question makes you freeze mid-bite, your fork hovering halfway to your mouth as the piece of steak feels heavy in your hand. "I—I don't know. I'm not sure if it'll go well with… my partner," you say quietly.
Yunjin clears her throat, trying to change the topic. "Maybe we should talk about something else." "Why? Who is it?" Niki asks as everyone looks at you curiously, waiting for an answer. "Uh… it's H—Heeseung," you mutter, chest tightening at the reminder. Everyone's eyes and mouth drop at the same time. Sunoo's fork drops against the table, Niki looks offended on your behalf, Jungwon's brows knit in concern, and Jay chokes on his whine. "Whoa, are you okay, Y/N? He's a History major… what is he even doing in your class. Have you tried switching partners?" These questions are thrown at you all at once, overlapping so fast you can't even tell who's speaking. "It's whatever… I don't really care," you lie, shrugging like it's nothing. "But, I'd prefer not to talk about it if that's alright. You know… because we shouldn't be talking too much about school during this celebration," you say, setting down your fork.
The table goes unusually quiet. Yunjin's hand immediately finds your knee under the table and gives it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. "Of course," Jungwon says gently, breaking the awkward silence. "Let's not talk about school when we're here to celebrate."Everyone nods in agreement. Just like that, the conversation shifts and everyone steers away from the topic."It's been a while since we've all taken a group photo. Shall we take one?" you ask, trying not to spoil the dinner any further. "Yes, of course," Sunoo immediately agrees, practically squealing. Afterward, you flop back into your seats, posting the pictures on Instagram. There are chaotic pictures with Yunjin flipping off the camera, Niki blinking, and Sunoo looking beyond annoyed at the two. Jay, quite the minimalist, posts a clean group photo (without Yunjin's middle finger of course).
At their shared apartment, Heeseung sees the notification while sprawled lazily on the couch after practice. He taps it without much interest, expecting another Pathify update. But instead, he sees you. Right there in the center, smiling with your friends who used to be his too. Heeseung holds his thumb against the Instagram story, stopping it from skipping ahead. He just stares at the photo… at you. Something prickles under his skin. It's unsettling, almost irritating because he shouldn't be looking. He tells himself it's just because he's exhausted from practice and that seeing you again up close after all these years probably just threw him off. And yet he doesn't move an inch. Not for a minute. Not for two.
He's still staring blankly at the photo with a weird feeling gnawing at his chest when the front door bursts open. "BROOO, WE'RE HOOOME," Jake shouts, tripping over his own feet as Sunghoon stumbles in right behind, equally wasted. "HEEESEUNGGG—YOU SHOULD'VE COME, YOU FUCKING PUSSYYY," Sunghoon yells, clutching his stomach like he's about to projectile vomit all over the expensive rug. They're too loud. An absolute disaster at their big grown age. Heeseung clears his throat, finally locking his phone before tossing it onto the cushion beside him like it was suddenly too heavy. Whatever that moment was, whatever he felt, he shuts it down before it even forms because he's not allowed to.
—
The next morning, your alarm goes off far too early for someone who stayed up drinking with their friends until 2 a.m. You groan into your pillow, smashing the snooze button before finally dragging yourself out of your soft, warm bed. Your head is foggy, not from drinking, just from thinking. Specifically, about how you're going to start working on the case with the person you refused to talk about at dinner. You rub your eyes and glance at your phone. Of course your friends are blowing up your phone in the group chat.
yunjin's hoes:
yunnie: someone pls send the photos of Niki drooling on the couch, passed out with his ass up in the air
sunsun: [image sent] #flat #wedontjudge #itsasafeplace
niki minaj: FLAT??? be serious bro my ass is THICCC AND PLUMPPP
wonnie: Disgusting. You're cleaning up your drool stains, Niki.
verstappen's bf: LOL also pls remember to heat up the leftovers on the stove or in the oven… NOT THE MICROWAVE
sunsun: why do u sound like a dad rn
verstappen's bf: because last time niki microwaved it for 10 minutes and it came out looking like my shit after eating taco bell…
niki minaj: OK I WAS DRUNK
yunnie: nah you're just an idiot LOL
niki minaj: Y/N pls get in here and defend m
you: NAUR… you drool on shared couches and can't even reheat food at the big age of 20…
After replying to the group chat, which always seems to end with everyone targeting Niki (lovingly and jokingly of course), you move on to your morning routine. You pull on the softest, warmest sweater you own now that the weather's getting colder and make yourself a warm cup of coffee. With no classes today, you decide to stay in, settle at your desk, and finally start working on the case. If you're going to be stuck working with Heeseung, you're at least determined to do most of the work without relying on him. You reread the entire case brief, highlight key points, and start building an outline. You dive into research, pulling academic journals, financial data, and comparable models. The document is filled with bullet points and research notes. You've been typing away in the document for two hour—until your phone vibrates beside your laptop. It's a text from an unknown number.
Unknown Number: hey we need to talk about the case. it's heeseung btw
Your fingers tighten slightly around your phone. You never asked for his number. Then it hits you—his number changed. You know this not because you memorized his stupid number, but because the area code is different. His number has a Cambridge area code rather than one from back home. Wait—you only told him your number was the same. You never actually gave it to him. You didn't text it to him. You didn't read it to him. You didn't write it for him. Which could only mean one thing—did he really memorize your number after all these years? Even through high school and college. Even through a new carrier and a new phone. Even after everything that happened. Your pulse quickens and your stomach twists at the thought of it. No. You refuse to believe that. You refuse to let yourself entertain the idea that he might care, that Lee Heeseung, of all people, would hold onto something as small and insignificant as your phone number. You won't allow yourself to go there. Not after everything.You scoff and shake your head, forcing yourself back into reality and reply to his texts.
You: what's your school email?
He replies instantly.
Unknown Number: [email protected]
You: i'll send an outline with everything i have so far.
Unknown Number: alright i'll work on it right now
You: no need to. you can just work on the presentation once i'm done with the research and proposal.
You've already decided you want to avoid Heeseung as much possible until the presentation, so you'll do most of the work. It's safer that way. Besides, he'll only hinder your chances of getting the internship. He's probably more focused on football and girls rather than his GPA anyway.
Your phone buzzes again.
Unknown Number: ???
Unknown Number: the report is the hardest part… we're in pairs for a reason
The typing bubble appears again, disappears, then reappears like he's trying to figure what he should and shouldn't say. You exhale sharply, irritation rising in your chest. Fine.
You: look, let's not make this any harder than it has to be.
The exact same line he threw at you in class. A beat of silence follows. Then the typing bubble appears.
Unknown Number: don't. i'm trying to make this easier, not harder. you're the one fighting me on everything
He's unmistakeably annoyed and for some reason that only irritates you more. You should be the only one annoyed and furious. The audacity of it makes your jaw clench so tightly aches. You want to slap him across the face because he has no right, no right at all to sound frustrated with you when you're the one who was wronged. Not him.
Unknown Number: just meet me at the library please, Y/N
Your breath hitches. Of course he's fine with meeting. Of course he thinks this is nothing but a normal discussion between classmates. Of course it doesn't affect him the way it affects you—sitting alone with him, pretending nothing ever happened between you two.
You: 6:00. don't be late.
You agree anyway. You tell yourself it's only for the project, and you're mature enough to speak to him without slapping the shit out of him. You tell yourself it's fine and that you can treat him like any other classmate. You tell yourself a lot things, but none of them feel true.
You're supposed to meet at 6, which means you have to leave your place by 5:50 to get there on time, but it's 5:55, and you just got out of bed. You've finally accepted the plan that you've been thinking of doing for the last hour. You're making him wait for you. Not too long, just enough to feel like you have even the slightest bit of control in this damning situation. It's petty, immature, and exactly the kind of thing you swore you wouldn't do. You snort to yourself as you slip on your shoes. "Sure. Mature. Very adult of me."
It's 6:00 when you grab your bag. You take one deep breath, and walk out the door. You arrive at the library at 6:10, feeling the tiniest spark of satisfaction curling in your chest. Ten minutes late—it's not enough to be rude, but just enough to make him wait. And he did. Heeseung is already there, leaning against his chair on the second floor where he told you he found a table. His head is tilted slightly like he's been scanning the crowd for you. Good. Let him wait, you think, with a victorious gleam in your eye—until you see her. A really pretty girl walks up to Heeseung. Like really pretty. The kind of pretty that looks like she just stepped off the Victoria's Secret runway. She's effortlessly stunning with silky, perfectly blown-out hair, and legs for days. She laughs at something he says, her hand landing on his chest like there's no personal space between the two of them. Her touch lingers there, softly gripping the fabric of his hoodie.
And he lets her. He just sits there, letting her giggle at whatever bland joke he made, letting her invade his space. Of course this jerk is flirting with a ridiculously hot girl at the library he practically begged you to meet him at. Absolutely typical. You scowl, agitated by him once again. You straighten your shoulder, smooth your sweater, and walk toward the table with your chin up, expression dry, and stride calm and collected. Once you reach the table, you clear your throat loud enough to cut through her laughter. "I have to go in an hour. Can we get this over with?" you lie. You actually have no where else to be after this. The girl's laughter dies instantly, and she drops her hand from his chest, stepping back slightly as she gives you a once over with a piercing glare.
Heeseung straightens in his chair, expression flickering with surprise and something else that you can't exactly place. Weird… you expected him to look more annoyed. "Yeah," he says a little too quickly. "I'll see you later, Emily." The girl squeezes his arm lightly. "Text me later?" she asks, sending him a smile sweet enough to rot his teeth. You roll your eyes and drop into the chair across from him, your bag hitting the table harder than intended. The truth is, Heeseung saw you before she even walked over. He'd been waiting for you nervously, feet bouncing against the floor, his eyes flicking toward the entrance every time he heard footsteps. He noticed you the moment you stepped onto the second floor, ten minutes late, eyes scanning the tables with the guarded look you always wear when you're bracing for something. God, he still knows everything about you.
He noticed Emily hovering too, the girl who's practically been stalking him since freshman year. He could've ignored her or shut the conversation down before it even started like he usually does, but he didn't this time. Heeseung let her talk, laugh at some meaningless comment, and touch his chest with her bony fingers pricking through his hoodie. And he did it because he knew you were watching. Heeseung wasn't interested, flirting, or even listening. He was waiting for you to walk up, waiting to see if you'd react, waiting to confirm something he shouldn't want to know. The moment he saw your face tighten, something ugly settled in his chest. Satisfaction. It lasted half a second before the guilt slammed into him. What the hell is he doing? Hasn't he hurt you enough?
By the time you sit down, he's already running a hand over his jaw, regret coiling inside his stomach. God, he is such an ass. You don't give him time to speak. "Let's go over what I've found," you say flatly, opening your laptop. You explain your outline without looking at him once, but you can feel his eyes on you, heat crawling up the back of your neck. Why is he looking at you like that? He should be looking at the screen, not you. You swallow hard, trying to keep your eyes on the outline. "I'll keep researching until I have enough to build a solid recommendation with supporting evidences," you murmur. "This case needs a defensible analysis. Dr. Schmidt is going to tear our work apart if my research isn't thorough enough. No wonder they gave us the whole semester."
"You're still planning on doing all of this by yourself?" His voice is low, with an edge to it.
"Yes." You don't even look up. "We'll only need to meet to prepare for the presentation."
There's a long pause before he finally lets out a sigh. "I know you wish you were paired with literally anyone else, but we don't have a choice," he says quietly.
Your fingers freeze above the keyboard. You hate that your body always seems to react before your mind does when it comes to him. You hate that your heart always fucking hurts because of him. Because hate isn't entirely it. It was never that simple, and he has no idea. If you just hated him, this would be easier. You could face him without your heart cracking every time he looks at you. But there's too much history wrapped up in him. Too many things left unsaid. Too many versions of him layered over each other in your memory for it to be easy for you.
He continues, jaw tightening. "This is my grade too." You finally lift your eyes, meeting his stare. He's right. He is supposed to do this with you, and you know that. But it doesn't stop the irritation you feel at his sudden insistence on being involved, such a sharp contrast to how he was in high school. It makes you almost scoff out loud. "I'm not hurting your grade," you say through gritted teeth. "I'm putting my all into this because I want the internship more than anything, and I'm not letting anyone, especially you, ruin it for me."
You have to set these boundaries. As stupid as it is, you still can't trust yourself around him even after all these years. "I'll handle the analysis and report. You can take the presentation." Heeseung watches you for a moment longer like he wants to argue, like there's something on the tip of his tongue, but the look on your face makes him stop. "Okay," he says finally, resigned.
But he doesn't listen. Heeseung works on the case over the next couple of weeks despite your wish. Instead of letting the boys drag him to frat parties and bars, Heeseung shows up to the library alone, usually late at night after football practice, still sweaty, hair damp, and body aching, which he tries to ignore. Throughout college, this being his third year, Heeseung has never spent as much time in the library as he has over these past few weeks. It's honestly diabolical. He rereads the case brief until it finally clicks, highlighting key information, and jotting down notes. He pulls financial statements, industry reports, academic journals, and forms valuations, seeing if his research can support your proposed solution and running the numbers to see if they line up with yours.
Truthfully, Heeseung has been struggling. Struggling would be an understatement, but it's not because he's stupid. This class just has nothing to do with his major. He ends up asking Jake for help, a decision he almost regrets when Jake never lets him hear the end of it, but Heeseung takes it. All of it. Because he knows how much this means to you. How hard you've been working for it. He refuses to be careless when your future depends on it. Eventually, Heeseung opens the shared document. He's careful about not daring to touch your work, but he adds his beneath it. He leaves comments, resources, clarifying questions that Dr. Schmidt might ask, and notes in the margin, pointing out potential risks and strengthening the argument. When Heeseung's done for the night, he saves the document and closes his laptop, rubbing a hand over his face, thinking about what you might say.
You refuse to work with him or even be in the same vicinity as him, so Heeseung keeps showing up in the only way he can—quietly, carefully, and without asking for permission. You immediately notice his work the moment you open the document the next morning. New text beneath yours, comments in the margins, and timestamps that stretch late into the night. Your jaw tightens. Of course he didn't listen. Your phone is already in your hand before you even finish scrolling, fingers practically flying as you type a sharp, angry text about him doing exactly what you told him not to do, but then you pause and actually read it. You skim through at first, quick and irritated, looking for anything to justify snapping at him. Maybe a wrong assumption, a sloppy calculation, or a comment that oversteps. Instead, you find citations you hadn't come across yet as well as evidences and risks you mentioned briefly that he expanded on with thoughtful insights. You scroll slower. Heeseung's work isn't half-assed or contradicting. They actually support and strengthen your analysis and proposal. He fixed the weak spots in your work that have been causing you so much stress.
Your drafted text sits unsent as you lean back in your chair, exhaling through your nose. This isn't what you wanted or asked for, but it's also good. Very good. You lock your phone without sending the explosive message, eyes drifting back to the document. For the first time since being paired with Heeseung, you feel something other than angry. You feel relieved and grateful. Your mind eases for the first time in weeks with Heeseung's help that you so stubbornly refused at first. Embarrassment trickles in along with a faint of guilt at how immature you've been, so determined to shut him out even when he was only trying to help.
You don't like admitting it, even to yourself, but you were wrong to doubt Heeseung. He actually made this lighter and manageable in a way it hadn't been before. Maybe you owe Heeseung an apology or at least a thank you, but before you can spiral over that too, you finally decide to take a break from this grueling case you've been buried in. You end up at one of the dance studios on campus. You haven't been here for far too long.
Although you quit ballet midway through high school to focus on your studies, you always find yourself back in the studio every once in a while. You truly love ballet, and you've never really stopped dancing. It's the one thing that still helps quiet your mind. The studio is empty and quiet, sunlight spilling in through the windows, and mirrors lining the walls. You change into your leotard, tights, and point shoes, stepping onto the floor as Swan Lake begins to play. Your body remembers before your mind does. And for the first time in weeks, you're not thinking about the case, the internship, or Heeseung. Just the quiet comfort of returning to something no one can take away from you.
Heeseung is on his way to class when the music nearby stops him. He freezes. Swan Lake. The sound leaks through the studio door. It's unmistakable. It's the same song you used to practice to over and over again when he'd be sitting off to the side, watching you intently with a brownie stuffed in his pocket, saving it for you. It's the one song you always went back to because you said it helped you focus and it made everything else disappear. His chest tightens. For a moment, he just stands there, staring at the closed studio door like it might disappear if he looks away. He hasn't heard this song in years, not since before everything fell apart.
Heeseung swallows, hesitating before taking a careful step closer. Through the narrow window in the door, he sees you. You're moving with such an angelic grace that steals the air from his lungs. It's familiar and effortless, like your body never forgot even if life forced you to step away. Each movement is precise, controlled, and achingly beautiful. He forces himself not to breathe too loudly, afraid that even the smallest sound might shatter what's unfolding in front of him. So he just watches, rooted in place, heart heavy with a realization he doesn't know how to carry. You never stopped being this person. But somewhere along the way, he became something so ugly. Maybe he always has been. He shouldn't be here. He shouldn't be near you. He would only taint you, ruin you like he was told. And they were right. But Heeseung lets himself be selfish one last time because seeing you like this, alone, focused, untouched by everything between you, feels like stumbling upon something sacred, precious. Something you once shared with him.
But the guilt tears him apart when he remembers the morning he was supposed to go the Varna Ballet Competition. The one you wouldn't stop talking about for months. The one that actually mattered. You told him it was the most important recital of your life, the kind dancers trained years for. You didn't even have to make him promise he'd be there because he always was. Until he wasn't.
He had been pacing in his room that morning, fingers fumbling with the top button of his dress shirt, heart pounding as the promises he made twisted tighter and tighter in his chest when Sooah knocked on his door. She didn't yell or scold, but she was tired, confused, and disappointed. Disappointed by the sudden distance he'd put between himself and you, the girl who was like a daughter to her. The girl who used to be the only person capable of pulling a smile out of her son when no one else could. "Come with me, honey." she pleaded, voice strained. "She needs you there."
But he hesitated too long. By the time he stepped into the hallway, Sooah was already heading for the door. When he reached it, she was pulling out of the driveway, the red glow of her taillights disappearing into the dark. Panic had hit him all at once. "Wait—" he shouted as tears spilled out of his eyes, throwing the door open and bolting outside with his mismatch shoes stomping against the pavement.
But he didn't make it past the porch. Minsuk latched onto his arm firmly, pulling him back inside. "You can't go," he said quietly. "I'm sorry, son." Heeseung fought him. Well at least he tried to. Thrashing in his father's arms and yelling as if he could still catch up to his mother. Like he could still make it in time if he just ran fast enough. But he couldn't. The driveway was empty, the house was quiet, and the bouquet of pink tulips he was supposed to give you sat abandoned on his desk, slowly wilting beneath the weight of one of the promises he couldn't keep.
He let you believe he simply didn't care enough to show up. Now, standing in the hallway outside the studio as Swan Lake fills the air again, the same helplessness crashes into him. The same regret. The same sick understanding that maybe he did have a choice after all. And for the first time in a long time, he's close enough to see it. Close enough to know exactly what he lost. Break it. That's what he should've done.
You hold your last pose, arms extended, chin lifted, and body perfectly still during the final notes of Swan Lake. You don't rush it. You never do, but this time, you really want to. Heeseung watches through the narrow window, breath shallow, afraid that if he moves, the moment will break. But you already know he's there. You caught his reflection in the mirror mid-pirouette, a figure at the door that didn't belong to the empty studio you thought you had to yourself.
The music fades. You remain frozen for a beat longer than necessary, muscles burning, heart racing, not just from the dance, but from the weight of Heeseung watching you. Slowly, you lower your arms and exhale, the room settling into silence. You straighten your shoulders, gaze fixed on your reflection in the mirror, and force your voice to stay calm. "I know you've been standing there… so just come in," you say, unsure of your invitation. You should've just ignored him. Fuck.
Heeseung hesitates before pulling the door open. His face is flushed, embarrassed now that he knows you caught him watching. He steps inside carefully, unsure if he's even allowed to exist in this space with you at all. He looks dazed like he hasn't fully caught up to what's happening. "I didn't mean to—" he starts, then stops. "I heard the music on my way to class."
You wipe the sweat from your neck before turning to face him, your expression unreadable. "It's Swan Lake," you say simply. "But you already know that." His jaw tightens at that. He nods, eyes dropping to the floor. "I remember," he says quietly. After a pause, he adds, "You were amazing by the way—the dance I mean." His face turns even redder like he regrets saying anything at all now.
The air between you shifts, growing heavier. "Thanks… and for helping with the research," you mutter. "Nah," Heeseung says quickly. "I couldn't let you carry it all alone." Silence stretches between you. Thick and uncomfortable until you're fed up again. What the hell is his problem? He's been showing up, helping, watching you dance like it means something, and acting like he cares after all this time. He doesn't get to do that. You clench your fists, frustration boiling over too fast before you can stop it. "Why are you doing this?" you snap. He looks up, startled. "All of it," you continue, voice tight. "The help. The concern. The pretending like none of this is fucking weird." You're so angry and exhausted. After all these years, he still won't tell you why he left. But you've decided it makes no sense. There has to be a reason. A bigger one. Because he's been looking at you the way he looked at you during prom, like someone who wants you, but is restraining themselves. Not someone who doesn't care. Not someone who moved on.
Heeseung swallows hard, bracing himself before taking a small step closer, afraid you might vanish if he doesn't. "I'm sorry," he says, rough and unfinished. "For the project. For before. For everything. I know apologies won't fix what I did, but I need you to know I never meant to hurt you." You let out a humorless laugh as you cross your arms. He's seven years too late. "Why?" you press. The single word stops him cold. "Why did you do all of it?" your voice trembles as tears blur your vision. Your cries hit him like a punch to the gut.
His chest tightens painfully, breath catching as he watches your face crumble in front of him. Every instinct in him screams for him to close the distance, to reach out and wipe your tears away the way he used to, to hold you until the shaking stops, but he doesn't move. He knows he doesn't deserve that kind of closeness anymore. Not after everything he's done. Not when he's the reason you're crying in the first place. So he stays rooted where he is, hands clenched at his sides, forcing himself to watch as the only girl he's ever loved breaks apart because of him, again.
"Why show up now? Why help when I told you not to? Why pretend you care after years of abandoning me?" He looks up at you again, and for a split second, you think he's finally going to say it. Whatever truth that's been sitting between you all this time. "I disappeared," he says instead, voice shaking despite his effort to keep it steady. "I stopped showing up. I stopped being there when you needed me, and I hate myself for that. You deserved better than that."
"That's not an answer," you say flatly.
"I know. I was stupid, alright?" he starts, shaking his head in frustration. "I thought you were too good for me. No, you are too good for me." He's not lying, but he's not telling you the entire truth. "You were doing everything right," he continues, shoulders shaking as he cries. "You were disciplined, focused, and talented. You were going somewhere, and I would've only dragged you down."
"That's such bullshit," you scream.
He flinches.
"You don't get to use self-pity as an excuse," you say, tears spilling freely now. "You didn't disappear because I was 'too good' for you. You disappeared because you were a coward." His lips part, but nothing comes out. You let out a bitter laugh. "You think I can't make decisions for myself? It's wasn't your place to decide for me. You don't get to shut me out and call it noble instead of being honest." His eyes flicker with panic, shame, and guilt all tangled together. "You think I wouldn't have stayed?" you ask, voice breaking. "You think I wouldn't have fought for you if you'd just told me the truth?"
He doesn't answer because he can't, and you see it. That's what hurts the most. All the lies. "You're apologizing," you say quietly "but you're still hiding." You grab your bag, hands shaking. "I don't need excuses," you say. "I need the truth, and you still won't give it to me. I can't do this again." He steps forward instinctively. "Please—" "Don't," you snap, wiping your tears. "Don't apologize if you're still going to lie to my face." You turn and walk out of the studio, the door slamming shut behind you, the echo louder than the music.
Heeseung stays rooted to the floor because the truth is sitting heavy in his chest, suffocating, unspeakable. Because he promised he would never tell you. Because telling you would destroy everything. Because he'll do anything to protect you, even if it means keeping you far away. Even if you hate him for it.
—
Over the next couple of weeks, you lock yourself in your room with the excuse of studying for midterm exams. You tell yourself you focus better there, but the truth is, you don't want to run into Heeseung. You skip the library, avoid popular cafes around campus, order in food, and keep your door shut. You study late into the night, flashcards and notes spread across your desk, forcing your mind to stay busy so it doesn't drift back to the studio, to his face, to the way he cried.
It works… mostly, but every time your phone lights up, your chest tightens anyway because some part of you is still bracing for him even when you're doing everything you can to avoid him.
The girls notice. They always do. You start turning down plans. You stop showing up to group study sessions, late-night food runs, and anything that requires you to leave your room. You tell them it's because of midterms, and you're exhausted. That you just want to be alone. They don't push at first, but then midterms end. The campus breathes a sigh of relief and suddenly, Thanksgiving break is looming with everyone counting down the days until they can go home. That's when they intervene.
You're rotting in your bed, mindlessly scrolling through TikTok when there's a gentle knock at your door. "You're going out with us tonight," Sophia declares, already halfway through your door before you even get the chance to respond. "No excuses this time," Manon adds, raising an eyebrow. "We're dragging you to the club if we have to." Yunjin lingers by the doorframe, watching you carefully with concern softening her expression. You feel a pang of guilt for worrying her so much. Normally, she would've already barged in and set you straight without hesitation. "You've been holed up here for weeks, Y/N. You need a break," she says gently. You hesitate. The thought of loud music and swarms of drunken, sweaty bodies feels overwhelming, but maybe this is good for you. Maybe it'll distract you. Numb the pain you've been carrying inside.
They girls have already planned your outfit, hyping you up like it's a done deal. "It's almost Thanksgiving break," Manon continues. "We have to hangout before everyone goes back home." "One night won't kill you, and if it sucks, we'll leave early," Sophia reassures. "Come on, please!" Yunjin adds as the three of them get down on their knees and beg dramatically. You glance at your desk, the finished notes, and you realize there's nothing left to hide behind. You've finished your exams. Maybe one night out will help you forget everything, even if it's just for a few hours. "Fine," you sigh. "But I'm not getting wasted."
They cheer like you've just won the Nobel Prize, immediately ushering you towards the bathroom. It's honestly embarrassing how you barely remember the last time you showered properly. You're not allowing yourself to rot away in bed over Heeseung any longer. No, you absolutely refuse. For the first time in weeks, you let yourself be pulled out of your room, away from your thoughts, away from the silence, and into the night meant to distract you from him.
—
You arrive to the bar in a black lace corset that snatches your waist, squeezes your breasts too tightly as they're practically spilling out of the neck line, and it's sheer in all the right places. You pair it with tiny black leather shorts, sitting dangerously low on your hips. It's risque and bold, making you reluctant to leave the house in, but the girls insisted on you wearing it since they spent 'so much time' picking it out. You look unapologetic, untouchable, and that's exactly what you need for tonight.
You start the night at the bar. "Gin and tonic please," you tell the bartender. You don't want to get drunk. Just enough to take the edge off. Enough to quiet the noises in your head. The glass is cool in your hand when it's set down. You take a small sip, barely tasting it when Sophia interjects. "Okay, now let's get on the dance floor." "Come on," Manon whines, already bouncing to the beat. "We didn't get dressed like this to stand around."
You shake your head. "You guys go first. I'll join in a bit." Yunjin frowns, tilting her head. "Are you sure? We can just wait for you then." "No way!" you insist, forcing a smile. "Go. I promise I'll come join you in a minute." They hesitate, exchanging looks like they're unsure about leaving you alone. "We'll stay near the bar then," Sophia says gently through the booming music, knowing you need some time alone. Manon nods in agreement, squeezing your hand. "Join us soon, okay?" Yunjin lingers the longest, searching your face before nodding. "Text us immediately if anything happens." "I will," you promise.
Reluctantly, they disappear into the crowd, swallowed by flashing lights, mingling bodies, and booming music. You exhale once they're gone, shoulders dropping just slightly. That's when James slides into the empty space beside you. "Hey," he says, smiling down at you in that familiar way, warm and tender, like he's genuinely happy to see you. It's not new, the way James looks at you. It started back in freshman year in ways that made it clear he actually cared, not just passing interest. He always chooses a seat near you when there are plenty of others. He lingers after lectures just to keep talking even when his friends are already halfway down the hall. Conversations with him are thoughtful, unhurried like he never minds being late if it means hearing you finish a thought.
He flirts, yes, but softly with sincerity. You've always been aware you're pretty, People have a way of making it obvious, but James never made it feel like it was the only thing worthwhile about you. He's like a golden retriever, kind without trying, the type of guy who checks in, remembers details, and never makes you feel like you owe him anything. Still, he's undeniably handsome. Broad shoulders, dark hair that falls naturally out of place, a face that softens the moment he smiles. Nothing forced. Nothing arrogant. Just easy, natural charm.
But despite all of that, you're not interested in him beyond being friends. Not because he's lacking, but because your heart has been tied up elsewhere for far too long even when you don't realize it. Still bruised. Still loyal to something that you haven't fully let go. And that's just not fair to James. He's too good for that.
"Hey," you respond, returning a small, genuine smile. "You look really beautiful tonight," James says, shyly. "I mean, you always do. But tonight? Yeah, I had to say something." There's no hunger. No lust. Just pure admiration. "And you don't look too bad yourself, James," you grin, flashing him a wink. And for the first time tonight, you feel more relaxed.
James' ears immediately turn red at that before continuing, "Thank you, but I have to say, you're the last person I'd expect to see here." He's not wrong. You attend the occasional house parties, but the club? It's not really your thing. More like it's not your thing at all. You'd rather spend the night tucked in your warm couch, a glass of wine in hand while the girls talk over one another with soft melodies playing in the background.
"My friends dragged me here. What about you?"
"Same with me," he says, tilting his head towards his familiar friends. For a moment, neither of you speaks as you take slow sips of your drink, the bass vibrating through the counter, the lights washing over the glass in flickers of red and blue. It isn't awkward, just quiet. James glances at you from the corner of his eye. "Hey," he says gently. "I can tell you've got a lot on your mind tonight." He hesitates, then adds, "If you want to be left alone, I can go." You melt at how sweet he is and slightly panic at his polite offer. "No," you say quickly before softening your tone. "Please stay." You really want James to stay. His presence has been comforting. His smile returns immediately, relieved. "Of course."
You fully turn towards him now, ready to say something else to keep the moment steady, and then—you see him. Near the edge of the dance floor, Heeseung stands beneath the strobe lights. But next to him is—Giselle. Your body shakes, your nostrils flare, and your fingers curl into your palms so tightly it stings, threatening to draw blood. After everything, after the apology, the quiet voice, the look in his eyes when he begged you to stay, this is where he is, with her. The anger rushes straight to your chest. You're not just upset, you're livid. So livid your vision blurs, so livid you could cross the room and punch him in the face. Maybe her too. For all the times she was a raging bitch. They're standing too close. Not touching, but close enough to make your skin crawl.
Before you can look away, James follows your line of sight, brows furrowed at your deathly glare. "Oh—that's Heeseung right?" he says, not really asking . He already knows. Everyone does. "Dude's a football legend. He could go pro, but my friend told me he wants to be a lawyer. They're in an LSAT study group with him and—"
Your brows furrow. A lawyer? The word hits you harder than the bass vibrating through the floor. The club blurs for a second, the strobe lights melting into something distant as memories immediately rush in uninvited. You're twelve again, sitting cross-legged on Sooah's home office floor, papers scattered everywhere. Court documents. Contracts. Things you were explicitly told not to touch. Heeseung grins like he always did when talking about his mother, eyes bright and earnest as he rifled through them anyway. "My mom is the best lawyer ever," he declared with pride. "I'm gonna be a lawyer like her one day." You remember how serious he sounded even back then. Your throat tightens.
James is still talking, oblivious. "I heard he always does well on the practice tests too. He lowkey carries the whole group." You let out a quiet, laugh that doesn't quite reach your eyes. You didn't know Heeseung was still chasing that dream, but you don't know anything about him. Not anymore.
"James, will you dance with me?"
Across the club, Heeseung stands there with his jaw locked, eyes dull with pure irritation as Giselle keeps inching closer. Her shoulder brushes his arm, her hip bumping his leg every time she laughs, fingers grazing his sleeves. He tried shifting away—multiple times, but Giselle closes the gap right back up each time. Her tacky perfume hits his nose with every inhale, sharp and nauseating, and it makes his skin crawl.
Why am I even here, he thinks. Jake. Fucking Jake. He insisted on Heeseung coming out with the boys, telling him he "needed a night off," promising it would be low-key. and then, without asking, he invites Giselle. If he knew Giselle would be here, he wouldn't have come. Hell, he would've lock his door and turned off his phone, knowing Giselle came to track him down. "Can you not?" Heeseung finally snaps, stepping sideways to put space between them. But she just laughs and leans in again, brushing against him, and Heeseung swears his jaw is going to break with how hard he's clenching it to avoid snapping even further. "I'm serious, Giselle," he says, voice low and sharp, turning fully toward her now. "Back the hell off." She scoffs, clearly offended, but he's already done with her. His attention drifts across the room despite Giselle's annoying complaints, then—he sees you.
His stomach drops as he feels something ugly and possessive tighten in his chest. Jealousy. You're not alone. You're with some guy, way too close, way too relaxed. Jack. James. Jacob. Whatever the hell his name is. It doesn't matter right now because the only thing that does is the way you're looking at the guy. You're smiling up at him, fingers laced with his as he gently pulls you toward the dance floor. You're so close to him, hands around his neck, his hands on your bare waist. Heeseung almost lunges forward, hands balled into fists, jaw tight, but he stops himself before he can reach you. "Don't," he tells himself. He has no right to feel this way. No right to watch you like that. No right to interfere with your date, your choices. He told himself he'd stay out of it. He told himself he'd keep his distance.
As you dance, you rest your head against his shoulder, comfortable, unguarded. He leans down, mouth close to your ear, and whispers something you nod at. He's leans in and kisses you, and that's when Heeseung finally snaps. His chest feels tight, breath shallow, vision narrowing until all he can see is you pressed against someone else. Someone who's not him. That's it. Heeseung doesn't think. He doesn't weigh the consequences. He just moves. He cuts through the crowd, ignoring the heads swiveling towards him, the way Giselle calls his name from behind. His hand closes around your wrist.
"What—?" you start, stumbling slightly as he drags you toward his chest. "We're leaving," he says, voice rough, already hauling you toward the exit."Heeseung, let go—" But he doesn't stop. Doesn't slow. Doesn't look back because if he sees you with him again, he knows he'll lose control completely whether it's his place or not.
Outside, the music is muffled. Distant. The streetlights hum overhead. You rip your arm back. "Are you fucking insane?" Your cheeks burn with embarrassment, your eyes blazing as you glare at him. He hasn't looked away once since dragging you out of the club. His eyes are dark, chest heaving. "What are you doing with him?" You let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "It's not of your business," you snap. "You don't get to drag me out like that."
"You need to be fucking careful," he fires back, taking a step closer. "You don't know his intentions." The audacity of it. After seeing him cozying up to Giselle not even two minutes ago, something in you snaps. Before you can stop yourself, your hand connects with his face. "Clearly you're fucking deranged because I feel way safer with James than I'd ever feel around you," you scream. Heeseung's eyes flash with hurt. For a moment, neither of you speaks as you're both reeling from the fact that you just slapped him. The tension between you is electric, dangerous, and unresolved in every possible way. "You don't get to do this," you say again, quieter now. "Not when you're inside with Giselle on your arm." He looks surprised for a second before his gaze softens. "It's not—"
Then—"Hey!" James voices cuts through the tension. He jogs out of the club, eyes immediately scanning you, concern written all over his face. "What's going on? Why did he just pull you out like that?" Out of the corner of your eye, you see Heeseung stiffen, jaw locking as fury creeps back in. "This doesn't involve you," he snaps. "So leave us the fuck alone." James steps closer anyway, placing himself in front of you, shielding you from Heeseung. "Actually, it does. You think I'm going to stand around after you dragged her out like that." "I'm fine," you say quickly, though your heart is still racing. James studies Heeseung for a moment before turning back to you. "Are you sure, Y/N?" he asks gently. "I can take you home." Before you can even answer, Heeseung lets out a bitter laugh. "Like hell you are." James stiffens. "Excuse me?"
"She's coming with me," Heeseung says, voice dangerously calm like he's not giving James any room to argue. "It's your choice, Y/N, but I don't like the way he grabbed you," James says before adding, "Just because you're the reigning football champion doesn't mean you get to put your hands on girls however you—" That's it. Heeseung's restraint finally snaps. The punch lands with a sharp crack, his fist connecting with James's jaw, sending him stumbling back. "What the fuck is wrong with you?" you shout, horror slicing through the anger as you rush towards James. "Oh my god—James, are you okay?" you cup his face without thinking, fingers gentle as you check his jaw. 'I'm so sorry, I didn't know he'd—"
"I'm okay," James says quickly, steadying you. He winces a little then gives you a reassuring nod. "I'm fine. Really. You don't need to apologize." Heeseung stands there frozen, chest rising and falling, knuckles already red and split. His are eyes wild—half disbelief at what he's done, half something uglier as he watches the way your hands linger on James's face. The way you're close. The softness in your voice. His jaw tightens, jealousy flashing hot and ugly across his face even now. Everything else fades, the club, Giselle. The realization settles heavy in your chest. This has gone too far.
Then—you hear sirens. Faint at first. Distant but unmistakable. You don't know if they're for something else or if someone saw the fight and called the police, but you don't wait to find out. "We have to leave. Now," you say urgently. "I'm not leaving without you, Y/N," Heeseung says immediately. You consider screaming at him, telling him to fuck off, but the last thing you want is to draw even more attention. "I'm so sorry, James," you say, guilt flooding your chest. "We have to go before the police get here."
James nods, understanding. "I'll be okay with him," you add quickly. "Please just head home. I'll text you later, okay?" Heeseung grunts at that. James hesitates, then says quietly, "Understood, but contact me if anything happens." He shoots Heeseung one last warning look before climbing into a taxi.
You quickly text the girls in the group chat to let them know you're going home first and to not worry before grabbing Heeseung by the sleeve. "Come on," you snap. "We're leaving. Now." He lets you pull him down the sidewalk, away from the club, away from the mess he created. Once you're far enough where there's no one else around, you stop abruptly and unleash your frustration on him. "What the hell is wrong with you?" you explode. "Do you have any idea how that could've ended? You punched him. In public. Over nothing, you freak!" "It wasn't nothing," he fires back. "Oh my god, are you serious right now?" your laugh is sharp. "You have no right to act like that."
He runs a hand through his hair, pacing once before stopping in front of you. "I don't like seeing him that close to you." Your eyes narrow. Is this asshole serious? "First off, it's none of your concern who I'm with. Second, you think that gives you the right to lose control and hurt him?"
"I know, but I couldn't help it, okay?" he says, voice strained. "He had his hands on you. You were laughing—"
"And you were inside with Giselle," you cut in immediately. "So don't even start. Don't you dare act jealous when you were doing the exact same thing." His mouth opens, then shuts. He exhales hard. "I wasn't with her because I wanted to be." "You were literally standing with her," you snap. "After everything you said to me. After you begged in the studio."
He flinches, but pushes on. "No one told me she was coming. Jake called her and didn't even ask me. If I knew she was going to come, I wouldn't have come." You don't say anything for a second, so he seizes it. "I told her to back off multiple times, but she wouldn't listen." You fold your arms, still furious. "And your solution was to stand there and let her?" "I wasn't trying to make a scene," he says softly.
You scoff. "Yet you made a scene with James and I?"
"Giselle's not worth it," he says, inching closer to you. "I lost it, and I'm sorry," he admits finally, quieter now. "Seeing him touch you. Seeing you look at him like that. It messed with my head." You shake your head, voice firm. "Your jealousy doesn't excuse what you did."
"I know," he says immediately. "I know. I fucked up." The adrenaline drains, leaving behind something more complicated than anger—hurt, exhaustion, and disappointment. "You don't get to decide who stands next to me," you say. "Not after everything. Not after I gave you my heart, and you just left me without a word." He meets your eyes, no defensiveness left this time. Just regret and fear. "I still love—"
You feel like throwing up. "No," you cut him off. "Not like this. Not now. Not ever." You raise your hand, flag down a cab, and climb inside without looking back. As the car pulls away, you finally let yourself breathe as Heeseung's figures gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror until he disappears completely. Truthfully, you're not sure what to believe anymore, but you know one thing for certain. Staying would've broken you all over again, and choosing yourself hurts less than letting him do it again.
—
The next day feels strangely quiet. Too quiet. You don't tell anyone what happened—not even Yunjin. When the girls interrogate you over breakfast, asking you why you left early, you shrug it off with something vague. Headache. Tired. Overstimulated. They exchange looks, clearly unconvinced, but they let it go. You keep it all to yourself—the fight, the punch, the way you walked away after he almost said those three words, eight letters.
And Heeseung. You don't know what to do with him. You don't answer any of his eight missed calls or the twenty messages. Everything feels unfinished and raw like when you were fourteen. Maybe it's always been that way.
But you focus on the one thing you do know you need to do. James. The guilt sits heavy in your chest. You've been replaying the night over and over—how you asked him to dance, how you let him kiss you. A part of you hates yourself for it. Not because James did anything wrong—he didn't—but because you know why you did all of that. You needed a distraction. You didn't mean to use him or lead him on, but you also weren't honest with yourself about why you asked him to dance. And that realization stings.
So you text him.
You: hey, are you feeling better?
He responds almost immediately.
James: yeah, don't worry :)
You: no, I owe you a big apology! are you free to grab coffee?
James: i'm free. you don't owe me anything though, but coffee sounds great
The cafe is warm and quiet, sunlight filtering through the windows in a way that feels undeserved considering what you've done. You made sure to arrive early and bought him a drink. It's the least you can do. James looks the same as he did last night—gentle, sweet, but there's a faint bruise along his jaw that makes your stomach twist.
"I'm really sorry," you say before he even sits down. "About everything."
He shakes his head. "You don't need to apologize for his actions."
"Still, I feel responsible," you admit quietly as you look down to your lap shamefully. "I dragged you into something messy."
James studies you for a moment before he raises your chin with his hand. "You didn't ask for that to happen," he says softly.
You nod, fingers curling around your cup. You consider telling him everything, how part of you asked him to dance because you wanted Heeseung to see, how desperately you wanted to feel seen by someone who didn't hurt you before. The truth sits right on the tip of your tongue. But it's like James can read your mind. "I'm guessing you and Heeseung have history," he says, raising one brow. "Is that why you seemed so… down last night? And maybe why you asked me to dance?"
Your heart shutters. You close your eyes for a brief moment, inhaling slowly, choosing your words carefully. "Yes," you admit, opening your eyes again. "But not entirely." James waits. He doesn't rush you. "We grew up together," you continue, voice steady but quiet. "Our mothers are best friends. So naturally we were best friends… until we weren't." Something soft crosses his expression. Understanding. Not judgment. You take a breath, then push on, choosing honesty even though it stings. "The least I could do is be honest," you say. "So yes, part of me wanted him to see. But mostly, I needed a distraction. I needed something that felt safe." Your fingers tighten slightly around the cup before you meet James's eyes again. "And you're that for me."
The words hang between you, vulnerable and unpolished, but true. You swallow, then add quickly, "And I understand that it's wrong. If you're upset or uncomfortable, you have every right to walk out or be mad at me." You brace yourself, eyes dropping to the table for a second, ready for disappointment or distance.
"I'm not mad, Y/N," he says gently. "Really."
You look up, surprised.
"If you need me as a distraction, if you need someone to lean on, use me," he continues. He meets your eyes, honest and calm. "I think you probably realize that I like you. I guess I'm not exactly subtle." Your chest tightens. "But you don't owe me anything," he adds quickly. "If right now I'm just a friend you can use or sit with when things get messy… I'm okay with that. We're nothing more than friends if that makes you feel comfortable," he reassures, smiling softly.
The tension you were holding onto finally loosens. "Thank you, James," you say, giving him the biggest, most genuine smile. "For being so understanding."
"Anytime," he nods. There's a beat of quiet before you speak again. "Do you want to come to my place for Thanksgiving?" James blinks, caught off guard. "Thanksgiving?"
"Yeah," you say, quickly adding, "Only if you want to. No pressure. It's just my mom makes the best turkey and—" You stop and exhale. "I'd like you there.
He considers it for a moment, then smiles again. Warmer this time. "I'd love to."
"Awesome," you grin, then notice something else. "Your bandage is falling off, by the way. Here—let me fix it." You lean in, carefully adjusting the bandage on his jaw. He watches you with amused eyes before flashing a crooked smile and winking.
"I still look handsome, even after getting beaten to a pulp." You laugh the loudest you've laughed in weeks. "Yes, James. You still look very dashing."
—
The drive from Cambridge to your house is long, exactly five hours long, but somehow, it doesn't feel daunting. You and James both prepare like it's a mission, both bringing a ridiculous amount of snacks with pillows and blankets stuffed into the backseat. James insists on driving, nudging you toward the passenger seat when you try to grab your keys. "Get some rest," he says easily. "If I feel tired, we can switch." You both know he won't ask you to switch, but you don't argue. You curl up instead, tucking a pillow against the door, watching the campus fade in the rearview mirror as you drive away.
A couple minutes in, you start talking. "This is the first Thanksgiving without Yunjin," you say quietly, staring out the window. "She's in France with her parents."
James glances over briefly. "That must feel weird. You two are practically attached by the hip." You chuckle at that because that's what everyone says. "Yeah," you admit. "We've never spent it apart, but I'm glad you're coming!" He laughs softly. "I am too."
You trade playlists after that. James reveals that his music taste is all over the place. He loves rap, r&b, and the occasional country music, which you never would've guessed. You end up teasing him for it. You also tell him how you only listen to r&b. You find out PND is both of your favorite artist, and you bond over that for half an hour.
At some point, you start playing I Spy. It lasts exactly ten minutes. "You can't say 'gray' when literally everything on the highway is gray," you accuse. "You can't accuse me of cheating just because you're losing," he shoots back, wiggling his brows. "You're impossible." "And you're dangerously competitive, he says." You both laugh and agree to stop before James swerves out of spite. The road stretches on, quieter now, but still comfortable.
After a while, James asks causally, "So… who's going to be there?"
"Some family and friends, you say. "Oh—and Heeseung's parents."
James nods. "Don't worry," you add quickly. "He never celebrates with us anymore. He usually stays at Jake's place." You glance at him, gauging his reaction.
James hums thoughtfully. "Jake and…?" "Sunghoon," you supply. "The golden football trio." You sigh, already annoyed. "That's not why I invited you, by the way." He finally looks over, a small smile tugging at his lips. "I know."
"You do?"
"I trust you," he says simply. Your heart feels content at that. Eventually, you drift off to the peaceful, comfortable silence.
—
The car barely comes to a full stop before your front door swings open. "Y/N!" Your mom squeal, pulling you into a hug so tight it knocks the breath out of you. She smells like home—a mix of her sweet Coco Mademoiselle perfume, laundry detergent, and whatever she's cooking. "You look so skinny, honey," she declares immediately, hands on your shoulders, scanning you from head to toe. "Have you been eating properly? Come inside, I made food already."
"Hi, mom," you laugh, already being dragged towards the kitchen. Your father follows, smiling as he pulls you into a long hug. Then his gaze shifts—sharp, assessing as he sees James. "And you must be…?" he asks.
"Hello, Mr. L/N. My name is James," he says, stepping forward and offering a firm handshake. "Thank you for having me."
"Honey, I already told you Y/N invited a friend," your mother scolds. "Hello, dear. You must be very hungry after such a long drive. Come sit down." Your mother peers at James like she's inspecting a purchase she's already decided she likes. Her eyes light up. "He's a very handsome friend, Y/N."
You groan. "Mom."
James laughs, his ears turning red. "It's very nice to meet you, Mrs. L/N! I've heard amazing things about your famous turkey."
"Well, I take my cooking very seriously when it comes to Thanksgiving," your mother laughs. "I'll cut you a piece right now!"
Your dad clears his throat. "Just so we're clear, you'll be sleeping in the guest room at the end of the hall. Very far away. On the opposite side of the house from Y/N." Everyone laughs. "Dad!" you protest. "Just establishing boundaries," he says, deadpan.
Sooah appears from the kitchen, already grinning. "You must be James." She looks between you and him, eyes sparkling with curiosity. "Do you know my son Heeseung? He also goes to Harvard." You and James glance at each other, both stifling a laugh. "Yes," James says easily, nodding. "I do, ma'am.
Sooah's grin widens. "Great! This is the first Thanksgiving he's joining in years. You all can catch up!" The words land like broken shards of glass. You freeze.
"I didn't know Heeseung was coming?" your father asks. Weird. He never cares about who comes.
"He is, and Jay is joining us as well!" Sooah clarifies.
Minsuk clears his throat. "Let's go help Jiwoo plate the food and set the table." One by one, everyone drifts toward the dining room, footsteps echoing down the hall, leaving you and James alone in the entryway.
He turns to you immediately. "Are you okay, Y/N?" he asks, concerned etched all over his face.
You force a breath, your fingers curling into the fabric of your sweater. "Yeah," you lie, the word coming out a little too quickly. You swallow. "I swear I didn't know he was coming."
"Don't worry. I know," he reassures. "I'm right by your side." You meet his eyes and despite everything twisting in your chest, you manage a small smile. "Yeah," you say quietly. "Thank you, James."
As you follow him toward the dining room, you brace yourself because now, there's no avoiding what you thought you left behind. Right when you and James take your seats, the doorbell rings, and your heart skips a beat. "Oh—it must be Heeseung and Jay! I'll get the door," Sooah exclaims, already halfway to the door. You barely have time to brace yourself before you hear the front door open. Jay walks in first, smiling, carrying a bottle of wine, and already greeting your parents. And then—Heeseung. The moment he steps inside, his eyes search the room for you. When you meet his eyes, your breath hitches. For a second, everything else seems to fade away, then he sees James… sitting next to you. That should be his seat, but it's not anymore, and it hasn't been for a long time. His jaw tightens. You notice even as you pretend not to.
"Y/N!" Jay beams when he spots you. "It's been forever." You hug him immediately, holding on just a second longer than necessary.
"I missed you," you say honestly.
"Same," he grins, ruffling your hair before pulling away. "You look good." When you sit back down, Jay takes the other seat beside you, and Heeseung ends up at the end of the table. Relief washes through you as you're not sitting beside him. Your eyes flick toward Heeseung's for a moment. He gives you an small, awkward nod. You return it. Nothing more.
Jay, blissfully unaware, launches into small talk with James about school. James answers easily, relaxed, smiling in that effortless way that makes him likeable without trying.
Eventually, plates are passed and food is served, but you barely eat. You push your food around more than you actually take bites, nodding along when spoken to, smiling when expected. The smell of everything, turkey, stuffing, and gravy, feels too heavy right now. Every time you lift your fork, your appetite disappears.
Your mom and Sooah stand, gathering plates. "Let's get dessert ready," your mother says brightly. "Y/N, would you like to help us?"
"Sure… I'll be there in a minute," you nod. As they head off, James leans in. "Are you okay? You haven't been eating much."
"Yeah, I'm probably not that hungry after all the snacks we had in the car," you force a laugh.
He chuckles softly. "That'll do it."
"I'm going to help my mom," you say, pushing your chair back. "I'll be right back." Before you head to the kitchen, you take a detour to the bathroom, needing a moment to breathe. When you reach the bathroom, you hear voices coming from inside. It's Jay. "Bro, you have to tell her the truth," Jay says urgently. "You can't let her keep resenting you for something you had no control over." Your breath catches, feet planted into the floor in front of the bathroom.
"I'm serious," Jay continues. "She thinks—"
"Jay, drop it," Heeseung cuts in, hushed and firm.
"She doesn't need you protecting her anymore if you're going to lie," Jay presses. "She deserves the truth."
"Enough," Heeseung snaps under his breath. "Not here."
Your hands are trembling. You run to the nearest room before they come out. Your mind races as you latch onto fragments of their conversation—something you had no control over. Resenting you. The truth. Your chest feels tight, your heart is pounding too loudly in your ears. Whatever it is they're talking about, you know one thing with chilling certainty—you've been lied to for seven years, and you're going to find out what it is.
After you help your mom and Sooah plate the dessert, you finally excuse yourself again. This time, you're not looking for a moment to breathe. You're looking for answers. You see Jay near the staircase, phone pressed to his ear as he seems to be answering a work call. He turns around when the call ends, and his eyes land on you. Before he can say a word, you grab his wrist. "Hey—" he starts.
"Come with me and be quiet," you say sternly, already pulling him up the stairs.
"Y/N, wait—"
You don't. You drag him down the hallway and into your bedroom, closing the door behind you. Only then do you turn to face him, arms crossed, heart pounding. "What is he hiding from me?" you demand.
Jay blinks. Then he finally laughs lightly like he's confused, feigning innocence. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Don't," you say sharply. "I heard you. Downstairs. You told him he had to tell me the truth. That I'm resenting him for something he had no choice over."
Jay exhales slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. "You must've misheard. We were talking about how people shouldn't judge the age gap between Max Verstappen and his girlfriend," he laughs awkwardly. "Like come on! It's 2026."
"Jay," you warn. "I swear I'm going to call Yunjin, and she's going to drop everything, fly back, and kick your ass. Do you want to be beaten up on Thanksgiving?"
His smile falters. He studies your face for a long moment, like he's weighing his options. Then he sighs, shoulder slumping, the act finally dropping. "Okay," he admits. "There is something."
Your heart pounds even louder. "What is it?"
He shakes his head immediately. "I can't tell you."
"Why not?" you groan. "Because it's not for me to tell. You deserve to hear it from him, not me," he says firmly, though his voice softens. "And because there's things he needs to say that I can't. It'll hurt you more coming from me."
You laugh bitterly. "You think this doesn't already hurt?"
Jay winces. "I know, but you need to hear it from him… you know I just want you to both be happy again."
"I don't know if that's possible," you say quietly, tears threatening to spill. Jay doesn't argue. He just looks at you for a moment, eyes heavy with something like regret before handing you a tissue. "Maybe not right away," he says. "But whatever happens, you should know it's been eating him alive for years. And it's been hurting you without you even knowing why."
Your throat tightens. "Then why does he keep hurting me?"
"Because sometimes," Jay says carefully, "people think they have to shoulder everything quietly to protect the person they love, even when it does the opposite." The room feels too small. Too cold. Jay continues, "I'm not trying to tell you how you should feel, but he's terrified that telling you will be the thing that finally makes him lose you for good."
That hits harder than you expect. Your heart aches at the thought of him being scared. Because no matter how badly Heeseung has hurt you, no matter how many times you've told yourself you're done with him, you know the truth you've never been able to say out loud. Truthfully, he could never lose you for good. Not completely. Not really. And that's what makes all of this unbearable.
Jay steps back toward the door. "I'm going to drag his ass up here, even by the ear if I have to." You nod as he slips out, leaving you alone in your childhood bedroom, surrounded by memories that suddenly feel too painful.
You barely have time to wipe your face before footsteps pound up the stairs. Your door bursts opens as Heeseung rushes in, breathless, like he just dropped everything and ran up here as fast as he could. His eyes are frantic as he sees your red-rimmed eyes. "Jay said you were crying," he says immediately. "What happened?"
You get straight to the point because you're just tired. Tired of all the lies and deception. "I heard you," you say, voice raw. "I heard Jay say I'm resenting you for something you had no control over. So stop lying to my face and tell me the truth." He freezes. For a long moment, he just stares at you like this is the moment he's been dreading for seven years. And you realize how tired and scared he looks.
He exhales, slowly and shaky, and closes the door behind him. "You should sit down first," he says quietly, but you don't. He swallows roughly. "Seven years ago," he begins, voice barely louder than a whisper, "the summer before high school started, my dad did something unforgivable."
Your stomach twists.
"He embezzled money from his clients," Heeseung reveals. "Millions, and he hid them in offshore accounts. Someone found out," he continues. "They blackmailed my dad and threatened to expose everything unless my dad paid them fifty million dollars."
"That's—" you choke on your words. How did you not know? "That's impossible."
"I wish it was…" he mutters. "He barely had any liquid assets, and he couldn't move the stolen funds without alarming the banks. They would've flagged it immediately."
Your knees feel weak, so you finally take a seat.
"But he was desperate, and my mom panicked. She didn't know what to do. So she went to your mom. My mom didn't know the full story and neither did your mom," he adds quickly. "They thought my dad's company was struggling financially. Your mom just knew my mom needed help, so she went to your father," his voice cracks. "He agreed to pay it."
Your hands curl into fists. "Why didn't I know?"
"Because he had two conditions," Heeseung says, tears flowing freely down his face.
You're not ready to hear this, but you have to. You need the truth.
"One, I had to stay away from you completely," he chokes out. "Your dad was worried the scandal would resurface, that I'd ruin your reputation. And two, we could never tell you. Not you. Not your mom. Not my mom. Ever." He breaks. Heeseung collapses on his knees, hands gripping the fabric of his jeans like it's the only thing keeping him upright. His shoulders shake violently, sobs tearing out of him in a way you've never seen before. Not once in all the years you've known him.
You thought you could handle whatever he did, but your father? The betrayal slams into you so hard it steals the air from your lungs. The man who raised you. Protected you. The man you trusted with your whole life. How could he do this to you? The ache in your heart is so overwhelming that you just can't take it anymore, so you let yourself cry. The kind that wracks your whole body. You cry harder than the time you hurled your paper telephone out the window when Heeseung didn't answered you. Harder than prom night, when you stood frozen in your room, watching him and Giselle together. This hurts worse than everything combined.
"You didn't think to tell me?" you gasp through your sobs, clutching your bed like it might keep your heart from splitting open.
"I thought about it every day," he says hoarsely. "Every single day."
"Then why didn't you?" you cry.
He squeezes his eyes shut. "Because I believed your dad," he says. "I believed him when he said I'd ruin you. That being with me would destroy your future, everything you were going to become, and I could never do that to you." His voice shakes harder now, words spilling out like he's been holding them in for years. "So I did the only thing I thought would protect you," he continues. "I kept the promise and distanced myself. I surrounded myself with people you hated, who would destroy the old image of me."
You clutch your chest, shaking your head repeatedly, refusing to accept this. The lies. The stupid promise.
"I knew if I told you, you wouldn't have cared," he whispers. "You would've stayed. You would've fought, and I couldn't let you do that." He lifts his head to look at you. "So I had to make you hate me because I'd rather live with you hating me than hold on to you selfishly. I love you too much to let my father's selfishness tarnish you."
This time, you allow him to tell you he loves you. Because you believe him, and that's what hurts the most. Because believing him means accepting that for seven years, he let you think he was cruel. That he was careless. That he chose the girls, the partying over you. He let your anger rot inside of you, let resentment consume you, let you mourn something that apparently never stopped existing for him. He lied to protect you, but it only destroyed you as well.
You sink down in front of him, knees brushing his, breath shaking violently. And then you just lose it. Your fists slam into his chest. Once. Twice. Again. Each hit is messy, desperate, and powerless. "I could've dealt with it!" you scream, tears blinding you. "I could've dealt with my dad, dealt with the blackmailer, dealt with all of it!" You hit him again, harder. He doesn't stop you. Doesn't raise his hands. He just takes it, choking on sobs. "You don't get to decide that for me!" you cry. Your fists keep pounding. "I would've fought! I would've chosen you! You should've broken it—" Your voice cracks completely as you scream.
"Break it!" Another punch. "Break the fucking promise!" Another punch. "You let me believe you were the villain!" you sob. "You let me rot in hatred while you stood there loving me in silence like that was noble." Your hands fall uselessly against his chest, your strength finally gone. He grabs your wrist gently, not to stop you, but to hold you, grounding you, forehead pressing into yours as your tears mix together. "I know… I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry, Y/N," he pleads.
"I think you should go, Heeseung," you whisper. "I just… I can't right now." He freezes. For a moment, it looks like he might argue. Like he might beg, but he nods, slowly, painfully.
"Okay," he whispers. "I understand." He stands, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve, not trusting himself to look at you for too long. When he reaches the door, his hand lingers on the handle. "I"ll wait," he says quietly. "I'll for whenever you're ready."
You don't answer. The door closes softly behind him. And you're left alone in your childhood bedroom, surrounded by memories that you begin to question.
—
After everyone leaves, the house goes quiet. You're curled on your bed when your phone buzzes. It's James. Shit, you forgot about him.
James: jay said you weren't feeling well. are you okay?
You stare at the screen longer than necessary before you reply.
You: omg i'm so sorry james!!! my stomach hurts, so I'm trying to sleep it off
You lie.
James: again, don't apologize! get some rest, and text me if you need anything! goodnight Y/N
You: thank you, james! good night<3
You set your phone down, and wait a little longer for him to fall asleep before you confront your father. The kitchen lights are still on. Your father is wiping down the counter, and your mother is stacking the dishes.
"Dad," you say. They both look up. "I know about the money, about the blackmailer, and about the conditions you forced Heeseung follow," you say, trying to steady your voice.
The room stills. Your father's face goes pale. Your mom frowns, confused. "What are you talking about, honey?"
"Dad paid fifty million dollars to the people who were blackmailing Minsuk," you say, eyes never leaving your father. "And in return, he forced Heeseung to cut contact with me and never tell you, Sooah, or me.
" Your mother's hand flies to her mouth. "Sungmin…?"
Your father sighs. "I did what I had to do, Y/N," he says, defensive. "What if the blackmailers decide they want more money one day? You would get dragged into their family's mess," your dad shakes his head. "No, I'm not taking any chances."
"You don't get to decide that for me," you cry.
"Yes I do!" your father says, raising his voice, but not loud enough for James to hear. "You're my only child, and I'll do whatever it takes to protect you even if you're not happy with my choices."
Your mother sinks into a chair, shaking. "You never told me," she whispers. "You let me believe—"
"I didn't want to burden you," he says.
"You wouldn't have," she says, tears spilling freely. "You betrayed her. You betrayed me!"
She looks at you then, heartbreak written all over her face. "I swear I didn't know, honey. I wouldn't have allowed your father to do that if I did." You nod, tears slipping silently down your cheeks. "I know mom."
Your dad steps toward you. "Y/N—"
"Don't," you say firmly. "It's seven years too late for you to tell me the truth or to apologize." Before your parents can say anything else, you run away to your room and lock the door quickly.
—
It's barely six in the morning when you knock softly on James's door. The house is still asleep—no voices, no movement, just the low hum of the heater and the faint light creeping in through the windows. James opens the door, hair messy, eyes still heavy with sleep. "Y/N?" he murmurs, blinking at the time on his phone. "Is everything—?"
"We have to leave," you whisper. "Now and quietly." That wakes him up. He straightens immediately, concerning shaping his features. "Okay," he says without hesitation. "What do you need?"
"Just grab your things," you say as quietly as possible so your parents don't wake up. "I'll explain later." He doesn't ask questions. Doesn't push. He nods and disappears back into the room, moving quickly, deliberately. You wait in the hallway, heart pounding, listening for any sound coming from your parents' bedroom. A few minutes later, he's back, backpack slung over one shoulder. "Ready," he whispers. You lead the way, careful with each step. The front door opens with a soft click, and the cold morning air hits your face.
Once you're outside, James finally speaks. "Where are we going?"
You exhale shakily. "Back. I just can't be around my parents right now."
He studies you for a second, then nods. "Alright."
You barely make it ten minutes onto the highway before exhaustion finally catches up to you after staying up all night, unable to sleep from all the thoughts and truth consuming your mind. When you wake up, the car is slowing as you recognize the familiar campus. Your eyes sting immediately, throat tight as you sit up, disoriented and embarrassed all at once. "I know i've been saying this a lot lately, but I'm sorry," you whisper. "For everything."
James glances at you, then back at the road. "I've been saying this a lot lately, but you don't need to keep apologizing," he laughs softly, flashing you a genuine smile.
"I do," you insist. "I ruined your Thanksgiving break, and I dragged you into my mess. I—"
"Y/N," he says gently, cutting you off. "I could see the tears on your pillow while I was driving."
Oh god… that's so embarrassing. You just want to jump out the car at this point.
"The last thing you should be worrying about right now is my feelings," he reassures, gently ruffling your hair.
The car comes to a stop. You barely make it out of the car before tears spill as you lean into James. He lets you cry against his shoulder, your sobs soft and exhausted as he rubs your back. He doesn't say anything. He just steadies you with his warm hand on your back. "I'll walk you up," he says quietly.
You nod. The morning air is cold and pale as he walks you to your door, neither of you rushing. When you stop, he pulls your keys from his pockets and places them gently in your hand. "Thank you for driving," you murmur.
"No problem. We would've crashed if you drove," he laughs, trying to cheer you up. You swat his arm gently. "Hey! I'll have you know I'm an awesome driver!" When the laughter fades, you pull him into a tight hug. "Thank you," you say, voice small but sincere. "For everything."
He just smiles. "That's what friends are for, aren't they?" You nod against his shoulder. " Yeah," you say softly. "It is."
—
Over the next few days, your phone becomes unbearable, a word you never thought you'd use to describe it. Your dad calls. Again and again. Missed calls pile up until the notification feels permanent. Voicemails follows, each one getting longer than the last, but you don't listen to any of them. Your mom texts too. You answer hers. Short replies at first, then slightly longer ones. She tells you she's staying with Sooah for now. She tells you she's sorry, and she loves you. You tell her you love her back. That's all you can manage right now. But you know it's not her fault. Sooah knows because her messages come late one night, careful and heavy, apologizing for not knowing. For not being a better mother. For letting you and Heeseung drift apart. You also tell her it's not her fault. Uncle Minsuk apologizes as well for how selfish he's been. For ruining Heeseung's life. For letting you down. but you don't respond to him.
The girls' group chat has been exploding the second Thanksgiving break started. Messages pile in faster than you can open them. Airport selfies. Outfit debates. Complaints about family dinners and relatives. Hometown gossip. Yunjin sends videos of all the designer gifts her parents got her in Paris. Sophia sends a blurry, shaky video of her dog stealing food off the table, and Manon sends incoherent drunk messages about family drama. In another group chat, Sunoo sends behind the scene snippets of his photo shoots. Niki sends a bunch of random memes to which Yunjin complains about it not being funny. Jungwon sends updates on Pathify, and Jay complains about how he has to do all the cooking for Thanksgiving dinner. You're present. You respond. Just less.
And then—Heeseung. He floods your phone non-stop with calls. Voicemails. Long messages. Emails. Your screen becomes a wall of notifications from him, apology after apology stacking on top of each other until it feels like you can't breathe. You just stare at his name until your heart can't take it anymore, so you block him. Eventually, a message comes in from Jay, but it's Heeseung. You type out a quick apology to Jay before blocking his number. Then Sunghoon. Blocked. Then Jake. You block his number too, which you have no problem doing.
You're curled up on the couch in your shared apartment, surrounded by endless McDonald's takeout. Half-melted ice cream on the coffee table. Buldak noodles getting cold in the bowl you forgot about half an hour ago. Yeah… you've hit rock bottom. You barely register the sound of the door opening. "Okay," Yunjin says, voice echoing through the apartment. "Why does it smell like Niki's fart in here?"
You look up. She's standing there, suitcase abandoned by the door behind her, coat still on, eyes already scanning you. The second she sees you, her expression softens. "You flew back," you say weakly. "Early…"
"Obviously," she replies, kicking the door shut. "You didn't send the turkey video."
You blink. "The what?"
"The video," she says like it's sacred. "Every Thanksgiving? Your mom's turkey. The slow pan. The aggressive zoom. You didn't send it."
You swallow. Of course Yunjin remembers.
"And," she continues, quieter now, "this is the first Thanksgiving we've ever spent apart. I hated it."
You laugh weakly. "I'm sorry I made you come back."
She drops her bag and crosses the room in three strides. "You didn't make me do anything. I wanted to. Besides my parents were acting like lovesick seventeen year olds, and I was losing my mind," she gags. She sits beside you, flicking a fry off your leg. "So what happened?" she says gently.
You try to answer, but nothing comes out. Your throat tightens. Your vision blurs. The weight of everything crashes down all at once. Yunjin doesn't ask again. She doesn't press. She just pulls you into her arms, holding you while you fall apart against her shoulder.
"I know," she whispers, rocking you slightly. "It's him." For the first time in days, you don't have to pretend you're okay.
—
Ever since Yunjin got back, she refuses to let you rot inside the apartment. She drags you out of bed in the mornings, opens the curtains even when you groan, and insists on at least one reason a day to step outside. Today, that reason is your favourite bagel place. You complain the entire walk there, even though your mouth is already watering at the thought of a smoked salmon bagel overloaded with cream cheese. You tell yourself you're only going because Yunjin insisted, not because you've been craving a bagel, and the shop doesn't offer delivery.
The bell above the door jingles as you step inside. And then—you freeze. Your parents are sitting at one of the tables by the window. Your heart drops, and you immediately turn to Yunjin, eyes wide. "You didn't—" She shakes her head quickly. "I swear, I didn't agree at first," she says desperately. "But your dad insisted on meeting here."
You swallow hard. Yunjin softens, squeezing your hand. "Look, we can make a run for it if that's what you want, but I know you need this," she adds quietly. "You've never gone a day without calling them. Not even once." You stand there frozen for a second longer, torn between walking right out and giving your father a chance. The smell of toasted bagels fill the air, warm and familiar, pulling you forward even as your chest tightens because no matter how angry you are, no matter how hurt you are, he's still your father. The man who has always done right by you up until now.
Yunjin squeezes your hand once again before stepping back. "I'll wait outside," she says quietly. You nod, then turn to sit down. Your mom doesn't even give you a chance to speak as she instantly pulls you into a hug so tight it almost knocks the air right from your lungs. Her arms shake as she holds you, her face buried in your hair.
"I'm sorry, Y/N," she whispers, over and over. "I'm so sorry. I should've known. I should've protected you."
"Mom," you murmur, gently pulling back. "It's okay. It's not your fault." She wipes her eyes, nodding, though she clearly doesn't believe that.
When you finally turn to your father, your hear breaks. He looks smaller. His eyes are puffy and red, dark circles etched below his eyes. His beard has grown out unevenly like you've never seen before. Your father has always upheld a polished appearance until now. Still, he hasn't looked at you yet as he keeps his head down. "I had no right," he says finally, voice rough. "None. I took something from you that wasn't mine to take."
You hands ball into a tight fist. "Why didn't you trust me?"
He looks up then, startled. "I do," he says immediately. "Of course I do. This was never about not trusting you."
"Then what was it?"
He exhales, hands clasped tightly on the table. "The public. The world. The cruel people who don't forgive, who don't forget. I was terrified they'd tear you apart for being with him if Minsuk's scandal ever got out."
Your anger subsides, replaced with guilt. Guilt for not trying to understand him just a little.
"I apologized to your mother," he continues. "To Sooah. I know sorry doesn't fix anything, but I needed you and them to hear it."
You nod slowly.
"And I want to apologize to Heeseung too," he says, eyes shining. "When the time is right. When you allow him to be near you again. I owe him that. I ruined him too. I ruined both of you."
Silence settles between you. You stare down at your hands, then back up at him. "You hurt me," you say honestly. "Really badly."
"I know," he whispers.
"But I also know you did it because you love me," you add quietly. "And because you were trying to protecting me."
Tears spill down his face. "I forgive you," you say.
He breaks completely, shoulders sagging in relief and grief all at once. Your mom reaches for his hand and squeezes it tightly. You sniff, grabbing a napkin. "Also," you add, "if your plan was to eat the best bagels in Massachusetts, there were easier ways to do it than staging an emotion breakdown in public." Thankfully, most students haven't returned from Thanksgiving break otherwise this shop would've been packed with people watching you and your parents crying like babies.
Your mom lets out a laugh. Your dad exhales shakily, a small smile tugging at his lips. "Order whatever you want," he says hoarsely. "My treat."
You glance at the menu. "Good," you say. "Because I'm getting extra salmon." As your bagel arrives and the tension eases, it feels like things are finally back on track.
—
Thanksgiving break ends, and students flood back into the city with over packed suitcases and complaints about early lectures. Campus is lively again and school resumes its usual pace, indifferent to whatever fell apart over the holidays. You're on your way to class when you stop short at your front door—there's a bouquet sitting there. Not just a bouquet, a ridiculously huge one. Pink tulips spilling everywhere, petals layered and lush, wrapped so carefully it feels like Valentines day. You have to put your bag down just to lift it.
"This is… for me?" you mutter. A small card is tucked into the ribbon. You hesitate before opening it. It's from Heeseung. Your chest tightens, but you don't throw it away either.
From that day on, there's always a bouquet waiting at your front door, and each day, it gets bigger. More tulips. More space taken up in your entryway until it feels impossible to ignore. Soon, there are gifts placed beside them. Very extravagant gifts. A Birkin bag. Bulgari diamond tennis bracelet. But what makes your stomach flutter just a little (a lot) are the same brownies he used to save for you after dance practice, overflowing in a a basket in between the bouquet and gifts.
The girls tell you not to fall for it. They say it firmly, but you still catch them whispering about the gifts when they think you can't hear. Fingers brushing over the petals. Eyes widening at the insanely expensive gifts. Awe slipping into their voices despite their advice.
Yunjin, though? She's furious. After you've already left for class, she catches him. Heeseung is crouched in front of the door, adjusting another bouquet, and setting a basket of brownies and a huge box beside it carefully like he's afraid it might be crooked.
Yunjin yanks the door open. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Yunjin snaps. Before he can even react, she yanks him by the ear and drags him toward the alley beside the apartment building.
"Ouch—Yunjin—w—wait!"
She releases him only to immediately square up, fists raised, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. "I swear to god, if you think you can buy your way back into her life—"
"Wait," he blurts again. "Please. Let me explain."
"I don't want to hear it," she fires back. "Do you have any idea how much you've hurt her? When are you going to leave her the hell alone?"
Heeseung swallows hard. "There are things you don't know," he says desperately. "Please. Just let me explain."
Yunjin hesitates, fists still clenched, jaw tight. She looks like she wants to hit him anyway. "Make it fast," she snaps.
As Heeseung stumbles through explanations, words tripping over each other, Yunjin freezes. Her expression shifts from fury to disbelief. "What?" she says slowly. He keeps talking, a little slower now. She holds up a hand. "Stop." She studies him for a long moment, then asks gently, "Are you… okay?"
He blinks, clearly not expecting that. "I—yeah. No. I don't know."
She exhales, hard, then reaches out, and pats his back awkwardly and reluctantly. "I missed you," she mutters. "You were my friend too, idiot."
Relief flickers across his face before grinning.
She immediately smacks the back of his head. "Don't get cocky."
"Ow," he mutters, rubbing it. "I've missed you and the boys as well."
"You better have, bitch," Yunjin mutters.
The two burst into laughter before Heeseung reaches into his bag and pulls out two paper cups attached by a string. "Can you help me with something?" he asks, offering a sheepish smile.
She stares at him for a long moment, then groans. "You are so unbelievable, dork face." But she doesn't walk away.
—
You get home from class, completely drained and exhausted. You don't even bother closing your door all the way. You drop your bag, and collapse face-first onto your bed. For a few quiet seconds, you stay like that before shifting on your side. Your eyes are about to close when they shoot open. You notice a paper cup dangling into your window. "What the hell…" you murmur, pushing yourself up. You move closer, fingers grazing the cup. It's real. You weren't hallucinating. There's a red string attached, disappearing past the edge of your window. Confused, you lean out. The string runs down to the window directly below yours. Yunjin's room. Before you can make sense of it, a voice vibrates through the cup, soft and hesitant. "Hey, Y/N."
Your heart lurches violently.
"Hello?" Heeseung tries again. "Y/N? I know you're there."
You stare at the cup, frozen in shock. You slowly lift it to your mouth. "Hello?" you say, unsure if your voice is even working.
There's a pause. A breath. "It worked," he says quietly. "Okay. Good."
You don't respond right away.
"I've been thinking about that day you came back from the Varna Competition," he continues, carefully. "The day you called me through this thing."
Your grip tightens around the cup.
"I heard you," he admits. "I was holding the cup, but I just… couldn't answer."
Your chest aches.
"I stood in my room staring at the blinds, listening to you try again," he says. "Listening to your voice shake, and when you threw it out… I deserved that, but it hurt so much."
You don't say anything.
"I was too scared to break the promise," he adds softly. "I should've answered. I'm sorry, Y/N. I'm so sorry."
You turn away from the cup for a brief moment, trying to blink away the tears.
"I know it's too late, but I won't be a coward anymore," he says firmly. "I promise."
Your hands are shaking now. Without saying another word, you drop the cup and turn for the door. Yunjin's door is already open when you reach it. Heeseung is standing there, awkward and unsure as if he's afraid one wrong move will send you running. You don't yell. You don't hit. You just step forward and pull him into a hug so sudden it leaves you both holding your breaths. "I hated you," you say quietly into his shoulder. "For so long."
"I know," he whispers.
"But I still love you," you add, voice cracking.
His arms tighten around you, no longer afraid you'll run. "I never stopped loving you," he says.
"Don't disappear again," you say.
"I won't," he promises. "Never again until the day I die."
Heeseung leans in to kiss you. It's soft at first, but it quickly turns frantic and hungry in that aching way that comes from wanting something for far too long.
You pull back. "Wait. Not here." You two barely make it to your room before your lips connect again. Heeseung presses you against the wall, hand up your shirt, grazing the small of your back. His soft lips make your head spin, your hand lacing into his other hand for support.
You both pull back breathless, foreheads press together. "Please don't stop," you whine.
"Are you sure?" Heeseung asks, afraid of pushing the relationship faster than you're ready for.
"Yes, Hee. Please!" The nickname leaves your lips, breathless and warm against his mouth. Something in him snaps at the nickname only you ever called him. Heeseung barely lifts you to the bed before smashing his lips into yours. The kiss is messy and sloppy with spit running down both of your chins, but it only turns you on even more. You clench your thighs, seeking some friction. Heeseung smirks into your lips before pulling away, a string of spit connecting your lips. “Be patient, baby,” he teases, putting his knee between your thighs.
This time, his lips move to your neck, somehow finding your sweet spot immediately. Freak. At this rate, none of your tops can hide the blooming purple mark on your neck. “Ah, Heeseung, you’re going to leave a mark.”
“That's the point, baby,” he mutters, groaning into your neck. “Everyone needs to know you’re mine.”
You roll your eyes. “Ha, seriously-“ but you’re cut off when Heeseung practically rips your shirt off. “No bra, huh?” he growls, spitting on both of your nipples before lathering it into your breasts. You’ve never felt so exposed around anyone before, so you can’t help but cover your face, embarrassed. But Heeseung gently pries your hands away. “You look so beautiful,” he says tenderly. “Don’t hide from me.”
You gasp when he latches his mouth onto one of your breasts while massaging the other. Heeseung can’t help but unleash a string of desperate sounds at how soft your breasts are, which barely fits in his mouth and hand. The pleasure is so intense, you feel like you can cum just from this, but you can feel how hard his cock is against your clothed mound. “Hee, let me-“ Before you can reach his zipper, he blocks your hand. “No, I want to make you feel good.” You want to protest, but suddenly—Heeseung pulls down your pants and panties in one motion. The cold air hits your wet cunt, sending shivers down your spine. "I've barely done anything, and you're already dripping," he hisses in satisfaction.
He trails hot, wet kisses down your stomach and stops right above your cunt before quickly stripping himself bare. You gasp at how big he is—so big you're not sure if he'll even fit. His tip is angry, red, and leaking with precum. He gives it a brief rub before smearing his precum on your slick folds. You moan at how lewd it is, grinding desperately against his hand. "Please, Hee" you cry out.
"I already told you to be patient, baby," Heeseung chuckles, slapping your cunt. Soon, he replaces his hand with his mouth, tongue lapping over your sweet folds, then your clit, causing you to yelp in pleasure. As Heeseung sucks on your clit, he pushes two fingers deep inside you. The sensation becomes so overwhelming you feel like you're going to cum, but he removes his fingers.
"Fuck, why'd you stop—" Before you can finish your desperate plea, he teases your entrance with his cock. He must know what you're thinking because he reassures you. "Don't worry. I'll go slow, love," he says, kissing you sweetly before pushing in slowly. Tears well in your eyes as you try to adjust to his size, even though less than half of his cock is inside you. Heeseung immediately stops, afraid that he'll hurt you. "We can stop right now if it hurts."
"No!" you say quickly. "Please keep going."
Heeseung hesitates before pushing his cock in further, bottoming out. He doesn't move, letting you adjust to his size. You can feel every vein and ridge on his cock, making you clench desperately around him. "You can move now. Please." Heeseung thrust slowly, but his thrusts quickly become deep and fast. "Fuck, baby. You're so fucking tight," he moans. "Feel how deep I am?"
"Oh god… yes! Don't stop!" you pant, both of you moans filling the room.
Heeseung kisses you sloppily as his movements become more frantic and desperate. "I'm gonna fill you full of my cum."
A scream rips from your throat as you feel a knot in your stomach forming. "I'm gonna cum, Hee!"
"Cum for me baby! Please," he begs. You clench even tighter around him as you cum, making Heeseung cum right after. "Fuck, yes!" he moans, cum shooting deep inside you, painting your walls.
Heeseung kisses you on your forehead before running downstairs. "Hee?" you call out, confused.
"I'm here baby! I just need to grab some things," Heeseung shouts back from downstairs before quickly returning with a glass of water and a warm towel.
"Are you okay, baby?" Heeseung asks worriedly as he hands you the glass of water. "Was I too rough?"
"No! It was perfect, Hee," you say shyly. "But you made quite a mess," you laugh, wiggling your eyes as you point to your thigh.
"Sorry," he says with a boyish grin. "Let me clean that up for you." He gently wipes your thigh with the towel before collapsing into bed with you. You two lie there in each others, engulfed in the peaceful silence as Heeseung rubs your back. "I love you, Y/N. I love you so much," he says earnestly.
"I love you too, Hee."
"By the way, you're my first," he says shyly.
You raise an eyebrow, clearly not believing him. "Yeah, right! The girls in high school would brag whenever they got to sleep with you," you grunt, slapping his arm.
"Ouch!" Heeseung pouts. "It was all a lie, baby! They were competing to see who could sleep with me first. You have to believe me," he whines like a child.
"Fine! Stop whining," you huff. "Wait—what about that night after prom?" you seethe.
"We were playing seven minutes in heaven," he frowns, fake gagging. "I was going to use the washroom when she slammed me against the wall…scariest moment of my life!"
You can't help but laugh. Now that you think about it, Giselle really did have crazy obsessive behaviour. She literally ran a kid out of Evercore. He transferred before grade nine.
"Oh—what about James—ouch!" he yelps. "Stop slapping me, baby!"
"You need to apologize to James," you scold, slapping him again despite the smile you're trying to hide.
"Fine," he mutters, rubbing his arm where you slapped him for the second time.
Then his eyes narrow. "Wait… did you at least like the gifts?"
You shrug, pretending to inspect your nails. "I guess."
"You guess?" Heeseung looks around your room. "Where are they?"
You hesitate. "I might've… given them to the girls."
He stares at you, horrified. "All of them?"
"Don't worry! I'll get them back," you chime.
"I spent my entire trust fund on all those gifts," he groans.
You climb into his lap, laughing. "You still won."
His pout disappears instantly. "Yeah," he says softly. "I did."
—
Epilogue
"I can't believe McCain got traded, son," your dad says, shaking his head at the TV like someone personally betrayed him.
"I know," Heeseung sighs beside him on the couch, just as invested. "But at least he went to a better team that knows how to utilize his skills."
You stop in the doorway, holding two glasses of water, watching them discuss basketball trades like it's been their routine for years. "Dad," you try. "I'm home too?"
"Not now, sweetie," he waves you off without looking. "Poor Heeseung hasn't been able to watch basketball because of finals."
You gasp. "Wow. You like him than me now?"
Heeseung tries to hide his smug smile, but fails miserably. Your mom walks in, and grabs your father by the sleeve. "Come help me in the kitchen and leave the kids alone."
"Wait—honey! It's the fourth quarter—" your father complains as he's being dragged to the kitchen.
The living room finally quiets. You sit beside Heeseung, shoulder brushing his. "Your stealing my dad."
"Your heard him! He called me son," he says proudly. "Sorry, but he loves me more."
You huff, but the smile tugging at your lips gives you away. After a moment, you add, "Can I ask you something?"
He turns toward you immediately. "Always."
"Why did you join my class?" you ask. "Corporate Finance has nothing to do with your major.
For a second, he just looks at you, something tender and a little shy flickering across his face. "I heard about the internship opportunity from Jake," he admits. "Not that you needed my help or anything, but I knew you'd take the course, so I enrolled to see you win. He pauses. "Admit it, though… I helped a lot didn't I?" he smirks.
Warmth floods your chest, but before you can respond, both of your phones buzz. It's an email from your professor. You open it—and freeze. "We won," you whisper. Then louder, "Heeseung—we won the case comp. And—"
Your voice breaks. "I got the internship."
He's on his feet in a second, pulling you into a hug so tight you start laughing.
From the kitchen your dad yells, "What happened?"
"We won the case comp, and I got the internship!"
"That's my daughter," he shouts back. A beat. "And my future son-in-law!"
"DAD!"
You're surrounded by the noise of your family and the steady beat of his heart against yours.
hello!! may i request a drabble or a spin off from forbidden taste!heeseung with his reaction or thoughts after taking the antidote for amortentia? and also how he’s desperate to find y/n and why she’s avoiding him for days? 🤭 thank you!! i luv a desperate man 😩
a/n: you may :3 i LOVED seeing this in my inbox when i woke up! And we do all indeed love a desperate man ;)
Warnings: ehm, a desperate man basically?
The fic in question --> click here
--
Heeseung was angry—no, he was livid. The moment the effects of the Amortentia wore off, his mind cleared like a storm breaking apart, and the first thing he thought of was you. Where were you? Why weren’t you there? He had searched and searched, every corridor and corner he could think of, but you were nowhere to be found.
It didn’t help that Yoonhee had been trailing after him, clinging to his arm, tears streaming down her face as she apologized profusely. “I didn’t mean for it to go this far! It was stupid—I know it was stupid, Heeseung, I’m so sorry!”
But Heeseung knew better. He could see right through her feigned remorse. The look in her eyes told him she wasn’t sorry for what she did—she was sorry she got caught. His patience, already paper-thin, finally snapped. He shoved her off and hissed, “Stay away from me,” before marching straight to a professor and reporting her. He didn’t wait to see the consequences unfold; he couldn’t care less. There were far more important things to deal with.
Like finding you.
You, who had been conspicuously absent through it all. You, who he hadn’t seen since after the Amortentia’s haze vanished. A knot of worry had formed in his chest, twisting tighter with every second that passed without an answer. He stormed into the courtyard, seeking out your housemates with frantic determination.
“Where is she?” he demanded, his voice sharp enough to startle a group of first-years nearby. “Where is she?!”
One of your friends finally stepped forward, hesitant but honest. “She’s... she’s been in bed all day. Said she wasn’t feeling well.”
The words hit him like a Bludger to the chest. Guilt and heartbreak washed over him in waves, drowning out the last remnants of anger. You had been suffering alone, likely because of him—because of what had happened, because of everything Yoonhee had done.
He tried everything—everything—to get through to you. He sent letters, each one carefully written, pouring his heart onto the parchment. He sent messages through your housemates, through your friends, hoping they might convince you to talk to him. Every time he saw a friend of yours, he’d stop them, desperate for any sliver of news.
“How is she? Did she eat today?” he’d ask, his voice laced with worry. “Did she sleep? Is she feeling any better?”
It was always the small things—tiny gestures—to show he cared. That he was thinking about you. That he was sorry. He wanted you to know that it had all been the Amortentia, that none of it had been real. None of it had been his choice. And above all, he wanted you to know that he never, ever meant to hurt you.
But no matter how hard he tried, you remained locked away. Your absence stretched between you like an invisible wall, keeping him out. You weren’t just avoiding him—you were avoiding everyone. And it hurt.
It hurt because he couldn’t see you. He couldn’t talk to you. He couldn’t hold you in his arms and kiss away the pain, couldn’t wipe the tears from your cheeks or make all your worries disappear. He wanted to tell you, face-to-face, how much you meant to him, how much he hated himself for letting this happen. But he couldn’t do any of that—not while you stayed hidden away in your common room, unreachable.
So, he waited. He stayed close, always looking for a chance, a moment, a sign. But until then, he would keep trying, keep hoping, because losing you was something he couldn’t bear.
And he did keep trying. Every day, he checked the places you’d usually be—the library where you’d bury yourself in books, the quiet corner of the courtyard where you’d sit when you needed to think, even the kitchens, where you’d sometimes sneak a late-night snack.
But you weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere.
The less he saw of you, the less he heard of you, the more desperate he grew. His patience—what little he had left—was wearing thin. He couldn’t focus in class, couldn’t eat properly, couldn’t sleep without his thoughts drifting back to you. He wanted—no, needed—to see you. To hear your voice, to know that you were okay, that you didn’t hate him. The thought of you hating him gnawed at his heart like a cruel curse.
He tried to remind himself to give you time, to respect the space you clearly needed. But it was hard. Too hard. Every day that passed felt like another piece of you slipping further away, and he couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t let that happen.
When another one of your housemates brushed him off with a mumbled “I don’t know,” Heeseung snapped. He didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but the frustration and worry boiled over. “How can you not know? You live with her! Hasn’t anyone even seen her?”
The girl flinched but reluctantly admitted, “She’s been in the dorm. She just... doesn’t come out.”
Those words were both a relief and a torment. You were there, within reach, but still so far away from him. The knowledge burned in his chest, twisting into something unbearable. You were so close—just a few walls separating you from him—but it might as well have been an ocean. And he was drowning in it.
Heeseung's desperation grew with every passing moment. He found himself pacing the corridors near your common room, running his hands through his hair, muttering curses under his breath. He couldn’t stand this helplessness, couldn’t stand the thought of you being alone, hurting because of him. The guilt was suffocating, pressing down on him like the weight of the castle itself.
He tried to write another letter, his trembling hands scrawling messy, frantic words onto the parchment.
Baby, I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I know you don’t want to see me, but please, just let me explain. Please let me make this right.
He crumpled it and started again, feeling like no words could possibly convey the storm in his chest. How could he put into words how much he hated himself for what happened? How could he tell you that the worst part of it all wasn’t Yoonhee’s betrayal or the humiliation of being under the potion’s effects—it was losing you?
He sent the letter anyway, knowing it was just one of many you’d likely left unopened.
The next day, he cornered one of your closest friends in the hallway. “Please,” he begged, his voice cracking. “Please tell her I’m sorry. Tell her... tell her I’ll wait as long as it takes. I just need her to know.”
The friend hesitated, giving him a pitying look before nodding. But he didn’t trust that it would reach you. Heeseung was running out of patience, running out of hope. Every time he thought about the tears you must have shed, the pain you must have felt, it killed him a little more.
Late one night, he found himself back outside your common room again, leaning against the cold stone wall, staring blankly at the entrance. He didn’t even know what he was doing there. Maybe he hoped you’d come out? Maybe he thought you’d sense him there, that you’d realize he wasn’t going anywhere until you let him in.
His fists clenched at his sides, and before he could stop himself, he let out a shaky breath, pressing his forehead against the wall, his shoulders slumping. “I’ll wait. As long as it takes... I’ll wait for you.”
His voice cracked on the last words, but he meant it. Even if it hurt. Even if it felt like he was being torn apart. You were worth it. You were everything.
Eventually, the Christmas Ball arrived, but Heeseung didn’t want to go. The last thing he wanted was to pretend to enjoy himself, but his friends had other plans. They nagged him, teased him, and pushed him to "just have some fun for once." After a mountain of peer pressure, he reluctantly gave in, throwing on his suit and styling his hair without much care.
He still didn’t expect much. The Ball wasn’t going to fix anything—it was just a night to endure. He let his friends drag him along, had a drink or two, and resigned himself to the chatter around him. None of it mattered.
Until he saw you.
Everything else disappeared the moment his eyes found you across the room. You stood at the edge of the Grand Hall, illuminated by the soft glow of the enchanted snowflakes falling from the ceiling. Your dress shimmered, and you looked breathtaking. Stunning. Like a vision he didn’t deserve to see.
And then he realized—you were staring back at him.
His heart stopped. You weren’t avoiding him this time. You weren’t looking away. Your gaze was locked on his, full of something he couldn’t quite place—uncertainty, maybe? He didn’t care. All he knew was that you were here, and you were looking at him.
Before he could even process what he was doing, his feet started moving. His drink was left abandoned on a nearby table as he strode across the hall, weaving through the crowd until he was right in front of you.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to.
He had waited for you.
But now, he was done waiting.
For weeks, Heeseung had been nothing but patient, forcing himself to hold back when every fiber of his being screamed to see you, to talk to you, to fix things. He’d stayed away when he knew you needed space. He sent letters, messages, and even flowers, trying to show you he cared without pushing too hard.
And still, he never got a response.
But Heeseung told himself he could endure it, because you were worth it. He could be patient, be understanding, because he loved you. He was good for you, wasn’t he? He cared for you in ways no one else could. No one else would wait this long, worry this much, or fight this hard.
And yet, when he saw you standing there, in your pretty dress, something inside him snapped. He had been so good. He had done everything right. He had given you all the space you asked for, all the time you needed. But seeing you now, after everything, reminded him just how much he’d missed you. How much he’d longed for you. How much it hurt to be apart.
He wasn’t going to let you slip through his fingers again. Not when he knew how good the two of you were together.
He didn’t ask for permission when he reached for your hand, didn’t even hesitate—he simply took it, his fingers curling around yours like they belonged there. Because they did. He believed that with every beat of his heart.
As he pulled you toward the corridor, he felt his resolve solidify. He had been patient, more patient than he thought he was capable of, but patience had its limits. He had waited for you to come to him, but you hadn’t. And now that he had you in front of him, he wasn’t going to let you go.
And when you didn’t fight him as he led you into the quiet hallway, it gave him hope. Hope that maybe, just maybe, you wanted this too.
a/n: i love writing his pov :) also im not sure when you put ur perm taglist... so im not adding it here xD already posted so much.
Synopsis: Being one of the smartest students at Hogwarts had its perks… and its downsides. Case in point: you’re now stuck tutoring the Slytherin Prince, Lee Heeseung who looks just as thrilled about this arrangement as you are. With his pride and your stubbornness, neither of you want to admit that the tension isn’t just academic frustration, so it’s only a matter of time before someone breaks the ice.
a/n: been letting this sit for too long in my drafts..
You had your fair share of students come and go—some eager, some desperate, and a few who were just hopeless cases trying to coast on charm alone. Transfiguration, Herbology, Potions, Muggle Studies… you’d tutored in them all. Somewhere along the way, without even meaning to, you'd built a reputation. The kind of reputation that followed you through corridors and whispered in the spaces between classes—one of the gifted ones, the prodigies. The student with the highest potential in your year.
They said you'd make a brilliant Auror one day. That you were bound for something great, something important. You heard it often—from professors, from classmates, from those wide-eyed first-years who nervously asked for help with their essays. Slughorn, in particular, never missed a chance to sing your praises, his twinkling eyes always watching you like he already saw your name in the Prophet headlines.
You didn’t care much for any of that.
It wasn’t that you didn’t appreciate the acknowledgment, or that you didn’t enjoy helping others. It was just… none of it felt like you. The applause, the ambition others projected onto you—it never reached deep enough to move you. You did what you were good at because it came naturally. Because it gave you something to focus on. Something to control.
And you wanted your life to be under control. You needed it to be. Every parchment neatly organized, every schedule memorized down to the hour. Your wand movements were precise, your essays meticulously worded, your notes color-coded and charmed to reshuffle themselves in alphabetical order if anyone dared mess with them.
Because if one thing slipped—even just a little—you weren't sure what would happen.
One step out of line, and you didn’t know what to do. Chaos made your skin itch. Uncertainty felt like standing on the edge of a broomstick at impossible heights with no safety charm in place. You didn’t do messy. Or unpredictable. Or reckless.
Which is exactly why he irritated you so much.
Lee Heeseung.
He was everything you disliked wrapped in a too-confident grin and that stupidly charming laugh that echoed through the corridors when you were just trying to concentrate. It was like he had been placed on this earth—sorted into Hogwarts—for the sole purpose of ruining your peace.
He was loud. He was chaotic. He strolled into class five minutes late like he owned the place, hair a mess, tie half-untied, and somehow still managed to get away with it every time. He was too laidback, like he’d never felt the pressure of a deadline in his life. He flirted with danger the way most people flirted with their crushes—boldly, carelessly, like he knew he’d come out unscathed.
And worst of all? He was a professor’s pet.
But not in the hardworking, straight-A kind of way. No, he got away with everything on sheer charisma. He cracked jokes that made even Professor Flitwick chuckle during lectures, and Professor Slughorn—who had once told you that your potion skills were “brilliant for your age”—had the audacity to say Heeseung’s last-minute disaster of a draft had “potential, if not promise.”
You despised him. Truly, sincerely, deeply.
So when Professor McGonagall cornered you after class with that look in her eyes—the one that meant you were about to be volunteered for something you didn’t want—you already knew who it would be.
“Mr. Lee is falling behind in Transfiguration,” she said, as if that were a surprise to anyone. “And I believe you’re the best person to help him.”
Of course you were.
Of course she would say that.
And of course, the next time you saw him, leaning against the wall outside the classroom with his hands in his pockets and that damned smirk on his face, you already knew how this would end.
“Well, well,” he said, pushing off the wall to fall into step beside you. “Looks like you’re stuck with me, genius.”
Merlin help you.
“I have a name, you know,” you muttered, not bothering to look at him.
“Oh, I know it,” he replied, voice dripping with forced enthusiasm. “I’ve heard it enough—‘top of the class this,’ ‘perfect marks that.’ Bet you’ve already got your future planned out by the hour.”
You rolled your eyes. “Flattery won’t make me go easy on you.”
“I’m not trying to flatter you,” he muttered under his breath.
You glanced at him. His usual grin wasn’t quite as smug—if anything, he looked vaguely irritated, like he’d just been assigned detention with a particularly strict professor. Which, to be fair, wasn't that far off.
“If you think I’m thrilled about this,” he added, “you’ve got another thing coming.”
You stopped walking.
Heeseung nearly bumped into you.
“Okay,” you said sharply, turning to face him. “Here’s how this is going to go. You meet me in the library after dinner—on time. You bring your notes, you shut up, and you listen. If you’re not serious about this, don’t waste my time.”
Heeseung sighed, running a hand through his hair like he was already regretting everything.
“Yeah, yeah. I got it,” he muttered. “Let’s just get this over with.”
You didn’t believe him for a second.
Later that evening, you sat at one of the quieter corners of the library, books already spread out, ink bottle open, quill poised. You’d even drafted a lesson plan—because of course you had. You were five minutes early. He was seven minutes late.
Naturally.
When he finally slouched in, he looked every bit like someone headed to a funeral. He dropped his bag onto the table with a dull thud, flopped into the chair across from you, and gave you a dead-eyed stare.
“Can’t believe I’m spending my evening like this.”
“You and me both,” you said flatly, sliding a textbook across the table. “Page seventy-three. We’re starting with Switching Spells. If you’re not at least decent by the end of the week, I’m telling McGonagall to assign someone else.”
Heeseung opened the book with a sigh, flipping to the page like it physically pained him.
“You threatening to give up on me already? We just started.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Try me.”
He didn’t smile. He didn’t talk. He just looked at the page like it had personally offended him.
Merlin, this was going to be a long week.
It had been three days. Three long, patience-testing, soul-draining days.
And Heeseung hadn’t taken a single one of them seriously.
Every evening you sat in the same corner of the library with your neatly organized notes and structured lesson plans, and every evening he showed up like it was some sort of social event. He greeted half the students on the way in, stopping mid-step to fist-bump friends, wink at passing girls, and occasionally ruffle the hair of a random first-year like he was the Hogwarts mascot.
And when he finally sat down across from you, he didn’t sit. He slouched. Laid back like the chair was a hammock and this was a holiday. You’d start talking—calmly, clearly, even with diagrams—and he’d nod like he was listening, then immediately start doodling little Quidditch plays in the margins of his parchment. Or worse—he’d turn to whisper to students at the nearby tables. You’d hear little bursts of laughter, the quiet flutter of someone giggling at whatever stupid, charming thing he’d said.
By the fourth time he leaned over to flirt with a girl who “just so happened” to pass by your table, something in you snapped.
You placed your quill down slowly, deliberately, and looked at him.
“Heeseung,” you said with an edge of tight restraint. “Do you mind?”
He turned to you, raising a brow, lips still curled in that maddening grin. “What? Just being friendly.”
“I’m trying to help you,” you said through clenched teeth. “And you’re too busy chatting, drawing, or—Merlin forbid—flirting to actually pay attention. Can you stop wasting my time?”
He blinked innocently. “Aw, come on, are you jealous?”
You inhaled sharply.
“Jealous?” you repeated, your voice calm—dangerously so.
He smirked, eyes dancing. “Of them. All these girls getting my attention when you want it so bad.”
You were this close to hexing him on the spot.
Instead, you exhaled and sat back, pressing your fingers together tightly to keep from reaching for your wand.
“Focus,” you said slowly, voice low but firm. “Please.”
He paused, and for a second—one second—you thought maybe, maybe you’d gotten through to him.
But then he leaned in, resting his chin on his hand as he looked you up and down in a way that made your skin buzz.
“Oh, I’d very gladly focus on you,” he said, voice dropping into that infuriating, flirty drawl. “Whenever I want.”
You didn’t flinch. You didn’t blush. You didn’t so much as blink.
Because you knew—everyone knew—that Lee Heeseung was handsome. Stupidly so. And charming. And infuriating. And just the kind of boy you’d spent your whole academic career staying the hell away from.
So instead of reacting, you looked him dead in the eyes and said, flatly, “I’d say you have the attention span of a flobberworm, but honestly? That’s an insult to flobberworms.”
He laughed—laughed—and slouched even further down in his seat.
Then, like he had all the time in the world, he picked up the textbook, flipped it open lazily, and spread his legs under the table like he was stretching out in his dormitory and not the school library.
The audacity.
You were mid-sentence, trying—still trying—to go over the theory of Switching Spells when he tilted the book sideways, squinting at it like the text was written in ancient runes.
You cleared your throat, sharp and pointed.
He didn’t ignore it this time.
His gaze snapped to yours.
But instead of the usual mischief, or that smug grin he wore like second skin, what you got was something else entirely.
Focus.
His undivided attention. His dark eyes locked on you with a sudden intensity that hit you like a Stupefy to the chest.
You almost gasped.
Almost.
Swallowing nervously you forced your voice to remain steady. “Did you get that, or are you just pretending again?”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he blinked slowly, then leaned forward—arms resting on the table now. “You talk like I haven’t been listening this whole time.”
You scoffed. “You’ve done everything but listen.”
“I watch,” he said simply. “I pick things up.”
His eyes flicked to your hand, where your fingers gripped the quill just a little too tightly, then back up to your face.
“I pick you up.”
Your pulse stuttered.
You hated how it did that. Hated how your body reacted when your brain was screaming to stay cool.
But you didn’t let it show.
You leaned forward slightly, voice cold and crisp. “Then pick this up too: if you don’t stop wasting my time, I will stop tutoring you. And Professor McGonagall won’t save you from the next exam.”
You then picked up your wand and pointed to the diagram in the book, keeping your eyes on the page and not on the heat of his gaze.
“Now. Watch closely.”
And for once, he did.
His eyes didn’t flick away. No snide comment, no snort of fake interest, no distracted glance at someone walking by. Just full, uninterrupted attention on you.
And you didn’t know if you preferred it when he wasn’t focusing on you.
Because when he wasn’t, it made you annoyed. Angry, even. You could deal with that. You were good at handling irritation. You’d perfected the art of brushing it off, biting back sharp words, and pushing through.
But when he was?
When his gaze followed your every movement, when his expression dropped all traces of that cocky, careless mask he always wore, when he tilted his head just slightly like he was trying to understand you, trying to see how you worked?
It made your skin warm.
It made your throat tighten and your hands go still for a beat too long.
It made you flushed.
You kept your focus on the parchment between you, using it like a shield. You lifted your wand, demonstrated the proper movement for the Switching Spell—slow, precise, circular—and muttered the incantation under your breath. The inkwell and the candle beside it switched places instantly.
“Got it?” you asked, proud of the steadiness in your voice.
He didn’t answer right away.
“Yeah,” he said, a bit lower than usual. “Yeah, I got it.”
You looked up, and there it was again—that look. Not amused. Not impressed. Just… locked in.
You snapped your fingers, trying to shatter the tension like it was just another spell. “Then show me.”
Heeseung leaned back, rolled his shoulders, and picked up his wand with an ease that was almost insulting. For someone who was supposedly failing, he sure held it like he knew what he was doing.
“Don’t half-ass it,” you warned.
He smirked, but there was something less smug about it this time.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, and cast the spell.
The movement wasn’t perfect—his circle was too wide—but the objects did switch places, albeit with a small spark and a thud that made the nearby students jump.
You blinked.
He looked down at the table, then up at you with a crooked grin. “Close enough?”
You didn’t say anything at first. Because no, it wasn’t perfect. But it wasn’t bad, either. It was better than anything you expected from him.
“…Lucky shot,” you muttered, more to yourself than to him.
But he only chuckled, sitting back with that same maddening confidence. “Nah. Told you I pick things up.”
And again, that gaze lingered.
You turned back to your notes to hide the way your pulse betrayed you, scribbling something down just to keep your hands moving.
Because if he kept looking at you like that…
You weren’t sure what would burn first. Your face. Or your patience.
Good news for you was that things did change. Not overnight, but gradually—just enough that it made you question the entire reason you ever thought this tutoring arrangement was a waste of time.
Heeseung didn’t stop acting like a cocky, insufferable idiot, though. No, that part remained stubbornly the same. He’d show up late, talk too much, make offhand comments that usually made you want to hex him, and still find ways to turn every lesson into some kind of twisted competition. But something else had shifted, too—something deeper than his usual antics.
When he listened, he really listened. When he struggled, he admitted it (rarely, but it happened). And when you got frustrated with him, he didn’t ignore it, or brush it off with some half-hearted attempt at humor. No, he seemed... almost genuinely concerned. But only for a second. Then his pride took over again, like some kind of safety mechanism to protect that delicate ego of his.
It was maddening.
One evening, after a particularly tough session with a tricky Transfiguration charm, Heeseung let out an exaggerated sigh, running a hand through his hair like the world was falling apart. His textbook lay open in front of him, the pages filled with smudged notes and scribbled doodles.
“I’m just saying,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “Transfiguration isn’t supposed to be this hard. It’s supposed to be about finesse. A little magic here, a little concentration there...”
You raised an eyebrow. “Is that why you still can’t turn your quill into a bird?”
He rolled his eyes dramatically. “Don’t remind me.”
You scoffed, eyes narrowing as you crossed your arms. “What’s your excuse this time?”
“I don’t have an excuse,” he muttered, but his tone lacked the usual bravado. He looked down at his wand, tapping it idly on the table. “Just... sometimes it’s harder than it looks.”
“Sometimes?” You shot him a skeptical glance. “You’ve been barely passing this whole year, Heeseung.”
He flinched at the words, the usual cheeky smile fading for just a second, but then he quickly recovered, slapping his hand on the table with a grin. “It’s not that bad.”
You weren’t having it. “It is that bad. You can’t keep slacking off and expect things to work out, Heeseung. Not everything can be handed to you because of your charm or your looks.”
His expression shifted again—this time, he looked a little less amused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
It was your turn to bite back your frustration. “You act like you don’t care about anything but your reputation. But if you actually put in the effort, you might actually get somewhere.”
There was a long, tense silence between the two of you. Heeseung’s jaw clenched, and for a moment, it almost seemed like he was going to snap at you. But then he just looked away, clearly annoyed.
“Whatever,” he muttered, shoving his book aside. “Not like I need to impress anyone. I’m just here because you’re too stubborn to let me fail.”
You scoffed. “You think I care if you fail? I care because you’re better than this. I’ve seen it, Heeseung. I know you’re capable of more than this laziness.”
He shot you a quick, almost bitter smile, though there was something different in his eyes. “So you do care.”
You froze, caught off guard by his words. But you couldn’t let it show, so you quickly masked it with a scoff. “What? No. I just don’t want to waste my time with someone who thinks they can coast through everything. If I’m tutoring you, you might as well try.”
Heeseung leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest, a glimmer of that familiar smirk returning. “So, you do care, but not because of me. Got it.”
You glared at him, but there was something in his expression—something that wasn’t the usual cocky arrogance. It was vulnerability, but it lasted only a moment before he buried it under his usual snark.
“I don’t care about your pride, Heeseung. I care about you getting a decent grade. You don’t have to keep acting like you’ve got everything figured out, because trust me—you don’t.”
Heeseung didn’t respond at first, but when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, more serious than usual.
“I don’t need anyone’s help, alright?” He looked you in the eye, his expression hardening. “But I’m here because... maybe I want to try. Not for you. But for myself.”
You paused. That wasn’t what you were expecting. But instead of softening in the moment, you just shook your head.
“Then stop pretending it’s all easy. Focus, Heeseung. Or you’re not going to get anywhere.”
He stared at you for a long moment, his gaze unreadable, before his lips curled into that annoying half-smile.
“Fine,” he said, pushing the book back in front of him. “But don’t act like I’m going to be good at it just because you say so.”
“Don’t act like you’re above it, and we’ll get along just fine.”
Heeseung rolled his eyes, the motion so exaggerated that it almost looked like it hurt. “Yeah, yeah. Sure, genius. Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
You just glared at him, but he didn’t seem to care. Instead, he grabbed a piece of parchment, uncaringly scribbling something down, his concentration on the paper only lasting a second. And then—of course—he crumpled it into a ball, smirking like a mischievous child.
Before you could even react, he flicked his wand, and the ball unfolded, neatly transformed into a paper plane. With another flick of his wand, he sent it sailing through the air.
It was perfect. Too perfect.
It flew across the table and landed with ease at a nearby group of girls who were quietly studying—or so you thought. They looked up, surprised at first, but as one of them picked up the paper, curiosity lit up in their eyes. She unfolded it, quickly scanning the message, then immediately burst into giggles. The others leaned in to read it, then broke into even louder giggles.
You couldn’t stop yourself from glancing at the table, watching as they passed the note around. The girls all glanced at Heeseung, their giggles escalating.
Heeseung, as usual, couldn’t resist. He winked at them, a self-satisfied smirk tugging at his lips, before looking back at you.
You groaned, rubbing your temple in disbelief. "You’ve got to be kidding me."
Heeseung leaned back in his chair, looking entirely too pleased with himself as he casually surveyed the girls across the room, whose attention was now entirely on him.
“You know,” he drawled, his voice low, “you should stop groaning so much. It’s a little... distracting.”
You glared at him, but the look on his face told you he was only getting started. He leaned in, dropping his voice an octave lower as his eyes slowly traced over you—way too much attention for your liking.
“Tell me," he teased, voice dripping with mischief, “what other sounds can you make?”
You felt your heart jump in your chest, but you refused to let it show. Instead, you just crossed your arms, straightened your posture, and focused on the textbook in front of you, trying to act like he didn’t just pull your focus away from everything you were trying to do.
But then—damn him—he took his time eyeing you up and down, and that was when he did it: He bit his bottom lip slowly, like he knew exactly what that simple motion was doing to you.
You could feel the heat rise to your cheeks despite yourself. It was bad enough he was acting like this—completely insufferable. But the worst part? It was working.
You shook your head, pushing the feelings down. "You’re so annoying," you muttered, knowing full well you’d never get through this session if you kept reacting to his ridiculous antics.
He leaned back in his chair again, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t bite... unless you want me to.”
You wanted to throw your book at him. You really did. But you didn’t. Instead, you just rubbed your temples again, trying to keep your voice steady.
“You’re wasting my time, Heeseung. Focus.”
“Focus?” He arched an eyebrow at you. “I’m always focused. You’re the one with the fascinating reactions.”
You opened your mouth to snap back at him, but he was already standing, stretching his arms above his head, clearly in no hurry to actually do any of the work you’d assigned.
“What are you doing?” you asked through gritted teeth.
“Taking a break,” he said, flashing you another one of those infuriating smiles. “You’ve been at this for hours. Don’t tell me you don’t need one, too.”
Your fingers twitched toward your wand, ready to curse him into next week, but instead, you held yourself back. “I’m fine,” you said, voice tight. “You go ahead and enjoy your little break.”
He winked at you again before strolling over to the girls at the other table, as if they were more interesting than your study session—or you, for that matter.
And it drove you mad. He’d clearly given up on pretending to care about the lesson, and that annoyed you more than it should have.
You were left to grumble quietly under your breath, flipping through the pages of the textbook without really reading a word. You could feel the frustration building again. No matter how much you tried to focus, you kept thinking about how much easier it would be to just report Heeseung to Professor McGonagall and be done with it. The constant interruptions, the childish distractions—he was making it impossible to tutor him. But then again, you had agreed. You’d taken this on because you thought you could make him better, and you hated admitting when something was beyond your control.
But with every lesson that went by and with Heeseung clearly not caring, your patience was running thin. You had a reputation to protect, and you refused to let him make a mockery of that. But deep down, you were tired. And that was the part you hated the most, the fact that you did care, even if he didn’t seem to.
Lost in your thoughts, you barely even noticed the shift in the air around you. It wasn’t until you heard a voice call your name that you snapped out of it.
“Hey,” the voice was familiar—warm and friendly. “Mind if I sit?”
You blinked, looking up from your notes to see your friend Taesan sliding into the seat next to you.
“Taesan?” you muttered, surprised but relieved to see him. You hadn’t even realized you were so wound up. “What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he said, his voice light as he dropped his bag beside him and began pulling out his own materials. He looked over at the table where Heeseung was still chatting with the girls, the laughter from across the room not at all surprising to him. “Is that your project for the day?” He nodded toward your open Transfiguration textbook.
You snorted, rubbing the back of your neck as you forced yourself to relax. “You could say that. More like a hopeless case.”
Taesan raised an eyebrow. “A hopeless case? Someone finally getting under your skin?” He turned to look at Heeseung with a knowing glance. “I take it the charm of Mr. Unpredictable isn’t working in your favor?”
You sighed, closing the book with a snap, the frustration bubbling over despite your best efforts to hold it in. “Heeseung isn’t getting anywhere. He doesn’t even try. He just ignored me at first. But now, he’s making me look like a joke.”
“Sounds like he’s really pushing your buttons,” Taesan remarked, a teasing glint in his eyes. “But you’re not giving up, right? Because if you’re thinking of quitting, I’ll need to get some popcorn for this show.”
You rolled your eyes, but his words made you pause. You couldn’t give up, could you? Not after everything you’d put into trying to help him. You weren’t the type to throw in the towel—especially not now.
“I don’t know,” you muttered, almost to yourself. “He’s just making everything so much harder than it needs to be. I don’t know how much more I can do, Taesan. I’ve tried everything.”
Taesan leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms over his head in that carefree way he always did, his expression suddenly serious. “You know, sometimes people act out because they’re scared. Or because they don’t want to face what’s right in front of them. Maybe that’s why Heeseung’s acting like such a... pain in the ass.” He looked at you, then back at Heeseung. “He might need someone to call him on his crap. But it’s clear that someone isn’t gonna be you unless you’re okay with taking the risk.”
You stared at him, unsure how to respond. “But I can’t just... let it slide. I’m responsible for this. I said I’d help him. If I bail now, I’d look like I can’t even keep my word.”
Taesan shrugged nonchalantly. “So what? If you need a break, you need a break. You’re not going to be able to help him if you’re burning out yourself.”
He had a point. You were burning out. It wasn’t just Heeseung—it was all the pressure you’d put on yourself to fix everything. You hadn’t realized how much it had been weighing on you until this moment.
Taesan smiled knowingly. “Look, whatever you decide, just remember that you don’t have to do it alone. Sometimes even the people who act like they don’t care the most are the ones who need help the most. But you can’t save him if you’re drowning yourself.”
You exhaled slowly, letting his words sink in. “I don’t even know how to start,” you said softly.
“Then start by letting go of the idea that you have to do it all,” Taesan said, giving you a reassuring look. “You don’t have to fix him. Just... let him find his own way. But you’ve got to stop trying to control everything. It’ll help.”
You were silent for a long moment, the weight of his words settling over you. Maybe you didn’t have to fix everything. Maybe you just needed to let Heeseung handle his own mess for once.
But you couldn’t help the lingering doubt. Was you stepping back enough? Would he finally get it?
Taesan snapped his fingers, pulling you from your thoughts. “Hey, we’re friends, right? So don’t think you’re getting away that easily. You are going to help me with Herbology later, right?”
You smiled, despite the lingering frustration. “Yeah, I guess I owe you one.”
He chuckled and nudged you with his shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
Taesan's lighthearted smile pulled you out of your thoughts as you looked over at him. You couldn’t help but chuckle a little too. It felt good to just be with someone who didn’t make everything feel like a battle. He was calm, focused, and actually listened.
“Alright,” you said, shifting your attention to Taesan’s Herbology assignment, “let’s see what you’ve got.”
He grinned sheepishly, pulling out a parchment covered in messy notes. “I know, I know, I’ve been slacking on this. Help me out, yeah?”
You couldn’t help but smile at him. “I’ll give you the basics. The rest is on you.”
The two of you spent the next while reviewing the material together—practical plant care, the finer points of herbology ingredients, and their magical uses. The difference between working with Taesan and Heeseung was night and day. Taesan actually engaged with the lesson, asked questions when he was confused, and gave you his full attention. It felt like a relief. You were able to help him piece everything together, and you even managed to finish his assignment far faster than you’d expected.
“So,” Taesan said, setting down his quill, “how’d I do?”
You reviewed his work with a critical eye before nodding. “Better than usual. Just pay more attention to the details next time, but overall, not bad.”
Taesan looked pleased, but then his smile faltered slightly as he glanced over your shoulder. You heard the familiar sound of footsteps, and despite your best efforts to ignore it, you knew exactly who it was before you even turned around.
Heeseung.
And the look on his face made your stomach drop.
He wasn’t mad, per se, but his gaze was sharp—like a storm brewing just behind those dark eyes. And more importantly, he wasn’t happy to see Taesan sitting there.
Taesan, ever the easygoing one, noticed the shift in Heeseung’s demeanor and raised an eyebrow. “Did I miss something, or is there a problem, Heeseung?”
Heeseung’s gaze flicked between you and Taesan, his jaw tightening for a brief second before he forced a smirk onto his face. “No problem,” he said, his voice too casual to be genuine. “I just didn’t realize you two were so cozy.”
You could feel your nerves tingle, and you noticed Taesan’s posture shift slightly. You quickly turned to face Heeseung, trying to keep your voice steady.
“You’re late,” you said, keeping the irritation from creeping in. “Did you finally get done with your ‘break’?”
Heeseung didn’t answer you right away. Instead, he glanced back at Taesan again, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “I didn’t think I needed an invitation to join the fun, but I see you’ve found someone else to entertain you.” His eyes narrowed slightly as he continued, “You sure he’s... worthy of your time?”
Taesan didn’t even flinch at the insinuation. He leaned back in his chair, clearly unfazed by Heeseung’s attempt at intimidation. “I don’t need your approval, mate. We were just talking—something you might want to try more of.”
You could feel the tension crackling between them. It wasn’t the first time Heeseung had been possessive or thrown a subtle jab, but you couldn’t help the growing sense of discomfort that settled in your chest.
“I’m here to study, not to deal with this,” you said, cutting in before things escalated any further. You stood up, setting your quill down with a little more force than necessary. “Heeseung, sit down. Let’s get this over with.”
Heeseung looked at you for a long moment, his face unreadable. Then, to your surprise, he did as you asked. He pulled out the seat across from you, though he was clearly still holding a grudge.
You sat back down, trying to ignore the tense atmosphere between him and Taesan, who was now staring Heeseung down with the same quiet defiance. There was a moment where you thought Heeseung might open his mouth and throw a remark, but then, he just sighed.
“Fine,” he muttered, dropping his bag on the table and flipping open his textbook. “Let’s get this over with.”
The silence that followed was thick with unspoken words. Taesan, sensing that things had shifted enough, gave you a small, almost apologetic smile before standing up to gather his things. “I’m gonna head out. Looks like you’ve got this under control,” he said, his tone still light, though there was a knowing edge to it.
You nodded gratefully, smiling back at him. “Thanks, Taesan. Don’t worry about me.”
Taesan gave you a casual wave before heading toward the door, leaving you alone with Heeseung.
Once he was gone, the tension in the air thickened. Heeseung didn’t look at you, instead focusing on the book in front of him, but you could feel the way his mood had shifted. The easygoing act was gone. Now, it was just the two of you, and for the first time in a long time, you weren’t sure how this was going to go.
“So,” you said, trying to fill the awkward silence, “ready to focus?”
Heeseung didn’t immediately respond. Instead, he turned his attention to the textbook in front of him, flipping through the pages with surprising focus. For a moment, the only sound was the rustling of parchment and the quiet humming from Heeseung. You waited, unsure of whether you should prod further or just let him work.
To your surprise, he muttered something under his breath, then pointed his wand at the textbook, murmuring the incantation. You had expected him to stumble, as he had so many times before. But when he flicked his wrist, the transformation happened on the first try. The object on the table shifted seamlessly—just like it was supposed to.
You blinked, staring at him for a moment, before glancing at the textbook. It was perfect.
“Did you... just—?” You couldn’t even finish your question, your surprise evident in your voice.
Heeseung didn’t seem fazed at all. He shrugged nonchalantly, dropping his wand onto the table with a casual gesture. “Yeah. First try. I’m not completely hopeless, you know.”
Your mind raced, trying to make sense of it. For the last few days, you’d been ready to give up on him, thinking he was either not trying or just plain incapable. But this? This was... different.
“You’ve been holding back, haven’t you?” You asked, narrowing your eyes at him. Something didn’t sit right. It was too easy, too quick for someone who had been struggling with the incantations for so long.
Heeseung glanced at you with a bored expression, as if he couldn’t care less about your suspicion. “No, I just didn’t feel like trying before. But if you want me to pass, guess I have to get serious.” He said it like it was no big deal, like it was nothing.
You stared at him, speechless for a moment, before you caught yourself. This wasn’t the Heeseung you were used to. No, this one was determined. And the fact that he’d done it so effortlessly made you wonder just how much of his previous behavior was an act.
“You’re telling me you’ve been pretending this whole time?” You couldn’t quite hide the incredulity in your voice. “You’ve been messing around just for fun?”
Heeseung met your gaze, his expression unreadable. “Maybe,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards into a small, mischievous smile. “Or maybe I just didn’t think you’d be able to handle it.”
You felt a sharp pang of annoyance rise up. “Handle it? You’ve been wasting my time with this nonsense?”
Heeseung’s smile widened slightly, but there was no mockery in it. “Well, it’s not like I’ve been completely wasting your time,” he said lightly. “Look at you. You’ve been pushing yourself so hard, just to fix me. And now... well, now you get to see that I’m capable of more than you think.”
For a split second, you were caught off guard by the way he said it. His words weren’t condescending, nor were they playful in the usual way.
You sighed, rubbing your temple. “This is so much more complicated than I thought.”
Heeseung leaned back in his chair, looking at you with an unreadable expression. “Life is complicated. You should know that by now.”
And with that, he grabbed his wand again, flicking it casually at the book in front of him, demonstrating the spell again, as if to prove a point.
Again, there was no hesitation in his movements. Just a simple, clean transformation of the object on the page.
You had to admit it—he’d done it again. Perfectly.
You couldn't help but feel a bit unnerved. Was Heeseung really just playing you the whole time? Or was there something else going on here? Either way, you had no idea what to make of it.
“Alright, you’re done,” you muttered, more to yourself than to him. “Just... don’t let it go to your head.”
Heeseung didn’t respond at first, but you could feel his gaze on you as he packed away his things. When he did speak, it was quieter than before, almost... serious.
“I’m just getting started...”
It was the first time he’d said anything without his usual swagger. And it sent a ripple of unease through you.
It was much easier for you to get Heeseung to focus after that day. His sudden progress—effortless and unnerving—was like a shift in the universe that made everything feel just a bit off. He listened now, followed instructions without teasing, and actually managed to nail every single spell you demonstrated. For once, he wasn’t playing games. The lessons were no longer frustrating. They were... manageable.
But you couldn’t shake the suspicion that had wormed its way into your mind.
It was too much of a coincidence that Heeseung’s sudden motivation came right after he saw you with Taesan. And it wasn’t like you were blind. You knew there was something between them. You weren’t stupid. The way Heeseung would glare at Taesan, the tension between them—it was obvious.
You could tell from their interactions that there was a rivalry, maybe even something more personal. The small comments Heeseung had made, the way he’d been on edge when he saw Taesan at the library, it didn’t take much to piece it together. You weren’t used to meddling in other people’s business, but this situation had you curious. You weren’t sure if it was just Heeseung being... Heeseung, or if there was something else at play.
So, you did what anyone would do when they were curious: you asked Taesan.
It wasn’t hard to find him. He was sitting at a table in the Great Hall, eating with a few friends. You walked over and slid into the seat across from him, giving him a small smile.
"Hey," you said casually, your voice low so the others wouldn’t overhear. "I need to ask you something."
Taesan looked up from his meal, pausing when he saw the seriousness on your face. “Sure, what’s up?”
You glanced over at Heeseung, who was sitting at a table nearby, surrounded by his usual crowd. He looked as smug as ever, but you couldn’t miss the way his eyes flickered to you and Taesan for a moment.
“Is there something going on between you and Heeseung?” you asked bluntly, cutting straight to the point.
Taesan blinked at you in surprise, but then he chuckled, shaking his head. “You noticed, huh?”
“Of course I did. You two are clearly not on the best terms. What’s going on?”
Taesan leaned back in his chair, his expression thoughtful for a moment before he spoke. "We’re rivals. Quidditch rivals, to be exact." He shrugged nonchalantly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “You know the competition, right? He’s a Chaser, I’m the Seeker. We’ve been going at it for years.”
You raised an eyebrow. "Quidditch? That’s it?"
Taesan chuckled again, this time with a bit more warmth. “It’s more than just the game. There’s... a bit of history between us. It goes beyond the pitch. We’ve always been at odds. Heeseung likes to act like he’s all carefree and cool, but trust me, there’s a lot of pride under that laid-back act.”
You couldn’t help but frown at that. Of course Heeseung had pride. You’d seen it firsthand. But you didn’t realize how much of it was tied up in something as simple as a rivalry. It felt deeper than that, more personal.
So you leaned in slightly, lowering your voice. “You said it goes beyond the pitch. What did you mean by that? What history?”
Taesan let out a long, tired sigh, raking a hand through his hair. He looked like he was debating whether or not to tell you, but in the end, he gave in with a shrug.
“It’s stupid, really,” he muttered. “But back in fourth year, there was… a girl.”
You blinked. “A girl?”
“Yeah,” he said, glancing at you as if gauging your reaction. “She wasn’t just any girl, either. She was brilliant—top of her class in Charms, wicked on a broomstick, and not afraid to throw a Bat-Bogey Hex at anyone who crossed her. Both Heeseung and I were… interested.”
You stared at him, trying to picture it. Heeseung chasing after someone with the same chaos and cocky charm he always wore like a badge. And Taesan—calm, composed Taesan—competing alongside him? That was a dynamic you hadn’t imagined before.
“So… what happened?” you asked slowly.
“We both tried to win her over,” Taesan explained, his voice laced with the bitterness of old memory. “It got competitive fast. Dumb things. Dueling in secret, trying to outshine each other in class, showing off during Quidditch matches. She didn’t pick either of us in the end.”
You tilted your head, brows furrowed. “Why not?”
“She got expelled,” he said flatly.
Your eyes widened. “Wait—what?”
Taesan nodded, a bit grimly. “Turns out she was experimenting with some really dangerous spells. Things that weren’t exactly legal. Word got out. She was caught with a restricted book and some potion ingredients that she shouldn't have had access to. Boom. Gone. Just like that.”
You sat there in stunned silence, processing that. “And neither of you knew?”
“Not a clue,” Taesan admitted. “We were both so wrapped up in competing, we didn’t even realize what she was up to. After that, everything between me and Heeseung just… soured. It stopped being friendly competition. It turned personal. Real fast.”
You looked over at Heeseung’s table again, at the way he leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head, laughing at something one of his mates said. You never would’ve guessed a story like that lived behind the easy smirks and constant flirting.
“Merlin,” you muttered under your breath.
Taesan gave you a wry smile. “Told you it was stupid.”
“It’s kind of tragic,” you said honestly.
“Yeah, well, so is being stuck tutoring him,” Taesan joked, nudging you with his elbow again. “You’ve got patience. I’ll give you that.”
You huffed, more to yourself than anyone else. Because the more you learned, the less simple Heeseung became. And for someone who liked things to be controlled and straightforward… you had a feeling you were walking right into the storm without even meaning to.
You were mid-grumble, muttering something to Taesan about prideful idiots and hopeless causes when you suddenly felt it—that eerie, unmistakable tingle of someone standing directly behind you. Too close. Too quiet.
Taesan’s eyes flicked up from his plate, a small smile pulling at his lips.
“Oh—Heeseung.”
Wait. What?
Your heart stuttered.
Heeseung was right behind you?
Before you could turn, before you could even react, strong arms wrapped around you from behind, and you were abruptly pulled to your feet with a surprised yelp that got caught in your throat. Your back hit a solid chest—his chest—and before you could squirm away, he had you trapped there, completely engulfed in his arms like this was a normal thing. Like this was something he always did.
“What are you two gossiping about, hmm?” His voice was low, teasing, warm against your ear.
You blinked, stunned, a thousand questions swirling in your head—but your body was locked up, frozen by the sudden contact, by how close he was, by how tight his grip had become around your waist. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t loose. It was possessive. Like he dared you to even think about slipping out of his grasp.
Taesan just chuckled from across the table, completely unbothered. “Nothing much. Just how tragic it is that someone needs tutoring in the first place.”
You could hear the grin in Heeseung’s voice. “Ah, I’m sure you’re both having a lovely little bonding moment over my academic struggles.”
“We were,” Taesan said casually. “Right up until you crashed it.”
You tried to move—just a little. But Heeseung’s arm only tightened, pressing you a fraction closer, like he was trying to make a point.
“Comfortable?” he murmured, eyes probably dancing with amusement.
You finally managed to find your voice, though it came out a bit strangled. “Heeseung. Let go.”
He didn’t. Instead, he dipped his head, speaking just loud enough for you to hear. “You smell like cinnamon.”
You almost choked.
“Heeseung.” You tried again, firmer this time, ignoring the burning in your cheeks.
But he didn’t budge. If anything, his hold on you tightened subtly, his mouth lowering just enough that his breath brushed the shell of your ear.
“You know,” he murmured, voice low and smooth like velvet, “you get this little crease between your eyebrows when you’re annoyed… it’s kind of cute.”
You stiffened.
“And when you blush,” he continued, tilting his head closer until his nose nearly brushed your jaw, “it climbs all the way to your ears. Like right now.”
Your breath hitched—barely, but enough.
Taesan, ever the gentleman—or maybe just wisely pretending not to see anything—went back to his food with a quiet hum, though you noticed the small smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth.
You tried to wriggle free again, but Heeseung was already turning you slightly, his arm sliding around your waist, guiding you like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Come on,” he said softly, lips still far too close to your skin. “You’re too tense. Let's get some air.”
“Heeseung—”
“Shh,” he said, the sound near your ear making your skin erupt in goosebumps. “You’ll thank me.”
And before you could protest again, he was steering you smoothly out of the Great Hall like it was his own personal ballroom and you were a dance partner he’d claimed without asking.
You glanced behind you in disbelief, catching Taesan’s knowing gaze as he lazily chewed on a piece of toast and lifted a subtle eyebrow, like told you so.
Heeseung didn’t stop until you were halfway down a corridor just outside the Hall, where the hum of voices faded behind you and the only sound was the soft echo of your shoes against the stone floor.
“Can you let go now?” you muttered, though your voice wasn’t nearly as sharp as it should’ve been. It came out softer than you intended, too laced with the breathlessness he always seemed to draw out of you—like he knew exactly how to unravel your composure.
He didn’t move at first.
Heeseung just looked at you, head tilted slightly, eyes flicking across your face as if he was reading something only he could see. “No,” he said finally, voice low. “Not yet.”
You blinked. “Why not?”
His grip around your waist loosened, but only so he could trail his fingers along the side of your arm. “Because the second I do, you’re going to run,” he murmured. “And I’m not done messing with you yet.”
You stared at him, heart pounding. “I’m not some game, Heeseung.”
His gaze softened for a fleeting second. “I know.”
Then—just like that—his expression shifted again. That cocky grin returned, sharp and smug. “But I do like the way you play.”
You scoffed, trying to push away from him, but he caught your wrist gently before you could take a step back.
“Relax,” he said. “I’m not dragging you into a dungeon. I just wanted you away from him.”
Your eyes narrowed. “Taesan?”
Heeseung rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Quidditch boy. With the puppy eyes and that little half-smile like he’s the good guy in a tragic romance. Please.”
You gaped at him, stunned. “Are you jealous?”
Heeseung laughed—loud, unbothered, head tipping back just a little as the sound echoed off the stone walls. “Jealous? Trust me, princess,” he said, flashing you a lazy grin, “if I was jealous, you wouldn’t be standing all prim and proper like this.”
Your brows furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He tilted his head slightly, eyes dark with mischief, and in a low, velvety whisper he said, “You know exactly what I mean.”
You stiffened. Your lips parted, but no words came out.
Because Merlin help you, you did know what he meant.
Heeseung’s gaze dragged down the line of your body and then right back up, settling on your mouth for a fraction too long before he smirked again—like he’d just won a game you didn’t know you were playing.
Your heart was thudding in your ears, heat climbing your neck as you instinctively crossed your arms—whether to shield yourself from his gaze or stop yourself from grabbing him by the collar, you weren’t entirely sure.
Damn him. Damn him and his stupid face and his stupid voice and his stupid everything.
You clenched your jaw, staring hard at the empty stretch of corridor ahead of you instead of the very real, very smug boy standing beside you. If you looked at him now—if you met his eyes—you knew you’d lose the last ounce of control you were holding onto by a thread.
“For what reason exactly,” you eventually bit out, “did you drag me out of the Great Hall like some deranged lunatic?”
Heeseung only hummed, hands casually stuffed in his pockets like he hadn’t just manhandled you in front of half the school. “Hmm… good question.”
You turned to him sharply, fully prepared to tear into him again, when he finally moved.
With an exaggerated sigh, he pulled something out of his pocket—a folded parchment, slightly crinkled at the edges—and held it out between two fingers like he was offering you a sweet.
You blinked, hesitated, then snatched it from him, unfolding it with a frown.
Your eyes scanned the page once. Then twice.
It was his most recent Transfiguration assignment. The same one Professor McGonagall had assigned last week. The one you’d spent literal hours preparing him for—between all the teasing, the distractions, and your mounting frustration.
And there it was. In neat, slanted handwriting at the top of the parchment:
Outstanding.
You stared at it in disbelief, lips parting slightly. “You…”
Heeseung leaned against the wall again, smug as ever. “I know. Don’t look so shocked. Hurts my feelings.”
“But you—” You looked back down at the parchment, flipping it over like maybe it was a trick. Like maybe he’d bribed the house elves to forge it. “You barely paid attention. You threw a paper plane across the table, for Merlin’s sake.”
“And still managed to impress McGonagall,” he said, voice lined with pride. “Maybe I just needed the right kind of motivation.”
You narrowed your eyes. “Me threatening to quit tutoring?”
He grinned. “You sitting next to Quidditch boy with the doe eyes.”
You flushed instantly. “It’s not like that.”
“Didn’t say it was,” Heeseung said lightly, pushing off the wall and stepping closer again, chin tilted just slightly as he watched you—like he was trying to read something from your face. “But maybe I didn’t like it.”
You folded the parchment and shoved it back into his chest, scowling at the way your heart thudded. "Idiot."
You had found the perfect form of motivation for Heeseung to actually study and learn.
And that motivation?
Taesan.
It was ridiculous how fast Heeseung would straighten up, stop doodling, and actually focus the second Taesan entered the picture. Just the sight of the other boy sitting beside you, exchanging notes or laughing at something you'd said, was enough to turn Heeseung into the most attentive student Hogwarts had ever seen. Wand out, quill ready, eyes glued to the parchment like he had something to prove. And in a way… he did.
Only downside?
You felt horribly guilty for using Taesan. Not that he minded. In fact, he was thrilled to play along.
"Anything to get under Heeseung’s skin," he'd said with a wink one afternoon, leaning a little closer to you on purpose. "And if I get to spend time with you too? Bonus."
It made you laugh—awkward and a bit flustered—but it worked. Every. Single. Time. Heeseung would visibly bristle, jaw tight, mouth twitching with words he didn’t say. He never said it, but you knew.
Because the second Taesan was gone, the aftermath began with Heeseung.
Cause he suddenly acted like he'd laid a claim on you.
That was the only way you could describe it.
Suddenly he was everywhere—next to you in the corridors, walking you to class even when he had somewhere else to be, sitting close enough during tutoring that your knees brushed under the table. He started calling you his tutor in a tone that left no room for argument. When people passed by and looked too long, he would casually drape an arm over your chair, or mutter something low like, “Should we give them a show?”
You told him to shut up.
You told him to stop.
But you didn’t move away.
And that was the real problem, wasn’t it?
Because you stopped wanting to. And you hated it.
You hated how easily Heeseung got under your skin, how his smirks lingered in your mind long after he was gone, how the scent of his cologne clung to your robe whenever he leaned in too close. You hated that you were supposed to be the composed one—the logical, focused, untouchable one.
But then he’d tilt his head and say something like, “You missed me, didn’t you?” and you’d feel like your entire body betrayed you with one stupid skip of your heart.
You told yourself it was the game. Just tension from tutoring and competition. Just hormones.
But it didn’t explain the way he looked at you now, the way he acted around you now.
It became a pattern. He’d be an asshole in front of Taesan, smug and dramatic, acting like the library was his personal performance stage and you were his muse.
And when he wasn’t throwing smug glances or making comments under his breath that had no right making your face warm, he was staring at you like he wanted to memorize you.
Like he already had.
You caught him once, watching you too intently as you explained something. Your words faltered mid-sentence, and his mouth quirked up into something soft, almost fond.
“What?” you mumbled.
“Nothing,” he said, eyes twinkling. “Just… I don’t think you even realize it, do you?”
“Realize what?”
He just leaned back in his chair and grinned.
“How fun it is to be yours.”
And you swore your heart forgot how to beat.
You actually almost slipped once.
It had been one of those quieter study sessions—no Taesan, no distractions, just the two of you tucked into the corner of the library where no one really went after hours. You had your notes spread out, a well-worn Transfiguration text open between you, and Heeseung was shockingly cooperative that evening.
At least at first.
He was sitting beside you—closer than usual. So close your legs were almost touching beneath the table, and your arms kept brushing whenever you reached for your quill or turned a page. You told yourself it didn’t matter. You told yourself you were used to it by now. You were fine.
But then he leaned in.
You didn’t even notice at first—too busy flipping to the next chapter and scribbling notes—but then his shoulder pressed against yours, and the heat of him was right there, and before you could even blink, he was so close.
You turned to say something—maybe a snarky comment, maybe a reminder to focus—and froze.
He was already looking at you.
Both of your faces were so close, your noses practically brushed. The words caught in your throat, completely useless now as you felt his breath fan across your cheek.
Heeseung inhaled slowly, like even the scent of you was enough to short-circuit his brain.
And then he looked down at your lips.
Your gaze dropped too—without thinking, without meaning to—and Merlin, it was like everything in the room stopped. The flickering candlelight, the soft scratch of parchment from nearby students, even the voice of Madam Pince scolding students.
Nothing moved.
You didn’t move.
And Heeseung?
If he leaned in even half an inch more, you weren’t sure what you’d do.
But your body knew.
And that was what terrified you most.
But as you and Heeseung locked eyes again, that fear that felt so suffocating a moment ago seemed to melt away.
It felt like a slow-moving storm, the kind that doesn’t give you a chance to prepare. You could feel his breath brushing against your skin, the steady rise and fall of his chest as his gaze dropped to your lips once again.
You both leaned in so slow at first that it felt like the longest moment of your life.
Heeseung’s hand moved, fingers brushing against the table, as if he was hesitating, waiting for something, or maybe waiting for you. You didn’t know. All you could focus on was the fact that every inch of space between you was slowly disappearing.
And then, in that instant, your lips almost touched—just the smallest gap left between you, the air thick with tension, and you could’ve sworn you heard your own heart pounding in your ears.
"Stop," you whispered.
The word didn’t even sound like it came from your mouth. It was too quiet, too shaky, too unconvincing.
Heeseung’s lips quirked into that familiar, maddening grin, though it was different now—softer.
“You don’t really want me to stop,” he murmured, his voice barely audible, yet the tone sent a shiver down your spine.
You agreed with him breathlessly, the words slipping out before you even realized you’d said them. “No... I don’t.”
The moment you agreed, his hand, which had been lingering beside you, slowly slid to the back of your neck, fingers brushing against your skin with just the right amount of pressure. You inhaled sharply as he gently cupped the nape of your neck, his thumb tracing circles that made your skin prickle.
Before you could think, he closed the distance between you, his lips pressed softly against yours. It was almost like he was claiming you, but there was something tender in the way he moved, as if he was savoring the moment. Like he was savoring you.
You couldn’t pull away. Not that you wanted to. Everything in you was telling you to let go, to lean into it, and so you did. You let yourself fall into the kiss, hands trembling as they reached for him—one resting against his chest, the other finding its way into his hair.
Heeseung’s other hand slipped around to your back, pulling you closer until there was no space between you at all. Your breath mingled with his, shallow and fast, and the kiss deepened, the world narrowing down to just the two of you. You were losing yourself to him. The way he tasted, the way he moved, the way his body fit so perfectly against yours.
You clung to him, your hands gripping the fabric of his shirt, as if you needed him to ground you. Every little touch, every movement, felt like it was pulling you deeper into the moment, and you couldn’t fight it, not anymore. Heeseung’s groan escaped quietly, his body slightly tensing as he responded to your touch.
He paused for a split second, pulling away just enough to catch his breath. His gaze was dark, almost like he was fighting with himself, but he didn’t let go of you.
His lips ghosted over your cheek, just a gentle caress, and then he whispered, “You’re making this harder than it needs to be…”
You could only nod slightly, too lost in the sensation of him against you to form coherent words. It felt so... right in a way you hadn’t expected.
Heeseung’s hand rested on your waist, a steady pressure that kept you close, yet he wasn’t pushing any further. And then, as if he had suddenly realized how dangerously close you both were to crossing a line, he leaned back slightly.
“Maybe we should... slow down,” he murmured, eyes never leaving yours, though his voice was still thick, like he wasn’t completely ready to let go of this moment either.
You shook your head, the words barely leaving your lips before you found yourself closing the distance again, your mouth finding his in a fierce kiss.
“No,” you mumbled against his lips, your voice breathless, almost desperate.
Heeseung let out a low, frustrated curse, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he kissed you back with a force that made your knees weak. His hands roamed, pulling you even closer, as if he couldn’t get enough of the closeness either. His lips were insistent, hungry, and you responded in kind, losing yourself again.
Everything about this felt like a blur. The way his body pressed against yours, the heat between you two, the quiet noises of your breath and his mixed together. There was nothing but him and the way he made you feel, like you could finally let go of all the tension that had built up between you.
But just as quickly as it had started, Heeseung slowed the kiss, pulling back just enough to catch his breath, his forehead resting against yours as both of you tried to regain some composure.
“You’re trouble,” he muttered, still catching his breath, a small, amused smirk tugging at his lips.
You agreed with him dazed, your voice barely a whisper. “I know.”
It wasn’t a lie. You were trouble. You wanted trouble. And right now, you didn’t want to fight it. You were a woman of control, always calculating, always careful. But at that moment, you wanted to lose that control. You wanted him to take it. Heeseung had a way of making everything else feel insignificant—like all the careful walls you’d built around yourself were nothing compared to the pull of his presence.
And when you felt his hand slip to your waist, pulling you even closer, his lips pressing to your neck, you realized that maybe, just maybe, you didn’t want to fight it anymore. You needed him to take control.
His lips trailed down the curve of your neck, and you couldn’t help but shiver, your breath hitching as he kissed the sensitive skin there. You could feel his smirk against your skin as if he knew exactly what he was doing, how much power he held in this moment.
"Isn’t it fun letting everything go," he murmured against your skin, his words making your pulse quicken. You barely registered that he’d stopped speaking before he pulled you into another kiss.
The warmth of his body pressed into yours as his hands slid down to your hips, fingers brushing lightly before tightening as he pulled you even closer. He was taking control, and every part of you responded to it, eager, willing.
Heeseung’s kisses became more deliberate, teasing, as he moved his lips lower, his hands guiding you effortlessly, making you forget everything but the sensation of him. You felt like you were falling, and you didn’t want to stop.
“You’re going to make me lose my mind,” you murmured, barely keeping it together.
Heeseung only chuckled, a dark, teasing sound that sent another wave of heat through you. "That’s the plan," he whispered, his lips brushing against your ear before he kissed the sensitive spot just below it.
It was too much and not enough all at once. You could feel your heart racing, your breath uneven. Heeseung wasn’t just teasing anymore—he was making sure you didn’t have a single ounce of control left to cling to.
And, strangely enough, you didn’t want it back.
Heeseung's lips never left your skin, trailing slow, teasing kisses down your neck as his hands explored the curve of your waist, pulling you tighter against him. He wasn’t in a rush. No, he was savoring every second, every shiver that passed through you. His breath against your skin made you tremble, but his words did something entirely different.
"You’re such a good tutor," he whispered, voice low and laced with amusement. "Kept up with me so well. But I have to say, it’s funny how easy it is to make you crumble."
You felt the heat in your cheeks spread, your pulse quickening, but you couldn’t decide if it was from embarrassment or desire. His words were like a cruel taunt, yet they stirred something in you, something that was both humbling and arousing. You wanted to hide from the way he made you feel, but at the same time, the compliments mixed with his teasing sent a rush through your body that was impossible to ignore.
He kissed along the edge of your jaw, his lips brushing against your skin with deliberate slowness. "You're good at pretending to be in control," he continued, his voice turning darker. "But I can see it, can feel it... how easily you let go when I touch you, like a little defenseless kitty."
You clenched your fists at your sides, trying to maintain your composure, but it was getting harder to hide the way your body betrayed you. The way your breath hitched when he whispered those words, how his touch made your thoughts scatter. You wanted to tell him to stop, to pull away but the way he made you feel… it was like nothing else mattered anymore.
And then, as if he could sense your internal struggle, he pulled back just slightly, eyes dark, smirk playing at the corners of his lips. “You know, it’s cute when you try to pretend you’re not enjoying this,” he teased, voice low, almost a growl. “But I think we both know better.”
You couldn't meet his gaze. You couldn’t even bring yourself to speak, feeling too exposed, too vulnerable, too lost in the way he had turned your emotions inside out.
You closed your eyes for a moment, letting the heat of the moment swallow you whole. Heeseung had this uncanny ability to unravel you, to make you forget everything you had ever tried to control. He was playing with you, juggling your emotions with a skill that left you confused, unsure of where you stood, but completely under his spell.
Heeseung’s smirk only widened as he noticed the way you struggled to hold your ground. His hand slid lower, just enough to make you tense, his thumb brushing the curve of your waist in a way that made your breath catch.
“Look at you,” he murmured, his voice thick with satisfaction. “You’ve been pretending all this time, haven’t you?”
He leaned in closer, his lips grazing your ear, sending a shiver down your spine as he whispered, “You think you can handle me, don’t you? But you’re already cracking. You’re already letting me win.”
Heeseung’s hands were everywhere now—one still at your waist, the other now threading through your hair, tilting your head back as if he owned you. His lips brushed against your neck, and his teeth nipped at your skin, causing you to gasp.
"Don’t act like you don’t like it," he whispered, low and threatening. "You think I can’t see it? How easily I can make you forget all that control you love so much." His grip on you tightened, holding you in place as he added, “You thought you had everything under control, huh? But you’re nothing but a perfect little puppet on a string."
You felt the sting of his words, sharp and cutting but there was something about it that made you flush even more. Something about the way he made you feel both degraded and desired at the same time.
"You’re so good at pretending, but you can’t hide from me," he murmured, his voice dripping with fake sugary honey. "I see the way you need me. How badly you want me to break you down, make you lose control. I’ll take my time with you, though. Make you beg for it.”
His words were cruel, but the way he said them, the way his fingers gripped your jaw to force you to look at him, made it clear that he wasn’t going to stop until he had you exactly where he wanted.
And despite the warning bells ringing in your mind, part of you couldn’t help but lean into him, your body betraying you even as you tried to hold on to your last shred of control.
You hated chaos. You hated messy. You hated unpredictability and recklessness.
You thrived on control, on order, on being able to predict every outcome, to mold everything to fit into neat little categories.
But when it was all smashed together in a person, when it was him, something you couldn’t tame, something you couldn’t figure out no matter how much you tried?
Oh, how you loved it so much.
It was maddening, infuriating, and yet... addicting.
Heeseung was everything you hated. He was unpredictable. He was reckless, and he didn’t care who saw it. He didn’t care what anyone thought, least of all you. And it drove you insane. It made your blood boil, but it also made your heart race in ways you couldn’t explain.
With every teasing word, every touch, every taunt, he peeled away at your control until there was nothing left but the raw need that had taken root deep within you. He made you ache in a way that was both pleasurable and frustrating, like being trapped in a whirlwind that you couldn’t escape but didn’t want to.
You couldn’t help but crave him—crave the chaos he brought, even though it scared the hell out of you. The way he made you feel alive in a way that no amount of control or precision ever could.
You didn’t want to be in control anymore.
You wanted him.
You wanted the chaos he offered, the unpredictability of him. Because, somehow, with him you were starting to find pieces of yourself you didn’t even know you’d lost somewhere along the way. And for once, you didn’t care.
Because as much as you hated chaos, it felt so damn good when it was with him.
Synopsis: At Hogwarts, you were golden. He chose darkness and shattered you. Years later, you hesitate to kill him. He kills for you instead. Now you teach at Hogwarts, trying to forget him. But Park Sunghoon never forgot you, now he has decided he won’t lose you twice.
a/n: Welcome to the first part of this series. It occured to me very late that it became too long to be a oneshot, so i had to cut it up. Now this first part is.. almost like an epilogue, but more detailed. So enjoy! REBLOGS AND COMMENTARY IS APPRECIATED!
Your father always called you a handful.
Not cruelly. Never cruelly. It was usually said with a tired sigh and the faintest hint of pride in his eyes, like he couldn’t decide whether to scold you or applaud you.
“You’ll go far,” he’d tell you, hands clasped behind his back as he watched you duel older cousins twice your size. “But that appetite for danger of yours will drag you down if you’re not careful.”
You always brushed him off, always laughed it off.
Because you were extraordinary.
Top marks. Impeccable wand control. A natural duelist. Pure-blooded and well-bred, raised with old magic. Professors at Hogwarts praised your essays, your reflexes, your instincts. You wanted to be an Auror — and you had the discipline to get there. Your grades never slipped. Your ambition was steady, focused, sharp.
But there was that other side of you.
The side that liked testing spells just to see how far they could stretch. The side that found creatures with too many teeth fascinating instead of frightening.
You liked teeth and claws and things that could kill you if you made one wrong move.
You liked danger. And yes, maybe you liked chaos just a little too much.
You were exceptional with hexes — quick, creative, controlled. You knew the difference between harmful and humiliating, and you preferred the latter. There was an art to embarrassment. A craft.
Filch and Mrs. Norris simply happened to be easy canvases.
Their patrol routes were predictable. Their reactions were theatrical. Their paranoia made everything better.
And then there was Peeves.
Peeves adored you.
You were one of the few students who could keep up with him — who could invent chaos instead of merely react to it.
Tonight’s prank had been meticulously planned.
You had enchanted one of the suits of armor near the third-floor corridor — the one Filch always passed during his late-night rounds. A simple trigger charm. Once activated, the armor would screech accusations at him in a booming, dramatic voice while releasing a cloud of bright purple smoke and a cascade of glittering sparks that clung stubbornly to fabric.
Harmless.
Humiliating.
Perfect.
You crouched behind a stone pillar, wand tucked into your sleeve, heart beating with anticipatory delight. Peeves hovered beside you, vibrating with barely contained excitement.
“He’s coming,” Peeves whispered, grinning wide enough to split his face. “Oh, this will be delicious—”
Footsteps echoed.
Measured. Even.
Not the shuffling, irritated stomp of Argus Filch.
But you were too excited to notice.
The suit of armor detonated into sound.
“FIIIIILCH YOU MISERABLE CAT-OBSESSED—”
Purple smoke burst outward in an impressive plume. Sparks rained down like cursed confetti.
And instead of wheezing outrage—
There was a sharp intake of breath. A cough. And a distinctly masculine voice snapping in surprise.
Peeves vanished. Just—gone.
“Coward,” you muttered under your breath, heart plummeting straight into your shoes. You stepped out immediately, because unlike poltergeists, you had dignity.
“I am so sorry — that was not meant for you, I thought you were Filch, I swear I would never—”
The student turned.
Your apology died mid-sentence.
Park Sunghoon.
He stood in the fading smoke like something carved from it — tall, composed, dark hair slightly mussed from the magical blast. Purple glitter clung to the shoulders of his robes and dusted the sleeve near his wrist. The torchlight along the corridor caught in his eyes, sharpening them into something almost metallic.
You had seen him before. Everyone had.
Pure-blooded. Ravenclaw. Top of the year in nearly everything. Brilliant. Ruthless. Quiet in a way that didn’t invite pity but demanded space.
You had seen him across the Great Hall, sitting alone at the Ravenclaw table with a book open. You shared—what? Two classes? Advanced Charms and Ancient Runes. You were almost certain you had never actually heard his voice before.
Not properly. Not directed at you.
And now he was staring at you. Not angry in a loud way. Just… displeased. Assessing.
Your pulse began behaving very unprofessionally.
“I’m sorry,” you repeated, softer now, suddenly hyperaware of the distance between you — or lack thereof.
He blinked once.
“It’s fine,” he said.
Merlin.
You had not been prepared for that, not prepared for how the sound slid down your spine.
You had not expected that voice.
“It was meant for Filch,” you added quickly, because for some reason you felt compelled to defend yourself.
“I gathered,” he replied dryly.
There it was.
A faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. Not amusement. Not quite. Something restrained.
Up close, he was unfair.
Sharp jaw. Dark lashes. Eyes that looked like they held thoughts he would never share, like they held too much thought and too little mercy. There was something composed about him, something restrained — like he was constantly holding something back.
And he was tall.
You had to tilt your head slightly to maintain eye contact, and that realization alone sent your traitorous heart into a frenzy in a way that was deeply inconvenient.
He didn’t fidget. He didn’t brush the glitter off his robe. He didn’t even look embarrassed.
He simply stood there, taking you in like you were the unexpected variable in an equation he hadn’t planned for.
“You’re in Advanced Defensive Theory,” he said.
Not a question.
You blinked. “Yes.”
“You argue with Professor Whitmore.”
“I contribute,” you corrected immediately.
“You interrupt.”
You scoffed softly, folding your arms over your chest like you were in the middle of a casual debate instead of standing inches away from a boy who made your pulse behave irrationally.
“In my book,” you said breezily, “that’s the same thing.”
His eyebrow lifted slightly.
You pushed on, brushing him off with a careless tilt of your head. “If someone is wrong, I correct them. If someone is vague, I clarify. If Professor Whitmore insists on explaining defensive counter-curses like we’re first years, I improve the lecture.”
A faint curl of satisfaction settled in your chest. You were used to winning arguments. Used to people reacting — either with amusement or exasperation.
Sunghoon did neither. He just stared at you.
It wasn’t a blank stare. It wasn’t empty. It was sharp and focused, like he was dissecting your words instead of responding to them. His gaze didn’t flicker away when you shifted your weight. It didn’t falter when you met it head-on.
If anything, it deepened.
“You’re not going to argue back?” you asked lightly, attempting to reclaim some of your usual confidence.
He didn’t answer. He just continued staring.
And Merlin help you, but that was worse. Because it felt like he was waiting for something. Watching for something. As if he already knew how you would react and simply wanted to see it unfold.
Your fingers fidgeted slightly at your side before you forced them still. “Anyway,” you said, shifting gears, “I really am sorry. That wasn’t meant for you.”
Still nothing. Just those dark eyes, steady and unrelenting.
For someone so quiet, he had a presence that was almost suffocating. Not loud. Not overbearing. Just… intense.
It made your skin feel too tight.
“I didn’t expect anyone else to be walking through here,” you added, softer this time.
His gaze flickered — just barely — to the enchanted armor, now standing innocently against the wall as though it hadn’t just screamed obscenities.
Then he looked back at you.
“How did you do it?”
You blinked.
“…What?”
“The trigger,” he clarified calmly. “How did you bind it?”
For a second, you simply stared at him.
That was not the question you expected.
“I—” You faltered, thrown off. “I’m sorry?”
His expression didn’t change. “The suit of armor. You hexed it to respond. How?”
Confusion washed over you, followed quickly by something like surprise.
He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t offended. He was curious.
“You’re asking about the enchantment?” you said slowly.
“Yes.”
The simplicity of it unsettled you.
You glanced back at the armor instinctively, as if expecting it to answer for you. “It’s not complicated,” you said after a moment, though your tone lost some of its usual teasing edge. “It’s a layered charm.”
He didn’t interrupt.
You found yourself explaining before you consciously decided to. “I used a modified auditory trigger,” you said, gesturing vaguely with your hand. “The armor only activates when it detects ‘Filch’ spoken within a certain radius.”
“And the smoke?” he asked.
“Basic dispersion charm. Non-toxic. Stains fabric for about an hour, though.” You winced slightly. “I may have overdone the glitter.”
His gaze flicked to his shoulder again. Then back to you.
“You stacked the enchantments,” he observed.
“Yes.”
“In sequence?”
“Of course.”
“You’re not supposed to be able to layer that many minor charms without destabilizing the trigger,” he said evenly.
You blinked at him, surprised despite yourself.
“I stabilized the core,” you replied automatically. “Anchored it to the armor’s existing ward structure.”
His eyes sharpened. “How?”
“Why do you care?” you asked quietly.
“Because it worked.”
It shouldn’t have felt like praise. But it did.
Your pulse skipped.
“I adjusted the matrix,” you admitted after a beat. “There’s a binding symbol carved inside the base. It redirects excess magic back into the object instead of letting it disperse.”
Another stretch of silence.
You expected him to challenge it. To critique it. To tell you it was inefficient. Instead, something shifted in his expression.
Interest.
“You modified the runes yourself,” he said.
“Yes.”
“How long did it take you?”
“Like one minute.”
His gaze lingered on you in a way that made your stomach flip.
“It was just for fun,” you added. “I wasn’t exactly writing a thesis.”
“You shouldn’t waste that on pranks.” There was no condescension in his tone. Just a fact.
Your chin lifted instinctively. “I don’t waste anything.”
His lips twitched almost imperceptibly. “I can see that.” He glanced once more at the armor, then back at you. “Next time,” he said calmly, “tell me before you try something like that.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So I can see it up close.”
You stared at him, thrown off balance in a way you didn’t appreciate. “You want to supervise my rule-breaking?” you asked lightly, trying to regain control of the moment.
“I want to see how your mind works when you’re not being graded.”
That did something to you. Because most people liked you for what you produced. Your scores. Your boldness in class.
But Sunghoon wasn’t impressed by results. He was curious about process.
You tilted your head, studying him the way he’d been studying you.
“You’re strange,” you decided.
A faint flicker of something — almost amusement — passed through his eyes.
“So are you.”
And somehow, that felt like agreement.
After that night, he didn’t disappear back into quiet observation.
He sought you out.
The next time you entered Advanced Defensive Theory, the seat beside you was occupied.
By him.
He didn’t acknowledge it. Didn’t look at you when you sat down.
He never made a spectacle of it. Sunghoon didn’t do spectacle.
He existed beside you like a shadow that chose to stay.
You found yourself looking for him.
In the Great Hall, your eyes would drift to the Ravenclaw table without permission. In the library, you’d pretend not to notice him already seated near the section you favored. In corridors, you’d sense him before you saw him.
By fifth year, people had started noticing how Sunghoon was always there. Always just slightly behind you. Or beside you. Close enough that the space between you felt claimed.
He didn’t touch you often in public. But when he did, it was obvious.
A hand at the small of your back when a corridor grew too crowded. Fingers brushing yours briefly before class began. Standing half a step in front of you when someone he didn’t like tried to linger in conversation.
He never raised his voice. He never made scenes.
He didn’t need to.
People felt the quiet warning in his stare. The calm certainty in the way he said, “She’s busy,” without asking your permission — but somehow knowing you didn’t mind.
And you didn’t.
Because it wasn’t suffocating.
It was grounding.
You liked knowing someone that sharp had chosen you.
The Yule Ball was when everything shifted.
Until then, whatever existed between you and Sunghoon had lived in the spaces between words — in shared glances across classrooms, in late-night study sessions that stretched a little too long, in the way he always seemed to appear at your side without being asked.
But the Yule Ball made things visible, bringing it to the light.
You had agreed to attend with a boy from your house — charming, well-liked, perfectly acceptable. The kind of boy your parents would approve of. The kind that smiled easily and didn’t carry storms behind his eyes.
He’d asked weeks in advance, red-faced but hopeful. You had said yes because it was simple.
Because Sunghoon hadn’t asked.
In fact, he hadn’t said anything at all when invitations began circulating. No jealousy. No claim. Not even curiosity. Just that same unreadable expression he always wore when he was thinking too much.
You told yourself it didn’t matter.
The night of the Yule Ball, the Great Hall was transformed — floating candles suspended beneath an enchanted winter sky, snow drifting lazily along the ceiling, frost-kissed trees lining the walls. Music swelled from the corner where instruments played themselves in elegant harmony. Students glittered in dress robes and jewel-toned gowns, laughter echoing against marble floors.
You felt beautiful. Confident.
Your date was attentive, polite. His hand rested at your waist as you danced, guiding you through the rhythm.
And yet— You felt it.
Across the room. A weight.
Your eyes found him without trying.
Sunghoon stood near one of the ice sculptures, half-shadowed by flickering candlelight. Dark robes tailored perfectly to his tall frame. Hair pushed back just enough to reveal the sharp lines of his face. He wasn’t smiling. He wasn’t dancing. He was watching.
Not the room though. No he was watching you.
You looked away first.
The music shifted into something slower. Your date’s hand slid lower on your waist — just slightly. Enough to be noticeable. Enough to feel presumptuous.
“You clean up nicely,” he murmured near your ear, breath warm against your skin. His fingers pressed a fraction too firmly against your hip.
You stiffened.
It wasn’t overtly inappropriate. But it wasn’t respectful either.
Across the ballroom, Sunghoon went very still. The kind of stillness that meant calculation.
You barely saw the movement. Just a subtle shift of his wrist. A controlled flick.
Your date’s foot caught on absolutely nothing. He pitched forward, balance vanishing beneath him as though the floor itself had betrayed him. Robes tangled. Shoes scraped uselessly against polished marble.
He went down hard.
A ripple of gasps. Then laughter.
Your date scrambled upright, face burning crimson, muttering something about slick floors.
You excused yourself with an apologetic smile and crossed the ballroom, ignoring curious stares. The music swelled behind you, but it felt distant now.
You found him near the edge of the Hall, partially obscured by the silver branches of an enchanted tree.
“You hexed him,” you said quietly.
“Yes.” No hesitation. No attempt to deny it. “He was inappropriate.”
Your brows lifted. “I could’ve handled it.”
“I know.”
That answer threw you.
You expected defensiveness. A justification. Instead, his voice remained calm.
He stepped closer. Close enough that you felt the warmth radiating from him despite the winter air drifting through the enchanted doors.
“I didn’t want you to,” he said. “He touched you like he thought you owed him something.” The possessiveness wasn’t loud. It was precise.
“And you think I owe you?” you challenged softly, though your voice lacked bite.
His gaze locked onto yours.
“No.” A pause. “I think you’re mine.” The words weren’t playful. They weren’t flirtatious.
Your heart hammered so loudly you were certain he could hear it.
“You don’t get to decide that,” you whispered.
“I already did.”
You should have stepped back. You should have bristled. Instead, warmth flooded your chest. It wasn't like he wasn’t claiming control over you, but like he was claiming commitment to you.
The difference mattered.
He leaned down slowly — giving you time to move if you wanted to.
You didn’t.
When his lips met yours, it wasn’t rushed. It was controlled intensity. Like he was memorizing the feeling.
Your fingers curled into the front of his robes, pulling him closer without thinking, while his hand slid to your lower back, anchoring you there.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested briefly against yours.
“You should’ve told me,” he murmured.
“Told you what?”
“That he asked you.”
Your heart skipped.
“You never asked me.”
His jaw tightened slightly. “I don’t compete,” he answered quietly.
You smiled faintly. “That’s arrogant.”
From that night on, there was no ambiguity. You were together. And together, you were formidable. You loved him. Not because he was gentle. But because when he chose something — or someone — he never did it halfway.
You didn’t see the warning signs. You didn’t question the intensity.
You were young and in love.
And completely unaware of how dangerous it would become when the world outside Hogwarts demanded something darker from him.
The change began in the summer before sixth year, subtle and insidious, like ink bleeding slowly across parchment.
You didn’t notice it immediately — how could you, when you were separated by distance and the obligations of separate worlds? Letters had always been your bridge. His used to arrive heavy with detail: sharp observations about Ministry decrees he found illogical, notes on experimental charm variations he’d tested in the quiet of his family estate, even the occasional dry remark about a tedious pure-blood gathering where politics masqueraded as polite conversation. He wrote in that precise, slanted script, filling margins when the page ran out, as if he couldn’t bear to leave anything unsaid.
Then the replies grew shorter.
Not colder, exactly. Still polite. Still him in their careful construction.
I’m well.
Studying.
Family obligations are tedious.
Don’t do anything reckless.
You stared at the sparse lines, turning the parchment over as though more might appear on the reverse. You told yourself it was the pressure of summer — pure-blood families demanded appearances, alliances, endless dinners where every word was weighed like galleons. You knew that life. You lived echoes of it yourself. So you wrote longer letters in response: the Kneazle at your creature assessment internship that nearly took a chunk out of your sleeve, the new hex variation you’d been perfecting (more elegant containment, less backlash), how the days felt longer without him near.
He never acknowledged those parts.
The train ride back to Hogwarts should have felt like returning to solid ground.
The platform at King’s Cross thrummed with familiar chaos — trunks clattering over stone, owls hooting indignantly from cages, students calling greetings across the steam. The scarlet engine huffed impatiently, ready to pull away.
You stepped onto the Hogwarts Express with that old thrill sparking in your chest, scanning the corridor instinctively.
There he was.
Sunghoon stood near the far end, posture rigid, dark robes immaculate. He looked… honed. Leaner, sharper, as though the summer had stripped away anything soft. His features stood out more starkly — high cheekbones, jaw set in quiet tension, dark hair pushed back.
Your heart lurched forward before your feet did.
You wove through the crowd.
“Sunghoon—”
He turned.
For the briefest instant, something flickered in his eyes — relief, perhaps, or recognition so raw it almost hurt to see. Then it disappeared.
“You look well,” he said. The words sounding practiced, like lines from a script he didn’t entirely believe. No smile. No step toward you.
You tried for lightness. “You look like you forgot how to write more than two sentences.”
His gaze flicked down the corridor — scanning faces, checking distance — before returning to you.
“I was busy.”
“With what?”
“Things.”
The train lurched into motion. Compartments filled with chatter. You reached for his hand out of long habit.
He let you take it. But his fingers didn’t curl around yours the way they used to. The grip was there — present, but restrained. Distant. Like he was permitting contact rather than returning it.
You told yourself it was nothing.
The first weeks of sixth year unwinded in small fractures.
He still walked beside you to classes. Still claimed the seat next to yours in shared classes. Still dismantled questions with that same surgical intelligence. But he no longer lingered.
After lessons, he rose quickly. “I have something to handle.”
“With who?” you’d ask, keeping your tone casual.
“It doesn’t concern you.”
The phrase settled between you like a wall, repeated often enough to feel rehearsed.
He stopped the small touches, no idle tracing of your wrist while you read side by side, no hand at the small of your back when corridors grew crowded. He stood near, but the space between felt hollow. Air where warmth used to be.
When another student flirted with you — bold, harmless — he didn’t react. No sharpened stare. No quiet step forward. He simply watched, detached, expression unreadable.
That detachment cut deeper than any flash of jealousy ever had.
One night in the library, the air thick with dust and candle smoke, you couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“You’re distant.”
He didn’t lift his eyes from the page.
“I’m studying.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Silence.
You reached across the table and gently closed the book in his hands.
“Talk to me.”
His jaw flexed, then he looked up at you. His eyes weren’t cold. They were exhausted — shadowed beneath, darker than you remembered, as though sleep had become optional. His shoulders carried perpetual tension, braced for impact.
“You’re overthinking,” he said quietly.
You searched his face for the boy who once told you he didn’t underestimate you.
“Are you pulling away from me?” The question landed heavy.
For a heartbeat, vulnerability cracked through, then it vanished, sealed behind composure.
“No.”
But he didn’t reach for you. Didn’t soften the line of his mouth. Didn’t offer the reassurance you ached for. The absence of those things hurt more than any denial.
You began noticing the edges of something larger.
Whispers among certain pure-blood circles. Quick glances exchanged in corridors. Conversations that broke off when you approached. Sunghoon spent time now with people he once dismissed — sons of old families, names that lingered in the darker corners of wizarding news.
“You’ve made new friends,” you said once, trying to keep it light.
“They’re useful.”
Useful. The word landed like a curse.
You worried. But pride and trust kept you from chasing.
Sunghoon had always been intense. Maybe this was simply… evolution. Family pressure. Sixth-year expectations. The weight of futures already mapped out.
You decided to give him space.
You stopped reaching first. Stopped asking where he disappeared to. Stopped pressing when he drew the line with “It doesn’t concern you.”
You smiled in public. Threw yourself into studies, into Auror training, into anything that filled the hours without requiring you to name the growing silence.
At night, though, alone in your dormitory, the questions returned.
You would lie awake, staring at the ceiling as moonlight spilled through the window, replaying every small shift: the way he flinched — just barely — when your fingers brushed his forearm once; the way he scanned corridors before speaking your name; the gradual cooling of his voice.
Love didn’t vanish overnight, you told yourself. People changed under pressure. Brilliant minds bent strangely under strain.
But distance, once offered, sometimes refused to take root.
You tried. Gods, you tried. In the weeks that followed, you became an expert in finding ways to avoid most interactions. You arrived to class three minutes late so the seat beside him was already taken by someone else—usually a wide-eyed third-year who didn’t know better when you smiled apologetically and claimed the far end of the row. You lingered in the library only until the candles burned to half-height, then packed your things with brisk efficiency before he could suggest walking back together. In the corridors you kept your eyes forward, chin high, laughter a little louder when your friends surrounded you, as if volume alone could fill the hollow space he used to occupy.
You told yourself it was kindness. Space. The gift he seemed to want.
He never thanked you for it. Instead, the opposite began to happen.
At first it was small things, easy to dismiss as coincidence. He appeared at the entrance to the Great Hall just as you were leaving breakfast, falling into step beside you without a word, his shoulder brushing yours once, twice, before you could widen the gap. When you chose a different table in the library—tucked and out of sight—he was already there the next evening, book open to the exact page you needed, as though he’d known your research schedule better than you did.
You tried harder.
You stopped going to the Astronomy Tower at midnight, the place that had once been yours without discussion. You joined a study group for NEWT-level Potions that met three evenings a week in the dungeons—loud, crowded, safe. On the fourth night, you slipped out early, expecting an empty corridor.
But it wasn’t.
He was leaning against the stone wall opposite the dungeon stairs, arms folded, silver prefect badge catching the torchlight like a warning. The same unreadable expression, but something sharper beneath it now. Tension in the line of his jaw. A muscle ticking once, twice.
“You’re avoiding me,” he said.
You paused mid-step, heart lurching against your ribs. “I’m giving you space. You said—”
“I didn’t say disappear.” His answer came faster than usual.
The corridor felt suddenly narrower. Torch flames flickered as though the air had shifted. You swallowed. “I’m not disappearing. I’m… respecting your boundaries.”
His eyes narrowed fractionally—the only crack in the composure. He pushed off the wall in one fluid motion and closed the distance until only a handspan remained between you. Close enough to see the faint shadows under his eyes, the way his lashes cast spidery lines across his cheeks in the low light.
“My boundaries,” he repeated, tasting the word like it was foreign. “Is that what you think this is?”
You lifted your chin. “You flinch when I touch you. You vanish for hours and come back smelling like rain and smoke. What else am I supposed to think?”
For a moment he said nothing. Just looked at you—really looked, the way he used to when the whole world narrowed to just the two of you. Then his hand moved, slow enough that you could have stepped away. His fingers brushed your wrist, then closed around it.
“I don’t want space,” he said. The words were barely above a whisper, but they landed like a spell. “I never asked for space.”
“Then what do you want, Sunghoon?” Your voice cracked on his name despite every effort to keep it steady. “Because you’re pulling away and holding on at the same time and I can’t—I can’t breathe in the middle.”
His thumb traced once over the pulse point at your wrist, feeling the frantic beat there. Something fractured in his expression—brief, almost invisible, but you caught it. The same flicker you’d seen on the train platform the first day back. Relief edged with pain.
“I want you here,” he said. “Even when I can’t… even when I shouldn’t.” His free hand lifted, hesitated, then tucked a stray strand of hair behind your ear with a gentleness that contradicted every sharp line of his posture. “I need you close enough that I can still see you. Still know you’re safe. Still—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Still feel like I’m not completely gone.”
You could feel the tremor in his fingers against your skin, the way his breathing had shallowed. This was the boy who never made spectacles, never raised his voice, never admitted weakness—and yet here he was, confessing in a dungeon corridor that smelled of damp stone and old potions, that the distance you’d offered was carving him open.
You should have pulled away. Should have demanded answers. Instead your free hand rose of its own accord and settled against his chest, right over the place where his heart hammered beneath layers of wool and restraint.
“You’re scaring me,” you whispered.
“I know.” His forehead dropped to rest against yours. “I’m scaring myself.” His gaze traced every line of your face as though he were memorizing it again: the arch of your brows, the curve of your mouth. He looked at you like you were the last solid thing in a world that had begun to slip through his fingers.
His hand—the one still wrapped around your wrist—lifted slowly, until his fingertips grazed the edge of your jaw. He tilted your face up the barest fraction, the gesture was so careful it almost hurt.
Then he closed the distance.
His lips brushed yours once—soft, testing, almost a question. When you didn’t pull away, didn’t push away, he pressed again, firmer this time. Still slow. But the restraint was fraying; you could feel it in the tremor that ran through his fingers, in the way his breath hitched against your mouth.
You didn’t kiss him back.
You let him have this—let him pour everything he couldn’t say into the careful press of his lips, the way he lingered at the corner of your mouth as though afraid to demand more. His other hand came to your waist, fingers splaying wide, anchoring you against the cold stone wall at your back without caging you. He kissed you like he was apologizing. Like he was asking permission with every slow slide of his mouth over yours.
And then—he pulled you closer.
One decisive tug, erasing the last sliver of space between your bodies. Your chest pressed flush to his, the hard planes of him meeting the softer give of you, and something inside you simply gave way.
You melted.
The resistance you’d been clinging to dissolved in a rush of heat and want and relief so sharp it bordered on pain. Your lips parted on a soft, involuntary sound, and you kissed him back.
Your arms moved without conscious thought. Up. Around his neck. Fingers sliding into the dark silk of his hair at the nape, threading through the strands he kept so ruthlessly neat. You tugged—just enough—and he groaned.
The sound vibrated against your mouth, low and rough and wrecked. It sent a shiver racing down your spine. His control snapped another fraction; the hand at your waist tightened, the other sliding up to cradle the back of your neck. Long fingers curled around the column of your throat, guiding your head exactly where he wanted it so he could angle deeper.
The kiss turned molten.
His tongue slipped past your lips, slow at first, exploratory, tasting you like he was relearning every inch. Your fingers tightened in his hair, pulling him closer still, and he answered with a low sound that made your knees threaten to buckle.
His free hand began to wander, skimming up your side, thumb brushing the underside of your breast through fabric before continuing, mapping the line of your ribs, the dip of your waist, the sharp edge of your shoulder blade. You arched instinctively into the touch, and he took advantage—pressing you harder against the wall, thigh sliding between yours just enough to make you gasp into his mouth.
Your palms slid down from his hair to the broad span of his shoulders, feeling muscle that hadn’t been quite so defined last year. He’d always been lean, elegant, precise. Now he felt lethal. Like a blade that had finally been sharpened to its full edge.
Another groan rumbled through him when your nails dragged lightly down his back. He retaliated by sucking your bottom lip between his teeth—gentle, then firmer—until you moaned, the sound swallowed by his mouth.
Sunghoon’s mouth left yours only long enough to drag hot, open kisses along your jaw, his teeth grazed the sensitive spot just below your ear and you arched.
You retaliated by sliding your hands under his robes, over the crisp white shirt he always kept buttoned to the throat like armor, his abdomen contracted under your touch, a sharp inhale escaping him when your nails scraped lightly just above the waistband of his trousers. He was breathing unevenly now. You felt the evidence of how much he wanted you pressing insistently against your hip, and the realization sent a fresh wave of heat pooling low in your belly.
His fingers found the first button of your shirt—popped it open with a deft flick. Then the second. Cool air kissed the newly bared skin of your collarbone, your sternum, and he followed it with his mouth—kissing a slow path downward until your head tipped back against the wall with a soft thud. Your shirt hung half-open now, one side slipping off your shoulder with your robe. His hand slid inside, cupping the soft swell of your breast through the thin fabric of your bra, thumb brushing over the peak until it hardened under his touch and you whimpered his name.
“Quiet,” he murmured against your skin, voice wrecked, but the command lacked its usual steel. It sounded more like a plea. “Someone could—”
You cut him off by tugging his shirt free of his trousers and dragging your nails down his sides, harder this time. He bucked against you once—instinctive, helpless—and then his mouth was back on yours, tongues sliding together in a rhythm that matched the frantic press of hips. His free hand dropped to your thigh, hitching your leg up around his waist so he could settle more firmly between them. The friction was devastating. You rocked against him without thinking, chasing the pressure, and he groaned so deeply it felt like it came from the center of his chest.
His belt buckle clinked softly as he shifted—fingers fumbling for the zipper of his trousers with less grace than usual. You helped, impatient, your hand brushing over the hard length of him through fabric before he managed to free himself. The sound he made when your fingers wrapped around him—low, broken, almost pained—sent a shiver racing through you. He thrust shallowly into your grip once, twice, forehead dropping to your shoulder as though the sensation had short-circuited every thought he’d ever had.
You were both lost in it now—clothes askew, breaths mingling, bodies straining toward the same desperate edge. His hand slipped beneath your skirt, fingertips teasing along the edge of your underwear, pressing just enough to make your hips jerk—
A sharp, indignant meow.
High-pitched. Close. Too close.
You both froze.
Mrs. Norris stood at the end of the corridor, tail lashing, yellow eyes gleaming with accusation in the torchlight. Her thin, mangy frame was silhouetted against the flickering flames, ears flattened, mouth open in another warning yowl that promised Filch wasn’t far behind.
Reality crashed in like ice water.
Sunghoon swore under his breath—vicious—and released you so fast you nearly stumbled. You scrambled back against the wall, hands flying to your shirt. Fingers shook as you fumbled buttons back into place, missing the first one twice before managing to close the top enough to look halfway decent. Your bra strap had slipped down your shoulder; you yanked it up, cheeks burning.
Sunghoon moved with the same frantic efficiency. He tucked himself back into his trousers with a wince, zipped up, fastened his belt in one swift motion. His shirt was still untucked, hair mussed beyond repair, lips swollen and glistening. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand like that could erase what had just happened.
Mrs. Norris hissed again, louder.
“Bloody cat,” Sunghoon muttered, voice hoarse. He grabbed your wrist and tugged you toward the nearest darkest alcove, pressing you both into shadow just as distant footsteps echoed from the stairwell. Filch’s wheezy voice drifted down, calling for his infernal pet.
You held your breath, heart hammering so loudly you were sure it would give you away. Sunghoon’s chest rose and fell rapidly beside you, his hand still locked around your wrist like he couldn’t bear to let go even now. His thumb stroked once—unconscious, soothing—over your racing pulse.
The footsteps paused. Mrs. Norris yowled once more, then trotted off toward the sound of her owner’s voice. The corridor fell silent again.
Neither of you moved for a long moment.
Then Sunghoon exhaled—shaky, almost a laugh.
“We’re going to get expelled one day,” he said quietly, voice still rough around the edges.
You turned your head just enough to meet his eyes. They were dark, pupils still blown, but the corner of his mouth twitched in something dangerously close to a smile.
“Worth it?” you whispered.
He looked at your mouth then back to your eyes. “Every damn time.”
He leaned in, pressed one last, slow kiss to the corner of your lips—soft this time, almost tender—before stepping back and straightening his robes with shaking hands. “Come on,” he murmured. “Before they return.”
You followed him on unsteady legs, shirt still crooked, hair a disaster, skin still burning where he’d touched you.
From that night onward, he kept you close.
It felt, at first, like a gift. Like the calendar had flipped backwards, to when every glance carried promise and every brush of shoulders felt like a secret. In the days that followed, he was there—always there—whenever you came to him.
You slid onto the bench beside him at the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall one morning, still half-asleep, and before you could even reach for the pumpkin juice, his arm had already draped casually around your shoulders. Just close enough that the warmth of him seeped through your robes, close enough that anyone looking would see the claim without him ever needing to speak it.
In the library, he had already claimed your usual table, you came and sat beside him, greeting him lovingly. When your quill rolled off the edge, he caught it mid-fall and set it back. When you leaned over to point out a note, his head tilted toward yours until your temples nearly touched, breath warm against your cheek. Perfect. Attentive. Exactly the boyfriend who once memorized the rhythm of your pulse.
It should have felt like coming home.
But the more it happened, the more you noticed the pattern beneath the perfection.
He never came to you first.
Never.
Not once.
You were always the one to seek him out. You were always the one to slide onto the bench beside him, to claim the chair across from him, to walk the extra corridor to where he usually studied. If you didn’t—if you waited, testing—he simply… wasn’t there. He didn’t appear at breakfast looking for you. Didn’t linger outside your common room. Didn’t send an owl asking where you’d gone. He existed in his own orbit, precise and self-contained, and only intersected with yours when you crossed into his path.
And when you did, he became flawless.
Strategic.
The word lodged in your chest like a splinter.
You began to watch him more closely.
His social circle hadn’t changed since the summer. If anything, it had tightened. The same cluster of pure-blood students—tall, pale, impeccably dressed— always murmuring in low voices when professors passed. Names that carried old weight: Malfoy, Zabini, Nott, Greengrass, even a Lestrange boy two years above who’d returned for his NEWTs with a permanent sneer. They spoke of blood status the way other people spoke of Quidditch scores—casual, dismissive. Half-bloods were “adequate, at best.” Muggle-borns were “a temporary inconvenience.”
Sunghoon sat among them.
Not loudly. Not performing. But he was there—listening, nodding once in a while, offering the occasional dry comment that made them laugh in that sharp, knowing way. When one of them sneered at a Gryffindor first-year who’d tripped over their own robes, Sunghoon didn’t join in. But he didn’t correct them either. He simply looked away, jaw tight, and changed the subject.
You hated it.
Every time you caught him at their table, something cold twisted in your stomach. You hated the way their eyes slid over you when you approached—like you were an interesting specimen rather than a person. You hated the way Sunghoon’s posture shifted fractionally straighter when you were near. You hated most of all that he still let you pull him away from them—let you thread your fingers through his and lead him toward the doors—without ever once apologizing for where he’d been sitting.
Because he was smart. Brilliant, really.
He should know better. He did know better. And yet he stayed in their orbit.
You told yourself it was survival. Pure-blood politics were a chessboard, and Sunghoon had always played three moves ahead. Maybe he was gathering information. Maybe he was protecting himself. Maybe he was protecting you.
But the doubt had taken root now, small and poisonous. Because when you weren’t there—when you didn’t cross into his path—he didn’t reach for you. And when you did, his perfection felt less like love and more like compensation. Like he was trying to keep you tethered with touches and kisses and murmured promises so you wouldn’t look too closely at the company he kept when your back was turned.
One evening in the library, you watched him from across the stacks.
You hadn’t meant to hide. Not really. You’d come looking for a specific volume on advanced counter-curses and the section had offered the perfect vantage. You could see without being seen. Or so you’d thought.
Sunghoon sat at the long oak table near the center of the room, flanked by Nott and Zabini. The three of them formed a closed triangle: heads bent over the same length of parchment, quills moving in lazy unison. From this distance their voices were a low murmur, punctuated by the occasional soft scrape of ink on paper and the rustle of turning pages. They looked like any other group of sixth-years cramming for NEWTs.
Except they weren’t.
You noticed it in pieces.
First, the way their eyes flicked outward—not randomly, but with purpose. A Hufflepuff girl with ink-stained fingers and a second-hand robe walked past, head down, hurrying away. Nott’s lip curled, just enough. He leaned in and muttered something. Zabini’s shoulders shook once in silent laughter. Sunghoon didn’t laugh. But the corner of his mouth twitched—small, almost imperceptible. Then he added something under his breath. Whatever it was made Nott snort outright and Zabini cover his mouth with the back of his hand.
Next came a Ravenclaw boy—lanky, glasses perpetually slipping, the kind of student who always answered questions too eagerly in class. He passed within ten feet of their table, arms full of books. Zabini tilted his head, murmured something about “eager little half-bloods thinking they belong here.” Nott smirked. And then, almost casual Sunghoon spoke.
“Careful,” he said, voice carrying just far enough for you to catch it. “He might hear you and start crying to McGonagall again.”
The words were dry. Detached. But they landed like a spark on dry tinder. Nott barked a short laugh. Zabini leaned back in his chair, eyes gleaming. The Ravenclaw boy faltered mid-step, cheeks flushing, then hurried faster without looking back.
You felt your stomach turn over.
Sunghoon had instigated it.
Not in the theatrical way some Slytherins liked to perform. But he’d fed it. A single sentence—perfectly timed—and the others had latched on like wolves scenting blood. He didn’t join in the laughter. He simply returned to the parchment, expression serene, as though he’d commented on the weather.
You pressed your back harder against the shelf, heart thudding unevenly. The candle closest to you threw long shadows across your hiding place. You told yourself to leave. To walk away before you saw anything else that would make the splinter in your chest dig deeper.
But you stayed.
Another student passed—a Muggle-born Gryffindor fourth-year, red tie askew, laughing too loudly at something her friend had said. Zabini’s gaze tracked her like a hawk. He opened his mouth.
Before he could speak, Sunghoon lifted his head slightly.
And looked directly toward you.
A tiny, involuntary squeak escaped you, barely audible, swallowed instantly by the library’s hush—but it felt deafening in your own ears.
He couldn’t see you… could he?
You were hidden. Well hidden. Tucked behind two rows of towering tomes on goblin rebellions, half-obscured by a ladder and the angle of the shelf. Your robes blended with the shadows. There was no way…
And yet his gaze had locked exactly on your position.
For one frozen second his eyes narrowed—searching, assessing—then softened in recognition. The faintest curve touched his lips. Not a smile. Something private. Something that said I know you’re there.
Your pulse roared in your ears. Why would he look here? How could he possibly—
Nott’s voice cut through the silence, casual and amused.
“Oi, Park. You’ve gone soft staring at the shelves again?” He followed Sunghoon’s line of sight, squinting into the gloom. “Or is that your little flower lurking back there?”
Sunghoon didn’t flinch. Didn’t look guilty. He simply leaned back in his chair, arms crossing loosely over his chest, and let one brow lift in mild interest.
“She’s not lurking,” he said evenly. “She’s studying.”
Zabini chuckled low. “Studying us, more like. Must be thrilling, watching the future of wizarding society at work.”
Nott grinned, sharp and lazy. “Lucky bastard, though. Perfect girlfriend, isn’t she? Loyal. Pretty. Doesn’t ask too many questions.” He nudged Sunghoon’s elbow. “Bet she melts every time you look at her. Must make the rest of it easier.”
Sunghoon’s expression didn’t change.
But you saw it—the micro-second tightening at the corner of his eye. The way his fingers flexed once against his sleeve. He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was quiet. Almost gentle.
“She’s more than that.”
Nott opened his mouth for another quip, then closed it again when Sunghoon’s gaze slid sideways to him. Something cold and unreadable passed over Sunghoon’s face.
Zabini cleared his throat, suddenly very interested in the parchment again. Nott shrugged, smirk fading into something more neutral.
Sunghoon’s eyes returned to the shadows where you stood. He didn’t beckon. Didn’t call your name. Just held your gaze across the distance until the weight of it became unbearable.
Your heart hammered against your ribs so hard you were sure the sound would carry.
You sighed.
It slipped out before you could stop it—soft, defeated, the sound of someone who had already lost the argument with themselves. Your shoulders dropped a fraction. The book you’d been clutching like a shield felt suddenly ridiculous in your hands.
And then you stepped out.
One foot, then the other. Candlelight caught on the edges of your robes as you emerged from the alcove’s gloom into the open aisle. You kept your chin up, eyes locked on his, refusing to shrink even as heat crawled up your neck.
Sunghoon’s gaze sharpened the instant you crossed into the light.
It wasn’t the soft, private look he’d worn a moment earlier. This was something else—something honed, possessive, almost predatory. His eyes narrowed fractionally, with the faintest tilt of his head, like a predator acknowledging movement in the grass.
Then he lifted a hand.
Slow. Elegant. Palm up, fingers relaxed—except for the index one.
He crooked it.
Once.
A single curl of his finger.
Come here.
The gesture was small. Insignificant to anyone watching who didn’t know him. But to you it landed like a spell—silent, binding, impossible to ignore. Your feet moved before your mind could catch up. One step. Another. Crossing the open floor toward their table as though pulled by invisible thread.
Nott and Zabini noticed. Nott’s smirk widened into something lazy and approving. Zabini leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, watching the exchange like it was private theater staged just for him.
Regret hit you like cold water the second your body obeyed.
Why did you do that?
Why did you let one crooked finger pull you across a crowded room like a summoned house-elf?
You’d walked to him. In front of them. Because he crooked a finger.
Like you were his. Like you’d always been his.
Nott let out a low whistle, soft enough not to draw Madam Pince’s attention. “Merlin. That was almost poetic.”
Zabini chuckled under his breath. “She comes when called. Convenient.”
Sunghoon didn’t acknowledge either of them.
You however turned your head just enough to side-eye them.
Nott first—lounging with one elbow propped on the table, chin resting on his fist, dark eyes glittering with amusement. The smirk hadn’t faded; if anything, it had deepened into something smug, satisfied, as though your obedience had confirmed some private bet he’d made with himself. Zabini was worse in his stillness—arms crossed over his chest, one brow arched in faint, mocking approval. Neither of them said anything more. They didn’t need to. Their silence was loud enough: Look at her. Look how easily she folds.
Heat crawled up the back of your neck—anger, embarrassment, a sharp twist of something you refused to name. You let your gaze linger on them a second longer than necessary, letting them see the edge in your expression. Not fear. Not submission. Just cold, quiet warning: I see you too.
Nott’s smirk only widened at the challenge, lazy and predatory, like he found your defiance amusing rather than threatening. Zabini tilted his head, dark eyes gleaming with detached interest, as though you were a particularly interesting exhibit in a glass case.
Before either of them could open their mouths again, Sunghoon moved. Without looking away from your face, without so much as shifting his shoulders, he extended one long leg under the table. The motion was casual, almost lazy—until the toe of his polished shoe connected with the side of Nott’s bench. A single, firm push.
The bench scraped back and Nott’s balance vanished.
He pitched sideways with an undignified yelp, arms windmilling for half a second before he hit the floor in a sprawl of robes. A soft thud, followed by the unmistakable clatter of ink bottle rolling under the table. A few nearby heads turned; someone stifled a laugh behind a book.
Nott scrambled up almost immediately, face flushed crimson, mouth already opening on a retort.
“Enough,” Sunghoon said. Voice low. Flat. Final.
Nott recovered quickly, righting himself with exaggerated nonchalance, but the smirk faltered for half a second. Zabini raised both brows, amusement flickering, though he said nothing.
Sunghoon’s attention never wavered from your face.
“Sit,” he said. Low. Quiet.
You glared at him.
The look you gave him was pure venom—narrowed eyes, lips pressed into a thin line, every line of your body screaming don’t you dare think this fixes anything. You wanted to turn on your heel. Wanted to leave him there with his smug friends and his carefully curated distance. Wanted to prove you weren’t the girl who came when called.
Your jaw tightened. Your hands curled into loose fists at your sides.
He didn’t flinch.
Instead he reached out and hooked two fingers through the belt loop at the side of your skirt. One gentle tug. The impact was soft. Cushioned. Because the second you were close enough, his arm slid around your waist. He drew you in until your side was flush against his, until the length of your thigh pressed along his, until there was no space left for doubt. His hand settled at the dip of your waist—then drifted lower. Dangerous. The heel of his palm rested just above the curve of your ass, fingers splayed wide enough that the tips brushed the upper swell through your skirt. Not groping. Not crude. Just a claim so blatant it made heat flare low in your belly despite everything.
His scent washed over you in the next breath—cedarwood, clean parchment, the faintest trace of winter air that always clung to him after flying. It curled into your lungs like smoke, familiar and devastating. Your shoulders wanted to drop. Your spine wanted to soften. You hated it.
You let yourself halfway melt anyway.
Your head tipped—just a fraction—until your temple brushed his shoulder. Not forgiveness. Just exhaustion. Just the bone-deep relief of being held when everything else felt like it was slipping.
Nott, back on the bench now, robes askew and pride clearly bruised, let out a low, mocking whistle.
“Merlin, Park,” he drawled, leaning back with renewed amusement. “You’ve got her trained better than a Cruciatus curse.”
Zabini leaned forward, elbows on the table, chin resting on laced fingers. His voice was silk over steel.
“She looks good like that, though. All flushed and obedient.” His gaze slid over you—slow, appreciative, lingering a second too long on where Sunghoon’s hand disappeared against your side. “If you ever get tired of the brooding Ravenclaw routine, love, my bench has plenty of room.”
You stiffened.
Sunghoon’s arm tightened around you, then his head turned. When his eyes met Zabini’s, the temperature in the immediate radius dropped ten degrees.
“Shut. Up.”
Nott opened his mouth—probably to push, because that was what Nott did—but Sunghoon’s gaze slid to him next. One look. That was all it took. Nott closed his mouth again. Shrugged. Picked up his quill like nothing had happened.
Zabini exhaled through his nose and leaned back, pulling his own book toward him.
“Fine. Touchy tonight, are we?”
They both bent their heads over parchment.
They weren’t studying. Not really. Quills moved in lazy strokes. Eyes flicked sideways every few seconds—watching, waiting for the next crack in composure. But they kept their mouths shut. Kept their teasing leers to themselves.
Because the message was clear:
She’s mine. Back off.
You felt the tension in his frame—the way his fingers flexed once against your side, the way his breathing stayed even despite the storm you could sense coiling beneath his skin.
His thumb stroked once—slow, soothing—along the line of your waist.
A silent promise. Or maybe a silent apology.
You weren’t sure which.
For weeks you tried—really tried—to give him the benefit of the doubt. You told yourself the library incident was a one-off, a momentary slip under pressure from Nott and Zabini’s goading. You reminded yourself that Sunghoon had always been sharp-tongued when cornered; it was part of what drew you to him in the first place. The way he could dismantle someone with a single sentence and never raise his voice. You loved that about him. You still did, in the private moments when it was just the two of you and the rest of the world felt far away.
But the moments weren’t private anymore.
You watched it happen again and again.
In the corridors between classes, when a nervous Hufflepuff fourth-year dropped their books in front of him—Sunghoon didn’t help pick them up. He stepped over the scattered parchment, glanced down at the trembling kid, and murmured something low enough that only the cluster of pure-bloods around him caught it. Whatever it was made them laugh loudly. The boy flushed scarlet and scrambled to gather his things alone.
You loved your boyfriend.
You did.
You loved the boy who once hexed your date at the Yule Ball because his hand had rested too low. You loved the boy who kissed you like you were oxygen in a room without air. You loved the way he memorized spell structures and shared them with you in late-night whispers, the way his fingers traced protective runes on your skin when he thought you were asleep.
But not when he was like this.
Not when he let those words slip so easily. Not when he chose silence over correction. Not when he fed the cruelty instead of starving it.
You tried to bring it up.
The first time was in the empty Charms classroom after curfew, moonlight spilling through tall windows, turning the desks silver. You’d waited until the castle quieted, until it was just the two of you and the faint hum of sleeping portraits.
“Sunghoon,” you started, voice low. “The things you say—the things you let them say—”
He turned from the window where he’d been staring out at the dark grounds.
His expression was unreadable.
Then he crossed the room in three strides.
Before the next word could leave your mouth, his hands were on your waist—lifting, turning, pressing you back against the nearest wall with controlled force. Your breath caught. His mouth crashed into yours, hard and claiming, swallowing whatever protest you’d been forming.
You tried to push back—palms flat against his chest—but his body caged you, pinning you in place. His hands roamed. Under your shirt. Along your ribs. Cupping your breasts through fabric until your nipples peaked and you gasped into his mouth. Fingers digging into your hips hard enough to bruise. Drowning every coherent thought.
When he finally pulled back—just enough to let you drag in air—your mind was already fogging. Eyes glassy. Lips swollen. Knees trembling.
He looked down at you, smirking—slow, dark, victorious. “Can’t even finish a sentence without melting for me.”
The words should have stung. Should have made you shove him away. Instead heat flooded your core. Your thighs clenched around nothing. A soft, broken whimper escaped before you could stop it.
He chuckled—low, cruel—and kissed you again. Slower this time. Deeper. One hand sliding down to palm your ass, squeezing hard enough to make you arch. The other fisted in your hair, tilting your head so he could devour your throat—teeth grazing, then biting, marking you in places your collar wouldn’t hide.
By the time he let you go, you couldn’t remember the exact shape of your argument. Only the taste of him. The ache between your legs. The way your body betrayed you every single time.
It happened again the next week…
And the week after…
Every time you tried to confront him—about the comments, about the company he kept, about the way he let poison seep in—he turned it into this. Into something so intense it erased everything else.
Into him winning. Always winning.
You started coming to class late.
Lips bruised and swollen. Shirt buttoned crooked, collar barely covering the fresh hickeys blooming purple along your collarbone, the faint crescent of bite marks peeking above your tie. Your hair mussed in ways no brush could fix. Eyes still glassy, cheeks flushed, walking with that careful, slightly bow-legged gait that made your friends exchange knowing glances and then look away.
One of them caught your wrist once in the corridor, voice low and worried.
“Are you okay?”
You forced a smile. Nodded. Lied.
“I’m fine.”
You weren’t.
You were exhausted.
Torn between the boy you’d fallen in love with and the one who was slowly disappearing into something darker. Torn between the way your body still craved him and the way your heart ached every time he chose silence over standing up.
You stopped trying to bring it up. Not because you agreed. Not because you stopped caring.
You told yourself one day you’d find the strength to surface. One day you’d make him listen without letting him turn your body against your mind.
One day.
But for now…
For now, you just tried not to look too closely. Tried not to hear the quiet cruelty in his voice. Tried not to notice how the boy you loved was slowly being replaced by someone colder.
Tried not to notice how the relationship tilted, into something slow, insidious, and toxic at the edges. Not broken. Just… off-balance. Like a potion left too long over flame—still drinkable, still sweet in places, but with a bitter aftertaste that lingered no matter how much honey you tried to stir in.
And then the showing-off began.
It started small. A hand on the small of your back as he steered you toward the Slytherin table during free study. Sunghoon didn’t ask if you wanted to stay. He simply guided you to the center of the group, sat you beside him on the bench, and rested his arm along you back like a king displaying his favorite trophy.
“Look who I brought,” he said, voice smooth as polished obsidian. His fingers traced idle circles on your shoulder, right where everyone could see. “My girl.”
The title landed like a claim. Not girlfriend. Not even your name. My girl. Possessive. Proud. Delivered with that quiet, effortless arrogance he wore so well now.
You flushed instantly—cheeks burning, gaze dropping to your lap. You wanted to shrink. To disappear behind Sunghoon’s shoulder. But he wouldn’t let you. His hand slid lower, fingers splaying across your ribs, pulling you closer until your thigh pressed flush against his.
Whenever you tried to pull away—whenever the discomfort crested and you’d whisper, “Not here, Sunghoon, please”—he’d turn it around so smoothly you almost believed him.
“You’re ashamed of me?” he’d ask, voice low and wounded, eyes wide with feigned hurt.
You’d shake your head, throat tight, but the words would tangle. Because part of you did want the dark thrill of being claimed so publicly by the boy everyone else feared a little. And he knew it. That's why he used it.
He started taking you to their private gatherings. He’d walk in with you tucked under his arm like a living accessory, robes slightly askew from the way he’d kissed you breathless in the corridor beforehand. He’d seat you on his lap in front of everyone, one hand resting casually on your thigh under the table, fingers pressing just enough to make you squirm while they discussed bloodlines and loyalty and power.
You wished you could have spoken up.The words had burned on your tongue. This is wrong. They were right there, heavy and sharp: Blood doesn’t decide worth. Everyone at Hogwarts has the right to be here. To learn. To become something greater than the families that birthed them. Muggle-born, half-blood, pure-blood—none of it matters when a spell lights up the same way in every wand.
You wanted to say it out loud. Wanted to cut through the laughter when they sneered about “mudbloods cluttering up the good seats in Potions.” Wanted to look them in the eye and ask how many generations of “superior blood” it took before cruelty became tradition. Wanted to stand up—literally push Sunghoon’s hand off your thigh and stand—and remind them that the castle didn’t check blood status at the gates. How the Sorting Hat never asked for a family tree.
But Sunghoon wouldn’t let you.
It was like he could read the exact moment the rebellion formed behind your eyes. Every single time. His fingers would tighten, a hard press against the inside of your thigh under the heavy oak table, thumb stroking once, twice, right where the hem of your skirt met skin. A silent don’t. His other hand would slide up your spine beneath your robes, fingertips tracing the knobs of your vertebrae until you shivered, until your breath caught and the words dissolved on your tongue.
Or worse—he’d kiss you. Right in the middle of someone else’s sentence. His tongue sliding against yours until your mind blanked and your fingers curled helplessly into the front of his shirt. When he pulled back, your lips would be glossy, your cheeks flushed, and the conversation would have already moved on. The moment was gone. Your courage with it.
He always knew.
Sometimes he’d rest his chin on your shoulder, eyes half-lidded, and murmur against your neck, “You’re thinking too loudly again.” As if your thoughts were something he could taste in the air between you. As if he’d already mapped every moral line you were trying to draw and had decided, long ago, exactly where to blur them.
You started falling down the rabbit hole.
Late at night, alone in your dormitory, the questions gnawed at you like gnats.
Were you even better than them?
You were pure-blood. Old family. Wealth that meant your vault at Gringotts had its own dragon on retainer. Your parents had rooted connections at the Ministry, kept a summer manor where portraits of ancestors sneered down. On paper, you belonged in their circle. You had the blood, the money, the connections.
But your family had never spoken like that.
Your father valued the house-elves with please and thank you. Your mother hired Muggle-born tutors for advanced Arithmancy because “talent is talent.” You had grown up believing Hogwarts belonged to everyone who could make a feather float on their first try. Blood status was a footnote, not a verdict. You had never looked at a first-year with patched robes and thought lesser.
Never.
Yet here you were.
Complicit.
Every time you watched a Hufflepuff girl fall when Nott “accidentally” tripped her in the corridor, you said nothing. Every time Zabini drawled about how “certain bloodlines dilute the magic,” you bit your tongue so hard it bled. Every time Sunghoon added his quiet, cutting remark, you felt the guilt coil tighter in your stomach like a serpent.
You told yourself you were protecting the relationship. That if you spoke, he’d pull away harder. That you couldn't make him choose. That love meant standing beside him even when the ground turned to quicksand.
But the truth was uglier.
It was getting harder to meet your own eyes in the mirror.
You started avoiding your friends entirely. Started walking the long way around the Great Hall so you wouldn’t have to see the Muggle-born students laughing together, unaware of how their joy was being dissected at another table. Started excusing yourself from study groups when the conversation turned to “why some families still cling to old prejudices.”
Because every time you opened your mouth to defend someone—anyone—the memory of Sunghoon’s voice in your ear, his mouth swallowing your protests, would rise like a tide. And you would stay quiet.
You hated the person you were becoming.
You hated how easily your body still arched into his touch even while your mind screamed this is wrong. You hated the way shame and desire had started to braid together so tightly you couldn’t tell them apart anymore.
And still, Sunghoon would turn to you in the empty room, eyes dark and soft all at once, and kiss you like you were the only pure thing left in his world.
“I need you,” he’d whisper against your swollen lips, hands already sliding under your clothes. “Stay with me. Please.”
And you would.
Because loving him had become a kind of drowning where you sank a little deeper into that rabbit hole—questioning your own goodness, your own courage, your own right to judge.
The rest of the year passed like that—slow, suffocating, a quiet erosion.
Exams came. You aced them—both of you did—because brilliance was the one thing neither of you ever lost. But the victories tasted hollow. You celebrated in empty classrooms instead of the common room, his mouth between your legs while your notes lay scattered on the floor, his name the only word you could remember when he finally let you come. Afterward he would hold you against his chest, and whisper how perfect you were. How no one else could ever understand what you had.
You believed him because believing anything else would have broken you.
End-of-year feasts passed in a blur of house banners and golden plates. You sat beside him at the Ravenclaw table, his arm draped over the back of your chair, fingers occasionally slipping beneath the collar of your robes to brush the fading hickeys he’d left the night before.
Then slowly the castle emptied. Trunks rattled down staircases. Owls screeched farewell from the Owlery. You said goodbye to friends with smiles that didn’t reach your eyes, promising letters you already knew you wouldn’t write. Sunghoon vanished into the crowd the morning of departure—gone before breakfast, no note, no goodbye kiss. You told yourself it was better this way. Cleaner. You told yourself the distance might give you space to breathe, to remember who you were before his hands and his voice rewrote you.
The Hogwarts Express carried you back to King’s Cross in heavy silence. You sat alone in a compartment near the back, forehead pressed to the cool glass, watching the countryside blur past. Your reflection looked older, eyes shadowed in a way that had nothing to do with lack of sleep.
Platform 9¾ was chaos when the train finally hissed to a stop. Families reuniting, house-elves scurrying with trunks, parents calling names over. You stepped onto the platform last, suitcase heavy in your hand, heart heavier still. You scanned the crowd once—half hoping, half dreading—and saw nothing.
You sighed and adjusted your grip on the handle.
Then arms came around you from behind.
Strong. Familiar. Unmistakable.
You froze for half a heartbeat—then melted.
Your suitcase slipped from your fingers with a dull thud. Your back pressed into his chest, head falling back against his shoulder as though your body had been waiting for this exact moment all year.
He kissed the top of your head, then his right hand lifted in front of your face.
A small velvet box rested on his palm.
He flicked it open with his thumb.
Inside lay a ring.
Sleek black metal—almost obsidian in the dim platform light—shaped like a slender serpent. Its body coiled once around an invisible axis, head raised, tiny navy blue eyes glinting with captured fire. Beautiful in the way only dangerous things can be.
“For you,” he murmured against your hair, voice rough with something you couldn’t quite name. “To show you my love. My devotion. That no matter what happens—no matter who tries to pull us apart—you’re mine. And I’m yours.”
The platform noise faded to a distant hum. The crowd blurred into watercolor. All you could see was the ring. All you could feel was the steady rise and fall of his chest against your back, the warmth of his arms caging you in the gentlest prison.
You turned in his hold.
His eyes were unguarded for once, with zero calculation. Just raw need. Just him.
You surged up and kissed him.
Hard. Desperate. Months of silence and guilt and drowning poured into the press of your mouth against his. He groaned—low, wrecked—and kissed you back with equal force.
When you finally broke apart, gasping, foreheads pressed together, he lifted the ring between two fingers.
“Do you accept it?” His voice cracked on the last word—barely, but you heard it.
You stared at the serpent. At the blue eyes that seemed to watch you back. Then you looked up at him.
“Yes.”
The moment the word left your lips, the ring moved.
The black snake uncoiled in a fluid ripple of metal, slithering across his palm like liquid shadow. It glided onto your waiting finger—cool at first, then warming rapidly to match your skin temperature. The serpent’s body wrapped once around the base of your finger, before coiling around. The blue eyes flashed once—bright, alive—then stilled. But you felt it: a faint pulse, like a second heartbeat against your skin. Binding. Eternal.
You stared, stunned.
Sunghoon only smiled before he lifted your hand to his lips. Kissed the ring. Kissed the knuckle just above it. Then pressed another kiss to the inside of your wrist, right over the racing pulse.
You didn’t know yet what the ring truly meant. You didn’t know yet how tightly its coils would one day bind you.
The holiday passed in a fever dream of snow and silence.
Your family’s manor was as it always had been—grand, glittering, suffocating in its perfection. Crystal chandeliers refracted firelight across marble floors. Portraits of stern ancestors murmured approval when you passed. Your parents asked polite questions about NEWTs and future prospects, never once mentioning the black serpent coiled around your finger like a living tattoo. They noticed it, of course—they always noticed everything—but they said nothing. Pure-blood etiquette demanded discretion when it came to marks of devotion, especially when the giver came from a family as old and shadowed as Sunghoon’s.
And before you knew it, the calendar had turned.
September 1st arrived cold and sharp. The Hogwarts Express waited at King’s Cross like an old promise, scarlet engine huffing steam into the September sky. You stepped onto Platform 9¾ with your trunk levitating behind you, heart hammering in a rhythm you couldn’t name—anticipation, dread, braided together so tightly you couldn’t separate them.
You found an empty compartment near the middle of the train. Seventh year. Last year. No time to mess around. NEWTs loomed like storm clouds. Auror applications waited in Ministry offices. The war whispers that had once been background noise now felt like thunder rolling closer every day.
The door slid open.
You didn’t need to look to know who it was.
Sunghoon looked… insanely good.
Taller, somehow, though that was impossible. Dark hair pushed back just enough to reveal the clean line of his brow. Charcoal wool hugging shoulders that had broadened another inch, sleeves rolled once to expose the pale skin and the faint shadow of veins. His tie was loose, the knot imperfect, silver-and-blue stripes against crisp white.
Before you could open your mouth—before you could say hello, or I missed you—he surged forward.
Three strides. Door slamming shut so hard behind him that the curtains followed with a flick of his wand. The locking charm snapped into place so fast the air crackled.
Then he was on you.
Hands framing your face, thumbs brushing your cheekbones as though mapping something he’d dreamed about all summer. His mouth crashed into yours—hard, desperate, tasting faintly of peppermint. You gasped against him; he swallowed the sound, tongue sliding in without preamble, claiming every inch like he was reminding you who you belonged to. You clung to the front of his sweater, knuckles white, body already arching toward him like gravity had reversed and he was the only solid thing left in the world.
The kiss turned frantic almost immediately.
Sunghoon’s breathing grew ragged against your lips, little hitches and low groans vibrating between you. His hands slid from your face to your waist, fingers digging in with bruising force, urgent, like he needed to feel solid proof that you were real, here, his. He kissed you harder, deeper, teeth catching your bottom lip and tugging until you whimpered. The sound seemed to snap something inside him.
He broke the kiss just long enough to mutter, hoarse and wrecked, “Fuck—I can’t wait.”
Before you could process the words, his arms banded around your ribs. In one fluid, effortless motion he lifted you. Your legs instinctively wrapped around his waist for balance; your skirt rode up your thighs as he turned, dropped heavily onto the cushioned bench seat, and pulled you down with him.
You landed straddling his lap, knees sinking into the worn velvet on either side of his hips.
The compartment rocked gently with the motion of the train, but neither of you noticed. Sunghoon’s hands were already everywhere—sliding up your thighs, shoving your skirt higher until the fabric bunched uselessly around your waist. His palms were hot against your bare skin, calluses from Quidditch broom handles dragging deliciously as he gripped the backs of your thighs and yanked you forward until your core pressed flush against the hard ridge straining against his trousers.
You both moaned at the contact—low, broken sounds that tangled in the air between your mouths.
He surged up to kiss you again, but this time it was messier, hungrier. His tongue stroked yours in filthy imitation of what he wanted to do lower. One hand left your thigh to fist in your hair, tugging your head back so he could drag open-mouthed kisses down your throat—sucking hard enough to leave fresh marks over the faded ones from last term. You felt the sharp sting of teeth, then the soothing lap of his tongue, and your hips rolled forward without permission, grinding down on him in helpless little circles.
“Fuck,” he hissed against your collarbone, hips bucking up to meet yours. “You have no idea—how many nights I thought about this. About you like this. On me.”
His hand slid between your bodies, fingers hooking into the waistband of your underwear and tugging the fabric aside. Cool air hit slick skin for half a second before his fingertips found you—sliding through your folds, circling your clit once, twice, then pressing inside with no warning.
You cried out—sharp, needy—and he swallowed it with another bruising kiss.
“Shh,” he breathed against your lips, even as he curled his fingers deeper, stroking that spot that made your thighs shake. “Someone might hear. Though…” He smirked, dark and dangerous. “Maybe I want them to. Maybe I want the whole bloody train to know exactly what I do to you.”
You clenched around his fingers at the words; he groaned like you’d punched the air out of him.
“Still so tight… Still so fucking perfect.” His thumb found your clit, rubbing circles while his fingers pumped slow and deep. “Ride my hand, baby. Show me how much you missed me.”
Shame burned somewhere distant in the back of your mind, but it dissolved under the heat of his touch, under the way his eyes devoured every twitch of your expression. Your hips rocked forward, chasing the pressure, grinding down until the heel of his palm pressed hard against you with every roll. Your hands scrambled for purchase—fingers threading through his dark hair, tugging until he hissed.
He watched you fall apart, eyes blown black, jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked in his cheek. The hand not buried inside you gripped your hip hard enough to leave fingerprints, guiding your movements when your rhythm faltered.
“That’s it,” he rasped. “Just like that. Let me feel you come all over my fingers before I fuck you properly.”
The filthy promise tipped you over.
Pleasure snapped through you like a whip, sharp and blinding. You buried your face in the crook of his neck to muffle the cry, body shaking as you clenched around his fingers, hips stuttering, thighs trembling on either side of him. He worked you through it, murmuring praise the whole time.
“Good girl. So good for me. Missed this—missed you clenching around me like you never want to let go.”
When the aftershocks finally eased, he withdrew his fingers slowly, letting you feel every inch. Then he lifted them to his mouth and sucked them clean—eyes locked on yours the entire time—tongue swirling around the digits like he was savoring something rare and precious.
You stared, dazed, lips parted, chest heaving.
He smiled and leaned in to kiss you again. You tasted yourself on his tongue.
“Welcome back to Hogwarts,” he murmured against your swollen mouth.
The train whistle blew somewhere distant—long and mournful—as though warning the world what was coming.
But neither of you cared.
The year had just begun.
And Sunghoon was already claiming every inch of you like he intended to keep you forever.
You really thought—foolishly, desperately—that this could be a normal year.
Seventh year. Last year. The one where everything was supposed to fall into place: NEWTs, career counseling sessions with McGonagall, late-night study marathons that ended in exhausted laughter then desperate kisses against cold stone. You pictured it like a photograph from someone else’s life: you and Sunghoon walking side by side to breakfast, shoulders brushing, sharing notes, stealing quiet moments in the library without the weight of eyes or expectations pressing in. Normal. Safe. Achievable.
It wasn’t like that at all.
Classes started unforgiving. You threw yourself into them with the kind of single-minded focus that had always carried you through. Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts—you aced every practical, every written essay, every drill. Professors nodded in quiet approval. Your classmates whispered that you were “Ministry material,” that the Auror Office would be fighting over your application.
Herbology was the exception. The greenhouse felt like a different world—humid, alive in ways that refused to bend to logic alone. Mandrakes screamed when repotted; Fanged Geraniums nipped at your fingers; Venomous Tentacula wrapped around your wrist once and left a bruise that bloomed purple for a week. You struggled. Badly. So you found a tutor: a quiet Ravenclaw fifth-year who spoke to plants like they were old friends and never once looked at you like you were failing. Twice a week in the empty greenhouse after dinner, you repotted, pruned, fertilized. Progress was slow, but it was progress.
Potions, though…
Potions should have been easy. You’d always been competent. But seventh-year NEWT-level was brutal—complex brews with thirty-seven ingredients, timing measured in heartbeats, cauldrons that could explode if you so much as breathed wrong. Your first Draught of Living Death came out the color of weak tea instead of smooth pearl. Slughorn raised one brow and gave you an Acceptable with visible disappointment.
You needed help.
And the person who could help best was Sunghoon.
He was brilliant at Potions. Always had been. Precise, intuitive, the kind of student who could identify a misstep in someone else’s brew from across the dungeon just by the color of the steam. Last year he’d tutored you through sixth-year theory in between classes, his voice low and patient. You thought—hoped—that seventh year could be the same. But it was impossible.
Because you barely saw him.
Now he wasn't like.. gone, no he simply… just wasn’t there. Wasn't present.
One morning he’d kiss you goodbye outside the Great Hall, lips lingering, promising to meet you after lunch for Potions revision. By dinner he was gone. No owl. No sighting in the common room or corridors. You’d wait—first patiently, then anxiously— asking his housemates if they’d seen him, but nothing.
He’d reappear two, sometimes three days later. Tired. Paler. Shadows under his eyes like bruises. Hair mussed in a way that wasn’t your fault. Robes slightly wrinkled, as though he’d slept in them.
You’d corner him immediately—heart in your throat, voice shaking despite every effort to keep it steady.
“Where were you?”
He’d look at you for one long, aching second. Then the mask would slide back into place.
“Sick,” he’d say. “Nothing to worry about.”
You didn’t believe him.
Not the first time.
Not the fifth.
Not the tenth.
Because the absences grew longer. The excuses stayed the same. And every time he came back, he came back… further away.
He touched you less in public. No more casual arm around your shoulders in the corridors. No more hand at the small of your back when crowds pressed too close. When you sat beside him at meals he’d let you lean against him, but his arm stayed on the table instead of around you. His smiles were smaller. His kisses—when they happened—were quick, almost perfunctory, like checking a box.
Conversations became clipped. Surface-level. He asked about your day, listened to your answers, but never offered his own. When you tried to press—about the absences, about the shadows in his eyes, he’d shut it down.
“Not now.”
“I’m fine.”
“Stop worrying.”
Each refusal landed like a small cut. Shallow at first. Then deeper. Until the worry became something constant, something that lived under your ribs and made it hard to breathe when he wasn’t there.
You started crying in the shower so no one would hear. Started gripping the ring on your finger until your knuckle turned white, as though the serpent could somehow summon him back. Started lying awake at night staring at the canopy, replaying every disappearance, every excuse, every time he’d looked at you like he was memorizing your face before walking away again.
It broke you. Like ice cracking under too much weight.
You still aced Charms. Still smiled in the Great Hall when friends asked how you were.
But inside, the drowning had returned. Colder this time.
Because the boy who once claimed every inch of you like he intended to keep you forever was slowly slipping through your fingers. And every time you reached for him, he gave you the same soft, tired lie:
“Nothing to worry about.”
You worried anyway. You worried until the worry became the only thing that felt real, it clung to you like damp robes after a storm—persistent, chilling, impossible to shake off no matter how tightly you wrapped yourself in denial.
It followed you through autumn’s golden decay and winter’s brittle frost. Every morning you woke with the same hollow ache in your chest, checking the foot of your bed for an owl that never came, scanning the Ravenclaw table at breakfast for the familiar dark head that was increasingly absent. Sunghoon became a ghost in his own life. He still appeared—enough to keep the rumors from exploding—but never for long. A quick kiss in an empty corridor before vanishing again. A hand brushing yours under the table in the Great Hall, then gone before you could lace your fingers through his. Notes left on your pillow in that precise, slanted handwriting: Library tonight? followed by nothing when you arrived.
When he did speak to you, his voice was flatter, stripped of the warmth that once lived beneath every word. He answered questions with single syllables. He stopped initiating touch. Stopped pulling you onto his lap in the courtyard. Stopped whispering filthy promises against your throat until you were trembling.
You told yourself it was the war whispers growing louder. The disappearances were Order business, or family business, or something he couldn’t share yet. You told yourself that the distance was temporary. Protective.
But the worry didn't go away. It lived in your throat like a stone. It woke you at 3 a.m. staring at the canopy, replaying every half-smile, every excuse, every time he’d looked at you like he was saying goodbye without words. It made your hands shake when you brewed potions, your cauldron bubbling over more than once because your mind was elsewhere.
By March the castle felt colder than the grounds outside. The snow had melted into gray slush; the sky stayed low and leaden. You were going crazy thread by thread, and Sunghoon was the only one who could have stitched you back together—but he was never there long enough to try.
You finally had enough on a Thursday afternoon when the sun broke through for the first time in weeks, weak and watery, turning the courtyard into a patchwork of pale light and long shadows.
He was there—miraculously—sitting on the low stone wall near the fountain, elbows on his knees, staring at nothing. Robes open at the collar, tie loosened, hair falling into his eyes. For one stupid, hopeful second your heart leapt the way it used to.
You crossed the courtyard without thinking. Grabbed his wrist—harder than you meant to—and pulled.
“Come with me.”
He looked up, startled. Opened his mouth—probably to brush you off with another I’m busy—but something in your expression stopped him. He let you drag him away from the curious stares of a few lingering fourth-years, through an archway, down a narrow passage lined with dusty tapestries, into a small, forgotten study room that smelled of old books and forgotten ink.
You slammed the door behind you then you turned to face him.
“What is your problem?”
Your voice cracked. You hated it—hated how small you sounded, how desperate—but the dam had broken.
Sunghoon leaned back against the nearest desk, arms crossed, expression carefully blank.
“There’s no problem.”
“Don’t!” You stepped closer. “Don’t lie to me again. You disappear for days. You come back looking like death. You barely look at me, barely touch me, barely speak to me. You’re pulling away and I can feel it every single second and I’m—” Your voice broke again. “I’m losing my mind, Sunghoon. Tell me what’s wrong. Please.”
He looked away—jaw tight, throat working once. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“Stop it!” The shout surprised even you. You closed the distance until you were inches from him, hands fisting in the front of his robes. “Stop treating me like I’m stupid. Like I can’t see it. Like I don’t feel it every time you leave without a word. I’m your girlfriend! I—” Tears burned hot behind your eyes; you blinked them back furiously. “I love you. And you’re letting me drown. Just tell me. Whatever it is. I can handle it. Just don’t keep shutting me out.”
For a long moment he said nothing.
Then something cracked.
His hands came up—fast, almost violent—and gripped your wrists, yanking them off his robes. His eyes—those eyes you’d once thought held entire galaxies—were stormy now.
“You want the truth?” His voice was low at first, dangerous. “Fine.” He stepped forward, forcing you back until your spine met the wall. He didn’t cage you with desire. This was different. This was anger. This was something breaking.
“I fell out of love with you.”
You froze. Breath stopped. Heart stopped. Everything stopped.
He stared down at you—chest rising and falling too fast, eyes glittering with something that looked dangerously close to tears.
“I tried,” he said, quieter now, voice cracking on the edges. “I tried so fucking hard! Every time I came back I told myself I could still feel it. That I could still want you the way I used to. But it’s gone. It’s just… gone.”
You shook your head—small, helpless jerks.
“No...”
“Yes.” He laughed once—harsh, hollow.
The tears were falling freely now—hot, unstoppable, dripping from your chin. You didn’t bother wiping them away. What was the point? He was already looking at you like you were something he used to care about. Something he’d outgrown.
Sunghoon stepped back. Just one step. Enough to put space between you that felt like miles.
“You think I like this?” His voice dropped lower, colder. The warmth that once lived in it had frozen over completely. “You think I enjoy watching you cry every time I walk away? You think I don’t see how pathetic it’s become? How you cling to me like I’m still the same boy who kissed you in the Great Hall like the world was ending? Newsflash—” He spat the word like venom. “—that boy died the first time I came back and realized I didn’t miss you. Not the way I was supposed to.”
Each sentence landed like a slap. You pressed your back harder against the wall, as though the stone could absorb some of the pain.
“You’re suffocating,” he continued, merciless now. “You hover! You wait! You look at me like I owe you answers I don’t have. Like love is a fucking contract I signed and forgot to renew! I can’t breathe around you anymore. Every time you open your mouth to ask where I’ve been, every time you touch me like you’re scared I’ll vanish again—it just reminds me how much I don’t want this. How much I don’t want you.”
The black serpent on your finger pulsed—sharp, frantic, like it was trying to protest. You looked at it, but your vision was blurring.
Sunghoon followed your gaze. His jaw tightened.
“That ring?” He laughed again—bitter, empty. “I gave it to you because I thought it would keep you. But it didn’t work. Nothing works. You’re still here, still begging, still crying, and I still feel nothing… It’s over, don't bother trying to change my mind.”
He didn’t wait for your response. Didn’t give you time to argue, to plead, to scream. He simply turned away, robes swirling once, and walked out.
The door shut behind him with a loud slam.
Your knees hit stone. Your palms pressed flat against the cold floor. And then the sobs came—ugly, wrenching, tearing out of your chest like something alive. You curled in on yourself, forehead to knees, arms wrapped tight around your middle as though you could hold the pieces together.
You cried until your throat was raw. Until the tears ran dry and left salt tracks on your cheeks. Until the room felt too small and too big all at once.
You didn’t know—couldn’t know—that Sunghoon hadn’t gone far.
He’d walked blindly through corridors, past startled portraits and flickering torches, until he reached the seventh-floor corridor. The blank stretch of wall opposite a tapestry. He stopped. Pressed his forehead to stone. Closed his eyes.
The door appeared almost instantly.
The Room of Requirement opened for him like it had been waiting.
He stepped inside and the door sealed shut behind him with a soft, final thud.
For one heartbeat there was silence.
Then he shattered.
A loud shout ripped out of him, furious and broken. He spun and slammed his fist into the nearest surface—a wooden table the room had conjured, already cluttered with potion vials and spellbooks he didn’t want. The table cracked. Vials exploded in sprays of glass and liquid. He didn’t stop.
He grabbed a chair and hurled it against the far wall. Wood splintered. He kicked over a bookshelf—tomes and books tumbling like dominoes. He picked up a heavy crystal orb the room had provided (for what purpose he didn’t care) and smashed it against the floor. Shards flew. He stepped on them, grinding them under his heel.
He then sank to his knees in the wreckage.
The first sob came quietly—almost surprised. Then another. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes like he could force the tears back inside. His shoulders shook. His breathing came in ragged gasps.
“I lied,” he whispered to the empty room. “I lied—I lied—I lied—”
The words dissolved into another broken cry.
He curled forward until his forehead touched the cold stone floor—shards biting into his palms, blood smearing across his skin—and cried like something inside him had finally ruptured beyond repair.
Because he hadn’t fallen out of love with you.
He’d fallen so far into it—so deep, so violently—that the only way he knew how to keep you safe was to make you hate him enough to leave.
The war was coming. The mark under his sleeve had burned hotter every day since summer. The disappearances weren’t sickness. They were initiations. Tasks. Orders.
He couldn’t drag you into that darkness. He couldn’t watch you burn because of him.
So he’d burned the bridge himself.
And now—alone in a room full of broken things like him—he paid the price.
He cried until his voice gave out.
Until the room, sensing his exhaustion, softened the floor beneath him into something almost like a bed.
Until the last sob faded into silence.
The first weeks after the breakup were a suffocating collapse.
You didn’t speak. Not to your dormmates, not to the professors who asked why you were missing from class, not even to the house-elves who timidly left trays of food by your bed because you hadn’t appeared in the Great Hall for days. Words felt like glass in your throat, useless, sharp. So you stayed silent. Curled under your blankets with the curtains drawn tight, staring at the dark canopy until your eyes burned. Sleep came in fits and when you woke, the ache in your chest was still there, heavier each time.
You skipped classes. The ones you’d once aced without effort. You told yourself you’d catch up tomorrow. Tomorrow never came. Food lost all taste; the house-elves’ carefully arranged plates went untouched until they vanished again. Your robes hung looser on your frame. Your reflection in the dormitory mirror looked like a stranger—hollow cheeks, shadowed eyes, lips perpetually chapped from biting them to keep from crying again.
The first bad grade arrived like a slap.
An Outstanding in Charms had become an Acceptable in Transfiguration. Professor McGonagall’s note was polite, concerned, but the howler from home arrived the next morning, your owl dropping it right in front of you with an apologetic hoot before fleeing.
The scarlet envelope exploded open the second your fingers touched it.
Your mother’s voice—cold, furious, magnified tenfold—filled the room.
“—disgraceful! You are wasting your potential! After everything we’ve sacrificed? After the tutors, the connections, the expectations? You will pull yourself together this instant or so help me you will spend the summer scrubbing cauldrons at St. Mungo’s until you remember what ambition looks like! Do not test us further! Me and your father are ashamed—do you know what this looks like to the Ministry?—fix this, or don’t bother coming home for Easter!”
The parchment shredded itself mid-sentence, scraps fluttering to the floor like dead leaves. You sat frozen, face burning, tears stinging fresh behind your eyes.
But something else ignited too.
Rage—not at your parents, not at the howler, but at yourself. At the version of you who had let Sunghoon hollow you out until there was nothing left to fight with.
That afternoon you dragged yourself to the library.
You sat at the same table you used to share with him. Opened every textbook you’d ignored for weeks. Summoned every scrap of willpower you had left and channeled the pain—the sharp, jagged thing in your chest—into focus.
From that day forward, you rebuilt.
You went to every class. Sat in the front row. Took notes until your hand cramped. Asked questions when you didn’t understand. You met the Ravenclaw girl in the greenhouse twice as often as before; the plants didn’t judge, didn’t leave, didn’t stop loving you just because you were hurting. You brewed potions until your cauldron sang perfect colors again. Your grades climbed steadily.
You rejected everyone who tried. A Hufflepuff sixth-year left a note in your bag confessing he’d liked you since fourth year. You ripped it at the first word. A Ravenclaw boy from your study group asked you to Hogsmeade the following weekend. You looked him in the eye and said, “I’m not interested.” Polite. No explanations. No room for hope.
You locked everyone out.
Housemates were allowed small mercies—quiet good mornings, shared chocolate frogs during late-night revision—but nothing deeper. The world narrowed to your dorm, the library, the great hall, the classrooms. Anything beyond that felt like risk. Like vulnerability. Like another chance to break.
You tried to erase him.
The scarf he’d once draped over your shoulders after Quidditch—into the fire. The charmed quill he’d given you that never ran out of ink—snapped in half and discarded. The tiny vial of Amortentia-scented perfume he’d gifted you one Valentine’s poured down the drain, vial shattered against the sink.
You tried to take off the ring.
Every night for a week you sat on the edge of your bed, gripping the serpent between thumb and forefinger, pulling.
The first time it hissed—low, warning, almost hurt. The metal tightened like a shackle, coiling so hard your skin turned white and pain shot up your arm. You gasped, released it immediately. The snake loosened again, almost apologetically.
You tried again the next night. Same result. Hiss. Tighten. Pain.
By the third attempt you were crying—quiet, furious tears—yanking until your skin bruised and the ring refused to budge. You screamed into your pillow. Punched the mattress. Cursed him in every language you knew.
Then you stopped.
You stared at the black serpent curled around your finger, pulsing faintly with something that felt dangerously close to a heartbeat—and whispered, “Fine! Stay!”
You told yourself it was because the snake didn’t want to leave. That it was enchanted loyalty, nothing more. That you were keeping it out of stubbornness, or spite, or practicality.
But deep down—bone-deep—you knew the truth.
You were relieved.
Relieved that something—anything—of him refused to let go. Relieved that one small piece still clung to you the way you still, traitorously, clung to the memory of him. The ring was the last tether. The last proof that he had once looked at you like you were everything.
You left it on.
Sunghoon, meanwhile, became a stranger in every way that mattered.
He walked the corridors like a shadow wearing his face. Head down. Shoulders rigid. Robes immaculate but eyes dull. When you passed in hallways he didn’t glance up. Not once. Not a flicker. Not even the accidental brush of eyes that strangers sometimes share. You might as well have been invisible. A ghost he’d already exorcised.
You told yourself it hurt less this way.
Yeah… you were a liar.
The lie was necessary. It was the only thing that kept your feet moving through the corridors when every instinct screamed to stop, to turn, to force him to look at you even if it was only to see hatred in his eyes instead of nothing. You repeated it like a mantra during the long, hollow weeks that followed: It hurts less if I pretend he never existed. You whispered it while brushing your teeth in the dormitory bathroom mirror, avoiding your own gaze. You muttered it under your breath while walking past the Ravenclaw table and forcing your eyes straight ahead. You clung to it in the middle of the night, when you had to press your palm against your mouth to keep from crying out.
But pain has a way of becoming fuel when there’s nothing else left to burn.
It pushed you forward.
Through the endless revision sessions in the library. Through the practical exams where your wand hand shook for the first five minutes until muscle memory took over. Through the nights when sleep refused to come and you stared at the canopy, tracing the ghost of his touch along your collarbone until the memory turned sour and you rolled over to bury your face in the pillow.
Before you knew it, NEWTs arrived.
And passed.
You walked out of the last exam—Potions, ironically—feeling nothing at first. Just the dull throb of exhaustion behind your eyes and the faint metallic taste of adrenaline fading on your tongue. Results came by owl two weeks later while you were home for a brief break. The envelope was heavy, official, sealed with the Ministry crest. Your parents watched in silence as you broke it open.
Top percentile, the accompanying letter said. Auror recruitment had already flagged your name. An interview was scheduled. A training position awaited—if you accepted.
Your mother’s eyes glistened for the first time in years. Your father actually smiled—small, restrained, but real. They hugged you. Told you how proud they were. How you’d honored the family name. How the Ministry would be lucky to have you.
And you were proud too.
Not the bright, shining pride of someone who’d won without scars. This was quieter. Harder-won. The pride of someone who had been cracked open, hollowed out, and still managed to stand upright long enough to cross the finish line.
a/n: 6AM. I say thank you. I go sleep. Part 2 will be posted soon. <3
REBLOGS AND COMMENTARY IS APPRECIATED!
description: Jay Park isn’t looking for love. What he is looking for is someone to care for his quiet, lonely son, someone patient, and reliable. Someone who can give Jisoo what he can’t. And maybe...just maybe...Mina isn’t falling for one Park, she’s falling for both.
content: Jay is a father
warnings: Slight posessiveness, Aloof Jay, drama, jealousy, allusions to smut, slight age gap
wc:
part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Mina
It was the kind of morning that could trick someone into thinking life was always this peaceful. Soft sunshine through cottony clouds, a cool breeze, and the smell of fresh grass from the park fields.
Jisoo practically vibrated with excitement as they pulled into the small neighborhood park, clutching Mina’s hand the whole way to the play area. But when they reached the edge of the playground and he saw the other kids running, shouting, playing he stopped.
Completely still.
Mina immediately noticed, crouching beside him with gentle eyes.
“Hey, baby,” she said softly, tucking a strand of hair out of his face. “Do you want Daddy and me to play with you for a bit first?”
But Jisoo shook his head fast. “No, Mommy.”
And then he took off darting straight toward the swings.
Mina didn’t move. Her mind didn’t either.
No. Mommy?
Her heart did a somersault. Her lips parted. She blinked.
Not Noona.
Not Mina.
Not Miss.
Not even the half silly nickname he’d once used, “my mochi maker.”
Mommy.
She stood up slowly, still stuck in some emotional molasses, trying to blink away the heat rising behind her eyes. And then she saw him gripping the swing with one arm while a little girl pushed him gently, the pair giggling like old friends.
That’s when Jay stepped closer, hands in his pockets, looking entirely too smug for someone who hadn’t done anything all morning except steal kisses and finish the last piece of pineapple without asking.
“Well,” he said, leaning in slightly toward her ear. “Looks like you’ve been promoted.”
She didn’t answer.
“Should I be calling you that too, or is it reserved for the kid?”
That earned him a slap to the bicep.
He flinched dramatically. “Abuse! In broad daylight, woman.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Mina muttered, cheeks warm.
Jay just grinned wider.
But she wasn’t smiling.
Not fully.
Because while that word had made something flutter and ache in her chest all at once, it also made her uneasy.
Jisoo had called her Mommy.
And sure, maybe it was innocent. Kids get attached, lines blur but she wasn’t here to replace anyone. She wasn’t his real mom. Hell, she didn’t even know anything about the woman. All she knew was that she wasn’t in Jisoo’s life, and now Mina was.
For how long though?
Could she really hold that place in his heart? Did she want to?
Yes.
That was the scariest part.
She wanted to. So badly it hurt.
“You’re thinking way too hard,” Jay murmured beside her, his teasing edge gone.
She glanced up at him. “I just don’t want to confuse him.”
“You didn’t,” he said firmly, gaze not leaving the little boy who was now kicking his legs out to mimic flying. “He knows exactly what you are.”
“And what’s that?”
“The woman who bandages his scrapes. The one who makes him mochi when he’s sad. The one who holds his hand when he’s scared. You’re the one who’s always there.”
Mina swallowed.
Jay looked at her then, really looked. “You’re not confusing him, Min. You’re his home.”
Her throat went tight, and she hated him a little for being so sweet when she was trying to emotionally spiral in peace.
So instead of answering, she turned her head quickly and called out to Jisoo, “Ten more minutes, sweetheart!”
“Ten hours!” he yelled back.
Jay chuckled and slipped an arm casually around her waist, his thumb rubbing soft circles into her hipbone as if the moment hadn’t just unraveled something in both of them.
Yeah.
Mina might not have meant to fall in love with both Parks.
But it was too late now.
And she was starting to think that maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t such a bad thing.
Jay
The whole Mommy thing?
Yeah, Jay digs it. A little too much.
Okay a lot too much.
He’d heard Jisoo mumble it once or twice before, little slips of the tongue that he chalked up to confusion or wishful thinking. And maybe a better man would’ve corrected it, gently drawn the line between caretaker and mother.
But he wasn’t a better man.
He was just a man.
A man who’d fallen headfirst for the woman currently tucked under his roof, wearing his hoodie, and tucking his son into bed with her gentle fingers and soothing words. So no, he didn’t stop Jisoo. Not once.
In fact, he’d made damn sure not to say a word.
And now he had a plan.
Because Jisoo didn’t just like Mina he loved her. Claimed her long before Jay ever did. And Jay? He was ready to make it official.
Make her his. Make her theirs.
She already was in almost every way.
He watches now from the doorway as Mina presses a final kiss to Jisoo’s cheek before leaving them alone for nap time. Her eyes meet his briefly, soft and unreadable, before she disappears down the hall. Jay waits until her steps fade out before crossing the room, crouching beside the bed where his sleepy little menace is curled up.
Jisoo blinks tiredly, his good arm curled around his stuffed bear, the other in its soft blue cast. “Daddy…”
“Yeah, bud?” Jay brushes his hand gently over his son’s hair.
“Mommy okay?” the boy mumbles, voice low. “She looked kinda…scared.”
Jay’s lips twitch.
Smart kid. Too damn observant.
“She’s okay,” he murmurs, fingers still smoothing through soft strands. “Promise.”
“Pinkie?” Jisoo sleepily raises his tiny pinky.
Jay hooks his around it. “Pinkie.”
A soft breath of air escapes the boy’s lips as his eyes flutter shut.
“I’ll talk to Mommy,” Jay adds quietly, the smugness creeping into his voice now that Jisoo’s nearly asleep. “Don’t worry, kid. Daddy’s got this.”
He waits a few moments until his son’s breathing evens out. Then he stands, tucks the blanket tighter around the small body, and exhales.
Yeah, he’s got this.
Mina might still be unsure about her place in their little world, but Jay? He’s sure of everything now.
She belongs here. With them.
And he’ll make sure she knows it.
One kiss. One touch. One morning like this at a time.
Hell, if he had to, he’d put a damn ring on her finger just to hear Jisoo call her Mommy again.
And he wouldn’t mind hearing her call him Daddy either....Jay freezes in thought.
“Jesus Christ,” he mutters under his breath.
Then he walks out the room, quietly shutting the door behind him, already planning just how he's going to make sure Mina never questions her place in this house or in their hearts ever again.
He found her in the sunroom.
Mina was sitting on the long padded bench nestled beneath the wide windows, sunlight pooling around her like it knew she was something holy. Her knees were pulled up, bare legs folded, head leaned against the glass as her fingers toyed absentmindedly with the hem of her skirt. She looked deep in thought or maybe, worse, doubt and that was enough for Jay to move.
No hesitation.
No fear.
Just him.
Because when Park Jongseong loved, he loved deep. And he loves her.
He walked in silently, hands in his pockets, eyes locked on her like he was studying art. Not the kind you glanced at but the kind that gutted you.
She looked up at the sound of his steps and blinked once, a soft smile curling on her lips. “Hey.”
Jay didn't say a word.
He didn’t need to.
He reached her in three slow strides, and before she could stand or speak again, his hands had already found her cheeks, cupping her face like she was fragile but his. His thumbs brushed along the soft swell of her cheekbones, eyes searching hers with a weight that made her breath catch.
“You’re overthinking,” he said softly. “Stop that.”
She started to say something, something he could already see forming a doubt, maybe a question.
So he kissed her.
Firm, warm, sealing her mouth with his in one motion that was more than affection it was a promise. A tether. A claim.
Her hands gripped his wrists, her eyes wide when he finally pulled back.
“I mean it,” he said, voice low, eyes dark but clear. “No more doubting where you stand here. With me. With Jisoo.”
“Jay—” she tried again, but her voice wavered.
“Mina,” he said, his voice firmer this time, “Look at me.”
She did.
He didn’t falter once.
“You belong to this family now. You hear me? You’ve been ours for a while. isoo made that decision way before I did. But now I have. And I don’t take that lightly.”
Her lips parted again, and he leaned in, pressing his forehead to hers.
“You don’t have to be his mom to love him the way you do. You already love him more than anyone else ever has. And me? I don’t want you here because you take care of my son. I want you here because you’ve taken over everything, everything, without even trying.”
His hands slipped down to hold her waist, thumbs pressing lightly into her sides, anchoring her.
“I want you here because I’m in love with you, Mina. Not like..” he paused, voice thick but unwavering, “not like puppy love. I’m talking... roots in the ground, your name under my skin, can’t sleep without you anymore kind of love. That’s what this is.”
Her eyes had glassed over, lips trembling.
“Say something,” he murmured, brows pulling in just the slightest.
“I… ]I just didn’t know you meant it like that,” she whispered, voice cracking. “I thought maybe this was just…”
She didn’t finish.
Didn’t need to.
Jay shook his head slowly, brushing his nose against hers. “Don’t do that. Don’t downplay what this is. Don’t put space between us when I’ve already closed the gap.”
Her breath hitched.
“You belong with the Parks now, baby. That’s not a question. That’s a truth. One I’m gonna keep reminding you of until it’s tattooed on your soul.”
And when she gave him that look again, the unsure one he kissed her again. Slower this time. Like he was giving her time to understand it, to absorb it. One hand still on her waist, the other cradling the back of her head.
When he pulled away, she was breathing harder.
But smiling.
And he knew right then that whatever came next, she wasn’t going anywhere.
Because Jay had spoken his truth.
And now she was part of his forever.
Mina
Jay had planted something in her.
No, not just planted but carved. Etched his truth into her heart with that voice of his, with those hands that held her like she was something precious, with those lips that had spoken love not like a line, but like a vow.
And now, the doubt was gone.
Completely.
Mina didn’t even know when exactly she had fallen in love with him. It hadn’t been one single moment it had been every moment. Soft ones, loud ones, the way he tucked Jisoo in, the way he watched her when he thought she wasn’t looking, the way his hands found hers without asking. She had fallen not like a storm, but like a tide.
Steady.
Certain.
Unstoppable.
Maybe it was too soon to say it...that four letter word people feared but she wasn’t scared. Some people fell fast, some fell slow.
She fell steady.
And Jay? God, he loved her. Said it like it was fact. No man had ever looked at her like she was the answer to his peace. No man had ever said those words to her and meant them with no hesitation, no stammering, no bargaining. Just Jay, laying his heart out like it wasn’t a gamble but a guarantee.
She trusted him.
Completely.
And Jisoo…her precious baby Park. If he wanted to call her mommy, then who was she to stop him? She felt like his mom deep in her chest, in every instinct she had, in the way her body moved before her mind when he cried, laughed, needed something. She would love that boy after her last breath.
Maybe she wasn’t his blood, but love wasn’t biology.
It was time.
It was heart.
And her heart belonged to both of them now.
Sure, it was new. Sure, it was terrifying. But at the same time not really. She’d been here for months. Waking up to Jisoo’s giggles, making breakfast, cleaning up markers off the wall, feeling Jay’s gaze on her as she stirred the pot. She’d been theirs for a while she just hadn’t realized it until now.
And if this was what falling felt like?
Then God, she never wanted to be steady again.
Her head turned at the sound of feet on the stairs.
Jay appeared a second later, shirt sleeves rolled up, hair a mess, a sleepy eyed but smirking Jisoo cradled in one arm like he wasn’t growing heavier by the day.
Two faces.
Same expression.
Matching smugness.
She didn’t even try to fight the smile.
Jay raised an eyebrow like he could already read her thoughts. Jisoo yawned dramatically, then blinked at her and grinned. “Mommy! Can I have cookies?”
Her throat caught.
Jay gave her a look that said, you asked for this, and then gently bounced the boy in his arms. “Only if you ask her nicely. She’s the boss.”
“Oh, so now I’m the boss?” she teased, standing slowly as they reached the bottom step.
Jay’s eyes dragged over her like she was something he’d never stop choosing. “You always were.”
And that was it.
That was her life now.
One brooding father with hands that held her like prayer, one mischievous child with a smile that healed things in her she didn’t know were broken and a home that didn’t look like it used to, but somehow fit her better than anything ever had.
She walked toward them, heart full.
If this was forever, she was already all in.
And she wouldn't change a damn thing.
Two weeks later
Mina couldn’t remember the last time she was nervous around Jisoo.
The child had long since burrowed his way into her heart like he owned a permanent lease there. But now that she stood at the edge of something real, her fingers tangled nervously in the hem of her sweater, and her heart did a somersault when Jay gently nudged her knee with his.
They were sitting on the plush living room rug. Jisoo cross legged in front of them in his dinosaur pajamas, Jay casually stretched beside her, his hand brushing against hers every few seconds as if grounding her.
"Hey, little man," Jay started, voice soft, calm. Almost too calm. Mina glanced at him out the side of her eye. He looked collected but that vein in his neck was twitching. He was just as nervous.
Jisoo blinked up at his dad with wide, curious eyes. "Yeah?"
Jay cleared his throat and smiled. “So…you know how you really love when Mina’s around?”
“I super love her,” Jisoo nodded with zero hesitation. “She makes steak and reads stories better than the robot at school.”
Mina choked on a laugh, and Jay smirked before continuing.
“Well,” Jay said, scooting just a little closer. “What would you think…if we were always around? Like, all the time. Like…if we were a family of three.”
Jisoo blinked. “We’re not already?”
That made both adults pause.
Mina’s eyes shimmered, and Jay’s chest rose slowly like he was trying not to let emotion knock him over.
“Technically not yet,” Jay said carefully. “But I love Mina. A lot. And I’d like her to stay. Not just as someone who helps us. But because she’s family. Our family.”
Jisoo tilted his head, lips pursed like he was doing some deep kindergarten calculus.
“So like…if you love her,” he started slowly, “and she loves you back which she does,” he added with a proud nod, “does that mean we get a baby?”
Jay choked on air before coughing. “A what?”
“I mean,” Jisoo huffed, exasperated. “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much..”
“Okay!” Mina sat up fast, shooting Jay a warning glare that could set the house on fire.
Jay burst into full blown cackles, falling back on his elbows as he wheezed. “Oh my God, I didn’t teach him that-”
“Sure you didn’t,” she hissed under her breath, cheeks pink, eyes slicing toward him as Jisoo looked between them innocently.
Mina took a breath and gently turned her full attention to the little boy in front of her. “Hey, sweetheart. Let me ask you something.”
“Okay,” he said with a shrug.
“If… f I stayed forever. If I was here every day and night, not just to take care of you, but because I want to be here, because I love you. Would that be okay?”
Jisoo’s head tilted again.
Then slowly, his whole face softened. His bottom lip wobbled and he quickly looked down like his emotions were too much for even him to handle.
“I wanna keep you forever,” he said in the smallest, most sincere voice. “You can be my mommy. I always wanted a mommy. I love you, Noona.”
Mina’s eyes filled instantly.
She didn’t have time to respond.
Because before she could say a word, Jisoo launched himself into her chest, one good arm wrapping around her neck with all the strength he could muster, and he squealed as he buried his little face against her shoulder.
“I love you I love you I love you!”
Mina held him so tightly it was like she was trying to keep her heart from falling out of her chest. Her throat ached from the pressure of love. “I love you too, baby,” she whispered shakily. “So, so much.”
Jay’s arms wrapped around them both, strong and warm and unshakable.
His lips brushed the side of Mina’s head as he whispered against her temple, “Welcome home, baby.”
And in that one moment filled with the sound of giggles, the smell of sunshine clinging to Jisoo’s hair, and Jay’s arms anchoring her in place Mina knew she had everything she would ever need.
A family.
Her family.
The Parks.
Forever.
Jay
1 year later
Park Jongseong was going to propose.
It should’ve been a calm moment. A private, emotional, intimate kind of thing.
But here he was inside a luxury jewelry boutique surrounded by absolute fucking morons.
“I’m just saying,” Heeseung drawled, leaning dramatically against a glass case filled with engagement rings that cost more than Ni-ki’s entire apartment complex. And he was the owner, “I knew you were whipped the minute you glared at that barista who called Mina pretty when we all went out.”
Jay didn’t even blink. “She was flirting. And her nails were dirty.”
Sunghoon snorted. “That was eight months ago, bro.”
Jay gritted his teeth. “And I stand by it.”
Jisoo, now a six year old little prince with a missing front tooth and a mouth that never shut up, clung to Jay’s leg like a determined koala. “Daddy, this one has sparkles! She needs sparkles!”
Jay looked down at the gigantic cushion cut diamond Jisoo was pointing at like it was radioactive. “We are not giving your mother a rock that could sink a boat.”
“But-”
“She doesn’t like flashy stuff, bud. We’re going simple.”
“But-”
“No.”
Behind them, Ni-ki and Jungwon were whispering like gossiping aunties at a brunch table.
“I heard he cried when she made him lunch for the first time,” Ni-ki stage whispered.
“Bro he definitely cried,” Jungwon replied with a solemn nod.
Jay gave them both a flat look. “You say another word and I’m putting both of you in the ring display.”
Heeseung smirked. “That’s a lot of effort for someone who sobbed the first time she called herself Jisoo’s mommy.”
“That,” Jay pointed at him, “was valid.”
“And precious,” Sunoo added sweetly, placing a hand over his chest like this was a K-Drama.
Jay turned toward the case, tuning them out as best as he could. A small velvet tray had been placed in front of him by the jeweler simple rings, classic, soft. He knew her taste better than anyone. She wasn’t flashy. She didn’t want something that screamed. She just wanted love. Real, gentle, grounding love.
He reached for one.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sunghoon said suddenly, stepping between him and the tray. “Before you do this, we need to come clean.”
Jay narrowed his eyes. “Come clean about what.”
Ni-ki raised his hand like a child confessing a crime. “We made bets.”
Jay blinked. “What?”
Heeseung groaned dramatically. “The day Sunghoon and I met Mina? We both looked at each other and said, ‘He’s gonna fall so hard for her.’”
“He already had,” Sunoo added helpfully.
Jay looked mildly murderous.
“So we bet on how long it would take,” Sunghoon confessed. “Heeseung said two months. I said one week. Sunoo said she’d have you begging in three days.”
Jungwon grinned like a cat. “I said you already belonged to her and just didn’t know it yet.”
Jay pinched the bridge of his nose. “You guys are all idiots.”
“But accurate,” Heeseung said proudly.
Jay ignored them all and finally picked the ring. It was a modest band, elegant and minimal, with a single round diamond hugged by small accent stones. It reminded him of Mina. Timeless, soft around the edges, and way too good for this world.
He turned to Jisoo, who was now hanging off Sunghoon’s arm like a sloth.
“You good with this one?”
Jisoo pouted. “It’s not big enough.”
Jay raised an eyebrow. “You want me to marry her or blind her?”
The kid rolled his eyes like a miniature teenager. “Whatever, but can I hold the box before you do it?”
Jay smirked. “Only if you promise not to drop it.”
“I won’t!” Jisoo beamed. “And then you can kiss mommy and I’ll say ewwwww really loud.”
Ni-ki nearly collapsed from laughter.
“Perfect,” Jay muttered. “My legacy. A dramatic son and a bunch of traitorous friends.”
He stood up straight, turning toward the jeweler with that signature Park Jongseong confidence. “We’ll take it. Wrap it. Full set. I’m proposing this weekend.”
The guys all froze.
“Wait this weekend?” Sunoo blinked. “Like, two days from now?”
Jay shrugged. “Why wait? She’s mine.”
Sunghoon let out a low whistle. “Possessive till the end.”
Jay turned with the box in hand and one arm slinging around Jisoo’s shoulders. “No. Just honest.”
And with that, he strode out of the store, leaving behind six stunned men, one giddy child, and a diamond that would change everything.
Park Jongseong was going to propose.
And the next chapter of his life?
Was going to be written with the girl who changed it all.
Mina
The Park house was loud.
But then again, it always was.
Mina padded barefoot across the warm hardwood floor, her cotton robe slightly loose, her long hair pinned up in a haphazard bun as she carried a laundry basket on her hip. She stopped short at the sound of high pitched giggling, followed by a deep groan.
“𝘚𝘩𝘪-shoot! Baby! She threw it at my face again!”
“She’s two, Jay.”
“She’s vicious!”
Mina sighed and walked into the living room to find her husband, yes, husband, still a little unreal even after three years on the floor, covered in throw pillows, a plastic teacup balanced on his head. His shirt was damp (again), and their daughter was standing proudly on the couch, holding another teacup in one hand and a glittery wand in the other like she was a fairy warrior.
“Dada down,” she declared.
Jay looked up from the floor with a betrayed expression. “Mina. Your daughter is a tyrant.”
“Our daughter,” she corrected, biting back a laugh.
From the hallway came the sound of stomping feet, and then their front door flung open.
“Mama! Dad! I’m home!!”
A blur of motion hit Mina at full speed.
Jisoo now eight and still a menace threw his backpack down and launched into her arms, hugging her tight.
“You smell like french toast,” he mumbled.
“You’re late,” Mina said, kissing the top of his messy hair. “Bus drop off was fifteen minutes ago.”
He grinned. “I walked.”
Jay looked up from under his daughter. “You walked?!”
“With the neighbors, calm down!” Jisoo shot back, then dramatically collapsed on the couch. “School was so boring, you guys.”
Mina rolled her eyes and looked down at her husband still flat on the floor, still under attack.
Jay gave her a lazy smirk. “You look hot, by the way.”
“I’m in a robe.”
“Exactly.”
Their daughter wobbled over to Mina, arms up. “Mamaaaaa.”
Mina picked her up with ease, pressing her nose to soft baby cheeks that still smelled like baby lotion and mischief. “Did you defeat Daddy?”
“Yup.”
Jay made a wounded noise. “Traitors. All of you.”
“You married into this,” Mina reminded, dropping a kiss to his hair as he groaned.
In that moment, as Jay sat up and Jisoo started rambling about a math test, Mina just breathed it all in.
This life.
This home.
This family.
There was a time she had doubted her place here. A time when she thought she was just a nanny, just someone passing through. But now, there was no just about her. She was Mina Park, mother of two, wife to a possessive but hopelessly devoted man, and loved beyond reason.
She moved to stand behind Jay and wrapped her arms around his shoulders from behind, chin on his head as he leaned back into her without hesitation.
Jisoo was now tugging on his little sister’s hand, trying to get her to help him set up the gaming console.
Jay tilted his head back to look up at Mina.
“Hey,” he murmured. “You happy?”
Her smile was soft, eyes shining. “More than I ever thought possible.”
He reached up, tugged her down, and kissed her sweetly, completely ignoring the gagging sounds coming from Jisoo.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you more.”
“Okay, now you’re the tyrant,” he muttered, pulling her into his lap as their kids rolled around like gremlins on the floor.
Mina laughed, her heart so full she could barely hold it in her chest.
And just like that the Park family chaos continued.
you were used to matchmaking, after all you were the reason your sister found her boyfriend but truthfully you didn't think much about love for yourself, not until you found yourself feeling more than you should for the local rich boy.
pairing: roommate!jungwon x roommate!femreader word count: 22.2K — one-shot ★⋆ content: fluff ⋆ angst ⋆ eventual smut soulmate au, kinda love at first sight, heavily based on xo kitty (but mature), loverboy!jungwon, matchmaker!reader, you don't have to have watched to read this!. SLOW BURN, a whole lot of yearning, jealousy, denial of feelings, introvert reader, refs to aot, refs to beautiful boy, characters from xo kitty, feat bsf!jake & enhypen!
★ | LISTEN ALONG! | PLAYLIST | LIBRARY
⚠︎ : alcohol, nightmares, cheating? (pls js wait) , toxic themes, at some point during this you're going to dislike jungwon but PLEASE let him land. jw loses his mind slightly.. making out, dry humping, spit play (ish), kinda mean!dom!won, fingering, nipple play, hair pulling, shower sex, oral (f receiving), unprotected sex, creampie.
— dreams are a form of communication for soulmates—a door into a life that could be. at the first meeting with their soulmate some become fortunate enough to develop dreams of them, it could be of anything, they could even be a background character, it'd be easy to mistake them for usual dreams but only few get blessed—cursed with these dreams.
being a match maker wasn't something you sought out, if anything it sought you out after all you didn't know sending out your sisters letters would land her, her soulmate. your sister and her boyfriend had gone through their fair share of tests but made it out each time, not unscathed but they made it out.
their relationship made it abundantly clear they chose each other every time—without fail and their determination to better their relationship was something you deeply admired, even being something you would strive for.
however you didn't bother yourself with something as trivial as boys, or anything of the sort. who needed love when you were always accidentally (and sometimes intentionally) matching people up.
this was a constant, even when you transferred to korea's international university of seoul (also known as kiss) into a dorm with your best friend jake who had graciously asked the board to let you room with him and his friend.
you melted into your desk chair sighing out in relief, decorating your new room had taken more out of you then you'd originally bargained, but at last the room was homey—comfortable and exactly how you liked it with the smell of your vanilla candle burning. you told jake you'd meet him at the welcome party, which really you said to have time to wind down before being overwhelmed with new people.
truthfully you were a little nervous to meet jake's roommate, mainly because you knew nothing about him—not even being able to point him out in one of jake's posts if asked.
you smoothed over the dress you picked out after a long internal debate, you paired it with your favourite necklace and a handbag. the mirror stared back at you whispering spells of confidence through you—you peeled your eyes away from the mirror with a satisfied hum.
before you could overthink going to the party any further you put on your favourite shoes and scrambled out the dorm with a little copy of a map of campus.
the air was light, a little cold but refreshing—this was about the time you regretted not bringing something to cover your arms.
thankfully for your goosebump ridden arms the hall wasn't far at all, you eyed the coloured sigh above the entry way "WELCOME PARTY!" feeling a little unease settle in your stomach.
the sound of laughter and music boomed through your body as you stepped through the room, on a plus you didn't have to graze against anyone to get through or else you would've turned around by now, especially with no alcohol in your system.
as if reading your mind a table packed with refreshments almost materialised in front of your eyes, it peeked through the swarm of people and a familiar brown fluffy haired man stood as he looked over the options.
[ NOW PLAYING > CON LA BRISA ]
a mischievous smile graced your lips as you placed a firm hand on his shoulder, making the taller boy stiffen with a subtle rise of his shoulders, he turned his head—eyebrows raised until they settled on you a familiar adoring boyish smile taking over his features.
"y/n!!" jake gasped pulling you into a hug "jake!" you returned against his shoulder, "you look amazing y/n!" he spoke over the music, you laughed complimenting his own outfit before you caught him up on the details of your journey, not noticing a certain blonde watching the exchange.
jungwon raised an eyebrow a smirk playing on his lips watching his friend talk to a girl he couldn't quite see behind him, he walked over as you got distracted with someone asking you about your dress, "i didn't know you had a girlfriend" he joked hush against his ear, eyes drifting over the back of your head, jake shook his head shooting him a eyeroll.
he snaked an arm around your shoulder as you finished your exchange pulling you so your shoulder bumped his, "this is our new roommate y/n" he beamed to jungwon.
your eyes fell him, his fell on you. for a split second you felt a tightness in your eyes—like they wanted to cry for you, like someone had wiped your memories of someone dear to you but your body still knew who he was—he felt so achingly familiar.
with your eyes full of wonder boring into each other you spoke together.
"have we met?".
you watched his lips curl, your own doing the same with no protest, his eyebrows furrowed looking over you as if he was trying to figure you out right there, or try to understand why his heart was beating faster, louder in his ears.
he looked like someone your eyes could fall to easily as your mind wandered into different realms, someone your eyes could find peace in as you thought of places you couldn't recall if asked.
the type of man you'd see on the front of a magazine wearing various designer pieces. only here he was sporting a black jacket with a white undershirt and grey baggy cargos. he knew how to dress, perfectly at that.
he didn't know what he expected when jake had asked him if you could move into their dorms, he just knows he did not expect you. not you with your eyes or your face that would leave people wondering who you were.
he smiled soft and polite "nice to meet you, i'm jungwon", you returned the smile, tilting your head "you too, i'm y/n".
he automatically repeated your name in his head over and over as if he was trying to ingrain your words into the corners of his mind—his brain short circuited when he realised what it was doing. you however didn't see any of this, just a stiffer smile than before and a little nod.
jake looked between the two of you trying to figure out why such a small exchange felt like it had an underlying secret under it. he grabbed a cup for each of you with some liquid sloshing around and pulled it around your shoulders in front of you.
you thanked him with a grin taking a long sip of the mystery substance, the taste of cherry and a liqueur you couldn't name sliding down your throat with a burn, you scrunched your nose giving your friend a nod of approval, your eyes flicked over to the pretty blonde watching his own reaction.
he also scrunched his nose in something between disgust and approval, approval not for the taste but for the alcohol. you all laughed together in uncertain familiarity, warmth seeped through your body, a comforting feeling—a hope for this feeling to continue.
after some time wandering around the room catching up with jake you caught the sight of a well dressed lady your age walking your way, "hii killer dress!, i'm yuri!" she spoke enthusiastically with an american accent eyeing you up and down.
"hi! you too, i'm y/n" you replied as she beamed proceeding to ask you the details of the dress, the discussion quickly switching to uni life "my mom is a professor here" she explained with a point towards the centre of the room towards a tall woman laughing comfortably into a taller man.
after a lot of getting to know your new friend and finding out she had mutual friends with yours, your social battery felt worn out and old wanting nothing more than to teleport home into comfy clothes and a cup of tea heating your palms, you bid your goodbyes to yuri and turned to let jake know you were going to turn in for the night. "we were just about to ask you if you wanted to go home" he replied as his eyes darted around looking for his friend around the hall.
you spotted him first next to the door with a tall black haired boy you'd later know as park sunghoon.
you nudged your friend and dragged your eyes back to where jungwon stood with a pointed look, he gave you a appreciative nod and motioned you to follow him through the wave of people who seemed to spawn in as you were leaving, you for one were thankful everyone came later.
"yo jungwon you coming?" jake asked as he dapped up the mystery man, "yeah" he replied eyes darting between you, the taller mans eyes followed jungwon's landing on you with a charming smile.
"hi, i'm sunghoon" he spoke clearly, you mimicked his smile feeling their eyes taking you in.
"hey, i'm y/n" you returned, he sent jake a look you had seen between friends many times, the slight eyebrow raise, the flick at the corner of his lips. jake raised an eyebrow as if to say don't even think about it.
jungwon unintentionally pulled you out of your thoughts with a cough, "alright we should get going" he spoke angling himself towards the door.
[ NOW PLAYING > NEW KIND OF LOVE ]
you let out a sigh you didn't realise you were holding in as you slipped off your shoes and placed them by the others. "tired?" jake sent a comforting smile placing his own by yours. "i have a couple hours left in me".
"good you should come watch a movie with us" he spoke as you led him through the dorm to your room "roommate bonding" he added with a laugh, you hummed placing your bag in it's new home—laying out your pyjamas for the night. "sure, why not" you smiled turning to face him, only to see both your roommates in front of your door frame.
their eyes gawked over the transformation of the once bare room, now filled with.. well you. "this is so comfy" jake exhaled sinking into a beanbag in the corner of your room. "i outdid myself" you replied playfully, jungwon also looked over your room taking in all your interests with slightly widened eyes before they landed on you. "movie in 30?" he asked you both leaning against your door, you both agreed before they dispersed into their own rooms to shower.
the hot water ran over your body like a blanket of comfort as your mind wandered to the first meeting with the blonde boy. you didn't mean it to, if anything you'd tried willing yourself to stop thinking about something you couldn't explain. after all the only explanation you could think of was temporary insanity.
he was a stranger not even 2 hours ago and now? he was your roommate, your pretty head fuck of a roommate and all he had done was look at you. you shook your head comically as a scoff left your lips at the invasive thought and with that you pushed it to the corners of your mind opting to forget about it completely.
unbeknownst to you jungwon's brain was fighting him about the same topic—a string of confusion clouding his usually clear mind, he too chose ignorance.
after drying yourself off and changing into your pyjamas—you opened your door and walked towards the kitchen. jungwon stood by the counter pouring hot water into a mug, his hair freshly washed—a slightly oversized black tee clinging to his body and grey sweats hanging off his hips.
you walked over and grabbed your own mug from the side before settling in step beside him. "hey" you said as you switched the kettle on, he looked over to you, almost like he'd forgotten you'd be here—or at least that's what you thought.
"hey, tea?" he said softly. "yeah how'd you know?" you replied before grabbing a tea-bag and sugar, "just a hunch" he slid closer to you—tilting his cup to show you the contents of the cup, the heat and scent tickling your nose.
"you have good taste" you smiled flicking the teabag into the bin, with his back to the counter he leant against it studying your movements. "so do you" his cat eyes still held the same familiarity you met him with now a curious arch to his brows.
you mirrored his movements leaning against the counter as the steam swirled into the air. "what movie do you want to watch?" he asked "hmm i'll let you and jake decide for today, see if you guys have what it takes" you playfully spoke, he let out an unguarded laugh and for a split second your mind tumbled into a eery silence—only that laugh spinning through you.
"i guess we can't fuck up then" he replied playfully checking the heat of his tea. "i guess not" your lips curled as your eyes met for a few more seconds than either of you intended, you looked deep into each other as if you expected the answers to reveal themselves to you.
you peeled them away first with a polite smile not catching his eyes lingering on you even after you turned.
jake slipped into the room with an exhale and a towel on his head, his eyes fell on you both "hey guys" he grinned lazily rubbing the towel into his damp hair.
he slid in next to you as you replied with your head knocking into his shoulder, "you and your tea obsessions" he scoffed with a ruffle to your hair, you slid away with a huff fixing the strands. jungwon watched in amusement but also something deeper, something he couldn't admit even to himself, a sense of longing—wanting to be closer, the thought was pushed away almost as quickly as it entered his mind.
you pushed yourself onto the counter and sipped on your tea as jake discussed movie options with jungwon. the blonde leaned over into jake's ear, you watched his expression taking a form of delight, his eyebrows lifting, "that might be perfect for her" jake said.
"alright can you fill me in" you looked between them, they nodded to each other, "the conjuring" jungwon looked at you with a corner of his lips twitching up.
you raised your eyebrows with pursed lips before cracking a smile, his lips mimicked your own, dimples peeking through.
you watched for a second, just enough time that it wasn't noticeable or so you thought, that dimple had the power to short circuit your brain, you just didn't know it yet. right now all you could think was that of a child, pretty blonde, pretty dimples, pretty eyes, pretty smile, pretty.
he watched your eyes do that thing he saw earlier, the split second of big wide eyes with thoughts running through them at a million miles per hour and then without warning it all stopped as though you were keeping yourself in check, what he didn't notice was himself doing the same.
"did he tell you it's one of my favourite?" you playfully interrogated looking between them "nope just a hunch" he replied with a tilt to his head and a smile as jake shook his head, "-also i saw your books" he added.
you turned your head as a laugh bubbled through you, not seeing how his eyes lit up, his mouth mirroring your own, his bubbly intoxicating laugh.
as your laughs died down jake's eyes caught jungwon's on you, the introvert laughing with girl he met a few hours, a knowing smile graced his lips.
[ NOW PLAYING > CHAMPAGNE COAST ]
you sat in between your two roommates with a shared blanket draped over your legs, your attention on the movie playing in front of you, you got through the movie feeling heaviness in your eyes.
he looked over to you for a split second, doing a double take when he saw your head drooping to the side before hitting jake's shoulder—jake lifted in shock from the sudden weight. he looked over to jungwon, stiffening afraid to wake you. he tried shuffling down so you could be comfier, only to be met with a groan and an arm flailing.
jungwon watched in amusement as jake huffed wrapping the blanket further on you, the movie finished with you breathing softly into jake's lap and legs brushing against jungwon's.
he looked over to jungwon with a small motion to help. jungwon gaped at the sight before him not knowing how to approach this, he teetered forward and blew some air through his nose.
his hand rested against your arm before carefully lifting your legs onto his lap, he pulled you further down as jake lifted your head, you stirred making them both freeze in their steps, as though searching for comfort with a little huff you ended up with your head in jungwon's neck.
he swallowed hard, wide eyes looking to jake as if he could help him, without a second thought he pulled himself to his feet with his arms wrapped safely around you, jake opened the door with a small laugh and peeled back your sheets. he placed you down gently and watched as your lips jutted out in a pout from the lack of warmth.
he couldn't decipher his thoughts—there were too many, for every thought he had about you, your softened features, your pretty lips, your huffs, also came a little voice telling him he's insane, to stop, he listened.
he draped the thick sheets over you before retreating to the safety of his room, mind spinning with ghost of you nestled in his neck.
you cracked the door open with rubs to the eye, a faint sting in your head loomed in the peaks of your head. the two men sat at the kitchen island with cups in front of them, they both looked up, small smiles gracing their lips. "morning" they both greeted.
you rubbed your head managing to give them a morning back, "i don't even remember getting to bed" you spoke as you made your tea, "yeah you were drooling on me" jake laughed loud. you set your cup on the table and groaned "i don't drool!" he laughed louder as you huffed.
"yeah no you didn't, if you did i would've thrown you to jungwon". you brain silenced you at the thought of such an intimate act, well it's normal with jake why not jungwon? you countered to yourself.
it's not the same.
"but jungwon got you to your room safe" he added as he chewed his food, you turned to him and mustered out apologies at that, saying they should've woken you up. he shook his head with a comforting laugh making your eyes meet his and with a rasp to his voice he said "i was glad to, really. besides you looked too peaceful".
you mustered a nod and a thank you not being able to meet his eyes.
"you guy's got classes today?" jake asked as you both sipped your tea. "i've got some induction meetings and then i'm freed" you spoke resting your chin on your hand.
"i've got to be there too" jungwon said finishing his tea. "your dad funded it?" jake asked.
"yeah he asked me to sit in since he can't be there" he spoke impassive. "jake do you have any today?" you asked looking over to him.
"nope gonna be a housewife today" you laughed feeling a little more awake now, the sting in your head now non-existent.
after finishing your tea you changed into some clothes and got ready for your class opting to go without your scarf since it was hiding from you, jungwon was going to your class today—you didn't quite know what to make of this, nothing wrong with getting closer to your roommate that your heart seems to come alive for.
without a word you both put on your shoes with a polite smile between you, he opened the door for you and locked it as you thanked him, you noticed his eyes still looking at you with that same curious gaze, except now it was like he was trying not to and failing.
you fell into step together walking towards the class, now out of the safety of the halls and onto the streets the air was fresh with the smell of rain, colder than yesterday. jungwon stopped in his tracks—his eyes on his phone, you stopped with him, "everything okay?" you asked, he glanced up "yeah, class got cancelled the stand in professor called in sick.. do you want to grab tea?".
"oh, yeah sure" you spoke with a chill running through you.
"are you cold?" jungwon spoke through the sound of birds and the odd car.
"just a little, i couldn't find my scarf" you spoke with a sigh as you looked over to him, his cheeks were tinted pink from the cold, a black backwards cap sat on his head, a red scarf wrapped neatly around his neck.
he immediately stopped walking, you turned to him with confusion written in your brows, he unwrapped the scarf walking over to you, you backed up "no, no i'll be okay" you spoke fast, firm.
"besides our dorm is on the way to the tea place".
"y/n come here" he raised an eyebrow leaving no room for debate, you stood still as he stepped forward, you thought he'd just give you the scarf, instead he looked at the scarf with concentration as he wrapped it neatly around your neck, as if this was the most important thing in the world in that moment.
"let's go home"
his deep red scarf sat comfortably around your neck, the clean scent of him happily invading your nose, you were picking up on his habits, if you lagged behind for even a second he'd slow down without a thought, always making sure doors don't fall on you without making a show of it.
"if you can't find it don't worry, just keep mine on" he spoke as you walked into the dorm, "no, i'd feel too bad" you looked up at him into his eyes for the first time that day, he faltered mouth opening and closing.
"will it make you feel better if i grab my turtleneck jacket" you made a faux thinking pout before nodding.
"that would make me feel better yes" he sent you a sweet smile, dimple hollowing, your heart flipped involuntarily.
you rummaged through your closet seeing no sign of your scarf—you turned back closing the door to your closet, where is it.
your eyes scanned over the room seeing nothing out of the ordinary, your bed with it's usual blankets folded lazily at the end. a slight annoyance tinged in you as you walked back to the kitchen.
"hey, back already?" jake greeted you, "yeah class got cancelled but we're going to a tea place if you wanna come?" you asked as you put your shoes back on.
"i'm feeling lazy but i'd looove if you could bring me grape-ade?" he asked with a cheeky grin and a head tilt, you rolled your eyes giving him a nod.
jungwon walked out from his room, now sporting an olive jacket, he grabbed his shoes and walked over to the sofa as you and jake conversed about something you wouldn't be able to remember if asked later on.
"you ready y/n?" he asked as you finished your conversation, "yeah i couldn't find it but i'm warm enou-".
"if you even try taking it off i'm gonna start wrestling you" he joked as he tied his laces into bows, "i could take you" you laughed with no thought behind the words, he rolled his eyes playfully before gesturing to the door for you to go ahead.
"bye jake!" you waved to the boy, jungwon joined before locking the door hearing a faint "don't forget the grape ade!" you both shared eye contact, giggles falling into the air with a warmth pooling in your stomach.
you'd settled into a comfortable talk of classes as you walked side by side, pushing all the nonsense from yesterday to the backrooms of your mind by force, because this was your roommate and you wanted to be friends with him... without your brain dangling a carrot etched with perfect man over your head.
you had a suspicion of what was happening, you'd had crushes before but quickly came to the realisation that crushes were nothing but a lack of information and you had a habit of falling for the thought of a person rather than who they actually were.
however this wasn't something you had dealt with since you were younger but for right now, that's all you could come up with.
you were brought back to reality when you'd finally reached the warmly lit cafe, jungwon pushed open the door, keeping it open for you as he had been. you thanked him as you both sat opposite each other at the front of the cafe, in front of the window.
he sunk back in the chair sighing under his breath as he pulled the cap from his head, he shook his head softly letting it fall to his forehead. his eye winked at the intrusion—he blew the hair away as he usually would.
you cursed in your head as you let your attention swerve back to the list of refreshments, as if you didn't already know what you wanted.
"what are you getting?" he asked with his eyes already on you, as though he'd been watching. "black tea, you?" you replied easily.
"me too" he tilted his head with a small smile. he watched as you averted your eyes to the window, a muscle in your jaw tightening as you turned your head towards it, his eyes softened as he watched you stuck in your own head—wondering what was going through your mind.
his scarf sat snug around your neck, only he knew who it belonged to. in shadows of his mind you were the water behind a dam, cracks deepened as you leaked through.
you ordered your drinks and talked as you looked out at the life outside the windows, through the background chatter of the others in the cafe jungwon's voice cut through.
"so.. jake tells me your a match-maker?" he started with a mischievous glint to his eyes. you groaned head tipping back, hands covering your face.
"he didn't.. oh my gosh" you spoke behind your hands. "don't worry he barely told me anything, he told me he was catching up with your sister and her boyfriend and about how you matched them up" he laughed softly as his fingers hovered over the cup.
"it wasn't intentional" you started, he encouraged you to go on with a pointed look, "she wrote some love letters and as the curious silly little sister, i sent them.. and they ended up dating for real after fake dating, they've been together about 6 years now" you added watching as his eyes widened slightly at your words.
"that sounds like the plot of a bad romcom" he spoke, eyes crinkling a laugh bursting out both of you at his words, "it really does".
"but since then it seems like i keep unintentionally matching people up, so i just did it when i saw something between people, even when they couldn't see it" you trailed off a small smile playing on your lips as your fingers skimmed the rim of the cup.
"how do you even notice things like that?" he asked with genuine wonder.
"sometimes all it takes is catching a look between people, other times it's been places i spend a lot of time at, like when i was at school i noticed my teachers yearning for each other like they were in a drama, so i put a rose on her desk from him, which got them talking and now they're married" you spoke happily, eyes lighting up at the memories of their wedding.
"wow, you are a modern day cupid" he spoke incredulously as you shook your head with a laugh.
"i'd rather not be, cupid's love story is complicated to say the least" you responded finishing your tea.
"aren't all love stories?" he countered.
"touché" you responded as you both finished up your tea. you ordered a go to grape-ade for jake and walked back to your dorm, sharing more details about your sister and her boyfriend.
you walked in laughing about one of your match-making stories as jake sat on the sofa scrolling on his phone, his ears perked at the noise. you sat next to him after taking off your shoes and coat and handed him his drink, he thanked you with a smile and a how was it. as you told him how cute the cafe was you felt a dip in the sofa next to you.
jungwon watched as you sat back and tilted your head back talking about the cafe, it wasn't much but he noticed it all, in the little time you'd spent together you were becoming a little more comfortable, bit by bit.
you caught his eye as you gestured to jake, he watched as your breath halt when you saw his feline eyes already on you, you pulled yourself together with a breath, his eyes glazed over your face—landing on your neck.
your own followed his and you unwrapped the scarf from your neck before holding it between your palms, "i'll wash it and get it back to you, is that okay?" he looked between your eyes slowly.
"no, it's okay i'll do it" before you could fight back, he read your mind and placed a hand on the scarf with a grin, you felt his hand graze yours, a light tingly feeling bloomed as you felt a flutter in the pits of your stomach.
you both pulled back in silence shifting back to your original position, jake sat sipping his grape-ade looking over with a side eye.
jungwon retreated into his room to freshen up, with his scarf. he hung it up, the scent of you causing him to stop in his tracks, with a shake to his head he left it hung on the hook by his wardobe, with no intention to wash it.
.⭑ˎˊ˗
you had the same encounters, the same shared looks that neither of you addressed or could even admit to yourselves and then you had your first class, with yuri sitting next to you, occasionally making conversation about clothes or class.
that evening you got home and had a shower as usual, washing away any stress from the day and getting changed into pyjamas—then proceeding to the kitchen to make your tea, only to find jungwon sat at the table with two steaming cups beside him.
he motioned you to sit, you raised an eyebrow in confusion as you sat beside him at the island—he slid the cup over while sipping his own.
you'd always been better at showing appreciation physically, with a thank you and a smile—a hug or a head on a shoulder.
so when you placed your cheek on his shoulder with a small thank you, you told yourself it was like how you would with jake, that it wasn't different.
he stiffened not having time to relax—you'd already pulled away, his body missed you when his mind couldn't understand why, he chased the feeling of your body on his without giving himself permission to.
"you didn't have to" was all you could muster with your voice coming out softer than you meant it to, quieter.
"i wanted to" he said back, with the same tone—that same tone that made it feel more intimate than either of you allowed it to be.
you took a testing sip, it tasted exactly as it would if you'd made it yourself—he watched over your expression.
"good?" he asked with a curious arch to his brow.
you turned to him "perfect... thank you".
his smile gleamed under the dim orange lamps scattered around the dorm, a small shy smile you only saw a handful of times but relishing in it each time.
[ PLAYING NOW > TAKE A BITE ]
he couldn't breathe feeling you against his neck, hot—heavy. your lips ghosting over his ear, he whispered incoherent words in your ear, his hands not touching you—not yet.
he was close enough that his presence maddened you, a slight pull could intertwine you but neither of you dared to cross that line.
"i wanted to see the world in colour, through your eyes and through your mind."
your eyes stung—cold sweat clung to your forehead, you were shaking, you groaned as you stumbled out of bed with your chest burning—eyes darting to the clock on your bedside table, lighting up a green 3:21AM.
you splashed cold water on your face and walked heavily through your door to the kitchen in the dark, without warning the under lights of the kitchen turned on—you gasped loud causing the other figure to jump with you, a startled jungwon stood before you.
his face was flushed, eyes wide, like he'd seen something he couldn't explain.
you let out a breath of relief sinking into the chair, his shoulders also slumped in something between relief and defeat.
neither of you spoke at first just breathing in the shared space, he also melted into the chair next to you.
"you look like you've seen a ghost" you finally spoke after minutes.
"so do you" he managed back.
he grabbed two water bottles from the fridge and slid back into his seat, you thanked him before guzzling down half the bottle.
you couldn't remember much from the dream, only that you were not you—you were watching yourself through someone else's eyes, you remembered they had made you look like you'd stepped out of a romcom, with the dreamy lens and the heart eyes.
you remembered the words.
and even so, you had no idea why it led to this reaction, why you were sat at your kitchen island with your roommate like you just had a life altering experience.
you weren't comforting each other for what you were going through, you were simply living through the same experience, unknowingly.
you were so focused on your thoughts you didn't notice jungwon's hand inching towards you, not until it held your arm—so light you'd think you were made of glass, only until then you didn't realise you were shaking.
you startled before dragging your eyes over to him, he tried inching closer to be able to hold you comfortably but the chair was stuck—he let go of his hold on you to grapple onto the bottom of your chair, dragging it closer so your shoulders touched.
you would've found it hot if you could think about anything other than whoever was with you in your head. his hand came back to that same spot, as if to ground you, he rubbed up and down, the sleeve of your shirt occasionally getting in the way.
without a word you turned, tilted your head and sighed falling onto his shoulder.
the last week scared you more than you could verbalise, you weren't scared of what was happening, more so of the uncertainty—the unknown.
the whys, hows, there was no real explanation to anything that had happened recently, it was all catching up to you after a week of pushing it all down and wishing it'd go away.
you felt him tense beneath you at the weight, he quickly relaxed—sighing into your touch, for a second you thought he was going to pull away, instead he pulled his hand from your arm and wrapped it around you, letting your weight fall on him.
he was telling you without words that you could lean on him, he could take it but all you could think was, who does he lean on?
after some time you tilted your head to take him in, his flushed cheeks, the curve of his nose, his eyes still sparkling despite the clear exhaustion—his eyes locked with yours.
"are you okay?" you asked as if you weren't the one shaking a couple minutes ago, not even realising you'd stopped.
he paused before laughing in fond disbelief "you're asking me that?"
you rolled your eyes, still so close to him, "you don't look too good yourself.. answer me".
"yes ma'am, i'm- well i'm fine—tired i just woke up after a dream" he spoke slow, careful.
"me too" you spoke under your breathe. he nodded finally looking away like he'd seen something he shouldn't have.
"good or bad dream?" he asked.
"i don't know yet".
.⭑ˎˊ˗
you spent most spare moments with those words in your head.
"i wanted to see the world in colour, through your eyes and through your mind."
after that night with jungwon you'd gone to bed with those words echoing in your mind like a prayer, you went to class as usual—one of them was with your roommates.
jake and jungwon had coerced you into sitting with their friends, sunghoon, ni-ki, yuri and her friend juliana, they welcomed you easily, as if you weren't new, they included you when they didn't have to.
after spending more time with them in classes sunghoon and ni-ki decided to come over more, you often found them on your sofa with a smile encouraging you to hang out with you, which you always did.
jungwon couldn't understand why this was happening to him, he went to class as usual, lived his life as usual. only now his heart raced when he heard your voice—he heard you everywhere, he heard you in the laughs of people he didn't know, always turning without fail to see if it was you behind it.
he hated it but he relished in your presence—he'd told himself you were roommates—friends, nothing more.
which is why he didn't know what he was thinking when he'd suggested studying in the library to his friends, of course you'd be invited.
it's not like he was avoiding you, but he'd made it a point to try not be in close proximity with you outside of the dorms. it seemed to have no logic behind it and he knew that but people do illogical things when they're going through a mental war.
so when he saw the flicker of hurt in your eyes when you realised he didn't mean to include you in the plans, he felt his heart squeeze—ache.
it did it again when you excused yourself with a poor lie about being tired—a lie no one else looked into but him.
the hurt sat low in your chest, you started wondering if you missed other signs from him indicating his lack of wanting you there. no matter how much you had tried, you couldn't stop the hurt from leaking into the cracks forming around your heart.
even when you'd told yourself it wasn't deep—that it didn't matter, you knew it wouldn't have mattered if it was anyone else but you found yourself asking yourself the same question of why.
so the second you realised what he had meant, you mumbled an excuse with the most convincing smile you could muster, avoiding his eyes and you walked to that tea cafe, because one thing you couldn't do, was be somewhere you weren't wanted.
that evening he couldn't focus, he slumped in his chair—absentmindedly chewing on his pencil. the odd flicker of pages, the muffled chatters acted as a playground for his mind.
his notebooks were long forgotten by now, jake sat besides him working on some physics equation, yuri on the other side chatting away with juliana as sunghoon and ni-ki sat in front, with all the people he held dear close by, all he wanted was to see you, was to tell you it wasn't that he didn't want you there, he just didn't trust his mind—or heart not to jump for you.
he turned to his friends, "i can't focus, i'm gonna work at home" he muttered to them.
he walked as fast as he could towards the dorms, he needed you to understand—you weren't unwanted, how could you be. the wind ran past his hair with a hiss, the knocking of his shoes loud against the concrete.
he opened the door and walked in, not bothering to take off his shoes, immediately looking for any sign of your presence with his heart in his throat.
no sign of you in the kitchen, living room—anyone's rooms.
so he did the next most logical thing, he messaged you—despite the fact that neither of you had messaged outside of the dorms group chat or the friends chat.
"hey, where are you?"
[ NOW PLAYING > CARDIGAN ]
you sat with your ear-phones in—trying to will the music to take over the noise in your head as you nursed a cup of black tea with a heavy heart.
the emotions you were trying so hard to deny were breaking through without permission but now you'd been let down for the first time, he'd rejected you without words—without even knowing what he was doing.
the stubborn flesh in your head called your brain took it as a deadline, the first pull—you'd unknowingly opened yourself to him without grasping what it would mean—that you had let yourself be hurt, you allowed the hurt by opening yourself.
you hated that more than you understood why. from now you wouldn't allow more, he was your roommate and a friend.
nothing more.
the second you came to this conclusion you felt a stinging in your heart, like it was fighting you—telling you to hold onto the hope in your heart for him to fix this.
your finger twirled around the rim of the cup as you stared off into the life beyond the windows, the lovesick couples, friends—all walked by, serving as a mocking reminder of your situation.
after what felt like hours you sipped the last remnants of the lukewarm tea and snapped the backwards cap closer towards your scalp before pulling open the door.
you walked without looking, not really—your eyes scanned over the cars to the right and the river to the left, which is why you didn't see the person in front of you until their hand was on your shoulder, snapping you out of your daydream.
jungwon stood in front of you, wide eyed—scanning every inch of your face like he was looking for signs of pain, hurt "y/n" he breathed out, letting go of your shoulder.
he watched as you looked at him before taking out your earphones, eyes holding a slight shock before melting into an emotion he couldn't understand, a thin lipped smile you held for a second.
"hey" you responded with a rock from the heels of your feet, dragging your eyes from your feet to the river—it glistened under the city lights.
"you didn't get my message?" he asked with a worried furrow to his eyebrows.
you pulled your phone from it's place in your bag and sighed through your nose, "it's silenced, sorry.. was it important?".
yes it was, it was so important but how could he do this without the dam breaking.
"yes y/n i'm.. i'm sorry about earlier, i didn't want to make you feel like-like i didn't want you there, i did—i do! i just.. i didn't want to make you feel like you had to be there" lie lie lie but the alternate was pouring his soul out about something he didn't understand and what would hurt more?
you stood shocked, shocked that he even addressed it—expecting this to be washed away with time as most conflicts between friends are.
"it's alright, i didn't feel like i had to be there..but it's fine. really" you watched his shoulders relax, the walls you'd put up that day slumped with them.
he turned so you were both now facing the river, his shoulder brushed against you, neither of you moved—his hand snaked onto your arm pulling you to face him.
"i don't want you to pull away.. okay?" he looked between your eyes, soft pleading.
the dam in your minds creaked heavy, the sting in your hearts vanished without further complaint.
"okay.. i won't" you spoke quiet, a dimple carved into his cheeks at your words.
you mimicked his smile unwillingly, eyes drifting back to the water.
his eyes followed your own to the mass of water in front of you, it was beautiful—with the dimmed orange lights glistening in the ripples, it was almost hypnotic—especially through your eyes.
"home?" his eyes didn't leave your face for a second, catching your immediate shyness.
"home" you smiled as he motioned for you to walk on the inside of the path, that night your mind grew weaker for him, never expecting him to take responsibility—but that small part of you that was afraid of letting him in, being hurt—wished he was ignorant, wished he didn't read you perfectly.
it would've made it easier to stay away but that was never in the cards for either of you.
[ NOW PLAYING > ROOMMATES ]
now comfy in some pyjamas after a warm shower you walked into the kitchen feeling content, comfortable compared to earlier—the discomfort in your stomach now gone.
jungwon had prepared a cup of tea for you alongside his own, always perfectly timed after you got ready for the late evening, you hummed as you slid in next to him on the sofa, sitting closer than you intended, he turned to you giving you a smile as you murmured a thank you.
he mimicked your way of accepting, leaning into your touch, shoulder pushing against you as he slumped further into the sofa—you sat flushed against each other as whatever documentary played in the background.
for the time you spent curled next to him, you thought about how the feelings you had earlier—the doubt had dissipated into nothing, you were so adamant on this changing things but how could it when he did everything you hadn't allowed yourself to think was possible.
"heyy!" jake slid in next to you with a cheeky grin, you both greeted him as he grabbed the remote from the table in front of you, "movie?" he spoke as he pulled a blanket from the side and passed it to jungwon.
you hummed in agreement placing the now empty cup in front of you "do you guys wanna carry on with the conjuring series?" you looked between them, they nodded enthusiastically.
with the lights now off and your drinks finished you started the movie with the blanket pulled up to your lap.
jungwon's attention wasn't all on the screen. he tried—he really tried to keep them fixed on the pixels but his eyes kept drifting, he didn't mean to—it's like they were magnetised to you.
the way your lips tilted every time you saw the couple have a moment, the way your eyes were lit with longing—he wondered in that moment if you'd ever been in love before, he choked on nothing realising his brain was no longer under his control—instantly coughing to try cover it up.
"you okay?" he paused feeling caught before looking over to you and nodding, mustering up a smile—even though he was malfunctioning.
you with your alluring eyes, your adoring smile, your laugh that he was hearing in places you weren't.
god he thought he was past this.
friend, roommate, friend, roommate. he repeated over and over.
you however felt clarity at the situation, because really this wasn't a situation at all, all the pulls and pushes in your head were just that—in your head, he didn't feel this.
friends. roommates.
you acted as though you would with any friend, pushing your legs on top of jake's lap and leaning your head on jungwon's shoulder. jake made a faux noise of annoyance just to pull the blanket over your legs comfortably.
and jungwon? his eyes hadn't left you, so when you had let yourself melt into his shoulder, he let his head fall against your own. he could smell your shampoo, barely but it was unmistakably you.
jungwon heard that people get sleepy when they're around people they're comfortable with, he thought that was ridiculous until he found himself drifting into dreamland, slumped against you.
you stiffened slightly as you heard his breathing slow down—his body growing heavier, he twitched every now and then with huffs at nothing in particular.
you felt his breath on your nape, his arm draped over your waist—in flashes you saw his dimple shining pretty as he kissed your cheek lovingly, he pulled your body close to his, whispering sweet nothings.
"i'm right here".
he woke up, breathing hard—a buzzing ache lingering behind his eyes. his surroundings became clearer with each blink, the hum of the tv, the warmth of your body. he looked around with wide eyes as you sat up looking over to him with concern written across your face.
"bad dream?" you asked softly. he turned and slumped lower so you were eye to eye, he took in your tired eyes, the stiff crease in your eyebrow—the way the tv light shone against your face.
"have you ever had a dream you couldn't explain?" he spoke quietly, flitting between your eyes.
"yeah actually.. pretty much every dream i have" you joked, his lips tilted in amusement—until you saw his eyes cloud over in real time by a deeper thought.
without warning you stood up and grabbed a water bottle, slumping back into that same position slowly—careful not to wake jake. he watched as you opened the bottle and passed it to him, he thanked you.
he didn't realise how thirsty he was until then, or how flushed he was. he guzzled down the water—sighing out from the lack of breath.
"do you know what a soulmate dream is?" he finally spoke.
"yeah of course, well not from experience but i've heard of them" you looked over to him—catching the way his eyebrows were knit in thought.
he gave you a look telling you to continue, "i've heard they can be pretty much anything, depends on the people.. my aunt found my uncle through the dreams when they were about our age, her dreams were from his eyes—she told me the first time she had the dream, she thought she was having a panic attack.. and she couldn't understand why something like a dream had caused so much stress..".
you trailed off as the cogs in your mind turned, clicking missing pieces into place with a flag waving that said "you are a fucking idiot."
surely not, you thought—mind flashing back to that dream, the words, looking through his eyes—your soulmates eyes.
you could be wrong.. but you if you were right then maybe you had somehow made contact with your soulmate, maybe it was someone in passing—maybe it was slight eye-contact with someone you had never even conversed with.
[ NOW PLAYING > BACK TO FRIENDS ]
"y/n?" jungwon waved a hand in front of your face—disrupting the mental war going on in your brain.
"sorry.. i just remembered something" you exhaled, head still dazed in the idea of having a soulmate, someone promised to you by the universe, to be destined to you.
you felt as though you should have been happier at this revelation, here was the possibility of having a soulmate and yet you couldn't stop thinking, what if it wasn't the blonde boy sat next to you. you pushed it away as you had been with any thought you didn't enjoy.
jungwon caught the whirl of thoughts in your head, he saw the conflict, although he had no ideas for what it could be for—who it could be for, his hand snaked around your back, settling on your bare arm, his thumb rubbed circles.
you looked over to him as the flutters in your stomach subsided, his eyes held the stars, they bored into yours—every twinkle in his eye had you falling deeper into his soul. his spare hand reached up settling on the base of your neck—he watched as your throat bobbed up and down.
your eyes flitted over his lips, to his eyes. he paused as a thought intruded, your lips were glistening—they looked soft, how would they mould against his, how would you taste?
you watched as his eyes dilated, closing in on your lips.
his hand shifted up, his thumb rested on your jaw.
in one swift movement you pushed your head into the crevice of his shoulder, his hands gravitated to your waist immediately.
your bodies moulded together, your chests flushed against each other, you felt his breath falter, loud. you wrapped your arms around his waist before pulling your body back slowly—his hands chased yours grazing against them.
you pulled your head back, your nose grazed his jaw—he faltered, he steadied himself with a hand on your thigh. for a moment neither of you dared to move, your breath grazing against his jaw.
and then as a cruel twist of fate, jake stirred.
neither of you knew why you felt like you had been caught, so when you both pulled away sitting back into your given places—you couldn't come up with a good enough explanation for why you both bolted like you'd been stung.
you didn't talk about that night again, not as you sauntered around the lingering touches—the yearning stares as the other remained oblivious, the strings of life pulled you together in ways you didn't want to allow.
he was everywhere, at home, at the cafe, at the library, in your mind. even when you'd found peace at the river alone, he was in your mind, if he wasn't there physically he was mentally.
you were in this perfect frenzy of close friends but not too close—both doing so well at maintaining this friendship, this perfectly curated back and forth.
but now the dam had a gushing—heavy leak and there was no fixing it.
[ NOW PLAYING > BLIND ]
your heart ached, your chest was pulsing with hurt—your throat burned as you were grasping for air, you didn't know what it felt like to be heartbroken—never felt the lack of hope, of knowing there's nothing left but here you were, on the floor of your bedroom.
you woke up screaming—sweating, you only knew it wasn't reality when you heard him.
"y/n, hey wake up"
you bolted up before you even knew where you were, the sound of your sobs quieting down as you gained consciousness.
jungwon stood over you with concern and sleep printed in his expression. "did..did i wake you? i'm so sorry" you breathed feeling tears run down your face, he shook his head—an amused huff left his lips as he sat himself on your bed.
he leaned in closer than you expected, a hand softly resting against your cheek and jaw—he held you for a moment before wiping away your tears. his eyes held an adoration only he could explain.
"bad dream?"
"the worst" you sighed.
you sat further up with a sniffle and a sigh as he pulled you into his arms, you squeaked in shock—his arm wrapped around your waist, the other cradling your head.
"you're okay" he whispered.
you both breathed each other in, he held you like this would be the last time, like he'd never get the chance again—as if this was the first meeting after a lifetime of waiting.
you felt as though you were in another dream, one with no consequences—but even comfort after a bad dream felt like an excuse to touch him, so hyperaware of the meaning.
you pulled away with murmurs of needing to freshen up and more apologies, you had thought yourself into overthinking.
it was all too much, you felt too much, his presence alone dampened the hurt you'd felt, no one else could do that—so you showered it all away and wrapped yourself in your towel before stepping back into your room and closing the door behind you.
you turned to see a flushed jungwon with his hand on the door handle covering his eyes. you jumped back as he whisper yelled apologies with his back turned.
"fuck i've been tryna get the door open since you left" he stuttered as you backed up to your closet, grabbing pyjamas.
"let me get changed and then i'll try help" you laughed at the sheer gravity of the situation as you pulled your clothes on and trudged over to him. he turned around and took you in, his eyes flit over you, a faint smirk on his lips.
you rolled your eyes as you tested the door yourself, it wasn't about strength—besides you'd seen jungwon's arms, that wouldn't have been a problem. the handle rattled, turning easily with no clicking, no confirmation of the cogs fitting into place, nothing.
you looked at him, he was already looking with a defeated expression. "what are the chances jake's awake?" you asked before bursting into laughter with him at his theatrical sigh.
"it's 2am, you need to sleep" he spoke as you both sat on the edge of your bed. "so do you" you countered, he hummed in agreement as you sat yourself under your covers, patting the space besides you.
this was fine, you told yourself as if you didn't run away from him for comforting you too well. you looked him over as he slid in besides you, his black tank-top clung to his figure perfectly, the shadows on his muscles perfectly lit under the fairy lights.
you slid down to get comfy, he mimicked your movements until you lay looking towards each other. how is it possible for someone to look so beautiful with no effort he thought as he scanned over your tired features.
"why are you looking at me like that?" you spoke into the comfortable silence of the room.
"like what?" he asked feeling his throat close up.
"like you've never seen me before"
he opened his mouth, closing it immediately—truthfully he looked at you like that every time he saw you.
"maybe i forget, so i take my time, make sure i can never forget again".
you rolled your eyes playfully, ignoring the way your heart soared at his words.
"save that for your soulmate" you joked.
the reality of your words sunk in too late—hurting your own feelings as the object of your desires lay in your bed with you.
you pulled the covers over your shoulders feeling the warmth seep through your body, his eyes never once left yours as you both talked yourself to sleep.
your eyes flickered open slowly, you yawned before blinking a few more times, adjusting to the golden rays peeking through. you tried to turn, only to be stuck—jungwon's arm was lazily splayed across your waist, his chest pressed to your back—his soft breaths against your nape.
you didn't dare move, didn't dare ruin this—for it wouldn't last.
you felt guilt for not waking him, for letting yourself live in this delusion while he slept—peaceful with no idea of where he was.
after minutes of laying there, your sleepiness wearing off—jungwon stirred, he groaned with his mouth closed as he pulled you by your waist further into his chest, you squeezed your eyes together and let yourself relax.
he twitched again a few minutes later, only now his eyes fluttered open—it was only evident he was awake when he yawned as quietly as he could as he took in his surrounding bit by bit, you half expected him to immediately let go of you and retreat into his space on your bed.
instead he let himself relax and closed his eyes with a faint smile.
you didn't know how much time it had been but by now you thought he was back to being asleep, until you heard a voice "yo y/n! i got the door open-" jake swung it open with a screw in one hand, his face morphed from glee to his jaw being dropped—and then a large toothy smile took over.
you shook your head with wide eyes motioning to the blonde boy being asleep, he hushed himself immediately not before raising his eyebrow and whispering "when did this happen?".
"nothing happened.. he was locked in here—so we slept" you shrugged your shoulders, praying your lips wouldn't betray you as your heartbeat already was.
you turned yourself slowly so you could face jake, only now jungwon huffed pulling you into his chest, his head was now in the crevice of your neck, his legs tangled over yours. jake laughed into his hand as you stared at him like a deer in headlights.
"fuck" you breathed as he doubled over in silent laughter. he whined as you pried yourself from his grasp with little apologies, his hands looked for you—a small pout forming on his pretty face.
you smiled as you pulled the covers over him before getting ready for the day. with your teeth brushed and your skincare on you skipped over to the kitchen, eyes catching on the pile of letters and cards.
a little pink card with the words "SYMPHONIA IX GALA" you'd heard about this gala from yuri, the gala where everyone goes all out with their dresses, dressing as princesses for the night—there was still a while until the night but tickets were already out and selling fast.
you had never been one to take initiative but last night with jungwon, that meant something—you were sure of it. it couldn't have been nothing, not with the way he looked at you—the way he held you.
maybe you could go together—as friends.. and see what happens.
half an hour later you walked back into your room with the pink card to see jungwon sat up rubbing his eyes, "morning" you smiled as you tucked the card under your alarm clock.
you sat yourself on the edge of the bed as he yawned with a stretch "morning y/n" he rasped leaning back on his arms.
"come on princess you should get up" you spoke pulling the covers down to his hips. he groaned as you jumped from the bed with a yelp, running from his swats.
"also your tits out!" you laughed turning the corner of your door.
[ NOW PLAYING > SYMPHONIA XI ]
that night you found the courage you needed to do it, after all you were only asking as a friend. that's what you told yourself, even if you wanted more—even if you knew you'd be hurt if nothing more was to happen.
you told yourself the next time you see him, you'll do it.
only you didn't expect to see him on your way to meeting your friends, he was sat on a bench with yuri—you walked over, telling yourself you can do this over and over.
"hey guys" you spoke watching as their heads snapped to you as if they were caught doing something they shouldn't.
"hey y/n" jungwon smiled, the smile not quite reaching his eyes.
yuri only smiled, "hey, did you hear about the gala? the tickets are out" you spoke to jungwon, feeling a chill of anxiety run through your body, it's too late to back out now.
"yeah, were you planning on going?" he nodded.
"yeah.. actually i was wondering if you wanted to go"
you watched a smile form, until he felt yuri grab his hand—his face dropped, his mouth opened as if to speak but before he could respond, yuri spoke "actually we're going together".
you looked between them, the hand she was so easily holding between her palms.
"oh that's cool, i'll ask jake" you nodded, ignoring the blooming envy in your heart, jungwon's face held conflict—like he wanted to speak but he couldn't bring himself to.
and to confirm the fact you were so badly trying to deny.
"we're dating" she added. you looked over at jungwon—he took one look at your face before avoiding it all together.
you breathed in, holding back any emotion and mustered a "congrats" yuri smiled sweetly, "i've got to meet sunghoon and ni-ki, i'll see you guys".
you walked as fast as you could but not to meet sunghoon and ni-ki, you pulled out your phone and messaged them a vague excuse and then you walked and walked.
not even a day ago he was in your bed, holding you as though he was used to the feeling. it burned, your heart—the sting turned into an aching you couldn't quite fathom, couldn't quite push down. the rain started slowly, you sat by the river feeling the drops run down your face along with your tears.
you were grateful for the rain, grateful it grew heavier, swallowing your sobs—somewhere along the way you opened your heart, despite your efforts to keep it hidden, you'd fallen for your roommate.
you hadn't been in the picture for long but you were observant, you had to be to be a match-maker. so how had you not caught this—caught a vibe, a look.. anything.
you knew it was late but your phone was dead and you couldn't bring yourself to care because along with the hurt of rejection, you hurt for the friendships you would lose—because you couldn't keep yourself from falling for him.
you mourned the memories you'd created, you knew nothing could be the same from now and anger at yourself for deluding yourself.
by the time you got back to the dorms you were soaked and freezing, it was late—so late that you got back to a furious jungwon and jake.
you closed the door behind you with the click of the key and kicked off your shoes, "where the hell were you?" jake jumped off the sofa walking to the hallway.
you turned to face him—he took in your state and gawked, "phone died" you sighed walking through to your room and shrugging off your coat, "where were you?" jungwon repeated as they followed you.
"river" you answered plainly as you shivered, they grabbed towels for you, walking to you slow—with distance, not being able to decipher your emotions. you turned to the door, jungwon stood in front of you, trying to drape the towel over you, "i'm fine" you sighed in annoyance pushing past him.
"you're out until 2am and you come back frozen but you're fine?" he gawked eyebrows— furrowed. "yes i am fine" a muscle in your jaw flexed as you looked away from him, you couldn't look at him.
it wasn't his fault he doesn't feel the same but you also couldn't pretend you could stand his touch anymore—his presence, you couldn't let him have this hold over your heart the way he did right now.
you sat down on your bed finally feeling the cold catch up to you, your breathing slowed as you sunk onto the bed.
jungwon slid over as you sunk, "stop, m-fine" you breathed pushing him with no force, jake ran over pulling the towels over your body. you felt weak, your eyes drooped until you felt yourself drifting, "no come on don't fall asleep" jungwon shook you as you groaned in annoyance.
they pulled you into the shower running hot water over you as you sat in your clothes, you managed to convince them you could change by yourself.
finally laying in bed with your covers pulled to your chin, jake sat by you as jungwon made tea, "what happened?" he slid in next to you rubbing your arms as you shivered.
"i just lost track of time.. that's all" you sighed as you wrapped yourself around him, your head in his shoulder.
"you lost track of time, sat in the rain?" he turned to you, speaking against your hair.
"yeah—it's therapeutic really" you spoke. he hummed—not believing you one bit.
by the time jungwon came back you had drifted off into sleep on jake, he looked over with a mixture of envy and relief but neither of those things could compete with the grief in his heart—the loss of your comfort around him, the annoyance in your expression at his mere presence.
jake watched over you—with an expression jungwon couldn't decipher, he sighed through his nose before speaking. "she looked happy this morning, she was even meant to meet the guys—they told me she cancelled, saying she's tired" they took in your peaceful expression with knit eyebrows.
jungwon couldn't think clearly, he wanted to believe that maybe you were thinking about him—maybe you were hurt, about him and yuri.
maybe you were just angry, that as his friend, you knew nothing, you were told on accident—with no prior knowledge or even inkling.
jake stayed through the night, telling jungwon to get some rest—which he reluctantly did after hours. he soothed you when you stirred, he rocked you when you groaned awake, he eventually drifted into sleep alongside you.
you stirred as jake slipped out and got ready for his classes, waking up a little while later to tea by your bedside, assuming it was from jake you didn't overthink it—opting to get ready, learning to live with the sting, instead of ignoring it this time.
this entire time you had pushed down your feelings, pushed them to the corners of your mind for you weren't used to feeling so much.
you told yourself you needed to feel to let go, to let go of him—to let go of the feelings you had harboured without allowing yourself to.
but that didn't mean you had to be around to witness him with his new girlfriend, which also meant distancing yourself from your friends, not because you wanted to but because they would be there and just by their presence the peace you seeked would dissipate.
you got through it alone, avoiding everyone—justifying it by telling yourself you needed time but they didn't make it easy and it didn't go without annoyance from jake, especially for staying out later than usual and avoiding the usual hang-outs.
the tea cafe had become somewhat of a sanctuary—it being open 24 hours was of great help for someone actively avoiding a roommate but you were surprised you hadn't seen him here, after all he had introduced you.
there were also a few times you weren't so lucky, in your shares classes yuri talked to you as usual, which to your surprise didn't come with talks of her new boyfriend.
as for jungwon, he didn't know what to expect—he just didn't expect silence—to be shut out like you hadn't spent the last couple months becoming closer, becoming friends, you didn't even come out for tea after your shower anymore.
you didn't walk to class with him—always walking earlier. every time he tried to talk to you but he was met with a brief cold response or bitter shut down, eventually even your silence turned into sour remarks.
he didn't push, because pushing meant the possibility of you pushing you away for good and he couldn't take that—but he could take this, he would take this over nothing.
you couldn't see it but jungwon's patience was wearing thin—each day he went without so much as a stray glance was undoing his resolve.
after another morning of solitude, you walked through the kitchen and out the door with no words to the blonde sat at the kitchen island, who unknown to you was waiting for you, he locked the door and walked a few paces behind you.
you sat in your usual seat a few minutes early to the lecture, consumed by your own thoughts—until you felt a presence besides you, sunghoon sat in his place besides you as he would. you settled into your usual conversations, until he talked about you helping him study after class,
"when did i agree to this?" you joked, "when yuri said we're all studying at your dorm later" he laughed with confusion, you opened your phone to the messages with a sigh, "i actually already have plans" you spoke, avoiding his eyes.
"what plans" he asked as you put your phone away, "i wanted to go to the cafe and juliana asked me to go out tonight".
he hummed, "i haven't seen this infamous cafe.. care for some company?".
you made a faux thinking face as he groaned "yeah sure, why not" you answered feeling eyes bore into the back of your head.
after your class you both walked to the cafe, narrowly avoiding an interaction with yuri on your way—you did however run into juliana who invited sunghoon to join you that night.
you didn't quite know why juliana had messaged you separately for your outing but you weren't complaining, if anything this was ideal. after the cafe you walked back to your dorms to get changed, with anxiety looming in your chest—knowing everyone would be there.
you clicked the door open and closed it after sunghoon scurried in, "you wanna wait here or come with?" you asked as you slid off your shoes, "i'll come with you" he replied.
you walked in to papers scattered over the coffee table and the kitchen island, jungwon and jake sat at the kitchen as yuri sat with ni-ki on the sofa.
you tried your best to walk through without seeming rude, "where have you guys been!" yuri asked with a smile as sunghoon stood behind you, "y/n showed me that tea cafe" sunghoon replied sensing your discomfort.
"aww you should take us some time" she spoke, you hummed as jake motioned you to come over, he pulled you in for a second. "you alright?" he whispered, you nodded with a ruffle to his hair—he swatted you away as you tried your best to avoid the blondes stares.
"i've got to get ready, but i'll talk to you later" you said to him as you moved to your door with sunghoon following.
"before you guys go, i wanted to just say while everyone's here that jungwon and i are dating!" juliana spoke enthusiastically not looking at anyone.
silence. dead ghostly silence.
for a split second you looked for jungwon's reaction, you couldn't help it. his eyes were already on you—you caught his discomfort, your face stayed straight—not so much as a grimace, you couldn't.
[ PLAYING NOW > MANEATER ]
the boys all looked at jungwon in disbelief, they had always sensed the vibes between you two, even when you didn't. you'd already turned around opting to head into your room with a goodbye.
"she's getting ready with sunghoon?" yuri raised a playful eyebrow and a nudge to ni-ki's shoulder, "they're friends" jungwon responded impassive, eyes still on the page.
"they'd be cute together" she hummed, jungwon looked up with a rise to his brow, before shaking his head—focusing on the click of his pen instead of the ugly green blooming deep within him.
you got changed in the bathroom, into a outfit you knew would turn heads for your first proper night out in a while.
you came out in a lowcut dress and your favourite going out shoes, sunghoon gawked shamelessly "are you trying to kill people?" you responded with a laugh and a "maybe" as you grabbed the chosen bottles of liqueur and walked through the door of your room to the kitchen.
you took two glasses pouring an equal amount of liquid in both—handing one to sunghoon, you hadn't noticed the pairs of eyes on you as you walked through.
"y/n you look hot as fuck" yuri spoke first, everyone hummed in agreement—except jungwon, who could only stare, the first genuine smile in a good second bloomed as you thanked them, you handed sunghoon the drink watching as he took a big mouthful.
you took a sip, testing the waters—when it was deemed safe you took a long swig, with only a sample of the drink left in the cup.
"steadyy" jake took the cup from you, drinking the remnants up.
"where we going n/n" he grinned all toothy, "we aren't going anywhere jakey" you smiled, he fake pouted—you turned your head with a groan laughing.
"we should probably get going" you made another drink, drinking half and leaving the rest for sunghoon who gladly chugged the rest. jungwon walked over pouring himself his own drink next to you, his eyes flit over you carefully, like he was absorbing you into his soul—or like he wanted to test you.
you decided to pay him no mind, instead securing your handbag and walking out the door.
you waltzed in to the sound of 2000's music blasting in your ears and thankfully you found juliana within the first couple minutes of being there. "hii guys" she squealed pulling you into a brief hug before pulling back and taking in your outfit.
"you look soo fucking hot!" she exclaimed—you complimented her own outfit with a giggle and a buzz running through your body. the three of you took shots as you all sat at the bar laughing and singing along to the music, until you felt arms around your waist and a head on your shoulder.
you were fully prepared to head-butt whoever was touching you, until you heard jake's laugh, "guess who!" he spoke over the music. you turned in happy shock "jake! what are you doing here?" you laughed.
"yuri forced us to come, something about juliana" he spoke hushed before ordering shots but unfortunately, where ever yuri was—so was he. you turned to see jungwon stood with his hands in his pockets, already looking at you—you rolled your eyes in annoyance before pushing yourself up and taking the shots.
"i'm gonna dance" you said to no one in particular already walking towards the dance floor—juliana opted to join you but not without daggers in her back.
throughout the week you felt your upset—sadness—hurt dissipate into anger, you knew it wasn't going to last, but for now angers always easier to navigate than hurt, especially when you're drinking.every time you caught him staring it fuelled the anger you so desperately craved to feel.
you swayed your hips with rhythm, each sway on beat. juliana stood in front of you mirroring your movements with a large smile, you noticed her also sneaking peeks at where the group would be, for why you didn't know—you didn't think much about it either.
especially when there was a cute guy eyeing you from the bar, "go talk to him!" she shouted over the music, you shook your head with a scrunch to your nose "i don't chase" she laughed at that, you watched as her mouth drop into a smirk.
you followed her gaze, said cute guy was now besides you with a drink in his hand "i couldn't help but notice you, you look beautiful" the mystery man said with a grin, "thank you! i'm y/n, this is my friend juliana" you smiled as he handed you the drink.
"i'm jay, nice to meet you both" he spoke over the music, you gravitated back to the bar with him after juliana whispered for you to go. you couldn't help but feel pricks on the back on your neck, feeling piercing jabs like someone was watching you, your conversation with jay was going well, he was beyond cute—well mannered.
everything you'd look for in a man.. if you were looking for a man.
the second the passing thought of him being a potential partner whizzed through you felt as though you were being hissed at by your heart and to make matters worse, you heard a familiar sweet voice.
"hey jay, been a while" jungwon spoke with a strained jaw, jay looked up with a genuine smile at his presence.
"yoo jungwon!" he exclaimed as he went in for a dap up, you however was stumped they knew each other.
"how do you-" you gestured between them speaking only to jay, "he's in most my classes" jungwon chimed in before the other man could speak, you hummed to jay as if he had replied.
"you wanna dance?" you asked jay, feeling a need to get out of this interaction but before he could respond jungwon edged closer to you, almost forcing you to look at him from the proximity, "actually jake asked for you" he spoke sweetly.
jake had not asked for you, he actually asked where you were. you apologised to jay and excused yourself as the blonde trailed dangerously close to you.
"hey jake" you smiled sitting by him at the bar, "y/n! where have you been!" he whined with a clear red tinge to his cheeks. "just was on the other side of the bar" you responded.
"you guys looked good together" yuri smiled, you reciprocated not seeing jungwon's daggers at his girlfriend.
"i'm getting so tired" jake whispered to you before dropping his head on your shoulder, you nodded already taking out your phone.
[ NOW PLAYING > PARTY 4 U ]
"i'm gonna take jake home" you spoke to whoever was listening, already pulling jake up with you not without a wobble.
"i'll come" jungwon spoke quicker than you'd have expected, quick enough to show he was engaged before you even spoke. "stay here, we're good" you responded not looking at him.
"i'm coming" he finalised despite the protests from yuri in forms of whispering near his ear. the car ride was quiet, not awkward—just silent, the only noise being the hum of the engine.
you all sobered up as you wound down for the night—ending up laying on jake's bed as he rambled about physics—feeling more awake after a cold shower.
"about earlier.. jungwon and yuri, did you know?" he started—slowly, words laced with caution.
"well..yeah i did, i found out like a week ago" you replied looking up from your phone, he looked like he was ready for a bomb to go off.
"like.. the day you came home late?" he asked with an eyebrow raised. you raised your own eyebrow—challenging "you'll have to be specific, i've come home late a few nights" you feigned ignorance.
the night you felt your heart hurt in ways you hadn't thought was allowed.
"the night you came home almost hypothermic" he spoke as he sat by you on his bed, his eyes scanned over the mass of your face, peering for any reaction—any indication he was correct.
"yeah, found out earlier that day" you said unbothered, as if that wasn't the reason you were spiralling deep into a burn no one could soothe.
"it's unrelated" you spoke before he could, as if he asked.
"is it?"
you watched his own expression, the worry etched in his forehead, in his eyes—he just wanted you to learn to lean even if it wasn't something you were used to, leaning on someone with the rawest edges of your thoughts, handing over emotions that took weeks to be allowed to exist.
jake of all people knew this wasn't your strong suit, which is why he didn't push—he only encouraged, he let you lie because he knew how badly you needed the lie to be real.
"i don't know" you sighed, you tipped your head back onto his pillow—blowing air through your nose in the process.
he let you speak, only moving to sit closer to you.
"ever since we met, it's like my brain is pushing me towards him, like it wants—needs me to be close to him..i know how insane that sounds and i tried—i really tried to ignore it but after a while i just let it happen, maybe because i hoped it would be reciprocated, i don't know what i thought, i told myself i wouldn't care if it wasn't but as we got closer, so did whatever was pulling me towards him and that night we got stuck in my room.. i thought- just maybe there was—there could be something more but i was still so, scared? so i asked him if he wanted to go to the dance but yuri said they were going together.. and i said i'll ask you instead and then she told me they were dating and my brain just went into overdrive".
as you rambled you watched him go through a plethora of emotions—from earnest listening to shock he was trying to be subtle about and then something bordering on appalled confusion.
"so you think a cosmic force is pulling you together-" he started, you nodded with a swift scrunch to your nose at his wording.
"and you asked him to the gala as a friend even though you wanted more but you didn't wanna admit it" he added.
you nodded "i'm so glad i was too stubborn to ask properly, imagine i did that and she told me they were together, i think i would've blown up" he laughed at that with his usual gummy smile.
"i don't know, i don't think you're insane or looking into things too deeply, anyone can see he's insane about you" he spoke casually as if you weren't being presented with new information.
you gawked for a second "what is wrong with you—don't say shit like that" you spoke as you swatted at his chest.
"nah i'm serious, he looks at you like you personally give him life every day and since you started avoiding him he's been looking around like a lost kitten always looking in places you'd usually be".
"jake he has a girlfriend" you sighed pushing your head deeper into the pillow.
"that's true, but he didn't stop looking for you whether or not he has a girl" he retorted.
"well he can keep doing that, i'm not waiting up on anyone just because there's a possibility he could like me especially whilst he has a girlfriend, besides i still just need time away from him, when he's close i can't hear myself think—it's like all rational thinking goes out the window" you groaned as a hand wiped down your face.
it was all becoming a bit too infuriating, even when you did your best to put yourself in positions where you couldn't be interacted with, he found a way, when you'd walk to class—he'd be right next to you. when all you wanted was to drink tea and read, he'd be in the room— hovering.
when you were playing a game with jake, he made it a point to sit next to you—closer than you wanted, at least a knee brushing yours.
which didn't help when your emotions towards him were currently in a hurricane you didn't care to address.
you even decided you'd spend all night at your tea cafe to study, not wanting to be distracted by jungwon's constant hovering. only he showed up not even an hour in and sat in front of you like it was his given place.
you looked up from your work without moving your head and blew air through your nose in annoyance, he looked at you with his signature curious feline gaze, which if anything annoyed you further—because why was he looking at you like he wasn't the one who sat down without permission.
"hey" he spoke after seconds of silence, with the sound of the rustles of paper and the chatters of the workers hanging as its own white noise.
"hello?" you breathed eyes still stuck on your work sheets—only your mind wasn't focused on the pages, not anymore.
"are you staying here—all night?" he asked eyeing the empty cup of tea besides you.
"probably" you spoke stifling a comedically timed yawn.
"you want to walk back with me?" he said before he could over-think the words coming out his mouth.
"i'm fine right here" you finally look up—expecting him to back off, to take the hints you'd been so easily throwing at him.
instead he stayed in his seat—sinking further into it with a nod at your words. your eyes stayed on him—challenging, he held your gaze as if he waiting for you to do something.
"are you not leaving?"
"thought i'd keep you company" he smiled as he ordered his own black tea.
you narrowed your eyes in disbelief and took a breath to compose yourself, he couldn't be serious..
"i don't need company" you responded with a sweet venom-laced smile, he smiled with a tilt to his head.
"you have mine anyway" he said easily—as if those words wasn't something you would've dreamed of weeks ago.
[ NOW PLAYING > FALLEN STAR ]
he was trying to be your friend again but you knew your friendship was never just that—it strived on touches neither of you wanted to pull from—contact you so deeply craved after convincing yourself you wouldn't.
but you didn't feel guilty for wanting those things, because he was just jungwon—but now, he was her jungwon.
which is also why you couldn't fathom how he could be here—in this position, you knew your feelings were painfully obvious—your reaction to their relationship only made that clearer.
"how can you do this to her?" you said before you could stop yourself.
if he felt any forms of guilt—anger or defence he hid it well.
"what am i doing?" he responded slowly, it felt almost mocking—as if he had no clue at all.
"i'm not going to spell it out for you" you spoke with a clenched jaw as you shoved your things into your bag and swiftly left the cafe.
the clacks of both your shoes were the only noise in the other-wise clear air.
"speak to me y/n" his voice soft and warm, the kind that had the power to soften your roughened edges.
he trailed behind you as you walked with a mission, this was where he would finally leave, was what you thought as you reached the river—you took a definitive turn to walk towards your designated spot.
only he was still here, "what are you doing?" you finally turned with frustration bubbling through you.
"speak to me.. please" he repeated again, in that same voice.
"what do you want me to say? that i don't understand why you're still talking to me—as if we can be friends—we can't" you let out finally.
"why can't we be?" he asked.
"you have a fucking girlfriend jungwon" you spat.
"so?" he walked closer to you.
"what the fuck.." you scoffed turning away from him, he grabbed your arm pulling you closer to him—turning you to face him again.
"that doesn't mean we can't be friends" he said, peering into your eyes, before you could shake yourself out of his grasp.
"does she know?" you responded quickly, not letting any silence settle.
"yes, she does".
"does she know everything?" you emphasized.
any girlfriend surely wouldn't let her boyfriend be friends with someone they almost kissed.
"she knows everything" he reiterated—only now did you notice his hand still hanging onto your arm.
you nodded, beyond confused—still with that same raw ache that only presented itself to you in his presence, his arm on you still felt far too intimate.
"i'll prove it to you" he added after seeing your inner conflict.
even if she allowed this friendship—you couldn't, not when you knew you craved more than his friendship could ever offer.
but even with the cold exterior you had on for him, you didn't tell him you couldn't allow it.
"fine, we'll see"
because space is easier when only you're aware of it.
he gave you real unfiltered smile, of relief—the kind that was currently making you feel guilty. you once again expected his words to be forgotten—erased with time, what you didn't expect was yuri herself talking to you about this.
she showed up at your dorm with a polite knock to your door and a stomach churning.
"hey can we talk?"
you sat on your bed patting the space besides you as she closed the door behind her, "look i'm gonna cut the bullshit and get to the point, i'm really cool with you being friends with jungwon—i know you had feelings for him and i know you almost kissed"
you couldn't decipher the exact course your emotions took—one of them was a stinging, stuck in your throat—that he had told someone something either of you had failed to address with even each other.
"why would you let us be friends? i don't know if you're aware but all of that was still very fresh before you dated" you spoke not bothering to hide your perplex.
"i know, it's simply because i trust you both—you were both my friends before any of this" you stared at her almost waiting for something to break, a crack—but it never came.
"right.." you responded not quite knowing to say at this point.
"you guys can do whatever you did before i was in the picture i'm not just going to ask you to cut off your roommate" she scoffed.
but you were never truly friends, every action had an underplating of your longing for things to change—if he had a girlfriend on the first meeting those course of events wouldn't have even occurred.
"if we almost kissed as friends—roommates.. do you really want us to do whatever we did before?" you raised an eyebrow now your confusion only deepening with each sentence. her expression didn't change, not once.
"truly i'm not strict y/n just don't kiss obviously" she laughed as though this was all some funny inconvenience. you just gawked in pure disbelief as she switched the topic to some off-topic party she was inviting you to with no mention of the prior conversation again.
you realised as she talked about clothes and drinks that you had never once seen them so much as hold hands—not that you wanted to see that or that it mattered, you were by no means judging their relationship—but you couldn't help but make the observation.
not long after that you got changed for the party, only opting to go because jake had begged with his big eyes and pout—you sat in the centre of the sofa nursing a half full glass of an alcohol you couldn't name.
sunghoon and ni-ki were stood leant against the sofa debating some game you weren't engaged in enough to name—yuri and juliana were whispering intensely about something in the kitchen.
[ NOW PLAYING > HOUSE OF CARDS ]
and you were teasing jake about his inability to handle his liquor—already noticing the light tinge of red on the tips of his cheeks, as he groaned in annoyance you felt a dip in the sofa besides you and a leg flush against yours—you turned to see the culprit, jungwon with his head tilted looking over you with his pretty glistening eyes.
you averted your head after sending a corporate smile—immediately focusing on the drink in front of you, he looked with you before softly wrapping his hand around the glass—pulling it gently from your grasp and bringing it up to his plush lips—taking a sip.
"mmm" he hummed as his tongue darted out—licking the remnants from his lips—eyes still trained on yours.
something in your stomach flipped—harsh, you managed a tight lipped smile as you placed your hand over his on the cup, taking it back into your hold.
yeah.. this was not going to work.
you gave it a subtle couple minutes before excusing yourself from his overwhelming touch to top up your drink, you felt his eyes follow you with a slightly darkened gaze.
the party was a typical house party at the home of someone you couldn't name—with the bass of the music bouncing off the walls and the lights dimmed enough but not too much.
you grabbed a random cup of a drink to further the harsh buzz you already felt, this night was a night of letting go—a night to live without a plan or a designated time to get home.
you conversed with random women complimenting them on their outfits, danced with your friends—but never without that familiar prickle on your nape, the one that only presented itself when you felt as though you were being watched. you settled yourself onto the end of an empty sofa with a drink someone had brought to keep your high going.
"hi beautiful" you heard a voice settle besides you along with the momentary sink of the plush sofa.
"hey jay!" you responded with a tilt to your head and a look you only reserved for shameless flirting on nights you couldn't recall.
"i missed you" he smirked inching closer, whispering close to your ear.
"oh really?" you smiled leaning closer.
"how could i not?" his breath tickled your ear as he snaked an arm around the back of the sofa.
you looked around the room—looking over nothing at particular with hazed over lens as he whispered words you could only giggle at, until your eyes fell on jungwon, his jaw was tight—his eyes were dark, his cup was slightly indented as if he was fighting every urge not to crush it right there.
you held his eye contact as jay's hand drifted from the back of the sofa to your shoulder—your arm before settling on your waist, you averted your gaze looking back up to the man before you.
his eyes were shamelessly trained on your lips, waiting for you to give the greenlight—the second you looked at his own slightly pink lips he leant forward—with a hand on your jaw.
and then you felt it, the chorus of complaint your heart was pushing onto you—you ignored it as you had been. whether or not this man was your soulmate didn't concern you, for you were lost in anything but who he was in this moment.
you smelt the alcohol on his lips as you were sure he could too, his lips pushed against yours for barely a second when you felt a hand pull you up, ripping you from his hold.
you barely registered anything as you looked at the hand connecting you to whoever was furiously pulling you to the nearest room. he slammed the door, pushing you against it.
"what the fuck jungwon!?" you spat tilting your head up, he was close enough you could smell his cologne, his nose inches from yours.
"you're kissing random guys now?" he scoffed not moving from his current position, caging you in against the cold wood of the door.
"random? what do you care" you laughed attempting to push him back, he didn't move.
he almost growled at your words, his breathe now fanning your ear as he composed himself, breathing low.
he pulled back, enough to see his eyes hold onto your lips, contemplating—his tongue ran over the span of his bottom lip—angry. you pushed yourself forward, just enough his chest grazed yours—just enough that he could feel every word.
"what do you care" you repeated low, venomous.
his throat bobbed as he breathed heavy against your lips, his hand splayed against your waist—possessive.
"fucking pussy" you shook your head with a mocking scoff—just as you straightened to move out of his grasp—his hand held the back of your head and he pushed your head back by your chin—tilted against the door.
you both breathed heavy against each others lips—parted barely grazing, his hand was imprinting into your jaw.
"say that again" you felt him speak against your lips.
"fucking p-" he closed the space between your lips, hard—you whimpered against his mouth as he kissed you, open mouthed—messy, he groaned low as he tasted you—his tongue whirled against yours as his hand released your jaw, it ran along the curve of your back settling on your lower back, he pushed against your body into the imprint straining against his pants.
he whimpered loud and unrestrained into your mouth as a gasp left your lips without permission, you pulled back just enough to get a glimpse of him in this state—his tongue lolled out as he caught his breath.
your heart was still—not screaming or thrashing against it's restraints, instead beating hard—with a thrill it only craved further.
months of back and forths, of stolen touches led to this, to a single vulnerable moment neither of you could pull away from—you could blame it on the alcohol, just a drunken mistake but you knew better.
he watched as you looked up at him with a gleam of pure fevour—he felt himself slip in that moment, his mind reducing into a puddle.
"driving me fucking crazy" he groaned as he pulled you up against the door, you made a noise in-between that of a gasp and a whimper as you wrapped your legs around him—your dress hiking up giving him access to the plush of your ass against his hands, his lips attacked you, his tongue battled yours hungrily, the only sounds in the room being your sinful noises mixed with the sound of his tongue sucking yours—pulling away with a slick pop and a string of saliva connecting you both.
his hips ground up into you as his lips kissed your jaw—chin and then licking against your ear before gasping and grunting sweetly.
"baby i can feel how wet you are" he whispered low, you whined in response pulling his head back by his hair and suckling on his bottom lip making him mewl against you.
you could feel how big he was even against the layers—your panties were beyond flooded with your arousal, you felt your stomach tightening as his movements grew erratic, he huffed against your lips as your own hips rolled down—desperate.
one hand left your ass—moving to where your bodies met, he drew fast rhythmic circles over your panties where your clit sat—aching to be touched. "f-fuck—i'm so close" you breathed. broken sounds fell from your lips against his as the coil in your stomach threatened to snap
"yeah? fuck- c-cum with me baby" he breathed before a final roll of your hips undid you both, the coil snapped hard—his hips stuttered with a shuddering groan and your name on repeat as though it was all he knew.
he held you as you slumped in his hold—head falling to his shoulder as you both caught your breath.
you finally lifted your head after however long of breathing against each other—in his arms. he set you down and smoothed over your dress as you sighed against the back of the door, his hand came up and cupped your jaw—he held it—gentle almost loving.
his eyes held a softness and spark you'd only seen in the moments you believed there could be more, his lips curved up before he pressed a sweet kiss against your lips—you kissed back.
[ NOW PLAYING > NOPE YOUR TOO LATE I ALREADY DIED ]
for a time you had forgotten where you were, who you were—who he was, only in that kiss did it hit you, he wasn't yours—not really.
you were kissing a man who belonged to someone else. you felt your stomach lurch as you pushed him away, your head spun—partly because of the alcohol but mainly because you felt disgust creep into your body—chills.
"y/n?" jungwon watched as your eyes darted with furrowed eyebrows—your breathing was shaky. you shook your head attempting to push open the door, only for him to stop you.
"just speak to me-" you looked at him incredulously, the hatred spinning through your body was mainly directed at yourself—but as you looked at him you couldn't help but feel disgust at him—hatred at him for so easily cheating on his girlfriend, the same one who had trusted you both to keep to yourselves.
"i'm more than this—i'm more than a side bitch, and yuri- she deserves so much better.. from both of us" your eyes pricked with tears, he shook his head.
"that's not—just please hear me out, you're not a side anything i only want you-" you scoffed as your tears fell—not wanting to hear another word you ripped the door open and pushed yourself through a group of people—hidden from him.
you found a bathroom and let yourself calm down, the only thought in your mind right now was finding yuri, the guilt ate at your heart as the tears fell, your chest hammered with a pain no one could comfort.
you had never felt so lost, your tears were for the loss of your respect for yourself—the pain you were going to cause—the people you'd lose and for losing yourself, you wanted to believe this was far from who you were—but right now you weren't so sure.
because in that moment you hadn't thought of yuri once, your mind never once flipped to the person you were hurting most.
so you wiped your tears and cleaned yourself up and then you opened the door and went to find jake.
"where's yuri?" you spoke over the music, suddenly feeling the harsh sting of a head-ache behind your eyes, the noise of people, the light all becoming entirely too overwhelming. jake turned his head to you—taking in your glazed over reddened eyes—and something between pain—defeat and disassociation.
"she went back to ours—with juliana, said it was the closest place and she felt sick" he spoke. you nodded and turned towards the door, his hand grabbed yours before you could start walking.
"are you okay?" you paused, just long enough to send doubt to his head and then sent him a tight lipped smile and stiff nod before setting off, only he trailed behind with worry in his brows. you finally reached your apartment after much overthinking and a lot of anxiety, the alcohol was just a buzz in the form of that same head-ache.
you opened the door to loud music blasting in your ears and walked through the hall, looking around for any signs of life—except you found it faster than you thought.
yuri sat on the sofa with her lips on juliana's. you stood still with your jaw dropped to the ground, jake walked up next to you—catching your expression before seeing the reason for it, his eyes followed yours before matching your dropped jaw.
jake composed himself first and coughed—loud, their heads snapped up, you had no idea what to think at this point your prior guilt and self-loathing filtered into a state of utter confusion.
neither of them spoke, just gawking—looking between each other with fear written all over them.
"so.. i came here to tell you that jungwon and i..uhm well—we" you scrunched your nose in discomfort, becoming too aware of the amount of people in the vicinity.
"i know" yuri spoke first, she looked at juliana who only nodded.
"look i wanted to tell you earlier but i was so scared—i really didn't know how to do this and i know i fucked up—but jungwon and i aren't dating, it was fake..i love juliana, i asked him if we could fake it, only because our maid caught us and my mom would approve of me dating him...but she would never approve of me and juliana—i made sure he didn't tell anyone and i know how badly he wanted to... i'm so sorry" she spoke fast, with tears in her eyes—and a shake to her voice.
you let out a breath—you felt their eyes on you waiting for you to speak but you couldn't find the words, so you opted to nodding and locking yourself in your room—overwhelmed with emotions, stuck in a frenzy of all the events that occurred in the last couple hours.
you showered away the grime from that day and got changed into your favourite jumper and pyjama pants, deciding to get some fresh air.
you wrapped yourself in a coat and slipped out—ignoring the people scattered around the room because you were afraid of that confrontation—afraid of all the conclusions you had failed to come to.
as you walked you tried thinking it all over, yes he wanted to tell you—yes you understood why he couldn't, it wasn't his place.
but he could've left you alone—he could have let you push away instead of trying to pull you back with the knowledge of how complicated it all was, knowing he couldn't tell you but still playing with your feelings.
you also knew that you wouldn't have wanted him to let you push away.
your mind ached with confusion as you walked along the river, leaning forward against the railing. the water swayed back and forth—imperfect ripples dancing throughout. you looked into it for answers—to tell you how to navigate this without losing your mind completely.
you huffed into the air as you sat with an odd sense of calm, you felt a drop land on your head—and of course you had nothing to protect you from it.
[ NOW PLAYING > MA MEILLEURE ENNEMIE ]
with no attempt to move you felt a couple more drops and then a shadow, you looked up to see a clear umbrella hovering over your head.
jungwon stood beside you with a hat on and an unreadable expression—something along the lines of adoration, a slight worry and pure unadulterated pining.
for a moment you just looked at each other, trying to figure out how this would go—you noticed the furrow in his brow, not angry, not confused, a furrow that made him look at you as if he was scared you'd disappear if he stopped looking.
his eyes looked slightly glossed over, sparkly as though he was from a dream.
"thanks" you spoke under your breath—the patters of ran fell against the plastic as you felt a light tension that only presented itself in his presence, not the bad kind—just a clear shift.
"i saw you leave, guessed you'd come here" he spoke.
"why'd you come?" you looked over the railing again, not catching him wince.
"i know you must be confused right now, i wanted to be here—and i wanted to apologise.. for lying to you, for making this so much more complicated than it had to be—y/n i am so sorry" he turned to face you completely, eyes boring into yours with guilt.
you nodded, unable to think of a response "so much has happened..i'm mainly angry" you started.
"i'm angry at myself for letting anything happen with you.. while yuri-"—"we weren't together" he interrupted, you turned to him and shook your head—blowing air through your nose.
"that doesn't matter! i thought you were and i still let it happen.. and i don't know how i could do that, i believed you were together and i didn't think about yuri once" you sighed—frustrated.
"y/n i know why that happened" he said fast, as though he didn't know if he should say it.
"what are you talking about?" you asked. he looked at you with a mixture of fear and anticipation, he stepped closer—under the umbrella.
"i can't breathe when i'm around you—i was scared of losing you, which is why i didn't come here after that night" he breathed in, as if to compose himself.
"i couldn't bring myself to..-" he shook his head, tightening his lips together before breathing out—he stepped forward, close enough you could see the sheen over his eyes—close enough you could count his eyelashes.
"i love you.. if you could take all the words in the language—it still wouldn't describe how much i love you, if you could put all those words together, it still wouldn't describe what i feel for you.. what i feel for you, is everything, i love you more than everything".
"everything?" you felt a tear you hadn't anticipated running down your cheek.
he smiled, sweet and soft—with a curve to his dimples and cupped your face with his free hand, running his thumb over your tears.
"everything" he nodded, you let out a laugh full of relief—he returned the laugh with his own, you inched forwards—he tilted his head, eyes now focused on your lips. he leaned forward—pressing his lips to yours delicate—loving, he pressed harder against your lips, his hand sliding to your nape—pressing just enough so you could feel how long he'd been waiting for this.
you cupped his face pressing a final peck to his lips before pulling away with a shy smile, his face was still inches from yours, now sporting a pink flush.
"i love you jungwon" you whispered between you both, as a promise as much as a confession.
his smile widened, he looked off to the side as if to compose himself and then he giggled dropping his head to your shoulder.
[ NOW PLAYING > LOVERS ]
"i think we're soulmates" he whispered—clearly without thinking.
your breathing stopped as you remembered your previous revelation, the beginning of your soulmate dreams. he lifted his head up from your shoulder—slowly, looking over everything inch of your face as he heard your breath falter.
"we couldn't stay away from each other, because we're soulmates" he held your gaze.
"yeah, you didn't think about yuri, not because you're a bad or selfish person—but because that was the first time your heart beat with me—..the first time our hearts beat together" he placed his hand over your heart.
"you know, she even said she doesn't expect us to stay away from each other" he joked—but your mind was somewhere far from here.
"what if we're not" you blurted out. he only smiled, looking as though you'd said the most endearingly—stupid thing possible.
"baby, soulmate or not you're stuck with me, i choose you—every time" you stifled a giggle at his words, tears welling in the corners of your eyes.
"that night we found each other, in the kitchen—that wasn't coincidence, i refuse to believe any of this was" he spoke slowly.
"let's go home" he pulled you close—whispering into your hair.
as those words left his mouth, lips against your hair—you felt content, you felt the ache you'd be harbouring in your heart lift, at first the comfort scared you—because nothing was made to last.
but there was beauty in the fear, for every irrational thought, you felt him—like an orb of light—strung between you, wrapping you together—not noticeable, not claustrophobic—just a presence. you both felt it in the pats of the water—in the freshly rained air, it was devastatingly beautiful.
that night you walked home, hand in hand under the little clear umbrella—occasionally bumping shoulders and bickering after trying to force him under the plastic.
once you got home and heard that familiar click, you got ready for the night, before being pulled into jungwon's room with gentle hands. of course you'd been in here before—but only with jake. his perfectly clean room with grey sheets and a little plant on the desk next to the stack of books, you couldn't help but notice that red scarf hanging on a hook by his wardrobe.
"sleep here tonight?" he looked to you with pleading eyes, no one could say no to that face.
you had barely nodded before he was pulling you down to the bed, paired with a mischievous giggle your heart could only swell at. he pulled you so you were almost on top of him, the moonlight spilled through the window—carving a shadow over his face.
one hand on your cheek, the other splayed around your waist—he held you as though he wouldn't get the chance again, his lips pressed to each inch of your face, spilling sweets into your ears. you fell asleep in his arms, to the sound of his honey voice whispering words he'd only dreamt of speaking to you.
his arms wrapped around your middle, his chin on your shoulder—he felt you hum against him as he pressed a sweet kiss against your jaw, only now he saw you clearly—through his eyes.
you found me.
your eyes fluttered open to the feeling of a hand brushing over your cheek—as they adjusted to the light a sleepy jungwon came into view.
"sorry, your hair was in the way" he whispered with an apologetic pout.
you only smiled lazily, stretching as you nuzzled into his neck eliciting a comfortable hum from him. "how long have you been awake?" you spoke muffled.
"maybe 10 minutes, you're a pretty sleeper" he said with rasp, pressing a kiss to your temple. you nudged your nose against his neck in protest before remembering your dream, seconds before you woke up.
you believed jungwon when he told you he'd choose you, that didn't mean you weren't allowed to worry bringing up your dream.
"baby?" you whispered, tilting your head just enough so he could hear you clearly.
he tilted his head away with a hand over his face, cheeks clearly turning red even as he hid his face. "that's new" he choked as you laughed, he attempted to composed himself with a cough.
"yes y/n?" he turned to look down at you "did you happen to have a dream last night?" you spoke quietly between you, watching over his every expression, his face morphed from light confusion to recognition.
he turned to you completely and cupped your face between his hands.
"you found me"
he pulled you closer to him, as you breathed out in relief, all you could do was take in each and every detail of his face with a profound joy no one could describe, a feeling you didn't think you'd get the clarity to enjoy.
"there's no one i'd rather be destined to" he whispered as he stroked your jaw. in a way you thought you'd felt all this before—all in your dreams but in your dreams you'd wake up alone, wondering when you'd feel it all, really feel it—in the world and not in your head.
you leaned forward, pressing your lips to his slowly, he hummed pulling your body impossibly closer.
"thank you soulmate" you spoke between kisses, he giggled—sweet.
[ NOW PLAYING > LES ]
after a lot of cuddling and kisses you begrudgingly got up—out of jungwon's death grip, you tiptoed out of his room into your own and decided to do some cleaning—as you folded the last of your washing, you laid some clothes out on your bed, grabbing your towel for a shower.
you pulled your curtains back, letting the morning glow wash over your room—soft rays fanning over the room in a pattern against each surface. as you stood out watching the life outside your windows, you felt hands creep around your waist—yelping out at the foreign feeling.
"jungwon! you scared me" you gasped—"mm i'm sorry baby" he spoke before pulling you into a kiss, you hummed into it as he deepened it slowly—walking back, you made an unintentional gasp-whine as the back of your legs pressed into the bed.
he swallowed your noises, hands wandering up your waist—your own pulled onto the back of his head, raking through his hair. he whined into your mouth loud—unfiltered.
"you're addicting" he breathed in-between kisses, your tongues traced each others, both spurring each other on with each noise.
"baby i was gonna shower" you giggled after pulling away to breathe, he shook his head for a split second a light bulb practically appearing above his head, he took your hand and pulled you to the bathroom—with a clear problem in his pants..
"let's shower then" he tilted his head, pulling you back into a deep—messy kiss, pushing his hands into your hips, you laughed at his boldness as your hands reached behind you to lock the door.
you parted just for a second to start the shower before capturing his lips again, hands toying at the hem of his shirt—he pulled it over his head as you pulled your sleep shorts off, kicking them somewhere in the bathroom. you took in his toned—golden chest, letting out a breath. he smirked at your reaction, you leaned in pressing kisses to his cheeks "so pretty".
he pulled your top over your head—his lips parted as he pulled you closer towards him, pressing small kisses to your collarbones—shoulders.
"my beautiful girl" he spoke looking over the details on your face—the crease in your cheeks as you smiled at his words, the love swirled with desire in your eyes. you felt your stomach twist as you scanned over the large imprint over his joggers, he kicked them off as you stepped over the ledge into the shower.
you gasped at the chill of the water, as you turned to change it jungwon turned you back towards him.
"don't bother" he grinned, pushing his darkened blonde hair back—your back pressed against the cool wall as he pressed his length against you, you caught sight of his painfully hard dick, mouth watering.
"not yet" he whispered before shoving his tongue into your mouth—pressing his fingers over your slit, you gasped against his mouth. he hummed, teasing—rubbing over your leaking cunt.
"don't fucking tease" you whined, teeth grit. he only chuckled—dark and taunting. "or what?" he licked against your ear.
your words got caught in your throat as he shoved two fingers deep into you with no remorse, you moaned loud as the cold water soothed the heat surging through you.
"shh baby, wouldn't want jake to hear your pretty noises now would we?" he mocked as he curled his fingers perfectly—repeatedly against your gummy walls.
your lips formed a pout as you bit your bottom lip—shaking your head with a whine mouth closed. your hand shook as you held the wall with enough pressure to drain the colour from it, the other on his shoulder—holding on for dear life.
he bent his knees, tilting down with his fingers thrusting in and out—his lips captured the peak of your tit with a low groan tearing into the mixed echoes of the room. his groans and your whines mingled with the sound of water hitting the two of you—it was truly filthy.
his tongue twirled over your tits as he alternated, finally letting them rest as his thumb joined the torment, transfixing on your clit. he straightened his legs—pressing your cheeks together to lick into your mouth, kissing you open mouthed. a low mewl tore from your throat into his mouth. you felt your stomach threaten to snap, cunt tightening around his relentless fingers.
"don't you dare" he whispered against your lips, eyes black with desire. he pumped his fingers harder, faster.
"i-mmph' i can't" you gasped, he dropped down to his knees as your legs shook hard, replacing his thumb with his lips—he sucked and licked against your clit. his eyes locked onto yours as his lips worked on you alongside his fingers, sinful noises shook through the room as he undid whatever he said about being quiet, with his mouth.
"cum-on-my-tongue" he breathed in-between sucks, with one final simultaneous curl to his finger and flick of his tongue you came.
you came hard with a drawn out scream, jungwon ate up your arousal through your high with enthusiastic moans of his own, your legs buckled as the heat rose through your body. he finally came up as you started twitching—overstimulated.
he pressed his lips against yours with a groan as you tasted yourself—you traced your fingers over his stomach working down to his cock, he twitched violently as you wrapped your palm around it—applying pressure.
he hissed at the contact and then hiked your leg up, around his waist. he grabbed your hand placing it back on his shoulder before wrapping his own hand around himself—teasing his reddened tip against your entrance.
he pushed in an inch, slowly—watching your every expression with parted lips and groans. your breath stuttered as he inched further and further in, until he bottomed out with a sweet whine against your ear.
you gasped as you adjusted, head against the wall—he kissed your ear, jaw—finally nipping on your bottom lip.
"mmph' move please" you whined as his cock twitched inside you, he held eye contact as he experimentally thrust into you, you gasped loud—immediately silencing yourself with closed eyed.
"open your eyes" he spoke as he thrusted again—his free hand started pinching at your nipples as he bounced you rhythmically.
your noises loudened as he pumped faster—harder into you, with his darkened eyes trained on yours, his own resolve breaking as whines spilled out, his fingers left your nipples—working on your puffy clit.
you cried out just as you felt your stomach tightening, for your second orgasm.
"y/n! are you good i heard you scream?!"
your head snapped to the door in fear hearing jake through the door, you looked at jungwon's face—only to see his eyes darken further with each moment, his once parted lips now upturned into a sly grin. he immediately tightened his grip on you, fucking up into you at an animal pace—your jaw dropped as you clamped a hand over your mouth.
"can feel your pussy sucking me in, you fucking like this?" he chuckled low into your ear, you clenched harder at his words, his hips stuttered as he sighed through his nose—as if to compose himself.
"go on, answer-him" he spoke with grit teeth—you slowly released the hand over your mouth, teeth now sunk into your lip.
"m-i'm—fine, slipped!" you choked out as jungwon's cock slammed into you, your vision slipping as tears rolled out unknown to you.
"okay.. be careful!" he shouted and then you heard the door to your room close.
as if on cue the coil snapped, hard—you saw white as you came for the second time, jungwon's head fell to your shoulder as he rode out his own high with a violent stutter to his hips and a drawn out groan as he filled your cunt with his milky cum.
you both gasped for air, he pulled out with a grunt as you hissed at the sensitivity, the gasps slowly dying down into deep breaths as the cool water washed away the sin and heat.
you felt his lips press kisses from your collarbone to your lips, pecking a few times with a dazed lazy smile. you both stood under the showerhead—whispering i love you's between kisses.
you washed each other, taking your sweet time—that was until you felt wave of sleep attack your eyelids, which prompted jungwon to swiftly pull you out and wrap you in a towel—making you do your skincare as he pulled out pyjamas for you. you got changed as jungwon sprinted to his own room, he came back within minutes to join you, he sunk into the bed besides you with a drawn out sigh as he pulled you into him.
your relationship with jungwon didn't fill any void, it didn't make you feel more accomplished—it added to the joy you already felt, you didn't need him to better your life—he added betterment without it being a necessity.
as a soulmate jungwon fit into place with ease, the changes that came with your relationship wasn't overwhelming—he was attentive without being overbearing, your wish was his command even without wishing—always thoughtful, with your shared teas becoming more frequent, often waking to them waiting for you on the kitchen island.
he did however have a hard time keeping his hands off you, during movie night or in public, of course jake had noticed the shift—unbeknownst to you he saw it in the way jungwon no longer looked at you how he did, he used to look at you as though he'd have to savour it—looking away almost as quickly as his eyes landed on you.
now his eyes lingered—they watched over your figure, sometimes with a deep fulfilment, other times as a predatory up and down.
what jake didn't know, was the soulmate news. he had no idea you were destined for each other. which you weren't trying to keep a secret but you hadn't quite known the best time to bring it up.
and you certainly hadn't expected it to come out when you assumed jake wasn't home.
you stood with your back to the room, making a drink as the tv played some animal documentary into the otherwise silent room. you huffed in faux annoyance as jungwon slid in behind you—resting his head on the blade of your shoulder as an amused noise left his mouth.
his hands slid around your waist as he pressed a kiss to your cheek—you turned your head enough to meet his lips, humming into an all too sweet kiss.
"morning soulmate" he spoke as you turned yourself around, hands leaning on the counter behind you—his hands traced your waist as you turned pulling you into another kiss, as you pulled back from his lips your words got lost on your tongue—a shell-shocked jake stood at the island.
his jaw dropped with a shopping bag in hand, jungwon followed your shocked expression to jake's—his own face falling.
"soulmates?!" he gawked looking between you both, you walked over to him setting the bag on the island and propping yourself up on it.
"yeah, um we've only known for a couple days.." you started as he continued looking between you both.
"alright i knew you were together or-or something! but soulmates?" he stammered, jungwon had walked over at this point standing besides you as you talked.
"wait, pause—did we make it that obvious?" you responded.
"well yeah? he looks at you like he's allowed to now, also you did kinda hint something happened when we caught yuri and juliana.." he raised an eyebrow as jungwon choked looking around the room.
"we have a lot of catching up to do" you sighed as he punched jungwon's shoulder making him groan out who only nodded with his lips tightened into a line.
"i deserved that.."
.⭑ˎˊ˗
time moved as your relationship progressed, each day melting together in a comfortable rhythm—jungwon found a new way to show his devotion towards you each day. sometimes he'd show up after your classes with a paper cup of your favourite tea—other times he had pulled you to your river, talking about finding the stray cat he had ran into.
you fell into a unspoken routine, having sleepovers every so often—sometimes you'd fall asleep early and wake up to a sleepy jungwon nestled into your back. he insisted on walking you to your classes each morning—even if he didn't have any.
your friends hadn't questioned the change at all, they welcomed it with open arms—all of them had pretty much seen it coming, they even went so far as to give those couple months you'd spent pining a name, the yearning trials..
yuri had also apologised many times in her own way, often sending flowers before you stopped her, telling her you understood—it was a cycle of pain for everyone.
nothing changed with jake—if anything he took your relationship as an opportunity to tease jungwon when he'd inevitably be caught lacking, leaving jungwon a flushed mess trying to convince you both he wasn't embarrassed. however burying his head into your shoulder denied that.
he also often walked into interesting scenes at the dorms.
one time he walked in to you baking, with jungwon on washing up duty, quickly coming to the conclusion baking wasn't for him—he beat each substance into the dish with zero patience of his own, you had to take the bowl from him in the same manner you would taking a toy from a child.
the last couple days you had felt slight unease, everything flowed the same—your life was beyond magical, except there was a little tingle in your spine that suggested otherwise.
you noticed it in the way jungwon looked slightly worried anytime you went near his desk, also not letting you grab his glasses for him—mumbling a vague excuse about being comfy on you, except he had complained about having to get them.
after some particularly tiring classes you kicked off your shoes and shrugged off your jacket as you trudged into your room, walking in to a little pink paper sat on your pillow.
come to the roof
slightly ominous.. but you easily knew who it was from the writing. a smile graced your lips as you slipped on your shoes and ran up the stairs. you pushed open the door immediately being hit with a slight chill—and jungwon sat on a blanket, barely being able to contain his smile as you sauntered over.
"what's this?" you laughed as you slid in next to him, he pulled you close by your shoulder—pressing a kiss to your cheek.
"so you remember when you asked me to the gala" he wiggled his eyebrows as you rolled your eyes.
"unfortunately" you said with a dropped voice.
"would you like to go with me y/n?" he spoke between you, low and shy.
"baby tickets would be long gone by now" you smiled as you kissed his nose.
he pulled out two pink tickets between his fingers as if he was holding a card—mischief riddled in his wide eyes.
"how did you-" you gasped.
"i got them the day before you asked me.. because i wanted to ask you" he whispered between you, his eyes crossed over your face before landing on your own—staring so deeply, with his head slightly tilted.
"of course i'll go with you, thank you baby" you tilted your head forward—just enough so your nose was nudging his.
"everything?"
"everything."
had to reference the anime that broke my heart for the first time.
🧡 summary: what you intended to be a distraction from your unfortunate crush on your best friend turns into your worst possible nightmare; you sent pictures - those kind of pictures - to the wrong person on accident. the person on the other end? jungwon - your best friend of many years and the absolute last person you’d want to damage your friendship with. you’d do anything to keep it from falling apart, so you head out for a late night visit to the dance studio.
💛 genre: best friends to lovers, fluff, slight angst, smut
🧡 rating: 18+ (mdni)
💛 word count: 18,040 words (oof)
🧡 content warnings: reader is down bad for bestie jungwon and doesn't relalize it's mutual, reader sends lewds, trope of ‘oh no i sent these pics to my best friend i’m in love with what do i do,’ dancer!wonie bc i feel like that’s a warning by itself, love confessions, kissing, making out, groping, cursing, dirty talk, lots of praise, hair pulling, both are very sensitive bc ✨in love things✨, fingering, mirror shenanigans, hand curved around jaw, oral (m.), jake is kinda a menace tbh but it’s for the plot everyone still loves him ofc
a/n: the way jungwon has had me by the throat ... i had this idea and just needed to get it out somehow 🤩 thank you endlessly to my bestie @moonstruckpark for always entertaining my ideas and for betaing - always know i can count on you and i love you lots <3
if you read this: thank you so much!! i hope you enjoy it~
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"You're really not gonna come back with us?"
It was a typical Friday night, or at least it started out that way. You usually would come over every week or every other week on Fridays to watch movies or play games with Jungwon and his roommates — Jay, Jake, and Heeseung — who were also your friends.
Sometimes, Jungwon would work in a dance practice session before you guys could hang out, which was why you were here now in the studio, having watched him dance for the last hour.
Jungwon glanced up at you through the mirror as he heard you approach. He knelt down to re-tie his shoelaces that had come undone during practice.
"Sorry, I need to stay. I'm in the zone — don't wanna let go of that energy."
Your arms were crossed and you gave him your best pout. Which you already knew would have zero effect in this situation because your best friend was stubborn as hell, especially when it came to dancing.
It was one of the many things you admired about him, though: his passion. So even if you were a little bummed that your plans had somewhat fallen through last minute, you couldn't find it in yourself to be that upset.
"You're also my ride home—" you tried to reason before you were cut off by an arm slinging itself around your shoulder, the sudden weight making you stumble.
"You can ride with us back to our place!" Jake reached out to steady you with his hand that wasn't attached to the arm he nearly knocked you over with. "We're all going to the same place anyway."
"And besides," Jake leaned in closer to you, but didn't really make an attempt to lower his volume, "it gives us more time to hang out by ourselves, yeah?"
Jake was now giving you his best puppy dog eyes and honestly how could you ever say no to that? You smiled and nodded, laughing when Jake pulled you closer into his side.
"Sleepover!" He pumped a fist into the air before he finally released you. "I'll probably sit in the back of the car if, ya know — you wanna join or anything."
Jay simply rolled his eyes as he packed his gear and Heeseung was too busy downing a bottle of water to notice Jake being extra. You simply giggled at his antics before you turned to see what Jungwon thought of it all.
Jungwon was still in the same spot, hands frozen as he held his shoelaces. He was looking directly at Jake, and his jaw was slightly clenched.
"Wonie?"
He blinked at the sound of your voice and shook his head quickly, like he was trying to bring himself back to the present. His eyes focused on you and he gave you a soft smile. "Hm?"
"You good?"
"Yeah, uh, just making sure that I'm all set before I start the routine again." He finished tying his shoe before hopping back up like the abrupt change in altitude was nothing.
This time, it was Jungwon's arm that found its way around your shoulders as he pulled you into a hug. A small 'oof' expelled from you at the sudden movement, not expecting that you would collide with his chest the way you did.
Being in this position hugging him was the farthest thing from unfamiliar, but the heat radiating off of him made it feel…different somehow.
"If you're staying the night, use my room, ok?"
You pulled back so you could look up at him, but his expression was hard to read.
"You want me to stay in your room?"
"Mhm." He hugged you closer for another moment before letting you go. His hand fell to your waist casually, like it was supposed to be there. "You can use my bed, and I've got a t-shirt I'm sure you can find if you need something comfortable to sleep in."
It wasn't like you'd never slept in his bed before, because you'd taken dozens of naps at his place, sometimes even with him in the bed…a respectable distance away, but still.
Even so, you didn't want to impose. "Wonie, I can sleep on you guys' couch, it's no big deal—"
"Nah, you'll sleep better in my bed— in my room." He corrected himself quickly and ran a hand through his hair, his blonde locks the slightest bit wavy with how damp they'd gotten from practice. "Think of it as my way of making it up to you since I can't drive you back."
"We'll look after her, don't worry." Jake slid over to you both, making it obvious that he'd just been eavesdropping on your conversation. "And my bed is plenty big enough for two, if you get lonely during the night." Jake added a wink for dramatic effect.
Jungwon's grip tightening on your waist took you by surprise.
It wasn't like Jungwon didn't want people showing you attention or anything like that. It was more like… after seeing you get treated badly one too many times, he'd had enough of it.
Was Jungwon protective of you? Always. Did all of your friends know that? Of course?
Did Jake care that his flirty nature was a little too much at times? Absolutely not.
"Thanks, Jake," you tried to be polite, but he really was going for it tonight. He'd always been more of the teasing sort, and you couldn't deny he was of the most charming people you'd ever met.
Jake had cranked the level up to 11 tonight for some reason, and the way Jungwon was reacting had your mind sprinting off into different directions.
"See you soon," Jake grinned at you as he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his black hoodie. He pulled the hood up and faced Jungwon, looking a little more serious now. "Hey, don't push yourself too hard, ok? You know you're the best — no one's better for this than you."
Jungwon blinked before nodding, holding you a little looser now as he smiled back at Jake. "Thanks, I need that reassurance sometimes."
Jake clapped a hand on Jungwon's shoulder before he left to join Jay and Heeseung near the door leading out of the studio.
Jungwon pulled you closer briefly into a side hug. "Guess you better go with them."
"I can stay—"
"Nope," Jungwon was already gently ushering you towards your friends. "I've already taken up enough of your time tonight."
"Time with you is never wasted, so I disagree." When you said the words, it didn't feel like they had any weight to them. The look on Jungwon's face, however, had you second guessing yourself for a moment.
Was that too far? Surely not. You've said way more incriminating— no, embarrassing things to him before. Something about it this time just seemed… different.
Maybe it was the way his hand was still on your waist as he walked with you to the front of the studio. Maybe it was the way that you could feel the heat radiating from him where he touched you, even through layers of clothing.
Maybe it was because Jungwon was Jungwon. And you were you.
That's all the two of you had ever been— and that was enough.
Before you could think on it too long, you tuned in once again to the men in front of you.
Jake was talking to Jay about something, and as usual Jay just looked on fondly with a puzzled, but very amused, expression. Heeseung was looking over the fliers that had been pasted to the window at the front, adding notes in his phone for important dates like recitals, mandatory practices, etc.
"Text me when you're home?" Jungwon retracted his hand and you missed the warmth immediately. "Well, when you're back at my place."
"Don't worry, loverboy, we'll take good care of her," Jake offered as Jay started pushing him out the door. He was mumbling something to Jake that sounded like "If you don't go get in the car—"
Heeseung waved and smiled at Jungwon before he followed the others, you right behind him as Jungwon closed the door when you finally stepped out into the cool night air.
The ride back to their place was pleasant — you always had a good time with them — but you couldn't shake this feeling that something was off.
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[you] 10:02 PM: just got back to your place
A few minutes later, your phone vibrated and the screen lit up, making you smile.
[wonie💙] 10:05 PM: good, use whatever you need in my room. what's mine is yours
You swore you could feel your heart pound against your chest at that response.
[you] 10:06 PM: oh? so if you come back and some of your most treasured items are missing, i won't get in trouble? 🤩
[wonie💙] 10:07 PM: don't push your luck
Barely a minute later:
[wonie💙] 10:08 PM: (but also yeah, because it's you)
You couldn't hold back your smile that time, catching Jake's attention as he was mid-ramble.
"What's got you grinning like that? Won already coming back?"
Jay chuckled and Heeseung went to raid the kitchen to find what you assumed would be ramen.
"No," you rolled your eyes playfully at Jake, "I was just letting him know we got here safe."
"Uh huh," Jake's sly smile didn't go unnoticed by you. "You let him know we were back home safe or that you were safe?"
Jake's knowing tone made you subtly shift from foot to foot. "…does it matter?"
Jake shrugged. "Guess not." He plopped down onto the couch before he resumed his conversation with Jay, this time with you listening in.
"I'm just saying — either she's into me, or she's asking me for advice on how to get another guy's attention."
Jay hummed like he was thinking it over. "And she did that by asking if you'd be alright with her sending you pictures?"
Heeseung called your name from the kitchen, prompting you to look over your shoulder. He raised a soda can to see if you wanted one, but you politely declined with a smile and shake of your head. He returned your smile before his head poked back into the fridge.
Jake groaned like he was personally offended by Jay's comment. "Not just pictures, bro. She asked if she could send me nudes."
Jay shoved Jake's shoulder and Jake retaliated with a shocked "What the hell, man?" You giggled at the absurdity of it all.
Jay, instead, groaned at the audacity and asked "Why are you always so crass?"
Jake shrugged. "Scorpio bullshit, I guess."
"We have a guest." Jay glanced over at you quickly, almost fast enough you didn't see it.
Jake followed the movement until his eyes landed on you. "Her?" He sputtered out a laugh. "C'mon, she doesn't care. We're all adults here, right?"
You sat in one of the chairs on the other side of the room, amused as always by Jake and Jay's push-and-pull with their discussions. "I don't care if you guys don't. Plus, I'm kinda curious to see what wisdom you're going to give us."
Jake made an exaggerated movement with his hand, motioning at you. "See? Thank you." Jay rolled his eyes but didn't disagree further.
Heeseung had joined the three of you now, bowl of ramen in one hand and a drink in the other while he sat in the chair next to you. "Ok so," Heeseung started, "she asked to send you nudes. Then what?"
For how much you sometimes thought Heeseung was in his own world when things were going on, he really did pay close attention to what was happening around him.
"Well I told her of course she could, duh," Jake said it like it was the most logical answer in the world. "I told her that it's one sure fire way to show your interest in a guy — at least if you have some inkling that he likes you back."
"It is?" Your voice even surprised you, because you thought you'd asked that question in your head.
Jake smiled. "Mhm." The smile stretched into a sly grin, one you knew all too well. "Why? You got someone you wanna send some pics to?"
You could feel your face heat up as you quickly shook your head. "No, just…was wondering, is all."
"Fair. Well, if you ever want to send some to anyone, then by all means, I'm available—"
Jake barely got the last word out before Jay was smacking him with a couch cushion.
"What is your deal tonight?!" Jake was trying to fight the onslaught of pillowy punches.
"I could ask you the same thing," Jay nearly yelled back. "I swear, sometimes it's like you want to dig your own grave."
Jake managed to wrestle the cushion away from Jay before tossing it to the floor. Heeseung kicked it further out of the way but made no other moves to intervene.
"You're telling me if she wanted to send you nudes that you would be opposed?"
Jay's mouth hung open for a second as he looked back and forth between you, Jake, Heeseung — who was happily eating his ramen without a care in the world, then back to you again.
"Yes— I mean, no, uh," Jay couldn't hold eye contact with you. "Personally I would say no because we're really good friends. No offense."
Jay offered you a smile but it felt like there was more he wasn't telling you.
"You're a different breed than me, then. If one of my really good friends was hot," Jake paused for a moment to catch your eye before he continued, smirking devilishly "and she wanted to send some to me, there's no way I'm turning that down."
You gulped. "Good to know."
Heeseung chuckled beside you, shaking his head at his friends' nonsense he was witnessing.
"Anyways," Jay said it with a tone of what you thought might be finality. "It's kinda late so I'm turning in soon. You have everything you need?"
You realized Jay was asking you that, having gotten lost in your own thoughts for a moment. "Huh? Yeah, I think so. Wonie said I could use whatever I needed from his room."
"I'm sure he did," Jake mumbled, still loud enough for you to hear. He followed Jay's lead and stood up from the couch, stretching his limbs as he did. "Sure you don't want company? I wasn't lying when I said my bed is big enough for two, you know."
Jay started pulling Jake toward their rooms at the opposite end of the apartment by the hood on his jacket before you could respond. "Goodnight," Jay addressed both you and Heeseung as he walked away, Jake waving as he was dragged along.
You laughed as Jake waved while he was being drug away, barely catching Jay say something like "One day I may not be here to save your ass—"
"Guess I'm gonna wind down, too." Heeseung yawned before he got up to clean his dishes. "You're free to stay in here of course, but I figured you're probably ready to head to Won's room and just chill."
His yawn triggered your own, the action making you realize then just how tired you really were. "Yeah, that sounds like the move."
Heeseung smiled before he turned around to face the sink. "Sleep well," he said over his shoulder, not waiting for you to acknowledge him before he turned the faucet on.
"You too," you hoped you said it at a volume he could hear over the water, but even if you hadn't, you knew Heeseung well enough that he would know you responded if he didn't hear it.
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When you closed Jungwon's room door behind you, the search for a t-shirt started. You knew what drawer Jungwon kept most of his shirts in, and right on top you found a dark blue one that you recognized as being one you'd worn on several occasions at this point.
If you thought about it hard enough, you might even remember Jungwon telling you that he basically always put that shirt near the top for you because you seemed to like it so much. He also once joked about just giving it to you, but then that would 'take the fun out of you wearing something that was his.'
That man really did confuse you sometimes.
Certain things he said and special moments the two of you shared had made you wonder in the past if there really was more to your friendship. It obviously didn't help that you had — and have had for a while — a massive crush on him. You always tried your best to push those feelings down because your friendship mattered more to you than anything else probably ever could. But right now, here, in his room, wearing his shirt while you waited on him to get home…
Well, sometimes it was fun to imagine, right?
You changed clothes, slightly mortified at the fact that you'd forgotten to bring shorts with you. Of course, you had left your place in a kind of frenzy because Jungwon has decided he needed to get some dance practice in right then, which changed your plans. You didn't mind the plan changed, but him grabbing your hand to rush both of you out the door of your place didn't leave you much time to grab anything extra as you left.
You were a little nervous to lay in his bed without them. It wasn't like it'd be wrong or bad of you to do so, it just felt quite— intimate.
Even though Jungwon wasn't there with you. The fact that it was his clothes and his bed was enough.
Your chest had that familiar ache starting, the one that always presented itself whenever you thought about Jungwon too much in a specific way, when you thought about him in a way that you could never have.
When you thought about being his completely— not just being his best friend, but also his person. You thought about meaning to him what he meant to you.
You thought about loving him as more than your best friend.
When your head hit the pillow, you sighed, trying to whisk away all the pesky thoughts that plagued you in that moment. Dwelling on it didn't help anyone, and pining like this would only draw you in further and make it harder for you to claw your way back out.
Your phone vibrated, helping somewhat with bringing you out of your spiral.
[wonie💙] 11:15 PM: hey, i'm almost done here, be back soon. i'll try not to wake you if you're asleep when i come in
Always so considerate. It was just one of the many things you loved about him. You sent him a response and before you closed out of your messages screen, your eyes drifted down to see [jake🐶] sitting a few people under Jungwon in your most recent contacts.
The conversation from earlier came back to you then.
"…it's one sure fire way to show your interest in a guy — at least if you have some inkling that he likes you back."
Did you have an 'inkling' Jungwon liked you back, or was it just wishful thinking?
And what did it even matter— there was no way in hell that you would sending any photos of that sort to Jungwon in the hopes of getting his attention.
…taking pictures, however…that was a different story.
Before you could chicken out, suddenly confident from the slight adrenaline rush you had at the idea, you slid out from under the covers and sat on top of Jungwon's bed.
Seeing yourself in the mirror across from his bed gave you an idea of a certain pose you thought might look nice. You bit your lip while you contemplated, noticing how the lighting in the room would probably look better if you adjusted it just a little bit—
Within a few minutes, you had a setup that you were proud of: you had turned the lighting to more of a blueish hue (Jungwon had taught you how and knew you liked that setting, so he also had it like that a lot when you were over), your phone was set up to where it could take pictures of you through the mirror without you having to hold it or it be in the way, and you were perched almost at the edge of his bed.
You set the camera timer and took a few photos in a pose you felt comfortable with. You exposed skin, but not too much— just enough to leave a little to the imagination. It was exhilarating, not just the act of doing this but where you were doing it; almost like being in Jungwon's room emboldened you to do things that you normally wouldn't.
When you were satisfied with one of the pictures, you saved it and deleted the others before you fixed Jungwon's room back to how it was before you got there (aside from the lights, of course). It was easier then for you to fall asleep since you felt like some kind of weight had been lifted— you just didn't know what.
Jungwon met you in your dreams, but this time, you welcomed the feeling without trying to fight it.
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Soft whispers and a nudge against your shoulder woke you up. You made some incoherent noises as you stirred, blinking as someone came into view.
"Hey there, sleepyhead." Jungwon smiled, sitting down next to you now that you were awake. "I hated waking you but I also wanted to check on you."
"Hi, Wonie," you greeted him back, a slight slur to your voice since you had been sleeping pretty hard. "Happy you're home."
His laughter was soft, and it probably could have lulled you back to sleep if he did it long enough. You faintly were aware of him brushing some of your hair out of your face.
"Me too. Always nice to see you here when I get back."
That had you feeling a little more awake. Your eyes opened more now, and it was then that you noticed Jungwon in front of you. He had on different clothes than the ones he'd been dancing in, and his hair was considerably damp from what you could tell.
He must've already taken a shower and changed before waking you up, and that honestly had you feeling some kind of way.
"I thought about waking you up before I got a shower," Jungwon went on — he had to have the ability to read your mind or something. "You know, just so you'd be aware I'm here if you woke up. But you looked so peaceful I couldn't fathom waking you. I hope that's ok."
His hand was still near your face from where he'd brushed your hair away, and in a moment of bravery, you placed your hand on top of his. The small hitch in his breath had your heart rate picking up.
"It's more than ok. This is your space, Wonie, you're free to do whatever you want."
Jungwon gulped. "R-Right. Well, uh," he slowly pulled his hand away from yours, running it through his hair afterwards. "I'm sure you probably wanna get back to sleep soon, so I'll leave you to it—"
You frowned. "Where are you going?"
Jungwon looked at you like it was obvious as he jerked his thumb behind him towards the bedroom door. "I'm going to go sleep on the couch? I'm not making you move out of my bed when you look this comfy."
You smiled and gently grabbed his wrist, tugging him forward a little bit, making him stumble. "Don't be silly— we can share the bed."
"Oh," Jungwon choked out. "Um, I mean, yeah, we can."
"We've taken naps before, right?" You yawned before you continued, your eyes slowly starting to droop closed again. "It'll be just like that, but kinda different."
Jungwon's lack of an answer had your eyes opening. "Unless you don't want to— I don't want you to be uncomfortable—"
"No, no, never," Jungwon rushed out, his free hand coming down to rest on top of yours that was still wrapped around his wrist. "I'm fine with sharing the bed. Only if you're ok with it, though."
"I wouldn't have made the suggestion if I wasn't." You tried teasing him a little with your tone, but all you did is manage to sound sleepier. The soft laugh you got in return was still worth it.
"Well then, I guess make some room for me. I'll give you as much space as I can." Jungwon walked over to the opposite side of the bed as you shimmied closer to the side you were laying on. You didn't really care about the space issues, but you also wanted him to be comfortable.
When he was settled in under the covers, you could almost feel how rigid his posture was with him trying to stay as far away as possible. Definitely not what you would consider comfortable.
"Wonie?" You didn't even bother looking over your shoulder.
"Y-Yeah?"
"You know you can come closer, right?"
A few seconds of silence before you felt the bed shifting behind you as Jungwon shuffled forward some. There was still some distance between the two of you, but you figured he wasn't at risk of falling off the bed anymore, at the very least.
"This ok?" He sounded hesitant, voice low like if he spoke any louder he might shatter the illusion of you both being here like this.
"Mhm," you nodded. Then you looked over your shoulder at him. "But you can still come closer, if you want."
"Do you…want me to?"
"Do you want to," you tossed the question back to him. It didn't matter if you wanted to cuddle up with him while he held you close — if he didn't want that then it wouldn't happen.
He moved slightly behind you before he answered. "I, uh, I do, but only if you're fine with it—"
You didn't let him finish, instead opting for reaching behind you to grab his arm and pull him closer. When he was closer to you, his hand accidentally brushed against your thigh.
"Shit, sorry, I didn't mean to," he paused. "Wait…you didn't bring shorts?"
It was your turn to be flustered now, and in all honesty, you had forgotten about that small detail since you'd fallen asleep.
"I didn't get a chance to grab any when we left my place," you willed your voice to stay steady and not betray your panic. "I'm sorry, I can leave if—"
"No," Jungwon's hand landed on your arm, where he patted you reassuringly. "Stay. Please."
You tried to relax then. "Just do what feels right, Wonie."
His hand stopped moving against your arm for a second where he'd been lazily tracing patterns you couldn't identify. "You sure?"
You looked at him over your shoulder and smiled. "I trust you."
It seemed like you finally gave Jungwon the confirmation he needed to hear for him to relax with you. His hand disappeared from your arm, and then you felt his arm snake around your waist a moment later as he pulled your closer. He didn't pull you flush against him, but his arm was secure around you, like he didn't dare let you go.
"This ok?" You could feel how close he was to your neck when he spoke, voice quiet, almost inaudible.
You nodded. "It's better than ok." His hand flexed against your stomach in response.
You mumbled out what you hoped sounded like 'goodnight,' not really minding much since you were already halfway back to dreamland. You felt Jungwon chuckle behind you.
After a few moments, he finally responded, his words leaving you with a smile as you drifted back to sleep.
"Goodnight, sweet girl."
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When you woke in the morning, the first thing you noticed was the warmth pressed up against your back, then the arm still looped around your waist. At some point in the night, it seemed like Jungwon had ended up pulling you closer against him — whether intentionally or while sleeping, though, you weren't sure. Jungwon's steady breathing behind you gave you a sense of peace.
Unfortunately for you, the peace didn't last long.
Jungwon let out what sounded like a sigh, his breath tickling your neck and making you shiver in surprise. That was when you felt it — when you felt him.
The slight brush against him was all you needed to be able to tell he was hard. And not just, like, a little bit. Hard enough for you to notice he was rather big—
Morning wood, your brain tried to reason, but whatever it was it did not help you with remaining calm in the slightest.
You shifted awkwardly as you tried to think of a way to shimmy yourself from his grasp. The small grunt he let out at your movement made you freeze before he pulled you in even closer, his grip tightening around you. You gasped as you collided against his chest, feeling your current problem against the back of your thighs.
You hated that you found yourself in this situation merely because you knew Jungwon would be mortified the moment he woke up. You hated yourself more for the fact that, if you put logic aside, you quite liked this.
Stupid conflicting feelings. Stupid Jungwon with his stupidly attractive face and his ridiculously strong arm and his very distracting problem behind you—
You had to get out of here. Fast. You gulped quickly and shut your eyes.
"Wonie," you called out softly. You hated every moment of this because you'd much rather fall back asleep in his embrace, even in the 'compromising' position you found yourself.
He barely stirred behind you, groaning again when he came into contact with you. Your mind was running rampant as you bit your lip to stifle any unnecessary sounds.
"Wonie, hey," you tried a little louder this time. "It's time to wake up."
This time you managed to get his attention, and his face nuzzled against your shoulder. "Hm?"
You didn't say anything else, you simply let him process as he slowly woke up. It took maybe 10 seconds before he let out a sharp gasp behind you.
"Oh, fuck, oh my god, I'm so sorry," his voice was somewhat shaky and you wanted nothing more than to console him in that moment. "This is so embarrassing, god—"
"Hey, it's ok," you tried to soothe him as you looked at him over your shoulder. He still had his arm wound tightly around you, so turning completely in his hold didn't seem like the best idea.
When his eyes met yours, he shut his immediately. "It's not ok, I can't believe this happened, well I actually can, but uh—"
You reached an arm back as best you could, hoping that if you cupped his face he might calm down. It had the complete opposite effect, causing you both to let out startled noises when he bucked up against you as your fingers brushed along his jawline.
"Fuck, maybe don't, uh, touch me right now?" He laughed nervously.
"Right, yeah, whatever you need," you were matching his nervous demeanor, despite your best efforts not to.
Truth be told: you really weren't uncomfortable, not at all. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Waking up in bed next to your best friend you were devastatingly in love with, and him being in this state at the same time? Truly a win for you, honestly. Especially considering how he was reacting while awake.
Your excitement about the situation made you feel bad though, since Jungwon clearly didn't share the same sentiment, at least from what you could tell. So you kept those thoughts to yourself, like you did most of your thoughts about Jungwon that delved into the 'more than friendly' category.
"I need this to not be happening," he sighed in frustration. "Listen, can I— when I let go of you, I need you to not look at me, ok?"
You nodded, the action jostling you more than you'd hoped. Jungwon grunted again and finally released you.
As you tumbled off the bed, he was gone in a flash, running into the bathroom in his room faster than you'd ever seen him. It was pretty impressive if you thought about it.
You stood in the middle of the room, unsure of where to go while he was…busy? You couldn't hear any noise from the bathroom, but you also weren't really straining to listen because the idea made you feel even more guilty.
It was fairly late in the morning, so you figured the other guys must be up by now. Maybe trying to find some breakfast and sharing their company would placate your rattled nerves.
Or at least they would if not for the fact that you still didn't have shorts to wear. You didn't want to put on your clothes from the previous day, so you made a choice.
These men had been around you long enough and had surely seen your legs before, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal, right?
You forgot about one small detail: Jake also lived here.
And even if it was only morning, he was still ruthless in his flirting attempts.
You tried tiptoeing out of Jungwon's room and shutting the door quietly, but the low whistle across the room quickly clued you in to how not subtle you were being.
"Well, you sure are a sight for sore eyes." Jake was grinning ear to ear. Beside him on the couch, Jay rolled his eyes before offering you a soft smile, almost like he was saying 'sorry.' Heeseung acknowledged you with a head nod before he resumed eating his cereal.
"Thanks, Jake," you tried to give them a smile back but it probably came out more like a grimace based on Heeseung's slightly concerned face.
"No problem. Always happy to compliment a pretty lady when I see one." He winked at you, which didn't help your nerves at all. You slowly made your way over to the chair you usually sat in, trying to tug down Jungwon's shirt as much as possible.
You silently sat and watched for a few minutes as the boys casually spoke about their plans for the day. Jungwon still hadn't joined the four of you in the living room yet. You couldn't help but let your thoughts drift to… ideas about what might be taking him this long.
"Why don't you come sit next to me," Jake broke you out of your stupor as he patted the seat beside him. You blinked and looked over.
There was enough room for you, sure, but it would've put you in pretty close proximity to Jake. Which, you didn't really mind, but the only one you wanted to be close to now was Jungwon—
Alright feelings, reel it in.
"That seat's taken," Jay piped up. Jake gave him a confused look before trying again.
"Bro, there's literally nothing in this seat—"
Jay placed one of the pillows on the couch in the spot before Jake was finished. "Now there is."
Heeseung laughed into his cereal and you even let out a chuckle yourself. Jake groaned and let his head fall against the couch. "Why do you do these things?"
Jay scoffed, appalled. "Why do you do these things? I'm trying to help you."
He might've thought he was speaking low enough for his voice to not carry, but you still heard anyway. You spared a glance at Heeseung and he simply shrugged.
"What, you want me to lie? She looks damn good like that," Jake pushed further. You could feel heat across your face, which only intensified when you heard movement from around the corner.
"Who looks good like what now?" Jungwon's voice was still deeper than usual, since he hadn't been awake long, but he looked significantly less flustered. He was standing next to your chair, one hand in his pocket while the other was holding something.
"I brought some of my shorts for you — they'll probably be a little loose, but you can tie them as tightly as you need to."
"Of course, always Jungwon to the rescue." The words dripped from Jake with exaggeration and Jay coughed awkwardly.
You ignored Jake's comment as you took the shorts with shaky hands, your chest feeling fuzzy at the fact that Jungwon had remembered during his… peril. "Thanks, I'll, uh, I'll go change."
"Whose shirt are you even wearing anyway?" You heard Jake call after you, but before you could answer, Jungwon's voice cut through the air — sharp, but calm.
"Mine."
You closed Jungwon's bedroom door and quickly changed, not wanting to miss any of what might be going on outside. Jake liked to push Jungwon — playfully, of course — and you usually found the interactions to be very amusing.
This morning, however, Jungwon didn't seem to be in a 'playful' mood. This was even more evident when you walked back outside and he was now sitting in your chair.
Jake knocked the pillow off the spot next to him and gestured to it like it was the only viable option. You took one step toward him—
—but you were instantly tugged backward by a hand on your wrist.
You landed softly on Jungwon's lap with your back against his chest. Thankfully, this time, he felt normal underneath you. But your heartbeat picked up anyway due to the fact that he has just put you in his lap on purpose.
Not only that, but he wrapped both arms around you from behind, placing his chin on your shoulder. You felt like you couldn't breathe or the illusion might shatter.
Except this was happening, this was real. And your thoughts were even more out of control than before.
Anytime Jungwon showed even a shred of possessiveness it always made your chest feel fluttery. This was one of the most possessive type of gestures you'd ever seen from him, and coming off the heels of staying with him last night and your shared time this morning, the entire situation had you feeling lost for words.
"Aw, c'mon Won, lighten up. Not my fault she looks good in your clothes." Jake dragged out the word 'your,' for a reason you couldn't place. Jungwon's arms tightened around you.
"I know she does."
His bluntness took you off guard, and it didn't seem like it was just you — Jake also raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Noted." Jake blinked before a sinister grin stretched across his face. "Hey, maybe if you're ever over and Won isn't here, you can borrow some of my clothes, yeah? Bet you'd look just as good—"
"No need to bet— you won't be finding out." Jungwon pulled you closer then, the action making you gasp softly.
Jay's mouth was hanging open as he looked between Jungwon and Jake before his stare rested on you. Heeseung had stopped eating his cereal, spoon still halfway to his mouth, full of another bite.
Jake held his hands up in defense, finally conceding, thankfully. "Whatever you say, man. Just teasing is all." His smug smile made you think there was more to his methods, but you let it drop for now.
Jungwon nodded (at least from what you could tell since he still had his chin on your shoulder) and that was the end of that interaction. The silence in the room wasn't tense, but if you had to describe it as anything, it was present.
Jay started up a new conversation, pulling Jake in instantly and even roping in Heeseung since it was about a game the three of them were playing. You watched with fondness in your gaze, resting against Jungwon's chest. You let out a happy sigh, and he readjusted his arms around you.
"Hey," he said quietly, voice right by your ear given the position you were in, "you doing ok?"
"Mhm," you nodded and looked to the side to give him a smile. He returned it, and you finally noticed that he looked a little…shy, perhaps?
"Good. Didn't wanna scare you away with— well, everything this morning."
You laughed as you leaned your head back against his shoulder and closed your eyes. "Nothing you do will ever keep me away. You're stuck with me — no returns, no refunds, no exchanges."
Jungwon chuckled beneath you, and one of his hands rested on your thigh now. "And I wouldn't have it any other way."
The rest of the morning was chill and calm, a break from the internal chaos you'd been experiencing for a little over maybe 12 hours now. At some point you dozed off, feeling comfortable and safe in Jungwon's warm embrace.
After you woke up some time later, you noticed that during your slumber, Jungwon had wrapped one of his pinkys around yours. He was still asleep underneath you, letting out soft snores against your shoulder while one arm was still curled around your waist.
You were down so, so bad.
✮✮🧡💛✮✮✮💛🧡✮✮✮🧡💛✮✮
It'd only been a few days but your feelings were more out of sorts than ever. Each time you and Jungwon hung out now there was some kind of weird energy between the two of you — not weird in a bad way, but just strange. Like you couldn't tell if he might've been feeling more like you were or if you truly were destined to stay this way forever — always the best friend, but never more than that.
For example, anytime Jake was around now, if Jungwon was there, he had to be touching you. Either his hand was brushing against yours, his arm was around your shoulders, he had a hand on your waist when you were beside him, basically anything like that.
Subtle, but very clearly saying: I'm here.
Did that deter Jake from flirting? Not really, but he did tone down the frequency of his comments at least, and for that you were grateful.
You knew there was no bad blood between Jungwon and Jake; they'd been close friends for too long to let lighthearted teasing shake things up. But you'd known Jungwon longer, and you know that for Jungwon, you were his best friend. And maybe that's why Jake being more bold bothered him the way it did.
You wouldn't delude yourself into thinking otherwise, because that would just get your hopes up before they inevitably came crashing down once again.
All these thoughts were racing through your mind while you sat with your back against the wall in the dance studio. Your arms were propped up on your knees as you watched Jungwon and Heeseung practice a routine for an upcoming show.
Jungwon decided today would be an amazing day to wear a black tank top and gray sweatpants— because who needs sanity, right?
Heeseung was a little more modest in his choice of clothing, a white t-shirt and black sweats, but Jungwon was distracting enough on his own that you didn't think it'd matter what Heeseung wore, your eyes would still be glued to him.
His blonde hair was damp from sweat, and he kept having to push it out of his face midway through their repeats of the routine. Heeseung called for a 5 minute break, and Jungwon started jogging over to you, big smile on his face.
"Did you see that? We're so close to nailing it, I can taste it."
That phrasing wasn't helping you think appropriate thoughts, especially not when this close you could see beads of sweat rolling down his neck and ending at the dip in his collarbone.
"You guys are doing great," you stood up and offered him his water bottle with a genuine smile, looking up at the ceiling afterwards to avert your focus from watching his Adam's apple bob when he drank from the bottle.
God, you really needed to get a grip. And not a grip of Jungwon— you needed to pull yourself together.
Jungwon seemed pleased with your praise, wiping the back of his mouth before he handed the water back. "Sorry I'm a bit messy right now, I know it's not like, the most appealing sight—"
"You're one of my favorite sights, no matter what."
The words slipped out before you could control them. There was no brain-to-mouth filter: only untethered feelings escaping you and taking up space in the atmosphere.
Jungwon blinked once, twice, before he stammered out an "O-oh. Thank you."
"R-right," it was your turn to stammer now, "well, uh, don't let me hold you up. Go get 'em!"
You tried to turn Jungwon around so he could walk back over to Heeseung, but when your hands reached out for his shoulders, he caught them with his own.
"By the way," he leaned in closer, giving your hands a small squeeze. You swore all other sound faded out in that moment.
"You're one of my favorite sights, too. Always."
You couldn't breathe. Jungwon's soft tone and closeness had you feeling intoxicated, and all you could do was nod in acknowledgement. He flashed that beautiful smile you saw all the time in your dreams before releasing your hands and turning around on his own.
"We don't have to stay too much longer, ok? Promise!" Without looking back, he held a hand up with his pinky outstretched — promising.
You sunk back to the floor, wrapping your arms around your legs this time (pinky out as you did). Jungwon really gave you whiplash sometimes, and your body was flush with a heat you didn't usually feel, at least not this intensely.
Not out in the open, not here in the actual vicinity of Jungwon. This was a feeling you mostly kept to yourself, left between you and your bed on nights where you were tangled in your sheets, frustrated while you tried to pleasure yourself and calling out the name of the only one you wanted: him.
Today was going to be a long day. You rested your forehead on your knees, already anticipating things to get much worse.
And they did — just not in the way you'd expected.
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Back at your own place now, you couldn't get the images of Jungwon dancing out of your head. The way he moved so fluidly, like his body was influencing the music and not the other way around; you would stare at him in awe every time. You could watch him dance for hours, and had done so multiple times before, but seeing him like that today, it was like a switch had flipped.
His behavior earlier did nothing to stave off the desire you could feel creeping up and threatening to consume you. You'd gone through so many emotions in the span of a few hours and you were exhausted by it all.
Now was not the time to start spiraling over your best friend, the person who knew you better than you knew yourself, the person whose smile could always brighten your day—
You didn't need this breakdown. Not right now. Your thoughts were already muddled enough with all these (re)surfacing feelings about Jungwon.
You needed a distraction. Your mind drifted to Jake, who had been a bit more flirtatious than usual lately.
Were you thinking clearly? Not really.
But you'd try anything to get the stupid thoughts to shut the fuck up for once.
You remembered then the picture you'd taken the night you stayed over at Jungwon's place, in his room, posing on his bed. It was burning a hole in your camera roll, just waiting for you to send it to someone. Waiting for you to bare yourself in a way that you only wanted one person to see.
And you could never show that person — thus was your dilemma.
Although, just because you couldn't send it to that person didn't mean you couldn't send it to anyone. And Jake did say he wouldn't mind if you sent him a picture.
And honestly? If you really thought about it, you could actually see yourself flirting back with a guy like Jake. The two of you had good chemistry already as friends, and it was safe to bet that there was a mutual attraction between the two of you from the compliments you'd both give.
What would Jungwon say, though? If you started dating one of his other good friends — one of your other good friends? Especially now after he's been acting the way he has around Jake? Would he be upset, or annoyed, or—
Would he even care to start with?
That last question left you with uneasiness in your chest. All of the pondering and 'what-ifs' started to make you feel antsy.
Without really thinking it through, you found the picture from the other night in your photo album and sent it.
[you] 8:28 PM: IMG.0902
You'd just texted Jake earlier in the day, so you knew he had to be near the top, if not at the very top, of your text list. You let out the breath you’d been holding, glad to have that out of your system. Now you could focus your attention on other things—
Or you could check and make sure the message sent, because why wouldn’t you? Nothing wrong with being cautious, especially when it's something as normal as sending a guy who has been kinda-sorta flirting with you a risqué picture of yourself with no warning.
You nearly dropped your phone as you stared wide-eyed at the screen.
“Fuck,” you breathed out. “No no no-”
[you] 8:29 PM: oh my god wait
[you] 8:29 PM: pls don’t open that
[you] 8:29 PM: just
[you] 8:29 PM: don’t scroll back up
[you] 8:29 PM: nothing to see up here
[you] 8:30 PM: i’ll tell you some cool facts instead!!
[you] 8:30 PM: did you know that octopuses sometimes throw things when they’re stressed
[you] 8:30 PM: just like people do
[you] 8:31 PM: crazy huh
You couldn’t even see the picture message on your screen anymore, and you knew Jungwon had a similar, if not the same, phone model like yours. So, it had to also be off his screen by now.
…right?
Panic seeped through your body, trying to settle into your bones. Every passing minute that you didn't get a response felt like torture.
The time it took Jungwon to respond was enough time for you to think of all the ways you could salvage this. It was also long enough for you to realize the only thing you could probably do now is skip town and start a new life elsewhere.
[wonie💙] 8:38 PM: well hi to you too
[you] 8:38 PM: yes hi hello pls don’t scroll up thank you 🫶
[wonie💙] 8:38 PM: uh
[wonie💙] 8:38 PM: you know i can’t just like
[wonie💙] 8:38 PM: ignore that you’re trying to hide something from me rn right?
[you] 8:38 PM: ofc you can!
[wonie💙] 8:38 PM: actually i can’t
[wonie💙] 8:39 PM: it’s in the best friend handbook
[wonie💙] 8:39 PM: don’t tell me you already forgot :(
Somehow, Jungwon hadn’t managed to see it yet. Or he was just really good at pretending for your sake, which you wouldn’t put past him at all.
A sigh of relief slipped past your lips and, like a fool, you thought for a moment that you might even be in the clear.
[wonie💙] 8:40 PM: since you forgot the sacred bestie rules, i think it’s only fair that you tell me what you're hiding
[you] 8:40 PM: jungwon i am so serious pls just forget about it
[wonie💙] 8:40 PM: using the full name?? now i gotta know what you sent me
[you] 8:40 PM: wonie don’t
[wonie💙] 8:40 PM: nickname won’t save you now
The wording had your heart racing but you shoved aside the feeling for now. You were in damage control mode and everything else could wait.
[you] 8:41 PM: pls??
[wonie💙] 8:41 PM: begging? you REALLY don’t want me to know do you
[you] 8:41 PM: believe me it’s better if you don’t :,)
[wonie💙] 8:41 PM: huh
[wonie💙] 8:41 PM: that so?
His tone was decipherable even through a screen. You knew what was coming next.
[wonie💙] 8:42 PM: bet.
Well, it was nice having an untainted friendship while it lasted. A few minutes went by as you sat at the edge of your bed with your head in your hands.
The vibration from your phone made you squeak because you hadn’t been expecting it so soon. Dread flowed through you as you opened it up to see what kind of damage had been done.
[wonie💙] 8:45 PM: oh
For some reason, you flinched. That simple ‘oh’ hurt probably more than anything else he could’ve said. But also: why did you want him to say more when you were already mortified?
You knew why and just didn’t want to admit it. You could keep the feelings in. You would keep the feelings in.
If there was any way you could crawl back from the cliff edge you were dangerously dangling yourself over, you would do it without hesitation.
Your friendship with Jungwon meant more to you than the happiness you thought you might have if you were ever more than that.
And as soon as you were done dealing with this, you’d make sure everything would be normal and fine and all good again.
Your phone vibrated again in your hold. Surprised, you opened it again.
[wonie💙] 8:46 PM: well
[wonie💙] 8:46 PM: definitely wasn't expecting that
[you] 8:46 PM: yeah well you saw it now so you can just delete it and forget what happened
[wonie💙] 8:47 PM: c’mon you know me better than that
Pause. What?
Before you could question it further, another text popped up.
[wonie💙] 8:47 PM: where are you rn
[you] 8:48 PM: i'm at home. why??
[wonie💙] 8:48 PM: by yourself?
[you] 8:48 PM: yes?
You fumbled with your phone as it started vibrating wildly in your hands—the custom vibration pattern you had set for whenever Jungwon was calling.
…Jungwon was calling.
Could you answer him like this? Face him so soon without the guarded barrier of texted words without vocals behind them?
Your stomach swirled with anticipation as you decided ‘fuck it, why not.’ You answered after another second of vibration.
“H-hi.”
“Hey,” Jungwon’s voice was…a little off. He still sounded calm, like usual, but there was a slight edge to it. “We gonna talk about it, or?”
"About the octopus fact?" Deflection: that was your only tactic you had left up your sleeve. "It's really interesting actually—"
"As much as I love hearing all your fun facts you have floating around in that pretty head of yours," Jungwon cut you off, tone sounding a little more amused now, "you and I both know what I'm asking about."
Your brain was trying to catch up with the fact that he just called you pretty. Well, more specifically your head, but you'd take what you could get.
It's not like Jungwon had never called you something like that before; he'd told you on numerous occasions when you looked nice in an outfit or he liked the way you styled your hair or something to that effect.
He'd even called you beautiful before, and you were very normal about that and definitely didn't dwell on it for 3 business days.
"Getting shy on me? Because you certainly don't look shy in that picture."
You whined. "Wonie, please delete it, it's so embarrassing."
A small chuckle filtered through the receiver. Had he always sounded that attractive over the phone?
"You sure we're talking about the same picture? Because what I'm looking at…" he trailed off, leaving you to wonder where his thoughts were going.
"You're still looking at it," you nearly hissed in disbelief.
"Why wouldn't I? It's a nice picture. And if I'm not mistaken," his voice dipped lower, not a lot, but enough, "you're also wearing my shirt."
Of course he would be the one to notice that. You knew taking pics in his room had been a bad idea.
But you also felt so…confident while doing it.
"You let me borrow shirts all the time, I fail to see why that's incriminating."
You did your best to keep your voice neutral, but the small hum he let out in response had the threads of your sanity fraying the longer you stayed on the phone.
"Just an observation. Was kinda hard to tell though, since you're almost not even wearing it—"
"Jungwon!" You looked around your empty apartment, checking to make sure you were still alone, as if your outburst would cause someone to randomly appear in the room with you.
"Hey, I'm just pointing out what I'm seeing," you could almost imagine him with his hands held up in defense. "I'm not complaining either."
The conversation was taking a…bit more of an unexpected turn that you thought it would have. It definitely wasn't affecting you in any way, how he was talking to you. (It absolutely was affecting you.)
As if your body wanted to betray your delusions, you noticed then that your palm was sweaty and you had to readjust your grip on your phone.
It impressed you a little bit, not that you'd give him the satisfaction of knowing it, that he was able to tell the shirt was his since it was a dark blue color and the lighting in the room was also blueish in hue. You'd been very intentional about how you wanted the lighting to accentuate the shadows and highlights in the space.
If he only noticed the shirt, you could probably avoid being flustered into oblivion. He wasn't the biggest on attention to detail sometimes, so you breathed a little easier.
"Wait…is that— is that my room?"
Alright so maybe he paid a bit more attention to detail than you thought.
"Uh—" you couldn't lie to him, you'd never been able to. "Yes."
Jungwon let out what sounded almost like a pained noise.
"Shit, ok, uh—" nervous laughter you were unfamiliar with graced your ears. "That's, uh— yeah."
You remembered at that moment how you were posing in the picture and you seriously wanted the ground to swallow you whole.
You were on your knees on Jungwon's bed, the same bed you slept in later that exact night, with him next to you. Your legs were slightly spread apart, thighs bare since you'd forgotten to bring shorts with you. Your hands tangled in the shirt as you were pulling it up; the hem of the shirt was only halfway up your chest, still covering you but barely. The look on your face in the picture as you stared at Jungwon's mirror was one that even you couldn't deny looked seductive.
You thought you heard Jungwon sigh; either that, or his breathing was off. "Listen, I—"
"I didn't mean to send it to you," you couldn't hold it in anymore. The words rushed out almost all at once, jumbled and incomprehensible to someone who didn't know any better. But you could tell by the shift you felt that Jungwon heard every word clearly.
"You didn't… mean to send it… to me?" He sounded like he was trying out the words for the first time in that order, saying them like they didn't feel right.
You gulped. "Yeah. I-I didn't."
Rustling could be heard from the other side and you desperately wanted to know what was going through his head.
"So you mean to tell me," his tone was much more stoic than it had been before, "that you took pictures looking like that— in my room, wearing my shirt, sitting like that on my bed."
He sounded guarded, unlike his usual tone with you. Your skin prickled as you waited for him to continue.
"You were posing in front of my mirror," a brief pause, "and you didn't mean to send it to me?"
You nodded, even though he couldn't see it. "Right. I meant to send it to—"
"I don't wanna know," Jungwon was quick to cut you off. "It's better if I don't know, actually." He added the last part softer, almost like he didn't want you to hear it.
Your heart thumped painfully in your chest. "Wonie, I'm sorry—"
"Nothing to be sorry for," he sounded a little more like himself, maybe even like he was smiling like he would whenever he wanted to comfort you, but you could see through it. "It was a mistake. Accidents happen. Doesn't mean I'm upset with you."
"I know, but… I'm still sorry." Your grasp on the phone was tight enough that you could feel the pain start to spread through your knuckles with how taut they were.
"Don't be." A moment of silence before he continued with what you knew this time was a sigh. "I need to go."
He hadn't said 'I should go' or 'I have to do something,' he said 'I need to go.'
The very specific phrasing had you panicking internally as you scrambled to fix this— whatever this was. "Wait, please—"
"I'll talk to you later," Jungwon ignored your plea for him to stay. You tried to swallow past the lump in your throat.
"Wonie…"
"Whoever it's meant for is lucky, though," he added quietly, making your breath catch. "And they better know it."
He hung up before you could answer. The dial tone had never seemed so loud.
You sat in the stifling silence of your room for a few minutes, replaying your conversation and trying to pinpoint exactly where you went wrong. The more you mulled it over, it didn't seem like Jungwon had really been bothered by the picture itself, but more so the fact that you didn't mean to send it to him.
Maybe you hadn't been imagining the possessive edge to his tone when he was talking about you being in his room wearing his clothes on his bed.
And maybe Jungwon just needed to leave to go hang out with the guys. Which would be a totally reasonable explanation as to why he would suddenly end the conversation… and also not invite you to tag along…
There wasn't much time to fixate on it further before your phone was going off again, but this time someone different was calling.
"Hello?" There was a small waver to your voice because your emotions were a little all over the place at the moment but you thought you managed to hide it well.
"Hey, hope I'm not bothering you," Jay was on the other end, sounding almost as confused as you were. "Do you have any idea why Won just left the apartment suddenly in the middle of the night? He's not answering his phone, so I figured if anyone knew where he went it would be you."
Your stomach lurched.
"No, he didn't say — I thought he was going somewhere with you guys."
You could picture Jay shaking his head. "Nah, he just walked out of his room and left. I don't think he even took anything like a bag with him and it's supposed to storm soon."
"I talked to him on the phone a few minutes ago but all he said was he needed to go — he's not answering when you call?"
"He hasn't answered me or Hee. I'd get Jake to try but I doubt that would work if us trying already didn't."
A feeling of guilt had clawed its way into your chest, weighing you down with each passing moment. Jungwon wasn't the type to just leave without saying something; he'd tell at least one of his friends, if he didn't already tell you.
Maybe you fucked up more than you thought.
"If he shows up there, call me, yeah? I'm not super worried, really, but— this does seem kinda off."
You gulped. "Yeah, of course. You'll be the first to know if I find out anything."
"Thanks, and same here if we hear something before you do."
You hung up the phone after saying goodbye to Jay and wracked your brain as to where Jungwon could be. It was the middle of the night, there was bound to be rain soon so he probably wouldn't be outside, and it was somewhere he wanted to be right now—
You made up your mind and grabbed an umbrella along with your keys on the way out of your apartment, already knowing where to look first.
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The dance studio — that was the only place that made reasonable sense. You tried a few other places before that, but honestly you should've just started with the studio to begin with.
You parked your car and noticed right away that Jungwon's car wasn't there, meaning he must've walked, despite it being later in the evening. The idea made your stomach twist further when you remembered Jay told you he left without a bag or anything.
The behavior was so unlike Jungwon. No wonder you were all worried.
You got out of the car and hesitated before you walked up to the front door of the studio. There wasn't a light on inside that you could see through the windows, but the feeling in your gut compelled you to try the doorknob anyway. When you did, it turned easily under your hand, and the door creaked open slowly.
Luckily for you, your intuition was right. It usually was when Jungwon was involved.
Light was peeking through underneath one of the doors down the hallway. It looked to be coming from the last room, if your perception could be trusted, which would also make sense because Jungwon preferred practicing in there anyway.
Music got louder as you made your way down the hall. You took a deep breath, hoping that Jungwon might not be here and maybe he went out to grab something quick and was already back home.
Another part of you hoped he was here and you weren't about to walk in on some stranger just trying to enjoy some alone time while they danced.
You wouldn't know until you tried — so with a cautious hand, you turned the door handle and gently pushed the door open. Without thinking, you locked it out of habit once you stepped in the room.
Inside the room was Jungwon, dancing more aggressively than you'd ever seen him dance before. Music was playing from his phone over the speaker in the room. You quickly texted Jay to let him know, heartbeat picking up slightly at his last response.
[jay🐈⬛] 9:35 PM: thanks for letting me know
[jay🐈⬛] 9:35 PM: take care of him, yeah? you're the person who does it the best
You would deal with what that could possibly mean at a later time. Right now: Jungwon.
With your eyes fixed on him now, there was a certain kind of ferocity to his moves that took your breath away. His expression that you could see through the mirror, however, hurt your chest.
His brows were furrowed in frustration and he was biting his bottom lip, hard enough that you figured it had to hurt. He was hitting every move with careful precision, but near the end of the song, he fumbled and fell to the floor, hard.
"Jungwon!" You couldn't help the cry you let out, surely inaudible to him due to the loud music that was still playing.
Jungwon sat himself up and stretched his legs out in front of him. He smacked the hardwood floor with his hand as he shouted "Fuck!"
He buried his head in his hands, pulling at the blonde strands of his hair while the music died down before the loop of audio started again.
There was no way you could sit back and watch him like this, you had to do something.
Even if you were the last person he wanted to see right now, even if he wanted nothing to do with you — he was still your best friend. He was still your Jungwon.
You ran over to him, steps barely making any sound since you were wearing lighter shoes. When you were beside him, you crouched down. One hand already was reaching out, but you didn't want to startle him, so you just hoped he'd be able to hear you.
"Wonie?" You said it as loudly as you could without yelling, still trying to do it softly even though there was just no way it would come out like that.
Jungwon flinched before he slowly removed his hands from his face. He looked over at you like he almost couldn't believe you were there next to him. His expression was pained, and you had no idea how to fix it.
He lowered the volume of the music so you didn't have to yell to be heard. "Why are you here?"
The sound of his voice broke your heart. He sounded defeated almost, and whether it was about him missing a move or something else, you still weren't sure.
"I needed to come see you. Needed to make sure you were ok."
He scoffed and looked away, the sound devastating you even further. "Why? It's not like I'm on your mind."
Ouch.
"Wonie, just talk to me, please," you tried to plead, to make him see sense.
"What is there to talk about? I'm here dancing, like usual. Nothing's wrong. You came all this way for nothing."
That may have actually been the first time Jungwon lied to you and you knew he was lying. And fuck, if that didn't also hurt.
"Why are you lying? Are you that upset with me?" You were trying not to let any tears fall but you had been through such an emotional roller coaster in the last hour alone that it was getting more difficult to hold it in.
Jungwon seemed to soften a little at that, but his jaw was still clenched. He shifted to where he was sitting with his arms propped up on his knees now, the movement making him wince slightly.
"Also you fell, are you hurt—"
His laughter, devoid of humor, cut you off. "So you saw that? Great." He ran a hand through his hair, almost pulling on the strands. "How long were you watching me fail before you decided to let me know you were here?"
"You weren't failing, it looked like you were doing great to me."
"Maybe you just don't know what to look for."
The coldness of his tone took you by surprise. Even during fights you'd had in the past, Jungwon never seemed this distant with you. It sparked the defensive reaction in you, even though you desperately wanted anything but that to happen right now.
"I've spent countless amounts of hours watching you dance. I think I know what I'm looking at."
He scoffed. "Do you? Do you really?"
His sudden standing made you wobble a bit before you regained your balance. He was walking toward the mirrors, and you followed him with no hesitation.
"Do you really know what you're looking at when you see me? Because I don't think you do."
He was looking at you through the mirror, placing a palm on it for support.
"I see you dancing, I see your movement, I see when you manage to land what looks to be impossible. Wonie, I see how amazing you are when you dance. You come alive when the music plays."
His head turned and the sad smile on his face made your stomach drop.
"Not what I asked you."
He started walking back over to you, his steps almost hesitant. You stayed rooted where you were — afraid to move, to breathe, to even blink.
You had to find out what was going on, you needed to fix it.
"I'm asking if you see me," Jungwon reiterated, "when you watch me, when you look at me. Or do you see me as just your best friend— just a person, something indifferent?"
Jungwon was, and always had been, so much more than 'just' anything and you'd tell him endlessly if you had to. But right now, you weren't sure what he was implying, so the thought stayed secure in your head, instead of making itself known like it probably should have.
You frowned. "I'm confused, I don't know what you're asking."
He sighed, the sound heavy like it weighed him down. "Just go home. I'll go back eventually."
His dismissal was what finally broke the dam. Tears fell now and you didn't bother to try and stop them.
"Did I fuck up that bad?"
Your voice was quiet, but it was enough. When Jungwon looked at you, any trace of prior frustration was wiped clean off his face as soon as he saw your lower lip quivering.
"Hey, wait—"
"I understand if sending that picture fucked up things with us, and- and if you don't want anything to do with me anymore—"
"Whoa, hang on a second," he responded in an almost panicked voice. He reached a hand out, not sure where to place it or if he should even place it at all.
"—I need to hear it from you." You looked him in the eyes as you said it, before you angled your body away. "I need to know that's what you want."
"What I want," Jungwon placed both hands on your shoulders to turn you so you were facing him, his tone gentler now, "is for you to listen to me. Who said anything about you fucking up?"
You let out a shallow breath. "That's what this is about, isn't it? I fucked up our friendship by doing something stupid."
"No, no, you didn't do anything like that. Hey," Jungwon tilted your chin so you'd face him again, "I mean it."
He had said it with conviction, and you so badly wanted to believe him.
"Then why- why were you acting like I don't see you for who you are, or whatever the hell that meant?" You didn't want to raise your voice but it was getting harder to tame that urge. "Why are you acting like you can't stand to be near me?"
The last words came out as a sob. His hand fell from your chin while the other dropped from your shoulder.
"It's not that I don't want to be around you."
"Then what is it, Jungwon? You're giving me mixed signals." Some thoughts you had kept hidden away for a long time were filtering their way through now, words like 'mixed signals' being thrown around because you were at a loss.
"I don't know how you want me to answer that."
You inhaled, the move somewhat shaky since you'd been crying. "Answering honestly would be a good start."
Jungwon dragged a hand down his face. "Fuck— fine. Fine." He took a deep breath before he continued.
"It's because being around you makes this harder."
That… wasn't what you'd been expecting to hear. You didn't really know what you were expecting, but it definitely wasn't that.
"Makes what harder? I don't understand—"
Jungwon groaned, walking closer to the mirrors again. You followed instantly, like there was a magnetic pull between the two of you.
"It makes denying how I feel about you harder, ok?" His voice had raised somewhat, hand running through his hair again. "Please don't ask me to explain, because I don't— I'm not sure I can do that."
"Denying… how you feel?"
Jungwon gulped before he nodded.
"And how do you feel?"
Jungwon sighed, the sound rough, uneven. "Please don't make me do this. I can't— I won't mess up what we have. It's worth everything to me," his voice was quieter now.
At some point he must have stopped the music playing from his phone without you realizing because you couldn't hear it in the background anymore, leaving you plenty of opportunity to notice when he spoke softer.
The gears in your brain were turning and you thought that maybe, just maybe, you understood what path he was trying to go down. Your heart was slamming against your chest, beating much too fast for what was probably appropriate, but if he was saying what you thought he was—
Well, sometimes the risk was worth the reward, right?
"Jungwon," you started, "I love you."
A small smirk graced his lips, but you couldn't tell if it was one of amusement or one of disbelief. "I know. I love you, too—"
"Wonie," you interrupted, stepping closer to where you were right in front of him. "I love you."
Your emphasis on the word 'love' was clear.
Jungwon's breath hitched. His eyes searched yours, like he was trying to decipher a riddle you had just dropped on him. "…what are you saying?"
Well, no turning back now.
You took a deep breath and shut your eyes for a brief moment before you looked at him with all your vulnerability bared.
"I'm in love with you. And I'm tired of pretending that I'm not."
The way Jungwon's eyes widened made you panic internally for all of maybe 2 seconds before the most beautiful smile you'd ever seen adorned his face.
"No way," he breathed, laughing a little at the end. "No fucking way." His hands cupped your face as his thumbs gently brushed against your cheeks. "You're not fucking with me, are you?"
It was somewhat hard to shake your head in his hold but you still managed. "Never."
Jungwon pulled you into a tight, nearly suffocating hug and buried his face in your shoulder.
"Me too," he said softly. His embrace loosened a little, so as not to crush you, but he didn't dare move away.
"You too?"
He lifted his head, face mere inches away from yours as his arms remained wrapped around you.
"I'm in love with you, too. I'm so fucking gone for you, I have been for a long time."
Hearing him mirror your confession made your heart do a weird little stutter, but you didn't have long to process it before he was speaking again.
"I've been so terrified of ruining our friendship, which means more to me than anything else in the world, other than you." His eyes were shining, full of emotion.
"The night we slept in my bed— don't remind me about the next morning," he immediately stopped you when your mouth opened the slightest amount. He knew that mischievous look on your face better than anyone else.
You giggled and let him continue.
"That night was the closest I'd come to throwing caution to the wind and confessing."
"Why didn't you?" You brushed a strand of hair back from his face, delighted in the way the small movement seemed to affect him.
Jungwon laughed, a sound you loved dearly. "Well, what was I supposed to say? 'Hey, it's driving me crazy being this close to you in my bed while you're wearing my shirt and looking like that— also I'm very much in love with you, by the way.'"
It was your turn to laugh fully as you laid your forehead on his shoulder. One of his hands came up to rest on the back of your head, while the other arm was still curled around your waist.
"I mean, had you said that, I wouldn't have been opposed—"
Jungwon scoffed teasingly, making you look back up at him. "Of course you would say that."
"You got a problem with it," you teased him.
He smiled. "Not at all."
The silence after was comfortable, and you could feel the charged energy sparking between the two of you. Jungwon broke the silence first, bringing his hand from the back of your head to caress the side of your face.
"Can I kiss you?"
"Please," you responded instantly, wanting to feel his lips against yours more than you wanted anything else in that moment. Jungwon wasted no time leaning in and claiming your mouth with his own.
You'd often imagined what it would feel like to kiss Jungwon, and in every scenario your brain conjured up, you always deemed that it would feel amazing no matter what. Your imagination couldn't even begin to compare to the actual feeling.
His lips moved against yours with a slow, tender rhythm. He wasn't trying to rush anything, savoring the taste of you as you melted against him. His movements were purposeful and gentle, but with just enough pressure to take your breath away. Kissing him felt right, it felt like you were whole, it felt like—
Kissing Jungwon felt like home.
When he finally pulled away, his eyes were still closed and he was breathing hard. He rested his forehead against yours.
"Fuck, so much better than I thought it would be," he sounded breathless. You smiled and looked down, surprised to see the tiniest bit of shaking in his knees.
"Wonie? Your knees—"
He chuckled. "Oh right, that. Guess 'weak in the knees' isn't just a phrase after all."
You laughed at his silly response, trying to ignore how you were rapidly heating up inside.
Kissing you made Jungwon's knees weak. You had that much of an effect on him. The revelation was doing things to you.
This time, you were the one who flustered him as you took the lead, pulling him closer by fisting your hands in his shirt. His answering grunt at the impact made your stomach flip.
Jungwon took the opportunity to walk forward as you were kissing, his hands firm on your waist as he guided you backward. His lips didn't leave yours, and the way he deepened the kiss while still making sure you didn't fall as you walked drew a noise from you that he seemed to really like.
Your back collided with a surface, the thud making you gasp into Jungwon's mouth. His fingers curled tighter around your waist.
"Fuck, sorry," he breathed before he started trailing kisses along your jaw. "Can't believe I get to see you like this."
Your fists clenched in his shirt as he went further, leaving light touches along your neck that intensified the lower he went.
"Can't believe I get to hear you like this." He brushed his lips against a particularly sensitive spot on your neck and you whined at the sensation. You could feel Jungwon's pleased smirk against your skin.
"Can't believe I get to touch you like this." He emphasized his words by squeezing you where his hands were holding you by the waist.
His face was in front of yours again, eyes searching for a moment before you saw a breathtaking smile.
"Can't believe you're mine."
You leaned in for another kiss with a false sense of gentleness before you pulled him closer by the grip you had on his shirt. Your lips landed on his with a hunger you didn't bother trying to tame.
You'd waited so long for even a chance for something like this to happen, there was no way you were holding back now. Especially not when Jungwon was this receptive to it.
The noise you swallowed down from him had you noticing the way you were already soaked from just this little bit of intimacy.
When Jungwon finally managed to pull away — begrudgingly, it looked like — his eyes found yours.
"Are you?" He asked it softly, almost like he was scared of the answer.
"Am I what?"
Jungwon brushed a piece of hair from your face before his palm rested against your cheek.
"Mine."
You smiled so big that if your face could've cracked it surely would have — smiling so hard that it almost hurt.
"Always have been."
Jungwon's deep groan as he pressed his body up against yours was driving you crazy.
"Fuck, god, that's— you have no idea how long I've wanted to hear that. How long I've wanted this," his thumbs brushed along your hip from where his hands were still holding onto you for dear life, "how long I've wanted you."
You wound your arms around his neck, pressing yourself up against him until you could feel him. He was just as affected as you were by all this, which made you happy in a way you'd never quite felt before.
"Then show me."
His smirk was deadly. "Right now? In here? You sure you want that, baby?"
This man was going to be the death of you, what the fuck—
"What if someone else came in, hm?" His tone was playful, but the look in his eyes made you wonder how much of it was meant in jest. "You want people to see you, to hear you while I make you mine?"
You gulped. "I locked the door, so—"
"Oh? Look at you, thinking ahead," his thumbs skirted around the hem of your shirt, just barely pushing it up.
"I did it without thinking," you tried to clarify, but your body betrayed you when he placed another kiss on that same sensitive spot he found earlier.
"Sure, baby, sure. I believe you." His hands were fully underneath your shirt now, still lingering around your waist. The feeling of skin on skin made you shiver. "Gonna let me take care of you?"
You nodded, ready for whatever Jungwon was about to do and if he didn't do it soon you might have actually started whining for real.
A ghost of a kiss graced your lips, barely there but still enough.
"Can I touch you?"
You nodded a little too fast, making Jungwon chuckle at your eagerness before he shook his head.
"Have to hear you, sweet girl. Tell me what you want."
"Please, Wonie," you mumbled the words against his lips, "touch me."
Jungwon moaned against your mouth. "Fuck, hearing you say my name like that— god, I can't explain what it does to me."
He held you against the wall behind you with one hand while he dipped his other one into the front of your sweats, taking his time even as you trembled with want in his hold. He brushed lightly over your panties and the way you flinched made his eyes widen.
"Holy shit, really? That sensitive?"
"Don't make fun of me," you whined out, eyes shut as you prepared yourself for… well honestly anything, because it appeared that no matter what Jungwon did it was going to wreck you.
"No, baby, never, I'm not making fun of you— it's hot as fuck, are you kidding me?"
He teased you again, pressing firmer against your clit through the fabric. The wetness he felt despite not actually touching you properly yet made his breath stutter.
"All this for me? God," Jungwon sounded amazed, "you're unreal."
"Please," you pleaded, hoping he'd actually touch you like he said he would.
"Fuck, ok, I got you," his tongue darted out to wet his lips as he pushed your panties to the side. His fingers caressed your folds gently, rubbing against your clit in slow, rhythmic circles.
"Wonie," you moaned out his name, making the rhythm of his hand falter.
"Ah, I can't get used to that," Jungwon threw his head his head back to get hair out of his eyes, "you sound so fucking pretty for me."
He caught your eyes as he teased your entrance with one finger, checking to make sure that this was ok, that you were ok.
"Please," you repeated it like a broken record. You wouldn't be surprised if by the end of the night you only knew that word and some form of Jungwon's name.
He didn't hesitate, moving inside you with a steady pace, one that had you clinging now to the back of his shirt. A sharp gasp left you when he hit a familiar spot. You tried to muffle your sounds by biting your lip, but Jungwon wasn't having that.
He pulled your bottom lip down from where your teeth were holding it, smoothing over it with his thumb. "Let it out, baby. Need to hear how I'm making you feel."
You moaned then, unrestrained, and felt how his thumb pressed against your lip in response before he placed his hand back on your hip.
Jungwon added another finger, managing to make you come undone with just two of them. Usually it would probably take more of this, but honestly you had no doubt that Jungwon could make you come untouched if he really tried hard enough.
You were sure he'd probably try that one day— if this was something that continued.
But now wasn't the time for those thoughts. Now was the time to focus on the beautiful man in front of you who you'd been dreaming about for years now, hoping to maybe experience a fraction of this with him even if it was just one time.
"You're so responsive, it's driving me crazy," Jungwon said the words with his tone full of wonder. "You sound like you're already close—"
"I am," you tried to warn him as your hand shot out to grasp his wrist — not to make him stop, but to encourage him to keep going. "Please don't stop."
"Wouldn't dream of it," he said the words against the column of your throat, finding that spot inside you over and over again, drawing you closer to your peak.
"God, I wish you could see yourself," he placed kisses anywhere he could on your face. "So beautiful."
When your moans started rising in pitch, you chanced a look at Jungwon. He looked like he'd been studying your reactions — every twitch of your body, every time your eyebrows furrowed, each time your mouth hung open in a silent scream of pleasure. He was studying you the same way he did a new dance routine, taking it all in until the motions were as easy as breathing for him.
He also had a devious expression on his face, which somehow, confusingly, made you even more aroused.
"Hey, baby?"
He was still moving, but the questioning tone took you off guard. "Y-yeah?"
It sounded way too casual for someone who was currently pulling downright depraved noises out of you.
"Got an idea — can I try something?"
"Does it involve you stopping, because please no," you sounded desperate, but if he truly did want to to stop you absolutely would with no questions asked. You had a feeling that wasn't what he was implying, though.
He chuckled and placed a kiss on your forehead. "I'll only stop for a second, but it'll be worth it, I promise."
You pretended to think about it, knowing damn well you'd happily and very willingly let this man do pretty much anything he wanted to you.
"Go ahead, but make it quick."
Your tone was clearly teasing, and you knew Jungwon got the vibe of it from the way he smiled.
Before you could comprehend what was happening, you were suddenly being turned around. Your hands shot out to brace yourself, and what you thought was a wall in fact wasn't one at all.
You came face to face with your own reflection — eyes glassy, lips swollen, breathing hard. And behind you stood Jungwon, looking just as much a mess, if not even more than you were. He looked beautiful like this, ethereal.
His stare in the mirror was lethal, and he kept his eyes on you as he gave your earlobe a gentle tug with his teeth. He pressed closer to you against your back when you moaned at the feeling.
He placed a kiss on your neck right underneath you ear before he finally said words you didn't know you'd been waiting to hear.
"You're gonna watch while I make you fall apart."
His hand found you again, and he slipped three fingers inside this time, the stretch surprising but not unwelcome. Jungwon grunted at the way you clenched around his fingers as your body jerked in his hold.
You had no time to react before you were moaning louder, eyes shut tightly, the feeling overwhelming you in all the best ways. The effort to open your eyes was overpowered by the intense pleasure coursing through you, but Jungwon wasn't having it.
"Keep those pretty eyes open for me," he mumbled the words against the exposed part of your shoulder, desire coating every syllable. "I meant what I said — you're gonna watch."
Your eyes barely blinked open as you tried to obey, but your head kept dropping down; Jungwon must've decided that he should give you some help.
His 'help' came in the form of a hand curving around your jaw from behind, holding your face in place as his fingers moved faster inside of you. Your back was flush against his chest now with the new positioning, and you could tell through the multiple layers of clothing just how bad he was aching for you — how hard he was for you.
He breathed along the shell of your ear, grunting when he felt your hips moving. "Fuck, do you know how many times I've thought about this? About watching you come undone for me?"
He ground against you, chasing the friction he so desperately wanted while you continued to melt in his hands.
You shook your head when you remembered he had asked you a question. "I don't know— but me too."
"Shit, you've thought about this too, yeah? Me ruining you with just my fingers?" He increased his pace and one of your hands grabbed his arm that was in front of you. Your nails dug in slightly, making him go even harder.
"Yes, yes Wonie," you answered truthfully, because honestly, you'd probably pictured him with you in every explicit way possible at this point.
"Fuck," you felt him moving against you more, somewhat matching the rhythm of his hand that was showing you no mercy. The way he was pushing you up against the mirror now with his own movements made you feel one separation away from going actually feral. You were close enough that your breath fogged up the glass as you tried to keep yourself together.
"Close, baby?" His own breaths were coming out in shorter pants now, and you could feel when he moaned against your cheek as he placed a tender kiss there. "Gonna cum for me?"
"Wonie, fuck, all for you." Your release was approaching quickly, and you still tried your hardest to keep your eyes open.
"All for me—only for me," Jungwon spoke the words against your neck. You trembled in his hold.
"C'mon, give it to me," he continued. He stared at you through the mirror, his eyes determined, his bottom lip caught by his teeth. When he let it go, he leaned in closer, still keeping eye contact with you before he said what would ultimately be your undoing.
"I need it."
As the pleasure rippled through your body, your back arched and your head landed against his shoulder behind you. He held you through your climax, only letting up on his relentless pace when your moans turned more into whines of oversensitivity.
"Fuck," Jungwon almost sounded more out of breath than you did. "Came so good for me. Looked so beautiful, just like I always knew you would."
You tried to catch your breath as you gave him a lazy smile through the mirror. Jungwon carefully pulled his fingers out, focused so intensely on making sure he didn't overstimulate you that he almost missed your response. The sight of him sucking your essence from his fingers made you become the one more weak in the knees this time.
He hummed around his fingers before he pulled them back out. "Taste so good, too."
The sudden change as he went about fixing your clothing was unexpected, but not unwelcome. His gentle movements and the kiss he placed on top of your head made you feel warm and fuzzy inside for a completely different reason.
But if he thought you were done, he was wildly mistaken because you were far from it.
You turned in his hold, his arms releasing you easily. As you pulled him in for a kiss, you moved one hand down until you could feel him. The surprised moan he let out as soon as you touched him over his clothes had to be one of the hottest sounds you'd ever heard in your entire life.
"Oh fuck, didn't think I'd be that sensitive, ha," Jungwon's eyes were having a hard time staying open now — something you would inevitably tease him about later.
"Gonna let me return the favor, Wonie?" Your tone was teasing, playful, but the movements of your hand were a stark contrast, if the noises escaping him were anything to go by.
He managed to open his eyes again before he nodded. "Yeah, yeah, ah— please."
Without wasting anymore time, you fell to your knees in front of him. You dragged your mouth along the bulge in his sweats, and he cursed above you.
Jungwon found it hard to look at you, and you could see his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides like he didn't know how to handle what was happening. "God, you on your knees for me, fuck—"
"Wonie," you said the word against him before your hands went to his waistband. "Look at me."
"Might not be the best idea if you want me to last literally any time at all," Jungwon rushed the words out, resulting in a giggle from you. You really did love this man.
"You can do it, can't you? For me?"
You were using the most sickly-sweet tone you could. Which, honestly, probably wasn't fair because you knew how it made him feel to hear you like that.
With a groan, Jungwon obeyed to the best of his ability. The look in his eyes spurred you on with a renewed sense of vigor, and the way his bottom lip was captured once again between his teeth in anticipation almost ruined you again right there on the floor.
"Want you to watch me," you continued with a quick kiss over his sweats before you started pulling them down. You stopped for only a moment to make sure it was ok, and his vigorous nod was all the answer you needed.
Jungwon's head tilted back when you palmed him again, this time through one less layer. A deep groan rumbled from his throat. "Holy fuck. God, you're— I can't believe what I'm seeing right now."
When he looked back down at you, the smile you graced him with was nothing short of radiant, and you could tell by how it made his breath hitch. When you finally had all clothing out of the way, you just had to admire him for a few seconds because he had the prettiest cock you'd ever seen.
You couldn't help the small laugh you let out when you saw him twitch because you were staring.
"You, uh— like what you see?"
Poor baby sounded so nervous, you had to put this man out of his misery. You wrapped a hand around him and he hissed at the contact.
"Love it," a slow stroke of your hand made him twitch again, this time in your hold. "So pretty, Wonie."
"Pretty is, uh, an interesting word that's for sure," he cut himself off with a moan when you placed a quick kiss on the tip. "How am I gonna survive this—"
"Just let me take care of you, ok?" A gentle tone to coincide with the slow drags of your hand was the perfect combo to have him already losing his mind even though you'd barely started. You had one more trick up your sleeve and you had to see if it would have the effect you were thinking it might.
"Oh, and Wonie?"
He hummed in response, the hum shifting quickly into a grunt when you added a little more pressure. He looked down at you and you gave him your most devious smile.
"It's my turn now to watch you fall apart."
The way Jungwon's head hit the mirror behind him when you took him into your mouth would've concerned you, had it not been for the sound of pure pleasure that he let out. His hands were reaching behind him as well, scrambling against the glass for something to hold onto and failing miserably.
You teased him for a few more seconds before you pulled back, giggling at the way his eyes were shut tight after he'd been the one making you keep yours open. You kept stroking him with a rhythm that had his hands pressing against the mirror once more.
"Can't keep your eyes on me, baby?" Jungwon twitched in your hand at the pet name; you truly loved the effect you had on this man. He opened his eyes just barely to peek at you before quickly shutting them again.
"If you don't want me to — fuck — cum down your throat in like 5 seconds then yeah, I fear I can't look at you."
The teasing tone made you feel a different kind of warmth inside, because as serious as he was (probably) being, he was still the same, silly Wonie you fell in love with.
"Who says I can't make you cum again?"
"Ok, what the actual fuck— you can't just say shit like that and," he paused to swallow down a moan, "expect me to be normal after."
"Wonie, just let go." You reached out and took one of his hands, placing it on top of your head. When you did the same with the other one, his eyes snapped open.
"Oh my god—"
"You can be rough with me, you know." The way Jungwon nearly fell over at your words proved to you that no, he did not know that, but you were determined that he could learn.
"You're sure," he panted out the question, already pulling your hair after every stroke of your hand made him jolt. "I don't, ah, wanna get carried away."
"It's ok, Wonie," you placed a kiss on his thigh as reassurance, but the soft gesture had probably the opposite effect.
And you loved it.
It seemed you had instead managed to spur him on and convince him to finally let go, because as soon as you took him back into your mouth, the way he thrusted was anything but gentle.
It didn't take long for him to find a steady pace. He was still careful to not completely destroy your throat (even if you kind of wanted him to), but tears were still pooling in the corners of your eyes anyway.
"Fuck, I love you, what the fuck," his hands fisted strands of your hair harshly, the sting of the pain making you moan around him. The vibrations made his hips stutter, and another wave of arousal singed your insides with its heat.
You didn't want to take your mouth off of him, so you blindly reached up to grab one of his hands. His eyes shot open and he slowed to a stop.
"Fuck, I'm sorry, are you ok? Am I being too rough?"
Still, very stubbornly, not wanting to take him out of your mouth, you shook your head as easily as you could. You intertwined your fingers with his hand you were holding now as you kept going. Jungwon's head hit the glass again, the thud sounding much more painful this time.
"Fuck, ok, just, if you need to like — fuck — stop or something, let me know, ok?"
A reassuring squeeze of his hand was all he needed to pick up right where he left off. His sounds were coming out quicker now, and you could feel him twitching in your mouth every few thrusts.
"Close, close, baby—"
As much as you wanted to keep going until your mouth was quite literally full of him, you needed to know what he wanted. You pulled off of him and inhaled, your lungs grateful for the air you didn't realize you'd been depriving yourself of.
"Where do you want it?"
"God, fuck, anywhere, just—ah," Jungwon was breaking down right before your eyes, other hand gripping your hair with a fierceness you didn't really know he had. "You choose—"
"Down my throat," the words sounded better coming from you than you thought they would, considering you didn't usually say things like that. "I wanna taste you."
Jungwon shuddered, nodding with his head rubbing against the glass. "Fuck, ok— won't be long, uh," he trailed off, letting out another alluring moan as he fixed his stare on you.
"This is what you want? You're sure?"
Even if Jungwon had to be moments away from spilling down your throat, it warmed your heart how he still managed to put your comfort above his own pleasure, just as you would do with him. He always put you first.
Always had. Always will.
Nodding wouldn't be efficient enough, you needed him to know just how badly you did want this. With a shred of courage (and honestly a hint of sheer curiosity) you let go of his hand just enough to wrap your pinky around his.
Your shared signal over all these years — you had no idea how this would go, but you couldn't think of a better way to convey how much you wanted to keep going.
And the reaction you got was better than anything you'd ever seen in your dreams.
The sound that left Jungwon's throat was one you weren't sure he made at first; it just sounded so… raw. It reverberated in that part of the room, where he was up against the mirror with you on your knees, taking him in.
You were already aching for him again, every sound driving you a little more crazy, every falter in movement making you throb with want. And now that you'd had a taste, you'd probably never be satiated by anyone but Jungwon ever again.
"I fucking love you, oh my god, you're perfect, I—" Jungwon tried to swallow down his next moan, instead succeeding in only biting his lip. "—cumming, fuck!"
Those few words were all you got for a warning before you felt him fill your mouth. You swallowed down everything you could, mindful of how his hand on the back of your head helped steady you as he was still squeezing your pinky with his.
As soon as he lifted his hand from your head, he helped you stand up, despite the fact that he was still trying to catch his breath. You were barely steady before he pulled you into another heated kiss, this one more sensual but still with the same amount of intensity as before. If he could taste himself on your tongue, he really didn't seem to care at all.
After a few more shared kisses, Jungwon pulled back and rested his forehead against yours. "I'm not dreaming, right? This is real?"
"It better fucking be or you're going to deal with a very annoyed me tomorrow."
Jungwon laughed, the sound thankfully so much brighter and happier than when you first got here earlier. "So like, a regular day. Got it."
You playfully tapped his arm. "I am not always that bad."
"No, you're not." Jungwon agreed. "But I am always the one taking care of you."
"In more ways than one it would seem," you smiled as you brushed some strands of hair out of his eyes.
"In all the ways you'll let me, for as long as you let me." Jungwon looked at you with a softness in his eyes that you'd seen so many times before, but never quite knew what it meant.
After all these years, you finally found the answer: love.
✮✮🧡💛✮✮✮💛🧡✮✮✮🧡💛✮✮
there is an intended drabble about once they go back to his apartment that will hopefully follow in the near future! i felt like this was getting a little long and this would be a good place to stop for now (thank you @moonstruckpark for the reassurance also 🩵)
You’ve had the same constellation of moles your whole life.
They dotted your skin like stories someone wrote in a language you never learned to read. There was one nestled at your collarbone that people mistook for a fleck of chocolate. One right at your wrist that friends would sometimes trace absently. Your hands were speckled with tiny dark spots, enough that you sometimes hid them under sleeves during childhood photos.
Your neck had another. Your shoulder blade, too. A large, almost heart-shaped one sat at the curve of your waist — barely visible unless your shirt lifted just right. And then there were the others.
The ones you didn’t notice at first.
On the inside of your thigh. Below your navel. At the bend of your knee. Beneath the slope of your breast.
None of them symmetrical. None of them in places people talk about in beauty blogs or skin-care reels. But your grandmother used to say they were marks left behind by the lips of someone who loved you in a past life.
“That boy must’ve adored you,” she’d said once, tracing one just below your collarbone. “He kissed you like he was afraid to forget.”
You had laughed at the time. You were twelve. You thought it sounded romantic — but silly.
You grew up and left the idea behind.
Until him.
Jungwon isn’t the kind of boy who flirts. He doesn’t toss compliments like confetti or brush fingers against yours just to make you flinch. He watches people quietly. Speaks with purpose. Carries a kind of stillness that makes noise feel like an interruption.
You meet him in a class you almost didn’t take. He sits beside you on the first day and doesn’t say much — just a small, polite smile. But every time you turn your head, he’s already looking at you.
You’d be unnerved if it didn’t feel… familiar.
Weeks pass. Assignments are shared. Inside jokes exchanged. One rainy afternoon, he pulls a loose thread from your sweater sleeve and tucks it into his pocket.
And then one night, you fall asleep on his couch after watching a late film, and you wake up with your hand in his.
Palm up. Fingers slack.
His thumb moves softly over a tiny mole near the base of your thumb. Like he’s memorising it.
You pretend to still be asleep.
“I have too many,” you joke one day, holding out your arm to show him. “Moles, I mean. My friends used to count them like stars.”
He doesn't laugh. He takes your hand in both of his.
Jungwon notices them like they mean everything.
He’s quiet. Gentle. The kind of person who doesn’t just look — he sees. You meet him through a class project, but he talks to you like he already knows your laugh, your hesitations, your tells.
And your moles.
The first time he holds your hand, he brushes his thumb over the tiny one near your thumb joint and murmurs, “Still here.”
You frown. “Still where?”
He doesn’t explain. Just smiles.
“This one,” he murmurs, brushing your wrist. “This one was always my favourite.”
You blink.
“You’ve never seen it before.”
You stare at him.
He doesn't elaborate.
Later, your roommate says Jungwon’s the type of boy who probably remembers his dreams in colour.
You think he remembers more than that.
You dream of him before you ever fall asleep in his arms.
In those dreams, he’s not always him.
Sometimes, he wears different clothes. His hair is longer, his voice deeper. You wear gowns. Sometimes armour. Sometimes you wear nothing at all — just silk sheets and a name you barely remember.
But the moles are always there.
The one behind your knee. The one on your neck. The one beneath your breast, especially.
And always — always — he kisses them like they’re precious.
Like he’s afraid they’ll fade if he doesn’t.
One night, as his mouth moves against your collarbone, you feel his hand slide gently over your waist. It pauses over the large mole there, fingers spreading as if to cover it. He kisses just beside it, breath warm.
“I found this one in every lifetime,” he whispers.
You shiver.
You don’t ask him how he knows.
Tangled in sheets and silence, you ask him directly:
“Do you believe in past lives?”
He nods, eyes open and honest. “Yes.”
“Do you think we were… something? Before?”
He smiles. “I don’t think.”
He pauses.
“I remember.”
It spills out slowly, like water leaking through cracks in the wall. In the quiet hours, in the pauses between kisses, he starts to tell you pieces.
“In one life,” he says, “I was a scholar, and you were the daughter of a nobleman. We passed each other once at a temple, and I only caught your eyes. But I knew.”
He kisses your collarbone then.
“In another, you were a musician. I waited every week just to hear your voice.”
His mouth finds your shoulder blade.
“Once, I found you after a war. You had forgotten your name, but you smiled at me, and I didn’t need to know anything else.”
You shiver.
“Were we always together?”
He shakes his head.
“Sometimes I was too late. Sometimes you loved someone else. Sometimes… you died before we found each other.”
You lean back against the pillows, letting the silence settle. Then you ask the question that’s been burning in your throat:
“And this time?”
He looks at you.
And he says it like a promise.
“This time, I’m going to love you long enough to make it count.”
After that, you start noticing the pattern. The way he kisses every mark. Not just the visible ones. Not just the convenient ones.
Once, when you’re lying beside him after a long day, half-naked and exhausted.
Then, without warning, he presses his mouth lower — beneath your breast — to that mark you’ve always avoided. The one you forgot to be embarrassed about.
You flinch.
He pauses. Looks up.
“No one’s touched that before,” you admit.
“I know,” he says. His hand spreads across your ribs, steadying you. “You never lived long enough.”
Your breath stops.
You stiffen.
But he doesn’t look up.
He just breathes against your skin like he’s thanking it.
And then he says, almost too quiet to hear:
“I lost you holding you like this.”
Your eyes sting.
And something inside you remembers — a flash, a fever, your chest aching, his voice calling you back when your body already knew how to let go.
Your first time together is slow.
You’re half-nervous, half aching, and he treats you like porcelain wrapped in something ancient.
It’s the first time someone sees all of them — really sees you, laid bare, constellation and all. His touch isn’t just careful; it’s reverent.
His lips ghost over your shoulder blade, where a dark spot lives like punctuation.
“This one was on your back when you ran through a river,” he murmurs. “You wore white. I remember seeing it through the fabric.”
You bite your lip. “You're making things up.”
He smiles softly. “I’m not. You had the same laugh then.”
His lips brush the skin again — slower this time, with more meaning than you know how to hold.
You start counting them again after that.
One on your neck.
One on your collarbone.
Too many on your hands to name.
One on your wrist, right where he always kisses you when you’re nervous.
One on your shoulder blade that he traces when you’re curled against him.
One just below your belly button that he smiles at before pressing his mouth there.
The large one on your waist he rests his hand over like it’s a place he belongs.
The one behind your knee that makes you giggle when his fingers find it.
And the one — the first one, the final one, the one that feels like a return — beneath your breast, where his kisses always linger the longest.
After that, you start to really see yourself too.
In the mirror. In his gaze. In your dreams.
The one mole at the curve of your inner thigh. The one behind your knee. The one low on your back that tickles when his fingertips trace over it.
Sometimes, when he’s between your legs, his lips will pause over each spot like checkpoints — like he’s returning to every place he missed you.
Once, he kisses the one just below your navel and whispers something you don’t catch.
You ask him what he said.
“That’s where I felt your- our first child kick.”
Your eyes widen.
He adds, “In the third life. Y-you died the same year.”
You start noticing his moles too.
There’s a small one on his jawline you always glance at when he’s speaking.
“I like this one,” you murmur, brushing your lips against it during a lazy morning.
“It’s new,” he says, smiling. “I didn’t have it in our first lives. But you kissed me here once, and it showed up in the next.”
You stare at him, awed. “What, like I… created it?”
“Maybe.” His eyes soften. “Love leaves marks.”
You find more.
One near his hip that you kiss when he’s half-asleep.
One behind his shoulder you trace with your fingertip when he’s lying facedown on the bed.
One under his ribs that only shows when he stretches, which he lets you explore when you press your lips to his skin in quiet wonder.
You whisper once, “Why don’t I remember you?”
He kisses the back of your knee, where a mole hides in the bend.
“You always forget,” he murmurs. “You’re not supposed to carry the pain.”
“But you do.”
He nods. “I’d rather remember and find you again than forget and lose you forever.”
Your roommate asks if you’re obsessed with each other.
You don’t answer. Because it’s more than that.
It’s recognition.
It’s waking up with your head on his chest and realising your fingers always drift to his jawline mole without thinking.
It’s him pulling your hand to his mouth and kissing each tiny mark like he’s saying hello in a language only you understand.
It’s one night — late, breathless — when he has you pinned beneath him, and he leans down to kiss the mole just below your breast, again and again, slower each time.
“I lost you like this,” he whispers, voice cracking.
You wrap your arms around him. “You found me again.”
It’s scary how much you believe him now.
Scary how much sense it makes.
Like your body remembered before your mind did.
Like the ache in your chest wasn’t yours — it was his.
Eventually, you tell him the truth.
“I hated my moles,” you admit. “I felt like they made me look messy.”
He laughs gently, tilting your chin up. “You’re not messy. You’re written. You’re a love letter someone finished in another lifetime and mailed to this one.”
One summer night, you lie in a patch of moonlight, completely bare, nothing between you but breath.
He kisses each mole slowly, thoroughly, until you’re trembling — not just from arousal, but from the intimacy of being seen like this.
When he reaches your inner thigh, he lingers.
“I never got to touch you here,” he whispers. “Not until now.”
You arch into his mouth, and he takes his time, his hands steadying you, anchoring you to this life, this love, this version of being together.
Afterward, you hold him just as gently.
You trace the mole at his jawline with your lips, whispering, “You’re mine too, you know.”
“I always was,” he says.
Some nights, when you’re half-asleep and tangled in sheets, you ask him about your past selves.
“Which one was your favourite?”
“This one,” he answers instantly.
“No,” you murmur. “I mean… before.”
He hesitates.
“You once danced barefoot in a garden. I watched you through a screen door and thought—if I could just hold you once, that would be enough.”
He kisses the mole on your shoulder blade, where you’re curled against him.
“Was it?”
“Never,” he says.
You tell your grandmother once, just before she passes:
“You were right, you know. About the moles.”
She smiles, eyes twinkling.
“I only told you what my mother told me.”
“Did she ever find her lover again?”
“She did,” she whispers, already fading.
And then: “Just once. But it was enough.”
You count them all once, together.
You name them.
He remembers their echoes.
He kisses the one below your navel and calls it “home.”
The one on your inner thigh becomes “devotion.”
Your wrist, “first sight.”
Your shoulder blade, “loss.”
Your waist, “belonging.”
The one beneath your breast—“the promise.”
And his?
You call his jawline “anchor.”
His rib “yearning.”
His hip “gravity.”
His shoulder “return.”
Years pass.
He still traces them.
When you fight, he kisses your hands.
When you cry, he finds the one on your collarbone and presses his forehead there.
When he asks you to move in, he kisses your wrist.
When you say yes, he finds the one at your waist.
And when he holds you that night — like he’s holding every version of you that ever lived — his mouth finds the one beneath your breast again.
Slow.
Tender.
Certain.
And you finally ask, breathless, “Why there?”
He doesn’t hesitate.
“That’s where I kissed you last.”
That night you fall asleep with his lips pressed just above your heart.
And you think, If we live again…
But you don’t finish the sentence.
Because now — now — is enough.
Now, your body remembers.
And his hands answer every question your skin ever carried.
the misfortunes and misconceptions of lee heeseung
❝ i'll let you in on a little secret: wanting nothing to do with y/n starts with actually wanting nothing to do with her. ❞
PAIRING ▸ slytherin!heeseung x hufflepuff!fem!reader
GENRES ▸ fluff, crack, hogwarts au, idiots to lovers au
WARNINGS ▸ profanity, the classic amortentia trope because what screams valentine's day like love potions, heeseung is down horrendous, sunghoon missing half an eyebrow, jake is babygirl, lots of catastrophizing, minor bending of canon for plot convenience, and a kiss scene of course
SUMMARY ▸ by no means does lee heeseung hold any romantic feelings toward you. the mere possibility is jarring, considering his luck seems to take a turn for the worst whenever he’s around you. from getting hit with a bludger during quidditch to getting into trouble with filch for setting off dungbombs in his office, heeseung starts to think you’re some sort of bad omen. he’s prepared for disaster when you two become partners in potions, but why does the amortentia smell like you?
WORD COUNT ▸ 13,497 words
PLAYLIST ▸ lavender kiss by the licks
AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ this is jayflrt's valentine for you ♡
LEE HEESEUNG WAS CERTAIN YOU MUST HAVE HAD AN AFFINITY FOR NEARLY KILLING HIM REGULARLY.
When he, Slytherin’s prized Seeker, got knocked off his broom by a bludger, there was only one potential suspect he could narrow the crime down to in his head.
In your hand was the very bat that sent the bludger in his way, hitting his miserable self square in the gut.
This seemed to be a pattern between the two of you, where it was mostly Heeseung experiencing great misfortune because of the Hufflepuff’s mere existence. His best friend, Park Jongseong, told him that he had probably wronged you in a past life for him to suffer this much around you. While Heeseung initially brushed it off as a joke, he couldn’t help but start to question if it was actually true.
Back in his first year, Heeseung met you during the Sorting Hat ceremony, where you accidentally tripped him right before he walked up to get sorted. Everyone in the Great Hall laughed at him, which was not his idea of a welcoming initiation into Slytherin, so he glared holes into the back of your head for the rest of the year.
In his third year, you ran into him at King’s Cross station, causing all of his trunks to go flying. While you were helping him repack everything, you two realized that the Hogwarts Express was long gone, and neither of you could even access the magical entryway to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Heeseung cried into his hands at the train station until a professor Apparated to pick them both up, and then you teased him about his tears for what felt like forever.
In a similar sense, Heeseung had somehow always managed to get into trouble when he was around you. Now, he had naturally grown out of disliking you for causing him so much suffering (mostly because he was far more popular now and everyone had forgotten about how you sent him flying during a duel, unfortunately revealing his strawberry-patterned boxers to an entire room of second and third years), but Heeseung was still wary about the adversity that seemed to follow you.
Were you a friend? Heeseung couldn’t tell for sure. You two spent an awfully long amount of time together, but you both also had your separate friend groups that hardly intermingled. Heeseung supposed you were more of a thorn in his side that hurt more when he tried to yank it out.
Now, there was nothing left for him to do now but clutch his stomach in pain and pray that he didn’t need to spend another night in the infirmary because of you. (Madam Pomfrey started to keep a tally; “Oh, Miss L/N didn’t injure you again, did she? Have a toffee, sweetheart,” was what he was expecting to hear from the school nurse.)
“Heeseung! Are you okay?” you asked, running up to him with your other hand clutching your broom. Thankfully, Heeseung had managed to grip his broom with one hand on the way down until he had safely landed, so there were no damages to his Moontrimmer. “Who did this to you?!”
“I know you’re holding the bat behind your back, Y/N,” he got out through gritted teeth.
He watched as you let your arm fall defeatedly to your side, revealing the Beater’s bat that violated practically every safety protocol.
“Oh, how embarrassing,” Kim Minjeong, the Chaser for the Slytherin team, said with a giggle from behind her palm. She was still floating a few feet from the ground, witnessing the damage done from her broom. Heeseung glared up at her. “Not a good look for you, Captain.”
Normally, he would shut Minjeong up with his usual threat that went something along the lines of putting a curse on her bloodline. This time, however, Heeseung was in far too much pain and humiliation to come up with a witty comeback.
Madam Hooch came running across the field to see what happened to her star Quidditch player. On the bright side, Heeseung knew that you wouldn’t get in trouble because game was game; you were just doing what you needed to ensure your victory, even though Slytherin still had a huge lead on Hufflepuff. After momentary deliberation, however, Heeseung realized that the bright side should have been the fact that he was still alive. Why was he thinking about you, anyway? He would pay galleons to see you get in trouble—but not too much trouble (and Merlin’s beard, he was far too soft).
“He needs to be taken to the infirmary,” Madam Hooch said. She spared you a glance before making a shooing motion with her gloved hand. By this time, his friends (Park Sunghoon, a sixth year who Heeseung ‘adopted’ in his second year, and Yang Jungwon, a broody fourth year with a penchant for rule-breaking) had come running down the stands and across the field. “You can visit him after you finish the match, Y/N. Madam Pomfrey can handle this.”
“Yes, of course,” you murmured, turning to Heeseung again and muttering a pathetic apology, to which he cracked a grin at. Maybe he shouldn’t have been grinning since you nearly cracked his skull open, or maybe he had really lost it this time.
“It’s only been a week since you’ve managed to nearly get me killed.” Heeseung shuddered at the memory of you accidentally setting his cloak on fire last week with a Blasting Charm. “Don’t worry. I knew something was gonna happen sooner or later.”
Words of affirmation weren’t exactly his strong suit.
But upon seeing the awkward grin on your face, like a blast of light that hit him all at once, Heeseung was suddenly painfully aware of everything—the awfully pleasant scent of lavender wafting from you, the searing ache from his injury, the way your hair framed your face, and the cool metal balled in his fist.
Wait—metal?
Before he was about to be carried out in a not-so-dignified manner, Heeseung raised his arm to open his palm, revealing the Golden Snitch that sat obediently, fanning its wings out once before closing again. A gasp rose from the crowd, and then the shocked looks from both teams followed. Minjeong nearly fell off her broom. The Slytherin house all but exploded in cheers after Madam Hooch gaped at the sight, fumbled for her whistle, blew it loudly, and then announced Slytherin’s victory over Hufflepuff.
Heeseung sighed in relief and fully collapsed onto the ground, looking up at the clear sky with contentment lifting the anguish from his brows. And now that he knew the verdict of the match, the pain finally hit him all at once, and he hoped Madam Pomfrey could fix him up before his house started celebrating their triumph.
“Heeseung! That was an incredible play!” Nishimura Riki, a fourth year Gryffindor, cried as he came running from the stands. If by incredible, he was referring to Heeseung getting bludgeoned to the ground, then sure, incredible—outstanding, even. The flash of Riki’s camera went off, capturing a pathetic-looking Heeseung lying limp on the springy turf. “This’ll definitely make the front page!”
Ever since the Nishimura kid got an internship at the Daily Prophet, the Slytherin team had been worried about appearing on the news unprompted—most likely in unflattering angles, too. It had even gotten to the point of Song Eunseok pinning up a poster of Riki to a corkboard in the locker room, as if he was a wanted criminal at large.
“Er, could we retake—”
“You grab his legs,” a voice from behind him ordered. It was Sunghoon, who had come running with Jungwon to carry him out of the field. “I’ll take his arms.”
Heeseung balked. “Guys, wait!”
But it was no use. He was already in the air, and Jungwon and Sunghoon were both ignoring his protests.
As if he was a rather sad sack of potatoes, Heeseung was carried out, body dangling and his eyes screwed shut as he heard more flashes of Riki’s camera going off. Most of all, he wondered if you caught sight of how pitiful he was. Surely, you found it hilarious, didn’t you? He was certain he would get teased endlessly in Charms next week.
“Nice game, champ,” Jungwon commented oh-so-casually, and Heeseung’s blood started boiling.
“Can you put me down already?! We have magic for a reason!” he blurted out, but his two friends ignored him all the same.
“I saw Sunoo being carried out like this the other day outside of the Dueling Club meeting room,” Sunghoon mused, and Heeseung imagined the poor Slytherin also being hauled to the infirmary like a ragdoll. “I heard he got hit with a nasty Disarming Charm. Someone nearly blasted the poor guy right into the Clock Tower’s pendulum.”
“I know. He’s better at dodging than I thought,” Jungwon replied unsympathetically. “What a shame. I’ll get him next time.”
Heeseung blanched. Poor Kim Sunoo.
But then he remembered his current state and thought Sunoo was better off than him. At least Sunoo wasn’t carried out in front of the entire school.
Really, the reason why Heeseung was so agitated was because being Slytherin’s Seeker meant that he had an important role. It was a responsibility that clearly set him apart, and it surely had to look impressive to others—for example, you—but here he was, being carried out of the Quidditch pitch like an idiot. It put all of his hard work and countless hours of practice to shame.
Thankfully, although his failing jock status might have damaged his ego to the point of no return, Madam Pomfrey didn’t seem to think his injuries were too severe this time. After a few healing charms, which made him feel back to normal in no time, Heeseung was ready to leave the infirmary.
Sunghoon and Jungwon ended up leaving right after dropping him off, claiming that they had to go celebrate their win in the Slytherin common room. Heeseung found it completely disrespectful to ditch the very person who brought them to victory.
To his surprise, you were waiting outside the door, twiddling your thumbs and doing that annoyingly cute habit of yours where you chewed on the inside of your cheek whenever you were in trouble (which, frankly, happened a lot of the time). He made a great deal of effort to adjust his cape before walking over to you with raised eyebrows, wondering if an apology was coming his way.
“I just wanted to say,” you started, voice uncharacteristically small and wavering, but then you followed up with an incomprehensible mumble that Heeseung could hardly decipher.
“What?”
“Uh,” you raised your voice this time, keeping it steadier with extra effort, “on the way here—funny story, really—I was telling Jake about how you set off a Dungbomb in Filch’s office the other week. Honest to God, I didn’t even see Mrs. Norris!”
Although you didn’t provide a solid conclusion, he was able to connect the dots and figure out what you were getting at. He almost wished he stayed oblivious because how was this happening to him twice in a day?
Heeseung’s face fell. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“Filch is looking for you,” you finished with a guilty look drawn across your face.
It happened to be your second guilty look of the day, actually. Two too many for Heeseung to handle.
There was one thing Lee Heeseung was quite sure of, and it was that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with you from now on.
The aftermath of his scolding from Filch resulted in him receiving evening detentions for the rest of the week. All you brought him was terrible luck wherever he went, and despite how nice you smelled and how shiny your hair was, he didn’t need your misfortune clinging to him like it would be the last breath he’d take.
Honestly, any longer around you and he was pretty sure he would be taking his last breath soon.
But it was honestly ridiculous how hard Heeseung had to restrain himself from going near you. He would pass by your unbothered self in the Courtyard, hoping to get some verbal recognition from you that would change his mind about his whole ignoring thing, but you simply just paid more attention to stupid Jake Sim from Hufflepuff.
Who cared about Jake Sim, anyway? Surely not the several girls in his year that threw themselves at him. There was nothing redeeming about him, not even with his perfect smile and perfect grades and perfect robes. Honestly, where did he get those robes? Heeseung bought his at Madam Malkin’s, like virtually every other student, but they weren’t as perfectly trimmed and fitted as Jake Sim’s perfect robes.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Park Jongseong, a sixth year Ravenclaw, sneered once he saw the glower across Heeseung’s face. “Wanting nothing to do with Y/N starts with actually wanting nothing to do with her.”
“Who said I didn’t not want anything to do with her?” Heeseung fired back, but even he was confused about his response, taking a few extra seconds to process what nonsense had just spewed out of his mouth. “Okay, look, just pretend I said the funniest thing you’ve ever heard when she walks by us.”
“Actually, that was the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Heeseung gave him an exasperated look. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I mean, you’re not that funny to begin with. Kind of hilarious that you think you’d be able to tell me the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You literally just told me I said the funniest thing ever.”
“Funny because it was such a pathetic thing to say. There’s a difference.”
“You’re a stupid git, you know that?”
“Am I now?”
“The stupidest of stupid gits.”
In truth, Jake was the stupid git. Jongseong could tease Heeseung all he wanted, but Jake Sim was the one grinning down at you with a stupid sparkle in his eyes, taunting the Slytherin with those evil, perfect corners of his lips. Didn’t he have better things to do? Like not taking up the oxygen in a place where he was clearly unwanted?
Also, to set the record straight, Heeseung needed to make it perfectly clear (to himself, too, because this was clearly confusing for him and everybody around him) that he was not into you.
Probably.
Sure, he felt a smidge of fondness because you two had gotten into life-threatening situations before (all your fault, by the way), so there was probably some semblance of friendship that was only due to the fact that shared trauma often brought people together. But that was all it was. Heeseung’s feelings did not extend into anything remotely romantic; he even shuddered at the very thought.
That was right. He was your friend, and that was all he wanted to be. Heeseung most definitely did not think about anything like holding your hand, or plucking flowers to braid into your hair, or kissing you in hidden corners of the castle. That would be ridiculous and completely unlike him.
And then you really did walk past him and Jongseong, so Heeseung took it upon himself to punch his friend’s shoulder hard and burst into forced laughter. He tried extremely hard to convince himself that this was a very normal thing to do, but soon after the act, he wanted to lay on the floor of the Owlery until the owls collectively decided to fly his body out somewhere far away—hopefully another country.
“Idiot, I’m the one who’s supposed to laugh,” Jongseong reminded him once you were out of sight. (You did not pay attention to his charade, Heeseung was sad to note.) With a scoff, he added, “You should probably hit the books ‘cause acting’s clearly not up your alley.”
Heeseung let out a retired sigh and stood up from the stone bench they had been sitting on. “I’m going to Potions.”
“Oh, you attend class now? Shocking.”
“I prefer not spending my evenings in detention.”
“Alright. I’ll update you later on the Jake-and-Y/N show.”
“You do that, and I’ll show you how good I’ve gotten at the hair loss curse,” he spat. “I’d start investing in some hats.”
“Is that why Sunghoon’s missing half an eyebrow?”
Heeseung didn’t answer. Honestly, Sunghoon’s predicament had nothing to do with him, but he left it up to Jongseong’s imagination for the sake of intimidation.
As he stormed away (well, more of a brisk walk; Heeseung wasn’t one to storm), he realized that his friends had all sorts of misconceptions about him. He couldn’t wrap his head around why Jongseong would possibly think he was concerned about you and Jake Sim. Sure, he spent a good portion of the morning glaring daggers at Jake Sim, but there was no way that meant Heeseung was that concerned about the Hufflepuff.
What was there to be concerned about, anyway? Heeseung was the Seeker of the Slytherin Quidditch team, scored five O.W.L.s last year, and he was the top duelist at Hogwarts. Jake Sim was just another pretty boy who Heeseung could crush under the sole of his shoe if he wanted to.
His mind wandered to thoughts of you and Jake Sim walking back to the Hufflepuff common room together. Your melodic laugh echoing through the halls because of a joke he told; your fingers entwined with his as he carried your books for you; and your eyes practically glowing with admiration as you watched him intently.
The thought made Heeseung sick to his stomach. Not because he liked you or anything disgusting like that, but because Jake Sim didn’t deserve to receive that much attention—not even in a hypothetical scenario that played out in Heeseung’s wild, almost sadistic imagination.
One thought comforted him, though: You had Potions with Heeseung, meaning you had to pry yourself from Jake’s side to attend Slughorn’s class.
As he was about to approach the classroom door, Heeseung realized he had forgotten his Potions textbook. He debated whether to go in without it or run to his dormitory to fetch it, and he eventually went with the latter to avoid being clueless if today required brewing a potion. This resulted in him being about ten minutes late to class, which he decided was your fault somehow.
Immediately upon entering the room, the pungent scent of lavender filled his nostrils, and it was all he could smell. He later recognized that there were a few other smells mixed in—the smell of butterbeer and the smell of fresh ink. The lavender, however, was so intense that it overwhelmed his senses.
It smelled like you.
Before Heeseung was about to blurt out and ask why you doused the entire classroom in your perfume, Professor Slughorn turned to look at him with brows raised in pleasant surprise.
“Ah, Mr. Lee,” he greeted. “You’re early today.”
He was ten minutes late.
“Uh, just forgot my textbook,” he said, holding up the Potions textbook he walked several, brutal flights of stairs to retrieve.
“If you’re ready to join us, I was just going over Amortentia.”
If Heeseung’s memory served him correctly, that was either the potion that boosted one’s memory or the potion that induced laughter. He hadn’t exactly been doing his reading over the summer, which was probably not an intelligent decision on his part considering he was in N.E.W.T. level Potions.
Either way, he was a little too preoccupied mentally replaying how his eyes met yours briefly. Heeseung walked over to stand next to you—for research purposes, of course—because he needed to know if you had really drenched yourself in lavender perfume, or if he had just gone crazy.
He nudged you with his elbow and muttered, “You reek.”
Okay, that was definitely not a chivalrous way of putting it.
“Excuse me?” Your unnaturally high-pitched voice was hardly a whisper, but Heeseung could detect… panic?
“No, I mean your perfume,” he corrected quickly. “It’s everywhere.”
“Is it that strong?” You lifted your sleeve to sniff at it.
“Yeah? It’s—”
“—the most powerful love potion known to wizardkind,” Heeseung heard Slughorn say as he redirected his focus to the actual lecture. “Amortentia’s said to smell different to each person, according to what attracts them.”
So it turned out that his memory didn’t serve him correctly at all.
Heeseung had his fair share of near-death experiences—probably a few more than the average Hogwarts student.
Never had he wanted so badly to combust into flames on the spot like a phoenix. Except he didn’t want to rise from the ashes; he was perfectly content with staying dead and buried without ever having to relive the last couple minutes of his life, which he was sure would scar him forever.
Immediately, Heeseung stopped focusing on Slughorn’s lecture to conjure up some lame excuse in his head. Maybe he could tell everyone that his Muggle-born father owned a lavender farm back in the day, thus his love for lavender scents bloomed. But, Merlin’s beard, that didn’t even make sense! Just because he loved the smell of lavender didn’t mean he was in love with it. The smell was always attached to the person—the very object of his desires.
And, of course, it all pointed back to you.
Heeseung should not have had the realization that he was in love with you in the middle of Potions, of all classes. Astronomy? Sure. He thought it would be romantic to come to terms with his feelings whilst observing the celestial bodies in the sky. Divination? Even better. Gazing into a crystal ball for answers made complete sense.
But Potions? Seriously? This was probably the least romantic place in Hogwarts aside from the haunted bathroom in the South Wing.
No, on second thought, Heeseung saw some potential in the haunted bathroom. Something about the complete isolation of the facility made it all the more exciting.
Potions, on the other hand, was simply downright dreadful.
“Amortentia, as you all know, is extremely dangerous. I only have it out here for educational purposes, so do not even think about touching that cauldron,” Slughorn warned. “Instead, for today’s lesson, I want you all to partner up and brew something… more lighthearted—say, Elixir for Inducing Euphoria. You can find it in your Potions books in chapter eight.”
After his lecture, Slughorn made everyone write down what Amortentia smelled like for them, warning his class about the dangers of the love potion being slipped into someone’s food or drink. Heeseung hastily wrote his down on a scrap of parchment before pocketing it where he would surely forget it existed.
He had been hoping Potion-making was going to be individual work today. He despised partner work, especially when that meant Heeseung would potentially be working with you, which didn’t prove too successful for his heart or his grades.
More importantly, Heeseung did not, by any means, want to work alongside you after accidentally admitting that the Amortentia smelled like lavender to him.
Not to mention you were atrocious when it came to Potions. Heeseung needed more than two hands to count all the times your cauldron blew up in your face this year. Even when Heeseung took the reins and stirred the ingredients himself, you would somehow manage to expertly worsen the situation.
Thankfully, Kim Sunoo also took Potions, so as soon as Heeseung spotted the Slytherin, he grabbed his robes by the nape.
“You’re working with me.”
It came off more as an order than a request, but Heeseung needed to be firm to emphasize the gravity of the situation he was in. What if he died working with you? Did Sunoo want him dead?
“No way,” Sunoo refused. “I already told Sohee I’d work with him. Plus, you never bring the right ingredients.”
Well, that was that; Sunoo hated Heeseung and wanted him dead.
“Are you serious? Sohee?” Heeseung asked, acting as if Sohee wasn’t one of the top students in Potions. “You’re turning your best friend down?”
“No, I’m turning you down.”
“Okay, ouch.”
“Sunoo, d’you have any Sopophorous beans on you?” Lee Sohee asked as he approached the two, reading off his Potions book. “I have Worm—oh, hey, Heeseung!”
With little enthusiasm, he greeted, “Hi, Sohee.”
“Heeseung needs a partner,” Sunoo explained.
“Oh, really?” Before Heeseung could stop him, Sohee turned his head and cupped his hands around his mouth, yelling, “Y/N! Heeseung needs a partner, too!”
“Sohee!” Heeseung hissed, suddenly wishing Sohee’s head was a Quaffle he could launch into oblivion. He lowered his voice to mutter, “Have you considered that maybe I’m asking Sunoo because I don’t wanna partner with Y/N?”
He shrugged in response. “How was I supposed to know that?”
Oh, this was horrible. Not only did Sunoo hate Heeseung and want him dead, but Sohee had joined in on the cause, too. They were both clearly plotting something wicked against him.
But now he had no other choice. It wasn’t like he could turn you down after Sohee had blatantly lied about Heeseung’s intentions. This was the worst outcome yet; he was probably going to fail Potions because of you, and then he would have to write a make-up paper on the stupid elixir they were supposed to brew.
“No one wants to partner with me!” you complained, shoulders sagging and lips forming a pout when you walked over to the Slytherin. “I can always count on you, though, Hee.”
Heeseung couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
No one wanted to partner with you? What had the wizarding world come to? Where was the comradery?
He was almost infuriated by how spineless the rest of his classmates were. Sure, Heeseung was complaining about working with you seconds prior, but you said it yourself: you could always count on him. At the end of the day, failing today’s class and writing a make-up paper was nothing in the grand scheme of things. Heeseung would always extend a helpful hand to those who needed it, or someone he was potentially crushing on.
Get a grip, Heeseung, he scolded himself. You do not have a crush on her. She’s just a good friend, that’s all. A perfectly normal, platonic friend of yours who gets on your nerves sometimes… and smells rather nice… and sort of looks extremely pretty when she has her hair tied up… and—
Okay, this was getting ridiculous.
“Yeah,” he got out in an embarrassingly choked voice. “You were my first choice, anyway—well, after Sunoo turned me down.”
There often came a time when a man had to put himself through tough situations to overcome adversity. As Heeseung approached their table, his shiny cauldron gleaming under the lamp light, he knew exactly what he needed to do.
Make sure you didn’t lay a finger on his bloody cauldron.
Sunoo and Sohee were working at the same table, standing at the bench across from them. Heeseung quickly sifted through his bag, and, as Sunoo predicted, he didn’t bring any of the ingredients necessary for the elixir. What the hell was he going to do with Fluxweed and rose oil?
“I have porcupine quills,” you said, pulling a glass jar out of your bag.
“Uh, okay, so I need you to get a Shrivelfig and Wormwood from Slughorn’s closet,” he instructed you, giving you a thumbs-up once you nodded. “I’m gonna beg Sunoo for his Sopophorous beans.”
After you walked off, Heeseung leaned over the table and muttered, “Sunoo, please give me some of your beans.”
“No,” the prick replied.
“Please,” Heeseung begged. “Eunseok’s table took the last of them from Slughorn’s closet.”
“Maybe, but I want something in return.”
“What do you want?”
A sly grin spread across Kim Sunoo’s face. “Tell me what the Amortentia smelled like for you.”
Honestly, Heeseung was perfectly content with writing another twenty inches to make up for a failed potion. He would even take detention, if needed. Anything to get himself out of this sick and twisted situation.
In his head, he imagined Sunoo getting what he deserved, and that was his ass getting properly kicked during Dueling Club. He envisioned Jungwon flourishing his wand and blasting Sunoo square in the gut, knocking him straight into the fountain in the middle of the courtyard.
He gave his friend a reproachful look. “I wish Jungwon’s spell hit you.”
Sunoo chuckled darkly and held up his jar of Sopophorous beans, waving them teasingly in the air. This was almost too much for Heeseung, but he committed to working with you, so he couldn’t let you down while you were off getting the rest of the ingredients.
“Lavender,” he admitted through gritted teeth. “The Amortentia smelled like lavender.”
His eyebrows raised in mock surprise. “Hear that, Sohee? Heeseung smelled lavender. You know who else usually smells like lavender?”
At that moment, you returned with the rest of the ingredients. You showed Heeseung the jars and bottles you brought over, but he was too distracted to properly examine them. His gaze remained fixed on Sunoo, eyes burning with resentment. He prayed to Salazar that Sunoo wouldn’t slip up in front of you.
Sohee, who clearly had no idea who Sunoo was referring to, blinked slowly. “Uh, Professor Longbottom? He probably smells like it—you know, with all the time he spends in the Greenhouse.”
“Yes, Sohee, I’m in love with Professor Longbottom,” Heeseung deadpanned. “Thank you for your wonderful insight.”
You made a face. “You’re in love with who?”
“No one,” Heeseung replied quickly once Sunoo finally handed him his desired ingredients. He lit the fire under the cauldron, dropping a sprig of peppermint inside to counterbalance the possible side-effects. “Just peel the Shrivelfig and chop the porcupine quills while I stir.”
The potion-making seemed to be going smoothly for the first few steps. However, when you were chopping the porcupine quills, Heeseung’s chest leaped when he heard an ouch come from you. He forgot about his cauldron immediately and looked over to see your finger bleeding.
“What happened?” He grabbed hold of your hand, inspecting the blood oozing from your cut. “Did you slice your finger?”
“M-my hand just slipped.”
This was bad. If Heeseung didn’t disinfect and bandage the wound, then it could possibly get infected and you’d die. (Merlin’s Beard, Heeseung, it’s hardly a flesh wound, his thoughts annoyingly cut in.) He needed to get you to Madam Pomfrey before—
“Heeseung!” Sunoo yelled from over the table.
He whirled around to see that elixir had turned a deep purple hue, bubbling up to the rim. That was strange; it was supposed to be a bright yellow color by now. Considering he was handling the cauldron the entire time, nothing should have gone badly wrong. Time seemed to slow down as Heeseung speculated what in Salazar’s name he managed to screw up.
That was when he noticed the green bottle next to the cauldron—the Infusion of Wormwood he poured in earlier. Except it wasn’t Wormwood; the brown tag hanging from the neck of the bottle read Flobberworm Mucus.
Before he could curse himself for not reading the label properly beforehand, the failed elixir rose all the way to the top and shot out of the cauldron, spewing purple liquid all over their table and burning a hole through the wood. Slughorn’s head turned sharply in their direction, and he crossed the classroom to see what mess you and Heeseung had caused.
“Evanesco!” the Potions teacher shouted, making the substance vanish in an instant. Slughorn looked mostly unsurprised as he turned to face you and Heeseung, letting a retired sigh slip. “Five points from Slytherin and Hufflepuff—and twenty inches on the properties of Amortentia by next class.”
“Twenty?” you cried, nearly gasping from the shock. “But, Sir, we have so much work from our other N.E.W.T. classes already!”
“And we have the Hogsmede trip after class,” Heeseung chimed in.
And, bless his heart, Slughorn was far too kind of a soul to be too strict with either of you. He typically had high expectations for those he taught, especially the ones he sought out for his reputable ‘Slug Club,’ but he had a soft spot for his N.E.W.T. students.
“Alright then, well… you and Mr. Lee can write twenty inches together and bring it to me,” he decided in his bumbling voice.
When he walked away, Heeseung let his shoulders sag. He couldn’t believe he had to write a paper over this—and with you, no less. He should’ve known that he was cursed to stumble upon misfortune again, but, at the same time, he just couldn’t find a way to blame you. Sure, you were the one who took the wrong bottle from the Potions cabinet, but Heeseung really should’ve double-checked the label before he poured it into the cauldron.
“Oh, well,” Sunoo simpered, wearing a proud smirk, “writing about Amortentia shouldn’t be hard for you, huh?”
Heeseung demonstrated his hair loss curse on Sunoo after class.
“I might get a D on my N.E.W.T. for Potions, Hee,” you complained to him later when you both had snuck away to the lakefront to work on your remedial paper. There was a nice patch of grass that Heeseung liked to sit on and contemplate his miserable life, so he figured that he’d share the location with you. “Or maybe even a T—oh, Godric’s Heart.”
“Hey, failing with distinction would be much more impressive than just downright failing,” he tried.
“Not helping.”
“Sorry.”
Heeseung had a total of four words written on his parchment so far, which happened to be both of your first and last names. He wasn’t sure how he would get to twenty inches without delving into the smells of Amortentia, which he already figured he would need to use a personal anecdote for. He was trying his best to avoid that since it would lead to a rather awkward conversation.
However, everyone was leaving for Hogsmede shortly, so Heeseung was hoping that you would decide to set aside the rest of the paper for later.
As if the universe was rubbing Heeseung’s misery in his face, Jake Sim came strutting over in his stupid, perfect robes. (Except it was quite a normal walk; no strutting whatsoever, actually.)
“Just got out of Arithmancy?” you asked him with a gut-wrenching, brilliant smile on your face.
“Yeah, Seunghan and I were heading to Hogsmede with everyone else,” Jake answered before his gaze drifted to Heeseung. Something seemed to light up in his eyes and he started reaching into his robes. “Hey, nice game yesterday! Did you see that, uh… where did I put it…” After some rummaging through his pockets, Jake pulled out a piece of parchment which seemed to be a clipping from the school newspaper. “You made the front page!”
Heeseung peered to see a moving picture of himself laying on the Quidditch pitch, half-conscious as the Golden Snitch rested in the palm of his hand. Next to him, Sunghoon and Jungwon gave the camera a thumbs-up and feigned shock at the sight of the Seeker on the ground.
He was definitely going to be sending Riki a Howler.
“Lovely,” he replied half-heartedly, fighting down a scowl when he realized that Jake wanted him to keep the clipping. “I’ll hang it up with the rest of my collection.”
Jake laughed, even though Heeseung was dead serious. He had an archive of mortifying photographs of him that Riki had taken ever since he stepped onto Hogwarts grounds. Collecting them was intentional, of course; Heeseung needed evidence for the Wizangamot if he planned to sue Nishimura Riki for defamation one day. If Heeseung had known how much of a nuisance the Gryffindor would be, he would’ve plotted for the kid to be sent back home right after his Sorting Ceremony.
“We have a remedial paper to write,” you told Jake glumly, “so I don’t think we’ll be going to Hogsmede today.”
Jake shrugged. “I’ll see you in the common room later, then.”
“Bye-bye.”
Once Jake walked off to find his friend, Heeseung shot you a dark look. There might have been something warm and soupy in his chest whenever he even looked in your general direction, but he wouldn’t let this slide.
“I’m not skipping the Hogsmede trip.”
“But we have to finish—”
“But Hogsmede,” he whined. “Can’t we meet in the library after and work on it?”
“I have a Transfiguration quiz I need to study for.” You sounded distressed for a moment, but you quickly brightened up. “Who are you meeting in Hogsmede?”
“Uh, well, no one in particular. Just wanted to check out some stores.”
“Then how about we go together?” you suggested. “We can work on our paper in The Three Broomsticks.”
“Oh.” Heat suddenly rose to Heeseung’s cheeks, and although he desperately tried to convince himself that your proposal did not sound like a date, he couldn’t shake how excited he was to spend some one-on-one time with you. “That works for me.”
On Salazar’s name, Heeseung was going to murder Sunghoon and Jungwon in cold blood.
While you and Heeseung had gotten cozy in an empty booth, brushing shoulders as you two looked over the first paragraph you started, his two dear friends decided to show up where they were clearly unwelcome. Apparently, mouthing get the fuck out of here wasn’t sending the message across.
Sunghoon was on some long tangent about how he barely scraped by on his O.W.L.s, but Slughorn finally gave him the green light to take Alchemy. For some odd reason, Alchemy was only available as a N.E.W.T. class, so Sunghoon had been anxious the whole summer over whether his O.W.L. results would be enough.
“Didn’t you get five O.W.L.s?” Jungwon asked, bored.
“Six—A in Herbology,” Sunghoon corrected. “I hate plants.”
“Longbottom let you in with an Acceptable?” Heeseung raised his brows with mild interest, but he quickly steeled his expression. He was not entertaining their company, no. He started practicing the fine art of Legilimency to send a message to Sunghoon: go away, go away, go away, go away.
“He said he was especially impressed that I got into his N.E.W.T. class.”
“Oh, yeah,” you spoke up, pointing at Sunghoon. “Yizhuo told me she had no idea you were in her class until you showed up for exams.”
“I also didn’t realize she was in my class until you mentioned that.”
“How’d you even pass?” Heeseung asked.
“No clue,” Sunghoon replied honestly. “The exam was fine, but I thought the practical would be the end for me. Turns out I’m a natural. They even clapped after I ripped the leaves off a Venomous Tentacula. Like, big deal, it’s a plant.”
Everyone at the table froze. Heeseung practically jumped seconds later, hitting his leg against the underside of the table. He had long abandoned his goal of kicking Sunghoon and Jungwon out of The Three Broomsticks. You choked on your butterbeer, wiping some of the foam off your chin. Jungwon’s eyebrows raised in disbelief. Heeseung’s knee hit the underside of the table, suppressing a groan. There was a shuffle below.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed you ducking under the table for a moment. However, he was too astounded by Sunghoon’s story to divert the topic.
Heeseung set his butterbeer down and asked, “You just walked over and used your bare hands?”
“I suppose not showing up to class has its upsides,” Jungwon said. “Ignorance is bliss.”
“Sunghoon, do you even know what a Venomous Tentacula does?” you asked.
“What? Photosynthesis?”
“Well, other than the snapping jaws that can either stun or kill you, and the vines reaching out to strangle you when you’re least expecting it,” Jungwon started (which didn't sound like a very pleasant start, to be honest), “there's also the venom that shoots out from its sprouts—oh, and the thorns that can kill you if you prick your finger.”
Sunghoon looked disturbed before muttering to Heeseung, “And they call Hogwarts the safest school on Earth. What a joke.”
You excused yourself shortly after the conversation came to an end, claiming that you spotted a friend a few tables over. Heeseung pretended to listen to Sunghoon and Jungwon trying to guess how old Professor Binns was, but really he was keeping an eye on you. Minjeong was whispering something to you, paused when you wrapped your arms around her, and then turned her neck to say something with sudden enthusiasm.
Heeseung wondered how it would feel if he was sitting in that seat instead of Kim Minjeong, if your arms were draped around his shoulders like that. He thought of your hair falling into his face, how he’d brush it away and turn his head to kiss you—
Dangerous waters, he warned himself. Do not go there.
“Every time I ask him—and, mind you, it was only a couple of times—he falls asleep before he can even give me an answer!” Sunghoon complained, bringing Heeseung’s attention back to the topic of the ancient History of Magic professor. “Heeseung, has he ever told your class how old he is?”
“Couple hundred years probably,” he answered. “Can you guys leave now?”
They gawked at him, offended.
Now Heeseung had realized he had driven himself into a corner. He couldn’t tell them the real reason why he wanted them to leave. If his friends found out that he wanted to spend time with you alone, then they would misconstrue the situation into something involving feelings—something which Lee Heeseung might have had but refused to admit out loud or to himself.
“You two have been distracting us from finishing our paper,” he said instead, pointing at their unfinished essay. “Twenty inches! And we hardly have two.”
Jungwon, who saw right through him, asked, “You just wanna spend time with Y/N, don’t you?”
Heeseung coughed loudly, as if that would cover up whatever the Slytherin just said. “What?”
“It’s so obvious,” Sunghoon said. “Would we really be your best friends if we couldn’t pick up on who you’re into?”
“I am not into—” Heeseung paused to weigh his words. His recent revelation brought him to the point of no return; he couldn’t just lie about how he felt now. He threw an anxious look over his shoulder to make sure you were still preoccupied with Minjeong. “We have a paper to write.”
Sunghoon threw his head back to laugh. “See? You can’t even deny it.”
“It doesn’t even matter; she’s into Jake.”
They went silent. Glanced at each other out of the corner of their eyes.
“Jake Sim?” Jungwon asked. “And Y/N?”
“Yes.”
“Jake Sim… and Y/N.”
“Yes,” Heeseung repeated with impatience seeping past his teeth.
“What makes you think she’s into Jake?”
“Uh…” Heeseung was now irritated that he was being put on the spot because nothing was coming to mind. He just thought of you and Jake laughing together in the courtyard and jealousy wrapped tight around his heart. “I saw them together.”
“I saw you in Filch’s office the other day,” Sunghoon said. “Are you two a thing?”
Heeseung scowled at him, but before he could fire back at his friend, Jungwon said, “Just tell us you want us to leave so you can spend time with Y/N, and we’ll go.” A sly grin spread across his face, and he scarily resembled Kim Sunoo at that very moment. “You should probably make up your mind before she gets back.”
Struggling for a way out of this situation, Heeseung gave them both dirty looks. He had no choice but to give Jungwon and Sunghoon what they wanted. You were going to wrap your conversation up with Minjeong any minute now, so he had to act now before his friends terrorized him for the rest of their Hogsmede trip.
“Fine,” he said sharply. “I wanna spend time with Y/N alone, so leave.”
Right on command, the two boys made a big scene about having to leave, throwing their hands up in exasperation and getting to their feet slowly. Sunghoon shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck as if it was a pain for them to be ordered around. Heeseung sank back into his seat in embarrassment.
“Alright, alright, we’ll go,” Sunghoon drawled, “but you better tell us all the details after.”
Heeseung gave them his word, even though he was sure the update would simply be finishing their essay. Once Jungwon and Sunghoon strode out of the pub, he turned his gaze back to Minjeong’s table. For a moment, he just watched how your hair shone under the warm lighting. Heeseung had to avert his eyes when you turned around again to walk back to his table. There was a strange look on your face, like you were trying to work through a puzzle in your head.
“Where’d the others go?”
For the entirety of their Hogsmede excursion, Heeseung had been trying his hardest not to look at you when you were so close to him. Now, though, with his friends gone, it was just you and him sitting almost shoulder-to-shoulder.
He realized he was staring at your lips instead of answering your question. He licked his lips involuntarily and looked away.
“Uh, went to check out some stores, I think,” he lied. “Should we get back to work?”
Slightly distracted, you replied, “Yes, let’s.”
The remedial paper was finally at an impressive twenty inches by the time you and Heeseung thought it would be best to start walking back to the school.
There weren’t many students around anymore as most people didn’t want to miss dinner in the Great Hall. Heeseung felt like something was off. You were focused on the paper the entire time, hardly engaging in any side conversation or recalling some fun memory. When you two ran out of things to write about Amortentia and stumbled upon the topic of describing its scent, Heeseung managed to steer away from writing about how the potion smelled for him. Instead, you two went for a more informational route with zero personal anecdotes.
The walk back to the castle was long, but Heeseung really hadn’t expected you to bring up the topic of Amortentia again. He thought hours of writing a paper on the potion would put you off of it for a long period of time.
“So, you remember Slughorn showing us the love potion in class, right?” you started timidly while the two of you were crossing a bridge in Hogsmede. You didn’t even let Heeseung get to the trail to Hogwarts before you started your interrogation. “What’d it smell like for you?”
Fuck.
Why was everyone so interested in what the Amortentia smelled like for him? It wasn’t supposed to be some groundbreaking piece of information, and it wasn’t a big deal that it smelled like your signature scent! There were far more interesting things to converse about, like how nicely the leaves were arranged on the trees, or how interesting of a shade the sky was.
But there was no way for him to avoid this question—not when you were staring at him so adamantly—so he resorted to lying. A white lie never hurt anyone, after all. Or, well, anyone important.
“Like… books,” he answered, trying to keep his voice as level as possible.
“Maybe you and the librarian are meant to be,” you teased.
“I guess sneaking into the restricted section makes the heart grow fond.”
You laughed, and, Merlin’s beard, what a melody. Heeseung could listen to your voice all day. Preferably on a warm day while he was stretched out on some grass with your head on his lap, or maybe he’d like to be laying on your lap. Either way, he would be perfectly content just listening to you talk his ear off until—
“Y’know, that’s funny ‘cause… well, you wrote lavender here,” you said, chewing on the inside of your cheek and holding the very scrap of parchment that was supposed to be tucked away in Heeseung’s pocket.
Suddenly, he felt the urge to shut himself in the Slytherin common room and never hear you speak to him again.
In the couple of seconds he was malfunctioning for, many thoughts raced through Heeseung’s head.
First, he wondered if there was still time left to request a Ministry-issued Time-Turner under the guise that he would use it for his classes. Instead, its intended purpose would be to reverse time until Heeseung had somehow gotten himself out of this situation or destroyed that stupid piece of parchment.
The second revelation that struck him was that he must have dropped the paper in The Three Broomsticks. It must have fallen out of his pocket when he hit his knee under the table. There was a moment when he noticed you picking something up from the floor, but he hadn’t dwelled on it, expecting it to have just been a napkin.
Lastly, he had gone extremely still—to the point of halting in his tracks and staring at you, wide-eyed. His body had completely seized up to the point where he almost thought he was shaking. Shaking—but he was shaking. He was shaking all over. Or maybe he wasn’t. He couldn’t tell. Heeseung clenched a fist to make sure he had control over his body.
“Heeseung?”
You stopped walking, too, looking at him curiously. For a moment, it looked like you were going to apologize for reading what he wrote down, but you looked down at it again.
“Did the love potion smell like lavender?” you asked in a soft voice. Looking visibly flustered, you said in a rush, “I’m just asking because Minjeong said I always, uh… smell like lavender, and I just thought…”
He needed to run. He needed to get out of here. He needed to disappear.
Heeseung felt like his blood was rushing through his ears, pumping so loud that he couldn’t hear anything but his heartbeat for a moment. You were saying something, but he couldn’t even make out the words your lips framed. The world had slowed down, and Heeseung wasn’t quite sure if his feet were planted firmly on the ground.
He would have rather been anywhere else—maybe at Sunghoon’s house where his mother’s baked goods wafted from her kitchen window. He could envision the meadow right behind their house and how he spent the summer in the grass, practicing Quidditch with Sunghoon and his little sister. Jongseong would arrive days later to complain about his O.W.L.s for three hours straight until Sunghoon and Heeseung felt the life oozing out of their bodies.
But here, with your eyes sparkling with determination, Heeseung felt like he was about to melt into a puddle. He was consumed with the ungodly urge to grab ahold of you and kiss you until his blood felt like electricity in his veins. Yes, he needed to be anywhere but here—anywhere where his feelings weren’t worn on his sleeve for the world to see.
You started again, “Heeseung—”
Before you could get anything else out, Heeseung, who was overcome with the will to escape, felt something pulling him from behind. In a flash, he was whisked out of thin air with a tug behind his navel, leaving you gobsmacked and stranded in Hogsmede.
He felt like he was being pushed through a thin vortex, squeezed by the fabric of reality tearing and reshaping itself around him. It took him some gasping breaths to get lungfuls of air into his body, but once he could breathe right again, he realized he was definitely not in Hogsmede.
“Excuse me?” Heeseung asked a nearby townsperson who was walking past him. He must have looked ridiculous in his Hogwarts robes, body awkwardly sprawled over two bales of hay. “Where am I?”
“Feldcroft,” the wizard answered.
He Apparated to Sunghoon’s hometown.
Not only did Heeseung spend thirty minutes trying to Apparate back to Hogsmede, but he was late for dinner. You were long gone, of course, but it seemed like you hadn’t exactly abandoned Heeseung. When he arrived on school grounds, Slughorn and McGonagall were waiting for him at the gate. This was definitely going to earn him a detention or two.
Apparently, you ran back to school to tell McGonagall about what happened. The headmistress also noted that you were sobbing because you were convinced that it was your fault somehow. You happened to be under the belief that Heeseung wouldn’t know how to get back, which he couldn’t argue with because he considered himself lucky to Apparate back without splinching himself.
After receiving a lecture from both professors about the dangers of Apparating unsupervised, Heeseung received two punishments: one week of detention and he wasn’t allowed to go on the next Hogsmede trip. However, he also received a pat on the back from Slughorn and a congratulations from McGonagall for a successful Apparition.
When he recounted the story to Sunghoon, Jungwon, and Sunoo in the common room the following morning, they were howling with laughter. He had to pause approximately four times for them to catch their breaths.
“It’s not that funny,” Heeseung deadpanned.
Sunoo, who was wiping tears from the corners of his eyes, replied, “It’s kinda funny.”
Sunoo was also missing several patches of hair, which Heeseung generously didn’t point out.
“Did my mom give you anything to bring back?” Sunghoon inquired. “I’ve been craving her tarts.”
“I didn’t exactly have time to drop by your mom’s and pick up some tarts! I was trying to Apparate back to Hogsmede, if that wasn’t already clear!”
“On the bright side,” Jungwon said, “you’ll probably pass your Apparition exam now. Sunghoon lost half an eyebrow while he was practicing yesterday.”
Sunghoon, with one and a half eyebrows, grimaced.
“So, you left Y/N hanging and she had to walk back alone?” Sunoo asked, tutting lightly as he shook his head. “Now you stand no chance of asking her out.”
Heeseung tried to cover up how taken aback he was by coughing into his arm, expertly hiding his reddening cheeks from his friends. “It’s not like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Jungwon said. “So, you’d be perfectly fine with Y/N going out with Jake?”
Heeseung’s face turned sour as he turned to look at the Slytherin. “She’s going out with who?”
“It’s a hypothetical question.”
“Well… who she goes out with is none of my business.”
Sunghoon barked out a laugh. “Then why’d you get so worked up?”
“I’m not getting worked up,” Heeseung replied firmly, huffing as he got to his feet. “I simply don’t think she and Jake Sim are compatible, but my opinion’s got nothing to do with her.”
“Yeah?” A ghost of a smirk was plastered across Sunoo’s face. “Why don’t you think they’re compatible?”
There was a fire in the center of Heeseung’s chest, blazing and scorching his heart. He felt as if he would pass out from the immense pressure in his chest, but then his body felt so hot that everything seemed to slip away. He thought of you and Jake again, thinking about how you smiled up at him in a way Heeseung had never seen you smile at him.
The fire in his chest raged.
“Because I exist,” he answered loudly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a Defense Against the Dark Arts class to attend.”
Whether they were awestruck or dumbfounded, Heeseung’s friends watched him leave the common room with crooked grins on their faces. He was extremely satisfied that he managed to get his two cents in without his voice cracking or wavering.
After Sunghoon was left in the common room with Sunoo and Jungwon, he slumped back in his seat and asked, “Since when did he go to class?”
Defense Against the Dark Arts was Heeseung’s favorite class. Not because he particularly enjoyed dueling or any violence of the sort, but because Professor Weasley was the only teacher who didn’t assign papers every other day. He preferred a more hands-on teaching method, which usually involved partnering up and practicing spells on fellow classmates.
Plus, when Heeseung was in moods like these—moods where he felt like he was going to burst into flames much like a phoenix would—he looked forward to blasting someone across the room. Someone preferably like Jung Sungchan, who didn’t take it personally when he conjured columns of fire in rapid succession.
Because he was so hot with unexplained anger and unrestrained emotion, Heeseung had to set the record straight (evidently for himself, too) that he most definitely harbored romantic feelings for you.
Admittedly, this was clear after he smelled the Amortentia, but Heseung refused to allow Potions to be the class that made him aware that he was in love. He could almost envision Slughorn taking credit for his future wedding, and the very thought made him shudder.
The fire in Heeseung’s chest grew into more of a wildfire tearing through his body once he saw Jake Sim in Defense Against the Dark Arts.
He completely forgot that Jake took this class, too. The cherry on top was that Jake and Seunghan decided to sit at the desk right behind Heeseung and Sungchan, so he could hardly focus on Sungchan rattling on about Trelawny giving him detention when he was trying his hardest to eavesdrop on Jake’s conversation.
Right when Heeseung heard Jake talking about something potentially dark and dangerous (buying a Pygmy Puff), Professor Weasley raised his wand to signal that he was starting class.
He started discussing familial curses, which Heeseung found especially interesting because he had almost considered a career path as a Curse-Breaker. It was a dangerous line of work, according to Professor Weasley, who used to be one himself before the second wizarding war, but Heeseung thought it was an honorable job to help remove dangerous curses.
Professor Weasley decided to stray from his usual ‘partner up with the person next to you’ and instead asked everyone to practice the Shield Charm with another student who was sitting around them. This, in turn, made Heeseung’s heart drop to his stomach.
If Sungchan wasn’t an option, then Heeseung was hoping he could partner with Seunghan. He quite liked the Hufflepuff, despite him being friends with the public enemy named Jake Sim. Seunghan had always been fun to talk to, and they became closer in fifth year when they were both sent to the infirmary and had beds next to each other. Madam Pomfrey was eventually tired of the two boys practicing jinxes on each other.
Sungchan and Seunghan partnered up almost immediately, and then the girl sitting in front of Heeseung had run off to her friend as soon as the words slipped from Professor Weasley’s mouth. There was no one else for him to turn to—no one but Jake.
“Do you have a partner yet?” Jake asked shyly, and Heeseung had to fight down a bitter retort; obviously he didn’t have a partner, or he would’ve gotten up by now. “We can practice together, if you want.”
Heeseung reluctantly got to his feet. “Sure.”
They were an odd pairing, for sure. Heeseung couldn’t help but feel awkward around Jake, and it seemed as if Jake felt the same way, even though he did his best to be overly-friendly.
Jake decided to be the one defending himself first, so Heeseung was graced with the opportunity to cast offensive spells at him all he wanted. He was having far too much fun casting Expelliarmus and Stupefy at Jake and watching the Hufflepuff draw his wand up just in time to shield himself.
“You’re really good at this!” Jake said, eyes wide with what Heeseung assumed was fear. “Do you duel often?”
“Not really,” he answered. “I just have good aim.”
“Quidditch.” He made the connection quickly with a far too happy look on his face. “I’ve seen you fly. You’re really good.”
Quit playing nice! Heeseung was yelling at him in his head. It was proving quite difficult to viciously attack the Hufflepuff while receiving compliments in return.
“Yeah?” Heeseung gritted his teeth. “Do you watch Y/N—Stupefy!—play?”
“Y/N?” Jake looked confused for a moment, but his smile never faltered. “Yeah, of course! I always support Hufflepuff.”
Oh, right. They were in the same house. Logically, this was where Heeseung should’ve backed off, but jealousy seized him by the throat and made his head go funny.
He sent another streak of orange light flying in Jake’s direction, aiming right for his perfect hair. Jake deflected it.
“Anyway,” Jake continued as he started to get the hang of performing wandless magic, “you guys are playing against Gryffindor next, right? I really think Slytherin’s gonna win. I mean, you guys have such a strong team, and…”
As he kept droning on about how great the Slytherin Quidditch team was, Heeseung couldn't help but feel a bit confused. He was here to intimidate the Hufflepuff, but now he felt like he was at some sort of meet and greet. Why was Jake so bent on praising the Slytherin team? Heeseung assumed that the whole incentive for Quidditch games was for house pride, but Jake seemed to be taking it way too seriously.
Come to think of it, Heeseung did find it strange that Jake had that defamatory newspaper clipping of Heeseung injured on the ground. Why would he specifically go looking for an article of the Slytherin team’s victory?
Heeseung lowered his wand when he heard a yelp to his right. Hong Seunghan had his wand raised over his head, a nearly-invisible shield circling his body that Heeseung could vaguely make out under the lamp light.
“Watch it! This isn’t target practice, Heeseung!” Seunghan cried, looking absolutely distressed as he hastily adjusted his yellow-trimmed robes.
Heeseung’s Stunning Spell would’ve hit Seunghan if he hadn’t reacted in time. On one hand, he felt bad; on the other hand, he really thought Seunghan should’ve been patting himself on the back for his quick reaction time instead.
“My bad,” Heeseung mumbled. So much for his so-called good aim.
“And you,” Seunghan said—to Jake, this time, “stop distracting him with all your Quidditch talk!”
Yeah, you tell him, Seunghan, thought Heeseung, who actually quite enjoyed talking about Quidditch.
To his surprise, Jake’s face started to flush pink. “I-I’m not trying to distract him or anything… I was just making conversation.”
Seunghan threw him a lazy smirk before turning back to Heeseung and rolling his eyes playfully. “Put him out of his misery and set him up with your friend, will you?”
“What?” Heeseung couldn’t stop himself from fuming at Seunghan’s words. The fire in his chest ignited once more, blazing with the heat of a thousand suns.
Sungchan, who had been waiting patiently to attack Seunghan, rubbed the back of his neck. “Er—can we get back to—”
“Seunghan, drop it already,” Jake pleaded, his voice growing smaller and smaller. “It’s not happening.”
Seunghan shrugged and returned to blocking Sungchan’s attacks. The two of them seemed to be having fun with the exercise, at least. Heeseung and Jake were a disaster; Heeseung was far too vexed to think straight, and Jake was as bashful as a first year.
“You can ask her yourself, you know,” Heeseung said coldly, shooting a jet of red light in Jake’s direction. Jake barely managed to cast his shield in time to deflect Heeseung’s spell.
“I can’t,” Jake replied, all meek and timid again, which made Heeseung’s blood boil.
He saw how comfortable Jake was around you, so why was he acting like this now? He was comfortable enough to walk up to you while you were with another guy; he was comfortable enough to keep eye contact while you smiled so radiantly at him; and he was comfortable enough to ask you to go to Hogsmede with him, so why was this such a big deal?
Heeseung felt sick to his stomach. He wanted this class to be over so that he could go to his dormitory and wallow in his miserable state.
Jake sighed wistfully. “She probably has no idea I even exist.”
Heeseung blanked.
He tossed around Jake’s words in his head a couple of times, trying to make sense of what he was saying. Heeseung perfectly understood being shy around a crush, but wasn’t this a bit much? From what he had observed, you most definitely knew of Jake’s existence.
Still confused, Heeseung replied, “I’m pretty sure she does.”
“Really?” Jake’s voice was louder, more hopeful. “She does? I mean, I guess she has to know I exist since we’re in the same class and all, but has she… has she ever mentioned me?”
Heeseung wondered if he should just stun Jake and leave class early.
Deciding against it for the sake of not receiving another week of detention, he answered, “Well, yeah, a couple of times.”
“Really? What did she say?”
“Uh…” Heeseung scratched his head as he tried to remember. “Something about telling you how I set off Dungbombs in Filch’s office.”
It was Jake’s turn to look confused.
“That was Y/N,” he said.
“Yeah, I know.”
“Wait, did you think I was talking about Y/N this whole time?”
Heeseung had to duck this time when his spell rebounded off of Jake’s shield and went flying in his direction. He stood up straight again, this time with his eyebrows furrowed and his ears bright red from realizing that he was about to embarrass himself yet again.
“You’re not?” he asked.
“No!”
“Then who are you talking about?”
“M-Minjeong,” Jake stammered out. “Kim Minjeong.”
Heeseung stared at him. For a moment, he wasn’t even sure if this was reality; this could have all been some hyper-realistic dream—one of those absurd ones that hardly made sense but left him gasping for air when he woke up.
But Heeseung’s feet were planted firmly on the ground and he had all ten of his fingers, so this couldn’t be a dream. Yet, when he drew in a shuddering breath, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was very wrong about this whole thing. Had he really been wrong about Jake Sim this entire time?
Also Minjeong? When he was friends with you? Heeseung wasn’t one to judge people’s tastes, but he’d swim oceans for you yet hardly cross a puddle for Minjeong. (Perhaps that was just because he resented the Slytherin girl for always making fun of his Quidditch screw-ups.)
So that was why Jake had been overly-invested in the Slytherin team. He wasn’t a Quidditch-fanatic whose house pride flew out the window; he was just harboring a crush this whole time! Heeseung was so relieved that the inferno in his chest had quelled.
In fact, he was so relieved that he let out a shaky laugh without having half the mind to hold it in. Jake must have thought Heeseung was making fun of his crush, but Heeseung couldn’t help but laugh and laugh about how pathetic he had been this whole time. He had lost sleep over Jake Sim, only for him to like someone completely different.
How ridiculous.
Heeseung crossed the distance between them and patted him firmly on the back, taking the Hufflepuff by surprise. “Minjeong, huh? I’ll introduce you.”
Jake’s eyes shone. “You will?”
“Of course I will. Now, tell me,” Heeseung started, his voice taking on a serious edge as he slung an arm around Jake’s shoulders, “where did you get your robes?”
It was such a lovely day outside; the grass was greener, the skies were bluer, and there wasn’t a single cloud in sight—perfect weather to fly. Heeseung could even hear the birds singing as he strode down the hallway, trying very, very hard to keep himself from skipping.
He wasn’t even trying to eavesdrop, but he picked up on the conversation a couple of fifth years were having nearby.
"—heard they both had to go to the infirmary!” one of them whispered to the other. “It was that bad!”
“Over a silly game?” The other girl, who Heeseung named Girl Two in his head, scoffed. “I’ll never understand Quidditch.”
Girl One shook her head. “Not over the game. It was over Lee Heeseung.”
Heeseung, who was slowly realizing that he was the Lee Heeseung they were gossiping about, suddenly felt very engaged in this conversation that he wasn’t part of. His guilty pleasure happened to be listening in on all of the scandalous happenings at Hogwarts. For him to be indirectly involved was even more exciting.
“Lee Heeseung?” Girl Two frowned. “Why would Y/N pick a fight over Lee Heeseung?”
He nearly tripped over his own feet. Heeseung had to scurry behind a pillar before anyone saw him blushing like a madman, but now he was worried about how strange it looked for him to be spying on a couple of fifth years from behind a pillar.
Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to pull away. You fought someone? And you were in the infirmary? His sick happiness was quickly replaced with dreadful worry.
(But he also wasn’t too worried; you could clearly handle your own.)
“No clue,” Girl One said. “I suppose they’re dating.”
Heeseung couldn’t stop the giggle from escaping his lips. He clamped a hand over his mouth as soon as it slipped out, and Girl One and Girl Two looked around suspiciously.
“Who was that?” Girl Two asked sharply.
“Must be that Ravenclaw girl,” Girl One replied bitterly, taking her wand out of her robes.
Heeseung had no idea who ‘that Ravenclaw girl’ was referring to, but he knew that he was no longer safe in their vicinity. After casting a Disillusionment Charm on himself, he fled the scene immediately, only removing the charm once he was safely down the hall.
He hadn’t even realized his heart was racing faster than it ever had in his life until he found himself sprinting in the direction of the infirmary.
“Mr. Lee, no running in the halls!” Professor Longbottom cried over his shoulder, gripping the pot of a Mandrake tightly. “That’ll be five points from—oh, forget it.”
Madam Pomfrey looked unsurprised to see Heeseung walking in, all sweaty and panting. She simply pointed in the direction of where your bed was and walked off to tend to some second year who, judging by the twigs in his hair, decided to test his luck with the Whomping Willow.
You were sulking in bed, turned on your side so that your back was facing Heeseung. It looked like you were mostly unscathed, but when Heeseung rounded the corner of your bed, all he could see was red when he noticed the cut on your lip and gash on your cheek.
“Heeseung!” you gasped, sitting up straight so that you could swing your legs off the bed. “How’d you know—”
“Who did this?” he asked angrily, drawing out his wand and looking around the infirmary. He remembered Girl One saying that both parties were sent to the infirmary, so they must have still been around. “Who hurt you?”
“It’s not that bad, I just—”
“Not that bad?” he repeated louder. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s not that bad,” you said again, quieter. You held onto Heeseung’s bicep with gentle hands, which happened to immediately calm him down. “Sit.”
Heeseung sighed and sat down on the edge of your bed. He had felt remarkably happier after finding out that Jake did not, in fact, have a thing for you, but now he was riled up again. He wondered what you thought about Jake, but then Heeseung wondered why you were picking fights over him.
“It was the Seeker from the Gryffindor team,” you told him in an oddly calm voice, although he couldn’t help but notice how you were fiddling with your fingers too much. “She was talking down on you during class, so I picked an argument with her after class. That’s how I got these.” You pointed at the cuts on your lower lip and cheek.
“But you don’t need to worry about her; she’s worse off than I am. I got her with a knee-reversal hex,” you said with a sheepish grin. “Let’s see how she flies after this.”
Heeseung stared at you. “You’re insane.”
“I believe the words you’re looking for are thank—”
“I love you.”
He believed he said it very, very softly, but his words echoed in his head so loudly that Heeseung couldn’t be completely sure that he hadn’t yelled it for the infirmary to hear. If it weren’t for the second year complaining loudly about how unsafe it was to have a murderous tree on school grounds, then Heeseung was sure the room would have been dead silent following his confession.
You didn’t move. The worst was happening right now; Heeseung had boldly blurted out his feelings just for you to not answer him and soon hate him for the rest of your life. It was fine. You two would graduate soon. He would no longer have to see you again, even though the smell of lavender would be a constant reminder of his first love and first heartbreak. He would die alone now. Oh, and he’d have to tell his parents with deep regret that they would not have grandchildren.
“Heeseung,” you whispered, and your lips started framing soundless words that you couldn’t get out.
The cat was out of the bag, so all Heeseung could do was stand up and own up to his words.
“You were right,” he said. “My Amortentia did smell like lavender—like you.”
He grabbed the rag on the table next to your bed, soaking it in water and wringing it out. Normally, Heeseung would have been shaking like a leaf, but he was oddly calm as he delicately held your chin, tilting your head to the side enough to get a good look at you.
“I must’ve fallen in love with you years ago—maybe even from the first time you tripped me at the Sorting Hat Ceremony,” he said softly as he dabbed at your fresh cut, and although your eyes were wide and glossy, you hardly even flinched. Heeseung was pretty sure he had never even admitted what he said out loud to himself. When he was done and set the rag aside, he said, “So… glad I got that out before I kept it to myself for the rest of my life. I’ll get going now and hopefully not kill myself on the way.”
He hurried past Madam Pomfrey, making eye contact with no one except the Gryffindor Seeker, whose knees were bent at an awkward angle. She leered at him, to which Heeseung paid no attention because he had far bigger things to worry about, like the fact that his life was over.
Before he got all the way down the hall, though, he heard footsteps getting louder and louder. When he turned to see you speeding after him, Heeseung panicked and started running himself.
“Why are you running?!” you cried.
“Why are you chasing me?!” he yelled back.
“Stop running! Get over here, Lee Heeseung!”
“No!” He was very embarrassed to note that his voice did indeed crack. “I’m scared!”
“Colloshoo!”
It was like he had rammed right into a wall. Heeseung felt like his shoes were glued to the floor, and, with a grunt, he ended up falling forward and landing on his face when they wouldn’t budge. If only you had waited to hex him after he reached the grassy outdoors instead of the hard, stone flooring of the breezeway.
“You hexed me!” He turned to look at you, exasperated. “How could you hex me after hexing someone for me?!”
“Now stay there.”
“No.” Stubborn, Heeseung started walking ahead—right down to the Great Lake so that he could wallow in embarrassment in that particularly nice patch of grass. He abandoned his shoes and trudged ahead in his socks. “And don’t follow me!”
“Heeseung,” you warned.
He groaned and turned on you just before he was looking forward to sitting down on the grass, pointing an accusatory finger at you. “You—you’re terrible luck, you know that? Sheer bad luck. You know I’ve lived eleven years of my life perfectly fine until you showed up? Suddenly, everything goes wrong when I’m around you! And it’s not just missing the Hogwarts Express or blowing up a potion, it’s everything else!”
You calmly listened to him as he continued in his wild craze, “I can hardly breathe when I’m around you! I can’t even look at you for too long, or else I’ll probably combust. You make it so impossible for me to stay away from you, even though the very thing I need for the sake of my sanity is to stay away from you!”
“Are you done now?” you asked calmly, not quite breathing as hard as he was, but your chest was still rising and falling as if you were winded from running.
“Yes,” he said, “so I’ll go drown myself in the—”
Before he could finish the rest of his sentence, you grabbed Heeseung by the front of his robes and pulled him down to kiss him senseless. He thought he had been hit with a Stunning Spell from how still he was, but when he realized that this was real life and you were indeed kissing him, his hand made its way to cradle your jaw as he kissed you back with searing passion.
He was ashamed to say that he had dreamt about this scenario many times, charted all of his next moves in great detail, and fantasized about doing much more than he’d like to admit. Heeseung felt like his heart was going to burst out of his chest, but he kept his lips pressed to yours like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to reality.
This was everything and more than he ever expected. He was certain he could never grow tired of the taste of your lips, and he was honestly scolding himself for not having done this sooner.
Your arms naturally found their way around his neck, and Heeseung took that as his cue to drop his to your waist. Still locked in a tight embrace, you pulled away to catch your breath, leaving Heeseung to chase after your lips.
“—Great Lake,” he finished his sentence in a breath, “and hopefully get eaten by the Giant Squid—”
“Oh, shut up,” you cut him off to kiss him again.
Heeseung had no further objections. He supposed this meant that he had the shiny new title of being your boyfriend, which he considered a higher honor than Quidditch Captain. This was saying a lot because Quidditch Captains got to use the really nice bathrooms.
Your kiss was slower this time, as if you both realized you had all the time in the world. And when you both finally broke apart, Heeseung let his fingers trace the outline of your lips to commit its shape to memory.
This time when you smiled, it was far brighter than any Patronus Charm he had ever seen.
“I love you, too,” you told him with a shy grin. “Always have.”
“Seriously?”
“Since our first year. Tripping you was by accident, of course. I just thought you were cute.”
Heeseung was pretty sure the average wizard's heart couldn’t handle this overload of emotions. In a few seconds, he was sure he would need to be admitted to the infirmary himself.
Then, you punched his shoulder. Hard.
“If you didn’t Disapparate on the spot back in Hogsmede, then maybe I could've told you sooner!”
“It’s not like I wanted to Apparate away, but… but you put me on the spot!” he exclaimed. Heeseung let his shoulders sag. “Either way, I thought you liked Jake.”
“Jake?” You looked confused before you burst into laughter. “What made you think I liked Jake? He’s so clearly into Minjeong!”
It seemed to be that everyone thought the notion of Jake and you liking each other was absolutely ridiculous. If it wasn’t too late, Heeseung was up for pitching himself in the depths of the Great Lake.
Girl One and Girl Two would surely get a kick out of this.
“Okay, I get it. I’m stupid,” he said, but you wouldn't stop laughing. Heeseung sighed heavily as you wiped tears from the corners of your eyes. “Alright, that’s it, you’re so getting it.”
This time, he grabbed hold of your face (gently, of course, because he didn't want to add pressure to your gash), and he peppered kisses all over your face. You scrunched up your nose, giggling as Heeseung kissed your forehead, your nose, your cheeks, and then finally your lips.
And this—this moment he had been anticipating for seven years—was loads better than letting the Giant Squid eat him.
AUTHOR'S NOTE ▸ the next morning, heeseung wakes up and basks in the afterglow of finally confessing to the girl of his dreams!! jay hands him the paper during breakfast and a picture of his shoes glued to the floor is on the front cover. anyways i hope you liked this fic!! so fun to write because i'm deep in a harry potter phase (how did this happen??) but happy valentine's day & thank you for reading <3
FIC TAG LIST ▸ @jakeslvt @520studio @jlheon @enha-stars @leep0ems @velvtcherie @woninluv @jaeyunluvr @hotsforikeu @skzenhalove @baevsxii @alyssajavenss @lovialy @loljaeyunz
genre: modern pride & prejudice au, enemies to lovers, university au
word count: 5.4k
a modernized take on the confession in the rain scene from pride & prejudice set in university enjoyyyyyy
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You should probably get out of this rain. It would be wise to make your way back to your dorm and continue your fuming in a place where you’re less likely to catch a nasty cold, but the logical parts of you are currently fighting a losing battle against the angry ones.
There’s a distant cry of your name from somewhere behind you, but it’s easy to ignore through the torrential downpour and thrumming in your ears. Right now, there is only one objective in mind and it’s to get away. No destination in particular, just not here. Not anywhere near him.
But fate is a cruel thing and all too easy to tempt and the next time Jungwon calls your name, he sounds dangerously close to reaching you.
God fucking damnit.
You should have just faked a stomachache or something. Common sense should have been enough to tell you that a guy who spends his afternoons at collegiate level competitive soccer practice would have an upper hand on the athletic front.
But there’s no use in mulling over the what ifs now, not when he’s probably going to catch up to you any—
The feeling of a warm hand encircling your wrist has you spinning on your heel, stray rain droplets flying from your skin with the force.
“___!” To your credit, he sounds out of breath, even if only slightly. “God, will you just—” You don’t miss the way his features fall a fraction of an inch when you twist out of his grip, retracting your arm back into safer territory. “Just hold on a second.”
Every instinct, every bone is screaming at you to ignore his request and high tail it out of here, but you have a feeling he’s not going to let you get very far. And if he does, he’ll just ambush you tomorrow after class or during your library study time that’s become increasingly synchronized with his own over the past few months.
It's almost unbelievable really, in hindsight. Yang Jungwon came into your life in a quiet sort of way, but once his presence was established, it sure was hard to miss. It’s not that the two of you didn’t like each other necessarily. You just never could quite seem to see eye to eye. He was abrasive where you were gentle and quiet where you were loud. Neither of you were ever particularly polarizing people—quite the opposite in fact—but something about your personalities just made the two of you clash right from the get go.
There would be a sarcastic quip here, a roll of the eyes there, just little reminders that the both of you were on opposite ends of the spectrum in just about everything. It’s almost ironic, really, the fact that the two of you shared so many mutual friends given the initial distaste you had for one another.
At first, both of you had wordlessly settled on a mutual agreement to just avoid each other all of the many times your paths crossed in class or at parties or during library study groups. You’re not even really sure when that changed, can’t pinpoint the moment when things started to shift, but over time, your mutual distaste started to grow into a mutual understanding. Under the surface, you found that the two of you actually had a lot in common. You just went about things in different ways.
And progression was only natural from there. Before long, you were inserting yourself into his conversations at parties instead of avoiding them entirely, answering his discussion questions during study group instead of keeping your head down, and sliding down into a seat not too far from his the few times you shared a class instead of somewhere across the room.
But the real kicker had come roughly three months ago, at the beginning of the fall semester. Students in the same contemporary literature course, you and Jungwon had been paired up as semester-long project partners on the very first day.
And from there, mutual understanding was quick to transform into something that looked a whole lot like friendship the more you stared at it. Even if your relationship was still a little rough around the edges, even if the two of you rarely shared a similar opinion and had a particularly strong inclination towards petty fights and ridiculous arguments, Yang Jungwon and you were, for lack of a better term, friends.
And it probably wasn’t entirely fair of you to avoid him for a week, to make him literally chase you down in the middle of a rainstorm just for a chance to get a word in sideways, but it really wasn’t your fault. Not after what Jay told you last week. And especially not after the damning text message you read with your own two eyes.
Still, you figure there’s no use in running anymore. At least not now.
Jungwon seems to sense your defeat, and when you make no further move to escape, he relaxes slightly, shoulders slumping as the tension around him dissipates just a fraction. With a set jaw and wide eyes, he reaches out like he’s going to grasp your wrist again before he thinks better of it. Instead, he settles on nodding his chin in a jerky sort of way towards a nearby veranda, silently encouraging you to follow his lead as he makes his way toward it for some much needed shelter from the torrential downpour.
But even a reprieve from the pelting rain isn’t enough to sweeten the atmosphere into anything less than tense. And Jungwon, in all of his twenty-one-year-old glory, misreads the situation entirely. “You, uh…” he tries, palm sliding to the back of his neck like he’s nervous. He can’t quite meet your eye now. “You’re fast when you want to be.”
At that, you arch an eyebrow, offering him nothing but silence and an exasperated set to your features. If this is his attempt at an apology, he’s doing a less than favorable job.
Another handful of seconds pass. Around you, the world continues to ebb and flow. Students walking to class, sheltering themselves from the rain with backpacks and book bags and a mismatched array of makeshift umbrellas.
Rain continues to pound the earth around you. But under the shelter, it’s just the two of you.
Suddenly, eye contact is a difficult thing to maintain.
When the silence extends into something impossibly more uncomfortable, you shake your head in silent disbelief, turning to leave him in the dust a final time. But once again, the sound of his voice disturbs the monotonous pouring of rain before you can make it all of three feet.
“I don’t really like literature, you know.” It’s an odd declaration, all things considered. Enough so to have you turning back until your gaze matches his own, the confused furrow of your brow meeting the open vulnerability of his own.
“What?”
Jungwon takes a deep inhale, steeling himself like he’ll lose his nerve in its entirety if he doesn’t get it all out in a single breath.
“I told you, when we were partnered up that first day of class and you asked me why I ended up taking contemporary lit.” His brow draws down into something that looks almost pained, gaze falling towards the raindrops that scatter against the concrete beneath you. “I told you it was because I’ve always liked literature, but that was a lie. I hate literature. Like, a lot. I needed one more upper division elective credit and I was signed up for a kinesiology course and it looked really cool, but then Jake told me that you were taking contemporary lit and I just…” He trails off, sliding an open palm down his face. His head shakes ever so slightly, almost like he's berating himself. He still won’t look you in the eye. “I knew this was a stupid idea. Everyone warned me too.” A laugh escapes his lips but no trace of humor follows. “All my friends said it would never work, that I should just let it go because this would never go the way I want it to. Hell, I even called my sister the other day and she told me I’d be better off to just forget it, but—”
“Jungwon,” you finally interrupt, mostly in fear that his nonsensical rambling won’t see any sort of end if you don’t intervene. “What are you talking about?”
There’s a moment, just a fraction of a minute, where everything around you seems to freeze, where time seems to suspend itself in mid air. Across from you, Jungwon’s chest is rising and falling slowly. A gentle pattern of heavy breaths as his rain soaked hair drips down across his eyes and over the bridge of his nose.
He’s flushed, but just slightly, and you can’t tell if it’s from the biting frigidness of the rain or something else entirely. At his sides, his hands are clenched into two identical fists, fingers wound so tightly his knuckles have gone completely white.
And then there are his eyes, so open, so vulnerable, so achingly honest and yet you have no idea what it is that’s running through his mind at a million miles a minute. The gaze that matches your own seems almost pleading, begging you to understand, to be gentle, but for what you can’t decipher.
But just as quickly as it came, the moment subsides into something decidedly less monumental the second he opens his mouth.
“You really don’t know?” He’s not being patronizing. There’s a thick tint of genuine disbelief laced through his tone, mixing easy with heavy strokes of premature embarrassment. But it irks you nonetheless, his apparent inability to make himself clear.
“Don’t know what?” You really should have faked that stomachache.
Jungwon averts his eyes again, gaze flickering to the concrete beneath him before his next words come out all in a jumbled rush, so tangled you almost miss them.
“I like you.”
Three words. Simple against the tongue and easy in delivery.
But you have no idea what to do with them and it would appear that Jungwon doesn’t either.
He’s pressing on before you can so much as take in his original declaration. “Like, I like you a lot, ___. Fuck. It’s all I can think about, I swear. Everytime we study together or grab food or even just when you’re sitting next to me in class taking notes. It’s hard to be around you sometimes because I feel like I’m always in my own head and so confused and I just…” He shakes his head, clearing away some of the haze. “I just like you. A lot.”
And maybe if he weren’t wrapped up so deeply in his own confession, in his own sphere of discomfort, he’d notice how the frown marring your pretty features has been growing steadily deeper the entire time. Maybe he’d have noticed that when you finally open your mouth to respond after an uncomfortably long beat of silence, it wouldn’t be a confession of equal feelings that comes out.
“Well I’m sorry to have confused you so much, Jungwon,” is the first thing you say, and if he expected anything it certainly wasn’t the annoyance running heavy through your tone. He’d anticipated a bit of confusion, maybe even some disbelief, but only the watered down versions that could just as easily be transformed into reciprocation.
“Wait, no,” he tries, but it’s in vain. “___, that’s not what I meant—”
“I can promise you that it was unintentional.” There’s sarcasm dripping off of all of your words, a mean streak that gives Jungwon pause. Had he really just laid his feelings out in the open after spending days agonizing over how to do it for… this?
He’s never been the best with words and he hates himself a little for it, hates that he can never seem to make a conversation flow as easily as you’re always able to. Hates how his thoughts come out stilted and messy and convoluted. Hates that even though he’s been practicing this conversation for days in the mirror and the shower and in his mind before he goes to bed, he still seems to have missed the mark terribly.
He just… He thought that you would get it. He’s never been good with words. But he also knows that you know that he’s never been good with words. It’s something that he’s always been fond of, your easy ability to read between the lines and pick up on all those little thoughts and ideas he could never quite find a way to put into words. If anything, your avoidance of all the subtext now seems almost intentional. It leaves him feeling more than a little confused.
Jungwon’s eyes are glassy when you meet them, mouth downturned and cheeks flushed. “Is that…” He trails off, voice small, so painfully unsure of himself as he toys with a loose string on his backpack. “Is that all you have to say?”
The venom is still there when you ask, “What do you want me to say, Jungwon?”
Another flash of pain crosses his features, fleeting but unmistakable. The surprise that shocks him into stillness is the only thing that keeps him from recoiling. “I don’t know. I just… I just laid all my feelings out for you and you can’t even tell me where your head’s at.” Always messy, always tripping over his own words. And if the sudden fire in your eyes in anything to go by, he’s only done it again.
“So I’m supposed to be flattered, then?” Your arms move to cross your chest and he feels every bit the scolded kid you’re trying to make him. “By you telling me that even though all of your friends and family told you that confessing to me was a bad idea, you decided to do it anyway? That you’re not even entirely sure about your actual feelings because I confuse you?”
“No.” He really should take a minute to gather his thoughts, to work them into something a little more coherent, but this is snowballing out of his control more quickly than he can keep track of. In the moment, adding fuel to the fire feels all too similar to smothering it with sand. “No. God. Fuck, no. That’s not—Look, it came out wrong. I was trying to tell you that I like you, maybe to ask you on a date, because—”
“And what makes you think I would want to date you, Jungwon?”
It’s cruel, even for you. Even towards him. It’s mean and it hurts and he’s so, so confused. “I… I don’t understand—”
You’re unwavering in your anger as you press on, face heating and brow drawing down. “God, Jungwon. Even if you hadn’t just basically insulted me six different ways, you know I have other reasons to be more than a little pissed off at you right now.”
And what those reasons could be, he has absolutely no idea.
“What are you talking about?” Jungwon doesn’t mean to let the defensive edge to his words slip in, but it’s beyond his control at this point. He’s so confused and you’re throwing accusations with little inhibition. “We barely even talked this last week. I practically had to run you down just to get you to have a conversation with me and now you’re just yelling—”
“And why do you think that is?” Somewhere in the extremities of your mind, you’re aware that people are starting to stare as they pass by, that you’re drawing more than a little attention. But with Jungwon right in front of you and anger closing in on all sides, they’re easy enough to ignore. “Why on earth would I want to be around, and much less date the same person who’s made Rina cry just about every night for the past month, Jungwon?”
“Rina?” Jungwon’s brow furrows even further at that, a confusion that seems so genuine that it absolutely infuriates you clouding his tone. “What does Rina have to do with—”
“Cut the shit, Jungwon. Jay told me what you did. And even if he didn’t, you should have known better than to let me borrow your laptop while you and Jake were texting.”
Oh. Oh, shit.
“Because when you left to go find a book, Jake just couldn’t stop thanking you for saving him from being ‘tied down’ all season, couldn’t stop talking about how he’s just so much better off without a girl around.”
There’s so much sarcasm and anger in your voice and Jungwon doesn’t know where to start. He knows that the incident in question is partially his fault, and yeah, it probably was a stupid idea to leave you alone with his laptop in the middle of a conversation with Jake, but how was he supposed to know his friend would bring up Rina? This really is all just some sort of misunderstanding. Maybe if you would just listen...
“I—” he tries, but you’re cutting him off in the next breath.
“Which is bullshit, by the way. Because Jay also told me about how miserable Jake’s been ever since he ended things with Rina and how he’s been spending half of your stupid soccer practice moping in the corner—”
Fucking Jay. “I didn’t—”
At that, he watches as the anger in your expression melds with something he can only call disbelief. “Are you seriously gonna deny it?”
“No. No, I’m not denying it. Will you just stop and listen for—?”
“No, actually. I don’t think I will." Your yelling is reaching a decibel that would be impossible not to notice, even through the rain, but you can't find it in yourself to care. "What kind of horrible person goes around breaking up good relationships on purpose?”
And just like that, Jungwon’s words lose their pleading edge. Every bone in his body, every instinct and shred of knowledge he’s gathered is telling him that you’re not here to listen. That nothing he says will be good enough for you. No, just like always, you’re here to berate him and talk over him and then storm off once you’ve said your piece. Just like every other argument you've ever had. And Jungwon’s fucking tired of it.
He's being just as difficult as you always are when he says, “First of all, I didn't break anyone up. I didn't make Jake do anything. The only thing I did was tell him the truth. And besides, he might be moping now, but he sent me those texts for a reason.”
It may be a one-eighty, but you’re no stranger to arguing with Jungwon. You know exactly how dirty he can play when he wants to. With a humorless laugh, you let your lips part in disbelief. “You have some fucking nerve, Yang.”
Jungwon just rolls his eyes, the accusation barely brushing him before he shakes it off his shoulders. He’s tired of being treated like this, of getting the short end of the stick and always being molded into some sort of villain by your quick hands. He doesn’t know how many times he has to show up for you, to prove to you that he’s not the person you thought he was all those months ago when you first met before you’ll actually give him some kind of a chance.
And if you won’t listen to anything calm and rational, well, maybe it’s time for a different approach. Jungwon’s looking for the argument he already has when he retorts, “Yeah? Well so does Rina.”
If anything, it at least is successful in capturing your attention. Your voice is deadly calm when you ask, “What did you just say to me?”
It’s something akin to an exasperated disbelief that he looks at you with now. A cool, collected exterior that’s entirely a front for the jumble of emotions he feels, but it’s infuriating to you nonetheless. “Come on, ___. You’re her best friend. You had to know.”
The tables turn, just like that. Now he’s the one laying claims in bold strokes while maintaining an unaffected facade, and you're left to do all the guesswork. “Know what?”
“That she was cheating on him!” When Jungwon sees the way your features shutter, he’s quick to amend. “Or at least getting close to it. I saw her, ___. Literally the morning after she was over all night with Jake I saw her out with some other guy! And usually, that’s not a big deal, but they sure as hell seemed closer than just friends when he went in for a hug.”
Just as quickly as they closed off, your emotions are twisting back into outrage. “That was her cousin, you absolute idiot! He lives hours away so they never get to see each other. He came up to visit for the weekend so she could show him around campus. A weekend that you ruined, by the way. Because she spent all of it crying in bed.”
It’s a revelation that you expect will have him back to begging at your feet, but Jungwon doesn’t miss a beat. “Still! Even if he was her cousin, that wasn’t the first time I saw her getting flirty with other guys.” Jungwon’s jaw clenches as a stray raindrop makes its way over the bridge of his nose. “The only reason I even told Jake was because I’d seen her do it so many times.”
You scoff, even as feelings of doubt start to trickle in through the corners of your mind, even as something that feels all too similar to nausea threatens to rise in your stomach. “That’s ridiculous.”
Jungwon is glaring at you now, really glaring and you curse the wave of unease it inspires. “You know, maybe if you could get over your incessant need to be right all the time, then—”
“My need t—?”
“—then maybe you’d see that you’re not above everyone else on some moral high ground and that sometimes, you’re wrong about things too. Just like the rest of us. I get that she’s your friend which is why I obviously didn’t want to drag you into this. And I’m sorry that Jay can’t keep a secret to save his life and that you found out like this, but I know what I saw. And instead of listening to me or even trying to talk to me about it like a fucking adult, you avoid me like the plague for a week. And then when we finally do talk, you stand here and assume that I'm the kind of person that would intentionally try to ruin both of our closest friends’ lives.”
There’s a lapse while Jungwon takes a moment to just stare at you, chest heaving and hair dripping. When he speaks again, there’s a distinct cloud of hurt that encompasses his words. “We’ve known each other for months, ___. Whenever you texted me at ass o’clock because you waited until the last minute to do your assignments and started panicking when you couldn’t get the answers, I was the one who woke up in the middle of the night to help you figure it out. Whenever you had some shit going on that you didn’t wanna worry your friends with, I was the one who stayed up with you to talk you through it. If you were tired in class but forgot your wallet, guess who was the one to buy you your favorite coffee.”
You offer him nothing but an indignant scoff, arms crossing over your chest. “So I owe you now? Is that what you’re saying? You keep a running tally of all the nice things you’ve ever done for me and the sum of them is finally high enough to cash in a date? To pick up the slack from having a hand in making my best friend miserable?”
“No.” He’s fuming just as clearly as you now, a thick cloud of emotion radiating off of him in waves as he takes a step forward into your space. Now you’re the one cowering, taking an equal step backwards even as you keep your chin high in defiance. “That’s not what I’m saying and maybe you’d get that if you fucking listened. You don’t owe me shit, ___. Forgive me for being fucking hurt by the fact that the entire time I thought we were becoming friends, that we were getting close to one another, you were actually keeping me at an arm’s length and always looking for a reason to cut me off and make me out to be some sort of villain.”
Your eyes narrow as another stray raindrop drips from an eyelash. “And forgive me for not instantly falling at your feet from a shitty confession after I had every reason to think that you just had single handedly ruined my best friend’s relationship!”
Somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re cognizant of the fact that you’re probably being unfair, that things probably would have gone a bit smoother had you just been willing to hear him out. But something about the way he levels you with thinly veiled insults and a smug little set to his mouth has you wanting to push back, to say your piece even if you’re only grasping at straws at this point.
A handful of insults ago, this might have been the kind of petty fight that could have been fixed with an apology and some space. But things are different this time around. They’re personal.
You’re not debating over the best flavor of gelato from the shop down the street or the Rotten Tomatoes review Jay mentioned in passing. Despite the cold exterior he’s adopted, the sharpest emotion Jungwon feels right now is a deep, burning humiliation at being rejected so definitively in every sense of the word. At reading things between you and him so terribly wrong.
And it takes more than a low, mumbled, I’m sorry with half avoided eye contact to make any steps towards remedying that kind of wound.
A scoff passes through parted lips as he takes another step forward. Left with no further space to retreat, your back becomes flush with the wall behind you as your chin turns up to meet his eye. “Funny that you say that.” There’s a dangerous glint to his eye, an unexpected emotion in what has so far been a whirlwind of annoyance and anger and hurt. “Because you sure didn’t seem to mind when I was the one doting all over you.”
“Excuse me?” The roll of your eyes is exaggerated. “You call buying me coffee every now and then ‘doting all over me?’” You huff a dry laugh, jutting your chin even further towards his own in defiance. “I think I really did dodge a bullet then. I imagine someone with those standards wouldn’t make for a very…” The way your eyes make quick work of scanning him from head to toe is dangerous, but if you’re to have anything, it will be the last word. "fulfilling relationship.”
Jungwon just takes it in stride, tilting his chin slightly before stepping impossibly closer. So close that you can clearly make out the mole just above his jawline. So close that you feel his words as much as you hear them. “Hm, maybe not. But what about all the times I did this?” It’s damningly hard to suppress the shiver that threatens to shoot the length of your spine as his fingers ghost delicately over the skin just above your collarbone. You're doing your damn best to maintain an unaffected front, but you feel the way his lips turn up into a little grin at the tiny gasp you can't quite contain. “Hm? And the forehead kisses?” Just as easily, he’s leaning down to let his lips brush against your hair, not exactly a kiss but a fleeting touch that leaves heat in its wake all the same.
He shifts then, and his next words are whispered against the shell of your ear. “All those little touches. I imagine it would have been pretty easy to have you—what was it you called it?—falling at my feet then if I really set my mind to it.” You don’t need to see his face to feel the smugness radiating from him in waves.
There’s a moment, barely a millisecond of time, in which you let yourself entertain the idea of turning your face, just slightly, until your lips are aligned with his. It wouldn't take much, really. And you already know that it would be entirely too easy to lose yourself against the heat of his mouth, within the tangle of your fingers against the nape of his neck, amongst the quiet little breathy gasps you're already sure he’d have no problem drawing from the back of your throat.
Because despite it all, you do know what he's talking about. In fact, you remember it all too well. The two of you have never breached that flimsy barrier of anything more than platonic, but it sure did seem to be your favorite line to teeter.
Because despite all of his faults and flaws and all the many reasons the two of you were always butting heads, Yang Jungwon was the kind of guy that was all too easy to get caught up in. And you have the distinct feeling that he feels the exact same way about you. It would be easy, the less inhibited parts of your mind whisper into your cloud of consciousness. It would feel good.
You're so wrapped up in your own thoughts, in the cacophony of sensation, that you don't notice it, but Jungwon's on the exact same wavelength. He can feel the way you shudder under his touch, can imagine that same gentle ripple of energy in so many different, more pleasurable contexts, and it's making him dizzy. Your lips are parted and all he can think about is giving them something to do that doesn’t involve throwing insults his way. He wants to say it then, wants to erase everything he said before by telling you how beautiful he thinks you are, how easy you made it for him to like you, how mortified he really is that he managed to fuck it all up so badly.
But the cold is as sobering as anything, and it takes less than a heartbeat for you to remember why you’re here in the first place. With slightly trembling hands, you’re pushing against his chest, ignoring your instincts to pull him closer instead, until there’s room to breathe again, until that damn voice in your mind is nothing but an afterthought. You want to scream at yourself for being so easy, for falling right into his little game, for letting him embarrass you like that. You infuse your gaze with as much venom as you can manage before you’re matching it to his own. “Fuck you, Jungwon. You have some real nerve, you know. Was this all some kind of joke to you?”
It's as if you've taken a bucket of ice water to his head. Because no matter how many little moments you allow him, how many glimpses he gets at the girl that just might like him half as much as he likes her, this is what you really think of him.
And as much as he wants things to be different, as much as he wants to push and fight and try until he finally makes you understand, he knows he'll eventually have to come to terms with the fact that no amount of wishful thinking will ever make you see him for who he really is.
“A joke?” He laughs humorlessly, tucking away his hurt for now in the only way he knows how. “No. But I guess it was a waste of my time. I got your message, by the way. Your opinion of me came through. Loud and clear. I’ll ask Sunoo to switch partners with me in lit and I’ll just leave you alone from now on.” There’s a pause, a moment of hesitation like he wants to say something else. The sky is still crying and his cheekbones are still dusted red and your chest is still heaving where you stare at him with parted lips. He takes one final glance before turning away from you completely.
And it’s with a final, “Have a nice life, ___” that he leaves you in the rain, shivering from the cold and desperately trying to ignore the sinking feeling building heavy in your gut.
You don’t even like baseball. Yet, here you are, on a date with a deadbeat who you regret not turning down. In good news, a certain player keeps catching your eye, making this experience easier to sit through. In bad news, an apocalypse is coming your way. Little do you know, in that chaos and horror, you’ll find that there may have been a good reason you chose to go to the baseball game…and his name is Park Jongseong.
WARNING(S): SMUT; oral (f!receiving), fingering (f!receiving), masturbation, unprotected sex. GORE; descriptions of death, people being mauled and dismembered, and generally gruesome + horror forward themes.
WORD COUNT: 13k
NOTE: Please enjoy this beloved fic of mine! While it’s inspired by the A Quiet Place Franchise, you don’t have to have seen the movies to read. Also, word on the street is i’m working on a Dark!Niki fanfic 🙂↕️
You don’t even like baseball.
Not for any good reason, but you’d never been particularly interested in sports. Maybe it’s because you’ve always subconsciously associated it with men who’ve got fragile egos.
Regardless of the reason why, you’re still trying to wrap your head around your date’s thought process.
What about this is romantic?
It’s hot, for one. The announcers voice is incredibly loud as it echoes through the stadium, yet hard to hear at the same time. You’re squished between your date and another random man, who has no regard for your need for arm space.
And, of course, you are lost. So ridiculously lost. Maybe it’s on you. After all, you agreed to go on the date, knowing it was baseball. It felt cruel to turn your date, Arthur, down, especially when he emphasized that he bought an extra ticket just for you!
You sigh, slumping in your seat. Not dramatically enough to draw any attention to yourself, but Arthur is so fixated on the field that you don’t think he’d notice you throwing a whole tantrum next to him.
You grimace at the way he shoves his hot dog between his lips, the ketchup, mustard, and other toppings dripping down the side of his mouth. Which, he wipes with his thumb, just to lick it off. It’s not inherently gross or unnatural, but you’re quickly realizing that you’re just not into this poor guy.
From the jump, he’d been charming, sure, but he also had this off-putting energy. Not like serial killer off-putting, but more like the kind of guy who wants a wife and kids, but not necessarily to be a dad or husband, if that makes any sense.
You wanted to see it through, though, give the guy a chance. Which is why you’re here. Unfortunately for you, you’ve already made up your mind about Arthur, and now, you have to sit through this baseball game with a convincing enough smile to remain unbothered by him worrying about it.
Grabbing your paper cup, you sip on the cold soda of your choice, a taste of relief underneath the hot sun.
In other good news, safe from the half-melted drink in your hand, one of the players for the Seattle Mariners team is rather attractive. Which, you’re well aware that it’s somewhat immoral to be checking out a completely unattainable man while you’re actively on a date, but you’ve already decided that you’re gonna let him down gently later, so what’s the harm?
Park Jongseong, moreso known as Jay, or number 19, from what you’ve gathered, is a stellar player. He’s good at batting—you think that’s the term—and seems to have a shitload of fans in the stands.
Safe from your date, that is, who scowls at the baseball player like he’s got a personal vendetta against him.
“Why do you make that face every time?” You ask, tilting your head at Arthur, who you have to nudge to get his attention.
He looks at you, and you repeat yourself, just for him to scoff incredulously, like you should know exactly why he despises Jay.
“He’s the kind of player that’s only so popular because girls like him. He’s not even that good! Like, there was this one time—“
And here comes the long winded rant about shit you won’t understand. It’s clearly fueled by his disdain for Jay, rather than actual fact, and you’re somewhat icked out by the fact that he’s so passionate about his hatred for the man that he’s foaming at the mouth.
Yuck.
Again, if he was a better guy, you would care less, but he is not helping his case. So, you just nod, feign understanding.
“Yeah, boo,” you agree, shaking your head as Arthur whips his head back towards the field, finishing his hot dog in the same messy fashion he started eating it with.
You manage an amused huff at the ridiculousness of this situation. Your eyes wander back to the field, and your gaze lands on your beloved player.
Ironically, an actual grin forms on your lips. He’s pretty, with dark hair and tan skin, one of few guys to pull of full baseball attire. You can barely see his face, given his helmet, but every-time there’s a closeup shot on the big screen, you take your time admiring his features.
Arthur seems to notice the look on your face, and nudges your shoulder. “Having fun?” he asks, with a wide, oblivious grin, and you just nod enthusiastically.
You snicker to yourself, just under your breath, as you both return your attention to the game. Your eyes narrow with focus as you watch Jay ready up.
The ball is thrown, and he readjusts his grip on his bat, whacking it with immense force when it comes his way. The crowd roars, and the commentators burst into chaotic rants, all the while, the ball is hurdling towards the crowd.
Fortunately, no one is pummeled with it. In fact, by the time it comes falling, it lands on the ground below you. Interesting.
You lean down, rather enthusiastically, to grab the ball, just for a bigger hand to come down and snatch it. Your date. Arthur.
He fucking pelts the ball back onto the field, and you look up with a shocked, betrayed expression.
“What the fuck?!” You snap at him, and even some of the attendees around you both confront him for his behavior. You’re sure they’re not worried about you, so much as the possibility that they could have gotten their hands on the ball, but at least you aren’t the only one mad.
“What?” Arthur bites back, oblivious as ever, as he plops back down into his seat, his shoulder shoving against yours.
There goes your mood.
Even focusing back on Jay doesn’t seem to fix it, thanks to the douche canoe to your left.
What you missed, though, was the look of shock on Jay’s face. Not only is he too far away for you to make out any facial expressions, you were too busy glaring down your stupid date to see the way he scowled.
He hadn’t meant for the ball to go into the crowd, but the last thing he’d ever be is opposed to someone getting to take home such a souvenir, whether they’re into baseball or not.
And even if you had no interest in the game, your growing interest in Jay was enough to make that instance rather upsetting. Maybe you’d have gotten into baseball just to spite your date, become one of those “fangirls” he seems to hate so much.
Anyways, the game drags on for what feels like forever, and maybe it’s because you’re fuming, or maybe it really is just that long of a play.
Either way, by the time it’s over, your ass hurts, your thighs are stuck to the seat, and you’ve never been so eager to get home and take a shower.
Arthur is giving you the cold shoulder, it seems, as you’re getting up to leave. He’s got a set look of disinterest on his face, like you’d done him wrong.
You roll your eyes as you grab your bag, and any trash that Arthur seemed to have no plans on picking up. As you’re on your way to the stairs, to leave the stands, you hear yelling.
“Hey, miss!” Calls a voice, just loud enough to catch your attention. You look back, and there’s Park fucking Jongseong holding a ball, smiling at you.
You shove the trash into Arthurs’ hands, because of course his nosy ass turned around too, and walk towards the edge of the stands.
Jay tosses the ball up, and it lands perfectly in your hands. His signature is on it, accompanied by some smudges of dirt, a bit of beating from the bat, it seems, like he’d gone and retrieved the ball your date tossed— oh my god.
He did!
Your eyes light up as you look back at Jay, and he gives a kind wave, before he turns on his heel, walking back across the field.
Your heart flutters, and you feel ridiculous for it, but fuck if that didn’t make you feel more than Arthur ever had.
“Stupid fucking game,” Arthur mutters, and kicks one of the stairs before stomping up them like a damn toddler.
Yet, your mood has been repaired once again, by Jay…again. With a small smile, you clutch the ball and start up the stairs.
That smile fades though, when a mob of people are rushing your way. Men and women alike, as if they’re hunting you—or, more accurately, the ball in your hands—down. A look of horror flashes across your face as you start to back up, towards the barricade of the grand stands, because you’ll be damned if they take the one good thing that’s come out of today from you.
Alas, you’re one woman, against a hoard of lord knows how many feral baseball fans.
Meanwhile, on the field, Jay looks over his shoulder, his eyes widening at the sight. He curses under his breath, because he should have known better.
Jay doesn’t get a chance to act, though.
Not before screams of horror ripple through the stands. Not before chairs are ripped out of the concrete, thrown around haphazardly.
Distracted by the sudden, unknown threat, the ball is pried from your hands. The man who got it yells in exclamation, triumph, but then, a clawed, alien-like hand suddenly plucks him up like he’s nothing.
The ball drops, and rather than worrying about the very obvious danger directly ahead of you, you reach down, snatch the ball, and look up just in time to witness the man being thrown across the stands, at least fifty feet by this…creature.
Its four legs make up almost all of its body, its face opens like the ugliest flower you’ve ever seen, decorated with rows of sharp, slimy teeth. It’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen, and you’re paralyzed with fear.
That is, until you’re grabbed by the arm, and suddenly dragged away, to a hidden exit that must have been blocked off from those in the stands.
As you barely grasp what’s going on, you realize that Jay is the one guiding you to what you hope is some form of safety. You clutch the ball in your hands like it’s the only thing keeping you grounded—which, it kind of is—and Jay leads you to the dugout.
It feels exposed, but when he drags you into a corner and has you crouch down with him, it’s not so bad. Well, safe from the echoing screams and chaos happening in the stands.
When you open your mouth to talk, eyes watery and blown with fear, Jay shakes his head vigorously, putting a finger to his lips, then yours. He nods his head towards the stands above, trying to silently communicate with you.
Your brows furrow with confusion, and Jay leans in.
“Sound. Notice how that…thing attacked the guy because he was yelling, making a lot of noise? We need to be quiet.” Jay explains, his voice smooth, unwavering, despite the scenario.
He takes a good look at you, and not for the same reason he looked back earlier—because he was hoping to catch another glimpse of the pretty girl who got the ball— but rather to make sure you’re unharmed. His hands linger on your arms, and his eyes are warm, caring, as he examines you.
He sees that you’re white-knuckling the ball, and can’t help but grin just a little. That’s cute.
He lays a hand over yours, meeting your gaze as he reassuringly squeezes your hand. As if to tell you “it’s okay” with the gentle touch.
Thunder suddenly booms in the distance, and when you flinch, Jay gently draws you into his embrace. While he’s not one to be so bold, for various reasons, he sees no reason to not comfort you right now.
The chaos seems to quiet, just in time for rain to begin pouring down from the sky above. Its sound is emphasized by the tin roof of the dugout, but the white noise is much nicer than the sound of people being mauled.
Jay sighs, his hand firm on your back, his head rested against yours. “So…your date didn’t seem like a great guy,” he says lowly, just loud enough for you to hear over the rain.
“I…yeah,” you laugh faintly, shaking your head as you look down at the signed ball in your grasp, rolling it between your hands.
“Thank you,” you say a moment later, lifting the ball, then nodding towards the stands, referring to when he practically saved your life.
He shakes his head dismissively, offering a reassuring smile. “It was the right thing to do, but you’re welcome.” He muses.
Before you can say anything else, a loud clanging sound makes both of you silent in an instant, your bodies tensing next to one another’s.
Thunder claps again, closer now, and you let out a soft breath as it seems you’re spared from whatever the fuck that first clanging sound was from.
You sink to the ground, looking out at the field, void of life, dimmed under the now gloomy sky. You carefully pull your phone out of your bag, put it on silent, and your eyes widen when an alert appears on your screen, issuing a state of emergency in the city of Seattle.
It’s not surprising, per se, but the realization that this threat is clearly looming, and larger than you had hoped becomes very prominent. Your throat tightens with worry, and your eyes sting again with tears.
Jay puts his hand on your arm, bringing you back to the moment, out of your spiraling thoughts.
“We’re safe,” he says under his breath, reassuringly, with a short, firm nod.
You let yourself believe it, even if it’s untrue. With a small nod of your own, you shove your phone back into your bag, opting to continue holding the baseball for dear life.
Jay sighs, then slowly stands up. Your eyes widen with fear, and you reach out to grab his hand, shaking your head, eyes pleading with him not to do anything risky.
“I have to check,” He mouths, gently prying his hand out of your grasp. Despite the look of worry on your face, he slowly walks out onto the field, turning to scan the stands.
While there seems to be no more of the creatures, the aftermath is equally as horrific. The blood, the destruction, the mutilated bodies and forgotten items. He swallows thickly, then walks back towards the dug out, now damp from the rain.
He reaches out to grab your hand, gently pulling you to your feet. “I need you to trust me,” he mutters, and you just nod, drawing in a breath when he gently covers your eyes with his hand.
He guides you across what you assume is the field, to an exit. Regardless of if you could handle it or not, he knows there’s no reason to let you witness the horror that lingers in the stands.
“I have an uh…an apartment,” Jay murmurs in your ear, finally letting his hand down. “It’s not far. We’ll walk there, and if we can get in, we’ll stay there tonight, okay?” He explains.
“I…are you sure? I mean, what if—“
“Hey. If I thought it would be unsafe, I wouldn’t do it. Okay? I got you,” he promises, raising a brow sternly.
With a slow nod of acceptance from you, he guides you out of the stadium, down the barren streets of Seattle. There’s no traffic or laughter, no signs of life. Everyone’s retreated, or worse, you assume.
“It’s raining. Hard. It’ll drown out any sounds we make. It’s okay.”
Jay’s voice is firm, promising, as you stand in his apartment, fingers shaking as they still hold the ball. He walks towards you and gently peels the ball from your hand, setting it on the counter.
He then takes your purse, sets it down next to the ball.
“Let’s get you dry,” He says, guiding you to sit down on the couch, before he walks away for a few moments, returning with a towel to wrap around your shoulders, since the rain drenched both of you the whole walk back to the apartment.
“Thank you, Jay,” you muse, looking up at him. He smiles, nodding in response.
“I never caught your name,” He says, a small, almost embarrassed laugh leaving his lips. How could he have forgotten to ask? Where are his manners?
Fortunately for him, you giggle. “Y/N.”
He nods, repeating it under his breath.
“Well, Y/N,” He hums, “It’s my pleasure to have you,” he says, then gestures to the apartment for some unknown reason, like he wanted to clarify his intentions.
He wanted to clarify his intentions.
A grin forms on your lips, but you decide you won’t pry into what exactly he meant by that. Instead, you watch as he walks into his kitchen.
“Have you eaten?” He asks, glancing at you, humming when you shake your head. He rummages carefully through his cupboards, because god forbid he were to somehow make too much noise, despite the pouring rain outside.
He pulls out ramen cups, turning to you. He opens his mouth to ask if you’re okay with that, but you’re nodding before he can.
He just smiles to himself, and carries on. He fills the cups with water, sets them in the microwave, then walks into his bedroom. When he comes out, he’s changed into a black t-shirt and jeans, having cleaned off any dirt left on his skin from the field.
God, he’s hot. Like, seriously hot. You thought, when you were in the stands, that maybe it was just because you were sat so far away, but if anything, he’s more attractive up close.
“Look, if you’d like, you can borrow any of my clothes, or I can wash yours— or, hell, i’m sure we can find somewhere to get you new ones, but my point here is that I want you to be comfortable, so…make yourself at home, yeah? Just let me know if you need anything, or if there’s anything i can do.” He explains.
There it is again.
Your heart flutters. He’s so pretty, so kind, and his voice is so smooth and sincere—
You force a nod, sighing shakily as you look back towards the big window, overlooking the city. It’s emptier than ever, rain blurring the view through the glass.
You can hear Jay moving around in the kitchen. Carefully opening the microwave, pulling the ramen cups out, taking his time to stir them up.
You look over your shoulder, and decide to get up, walking towards the kitchen counter, bar stools tucked beneath the side that faces the living room.
You sit down, and Jay slides one cup towards you, along with chopsticks, before he digs into his, and makes a dramatic gesture, waving his hand in front of his mouth.
“It’s hot.” He says, making you giggle, and you quickly realize it wasn’t actually hot. Not hot enough to burn, and especially not with the way he blew on the noodles before eating them.
He just wanted to make you smile.
Your heart clenches this time. It doesn’t flutter, but squeezes. It’s painful yet welcome, and you quietly begin to eat the ramen. Which, given the fact that you don’t remember when you last ate, is some of the best ramen you think you’ve ever had.
You both eat in comfortable silence, Jay humming quietly here and there.
You don’t miss the way his brows move as he chews. A little quirk you don’t think you’ve noticed on anyone else. It’s cute.
Your eyes scan the kitchen counters. Safe from a plate and a few utensils in the sink, it’s clean, likely because he’s never at home enough to gather clutter, you assume. He seems like that kind of guy, but you could be wrong. Maybe he’s just a minimalist.
“So, what was the deal with your date?” Jay suddenly asks, as he leans his hip against the counter, glancing at you curiously.
“Uh…” you pause, stirring the noodles in the cup, watching idly. “He was my date,” you say with reluctance. Wasn’t much of a date at all, really.
“Oh?” Jay chirps, taking another bite of his ramen. “Like, first date or boyfriend-date or…?”
“It was our second date, actually,” You huff out a quiet, embarrassed laugh. “I’m gonna be honest, I wasn’t really into him, but he seemed so excited about the baseball tickets. Didn’t want to disappoint, you know?”
Jay hums in acknowledgement, tilting this head thoughtfully. “That’s nice of you,” He muses.
A moment of silence passes. Both of you take another bite of your ramen.
“Excuse my language, but he seemed like an ass, respectfully,” Jay then says, making you pause.
Then, you grin. “He was an ass. One hundred and ten percent an ass,” You confirm.
“Sorry you had to sit through two dates with him, then,” Jay muses, and you both share a laugh at the notion.
As you’re finishing your ramen, a certain sweet treat catches your eye — Nutella.
Jay follows your gaze, his grin widening. “You want some?” He asks, and you nod slowly.
So, when you both wrap up with the ramen, he takes care of the trash and dishes, then sets the Nutella on the counter while he grabs a slice of bread, putting it in what looks to be all too fancy of a toaster.
“Can I have a spoon?” you ask, and Jay gives one to you mindlessly, too focused on the task at hand.
In fact, he’s sliding a piece of Nutella covered toast to you before he even notices that you’ve got a spoonful in your mouth.
He breaks into a shocked laugh, then shakes his head once. “Alright, fuck it,” the grabs another spoon, then scoops up a big glob of Nutella, before he shoves it into his mouth.
As he works his way through the thick substance, he grimaces slightly.
“So much chocolate,” He says through the Nutella in his mouth, making you both burst into a fit of giggles.
Once he recovers, he rinses off both spoons, smiling to himself when you go in for the toast. Then, he grabs a glass, fills it with water, and sets it in front of you, tending to you like it’s as natural as ever.
And honestly, it feels natural to you. You feel incredibly at home, despite being in such an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar company.
Later that night, Jay had given you the choice to take his bed, or sleep on the couch, whichever made you more comfortable.
Reluctantly, you accepted his bed, with some persuasion on his part.
So, now you’re in his bed, alone, in the dark. The rain is still going, but quieter now, more of a drizzle.
Your mind wanders back to earlier, the scene that unfolded in the stands, the fact that your date ditched you. You briefly wonder what happened to him, if he’s okay, and decide it’s not worth worrying over. There’s nothing you could do, anyways, and he clearly didn’t care what happened to you.
You sigh, a heavy, much needed sigh. Rolling over, you catch a whiff of Jay. That woodsy, warm scent, clearly remnants of his cologne in the bed, wrapped up in the sheets, lingering on the pillow that you can only assume he uses regularly.
Suddenly, being without him feels suffocating.
And, yes, that’s insane.
You just met the fucking guy.
You spend a good ten minutes warring with yourself. Maybe it’s just the situation. You’re scared and uncertain, so you’re clinging to something that’s not real.
Or maybe there is a genuine connection. Maybe he feels it too. Maybe he’s having the same thoughts as you.
You blink at the ceiling, then get up. You walk quietly to the door, open it gently, and move in the same cautious manner down the little halfway to the living room.
He’s sprawled across the couch, but it doesn’t seem he’s asleep. There’s a news channel playing on the TV, playing videos taken by those who were able to catch the creatures invading on film.
They’ve decided to dub them “Death Angels.”
You swallow at the reality of the situation as it weighs down on you once again. Then, you speak lowly.
“Jay?”
His head whips around, and he gazes at you from the couch. “Y/N,” he muses. “What’s wrong?” He asks, brows furrowed with concern as he sits up, gesturing for you to come closer.
You walk towards the couch, arms wrapped around yourself in a sheepish manner.
“I don’t…want to be alone,” You murmur, avoiding his gaze, even as it gently caresses your form, with not even a hint of judgement.
“Okay,” he speaks softly, “Then you won’t be.”
It’s simple and sincere. He gestures again, beckoning you to join him on the couch. When you sit down, he drapes a blanket over you, then leans back, letting out a breath before he talks.
“There’s boats. At Alki beach.”
He stares at the TV, gnawing at his inner cheek. “Cars are too loud, when the streets are quiet, so we’d have to walk, but…but it would only be a few days,” He explains, sighing quietly. “It’s not safe to stay here, and even if we wanted to, evacuation is mandatory,” Jay continues.
“…Why are you helping me?” You ask suddenly, making Jay’s brows knit together.
“Why would I not?”
“I don’t know, it just seems…” You trail off. The only thing it seems is incredibly generous, which you’ve gathered that he seems to be exactly that, and genuinely so.
“I’m helping you because it’s the right thing to do.”
You blink, then smile slightly. “You said the same thing when I thanked you earlier. It’s okay to give yourself some credit, you know?”
“Sure, but I don’t need it. Not when i’m doing the bare minimum,” he shrugs, glancing at you, then back at the TV.
He’s so…different.
He doesn’t expect praise. He doesn’t expect anything at all, actually. He’s been nothing but kind, and for no reason other than it’s what he feels is right.
“It’s not the bare minimum. Bare minimum would be wishing me luck and sending me on my way, but you let me into your home, you fed me, you gave up your bed, and now you’re…if i’m not misunderstanding, you’re offering to let me go with you.”
“Not let you go with me,” He corrects, “Take you with me. There’s a difference.”
“And that difference is…?”
“Letting you go with me makes it sound like i’m reluctant. Taking you with me means i’m responsible for it. I’d like you to come with me — I’d like to know you get there safely, if you’ll let me do that.”
You’re completely, wholly taken aback, because who is this man and who raised him to be this giving?
“I’d let you do anything to me, at this rate.” You say without giving it a second thought.
He’s still for a moment, then laughs. It’s short and bashful, and he shakes his head slightly, a grin lingering on his lips.
“Alright.” He says simply, nodding once, as if to confirm that you’ll go with him, to the beach, to the boats. To safety. Real safety.
As you both sit in silence—he muted the TV, since the rain was beginning to die down, and he didn’t want to risk anything—tiredness finally washes over you.
Your head droops, and the last thing you remember, before falling asleep, is a warm hand guiding your head to a resting place.
Jay, putting your head on his shoulder.
DAY ONE:
It’s like the universe knows what chaos is going on.
The sun isn’t out, when you and Jay leave his apartment, to start your venture to the beach. It’s gloomy again—not raining, not yet—and the weather is noticeably colder than you recall it being during the game.
Jay’s estimate was that it would take three days at the least to reach the beach, a week at most.
He planned stops, hotels or rest spots, places to look for food. You’d honestly been a bit impressed by it, how put together his plan seemed.
The streets are crowded. Thickly so. It seems some learned the hard way, that cars or other vehicles would be too loud, given the flipped over automobiles, windows busted out, and what you don’t want to believe is unfortunate souls sprawled across the asphalt.
You grip the baseball between your hands, brows knit together as you walk alongside Jay.
You’ve never been in such a big, yet quiet crowd. Everyone’s footsteps are cautious and calculated, slow and measured.
You look down at the ground as you walk, avoiding glass or leaves, anything that might make too much noise if you were to unintentionally step on it.
Jay has a firm grip on your arm, guiding you forward. He seems almost…angry. You’re pretty sure you’re misreading it, but maybe he’s frustrated at how slow paced this whole thing is.
I mean, you can look over your shoulder and see his apartment, when you’ve been walking for nearly half an hour now.
You glance up at the gloomy sky, then back down to the pavement below your feet.
Suddenly, you walk into another person, who had just come to a full stop in front of you. They make a noise, a loud, scoff-like sound, as if they hadn’t just stopped for no reason.
Jays eyes widen, and he grips you even tighter, suddenly dragging you away from the crowd. You follow him, tripping over yourself as he yanks you into a pharmacy. He pushes you down, crouches next to you.
He folds himself over you, guarding you, like a human shield.
Then, you hear it.
The screams, the chaos, the vile sounds of people being torn apart.
Jay suddenly stands, grabs you again, and yanks you up roughly. He drags you through the store, behind the checkout counter, and into what seems to be a break room, where he shuts the door.
He lets go of you, grabs a chair that he carefully places under the doorknob, to act as a stopper.
Your heart is racing in your chest, and you slowly sink down to the floor, hands shaking around the ball in your hands, as your breathing becomes uneven.
While the sounds are muffled, you can still hear the horrific noise. The windows of the pharmacy sound as if they’re broken, and then comes that high-pitched shrieking sound you had heard in the stands yesterday.
Jay turns to see you, shaking and scared. He rushes to you, and wraps his arms around you, sitting down next to you.
It’s exactly how he held you in the Dugout.
This time, though, you curl into him, opting to hold the ball with one hand, so you can wrap your arms around him, and bury your face into his chest, like it’ll save you from whatever is coming your way.
Jay rests one hand on your back, and the other lands on the back of your head, where he strokes your hair.
“It’s okay,” he whispers, so quiet that you barely hear it. “We’re okay.”
You nod, almost frantically, clinging to his words exactly as you’re clinging to him.
Jay holds you until the noise quiets, and waits until you seem to relax even a little, before he loosens his hold.
He doesn’t let go yet, though. He gently tilts your head back, caressing your cheek with his hand.
“You okay?” He murmurs, and you nod slowly. “Good,” he whispers, his eyes fixed on yours.
You swear he glances at your lips.
Then, he releases, with a subtle gulp, and carefully stands up. He examines the room around you both, then takes off his backpack, stalks over to a case of water bottles.
He unzips his bag, cautious and slow, before he begins loading it with water. Even if food is harder to get—given that there’s a vending machine right next to the water, of which would be entirely too loud to actually retrieve anything from—water is a non negotiable.
He tests the weight of his bag, then puts a few more bottles in it, and counts quietly. With a small, subconscious nod, he zips his bag up, and stands, putting it back over his shoulders.
You watch as he walks to the door, carefully removing the chair. It reminds you of when he had to leave the dugout to check the stands.
When he looks over his shoulder at you, and sees the worry on your face, he sighs quietly.
Jay walks towards you, crouches in front of you, and gently cups your face, tilting your head up.
“They can’t see. They rely on echolocation. As long as we’re quiet, we’re safe, okay?” He assures you in a low tone.
“And if we want to make any progress, we have to keep moving. I know it’s scary, but we’re gonna make it.” He promises.
You nod, lifting your hands to gently grasp his, where they rest on your cheeks.
Again, you swear he looks at your lips.
Then, he leans in, and your heart jumps several beats.
Instead of what you’d been expecting, though, he kisses your forehead, then stands up, offering his hand to you.
You blink, unsure of whether to be disappointed that it wasn’t your lips, or grateful that he kissed you at all.
That is, until you remember you just met the man, and internally scold yourself for being so entranced by him.
You take his hand, allowing him to guide you back to your feet.
Then, he does what he did when he lead you out of the field.
He covers your eyes for upwards of ten minutes, carefully guiding you forward. You’re assuming it’s not good, given that there seems to be hardly any crowding on the street now.
When he uncovers your eyes, his hand drops down to lace with yours, holding it firmly.
Then, you realize that you’re missing something that’s come to be rather important to you. The ball.
“My ball,” You say suddenly, brows furrowed as you look up at Jay.
His eyes widen as his hand flies up to cover your lips, and he looks at you with an expression that reads “Are you crazy?”
You press your lips together beneath his hand, guilt and fear clawing up your throat. How could you forget such a serious rule as to not speak, over a damn ball?
Jay looks around with sharp eyes, before he sighs, moving his hand to press his finger against his lips as a reminder for you to not talk.
He gently pulls you forward, and your heart sinks as you realize there will be no going back for it. You still aren’t sure why it means so much to you, but you do know that you’re dreading leaving it behind. So much so that each step forward feels near impossible.
Your eyes begin to water, against your will, but before any tears fall, Jay suddenly stops. He huffs under his breath, like he’s irritated, but not quite at the end of his fuse.
He lets go of your hand, carefully removes his backpack, and unzips it with even more caution than he had done in the break room.
You watch with furrowed brows, lifting your hands to wipe your wet eyes.
And, there it is. The ball. It sits on top of the water bottles, clearly retrieved by Jay, perhaps after he’d kissed your forehead.
You let go of it to reach up and cup his hands, you now remember.
You let out a careful breath of relief, gently taking the ball as he hands it to you.
You examine it for a moment, nodding reassuringly to yourself as you brush your thumb over the signature, which is slightly worn from how much you’d fidgeted with the ball since you got it.
Then, you cautiously leap forward, throwing your arms around Jay’s shoulders, hugging him tightly.
He’s tense at first, but he relaxes slowly, wrapping his arms just as tightly around you. He rubs your back, and his heart clenches when he hears your muffled cries against his jacket.
He caresses the back of your head, a silent reminder that it’s okay. He doesn’t let go until you do.
While you calm down, and wipe away the rest of your tears, Jay puts his backpack back on, and takes your hand, guiding you forward once more.
His expression is set in this stern, almost determined look, and for a moment, you feel guilty.
You were this close to throwing a fit over a ball. A baseball— you don’t even like baseball.
Swallowing, you look up at Jay, taking in his features. His jaw is clenched, his eyes are narrowed with focus, his nostrils flared slightly.
You look back ahead, trying to imagine where you’d be if it weren’t for Jay.
You aren’t sure you want to know how that would have gone. So, you don’t bother dwelling on it.
All you know is that you’re immensely grateful for him, and hurdling towards head over heels, too.
DAY TWO:
Safe from the incident in the morning, your first day of traveling through the city went smoothly.
You spent most of the walk in silence, both of you focused on simply making it to your next resting spot, which was a rather nice hotel, safe from the way it was ransacked.
No one was behind the front desk, which didn’t necessarily come as a surprise, which is why Jay took it upon himself to find a random room key.
Once in the room, you both sat down, drank water (which Jay also refilled the bottles while you were there), and talked quietly, sat across from one another on the couch.
Jay asked about your date again, and you gave him a pretty lengthy rundown. You met on a dating app, you reluctantly explained, along with the fact that you’d jumped from app to app, trying to form any sort of connection with any one.
Alas, men suck. You stated that proudly, perhaps a test of Jay’s character, as men you avoid tend to get offended about such a statement.
He laughed, though. He agreed, too, that a lot of guys do, in fact, suck.
Your little story time about Arthur also led to exposing your lack of knowledge about baseball.
So, then it was Jay’s turn to talk.
He explained his position as third baseman, how he bats fourth, brings in the runners. He grew up with baseball, and when his parents let him try it as an after school activity, it became clear that he had quite the talent for it.
You paid attention to his words, but found that you focused more on his voice, the warmth laced in his words, how gently he spoke to you. You were well aware that was mostly due to the circumstance, but a part of you wanted to believe it was just for you, and whatever bond you both now share.
You also watched closely, his facial expressions. The way his lips moved, how soft they looked, the way his brows twitched, the way he’d run his hand through his hair every few sentences, fidgeting with the strands.
He’s good at hiding stress, you’d learned, but you’re slowly catching onto his giveaways.
Right now, you can see it clear as day. His jaw is set, clenched firmly, his brows are ever so slightly furrowed, and he’s white knuckling the strap of his backpack as you guys walk slowly through a less rundown part of the city. You’ve made it to the outskirts, now, the stores smaller and closer together.
The skies above, as they have been since this whole thing started, are dark. The air is cool, cooler than it was yesterday, kissing your skin with cold breezes that come and go.
For some reason, when you look at Jay, his clear state of stress makes your heart a little heavier, your chest tight. You roll your beloved baseball in your hands, the signature on it worn down more with each passing hour of you rubbing your thumb over it.
Suddenly, a cold droplet lands on your forearm. You look up, another drop landing on your cheek this time. Jay looks up, too, sighing quietly.
He reaches for your arm, gently tugging you closer to the buildings, using the awnings to shield you both from the rain as it comes down heavier and heavier.
You subconsciously lean into him, but he drops his hand, lets go of you. You glance up at him, his expression unchanging.
A frown forms on your lips as a result, and you squeeze the ball a little tighter as you keep walking.
“Are you mad at me?” You ask, and Jay whips his head towards you, giving you that look again. The “are you crazy?” look.
“It’s raining,” you say, lower this time, “I thought you said the rain makes it hard for them to hear us?”
“It does, but—“ Jay shakes his head, walking a little faster. “I don’t want to risk anything.”
His tone is firm, like that’s it. No arguing. No talking at all, actually.
It’s like the Jay you had just started getting used to disappeared, replaced with this less gentle version of him.
Maybe he’s tired.
Maybe the stress is getting to him.
Maybe he’s just scared, too.
Those are just a few of the excuses you make, trying to cope with the growing fear that the connection you thought you’d made with him was fake.
It’s not like his embrace made you feel safe, or his voice sounded like music, or that his presence felt oddly homey…or anything. Definitely not.
The rain persists. You and Jay keep walking, not a word spoken for the following hours.
Jay slows as you guys come upon a convenience store. You look at him, waiting for some sort of anything that gives way to his thoughts, but he just continues walking, heading towards the entrance of the store.
Despite your growing worry, you follow him. He turns to you, at last, and gestures to the food, before he walks towards said isles. You walk behind him at first, but as you scan the store, you decide that maybe, just maybe, he needs space.
Maybe that’s what it is.
So, you turn in the opposite direction.
It’s a convenience store you’ve never been in, but comparable to maybe a Walgreens, or CVS, one of those stores that has a little bit of everything you might need on a whim.
As you venture on your own, carefully up and down the isles, you stumble upon box of stuffed animals, and maybe it’s childish, but for whatever reason, you feel the urge to see what’s in said box.
On the surface, there’s an oversized teddy bear, a green and black snake, a pastel, multicolor cat, and just when you’re grabbing the pastel cat, you spot something else that draws your attention.
A black cat with golden eyes. You pick up the plushie, a small smile on your lips. It looks like Jay— but then your smile drops, when you remember how he’s been acting.
Yet, you keep hold of the stuffed animal, tucking it under your arm, holding the baseball that you still refuse to let go of.
Continuing to make your way through the isles, you clutch the stuffed animal like it’s a lifeline. Once again, you wonder what’s got you so goddamn attached to Jay.
It’s not like he’s done anything incredibly out of the ordinary…but then you recall what you said to him.
“The bare minimum would have been wishing me luck and sending me on my way.”
Yet, he’s done so much more than that. He’s comforted you, he’s fed you, kept you safe—
Then comes, once more, the wondering what would have happened if it weren’t for him. It’s not that you don’t think you’re capable of doing this on your own; if you had to, you would, but he’s made it so much easier for you.
Does he think you’re a burden?
You swallow, your eyes watering in an instant, because god fucking forbid that’s the case.
You realize now, that the reason you’re attached to him doesn’t fucking matter, but you don’t want to lose him. Not after all this.
Just when a tear slips down your cheek, a firm hand grabs your arm, startling you. You whip your head around, eyes wide, blown with fear.
It’s Jay, and he looks pissed, but more than that, scared. He looks you up and down, like he did in the dugout, but with a sense of urgency unlike before.
Like he needs to know, for certain, that you’re safe.
Just as he noticed the ball, the first time, he now notices the black cat tucked into your side. If he wasn’t so worried, he’d have smiled, but he does have an inward reaction. His heart clenches, fondly so.
He loosens his grip on your arm, but doesn’t let go. He lets out a breath, a sigh of relief, you think.
“Jay?” You whisper, scared that he’ll give you that look again, scared that he might, for some reason, shove you away.
Instead, he lifts his hand, and wipes your tear. “Why are you crying?” He whispers, brows furrowing like your pain is his own.
“I…I don’t know,” you shake your head dismissively, and instead of prying, he just nods, rubbing his thumb over your skin.
You swallow, feeling your eyes burn in response to how intense his gaze is, the tenderness in which he caresses your skin.
“Did I do something?” you choke out.
“What?” His brows furrow closer together, confusion spreading across his expression.
“You’ve been so…off today.” You murmur, “and I— I don’t know why, or if i’m overreacting.”
He blinks, lips parting as if to speak, before he closes his mouth, clenching his jaw like he always does.
“I just…i’m just worried.” He mutters. “Everything seems too calm, today, and it’s like…like i’m just waiting for the ball to drop. Maybe that’s pessimistic of me, but I can’t let my guard down.”
Your heart sinks. He is scared.
You lift your free hand, mirroring the way he’s caressing your cheek, and you shake your head slightly. “Pessimistic or not, it’s understandable,” You murmur.
He nods slightly, jaw clenching tighter as he ever so slightly nudges his head against your hand.
He steps closer, reaches for your waist with his free hand, and moves his hand down to the side of your neck. “I was worried something happened to you, and I somehow didn’t know. I’d…never have forgiven myself,” he whispers, so close that you can feel his breath on your lips.
“I thought you wanted space,” you muse honestly, and he shakes his head immediately.
“I want you by my side. At all times. I need to know you’re safe.”
You nod slowly, your heart swelling as he leans in, his nose brushing yours.
Before he can say anything else, you step closer and press your lips against his in a soft, careful kiss.
The rain seems to pour twice as heavy in an instant, and the sound fades into nothing as he devours your mouth with his own, yet remains tender as he kisses you back.
Your hand shifts to the back of his neck, and you hold him there, soaking up the kiss for every ounce of what it’s worth.
In this moment, you feel unlike yourself, in the best way. It’s an out of body experience, warm and tingly, making your heart race in a way that reminds you that you’re alive, rather than makes you anxious.
When he pulls back, and you begin to trail kisses down his cheek, towards his jaw, he shakes his head slightly, letting out a breath as he guides you back.
“Not like this. Not here,” he whispers, giving your cheek one more affectionate caress, before he releases you.
Despite your disdain, regarding the end of that moment, you nod slowly.
“…Did you get food?” You murmur, and Jay nods, gesturing to his backpack.
“I see you got your necessities too?” He gestures to the stuffed animal, finally allowing himself to smile about it.
You nod, glancing down at the items in your grasp. Mirrors of him, really, in rather odd ways.
“Good.” He nods, then puts a hand on your back, gently guiding you out of the store.
“We’re close.” Jay says quietly, as unlocks the hotel room door, holding it open for you.
“To the beach?” You ask, looking over your shoulder at him, as he shuts and locks the door, nodding in response.
“Yeah. I think we can make it by sunset tomorrow, if we leave early enough,” he muses, as he takes his backpack off, sets it on the desk next to the ball and your new stuffed animal.
You sigh quietly, staring at him from your place on the bed, as he pulls out two water bottles, and the same ramen cups that you had at his apartment.
He walks to the kitchen area, and carefully searches for a pot, which he places with extreme caution on the electric stove. He adds water, turns on the heat, then turns to you.
“Do you think the shower would be too loud?” You ask suddenly, gazing at him, and he shakes his head.
“It’s still raining,” He comments idly, reassuringly.
So, you get up and head into the bathroom, shutting the door carefully. You take your time, carefully pulling out towels, discarding your clothes.
Then, you get in the shower, for the first time in several days, washing the grime off of your skin. You choose not to think about having to put your dirty clothes back on, in favor of savoring the warm water, the feeling of getting clean.
Meanwhile, Jay remains in the kitchen, quietly cooking the ramen. He smiles to himself as he looks across the room, gazing at the stuffed animal he found you with.
Black, short fur, golden eyes, long whiskers. It’s cute, and what’s even cuter is the fact that you decided you had to have it.
His eyes flick to the ball, and he hums quietly to himself, then walks towards the desk, where he picks it up. It’s grown a bit dirty, and the signature is worn. He raises a brow, then turns to his backpack.
With the ball in one hand, he unzips the front pocket of his bag, and digs around, nodding affirmatively to himself when he finds what he was hoping for.
A sharpie.
He pulls the cap off and carefully traces his signature, then just for you, adds a little cat face, with a heart on the nose.
He sets the ball back down, then puts the sharpie away, before he returns to the stove, carefully stirring the noodles.
Just when he’s finishing up with the ramen, he hears the shower turn off. He grabs bowls, carefully separating the noodles into the two dishes.
He looks up when he hears the bathroom door open, and his eyes widen when he sees you, standing in nothing but a towel wrapped around your body.
He blinks a few times, the swallows, shifting his focus. “I should have grabbed clothes for you at one of the stores, i’m sorry—“
You smile. Of course that’s his concern.
He stands still as you walk towards him, until you grab his hand, gently pulling him towards the bed.
“It’s fine,” you whisper, gently sliding your fingers into his hair. He grunts quietly, leaning into your touch, where he lets you guide him towards you, until your noses ghost against one another’s for the second time.
This time, though, he kisses you, not the other way around.
You sigh into the kiss, shuddering as his hands find your arms, cautious of the fact that you’re naked, safe from the towel.
Then, you drop it.
His hands pause when he hears the fabric his the floor, and he slowly pulls back, but his eyes stay on yours.
“Jay,” you murmur, “Can you stop trying to be respectful for once?” You laugh quietly, and he manages a small, tight-lipped smile.
“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want,” he whispers, caressing your cheek. His hand slowly drifts down your neck, hovering over your collarbone.
“I want this. I want you. I’ll tell you to stop, if need be, I promise,” You murmur, and he nods his head slowly.
His hand drifts lower, and he drags his other hand upwards, letting them both find your breasts at the same time. His brows suddenly knit together, and his hands slide back down, his arms wrapping around your form.
“You’re cold,” he whispers with concern, and you huff quietly, sliding your arms around his shoulders, pressing yourself into his embrace.
“I’m okay, Jay,” you respond, gently gripping the fabric of his shirt. “And if you don’t do something, I promise the least of your issues will be my body temperature.”
He snickers, the sound low and amused, as he nods, rubbing your back. His hands slide lower, until he’s groping your ass, gently pushing you towards the bed with his body.
He got the memo. Good.
You lay down, and your eyes double in size when he suddenly sinks to his knees. He wraps his arms around your thighs, drags you towards the edge of the bed, and starts peppering kisses along your legs, from the side of your shins, up to your inner thighs.
“Is this okay?” he breathes into your skin, glancing up just long enough to see you nodding eagerly.
He presses a kiss to the mound of your cunt, then kisses your slit, before his tongue darts out, and in a smooth, warm stripe, licks between your folds, flicking over your clit.
You gasp, reaching down to tangle one hand in his hair, the other curling into the blanket beneath you. “Jay—“
He draws back, and spits directly onto your pussy, then buries his head between your thighs, spreading his saliva, adding to your already evident arousal.
“Jesus, you taste good,” he mutters against you, swirling his tongue around your clit, his tongue then dipping down to prod at your entrance.
You spare a look between your legs, and holy fuck—
His eyes are shut, brows taut with focus, and he’s practically making out with your sopping cunt, the mixture of his saliva and your arousal dripping down your ass.
He slides his mouth down, then suckles his way back up, suckling gently at your clit, then a little more greedily when a moan rips from your throat.
He shifts one hand from your thigh, and gently pushes his middle finger into your clenching hole, groaning at the way you’re starting to grind against his mouth and finger. He slides a second finger into you, gently thrusting them into your needy pussy, while he continues focusing on your clit with his tongue.
“Jay, fuck, baby— i’m—“
You whimper, and Jay’s fingers curl into the plump flesh of your thigh, an instinctive response to the sound, while he pushes you closer to a climax.
“Give it to me,” he almost growls against you, his voice rasped and muffled against your slick heat.
“Jay, Jay—“ You repeat his name like a mantra, voice breaking when you finally come undone, hips rolling forward involuntarily.
Jay guides you through your orgasm, his fingers and tongue working rhythmically to draw out the pleasure.
When he feels your hand pushing against his head, he draws back, but his eyes linger on your pulsing cunt, and he hums, slowly drawing his fingers out of you.
He huffs quietly, almost in awe, as your walls squeeze around his fingers, and gently pats your pussy, as if to soothe you, but the motion makes you jolt.
Your lips part, but you’re too fucked out to say anything yet.
Jay stands, then leans over you and kisses you softly, your essence lingering on his lips.
“Stay here,” he murmurs against your mouth, then turns around, and disappears into the bathroom. When he returns, he’s got a wash cloth, which seems to be damp, and he gently cleans between your legs in a way that’s borderline uncomfortable with how intimate it is, even if he was just tongue deep in your pussy.
He sets the rag on the edge of the bed, then reaches around your body as you sit up, to pull the comforter around you.
You slide your arms around his shoulders, though, and he laughs gently. “Baby, there’s food…that’s now cold,” he murmurs, kissing your shoulder.
“And?” you mumble, as you stroke his hair, burying your face against his shoulder, sighing into his shirt. He rubs your back, humming.
“I gotta make sure my girl is fed, yeah? So level with me, and let me get the food.”
Reluctantly, you release him, but not before stealing another kiss. He kisses you firmly, a promise to return, even if he’s not leaving your line of site.
He goes back to the stove, grabs the bowls, and dumps the contents back into the pot, turns on the heat.
“While we wait for that,” he says, voice gentle, he walks to his backpack, unzips it, and pulls out a small container.
Nutella.
DAY THREE:
You didn’t remember falling asleep.
In fact, the first thing you recalled when you woke up, was the fact that Jay had given you one of the best orgasms you’ve had in years.
Your cheeks warmed, your skin tingled like you could still physically feel the effects from what he’d done.
You were quick to realize his absence, though.
However, there was a reminder of his presence left in your arms. One you know you didn’t put there yourself.
The stuffed animal, tucked into your side.
Wrapping your head around the bits and pieces of context, like the idea of Jay choosing to tuck you in with your new plushie, you realized the shower was running.
You sat up, blinking tiredly as you pulled the comforter up to your chest, eyes fluttering shut as one hand rested on the toy next to you.
Then, you heard it. Or, him, more accurately.
A wet, repetitive sound. Gentle slaps, sharp breaths.
Your brows furrowed, and it hit you rather harsh, the realization. Jay was jerking off. In the shower.
You also realized in that moment that you had never returned the favor, after he ate you out, but he didn’t really give you the chance to.
You crawled out of bed and wandered closer to the bathroom, the sound becoming clearer with each step. You could hear it vividly, each stroke, each shake of his breath, meshed with the flowing water.
So, maybe you listened to the whole thing, until he let out a quiet, strangled noise, muffled by the shower stream. You gave it a few moments, then knocked on the door.
Meanwhile, in the shower, Jay nearly jumped out of his own skin. He hadn’t been bothered that you didn’t return the favor; he’s never been that kind of guy. That being said, that didn’t mean his dick wasn’t feeling neglected.
He’s a gentleman, though, and was driven by the very real image of you in bed, naked. He refused to let himself try to wake you, just to fuck you, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t imagine that pretty body of yours, right?
Anyways, he was startled. Like, seriously startled.
To be fair, he was just cumming to the thought of your noises and your delicious pussy—
“It’s unlocked.” He’d call, voice barely audible over the water. You spared a glance at the large window; the city is emptier than ever, and it’s raining. Again.
Jesus fucking christ. Sure, it’s typically pretty gloomy in Seattle, but raining for days straight?
You paid little to no mind to that, though, and instead pushed open the bathroom door.
“Sorry to bother,” you said, voice smooth, innocent like you hadn’t just heard some particularly lewd noises. “I uh…before we go, i’d just really like to brush my teeth.”
“Not a problem. Go for it.” Jay responded, voice thick, like he was caught.
He was.
You didn’t say that, though.
Instead, you helped yourself to the toothbrushes he snagged from the front area of the hotel, as they seemed to offer basic toiletries at the front desk.
When you reached for the handle, to turn on the water, you grinned.
“I don’t want to be too loud, or mess up your shower…can I just borrow some of your water?”
When you peaked in to wet your tooth brush, he stood, facing away from you. You were still naked, after all, and he didn’t find it exactly respectful to flaunt his slowly hardening—again—dick in your face first thing.
You held in a snicker, began brushing your teeth as you turned away from him.
Yes, you did want to brush your teeth, but more than that, you had to get a mental picture of him, post jack off.
After that unfortunate event (for him), you would get dressed, pack up, and head for what you hoped to be the final stretch of your journey to the beach, to your escape.
It had remained smooth sailing. That part was worrisome, for some reason.
With that in mind, you simply remained glad that you had made it this far.
You and Jay were walking in silence, as you’d done the last two days. It was peaceful, in an eerie way. The empty streets, the rain, the cool breezes, the quiet.
It all felt like the calm before a storm, like it was only a matter of time before the real thing showed up.
Today, you and Jay lingered a little closer to one another. His hand remained on your back, and you often found his fingers, lacing them with your own. Maybe, in some weird way, you guys had figured it out, how to cope with it all.
That being said, Jay had also seemed…tense. Again.
However, it became evident all too quickly that it was for a completely different reason this time.
Clearly, his shower session didn’t cut it.
You’re assuming so, given the very obvious hard-on that’s prominently pushing against his pants.
Poor guy.
You spare several glances, not concerned with subtlety at this point. You’re pretty sure he’s well aware that you knew what he was getting up to this morning, and regardless of that, you wouldn’t be opposed to him knowing that you’re hoping to feel more than just his fingers and tongue- amazing as they were.
Looking ahead, there’s a lingering smirk on your face, the knowledge of his not-so-little predicament bringing you some sort of twisted joy.
So, you decide to have fun with it.
First, you walked ever so slightly faster than him. Just enough to be in front of him. When you could feel his gaze—because it’s always intense, the way he watches your movements—you tug your shorts up, and definitely higher than necessary.
Jay notices. His eyes flick down to your hands as they hike the shorts up, and he swallows, taking in the way they hug your backside, the way he can just barely catch a glimpse of the crease where your ass meets your thighs.
He swallows. Thickly. His cock twitches in his pants, and he thinks back to last night, when he was groping handfuls of the plump flesh.
He doesn’t do anything though. Why would he? He’s a respectful, patient man, and he’s just trying to get the both of you to something that resembles even a little bit of safety.
Secondly, you walked ahead for sometime. Maybe half an hour, at most, just long enough to feel your shorts finally un-wedge themselves from between your ass cheeks.
You’re praying the wedgie was worth it.
You look up at the sky, dim, but not as gloomy as it has been. Then, you come to a sudden stop.
Behind you, Jay was busy averting his gaze from your backside, internally begging himself to get it the fuck together.
When he bumps into you, and you stumble forward slightly, not-so-accidentally dropping your stuffed animal, he blinks.
He presses his lips together in a firm, set line, and his eyes bulge when you lean down.
And third, you make a point to push back against him as you reach down to grab your beloved black cat plushie.
His breath hitches. His nostrils flare.
It’s taking every fiber of his being to not grab you by the hips and hump you like a fucking dog—
Then, you stand up and keep walking.
He’s going to lose his mind, he thinks.
By your fourth teasing advance, Jay caught onto your little game. His dick is throbbing in his pants, and he’s still thinking about your little acts, the way your ass felt against his dick, how all he could imagine was sliding his cock between your cheeks, dipping the head into your sopping cunt.
Fuck. The way you squeezed around his fingers.
An hour or so after that last incident, the rain starts. In this particular part of the city, there’s hardly any awnings for you to find purchase under, so, he pulls you into a random store, of which you find is an abandoned boutique.
You wander through the store while Jay pulls water bottles and snacks out of his bag, reorganizing some of the contents within his backpack.
He glances over his shoulder every now and again, watching the way you trace the details on some of the clothes.
“You should grab something, if you want it,” he comments idly, zipping up his backpack. He discretely reaches down to readjust his boner, eyes screwing shut.
You end up grabbing a sweater. It’s material is thin and soft, not too heavy, but enough that it’ll knock the chill of the occasional breezes as you and Jay walk through the city.
The clothing is cute, but not particularly practical for what you and Jay are doing, so you don’t bother with most of it.
When you return to Jay, he’s eating a protein bar, holding water in his other hand. You sit down in front of him, on your knees, and grin when he takes a sip of water, a droplet dribbling down his chin.
You smirk.
When you reach out to wipe it away, in a particularly promiscuous manner, he grabs your wrist.
“Stop.” He says firmly. “We are too fucking close to risk it, yeah? Just…wait.”
Theres an unspoken promise laced in his tone.
A promise to fuck you?
You fucking hope so, because the way he’s looking at you meshed with the sternness of his voice is incredibly arousing, and you’re still craving more from him after last night.
Nevertheless, you guys “refuel”, use the bathroom, then leave, walking through a lighter drizzle now that the rain has calmed.
It’s mid day, by now, you assume you haven’t had phone signal since the start of this mess, and your phones been dead since yesterday, anyways.
Another hour or so passes, before your next stop.
Jay gently grabs your hand, coming to his own stop, which makes you pause as well. He glances up at the label on a small building, the looks at you.
It’s a studio.
He pulls you into said building, and once the door is shut, he talks lowly.
“I used to come here, record music—“
Your gasp of interest makes him grin, but he shakes his head dismissively. “I never published anything, or even really did much. Just some sessions here and there, but I did come often to get some peace and quiet,” He explains as he guides you down a hall, and pushes open the door to a recording room.
He puts his backpack down in the rolling chair, then turns to you, gently taking the baseball and your stuffed animal.
He looks down at the cat, raising a brow. “Have you named it yet?”
“Jongseong.”
“What?” He looks up at you, confused by the fact that you called him by his government name.
“The cat. His name is Jongseong,” you clarify, and Jay breaks into a laugh as realization dawns on him.
“I see.”
He taps the nose of the cat, then sets it down on top of his bag, as well as the baseball.
“I don’t get what we’re doing in here,” you then say, tilting your head at him. “Like, did you just want to see it before we leave, or?”
He steps forward, reaching out to grab you by the waist. He pulls you in, slowly pushing your new sweater off of your shoulders.
“I’m fucking dying, honey,” he murmurs, and your eyes widen with realization.
Oh, fuck.
“Yeah?” You whisper, reaching out to drag your hands down his sides, letting one trail down to the bulge that has yet to soften within the confines of his jeans.
You bite your lip as you palm him, feeling him up through the denim, which is too thick of a barrier for you to really feel more than the obvious fact that it’s hard.
“Wait, baby,” he murmurs, gently pulling you into the recording box itself. He shuts the door, then turns to you, and pulls you into a searing kiss.
His hands roam your body, and he doesn’t waste any time unbuttoning your denim shorts, pushing them down your legs.
He hums against your lips, groping your ass with more greed than he did last night. Your hands are in his hair, tugging and pulling with need as you melt into the kiss, letting his tongue dance with yours.
It’s nasty and desperate, the way you’re kissing, bodies rolling rhythmically into one another’s.
His fingers dip under your shirt, and he pulls away from the kiss just to pull both your top and bra off in one fell swoop, leaving you in nothing but your panties.
“Fuck,” he breathes, hands trailing up your sides, until he’s groping your boobs, his hands gentle, mindful of his strength.
Your brows are furrowed, and you’re internally freaking out. You’re supposed to keep quiet while this man—hopefully—pounds you into next week? Right, right.
“Not fair,” you whisper, and he tilts his head, sliding his hands up to your cheeks, as he leans down to kiss his way up your breasts, to your lips.
He kisses you, open-mouthed and sensual. “What’s not fair?” He whispers back.
You don’t dare mention your concern regarding your ability to be quiet, because you refuse to pass up this opportunity.
You reluctantly pulling your fingers out of his hair, and instead tug at his shirt. “I’m damn near naked, and you’re fully clothed,” You murmur.
He hums. “Where are my manners? I’m sorry, honey,” He almost coos, before he pulls his shirt over his head, and you’re already working at his jeans.
He caresses your hair, a breathy laugh leaving his lips as you yank down his jeans, mouth watering when you see his dick, strained and twitching through the fabric of his underwear.
“Can I?” You whisper, looking up at him. His fingers caress your cheek, and he tilts your chin up.
“Say please.” He purrs.
“Please, Jay,” you respond with quiet, but honest need, and he nods slowly.
When you tug his underwear down, you take him in, naked before you. He’s fucking gorgeous, all tanned, honey-toned skin, chiseled slopes, and his dick is hard, throbbing, precum making his head look slick.
You look up at him, his hand lingering on your cheek, looking for guidance. You’d happily suck him off, but you wouldn’t be opposed to him fucking you right here, right now.
“Shit. I don’t…” He sighs, brows pinched together. “I don’t have any condoms, we can’t-“
“I have an IUD.”
He blinks, and when you nod reassuringly, he nods back, silently communicating with you. It’s okay. This is okay.
“Come here,” he murmurs, gently pulling you to your feet. He pushes you against the wall, and the foam-like material is soft against your hands as you brace yourself, arching your back.
He grips your hips, starts kissing your shoulder, moving down your back, until he sinks to his knees, and yanks your panties down.
He grips your ass, spreading your cheeks, his eyes fixed on the growing arousal making a mess of your pretty pussy.
You gasp when he dives in, burying his tongue between your folds, licking long, thick stripes from your clit to your ass, like he didn’t get enough last night, like he’s been craving this all day.
Has he?
You can only assume so, with the way he moans into your cunt, fucking his tongue into you, licking up your slick.
“Jay,” you whimper breathily, fingers digging into the wall. “Jay—“
“Honey?” He pauses, “Talk to me, sweet girl,” he murmurs, rubbing your lower back.
“The— the noise,” you whisper, letting out a shaky breath. “I can’t…”
Can’t shut the fuck up.
And while dying as he fucks you sounds like the best way to go out, you refuse to not have this man for at least a little longer.
Jay hums, then slowly stands, kissing his way up your back. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t reassure you, or respond at all.
He guides his cock between your thighs, rubbing the head between your lips, nudging your clit with each slow thrust.
Then, when he slides into you, he fucking whimpers.
Your eyes screw shut, and you let out a shaky, broken noise, an inaudible plea, fear and arousal consuming you.
He starts slow, fucking deep into your sopping, needy pussy, and gradually builds up to rough, calculated thrusts.
You cover your mouth with your hands, and Jay supports you by holding your hips, dragging you back and forth on his dick, to meet his thrusts.
There’s wet smacking noises, loud and filthy, but what’s even more nasty?
He leans forward, his chest pressing against your back, and kisses your shoulder, then lets out a loud, raw moan as his tip nudges your cervix.
“It’s soundproof, honey,” he whispers, “I—“ He grunts, thrusting into you, his fingers digging into your hips to help him stable himself.
“I forgot about this place,” he explains through strained noises and heavy breaths, “But we’re safe here…and I want to hear you,” He slides one hand up your back, then wraps it around your throat, gently guiding you to stand up more straight, arched against his frontside, while he fucks into you.
His other hand slides between your legs, and he rubs your clit, thrusting into you, kissing your cervix gently with each thrust, just barely nudging it with the tip of his cock; not enough to hurt, but enough to remind you just how deep he is.
“Fuck,” you cry out, a single tear sliding down your cheek, and he gently kisses the tear.
“Don’t cry, honey,” he whispers, “It feels good, doesn’t it? I know, I know,” He soothes you, whimpers ripping from your throat, as you finally let go of the fear.
He gently pushes you back against the wall, lets go of your throat, and caresses your hair, before his hand returns to your hip.
You lean your weight into the wall, moaning as he rubs your clit and thrusts into you, his own noises meshing with yours.
“Oh, fuck,” you moan, eyes rolling back as you’re beginning to hurdle towards an orgasm.
“That’s it, sweet girl,” he coos, “Taking me so fucking good, being such a good girl—“ He’s cut off by his own moan, and he speeds up both his thrusts and the circles he’s rubbing on your clit.
“I’m so close,” you whimper, brows furrowed with pleasure as Jay continues pounding into you, his pelvis smacking against your ass.
He hums greedily, the sound bordering on a low growl. “Cum for me, honey,” he pleas lowly, feeling his own orgasm approaching, his head falling back for only a moment before he lifts his head.
He needs to see you. He needs to take in how fucking sexy you are, how attracted he is to you.
“Jay, Jay—“ You whine, gasping as your orgasm rips through your body, your skin tingling and warm, your vision going white for a moment as he pounds into you.
He only slows his motions on your clit when you start muttering that it’s sensitive, and then, he grabs your hips, and his thrusts become harder, more desperate.
He moans, his jaw slack as he thrusts into you. “Fuck, baby, i’m gonna cum,” He breathes.
You look over your shoulder, managing to get a decent view at his expression, how he is so utterly focused on the way his dick disappears between your thighs, the way your ass recoils with each thrust.
“Holy—“ His eyes roll back, and his hips stutter, his thrusts slowing to a stop. He leans against your back as he cums, shooting ropes of hot semen into you, filling you with more than just his dick, now.
He lets out a breath as he kisses your shoulder, and wraps his arms around your middle, hugging you from behind. You lean into him, making a quiet noise when his cock slips out of you.
You grimace at the feeling of his cum sliding down your thighs, and he huffs a sheepish laugh.
“I’m sorry,” He murmurs, kissing your cheek softly.
“It just feels weird,” you giggle quietly, shaking your head. “And it’s okay. Didn’t want you to pull out anyways.”
He sighs, shaking his head. “Fuck.”
After cleaning up to the best of your abilities, Jay suggested that you both take a small rest here, in the safety of the soundproof room.
So, you’re leaning into his side, fidgeting with your ball, while he sips on water, his eyes closed as he relaxes against the wall.
As you look down at the item in your hands, you realize that the signature is no longer worn.
In fact, it’s brand new, and has a new addition. The outline of a cat, with a heart in place of the nose.
Suddenly, your eyes are watery. The ball means so much to you because it’s from him. Maybe you subconsciously knew that he’d become part of your life, from the jump.
Even if that wasn’t the case at the time, now, you can happily confirm that the ball is important solely because it’s from him. It represents how you met, it represents his passion for baseball, it represents the comfort the mere thought of his presence has brought you in the last three, horrifying days.
“You signed it again.”
“Yeah. I did,” he murmurs, peeling his eyes open. “I did it when you were in the shower, the other day.”
Staring down at the signature, you sniffle, then look up at him. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. It was the right thing to do.” He whispers, an ode to his refusal to credit himself, because of course he’d brush it off.
Rolling your eyes, you lean in, capturing his lips in a loving kiss.
It’s storming.
Like, properly storming. The rain comes down so harshly that the droplets almost sting, lightning strikes scarily close, and thunder booms so loudly it startles you every time.
Jay walks next to you, holding your hand. In his backpack, now, is your baseball and cat, an attempt to protect them from the weather.
You can see the beach, now, in the distance. Your heart is heavy, and there’s this feeling of dread, like something’s not quite right.
Jay feels it too. The atmosphere is heavy, and there’s this haunting sense of doom.
As soon as you make it to the sand, you stop dead in your tracks.
Hundreds of bodies, missing limbs, clothes, faces. They’re mauled and some are even slightly decomposed.
In the distance, a horn blares loudly, and you look ahead at the same time as Jay.
The boats are so far from the port that you can hardly make them out, but both of you realize one very unfortunate, critical detail.
The death angels, or whatever they were calling it on the news? They’d clearly been here. They’d been hunting down every single being who tried to get on the boats, and now?
There’s several on each boat, and there it is once again. That shrieking, high pitched noise they make.
You and Jay are met with a very grim realization.
You won’t be leaving Seattle.
You look at him, he looks at you.
Then, with unspoken communication, you both turn away from the gruesome scene, to face the very place you’d been trying to escape.
“…Looks like it’s you and me, honey.” He says, squeezing your hand.
*trope: he fell first, she fell harder-sport romance
*synopsis: After years in New York, where you built a life full of luxury events, 50th-floor parties, and a career in tourism marketing, a phone call from your grandfather forces you to return to Montana, where you were born and raised. The ranch, once thriving, is now in financial trouble, and he asks for your help to make it flourish and gain recognition during the three summer months. The ranch means everything to your family, but especially to your grandfather, so you agree, confident it will be an easy task. What you don’t know is that the ranch has a new, undisputed leader: Jungwon a cocky cowboy, top-ranked in rodeo, with a dangerously charming smile and a fake “bad boy” attitude that makes your blood boil. Jungwon hates the idea of turning the ranch into a tourist attraction, but you, armed with your degree and contacts, are determined to save it your way. He’s tough to break, making you clean stalls and repair fences to make you give up, but you respond with sharp wit and determination, reminding him that without your money, he couldn’t even afford the best bulls for his training. Between stolen kisses in flower-filled meadows, rodeo competitions, and country music parties, you find yourself in another world…maybe the real one but you have a plan: go back to New York in September, and nothing...not even a stubborn, sexy cowboy can make you change your mind. Or at least, that’s what you think.
*tags: Jungwon acts like an asshole at first but in a funny way because he loves to tease Y/n, a lot of tension, Jungwon is a clingy and touchy boy, kisses, jealousy, discordances, hickeys, masturbation (f.m) unprotected sex (don't horny ppl) cowgirl, statement, +18, rodeo vibes, Y/n takes care of Jungwon when he hurts himself at rodeo, pentanes (citygirl, noona) (wonie)
New York had been your home for years now. The Big Apple had wrapped you in its relentless rhythm, skyscrapers, neon lights, the scent of coffee, and chaos from dawn till dusk. You had a degree in tourism marketing, a job at City Hall organizing events, exhibitions, and initiatives to make people fall in love with the city. Every week was a new challenge, a new adventure to tell, and you were one of the most ambitious, always arriving at 8:50 a.m. and leaving long after closing time, just to prove how meticulous you were, how much you cared about showing people you were serious.
But New York wasn’t just work. It was your escape. Thanks to your job, you earned good money, and the luxury boutiques of Fifth Avenue made you feel invincible as you lost yourself in silk dresses, designer handbags, and high-end sunglasses. They reminded you of how much you’d dreamed of this life in the most talked-about city in the world, and then there were the parties on the 50th floor, where the music pulsed, and the world felt like it was at your feet: fashion events, runway shows, nights when you felt alive, desired, at the center of everything.
Yet, no matter how much you loved it, you couldn’t forget your roots. You couldn’t erase the 18-year-old girl who raced across Montana’s prairie, climbed fences to avoid homework, got into trouble, and felt the wild call of nature. That girl seemed light-years away, buried under layers of makeup, designer clothes, and a life that left no room for nostalgia, but everything changed the day your phone buzzed on your office desk.
A name flashed in bold on the screen: "Grandpa❤️"
A spontaneous smile tugged at your lips as you answered. Your grandpa was the only person you loved more than yourself, the only one who’d encouraged you to leave Montana, who’d seen your suffering when you dreamed of escaping, and who’d believed in you enough to pay for your board, lodging, and college just to see you happy, even if it meant a four-hour flight away.
"Hey, old cowboy! What a surprise!" you said, trying to hide your curiosity. Your grandpa never called in May, only on holidays or your birthday. It was strange to hear from him on a random weekday when he knew you’d be at work.
"Hi, sweetheart. How’s life in New York? They treating you right there?" His voice was rough, and you could picture his weathered face, his blue eyes scanning the horizon as he pressed the phone to his ear.
"Everything’s good, Grandpa. Work’s busy, but I love it. And you? How’s the ranch?" You heard him cough a deep, worrying sound you’d never heard from him before. You shifted in your chair, the Brooklyn Bridge visible through the window.
"Oh, you know how it is. My back’s acting up, the horses are stubborn as ever, and the bulls… well, they never change." He chuckled, but it sounded forced. You furrowed your brow.
"Grandpa… are you okay?"
He sighed. For a moment, there was only silence. Then, in a tone that tried to be light but betrayed concern, he said, "I’m fine, I’m fine… Don’t want to worry you, sweetheart. It’s just…" Another cough, deeper this time. "Well, I’m getting old, and the ranch isn’t what it used to be. I’ve had to cut back on a lot, and I don’t know how to keep it going. But you… You’ve got that marketing degree, contacts, and you know how to get people interested in a place. Maybe you could help, just for a while. I know I’m asking a lot, and I don’t know the fancy terms, but the ranch needs a breath of fresh air. With social media, some advertising, we could make people fall in love with it again, as they did a few years back…"
You stood up abruptly, shaking your head as you stared at New York’s skyline. The ranch, the prairie, the cattle, the rodeos, it all flashed before your eyes. That was another life, buried deep inside you, but sometimes it resurfaced.
"You’re asking me to come back to Montana?" The question came out breathless. You hated Montana, but hearing your grandpa’s voice, hoarse and fragile, made your chest tighten.
"Just for the summer months. June, July, August, maybe mid-September… I’m not asking you to leave New York forever. I know you’ve got your life there, your job, your friends… and I remember how much you hated this place, all those times you made me watch Gossip Girl or New York Christmas movies because you wanted to live there, but the ranch needs you. We’ve got nothing to lose, and who knows… maybe you’ll even have a little fun like the old days. Meet some new people."
You winced. In Montana, the people were always the same, and there sure weren’t planes landing 24/7 with tourists or newcomers moving to Billings. Your heart raced. New York was your home, your refuge, the place where you’d reinvented yourself. But the ranch was your past, and your roots were there. Your grandpa was the only person in the world who’d always made you feel safe, even when you were just a stubborn kid racing across the prairie.
"Three months. Just June, July, and August. Then I’m coming back to New York, Grandpa. I can’t leave my job, my life… but for those three months, I’ll do everything I can to help. I’ll promote the ranch and find a way to get it back on its feet. But in September, I’m returning to the city. Got it? There’s nothing that’ll stop me from coming back."
There was a heavy silence on the other end. Then his voice, lighter, almost relieved: "Thank you, sweetheart. You don’t know what this means to me, to the ranch. It’ll be like old times, except instead of skipping homework, you’ll be skipping client meetings and all that bureaucratic paperwork you love so much!"
You laughed, but deep down, you knew something was already shifting. It wasn’t just about three months. It was the pull of a place you’d left behind but had never stopped being a part of you.
"Alright, Grandpa. I’ll arrange everything and be there by early June. But don’t expect me to start riding bulls, okay?" You tried to joke, but your mind was already racing ahead, wondering what awaited you. Had things changed in the years you’d been gone? Were there really new people, as your grandpa said?
"Deal. And don’t worry about the bulls… we’ve got enough cowboys here. We just need a brilliant mind like yours, full of ideas to market the place."
You hung up, but the phone suddenly felt heavier. New York had made you strong, independent, and confident. But as you watched the city lights reflect off the skyscrapers, you felt something strange: for the first time in years, you were going home and you had no idea what to expect.
The plane landed with a jolt on the runway at Bozeman Airport in Montana. You pressed your face against the window, eager to take in a landscape that seemed to belong to another time: endless prairie, mountains cutting sharp against the blue sky, and an airport so small it looked like a toy compared to the chaos of JFK, where flights took off for every corner of the world. Here, planes only arrived from other U.S. states.
As you stepped off the stairs, the air hit you like a fresh slap, clean, pure, carrying the scent of earth and freshly cut grass. It sent shivers down your spine. You loved New York with all your heart, but there, you breathed in smog, coffee, and relentless frenzy. Here? You breathed in life, endless days, and the smell of wide-open spaces.
While waiting for your luggage, you watched people your age: boys in cowboy hats so wide they looked like boats, worn boots, dirt-stained jeans, and girls in unbuttoned plaid shirts over tank tops and denim shorts. A fashion sense that would’ve been a crime in New York and honestly, in your eyes too. You smirked to yourself. Here, everyone was a little bit cowboy, even if they didn’t want to admit it. You used to dress like that too, once upon a time. But New York had changed you.
And then there were your two 25-kilo suitcases (okay, maybe 26, but who was checking?), your stuffed North Face backpack, and your large Hermes bag because "you never know."
You’d been terrified of forgetting something in your apartment, so you’d packed elegant dresses for dinners, high- and low-waisted skirts for special occasions, silk blouses (because even shoveling manure could be done with style, you’d thought as you tossed armfuls of clothes into your luggage), riding boots to at least look like you belonged, and a pair of heels because, again, you never know. You loved making a good impression, and you could already imagine your grandpa’s comments but you were ready to transform this place.
When the airport’s automatic doors slid open, you spotted him immediately: leaning against his old Toyota van, arms crossed, that same grin unchanged after all these years. He wore his usual plaid shirt, faded jeans, and the cowboy hat he’d had since you were a kid. A 32-tooth smile spread across your face.
"Hi, Grandpa!" you shouted, dropping your backpack and running toward him. He caught you mid-leap as you threw yourself into his arms, and for a second, you were a little girl again. You breathed in his familiar scent of pine and wheat, comforting and safe, and snuggled against him in a way you hadn’t in years.
"My little girl’s finally home," he said, squeezing you tight. "Look at how you’ve grown…" He held you at arm’s length to get a good look, and you twirled, letting the skirt of your travel dress flare out.
"I’m not that little anymore! Look at me!" you said, striking a pose. "What do you think? A real city woman, huh?"
He laughed, shaking his head as he kissed your forehead. You blinked at the unexpected affection. "I bet you left a trail of broken hearts back in New York, didn’t you?" he teased.
You shrugged, grinning. "Well, I can’t deny I’ve caused a little damage…" You admitted with a chuckle. But then his gaze landed on your suitcases, then your backpack, and finally, your Hermes bag.
"Y/N…" he said, raising an eyebrow. "Just how in the hell did you pack this much for three months?"
You giggled, offering a mock-shy smile as you helped him load everything into the van. "You never know, Grandpa! I want to be perfect for any occasion. And besides…" you lowered your voice, as if sharing a secret, "I didn’t bring thatmuch."
He burst out laughing, patting your shoulder. "Sure, sure, and I’m the President of the United States!" he said as the van pulled away. You settled into the passenger seat and looked out the window. The snow-capped peaks grew closer, the prairie stretched endlessly, dotted with grazing cows and cowboys on horseback who looked like they’d ridden straight out of a Western. As you passed stacks of hay bales, you caught a glimpse of your 16-year-old self, posing for Tumblr photos right there, hair wild in the wind, a mischievous smile on your face. Like you used to, you leaned slightly out the window, closed your eyes, and breathed deeply, feeling the wind whip through your hair. The air was so different from New York’s, no scent of fresh bagels, coffee carts, or subway smog clinging to your clothes (and maybe a little bit of other people’s sweat). Here, there was only grass, earth, and the smell of freedom.
Your grandpa glanced at you sideways. "I bet New York doesn’t have air this clean and pure, huh? Just the stink of fried food and smog!"
You laughed, closing your eyes. "No lies detected…" you admitted. "But you know what?" You looked at him, a bittersweet smile playing on your lips. "I missed this place. This air. Even if I’d never admit it to anyone else."
He nodded, as if he already knew. "I know, sweetheart. I know."
As the van rumbled down the dirt road toward the ranch, something inside you clicked. New York was home, New York was chaos, opportunity, life. But Montana? Montana was home. Your roots were here. And for the first time in years, you couldn’t wait to roll up your sleeves and make this place thrive again, just like the old days.
The ranch’s sign, "Y/n Peak", with its faded letters and hand-painted mountains, made you smile despite yourself. It was exactly as you’d left it a couple of years ago: rustic, welcoming, a little weathered by time, sprawling across acres of land. The main villa stood proudly at the center, surrounded by the wooden guest cabins (now with "Instagrammable" saunas and porches, as your grandpa had boasted), the green pasture where horses grazed, the expanded stables, and in the distance, the bullpen where the annual cattle auctions were held.
As you stepped out of the car, your Texan boots, bought more for aesthetics than comfort, sank into the mix of sand and packed earth. You stretched, breathing in the clean air thick with the scent of hay, soil, and freshly picked wildflowers. It was so different from New York that you shivered. Here, there were no honking taxis, no police sirens, no steaming hot dog carts or watered-down coffee. Just the chirping of birds, the lowing of cattle, and the sweet, earthy smell of hay. You gazed at the mountain peaks and murmured, "It hasn’t changed at all."
Your grandpa, unloading your luggage from the van, chuckled and pointed toward the cabins with a calloused finger.
"That’s not true. Look there, the guest cabins have been modernized. Some even have saunas now. The stables have been expanded, and we’ve added ‘Instagrammable’ chairs along the walking trails. Is that what you call them?"
You smirked, nodding. Your grandpa knowing anything about Instagram or marketing was oddly amusing. "Yeah, Grandpa, that’s what they’re called."
His finger shifted toward the bullpen, and that’s when you heard it: a sharp whistle, followed by a masculine curse. A guy you’d never seen before was attempting to tame a massive bull, one that looked way too big for him. Your grandpa grinned.
"Another new addition to the ranch: Won. The reigning rodeo champion this season." His tone was proud and confident, but seconds later, the bull bucked, sending the guy flying through the air. He landed with a thud on the ground.
You blinked, stunned. "You sure he’s the reigning champion?" you muttered as your grandpa rushed toward the pen.
"Jungwon! You okay?" he shouted, vaulting over the fence with an agility you didn’t expect from a man his age.
The guy, Jungwon, pushed himself up slowly, shaking his head and laughing like getting thrown by a bull was just another Tuesday. That’s when you noticed the scratch on his cheek, but it was nothing compared to his eyes. Feline-shaped, intense, almost golden in the Montana sun. And right now, they were locked on you, or rather, your boots.
He gave them a quick once-over, then let his gaze travel up your legs, lean but toned and sun-kissed, lingering on your simple yet elegant white-and-yellow sundress. When he reached your face, his eyes paused on your flushed cheeks and honey-blonde hair, tousled by the wind. A smirk tugged at his lips, sweet but laced with mischief, as he studied you, clearly used to this effect on 99% of the girls he met. With a fluid motion, he stood, dusted off his jeans, and with a grace you didn’t expect from a cowboy, leaped over the fence in one bound. He approached you, dipped slightly, and slid his cowboy hat off his head, revealing thick, dark, slightly sweat-curled hair.
You furrowed your brows. Who the hell bows in 2026? Oh, right, you weren’t in a metropolis anymore. When he looked up, you caught sight of dimples on his cheeks, hitting you like a punch to the gut. This guy couldn’t just be a cowboy. He was too… stunning.
"You must be the famous Y/N?" he asked, his voice a mix of roughness and warmth. "Name’s Yang Jungwon."
His hand extended toward you. After a second of hesitation, eyeing his veined, slightly calloused fingers, you shook it.
"Yeah, that’s me. Y/N, Jerry’s granddaughter." You gestured toward your grandpa, who nodded in acknowledgment. Jungwon’s hand slipped from yours with a smug little smile, and he leaned in just a fraction.
The scent of wildflowers and hay wafted off him, intoxicating. How did a guy who’d just been wrestling a bull and sweating smell this good? New Yorkers could take notes.
But all his charming traits vanished when he opened his mouth again: "Don’t worry, I know how to ride bulls. In fact, I know how to ride a lot of things." He paused, his gaze sliding down your body with a teasing glint. "That bull’s a rookie. Small, needs breaking in, that’s why he’s so jumpy. Throws me every other try!"
He pulled back, grinning, and you gaped, unsure whether to be offended or amused. Had he actually heard your comment to your grandpa?
"Who does this guy think he is?" you thought, but before you could retort, your grandpa cut in: "Like I said, Jungwon’s the reigning champ. And thanks to him, the ranch is slowly thriving again, sponsors, publicity, the works."
"Publicity?" you repeated, eyeing Jungwon skeptically. "You’re not an actor, a model, a singer, or an influencer."
Jungwon chuckled, his smirk promising trouble. Your grandpa added, grinning, "Well, he’s not an actor or a model… but that face of his brings in enough cash to keep this place afloat." With that, he walked off, leaving you alone with Jungwon, who preened, running a hand through his hair and adjusting his hat with a dramatic flourish.
"City girl," he said, "I’m no actor, but this face brings in enough money to keep this ‘shack’ standing." His gaze lingered on you a beat too long, and you crossed your arms, blushing but refusing to back down.
"Sure, you’re the reigning champ?" you shot back, tapping your boot. "From what I saw, you look more like a beginner."
Jungwon laughed, his grin half-challenge, half-amusement. "Oh, city girl, if you wanna see how good I am, just Google my name or check my Instagram. You’ll see who I am."
You raised an eyebrow, smirking. "And why would I? I don’t care who you are. You’re just an arrogant cowboy who thinks he’s hot stuff because he’s ranked #1 in bull riding."
He took a slow, confident step closer, his breath warm against your ear. "Arrogant? Yeah. But also famous and you, city girl, don’t even know who you’re playing with. I don’t know you yet, but I do know you want to turn this place into your little playground. Not gonna happen. This ranch has been blooming for years, thanks to your grandpa, sure, but mostly thanks to me."
You glared, speechless for once. Before you could snap back, he vaulted back into the pen with a smirk. You stomped your boot and marched toward your grandpa, who watched from a distance. Jungwon shook his head, girls like you were all the same but he’d make sure you learned Montana wasn’t New York and you sure as hell couldn’t just waltz in and do whatever you wanted on his turf.
Your phone burned in your hands as you scrolled again through @YangJungwon04’s profile. You couldn’t believe your grandpa had hired this guy as the face of the ranch. He was too flirty, too self-assured, too… everything. And yet, the more you scrolled, the more you found yourself smirking against your will.
First discovery? He was two years younger than you. Two years. Not even a fully grown man, just a kid playing at being a world champion and failing, at that. Ridiculous. Then you saw the fan pages, the thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok, even a dedicated app for bull riders where he shared photos, videos, and live streams with fans. A world of likes, thirsty comments, and girls fainting in the replies. "What a loser," you thought, and yet… You couldn’t stop looking.
There were photos of him bent down, petting a cat, with an expression so sweet it made your chest tighten. "Okay, that’s cute… but no. No, no, no. The cat is cute, not him." Then a video of him dancing after winning the 2025 Regional Rodeo Championship, his sweaty jeans and clinging T-shirt on full display as he laughed and hugged your grandpa. Your heart stuttered: that smile, that hug with your grandpa… it was too genuine, too real.
More photos: him on a sagging couch, his face just waking up from a nap, his profile full of horses, prairie, wild rides under the sun and then...wait a photo and video of him in New York. At Times Square, snow was falling on his hair. A video of him in Central Park, throwing himself into the snow to make a snow angel, his heart full of joy.
"Damn it…" You thought. "I was there that night. In that crowd, with my friends, drinking champagne and laughing. And he was just a few blocks away. I didn’t know. Maybe fate already had us on the same path…"
You tossed the phone onto the bed like it was on fire.
"God, Y/n, you like guys who play baseball, who go to brunch at places like Ralph Lauren, not cowboys! Not arrogant, hungry cowboys like him!" you muttered under your breath, shoving clothes into the wardrobe.
After more than an hour of organizing shirts, skirts, dresses, and all kinds of shoes, you finally took a scorching hot shower, letting the water wash away the stress of the day. You slipped into an oversized T-shirt and shorts, wrapped your hair in a towel, and sat by the window.
That window, the iconic one with the built-in bench where, as a child, you’d sit and gaze at the stars, read stories about cowboys saving princesses, and as a teenager, pose for photos or watch sunsets and sunrises. Outside, the cool early summer breeze prickled your skin, and your eyes traced the mountain peaks turning lilac, blue, pink, and gray, painting a perfect sunset over the ranch. You snapped a photo for Instagram until you heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel. Not just any footsteps. Decisive. Heavy. Familiar.
You leaned slightly out the window and saw him: Jungwon, walking with his hands in his pockets, his cowboy hat tilted back just a little. But something was off. No smirk. No trace of the swagger you’d seen just hours before. His gaze was fixed on the ground, and in his hand, he clutched a folded piece of paper, one you recognized instantly: a bill.
You leaned further out, watching as he stopped right below your window. He held the paper up to the fading sunset light, as if searching for answers in the rows of numbers and deadlines. After a moment, he slowly lifted his eyes and saw you. You froze for an instant, neither of you moved.
His eyes, usually bright and full of mischief, were tired. Almost resigned. This wasn’t the Jungwon you’d met earlier. This was a guy carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. You didn’t know why, but something inside you tightened.
"What are you doing here?" you asked, your voice softer than you intended. It wasn’t an accusation, just curiosity, a need to understand what was going through his mind. But he didn’t answer right away. He ran a hand through his hair, as if searching for the right words, then sighed and held up the bill toward you, as if to say, This isn’t a joke.
"Trying to figure out how to pay off another $12,000 in debt your grandpa doesn’t even know about," he said, his voice rough. This wasn’t the cocky guy from before. This was someone else entirely.
You leaned out further. "What are you talking about?" Your voice was barely above a whisper. "My grandpa told me the ranch was doing better. That you were fixing things, little by little."
Jungwon shook his head, his eyes still locked on that damn piece of paper. "We fixed some things. Not everything. And if we don’t find a solution by the end of summer…" He paused, as if the words cost him too much. "Well. Say goodbye to the ranch." This time, his gaze didn’t leave yours, and you felt a knot form in your stomach. You hadn’t realized things were this bad. This place was your grandpa’s home. The place where you grew up and here was Jungwon, who wasn’t even from your county, fighting to save it.
"Why don’t you tell him?" you asked, your voice trembling slightly. For the first time, you saw something vulnerablein his eyes.
"Because Jerry’s got enough on his plate already. And because…" He hesitated, as if deciding whether to tell you the truth. "Because I know you’ll be gone in three months, and I don’t want him spending his last days here worrying."
You were speechless. This wasn’t just about money, it was about loyalty, about love for a place, for a person about sacrifice.
Jungwon rubbed a hand over his face, as if trying to shake off the exhaustion. Then, with a smile that wasn’t arrogant or sweet but just real, he said, "Tomorrow morning. 5 a.m. I’ll be at the stables. Wear something you don’t mind getting dirty and, for God’s sake, not those damn Texan boots that could pay off a shepherd’s debts!"
"And why should I?" you asked, even though you already knew the answer. He laughed, looking at you.
"Because, city girl, if you want to save this ranch, you’re gonna have to learn to work like the rest of us. Otherwise, in a couple of years, you’ll be the one stuck paying off your family’s debts and you won’t be living in luxury like you are now." With that, he turned and walked away, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
The sun was already rising when Jungwon leaned against the wall outside your room, arms crossed, a cowbell dangling from his hand. He had bet with himself that you wouldn’t show up at 5 a.m., and he’d been right. After opening the gates for the bulls, letting the cows out into the pasture, and saddling all the horses, he’d had enough of you.
Why did you even come to Montana? he thought irritably…for a vacation, not to work. With determined strides, he entered the wing of the house where you were staying and knocked on your door, once, twice, three times, but heard no response. With an exasperated sigh, he pushed the door open, and there you were.
Sprawled across the bed, your mouth slightly open, you slept peacefully like a bear cub after hibernation. The curtains fluttered in the breeze from the half-open window, carrying the scent of fresh grass and earth. On the nightstand, your phone vibrated insistently, the alarm flashing: "WAKE UP, PRINCESS 👑 THE WORLD ISN’T WAITING FOR YOU (BUT THE HORSES ARE)."
Jungwon smiled despite himself. That shrill alarm had been blaring for over an hour, filling the room with noise, but you slept as if nothing could wake you, not even an earthquake. With a quick motion, he silenced the alarm and looked around, rubbing his face. The room was a disaster: clothes strewn everywhere, makeup on the nightstand, shoes of every kind, including the high heels you’d never wear here. He shook his head, thinking, Damn, that’s a lot of stuff for three months. With a sigh, he slipped out silently, closing the door behind him.
Jungwon walked across almost the entire ranch, thinking how different this place was from New York. There were no rooftop parties here, no aesthetic bars for sipping matcha, no dawn Pilates classes. Instead, there were rodeos at sunset, mid-summer parties with craft beer and country music, and dawn training sessions where sweat mixed with dust. He would’ve bet everything he owned that you wouldn’t last the whole summer in Montana. With one last glance at your window, he headed toward the stables, where he needed to groom the horses, check the fences, and most importantly, prepare everything for the day’s training. The next few weeks would be brutal, with rodeo competitions every weekend. He hoped that by the end of the summer, he’d win the title of World Rodeo Champion, see a nice sum in his bank account, and pay off most of Jerry’s debts. After all, Jerry was the only one who had believed in that kid who used to sneak in to ride bulls illegally. If you decided to join in, fine. If not, he’d do everything alone, as always.
But as he walked, he couldn’t help thinking about how small and defenseless you’d looked in that bed, your hair spread across the pillow, your breathing slow and steady. He shook those thoughts away immediately.
The sun was already high when you finally stumbled down the ranch stairs, grumbling about how stupid you’d been for not waking up. You’d thrown on pink yoga pants that clung to you like a second skin, a basic "I ❤️ NY" T-shirt that every New York girl owned, and sneakers that at least made you feel a little more at ease in this place where everything seemed out of place. Your hair was tied in a messy braid, and the piercing in your navel peeked out just below your fitted shirt. You knew you had a lean but curvy physique, one that Jungwon couldn’t help but notice as you approached.
"Sorry, I didn’t wake up," you said, slightly out of breath after nearly sprinting across the ranch. You looked around with a mix of embarrassment and annoyance.
"I swear I set my alarm for 5 a.m., but it didn’t go off… or maybe it turned off on its own." Your gaze landed on Jungwon and your grandpa, both sipping steaming cups of coffee with an expression far too relaxed for people who supposedly woke up at dawn to work.
Your grandpa handed you a cup of coffee and a biscuit, smiling. "Sweetheart, don’t worry. It’s your first day in Montana, who said you had to wake up at 5?"
Jungwon, however, didn’t look away. His eyes slid down your body, lingering on the piercing peeking out from under your shirt, the curves your thin fabric didn’t hide, and finally, your face, where a sudden flush betrayed your discomfort.
"I knew most ranchers woke up early to do the hardest work…" You said, sipping the coffee, too bitter for your taste, but you weren’t about to complain in front of him.
"You thought right, city girl," he said, his smirk half-challenge, half-amusement. "Everyone with a ranch wakes up early to do the toughest jobs in the morning. Then people like me go train." He stood up from the wooden chair and stepped closer to you.
"Doesn’t look like you’re working that hard now," you shot back, crossing your arms. "You’re all just sitting here having breakfast like it’s a Sunday afternoon."
Your grandpa laughed, shooting Jungwon a look. Jungwon huffed and ran a hand through his hair. "I can’t believe this," he muttered, but your grandpa gave him a warning glance before turning back to you.
"Sweetheart, you don’t have to wake up at 5. Starting today, you’ll just need to explore the ranch, take photos, and shoot videos. By mid-summer, we’ve got the county fair, and I’m sure plenty of people from New York, Boston, big cities will want to come relax here, especially to see the rodeo finals at the end of summer."
You nodded, excited at the idea of organizing and promoting the ranch.
"I can’t wait to see the whole ranch and spruce up the website! We could even do ‘couple photos’ in the suites with saunas and outdoor pools to attract more people, young couples love that kind of thing!"
Your grandpa smiled and pulled you into a side hug. "That’s a great idea, sweetheart. I’m sure by the end of summer, the ranch will be full of tourists. In fact, we’ve already sold more than half the rooms for June!" He showed you the bookings on the tablet, and you saw the hotel situation wasn’t bad at all; it was actually pretty good.
"Well, I’ll go take a look around and try calling someone at New York City Hall to see if I can get something posted on their site and print some brochures to hand out in the city," you said, trying to ignore Jungwon’s fixed gaze on you. But just as you took a few steps to leave, your grandpa intervened:
"Jungwon will go with you to show you everything, sweetheart."
You rolled your eyes and turned to your grandpa, nodding in resignation. You waited for Jungwon to approach, and as he did, you deliberately whispered:
"Does he always have to be around? Like an annoying fly!"
Jungwon heard you and grinned, crossing his arms. Now that your grandpa was out of earshot, he leaned in slightly and said:
"Exactly, city girl. I’m like an annoying fly that won’t leave you alone as long as you’re here. Now move it, the ranch is huge, or I’ll carry you on my shoulders!" He mimed scooping you up, and you huffed, walking a little farther away from him.
The morning sun warmed your back as you followed Jungwon around the ranch, observing every corner with a critical yet loving eye. This place had watched you grow up, and you noticed they had created interactive zones for school groups or summer camps, perfect for attracting more families. There were educational gardens, sensory paths, and even a small pond with ducks where kids could feed the animals. It was all so well-organized, so alive, that for a moment, you forgot you were a "city girl" and felt at home again.
Jungwon led you to the stables, where the horses neighed softly, then to the rabbit area, where some kids had even given the animals names. Finally, you reached the chicken coop, where wooden houses sheltered broody hens sitting on their eggs.
"I bet you don’t remember how to pick up a chicken’s egg," Jungwon teased, his smirk making you want to punch him. You crossed your arms, glaring at the hens.
"Excuse me? Okay, I’m a city girl, but I left at 19, and I’m 23 now. It hasn’t been that long, and I was great at picking eggs as a kid." You tapped your foot, and Jungwon laughed, his dimples making him annoyingly cute. You quickly looked away.
"Really? Then prove it. Grab those eggs and put them in the egg tray. We’ll sell them at the market later."
You crouched slowly, trying not to startle the hens. At first, it went smoothly, you picked up one egg, then another, feeling almost proud of yourself but then, a territorial hen pecked the back of your hand.
"OH!" you yelped, jumping back and nearly colliding with Jungwon. You checked your hand and saw your glittery nail polish was chipped.
"Damn chicken!" you cursed, glaring at Jungwon, who burst out laughing, doubling over. "Oh, Y/n, you’re way too much of a city girl for this! Look, you even ruined your manicure!" he teased, effortlessly collecting all the eggs in seconds and placing them in the tray.
"It’s not my fault that it’s a psychopath!" you protested, pouting at your ruined nail. Jungwon just shrugged with a smirk.
"Don’t worry, noona. You’ll find something else you’re good at, right?" And with that, he walked off, leaving you stunned. Did he just call you noona?
You stood there, frozen, before clenching your fists and chasing after him, nearly tripping over your own feet. "Hey! What did you call me?"
Jungwon turned, looking at you, your messy braid, flushed cheeks, and dirt-stained pink yoga pants and found you oddly cute.
"Noona. I heard you’re two years older than me, so you’re a noona to me," he explained with a shrug as he walked toward the ranch’s hotel area. "Don’t tell me no one in New York calls you that."
You pouted because, in your office back in New York, you were the youngest, and no one ever called you that. "No, no one does," you admitted, feeling strangely embarrassed and annoyed at the same time. "And you’re asked not to either. It’s… weird."
Jungwon laughed, stepping a little too close for comfort. "Oh, noona, but it suits you so well," he teased, his playful smirk driving you crazy.
"Stop it," you warned, crossing your arms and putting some distance between you. But he didn’t seem intimidated at all. Instead, he leaned in slightly, taking advantage of his height, and his thumb brushed a strand of your hair, removing a piece of hay. His eyes lingered on your face, and for a second, it felt like he was too close. Then, as if remembering himself, he took a step back and pointed toward the ranch’s reception.
In silence, you walked to your aunt, who greeted you with a hug. She handed you a tablet showing all the ranch’s categories, guest ratings, reviews, and pricing.
"Now that you’re here, I want to see all the rooms," you said excitedly. "Which are the suites? What are the most popular spots?"
Your aunt gave you the room keycard and began explaining:
"There are seven rooms, three romantic suites and two family suites, all with Wi-Fi, USB ports, plasma TVs, recycled wood, robes, and porch swings." So you and Jungwon went to inspect every room, taking photos and videos. You stopped in one of the romantic suites, perfect for couples or honeymooners. There was a king-sized bed facing the mountain views, a wooden bathroom with a small door leading to a private sauna, and a cozy nook where guests could order fresh pastries, eggs, milk, jams, and local meats for a fee. Finally, the porch had two swings, and a staircase covered in fairy lights led down to the private poolshared by all the rooms.
"This place could be marketed year-round; it’s perfect for anyone who wants to escape city life," you said, smiling. You turned to Jungwon, who hadn’t stopped watching how your eyes lit up at the beauty and sacrifice your grandparents and aunts had put into this place.
"So… are you dating anyone?" you blurted out without thinking, and he coughed slightly, caught off guard.
"You’re talking to me?" he asked, pointing at himself. You looked around as if someone else might be there.
"Yes, I’m talking to you, Yang Jungwon. Are you dating someone or not?"
Jungwon smirked, stepping closer again. "And if I were, noona? Would you be jealous?"
You laughed at his teasing. This guy was always so full of himself, probably with every girl.
"Why would I be jealous? You’re not even my ideal type."
Jungwon raised an eyebrow, amused. "Oh, really? And what is your ideal type, noona?" he asked, inching even closer, but you ignored the question and said confidently:
"I only asked because I had an idea. Remember earlier, when I told my grandpa we could take photos of a couple enjoying the pool, sauna, restaurant, and rooms?"
He nodded, his smirk making you want to wipe it off his face.
"Yeah, I remember. Are you just looking for an excuse to get close to me, noona?"
"What?!" you exclaimed, poking a finger at his chest.
"That’s not it at all! We can’t hire strangers, they’d want money, and you and I are already here. We’re young, and with my iPhone, we can take great photos. I’ll edit and enhance them for social media and the ranch’s website."
Jungwon chuckled, his grin making you want to erase it from his face. "Let’s just say this idea of yours is totally an excuse to be near me, noona," he repeated, stepping even closer.
"That’s not true!" you protested, feeling your cheeks heat up.
"It’s just a good idea for the ranch! Lots of hotels do couple photoshoots to sell online or through travel agencies!" Your voice rose slightly, and Jungwon noticed how your cheeks flushed even redder.
"Mmh," he hummed, his tone making it clear he didn’t believe you. "Either way, noona, if you want to do these photos, you’ll have to put up with me for a while."
"Not a problem," you lied, crossing your arms and putting some distance between you. "I don’t care. I’m just making sure we can use your image for the photos without some hypothetical girlfriend getting mad."
He laughed, leaning in slightly. "I’m not dating anyone, noona. But if I were… don’t you think that’d be a problem for you?"
"Absolutely not," you replied, though your heart was racing. "You’re not my type, remember?"
"Mmm," he mused, resting his chin on his hand. "But if I’m not your type, why do you want to take photos with me?"
You huffed. "Because you’re here, you’re photogenic, and the ranch needs publicity and since you’ve got a ton of followers, you’ll help bring visibility, and my grandpa adores you," you added, not letting him finish, but Jungwon just laughed, leaning in close to your ear again.
"Oh, noona, you always have a second choice," he whispered before walking away, leaving you there with flushed cheeks, obviously from the heat.
The morning sun filtered through the curtains of your room at the ranch, casting a warm glow on your laptop screen as you typed frantically, sending an email to the New York City Hall office. Those summer mornings, you always woke up early to the sounds of chickens, crickets, and the other animals that stirred the ranch to life. You were there with them, watching the sunrise ripple across the mountain peaks, your fingers trembling slightly, not just from excitement, but from the realization that if everything went well, you could save the ranch without asking Jungwon for any more sacrifices.
You saw the message Kai from the New York City Hall office had sent you. You read it over and over, absorbing every detail. Thanks to his help, the ranch had been featured in the event newsletter for all New York residents, complete with photos and a short description of the ranch. You’d already received three bookings for the week of the National Rodeo Finals and more requests for the mid-summer festival.
You had attached some photos of the ranch and its offerings for all ages, suites with saunas, natural pools, scenic trails, and sensory activities for kids and they had been published in the travel section of the newsletter, promoting the ranch as the perfect escape from the chaos of the city for a week of relaxation in nature, and it had worked.
Additionally, you had written to Kai that you were organizing a photographic campaign with the reigning rodeo champion, Yang Jungwon, to promote the ranch as a romantic and adventurous destination. In a few days, you will send that material to be advertised in the newsletter as well.
When you saw the photos of your grandpa’s ranch and the little text promoting it, you couldn’t resist. You grabbed your phone and ran downstairs, where you knew your grandpa would be watching and training Jungwon. You found him in the courtyard, wearing his classic cowboy hat and grinning when he saw you running toward him.
"Grandpa! Grandpa!" you exclaimed, breathless.
"We already have three bookings for the rodeo finals week! And more requests for the mid-summer festival! New York City Hall is helping promote the ranch!" You showed him the website with the photos you had taken a few days earlier, and your grandpa pulled you into a tight hug, lifting you almost off the ground.
"My little girl is a genius!" he exclaimed, his eyes glistening. "I knew you’d be an asset to this place!"
You felt proud and moved at the same time. But then, as your grandpa set you down, you noticed Jungwon in the distance, training with a bull, and you couldn’t take your eyes off him.
"He was crucial in getting attention with his social media. Without him, we wouldn’t have had all this visibility," you said, watching him as he trained. Your grandpa followed your gaze and smiled.
"Yes, Jungwon is a special boy. He has a big heart, even if he pretends to be tough… but he has his demons too…" he said. You furrowed your brows slightly and asked what he meant, but your grandpa just shrugged.
You wanted to know more because Jungwon wasn’t just a "special boy." He was a problem, a problem with feline eyes, dimples, and an attitude that had gotten under your skin from the first moment you saw him.
Your grandpa left to talk to one of the cowboys, and you stayed there, watching Jungwon train.
You couldn’t look away; it was like your brain had stopped working, and all you could see was him: the way his muscles flexed under his shirt, the way sweat slid down his back, the smirk that curled his lips every time he tamed the bull.
"You’re staring, city girl?" His voice made you jump; he’d caught you.
"W-What? No!" you stammered, blushing like a tomato.
"I was just… admiring the landscape!" you said weakly, gesturing vaguely at the surrounding prairie.
Jungwon laughed, dismounting from the bull and walking toward you with that slow, confident stride of his.
"Sure, the landscape," he said, pausing to look at you with those golden eyes that sent shivers down your spine. "Or maybe you were admiring me?"
You rolled your eyes.
"In your dreams, cowboy," you replied, crossing your arms, though your tone wasn’t convincing and you both knew it.
He stepped even closer, so close that you had to tilt your head back to meet his gaze. With his dimples just barely visible, he said:
"So, city girl, wanna tell me why you blush every time you look at me?"
You glared at him.
"I’m not blushing because of you! It’s hot here, and…!" you tried to protest, even though you both knew it was a lie.
"Liar," he murmured. Then, without warning, he brushed your cheek with a finger, where you could feel the heat rising. His slightly calloused touch against your skin left you breathless as he whispered, shielding both of you with his cowboy hat:
"You should stop lying, Y/n, to yourself and to me, because I know you like me… even if you don’t want to admit it."
And just like every time, Yang Jungwon walked away toward the ranch. A few seconds later, you turned toward him and shouted:
"It’s… It’s not true!" your heart pounding wildly.
You heard Jungwon’s laughter in the distance as he turned back to you and said:
"Keep telling yourself that, noona, but sooner or later, you’ll have to admit that this ranch isn’t the only thing that wakes you up in the morning."
And with that, he turned and went back to his training, leaving you there, heart in your throat, mind full of thoughts you didn’t want to admit.
Your room looked like a battlefield of fashion and chaos, clothes strewn everywhere, skirts draped over the door, makeup scattered across your desk like a rainbow explosion. Seoul City by Jennie blasted from your speakers as you finally settled on the perfect outfit: a flirty white sundress with thin straps slipping just so over your shoulders, your Texan boots (because even in Montana, you refused to sacrifice style), and a silver necklace with a tiny heart-shaped horseshoe pendant. Your hair cascaded in soft waves, and as you lined your lips with a muted pink pencil, you glanced out the window.
The sun was just beginning its slow descent, painting the sky in hues of pink and violet. Even at 8:30 PM, the Montana summer light lingered, golden and dreamy.
You turned back to the mirror, giving yourself a once-over. "Okay, Y/n. Tonight’s the night. We’re making this ranch go viral."
The photos you’d take with Jungwon would be perfection. He was the reigning rodeo world champion of Montana, and you… Well, you knew you cleaned up nicely. But let’s be real, he would be the star and that was fine by you. Together, you were aesthetic gold for the ‘gram: him with his rugged cowboy charm, you with your city-meets-countryside vibe. "People are gonna lose their minds," you thought, already imagining the Instagram likes, the comments, the shares your friends would flood in to boost the ranch’s visibility.
You took a deep breath, grabbed your phone, and headed downstairs only to freeze mid-step.
There he was.
Jungwon sat on one of the ranch’s wooden loungers, watching the sunset paint the mountain peaks in fiery gold. He wore a crisp white tee under an unbuttoned plaid shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms dusted with sun and sweat. Over it, a suede jacket in a warm, earthy tone hugged his shoulders, and his worn-in boots looked like they’d been molded to his feet. His hair was tousled, as if he’d spent the day running his hands through it, and when he lifted his gaze, those damn golden eyes, your breath hitched.
For a second, neither of you moved.
The wind gently tousled your hair, and Jungwon noticed how your cheeks flushed that soft shade of pink, how the sundress accentuated your golden-tanned skin, and how your eyes never left him—not the landscape, him. He stood up from the lounger and approached you, gifting you with a small smile. His dimples made him look almost boyish, but you knew better. Here, with your grandpa, Jungwon was the most mature and responsible person you’d ever met. At such a young age, he’d taken on the burden of keeping the ranch from failing, and that wasn’t something you could ignore.
Neither of you noticed your aunt and grandpa watching you intently from a distance. Your aunt leaned in and whispered to your grandpa:
"Those two pretend they can’t stand each other, but look at how they seek each other out with their eyes. Did you see how our little one always blushes when Jungwon’s around?" She nudged your grandpa, who was observing you both.
"I’m not blind…" he replied softly, "But I just hope Y/n doesn’t end up hurting Jungwon. His mom already left this land. I can’t imagine what would happen if he got attached to Y/n and then she went back to her real life in New York because this isn’t her real life."
Your aunt nodded, her expression tinged with resignation. She knew you struggled with being here, but maybe that could change. She clapped her hands, breaking the spell between you and Jungwon.
"Are you two ready to take those photos?" she asked, her smile saying, "Finally."
As you walked into the ranch’s garden, you noticed your aunt had placed small candles around the entrance. Jungwon approached you with that slow, confident stride of his and said:
"So, city girl, ready to become a social media star?" He glanced at your aunt, positioning the tripod.
"I was born ready," you replied, trying to keep your tone professional. But inside, your heart was racing, and you weren’t sure if it was from excitement or something else.
He leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. "Good, because today, noona, we’re going to take photos that’ll drive everyone wild."
"That’s the whole point of this charade," you shot back, but your voice was a little too high, a little too bright. Jungwon laughed.
"Yeah, noona, but I bet it’s not just for the ranch, huh?"
You tried to retort, but your aunt positioned herself near the pond, the sunset casting a golden glow behind you both. "Okay, you two, get close! Smile and try to look like a real couple!"
Your eyes widened, and before you could react, Jungwon draped an arm around your shoulders. You felt the warmth of his body through the thin fabric of your dress. "Relax and smile, noona," he whispered in your ear, and you couldn’t do anything but obey. Suddenly, you were smiling, wrapped in Jungwon’s arms in a way you hadn’t expected. From the outside, he might look like a troublemaker, someone full of himself, but the way he held you was almost tender, as if he were afraid of being too much for you.
"Oh my God, you two are perfect!" your aunt exclaimed, snapping photo after photo. Jungwon looked at you, his eyes saying too many things. "See, noona? We make a good couple, don’t we?"
"We’re a fake couple," you clarified, but your voice was weak, almost a whisper.
He leaned in even closer, his lips just a breath away from your ear.
"For now," he murmured and you didn’t know what to think, because you certainly hadn’t planned on liking a rodeo champion who was doing everything to keep your ranch afloat.
Jungwon pulled away from you, and your heart gave a little jolt when you heard your aunt exclaim that the shot was beautiful and that she couldn’t wait to edit and post it. But you and Jungwon were too busy looking at each other to react. He ran a hand through his hair a gesture that usually exuded confidence, but now there was something different about it. A sudden, unexpected shyness had appeared, as if he had just realized he had crossed an invisible line between you.
He quickly got up from the swing and didn’t look at you as he offered his hand again. This time, you took it, and your fingers intertwined for a moment. You both looked at your hands, but Jungwon quickly pulled his away as if it were burning and walked toward your aunt.
"Maybe… I went too far," he murmured, his voice so low you almost didn’t hear it, but you did. You stood there, watching him walk away, and called out with a gesture:
"That’s a wrap, or the photos!" you said, trying to regain a professional tone, even though your voice trembled slightly. "I bet all the videos and photos we took in these hours are enough for the ad and the website."
Your aunt nodded, and so did your grandpa, but Jungwon just started walking away from you. You lowered your eyes because you didn’t understand what was happening between you, but he was figuring it out perfectly.
As he walked away, he muttered under his breath: "God, Jungwon, you’re so stupid. Why did you kiss her? Now she’ll think you’re a loser… or maybe she already does." He headed toward the stables because he seriously needed to clear his head. He reached his horse, Spirit, a purebred black Quarter Horse with a glossy coat and dark, intelligent eyes. He stroked Spirit’s muzzle, speaking to him in a low, calm voice as if the horse could truly understand every word and his state of mind at that moment.
"I wish I were an animal, Spirit," he said, almost chuckling. "You guys don’t fall in love, don’t complicate your lives with feelings. You just love, without all this bullshit and adult problems." He stroked Spirit’s mane, and the horse neighed softly, as if he were really listening. Jungwon laughed. "Yeah, I know, you’re a horse, you can’t answer. But at least you don’t judge me, right?"
He almost hugged Spirit, and that’s when he heard the sound of your Texan boots on the gravel. Jungwon turned, and when he saw you, he rolled his eyes as if you were the last person he wanted to see right then.
"I knew you were weird, but talking to horses?" you said, laughing to mask your embarrassment. "Isn’t that a little… childish?"
He rolled his eyes again, but this time there was no smirk on his lips like usual. "What do you want, city girl?"
You crossed your arms, trying to look more confident than you felt, and said, "I just wanted to know if you were going out with Spirit. Like you do every evening." You said it almost in a whisper, and Jungwon turned to look at you with an expression that was half surprised, half amused. "I didn’t think I had a stalker right under my nose."
"I’m not a stalker!" you protested, feeling your cheeks flush.
"It’s just that… I’ve figured out your habits… every evening you go out riding, and I was wondering where you go."
He stroked Spirit thoughtfully, then said with a slightly amused tone: "The city girl wants to know where her favorite cowboy goes?" he asked, his tone half-joking, half-challenging.
"Should we show her where we always go, Spirit?"
Spirit neighed again as if he were really answering, and Jungwon put on the slightly larger saddle for two people. He took your hand, and you took it without hesitation, even though inside you were a tangle of emotions.
Jungwon helped you climb onto Spirit, and you settled behind him, your hands resting on his broad, muscular shoulders as he leaned forward to stroke the horse’s neck.
"Hold on tight to me, okay?" he said, his voice half concern, half amusement. "I don’t want the coach’s granddaughter on my conscience."
You chuckled, even though your stomach was twisted in knots.
"Don’t worry, cowboy… I’m not that fragile."
He whistled to Spirit, and the horse took off at a gallop. You recognized the path immediately, it didn’t lead to town but toward the wildlife trail in the national park, a place where nature was still untamed and untouched by humans. Clinging tightly to him, you whispered near his ear:
"Are you sure we won’t get lost?" you asked as Spirit galloped faster. Jungwon laughed, feeling you pressed so close to him, your body trembling slightly against his back.
"Trust me, city girl," he said, urging Spirit to go even faster.
"Easy for you to say!" you exclaimed, but the truth was, you didn’t want him to stop. You didn’t want this ride to end because, for the first time in a long time, you felt at home, not in New York, not in the chaos of the city, but here, in the Montana mountains, with the wind tangling your hair and the sun setting behind the peaks, painting everything in shades of orange and violet. It was like a postcard, a moment so rare and beautiful that few people ever got to see and in that moment, you realized something terrifying yet wonderful: you were completely trusting a guy you’d barely known a few weeks ago, and he was making you fall in love all over again with your hometown, with its wild landscapes. It scared you, but it also felt magical.
Jungwon hesitated for a moment; his rational side screamed at him to stop, to remember you’d be gone in a few months, that this was a terrible idea. But his instincts? They were dragging him straight toward the edge. Ever since that first day, when he’d seen you in that sundress, watching him fall off the bull with that slightly defiant look in your eyes, he’d wanted to pull you close and make you his. And now, his desire won.
He leaned in, and his lips met yours.
You’d spent so many summer evenings wondering what his kiss would feel like aggressive, maybe, like he had something to prove, like the way he teased you every damn day with that smirk, driving you crazy from sunrise to sunset. But this? This was nothing like that. For those first few seconds, time stopped. He stayed there, pressed against you, almost motionless, breath caught between your lips. You could feel his fear, the raw, unfiltered terror that you might push him away, that you might vanish. But you didn’t.
Instead, your hand slid behind his neck and that was all the permission he needed.
Jungwon deepened the kiss, his usual restraint shattering. His lips tasted faintly musky, with a hint of the hay stalk he’d been chewing moments before, clashing violently with the artificial, sickly-sweet cherry gloss on yours. The mix was strange, unexpected but it was you two, perfectly chaotic, just like your personalities. You gripped the back of his neck, pulling him closer, and felt his spine arch as your lips parted in silent invitation.
A choked sound escaped him against your mouth when he realized you were letting him, really letting him, and then, slowly, deliberately, he sucked on your bottom lip. The air left your lungs in a breathy moan, and that sound? It became his favorite. He was the one making you gasp, making you melt, and no one else. You could feel his lips curve into a victorious smirk against yours, and you rolled your eyes internally... no way were you letting him win that easily.
The way his lips trembled against yours, the way his breath hitched, he thought he had control just because he was making you tremble and moan at the same time. Poor, delusional boy. You slid your tongue between his lips, taking charge, setting the pace, exploring his mouth with a hunger that left him breathless. The kiss shifted from hesitant to desperate. You felt his large hands usually so gentle, now searching for leverage, one resting on your waist, the other cupping your cheek as if afraid you might vanish. When he pulled back just enough to breathe, he whispered against your lips:
"Noona…" His voice was rough, raw, and it sent a flush creeping up your neck. You were both breathless, chests rising and falling in sync, neither of you able to look away. His eyes were lost in yours, dark and dazed.
"I’m fucked," he murmured against your lips, his usual teasing tone replaced by something serious, vulnerable. You smirked, pressing your forehead to his. "Yeah, Jungwon… you are."
With the first stars blinking above and darkness wrapping around you, you grabbed the collar of his shirt and yanked him back into a kiss that held no hesitation, no fear just raw, unfiltered passion. You kissed him harder, and he shuddered as your fingers tangled in his hair, softer than you expected, so thick you wanted to spend hours running your hands through it, pulling like you were now. Jungwon, in turn, dragged you closer, his fingers nervously toying with the thin fabric of your dress as if he wanted to tear it away just to feel your skin but it was the way you gripped his hair that drove him wild. He groaned against your lips when you finally pulled back, and he lifted a hand to his own hair, his cheeks flushed too.
You tried to mask the wild pounding of your heart with a smirk. "Well, I’d say that was… interesting. Much more interesting than any kiss I’ve had with New York boys."
Jungwon’s eyebrow shot up, and something dangerously close to jealousy flared in his chest at the thought of other guys touching you, kissing you, having you before him but from that day on, things would be different.
"Interesting?" he repeated, his voice a low, rough chuckle. "I bet those were the best kisses you’ve ever had."
You crossed your arms, trying to look more confident than you felt. "Who said I liked our kisses?" Your tone was meant to sound convincing, but the way your cheeks burned gave you away.
He burst out laughing, that infuriating smirk of his making you want to throw something at his face.
"Oh, really?" he said, stepping closer. "Because I seem to remember you blushing like a tomato, noona, unable to stop touching my hair like it was the only thing in the world that mattered to you and then…" He leaned in until his lips were a breath away from your ear. "…the way you moaned? So sweet it made me want to do a lot more than just kiss you."
Heat flooded your cheeks, and you knew he’d won this round. You rolled your eyes, snapping, "I did not moan...."
Jungwon laughed again, half amused, half loving the way you squirmed, refusing to admit you’d liked it too. "Sure, noona and I’m not Montana’s rodeo champion." His tone made you want to kiss him again just to shut him up.
"You’re insufferable," you muttered, but there was no real anger in your voice just tension, a crackling, electric charge in the air between you. He stepped even closer, your bodies almost touching.
"And you’re beautiful when you blush, noona," he whispered, his voice sending shivers down your spine as his thumb traced your cheek. "But you already know that, don’t you?"
Both of you realized in that moment....everything was about to change.
It had been almost a week since that kiss in the meadow, and in that time, you had done everything possible to avoid Jungwon. He hated this situation between you two, he would smirk, but at the same time, his jaw would tighten every time he heard or saw the excuses you came up with to avoid being alone with him. For someone two years older, you were acting like a spoiled child.
Your excuses had been creative, some even believable:
The day after the kiss, after he finished training and took a shower, he saw you and tried to talk to you. But you said: "I have to work on my laptop. I have a video call with travel agency managers from New York to promote the ranch!" And it was true, but you could have postponed it, at least. You didn’t have to lock yourself in your room for three hours after the call to do skincare and watch a tear-jerker K-drama.
Another time, he found you with your grandpa and asked if you could help him with something he couldn’t even remember anymore. You stood up abruptly and said: "I have to finish editing the photos for the ranch’s website! The more photos we put on the site and social media, the more engagement we’ll get from clients!" This was also true, but you didn’t have to do it in the evening...
Other excuses were less believable. One evening, while Jungwon was finishing his training and walking into the dining room, you were eating a plate of pasta at supersonic speed, as if you were in a speed-eating contest. "Sorry, I have to go! I have... uh... an appointment with my personal trainer. You know, there’s nowhere to do Pilates here, so I’m taking online lessons!" you said, jumping up and running away as if you’d seen a ghost. Jungwon stood frozen in the kitchen, trying to figure out if you were joking or serious.
Other times during that week, you had seriously sabotaged every possible encounter, even taking longer walks to avoid running into Jungwon. He was seriously tired of this situation.
That evening, Jungwon didn’t go to the meadow where you had kissed. Instead, he went to Heeseung’s house, his hyung, a two-time world rodeo champion. Heeseung’s house was too rich for his taste: a pool overlooking the mountains, white leather sofas (who even had white sofas in a cowboy’s house?!), and a fridge stocked with expensive beers. But he couldn’t deny the villa was stunning, with one of the best views in Montana, even featured in travel vlogs.
Jungwon sat with his legs dangling in the pool, a beer in hand, while Heeseung leaned against the edge with another beer, both watching the sunset turn a deep orange.
"Why don’t you ask her to the town fair?" Heeseung said, glancing at the sunset and distractedly at the window of his current fake girlfriend’s room. It was a complicated situation, one Jungwon didn’t care about, but Heeseung had clearly changed since she’d entered his life. He’d always been a ladies’ man, someone who knew he had talent and used it to his advantage, but lately, he’d lost some credibility in the cowboy world. Now, for better or worse, he was stuck cleaning up his image by sharing his days with a girl who almost reminded Jungwon of you, though you were a little more "chill."
"Girls love this stuff," Heeseung continued. "The stalls, the fried doughnuts, the guy winning a stuffed animal for her… then you could take her to the outdoor cinema. It’s… romantic, right?" He glanced at the lit window of his fake girlfriend’s room, his thoughts tangled.
Jungwon chuckled, taking a sip of beer. "Would your ‘fake girlfriend’ even like something like that?"
Heeseung shrugged without taking his eyes off the window.
"You said it yourself….fake. I don’t know what she likes, and she doesn’t know what I like. But right now, we’re talking about Y/n."
He turned to Jungwon with a serious expression.
"So, as a friend, not a rival, I’m telling you this: invite her. If she says no… well, at least you tried."
Jungwon ran a hand over his face, sighing. "Heeseung, Y/n spent years in New York. You know what people do there on weekends? They go to rooftop bars and drink twenty-dollar cocktails, hit luxury clubs, and who knows what other amazing things a city like that offers." He shook his head. "She wouldn’t care about some small-town fair. She’d probably laugh at me. Hell, she’s probably already thinking about how pathetic I was for kissing her."
Heeseung snapped his fingers, pointing at him. "Jungwon, listen to me: don’t overthink it with that girl. Everyone knows how much you’re doing for Jerry’s ranch. If she can’t see how good you are, how amazing you are… then it’s her loss, not yours." He paused, then added with a sly grin: "And honestly, who cares if she’s lived in New York? She’s here now and if she calls you a loser, fine, you’ll be her favorite loser."
Jungwon rolled his eyes at his hyung’s cheesy line, but Heeseung wasn’t done. He leaned in, lowering his voice like he was about to reveal a secret. "And hey… when I came to the ranch, I saw the way she looked at you. Trust me…" He paused dramatically. "…she wasn’t looking at you like you’re just some guy." He smirked. "She was looking at you like she wanted to strangle you… but also kiss you and roll around with you in some flowery meadow."
Jungwon spat out the beer he’d just sipped, coughing. "What?!"
Heeseung laughed, patting his back. "Yeah, man… so stop running both of you and just ask her to the fair."
The soft glow of your vanity lights cast a warm hue over your makeshift beauty salon. The humidifier released a gentle scent of lavender into the air, while your desk was cluttered with serums, masks, and under-eye patches. Butter by BTS played at full volume from your laptop, filling the room with its energetic rhythm. You felt safe in your signature white robe pajamas, adorned with little red hearts that seemed to mock your current emotional state. Your face was covered in acne patches for those pesky pre-cycle breakouts, and you were dabbing serums onto your skin with surgical precision.
You had told everyone you needed to "work on your laptop," but the truth was far more embarrassing: you were literally hiding from Jungwon.
A week had passed since that kiss, seven days where every time you closed your eyes, your mind replayed that moment on loop, making you feel like a teenager with your first crush.
God, you hadn’t felt this lost over someone since the age of dinosaurs. As the music swelled, you couldn’t stay still: your feet kicked at the air, your heels dug into the duvet, and every so often, you grabbed a pillow to scream into, trying to muffle the cry that tasted of frustration and desire.
Downstairs, Jungwon entered the house with his usual ease, as if he belonged there. He greeted your grandpa with a respectful nod and smiled at your aunt, who looked at him with a knowing expression.
"She’s upstairs," your aunt whispered, nodding toward the ceiling. "Says she’s working, but listen to that music blasting some Chinese or Korean boys, I still can’t tell which..."
Jungwon listened, hearing the bass of Butter vibrating through the floorboards. "Working, huh?" he muttered to himself with a crooked smile. "Sure, she’s probably writing an international treaty on the global phenomenon of BTS... or maybe she’s watching edited videos of a certain member..."
He took the stairs two at a time, trying to calm his racing heart. When he reached your door, just as the notes of Blood Sweat & Tears replaced the previous song, he called out your name loudly. You froze mid-motion, the tonic bottle hovering in the air, your heart leaping into your throat. You stayed still, hoping that if you pretended to be a piece of furniture, he would leave. But Jungwon wasn’t the type to give up. Ever.
"I know you’re in there," he said, his tone a mix of amusement and exasperation. "I saw your sneakers abandoned outside the door, and noona, I could hear you humming the chorus all the way down the hall... let’s just say you’re not exactly a secret agent."
From the other side of the room, you huffed so hard a strand of hair flew away from your face. You wanted the floor to open up and swallow you whole right then.
"Go away! I’m naked! I just got out of the shower!" you yelled, hoping the mere thought of your nudity would scare him off. Instead, you heard the metallic sound of the doorknob turning. Why hadn’t I locked it?! you cursed mentally. The door opened slowly, and Jungwon leaned against the doorframe, one hand covering his face. Slowly, he spread his fingers apart, his eyes scanning you from head to toe.
"Well, city girl... " You don’t look half-naked to me," he said, chuckling. You jumped up from the bed, pointing a finger at his face, still smeared with your face mask.
"Are you some kind of pervert? You just barge into someone’s room when they say they’re half-naked?"
"No," he lied shamelessly. You weren’t sure if he was denying being a pervert or denying barging into rooms, but his eyes betrayed his thoughts as they lingered on how the pajamas clung to your body. A pervert? Maybe. Because that pajama looks like a second skin on your soft body, he thought, taking in how it hugged your curves—your tan skin, the swell of your breasts, your hips, and how perfectly it wrapped around your thighs, where he imagined feeling them against him. The scent of cherry and vanilla invaded his nostrils, and yes... maybe Jungwon was becoming a pervert. Or maybe just obsessed with you. Especially with your lips, slightly pouty and glossed with your usual cherry lip gloss, drawing him in like a moth to a flame.
Regaining his composure, Jungwon took a step forward, his dimples flashing briefly before disappearing as he turned serious again.
"Heeseung told me to invite you to the town fair."
You rolled your eyes, exasperated, but looked at him with slight curiosity. "Oh, great. So now your ‘world champion’ friend is meddling too? I was taught not to trust someone fighting for the same dream as me. It’s competition, Jungwon."
You watched him step even closer until you could feel the heat radiating from his body.
"You can be friends with everyone, you know? And from Heeseung, you could learn a lot: take inspiration from how he trains, his grit... take everything he has to offer," he paused, lowering his voice to a rough whisper, "except his advice on how to treat a girl, let’s just say he’s a total disaster at that. But for once, he’s right, and you should come."
He smiled at you, his gaze sweeping over you from head to toe. A shiver ran down your spine, starting from your neck and reaching the tips of your toes.
"I’m not interested in town fairs. Dust, noise, and questionable music? No thanks, I’ll stay comfortably in my room watching a K-drama," you said, looking at him. Jungwon smiled, knowing exactly what your answer would be.
"Mmm." He let his fingers slide over your shoulder, barely grazing the fabric of your robe. "Too bad... because I want you there."
You looked at him intensely, unable to move as his finger slowly traced the delicate line of your neck, stopping on your cheek.
"And if I refuse?" you challenged, despite your shortness of breath. He flashed that sly smile, the one that made you want to kiss him and strangle him at the same time. He leaned toward your ear, his lips brushing against it as he spoke:
"Then I’ll come get you myself. I’ll come right here, throw you over my shoulder, and carry you out just as you are even if you’re wearing this little heart-covered pajama set... and you know I’d do it."
He said no more, turned, and left the room with the confidence of someone who knew he’d already won. You stayed there, frozen, until you heard the front door close. Only then did you collapse onto the bed, burying your face in the pillow and screaming with all your might, because that boy wasn’t just getting into your head he was taking over every single thought you had.
The air of the fair carried all the way to your room: the scent of frying oil, the laughter, the snorts of animals, and above all, the music.
When you finally arrived at the fairgrounds, the smoky aroma of grilled food and cotton candy filled your senses. It had been years since you’d seen so many people celebrating like this. Sure, New York had its "neighborhood festivals," but nothing like this. Above you, strings of colorful lights swayed, casting long shadows over the crowd, and you stood there in your yellow fringe dress, Montana-chic, but with a price tag that screamed "don’t get too close with beer or caramel apples."
People at your family’s booth glanced at you, but your eyes searched for only one person and of course, you found him.
Jungwon stood by the charity fishing booth, wearing a simple white T-shirt that made his tan glow. He laughed heartily, his dimples on full display, while two local girls practically clung to him, one even resting a hand on his arm and whispering something that made him chuckle even harder a sharp, acidic pang of jealousy burned in your stomach.
"God, I can’t be jealous of Jungwon," you thought, gripping your bag so tightly your knuckles turned white. "He’s not even my type...not as a distraction, not as anything."
But before you could stop yourself, you muttered under your breath, not realizing your aunt was beside you:
"Look at the king of the party," you thought, scowling. "I bet he didn’t even remember inviting me."
Your aunt chuckled. "Don’t worry, Y/n. That boy’s been waiting all week to see you here at the fair."
You scoffed, but before you could react, Jungwon caught your gaze. His face lit up, and in seconds, he waved off the girls and pushed through the crowd to reach you.
"City girl! You actually came!" he exclaimed, trying to make some contact, but you pouted and stepped back slightly. His eyebrows shot up, surprised, you hadn’t avoided his touch in weeks, even if it was just to tease you.
"What’s wrong?" he asked, frowning slightly.
"I don’t want greasy fritters," you snapped, your voice unnaturally high, like a petulant child. "And you could’ve stayed with your friends… I saw how close they were to you. How they kept touching you, taking photos and videos."
Jungwon burst out laughing, seeing how flustered you were just because he’d been talking and taking pictures with some young fans. "No way, noona… are you jealous?"
Before you could retort, he grabbed your wrist, not aggressively but firmly and pulled you away from the crowd, behind a wooden storage shed.
The scent of pine and hay overpowered the fair’s smoky air.
Jungwon pressed you against the wooden planks, caging you in with his arms on either side of your head. His face was inches from yours, lit only by the flickering string lights above and the slow fall of night.
"Say it," he murmured, his usual teasing smirk playing on his lips.
"You were jealous of those two, weren’t you? The city girl scared a country boy might find someone better?"
His usual arrogance grated on you, he looked like a good boy at first glance, but if you knew him better, you’d see that Jungwon was so much more than just a pretty face but something inside you snapped.
The shame of being caught, the fear of being exposed, the insecurity you’d been carrying all week it all exploded into cold, sharp anger.
"Jealous? Me? Do you hear yourself when you talk?" you hissed, looking him up and down. "Jungwon, open your eyes and look around! We’re in the middle of nowhere, eating junk food in the dust. Do you really think I could be jealous of… this? Do you know why I left this place the second I had the chance?" You glared at him, and his smile faltered.
"It’s just a fair, I don’t understand why..." he tried to say, but you cut him off.
"No, you don’t understand anything!" you snapped. "I have a real life waiting for me four hours from here. I’m living my dream in New York, where I have a career where people matter! I could never be jealous of some country boy who thinks he’s God’s gift just because a couple of girls follow him around. Don’t even think for a second that I’d take you seriously. We’re from different worlds, and in a month, I’ll leave this state just like I did years ago. If things go well for the ranch and if there’s no disaster I’ll visit my grandpa sometimes. That’s it."
The words hung in the air, heavier than the fair’s music. Jungwon’s smile vanished completely, replaced by an expression you’d never seen before a mix of ice and deep humiliation. His usually warm, gentle gaze turned glassy. For the first time, you saw him shrink, as if your words had hit him like a bucket of ice water, making him feel small.
He took a few steps back, as if putting up a barrier. "I understand," he said, shoving his hands into his pockets and looking away.
"I’m sorry for boring you with my insignificant, repetitive life. But you know what? I thought that under that ‘superior girl’ mask, there was someone who could appreciate real things. I thought you were different from my mom… but I was wrong, you’re just another arrogant person who only thinks about themselves just like 99% of people today."
You frowned at the mention of his mom, you’d heard something about her before, but nothing concrete. He looked at you one last time, but there was no trace of the boy who teased you gently. Instead, there was sadness, and maybe the realization that you could never truly be his.
"Go back to your ‘big’ world tomorrow, Y/n. The ranch survived just fine without you for months… I’d rather stay here in my small world, where at least people know what respect is."
With that, he turned and walked away, disappearing into the crowd without a backward glance. You stayed there, alone in the darkness behind the shed, the bitter taste of your own words in your mouth and the sinking realization that maybe just maybe you’d ruined everything.
The air at your grandpa’s ranch felt suffocating those days. Ever since you’d fought with Jungwon, the tension between you two weighed heavily, especially during shared moments like breakfast, where the only sounds were the clinking of forks against ceramic plates and the quiet hum of the TV in the background.
Your aunt watched you with that maternal look that screamed, "You were stupid to say those things to him," while your grandpa sighed behind his newspaper, glancing at you both with quiet curiosity, trying to figure out what was going on and then there was Jungwon.
Your personal torment in denim and cowboy boots, with those dimples that could knock out 99% of the female population with his charm. Ever since you’d lashed out at him about "country life," he’d turned into a ghost around you. He no longer teased you, no longer made jokes about your overly glossy lip gloss or your out-of-place outfits. If he had to say something to you, he used the bare minimum of words, barely more than a robot and you? Deep down, you felt like a colossal jerk.
One afternoon, you watched him from a distance as he fixed the chicken coop fence. You leaned against the tool shed, trying to look detached, but you were practically devouring him with your eyes. Jungwon could feel your presence; you knew it from the way his back muscles tensed under his sweat-soaked T-shirt but he pretended not to notice and kept hammering a nail with fierce precision. Then, as you walked away, he muttered under his breath:
"That girl has serious issues, no, she’s literally bipolar. But what can you expect from someone who drinks weird matcha concoctions or those TikTok smoothies that cost almost $20 and come in strange colors..."
With a little pout, you decided that this silence was killing you. So, you went on the offensive or rather, you made a series of awkward attempts at reconnection that would’ve made you look like a high school loser.
You followed him to the pool, where Jungwon was bent over the filters, jaw clenched, lost in thought.
"Need a hand? I can clean with the net," you said, trying to sound helpful. You grabbed the pole and started swiping at the water, nearly hitting him more than the leaves. Jungwon stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans, and took the net from you with infuriating slowness. "It’s already a miracle if you clean your own room, Y/N. You can’t even keep a closet in order, let alone a pool."
You blinked, your cheeks burning with frustration, and tried to say something, but another ranch hand arrived, and Jungwon walked off with him without so much as a glance, leaving you there with your adorable pout.
Another time, you tried the oldest excuse in the book. "Jungwon, can you teach me to ride better? I feel like my posture isn’t… correct." He nearly spat out the iced tea he was drinking and leaned against the stable doorframe, sizing you up.
"Y/N, seriously? Don’t you have a more believable excuse to get my attention? We all know you ride better than half the tourists we host."
You felt your face flush all the way to your ears. You would’ve dug a hole and buried yourself right then if you could, you were pathetic.
Another time, you tried lifting a heavy Western saddle like it was a feather, nearly toppling backward. Jungwon gave you a look that was half irritation, half something that looked like nostalgia. And every time you turned your back, you could still feel his gaze burning into you. You missed him. You missed him like crazy and he hated that he couldn’t stop wanting you, because deep down, you wanted him too…
The final straw that made you realize how much you needed him was the start of the rodeo season across the states: Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma. Wednesday had become your personal hell.
Watching the truck get loaded up felt like a punch to the gut because you wanted to go with him. But you knew you weren’t welcome. So, you stood on the porch with your arms crossed, trying not to let anyone see you trembling, and shouted a "Good luck, Jungwon!" that sounded more like a prayer than a wish. And he didn’t give in… he didn’t say goodbye, just tipped his hat. You hated that damn cowboy gesture that hid his eyes.
"Thanks, Y/N," he said, no smile, no dimples..nothing.
You went back to your room with stinging eyes, feeling like an idiot. From Wednesday to Sunday, the ranch felt like a graveyard because you missed the sound of his boots, his scent of leather and open air, even the way he annoyed you andhis laugh. The best part was when he came back on Sunday night, still dusty from Texas, exhaustion in his bones. And without realizing it, you felt better just seeing him back at the ranch.
Maybe you realized that you liked Jungwon way too much. And what you were starting to feel for him wasn’t just a summer fling—it was something deeper.
That Wednesday, your past came knocking and landed right in the dusty driveway of the ranch. Your colleagues from New York arrived with their designer bags and that air of superiority that used to be yours too, but was slowly fading. Chloe hugged you, leaving behind a trail of expensive perfume that clashed terribly with the scent of hay and fresh air you now considered "home."
"Y/N! It’s so charming! It feels like we’re on the set of a 1930s Western movie!" Chloe exclaimed as you played tour guide around the ranch.
You felt like a traitor to yourself on one hand, you couldn’t wait to return to New York, where the "city girl" everyone knew still existed but on the other, you were beginning to realize that if you went back, what would you really have?
A nice apartment, a good salary, and "friends" you spent hundreds of dollars on cocktails and fancy dinners with, but no one to share lunches with, no one to watch sunsets with, no one to give you the warm hugs your grandpa did, or make you laugh like Jungwon.
"I’ll admit, the air here is definitely better than New York’s, but Y/N, I bet you miss the stuffy subway air and the hot dog carts at 9 AM outside City Hall,"
Mark joked, nodding toward a group of chickens near the ranch entrance. You smiled, but it was mechanical. Your eyes kept drifting to the clock. Jungwon’s departure for the Texas rodeo was getting closer.
You’d been so busy playing the part of the "successful city girl" with your friends that the routine of the past few weeks had slipped through your fingers. By now, it had become a kind of superstition, a secret ritual: every Wednesday, no matter how much you and Jungwon were at odds, you were always there on the porch, shouting or whispering a "Good luck, Jungwon!" the only thread left, the only bridge over the chasm of harsh words you’d dug between you but between chats about revenue and Chloe’s selfies in front of the stables, time slipped away.
In the distance, you saw the dust rise in the driveway as your grandpa’s pickup and the horse trailer turned the corner at the main gate. Your heart skipped a beat.
You said a quick goodbye to your colleagues and rushed into your aunt’s office, the door slamming a little too hard against the wall.
Auntie? Did Jungwon and Grandpa already leave?" She looked up, adjusting her glasses with deliberate slowness, and nodded. "Yes, sweetheart. They just left—though they were running a bit late, if I’m honest." She chuckled. "Jungwon kept lingering like he was waiting for the sun to shift... like he was waiting for someone."
Hearing your aunt’s words, you froze in the doorway. He was waiting for you. He knew you’d come to say goodbye, despite your harsh words, despite the weeks of cold silence. He’d stayed there, wasting time, hoping you’d appear on the porch. Instead, you’d been talking about offices and skyscrapers with people who didn’t even know how much a saddle weighed.
You felt like an idiot. A selfish, stupid idiot.
When you went outside, you ignored Chloe calling you to show you a photo. You sat on the wooden steps and pulled out your phone, your fingers trembling slightly. You opened the chat with Jungwon.
To: 🤠Jungwon-> Hey... I was busy with my colleagues this morning and didn’t realize you were leaving for Texas. I just wanted to say good luck for this weekend’s competition. The whole ranch will be watching and cheering for you. Break a leg!
You stared at the "Send" button like it was the trigger of a gun. You wanted to add more... you wanted to write: "I’m sorry for what I said at the fair." You wanted to write: "I miss you when you’re not here." You wanted to write: "Please, be careful." But pride was still a hard pill to swallow, you sighed and pressed send.
The ranch’s living room was thick with the smell of beer, popcorn, and that feverish excitement that always comes before big events. Your colleagues from New York sat on the leather couches, fascinated by what they saw as exotic folklore but for you, it had become routine. Every weekend during rodeo season, you’d sit in front of the TV, watching young men fight for seconds on the back of an enraged bull. For you, your aunt, the stable hands, and everyone else at the ranch, this wasn’t entertainment it was real life. These young men chose this path to earn a decent living, always hoping they wouldn’t end up in a wheelchair for months or worse, for the rest of their lives.
You perched on the armrest of your aunt’s chair, your fingers digging into the fabric because you were literally sweating from nerves. Chloe, sitting beside you, was recording an Instagram story.
"This is insane, Y/N! How does he even stay on that thing?" she exclaimed.
You didn’t answer. Every time you watched him train, you asked yourself the same question. And right now, you feel sick to your stomach.
Your message from Wednesday was still unread no response. Maybe he hadn’t even seen it. Or maybe he had, and decided that your "good luck" was too little, too late. Because what he really wanted was to see you there, like every other time he left for a rodeo, hearing you shout that "good luck" out loud. It seemed like a small thing, but for Jungwon, it wasn’t.
On the screen, the Pro Rodeo graphics flashed with odds, success rates, and the wins and losses of the prodigy himself, Yang Jungwon: currently 2nd in the world rankings. The camera zoomed in on the starting pen, where he sat straddling a bull that looked like pure muscle and hatred for humanity. Jungwon adjusted his hat, his face a mask of absolute concentration beautifully, yet deadly.
"And here’s the man rewriting rodeo history this year!" the announcer’s voice boomed through the TV speakers. "Yang Jungwon, ladies and gentlemen! If he can stay on this bull for eight seconds, he doesn’t just win the Texas round, he jumps to first place in the championship! He’s the absolute favorite this season, even more than Lee Heeseung. Jungwon’s got an agility we haven’t seen since the golden days of the circuit, and maybe that’s just what this sport needed to put some pressure on Heeseung!" the commentator laughed.
"Look at how tense his muscles are," Mark commented, impressed. "That guy’s a true professional."
You nodded, watching him so focused yet tense at the same time. The commentator picked up again:
"Jungwon’s got flawless technique," the second commentator continued as the camera zoomed in on his gloved hand gripping the rope. "He doesn’t just endure he reads the bull. See how he’s waiting for the perfect moment? If he closes this ride today, the world title is practically his. He’s the man to beat this year."
Your heart was doing backflips. Please, just get down safely. Please, Jungwon.
The gate burst open, and the crowd erupted as the bull charged out, snorting and kicking up a cloud of red dust. For the first four seconds, it was like a dance, Jungwon moved with every twist and turn of the massive beast, his grace breathtaking, his control absolute.
"Look at him! He’s a statue! Doesn’t move an inch!" the commentator shouted. "He’s doing it! He’s really bringing this championship home…"
The commentator didn’t finish his sentence. The bull did something bulls at this level shouldn’t do it planted its front hooves and whipped into a violent, sudden spin. Jungwon was thrown off balance, his hand caught for a split second too long on the enraged bull, sending him flying. His body hit the metal railing of the arena with his left shoulder, the impact echoing through the room like a gunshot. He crumpled to the ground, motionless, as the bull blinded by rage charged back toward the space where he lay.
"NO!" you screamed, hands flying to your face. Chloe looked at you, concerned by your reaction. The commentators’ voices filled the room:
"Oh no! That’s a nasty fall! He’s down! Medics are entering the arena, the bull’s still loose near him, this is an emergency situation, folks..."
You shot to your feet, rushing to your aunt, tears burning hot on your cheeks. Your mind raced with one thought: It’s my fault. It’s my fault for distracting him, for hurting him, for not telling him that kiss turned everything upside down.
"Y/n, sweetheart..." Your aunt knelt beside you, wrapping her trembling arms around your shoulders. You could feel her crying too because to her, Jungwon was the son she never had, but she was trying to stay strong for you.
"Breathe, baby. Jungwon’s strong, he’s a seasoned fighter. You know how many times I’ve seen riders like him fall? Countless. And a few days later, they’re back on the bulls like nothing happened."
“Auntie, he’s not moving!" you sobbed, burying your face in her shoulder. Your New York colleagues stood in awkward, frightened silence, finally realizing this wasn’t just a game for you. Chloe understood maybe for the first time since she’d known you that you were feeling something real for someone.
"Please, just tell him to get up... Jungwon, please, get up..." you whispered through tears. And in that moment, as the broadcast cut away to avoid showing blood, you realized you didn’t care about New York, your career, or your pride. Right then, all that existed was the ranch and a boy with sweet dimples who had been stealing your heart, one stubborn piece at a time.
That evening, after your grandpa had simply told you Jungwon was "fine" without offering any details, you’d spent the last forty-eight hours digging through the internet like a woman possessed.
What you uncovered about the world of bull riders wasn’t some adrenaline-fueled boy’s game, it was a brutal, high-stakes money machine. A champion at Jungwon’s level could rake in $500,000 to a million in prize money alone, not even counting the astronomical sums sponsors threw at riders willing to cheat death for eight seconds. You nearly choked on your water reading those numbers.
Jungwon, if he won the world title in just a few weeks, could live off that money for the rest of his life, not just him, but any future family he might have because Jungwon wasn’t going to stop at 21.
Since you’d arrived in Montana, you’d seen how much they loved him in the professional circuit. He’d keep riding for years. But the cost... that was what made you sick to your stomach, what made your blood boil all at once.
That comment you’d read had stuck with you like a thorn:
"Let’s hope he’s okay. We’ve bet everything on him. We can’t afford to lose out because some kid got buckled off a bull."
Some kid? He wasn’t some kid to them. He was an investment and you....you’d treated him like a summer fling from the moment you’d laid eyes on him. You’d dismissed him as a distraction, something temporary. But after seeing him hit that red dirt, after watching him lie there motionless, you realized something that burned worse than the Montana sun:
Jungwon wasn’t a summer fling. He wasn’t just someone. He was the one making a permanent stop in your heart, whether you’d admitted it or not.
That Sunday morning had been a nightmare for you. Every time you saw a vehicle approaching the ranch, you hoped it was Jungwon’s van, but it was always just another tourist or family arriving. On one hand, you were happy because the money to pay off some of the ranch’s debts was steadily coming in. On the other, you couldn’t wait for him to return.
After finishing your meal, you sat in the hammock with your laptop, trying to work, but your eyes kept drifting toward the gate every few minutes.
When you finally saw the van pull into the driveway, your heart started racing. The dust settled, revealing the figures stepping out: your grandpa looked like he had aged ten years, the physiotherapist had a tense expression, and then there was him: Jungwon.
He wasn’t wearing his usual cowboy hat. Instead, his hood was pulled up, but it didn’t hide the black sling immobilizing his left arm against his chest. As he took his first steps, you saw him clench his jaw against the sudden pain of movement. You left your laptop in the hammock and hurried down the steps toward him.
"Jungwon!" you called out, running to him. "Oh my God, Jungwon... I saw you on TV, I followed everything. How are you? What did the doctors say? Will you recover in time for the finals?"
He stopped but didn’t look at you right away. When he finally lifted his gaze, his eyes usually so full of warmth whenever they met yours were now cold, glassy, devoid of that spark that made you feel alive.
"I don’t want to talk, Y/N," he said, his voice sharp. "The last thing I want right now is to hear your voice."
His words hit you like a whip, you hadn’t expected them. He took a step to the side, limping visibly, and headed toward his room without looking back.
You stood there, paralyzed, searching for your grandpa’s gaze as you helped unload the bags, hoping for even a sliver of comfort.
"Grandpa, but the finals? Will he recover in time? I read that if his shoulder...." you asked, hopeful for at least some discussion with him.
"Enough, Y/n!" your grandpa snapped, slamming the van door shut so hard it made you flinch. "Do you think we care about your articles or what they say on TikTok? That boy risks losing everything he’s bled for because of one distraction. Go inside, let us work on Jungwon’s recovery, and for God’s sake, leave him alone!"
Your breath caught in your throat, and the corners of your eyes grew slightly damp. You closed your eyes for a moment, trying to hold back the tears. You grabbed Jungwon’s bag—the one he always took to competitions and followed him.
"Y/n! Where do you think you’re going?" your grandpa yelled after you. "Leave him alone! This isn’t the time to gobother him with your excuses or stupid questions! Get back inside right now!"
You turned to look at him, and this time, there was no trace of the sassy New York girl. There was only a woman losing the one thing that truly mattered.
"I’m not going to bother him, Grandpa, and I’m not going to pester him. I’m going to him because he’s falling apart, and I’m the only one who knows how much of a mistake it was to let him leave without a hug. Yell at me all you want, but I’m not moving from there."
Ignoring your grandpa’s shouts as he called your name, telling you to come back inside, you headed toward Jungwon’s cabin. You had to clear the air between you two.
The room was dim, lit only by the faint glow of twilight filtering through the half-drawn curtains. You took a deep breath and knocked on Jungwon’s door just once before stepping inside without waiting for a response.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands, his good shoulder bearing the weight of everything that had happened in Texas. Without looking up, Jungwon lifted his eyes slightly, he knew you had entered without his permission.
"I told you I didn’t want to hear your voice," he murmured, still not lifting his gaze. You felt the lump in your throat tighten, but you swallowed it down, pretending to cough to clear your voice.
"Well, I’ve never been great at following orders," you replied, trying to lighten the mood. You set his bag down on the floor and approached him cautiously, as if walking through a minefield. You were genuinely afraid he might explode at any moment, that he’d say the worst things and make it clear you no longer existed for him.
"Leave, Y/n. Go back to New York, to your perfect colleagues and your perfect life. You have no idea what kind of pressure I’m under... If I don’t win the finals, I lose my sponsors, the ranch, everything good this life has given me," he said, finally lifting his eyes to meet yours. You saw that even his eyes were slightly glossy.
"But then again, like you said... I’m just a country boy who enjoys riding bulls for a living. It’s all a game to you, right?I’m just the clown, the rodeo fool everyone laughs at."
He tried to take off his hoodie, but the sling on his left arm made it difficult, and the sleeve got caught. You heard him huff in frustration, a muffled groan escaping his teeth. You couldn’t bear to watch him struggle with something so simple. You stepped closer, reaching out your hands.
"Let me help," you whispered, but he glared at you.
"I can do it myself!" he snapped, trying to push you away. But you planted your hands firmly on his shoulders.
"Shut up and stay still," you said, pulling down the zipper with a decisive motion and helping him slide off the heavy fabric. Underneath, he wore a black shirt that clung to his muscles like a second skin, making his sculpted chest and arms even more pronounced with every strained breath he took.
He pulled away from you, muttering a "thanks," and sat down to take off his shoes before settling back on the bed, legs spread wide, staring at the wall as if he could knock it down with his gaze. You stood there, watching him for minutes, and then without being able to stop yourself, you burst into tears. Small sobs filled the room.
Jungwon tried to ignore you, his jaw clenching as your crying grew louder. Eventually, he turned toward you and saw your hands covering your face, your expression a mix of sadness and worry—something he’d never seen from you before, not even when you’d found out how much debt your grandpa owed or when you’d heard about his health struggles.
"Y/n... you don’t need to cry. I’m fine," he said, his voice softer now, almost... gentle.
"It’s my fault," you sobbed into your hands. "It’s all my fault."
He furrowed his brows slightly, shaking his head because he didn’t understand what you were talking about. His voice softened even more as he said:
"Come here, Y/n."
You shook your head no, burying your face further into your trembling hands. You felt him reach out, his open palm a silent invitation to come closer.
"Come on, noona. Everything hurts, don’t make me get up again. Just come here."
When he called you "noona" after weeks of silence, you moved closer, letting him pull you to sit on the edge of the bed. His skin was warm, rough, real as he brushed your cheek with his thumb, wiping away a tear.
"It’s not your fault," he whispered. "I was the one who messed up on that bull."
"No," you replied, and this time, you let go completely, stretching your body out on the mattress and burying your face in the crook of his neck—the one place you knew wasn’t bruised. As you settled in, you realized Jungwon was becoming a second home to you. Feeling his hand begin to gently stroke your back, you knew you wanted to stay there forever, close to him, and that you never wanted to lose him. Jungwon, feeling you cry against him, seemed to have the last of his barriers crumble.
"Hey," he murmured, trying to joke so he wouldn’t drown in tears too.
"You know how many times I’ve fallen since I started riding? Don’t worry, that bull’s gonna have nightmares about me next time ‘cause I’m gonna ride him right!" He tried to laugh, but you murmured against his neck:
"There’s nothing funny about this," you said, lifting your head just enough to look at him, your trembling fingers brushing his jaw. "That bull even messed up your face... look at all these little scratches you have."
You gently disinfected the small scratches on his face, and in that moment, the atmosphere between you shifted. Jungwon looked at you intently, seeing how the faint sunlight wrapped around your face, how your eyes were glossy but alive, never leaving his. Without thinking, he slid his hand up your thigh and shifted you with a fluid motion from the edge of the bed to straddling his lap. Your legs wrapped around his powerful hips, and his good arm pulled you against his chest. Your lips were a breath apart, so close that Jungwon could see every shade in your eyes, and you, his.
"I’m sorry, Jungwon," you whispered, a millimeter from his mouth. "I’m sorry for making you suffer."
I... I was so stupid at the fair, Jungwon. I don’t know why I said those awful things... I think you’re actually the best guy I’ve ever met," you murmured between broken breaths. Under his gaze, you felt small and vulnerable, stripped of the New York armor that usually made you feel invincible.
Jungwon didn’t respond right away. Instead, he gently pressed his lips to every spot on your face where tears had fallen, kissing them away with warm, tender kisses, one after another, tracing their path up your cheeks until he reached your eyes. You felt cradled by his soft kisses.
"I admit it... " Those words came out because I was jealous," you continued to confess, now unable to stop. "I was jealous seeing those girls so close to you. I know it’s a pathetic excuse, but I don’t think those things... I think you’re working your ass off to fix the debts. I think you’re way too young to have this ranch on your shoulders, and I...."
Jungwon, hearing you ramble, pressed a finger to your lips and said: "Shut up for a second, noona."
The command stole your breath as he pressed his lips to yours. This time, there was no shyness—just a primal need that tasted of salt from your tears and the sweet, minty flavor that was uniquely him.
You parted your lips instantly, welcoming his tongue in a dance that was anything but romantic it was desperate. You carefully wrapped your arms around his neck, mindful of his injury, and sucked on his lower lip. Jungwon groaned against your mouth, pulling you closer with his good hand, pressing you so hard against him that your hips collided with his. Under your sundress, the only barrier was your panties, and the only thing separating you from his hard, demanding erection was the thin fabric.
You moaned at the friction between your bodies, burying your hands in his hair. He smiled against your lips, knowing the effect he had on you from the very first day you met.
"Tell me to stop, noona. Please," he panted against the hollow of your neck as his hand slid timidly under your sundress. His finger traced small circles on the inside of your thigh.
"No..." you whispered, shaking your head. "You can do anything with me."
Jungwon paused to look into your eyes with an intensity that made you feel like he was seeing right through you.
"You’re such a spoiled, bipolar girl, Y/N. First, you say the worst things to me, make me feel like I’m less than you, and now you’re offering yourself to me like a sacrifice?" he murmured as his lips brushed against the skin of your neck, alternating kisses with gentle bites.
"Do you like the idea that the country boy you despised could take you however he wants, just like he’s wanted to since the first day he saw you?"
As his words hit you, his hand slid under the hem of your dress. You felt his warm, rough skin, marked by veins, slowly moving up your inner thigh, burning every inch until his fingers found the damp lace edge of your panties.
"Fuck, noona... you’re so wet down here," he cursed, feeling the damp center of your panties with a mix of triumph and hunger.
"Look at what you’ve become for me while I was away," he chuckled, and you hid your face in the crook of his neck, unable to bear his gaze. Like him, you began kissing his skin frantically, leaving purple marks on his collarbone, claiming the boy everyone wanted but who secretly belonged only to you.
"I want to see your face while I touch you, Y/n," he ordered, gripping your chin and forcing you to lift your gaze.
"No..." you murmured, trying to escape by shaking your head and continuing to kiss the lower part of his neck. After so long, you heard his laughter fill the room.
"Where’s the brave city girl gone? The one who looked down on me at the fair? Now you’re just a wet little girl trembling on my lap because you know I’m about to take everything I want."
He whispered in your ear as his fingers gently shifted the edge of your panties to touch you. When you felt his finger caress you delicately, moving in light circles even in that most sensitive area, it was almost torture. Without warning, that finger slid inside the slick folds Jungwon had dreamed of sinking into.
You arched your back, a soft moan escaping your throat as he began moving his hand with a knowing rhythm, manipulating your body as if he knew every secret better than you did. You felt his finger curl inside you, and at the same time, Jungwon loved pushing deeper, then almost pulling out completely, only to feel how eager you were for him before thrusting back in.
"Look how tight you grip me, noona. You’re so tight and so hot," he whispered against your ear as he continued to push inside you, making you rhythmically collide against his hand. "Who’s the superior one now? Who’s really taking control of you?"
He said with that smirk you couldn’t stand but adored, seeing his dimples and his cheeks flushed like yours. You couldn’t answer.
His fingers, two, then three, slid inside you effortlessly, moving with practiced skill, stretching and pushing deep until you felt that dull, burning heat explode in your core.
"All that New York arrogance, those expensive clothes, the way you looked at me like I was trash... and look at you now, 'city girl,' crying because you were worried about a boy who fell off a bull, the same boy you kept pretending to despise. But you’re also crying because of how good I’m making you feel with my fingers. And damn, it’s so good to feel you soaking my hand, begging a country boy not to stop."
You threw your head back as you rode his fingers, desperate to snap back at him but what could you say? It was the truth.
"Jungwon... please..." you gasped, shivers racing down your spine. Hearing you beg, he stopped abruptly, leaving his fingers buried deep inside you. The sudden emptiness was a torture you hadn’t been prepared for. Your eyes flew open, searching for his, and found him watching you with that crooked smirk.
"Please what, Y/n? Tell me what you want. Use that mouth to say exactly what you want from me and don’t lie to yourself this time," he taunted, degrading your dignity with that infuriating, smug smile that made your blood boil. "Do you want me to keep going? Do you want me to make you come so hard you forget your own name?"
"Yes... yes, fuck, do it." You pressed your body against his chest, inhaling his scent like you were drunk on him. He laughed at how desperate you were for him, then resumed pumping inside you with mastery because he was done being the ranch’s good boy, the Jungwon who took care of everything. This time, he added his thumb, pressing hard right where he knew you’d lose all control. His fingers thrust inside you, fast and relentless, while his thumb circled with a pressure that made you see stars.
Your walls clenched around his hand in involuntary spasms, trying to hold onto the pleasure that was becoming unbearable. Small tears of ecstasy streaked your sweet face.
"Fuck, you’re so tight," he groaned against your lips as he kept stroking and pumping deeper inside you.
Without realizing it, you moved frantically, riding him, trying to match every thrust, feeling the hardness of his sweatpants pressing against your intimacy while he kept digging inside you. New York didn’t exist anymore. Your colleagues, who had told you they couldn’t wait to see you before leaving, didn’t exist. The email from your boss, demanding you send your one-way ticket back to New York as soon as possible, didn’t exist. There was only the pressure of Jungwon’s good arm holding you crushed against him, and this feeling of being possessed in a way you never thought possible and you loved it.
"Look at me when you come, Y/N... don’t you dare close your eyes. I want to see the city girl break apart in my hands because of me and no one else."
And then it happened: a white-hot wave of heat began to spill from where his fingers were working frantically to pleasure you. You screamed his name, your voice choked against his shoulder, as your body was wracked with violent spasms that arched you against him. You clung to him like he was your lifeline, and he didn’t stop, he kept moving his fingers inside you even as you came, savoring every single contraction, claiming every ounce of your pleasure. Because from that moment on, Jungwon had decided: only he would touch you and you’d be his, even if you were 4,000 miles away.
Jungwon’s recovery had become a routine part of life at the ranch. Everyone was worried about him, and for the first time in your life, you found yourself face-to-face with journalists trying to sneak onto the ranch to film or conduct interviews about Jungwon’s recovery. But no one talked not even Jungwon, he never brought it up at dinner, during work, or when the two of you were together.
Every morning, you watched him from the kitchen window as he did mobility exercises with resistance bands, his face twisted into a mask of pure pain. His physiotherapist was a sadist, but Jungwon was worse, he never gave up, even as he mounted his trusted bull. At first, he could barely stay on for two seconds, but with each passing day, he improved. Since that night when you two had finally talked and understood each other, Jungwon had become a silent shadow around you. He wanted to spend every possible moment with you because, on his crumpled calendar, he had circled the date of your departure in a bloody red marker.
At the beginning of the summer, he had circled that hypothetical week when you would leave as a celebratory milestone for himself. But now, every time his eyes fell on that page, a shiver ran down his spine. He knew that after the world finals, you would leave Montana, your family, and most importantly him and honestly, he wouldn’t stop you. He wouldn’t make the same mistake his father had.
He had already seen what it was like to watch someone live and survive in a place they hated. The most important example was his mother. He knew what it meant to chain someone to Montana when their heart beat to the rhythm of a metropolis. He would never ask you to stay, just as his father had begged his mother to after 10 years of fake happiness, he had watched his mother leave and build a life she truly loved far away from Montana.
The air that evening was crisp, a sign that the end of August was approaching and the days were gradually getting shorter. As the sun set, everyone had started draping something over their shoulders because the evening temperatures were dropping slightly.
Jungwon had asked you out for a movie, and you had assumed he would take you into town, to a cinema with air conditioning and velvet seats. After all, when a guy says, "Let’s go watch a movie together," anyone in the world would think they were heading to a movie theater but Jungwon was different from everyone else, and he could surprise you, as always.
So, you pulled out a champagne-colored dress from your wardrobe that hugged your curves. You knew it would drive him and every cowboy in town...crazy. You paired it with a short black cashmere cardigan and sandals. Your makeup was light, but it had still taken you forty minutes between skincare and blending. Your hair fell sleek over your shoulders, and with a five-minute delay, you finally came downstairs.
You saw him on the porch, wearing slightly baggy jeans, a white T-shirt that clung to his back muscles, and a zip-up hoodie. He was holding his laptop, and you looked at him skeptically: Why does he have a computer in his hand?
You approached him, and you saw him scan your body from head to toe. Your cheeks flushed slightly red, and you tried not to let him see how nervous you were.
"What time does the movie start?" you asked, nervously adjusting the strap of your sandal. He turned slowly, eyeing you from head to toe once more, his pupils dilating as if he hadn’t fully realized how seriously dressed up you were the first time he saw you.
"Damn, City Girl. I didn’t know you needed a dress that probably costs as much as my first pro saddle just to walk ten meters to the garden," he said, his mouth slightly open because you were seriously stunning and dressed like that, you were driving him crazy.
When you heard the word garden, your eyes widened, and you thought he must be joking.
"In the garden? Are you kidding me? I spent an hour straightening my hair and choosing this outfit just to stay on the ranch and watch a movie on a laptop?"
Jungwon chuckled, and you saw him give a shy smile, catching a glimpse of those dimples that always made you melt. You heard a low, vibrating sound come from his mouth.
"Well, I’m happy to know you waste so much of your precious time just to get my approval... it flatters me, really," he said, tucking a strand of your hair behind your ear. You glared at him and said:
"You’re an arrogant idiot, Yang Jungwon! I hope that laptop dies halfway through the movie! I thought we were going into town to watch a movie like normal people in this damn world!" you said with a pout that you knew was terribly cute.
He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, then pressed his lips to yours in a brief, soft kiss and whispered, "You’re beautiful, noona." He took your hand, intertwining his fingers with yours, and said:
"Trust me, noona. I’ve planned everything perfectly for our first date."
You walked for a few minutes until he led you to the swing—the one where you had taken photos for the ranch. He had created a love nest for the two of you: there were pillows everywhere, a wool blanket that smelled of fresh laundry, the stars above you, and in the distance, you could see the strings of little lights from the ranch. There was a huge box of popcorn: half classic flavor, half chocolate-covered, just the way you liked them. You felt something you hadn’t felt in a long time: little butterflies fluttering in your stomach because no one had ever gone to so much trouble for you. You brushed away the tears that threatened to form in your eyes.
"TADAAAA," he exclaimed with a smirk. "Better than a movie theater that smells like old carpet, right?"
He guided you onto the swing, and you suddenly felt shy under his gaze, which never left you. He leaned in, placing a finger under your chin to make you look at him, seeing how you couldn’t meet his eyes but only looked at what he had prepared that afternoon.
"So? Did I leave you speechless, City Girl?"
You rolled your eyes, trying to recover your New York pride, and said:
"It’s not the first time I’ve watched a movie outdoors, you know? They do it every week in Central Park. It’s a very... nice thing."
Jungwon chuckled and saw him turn on the laptop. "Well, then, imagine this is your Central Park, and I’m your escort from the Big Apple!"
You looked at the stars above you, heard the sounds of animals in the distance, felt how his scent mixed with that of nature, and watched his profile illuminated by the screen. You whispered:
"It’s nicer here," as if you were afraid he might hear your confession. "You thought of this... it wasn’t the town’s idea. It’s something... real."
He turned to you with a suddenly serious look and moved closer. "Wait, did you just compliment me? Did the Queen of Manhattan just admit that I can do something better than her favorite city?"
You made a vague gesture with your hand and said: "Don’t get too excited, Cowboy."
In an instant, Jungwon pushed you back on the swing, hovering over you with his solid body. He started tickling your sides, right where he knew you'd lose every shred of dignity.
"Say it! Admit it’s a compliment!" he demanded, but you shook your head.
"No! Never!" you shouted through laughter, kicking and trying to wriggle free from his grip. But he was relentless, his fingers quick and skilled. As you laughed until your eyes nearly teared up, he lowered his face and began kissing the base of your neck, alternating kisses with tickles. The sudden rush of pleasure caught you off guard, and you moaned.
"Okay, okay! It was a compliment, you’re amazing, just stop!" you said, almost in tears and breathless from his antics. He lifted his face, his hair tousled and his eyes shining with triumph at seeing you so undone by him.
"Good girl, you should always be honest with me," he murmured, and then he kissed you again, this time with more hunger, seeking physical contact as if his life depended on it.
"God, you’re so clingy, Jungwon!" you exclaimed, trying to catch your breath and push him away slightly. "Who would’ve ever thought that the future world champion of bull riding could be so sticky and sweet?" you said, ruffling his soft hair. He looked at you with a glint of mischief and shrugged.
"Maybe I’m just selective, noona, or maybe I’ve figured out that I like older girls who are a little bossy with me," he said, chuckling. He adjusted the laptop on your intertwined legs. "We'd better watch the movie now, before I decide to do something else with this silk dress!" he said, caressing your side and pulling you closer with his uninjured arm around your waist.
But throughout the entire movie, Jungwon couldn’t stay still. It was as if he had a physical need to feel that you were there. His hand traced hypnotic little circles on your side, his legs were tangled with yours under the blanket, and as if that wasn’t enough, halfway through the movie, he rested his head right between your neck and the beginning of your chest. You felt him sigh like a child who had finally found his place in the world, and his world was increasingly taking shape with you as the main protagonist of his future life.
The world championship finals were just over a week away, and the ranch was no longer the quiet refuge it had been before you arrived at the beginning of the summer. Instead, it had become something of a gathering spot for Jungwon’s fans. Every day, pick-up trucks filled with tourists and admirers stopped at the gate, hoping to catch a glimpse of him training. Jungwon handled it all with a grace that left you speechless he stopped for photos, made TikTok videos with most of the girls, gave interviews to small accounts that talked about rodeo or sports in general, signed dusty hats, and joked with kids who looked at him like he was a superhero.
Honestly, he didn’t mind that side of fame. He liked knowing that his sport and his life had started to inspire so many kids lately. But there was a darker side to it all that was wearing him down: the nosy journalists.
There were the serious ones, who talked about riding percentages, technique, and the strength of the bulls. With them, Jungwon was an open book because he loved riding bulls, and when he found himself in front of journalists who cared more about the "sporting" Jungwon, he was fascinated and even gave hour-long press conferences. But then there were the vultures, the ones who didn’t care about how his shoulder was doing or how Jerry had taken him under his wing when he was just a kid. They only wanted to know who was warming his bed or how many zeros were in his bank account.
The journalists had become Jungwon’s shadow, a constant buzz of flashes and inappropriate questions that made the air at the ranch feel heavy as lead, especially before the final world championship race that would decide everything. They were no longer just the sports reporters from RodeoSprint the ones Jungwon respected because they talked about technique, points, and boots. Now, the tabloid vultures had arrived, the ones who dug for dirt beneath the shine of the gold buckle, the ones who thought Jungwon wasn’t just fighting a bull to become World Champion but also to pay off Jerry’s debts.
The Montana sun beat down mercilessly on the bank’s parking lot, but Jungwon barely seemed to notice after spendingcountless hours under the sun, he had become one with its heat. He could almost see his reflection in the glass windows of the upscale downtown district, looking out of place among the people in suits and ties. At just 21 years old, with his slightly oversized jeans, worn hoodie, and a folder full of the ranch’s income and expenses in hand, he was the "Golden Boy" of rodeo a prodigy who smiled for fans and signed autographs with endless patience but beneath his RodeoSprint T-shirt, his heart carried the weight of an entire world on his shoulders. He took a deep breath and stepped into the bank manager’s office, where Mr. Weber awaited him.
"Jungwon, take a seat," Weber said, extending his hand. "I’ve been looking over Jerry’s ranch finances, and what you’ve accomplished is remarkable. The publicity you’ve brought in has helped—tourism is up by 20%, and expenses are down. But..." He sighed, steepling his fingers over his state-of-the-art computer. As he turned the screen toward Jungwon, he continued, "The outstanding debts are like a hydra, son. Cut off one head, and two more grow back. Between back taxes and mortgages on the equipment, we’re still looking at over $150,000, not including the accruing interest."
Jungwon remained still. Before the summer, the debt had been $210,000, and they had already paid off $60,000. His voice, usually warm when he spoke to you, was now cold, sharp, almost robotic.
"Weber, I didn’t come here for a math lesson," Jungwon said, his eyes fixed on the red lines of unpaid debts.
"I genuinely want to help you, Jungwon. Jerry’s a good man, but he’s old-school. You’re young, you’ve got a name for yourself, and if you’re serious about taking over the ranch one day, we can structure a long-term loan...thirty years with manageable payments. It’d take the pressure off, and you wouldn’t have the bank calling you every month about deadlines and paperwork."
Jungwon gave a bitter smile. Thirty years. Damn, thirty years was a lifetime. He knew he was the backbone of that ranch, but he didn’t want to spend his entire life there.
"I don’t need a loan," Jungwon said, his voice devoid of the warmth he reserved for you. "I need time. In a few weeks, this will all be over."
Weber raised an eyebrow, skeptical. "A few weeks? Son, we’re not talking pocket change here. $150,000 doesn’t just fall from the sky."
"It does in the arena," Jungwon shot back, slowly rising from his chair and leaning over the desk, towering over the man with his gaze. "The prize for first place in the world championship, combined with the sponsor bonuses I’ll get the second I lift that trophy, covers the entire debt. Hell, with $500,000, I could buy the whole ranch if I wanted to."
Weber thought back to Jungwon’s last fall for the thousandth time.
"That ranch will be debt-free in a few weeks because I will be the world champion," Jungwon interrupted with icy confidence.
"That’s a risky bet... What if the bull throws you before eight seconds, like last time? What then?"
Jungwon recalled that fall for the thousandth time but didn’t waver. "You have my word: if I don’t win the championship, I’ll sign that damn loan and spend the rest of my life paying off the interest. But if I win, Weber, I want the debt clearance documents ready on your desk Monday morning....no late fees, no extra cents."
The manager studied him for a long moment before nodding slowly, almost surprised by Jungwon’s resolve. "You’ve got guts, kid. I don’t see many guys your age like you, and I can’t tell if you’re a genius or a madman but fine...I accept. We’ll see each other Monday after the finals, and I hope to see you walking out of there in one piece."
Jungwon nodded and left the bank, his heart pounding. Every step toward his pick-up was a step toward the ranch’s freedom but also a step closer to the end of the summer. He knew that clearing the debts would remove your last excuse to stay. But he wanted you to choose to stay for him, not out of guilt for the ranch or your family. He wanted you to be free.
The arena was a sensory whirlwind of smells: the sharp scent of freshly turned earth, the musk of animals, and the sweet allure of caramel popcorn swirled in the air as people began taking their seats in the various sections. The massive screens above projected statistics and faces of bull riders both seasoned veterans and rookies, while the crowd, a surging river, flooded the stands to witness the event of the year. You noticed that other arenas in Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and Wyoming were also connected to watch the finals live.
Endless posters of Jungwon’s face popped up everywhere: some were hilarious memes, others were affectionate amateur drawings, and there were plenty of girls wearing his jersey, handing out signed photocards. He had become a full-blown cult phenomenon, something you’d never associated with rodeo.
You were backstage, in that shadowy area where the smell of liniment and adrenaline mixed with the sharp tang of fear at the thought of seeing Jungwon on a bull again, not just any bull, but the same one that had thrown him in Texas. You saw plenty of bull riders, commentators, and guys placing bets getting ready, while the "WAGs" (wives and girlfriends of the champions) paraded in their carefully curated outfits and you were no different.
Your entrance didn’t go unnoticed. Many eyes turned to you: some girls were curious, and a few bull riders were charmed by the sight of a completely new girl in the circuit, winking at you or tipping their hats. But you weren’t interested until a girl with a social media channel specializing in circuit outfits stopped you with a dazzling smile.
"Oh my God! Those jeans are INCREDIBLE! 'Kiss it, Cowboy'...who’s it for?" she asked, pointing her camera at your backside and gesturing for you to do a little twirl to show off the outfit.
You shrugged with an enigmatic smile and said to her—and her 400K+ followers. "It’s a secret, sweetheart."
When she turned off the camera, she confessed to being a huge Jungwon fan. In an impulsive gesture, you gave her a signed Jungwon photocard you had in your bag.
Most of the attention, though, was on your outfit carefully designed to turn heads and, most importantly, to drive Jungwon wild.
You wore a fiery red corset that accentuated your sun-kissed skin, leaving much of your back and shoulders bare. You’d chosen low-rise, tight jeans that hugged every curve, with "Kiss it, Cowboy" embroidered in red on the back pocket a bold, irresistible invitation for someone in particular. And on your feet, you’d picked camperos boots to show you could fit into the rodeo scene but still keep your signature style.
After browsing the stalls, you finally made your way to Jungwon’s box and found him in a corner talking to his physiotherapist. His face still looked tired from endless training and visits, but he was focused. When he looked up and saw you, a slow, almost shocked smile spread across his face, lighting up his eyes in a way that stole your breath. His gaze traveled from head to toe, lingering a second too long on your corset—and the writing on your jeans. He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that betrayed his nervousness. You saw him say something to the physiotherapist, who nodded with a knowing smirk, before he walked toward you, his cheeks slightly flushed. He took your hand in his and started walking, pulling you away from the crowd.
"Where are we going?" you asked as you hurried to keep up with his pace. He didn’t answer until you found yourselves in a dark, hidden corner, far from cameras and prying eyes. Jungwon pushed you gently against the cold wall and whispered in a low voice, as if afraid of being caught:
"Damn it, Y/n. Do you want me to die out there? How the hell do you expect me to concentrate on a thousand-pound bull when you’re here dressed like this?" He looked you over again, a rare mix of frustration and admiration in his eyes. You laughed, enjoying his discomfort and rare shyness.
"It’s not that big of a deal, Cowboy. I thought a world champion should know how to handle distractions," you said, pointing at him. But he looked at you with fiery eyes.
"Are you kidding? You’re too beautiful, noona. Too much for this place, too much for me and this outfit is a weapon of mass distraction... I bet half the cowboys out there were checking you out."
You shrugged, and he gently caressed your cheek with his thumb, but with a pressure that made it clear you were his.
You rose slightly on your boot tips, closing the distance between your faces, and said:
"The Jungwon I know doesn’t get distracted so easily. But if I am distracting you, I want to do it in a good way... Consider it an incentive. If you stay on that bull for eight seconds, maybe you’ll get to see what’s under this corset and these jeans."
Jungwon’s eyes widened at your words, his cheeks flushing a deep red. "Jesus, noona..." he muttered, a mix of anger and pure desire. "Do you even realize what you’re asking me?" Instinctively, he reached for your corset, but you pulled back with a fake innocent smile and whispered in his ear, feeling his ragged breath on your neck:
"Duty first, pleasure later, Cowboy."
Then you planted a small kiss right on one of his dimples before slipping out of his grip and running away.
"Be careful out there and have fun!" you called, turning back. "Don’t think about tomorrow, Jungwon...just live in the moment! Because nothing will ever be like the first time you win a world championship!"
And with that, you left him there in that dark corner, his face red and an expression you’d never forget. As you walked away, you could feel his gaze burning into your back. And in that moment, Jungwon felt for the first time that maybe, deep down, you’d seen there was more to him than just the boyish Jungwon, you’d seen the man and now, that man had one more reason to win.
The noise in the arena grew louder with every passing moment. Journalists were setting up their laptops and headsets, reporters were there to write the story that was about to unfold, and photographers were adjusting their equipment for the final shots. Jungwon’s closest friends: Sunghoon, Heeseung, Niki, Jake, Jay, and even Sunoo, who was one of the commentators narrating Jungwon’s journey second by second, were all there.
You heard Sunoo’s unmistakable voice booming through the speakers, echoing against the metal roof as he spoke into the camera:
"This isn’t just any final....we’re talking about a rookie trying to win his first world title in a category dominated by seasoned riders like Jin or Eric! Yang Jungwon needs those eight seconds to enter the legend books, or he’ll go home with nothing but shattered dreams and a busted shoulder because we all know that shoulder isn’t fully healed yet!"
You were gripping the metal railing of the VIP section, feeling the cold iron against your palms. Beside you, your grandpa looked like he had aged ten years in ten seconds. His hat was clenched in his rough hands, his eyes fixed on gate number four. Your aunt, meanwhile, was taking small, shaky breaths, unable to stay still for even a second as anxiety gnawed at her.
"I can’t breathe, Grandpa," you whispered, feeling tears press against your eyelids. "What if he falls? What if his shoulder can’t take it?"
Your aunt shot you a sharp look and told you not to say those words out loud, they only brought bad luck. But your grandpa didn’t take his eyes off Jungwon, who was preparing at the sidelines. You felt his hand rest on your shoulder.
"That boy won’t fall today, Y/n," your grandpa said, his voice thick with pride. "He’s a Yang, and Yangs are stubborn as mules and proud as eagles. That boy loves the pre-race adrenaline, loves riding those bulls, and he’s got the guts to ride the same bull that threw him weeks ago in the final match. Y/n, watch and learn what it means to love something more than your own life. He’s not just some kid trying to show off, he’s a man going to claim his destiny. Because in here, this year, he’s the only one who has to win the world title."
Your grandpa spoke with the pride of a man who had trained Jungwon himself. Then, silence fell, and everyone turned on their phones to capture the moment of truth.
Jungwon gave a sharp nod to the attendant to open the gate, and the gate exploded open. It was primal chaos. You were used to seeing him train day and night, but live, in a world championship fight, everything was different: more adrenaline-fueled, more terrifying.
The bull burst out like a tornado, a mass of black muscle and frothing saliva. Jungwon seemed glued to it, moving with brutal grace every time the bull kicked, his good arm raised in the air like a challenge to God. You tried to close your eyes, but you heard Sunoo scream:
"Five seconds! Six! Seven! Jungwon isn’t human right now...he’s a monster, a machine controlling it all!" Sunoo’s voice cracked with emotion because he knew how many sacrifices his friend had made. The horn blared, eight seconds had passed, and then some. You looked up at the scoreboard and saw 97.5 points, a world record.
The arena erupted in cheers as everyone celebrated watching Jungwon, the rookie, win his first world title. Your legs gave out, and you found yourself on your knees in the dirt, hands over your face as you burst into tears.
You saw your grandpa run to Jungwon, vaulting over the barriers to hug him, and reporters immediately swarmed Jungwon to place the world champion cowboy hat on his head. Your aunt looked at you with a mix of happiness and sadness because she alone knew that soon, you’d be leaving for New York again.
After slipping on the golden buckle, posing for countless photos with RodeoSprint and the official world championship channels, and being interviewed more times than he could count, Jungwon bent down to thank everyone. Then, with an ease that left security speechless, he vaulted over the fence and ran straight toward you, covered in dust, sweat, and a smile that said far too much in that moment. He lifted you off the ground, pressing you against his wildly beating chest.
"You did it... Oh my God, Jungwon, you did it!" you sobbed into his neck, breathing in the sharp scent of his exhaustion. You felt Jungwon lift you slightly off the ground and laughed against his skin. His hands slid deliberately, possessively, into the back pockets of your jeans, right over the "Kiss it, Cowboy" stitching, completely ignoring the cameras and the 30,000-plus spectators watching from above.
"I heard you, noona," he panted, his face smudged with dirt but his eyes shining with pure gold. "I heard you scream my name the second that bastard tried to spin me left, and I thought: If I fall now, it’s over because you’ll go back to New York, and I’ll never get to tell you that you’re the only home I’ve ever wanted since the first day I saw you..." He brushed away the small tears escaping your eyes with his thumb.
"You’re crazy," you whispered through your tears. "You risked everything."
"I won everything," he countered, and his voice was no longer that of the boy who used to tease you at the start of summer. It was rough against your skin as you felt him kiss the hollow of your neck.
"Jungwon... everyone’s watching. My grandpa’s there... my aunt, all your friends..." you said, your face slightly flushed. He didn’t even turn around, instead, he pulled you tighter, hooking his thumbs into your jean pockets and pressing you against his still-tense hips.
"Let them watch. Let them see that the world champion belongs to a New York ‘city girl,’" he murmured, leaning in to brush his lips against yours. "Tell me you’re mine. Say it now, in front of everyone, or I’ll get back on that bull until you do."
"I’m yours, Cowboy," you replied, and this time, Jungwon kissed you seriously in front of all the cameras. In that moment, there was no New York, no plane ticket you’d had to buy and send a screenshot of to your boss, no fear of hurting him. There was only the two of you...
Jungwon didn’t bother washing off the sweat, the arena dust, or the scent of champagne that had drenched him on the podium. When he opened the door to his room at the ranch, there was no room for words; there had been too many moments when he’d wanted to make you his, and he wanted to be completely yours. So he pushed you gently but firmly against the wooden wall of his room, crashing his lips against yours in a kiss that tasted of love and surrender. You wrapped your legs around his hips, and he chuckled against your mouth like a boy with his first crush and adventure. It was a vibrant sound that warmed your heart because you wanted to hear that laugh forever.
The kiss between you was deep and full of sweetness an intertwining of tongues, trying to reclaim every second spent silently desiring each other over the summer. Both of you had tried so hard not to fall into something called "love," but the heart couldn’t be commanded. That summer, you had both found yourselves in the right place at the right time.
His hands slid into the pockets of your jeans, right over the "Kiss it, Cowboy" stitching that had tormented him throughout the tournament.
"Damn it, Y/N..." he whispered between kisses, his hot breath tickling your skin. "You’ve been a constant threat, you know? Not just tonight in the arena, but every single day you’ve spent on this ranch... from the first moment I saw and heard you, you got under my skin."
You giggled, caressing his damp nape as your foreheads rested against each other and your eyes never stopped looking at each other.
"You can’t complain about having me around. Without me, who would’ve driven you crazy all the time? You would’ve spent another summer just being bored and training."
He looked at you with a sweetness that stole your breath away as his thumb caressed your lips.
"No one... and that’s exactly the problem." He carried you toward the bed, the same bed where, weeks earlier, you had curled up crying, convinced you had ruined his career. Just like that night, he sat down and held you straddling him.
You began rubbing your jeans against his in a slow motion that drew a ragged moan from him. He pulled you closer, burying his face between your breasts, pressing against the red corset as he struggled with the laces to finally see you bare before his eyes.
When the corset finally fell to the floor, revealing the black lace of your lingerie, Jungwon’s gaze changed. There wasn’t just desire anymore—there was devotion.
"Christ, why are you so beautiful..." he murmured, beginning to massage your breasts with a slow, almost reverent pressure. Gradually, your nipples became hard under his touch, and you arched your back, seeking the warmth of his hands.
"I didn’t think the golden boy of photocards had such a fixation on seeing me like this, on top of him," you whispered, feeling your heart race. Jungwon chuckled softly as one hand continued to caress your breast and the other captured a nipple, sucking it with a gentleness that sent shivers through you. You grabbed his hair, pulling it slightly to make him lift his face.
His eyes were glossy and full of a truth you both weren’t ready to admit yet—because both of you had fallen in love. He responded in kind:
"I didn’t think the corporate girl from New York, so precise and bossy, would be so loud when someone touches her the right way," he said as small moans escaped your lips while he touched and teased you. You saw the dimple appear on his cheek—a sign that even though he played the "tough guy" and the "alpha boy," he was always a little younger than you, and to you, he was still a kid. So you pulled his hair harder, trying to maintain your experienced woman facade.
"Show some respect, Cowboy. Remember, I’m older than you. You should call me noona and be very careful about how you speak to me," you said, laughing. Jungwon kissed the skin above your heart again, his hands now rising to caress your face with infinite tenderness.
"Yes, yes, noona... I’ll remember forever that you’re older. In fact, I love that you have more experience than me... it makes me even prouder to have made you fall for a simple Montana boy."
In that moment, you wanted to seriously provoke him, you wanted to see him surrender, to watch the World Champion dissolve under your touch. So you pulled off his black shirt, revealing his sun-kissed skin and the muscles honed by weeks of grueling recovery. You leaned down and began peppering the hollow of his neck with wet kisses, alternating them with deliberate little love bites that would leave your mark, reminding Jungwon that you were the only one who existed for him. Meanwhile, Jungwon let his head fall back against the padded headboard, his fingers clawing at the fabric of your jeans through the pockets. A rough moan escaped his throat—exactly the sound you’d been longing to hear, a mix of relief and torment.
"Damn it, Y/N... you’re killing me..." he murmured as his erection pressed insistently against the denim of your jeans. You could feel yourself getting wet just from his closeness.
"Noona... I need you... I need you now," he stuttered a couple of times as you traced your fingers over his sculpted abs. You chuckled against his skin, kissing your way down his chiseled chest, lingering over the taut line of his abs.
"Be more specific, Cowboy," you teased in a low voice against his skin. "Tell me exactly what you need, or how can I satisfy you?"
When you lifted your face, you saw him panting with pleasure, his cheeks flushed and his dimples deep in an expression that made him look vulnerable, almost defenseless in front of you. He seemed like a lost boy under your touch, not the guy who, just hours earlier, had ridden a bull with the confidence of a World Champion.
When you reached the V-line below his navel, you motioned for him to lift up. With slightly trembling hands, he unzipped his jeans and lifted his hips, allowing you to slide them off. Of course, like a classic Gen Z guy, he was wearing Calvin Klein boxers, and you could clearly see the evidence of his arousal pressing insistently against the fabric. You licked your lips, noticing how he tried to hold your gaze despite his red cheeks, catching a hint of shyness that made him even more adorable.
"Take off those jeans, Y/N. I want to see you too," he murmured softly. You stood up just enough to let the sinful jeans with "Kiss it, Cowboy" slide off, leaving you in nothing but black lace panties. Jungwon cursed under his breath at the sight of you, so beautiful in that moment.
"Jesus, I don’t deserve to have you here... you’re... you’re stunning," he said, guiding you to position yourself lower between his muscular legs. You felt your fingers slide under the waistband of his boxers, teasing him for a few seconds before pulling them down completely. When his erection sprang free, rigid and already glistening with desire, your eyes widened at the beauty of the body that was now all yours.
"You’re beautiful, Jungwon, and all mine," you whispered, looking up at him as he grew even shyer. As soon as your fingers wrapped around the base of his cock, he let out a choked sound, arching his back and pushing himself further up.
"Tell me what you want, champion," you said, looking up at him. He ran a hand through his tousled hair and, in a low voice, said:
"I want... I want you to take me in your mouth, noona. I want to feel you around me."
Your eyes widened as you caressed the swollen tip of his cock with your thumb, feeling a small drop of excitement wet your skin.
You smirked mischievously at the sight of Jungwon so lost in you as your fingers caressed his length, making him shudder. You licked the tip before taking him between your lips again.
Your lips closed around his tip, and you began to lick him slowly, as if you wanted to tease him, your eyes fixed on his. It was beautiful to see him tug at his hair in frustration and watch his cheeks flush because of you. You heard small moans escape his mouth as you slowly began to take him deeper into your mouth, and that guttural sound made you clench your thighs because you were getting excited too.
"Fuck... noona..." His fingers guided you to take him a little deeper, but you controlled the rhythm, taking him deeper at your own pace. Your tongue traced small circles around the head.
"You’re... you’re perfect..." he panted, his voice trembling. You stopped to look up at him with a smirk and said, "I know," you licking the tip before taking him back into your mouth.
Jungwon rolled his eyes as one hand gently pulled your hair while the other gripped the sheets of his bed. His fingers tightened in your hair, and his back arched even more as your lips slid further down his shaft, faster and more confident.
You could feel his body trembling, his hands seeking physical contact with you as if he were afraid of losing control. But the only one who truly had control of the situation was you, and you were so happy to see him lose it for you, finally.
"I want to see you come for me, Jungwon," you whispered, pulling away for a second with your lips swollen and wet. For Jungwon, it was a heavenly sight to see you with a bit of drool at the corners of your mouth, and he stuttered, "You’re... you’re too much... I... please, keep going."
You giggled, seeing his hair become slightly damp and his eyes grow glossy from the stimulation. You took him back into your mouth mercilessly while your fingers began to play with and caress his testicles, making him moan even more. You knew that was his breaking point.
"Noona... I’m about to..." he stuttered, trying to warn you, but you didn’t stop. You pushed him over the edge, feeling his body tense beneath you as his fingers dug into your hair. A long, rough moan escaped his lips as you felt his release spill into your mouth and down your throat, with strands of excitement and cum dripping. You sucked, making him even more stimulated beneath you.
When you pulled away, Jungwon was still staring at you, unable to look away, he pulled you back up onto his lap and kissed you, tasting his excitement on your lips.
This time, you took the lead. You wanted Jungwon on your terms. You saw him looking at you with desire-clouded eyes as you positioned yourself above him, your thighs squeezing his muscular hips. A low moan escaped your lips as you felt his warm skin against yours, and he smiled at you with a crooked, challenging grin.
"Are you sure you want to do this, noona?" he asked, looking straight into your eyes. "Remember, I’m not an easy bull to tame."
"You rode that bull just a few hours ago," you replied, fixing him with a gaze full of confidence you didn’t know you had. "Now I want to be the cowgirl in this situation... I want to see if the champion can stay still while I take what’s mine."
Jungwon brought a hand to his face, covering his eyes for a second as a trembling sigh escaped his lips. "Damn... this girl is going to be the death of me," he muttered under his breath. "You’re going to give me a heart attack before I even get my tournament prize."
You chuckled and, without warning, positioned yourself over his length, feeling the heat of his arousal pressing against you. He jolted as his fingers snapped to your hips, digging into your skin in a possessive grip.
"Fuck, noona..." he panted, his head hitting the headboard again. You leaned over him, brushing your nose against his.
"Are you ready, Cowboy?"
He nodded frantically, his cheeks flushed bright red, his eyes fixed on your body. You lifted yourself slightly, guiding him, then lowered yourself decisively, taking him all in one swift motion. As his cock slid inside your warm, tight walls, you both moaned at the sensation of being locked together. His fingers gripped your hips with a force that would leave marks for days to come.
"You’re so tight..." he said, feeling that he wasn’t even halfway in, but the sensation of fullness, seeing and feeling yourself so full of him, was so intense and so perfect that you thought you’d never felt anything like it in your entire life.
"Look how you’re taking me..." he murmured in a voice thick with possession. "You seem born to be right here, on top of me, taking everything I give you."
And without warning, in one swift motion, Jungwon lifted himself slightly on his elbows and thrust his hips upward, burying himself deep inside you. You cried out in pleasure at feeling so full of him all at once, and you wrapped your arms around his body to keep from falling, to feel him even deeper inside you.
"Open your eyes, Y/n," he whispered in your ear, a sweet command: "Look... look down... look how my cock is inside you."
You lowered your gaze, your hair falling over your face, and your bodies were bound, fused together. You could almost see the bulge of his cock beneath your stretched skin, a tangible sign of how deeply you were united. After a few seconds of feeling him completely still inside you, you gasped:
"I want to move," you panted, trying to find the rhythm again. He teased a breast with his free hand, pinching a nipple that made you shudder.
"Do you want to move, or do you want to ride me, noona?" he said against your earlobe. You made that little pout Jungwon had begun to love and adore at the same time, and he saw how your cheeks flushed at his question. You responded with a hint of fake innocence:
"I want to ride you."
Jungwon smiled with an expression of pure triumph and said, "I’m all yours, noona. Show me how a city girl rides... show me if you can last more than eight seconds on top of me!"
You didn’t let him repeat himself. Instead, you began to move in a slow, torturous rhythm designed to drive him wild. Your hands gripped his V-line, your fingers digging into his sweaty skin as you moved above him with deliberate slowness. Every motion was calculated to push him to the edge, and that was exactly your intention, you wanted to make the "Golden Boy" of the prairie lose control.
Jungwon lay beneath you, his muscles tense, his lips slightly parted, his eyes burning with a desire he could no longer hide as he watched you, so beautiful and his. Every time you lifted yourself, his cock slipped out just a few centimeters, only to slide back inside you in one fluid, hypnotic motion.
You felt every inch of him rubbing against that perfect spot inside you, and a low, throaty moan escaped your lips each time his length pushed deeper. Jungwon immediately felt how your thighs squeezed his hips tighter with every thrust, and every time you lowered yourself, you heard his breath quicken. His fingers never stopped touching you, digging into your flesh as if he wanted to merge with you.
"Don’t stop, noona," he begged, his voice trembling as his hands gripped your ass, pulling you down harder each time you tried to lift yourself. Feeling himself sink deeper inside you, he stuttered, "You’re so beautiful when you ride me... but it seems like you’re just trying to tease me."
You didn’t listen. You were too drunk on him, too lost in the rhythm of your bodies and the way each thrust filled you. So you kept moving, bouncing on top of him with a rhythm that was half dance, half torture, your thighs clenching every time you took him inside you.
Jungwon couldn’t take it anymore. Seeing you slow down, especially when he noticed your breath becoming irregular, he had no intention of stopping. With a quick, decisive movement, he pushed you down onto the mattress, making you moan and cry out together.
"Fuck, noona!" he growled as he caged you in his arms, his chest pressing against yours, but most of all, his length driving into you with deep, irregular thrusts.
You instinctively wrapped your legs around his hips, feeling how each thrust filled you and even better than when you were riding him before as if he wanted to brand you from the inside.
"You’re so tight, fuck," he moaned, his lips finding your neck, kissing, sucking, and biting your skin as he continued to push inside you. "And you thought you could tease me like that, huh? I may be younger than you, but damn, I know when someone’s trying to mess with me or drive me crazy and you were doing it on purpose just now, weren’t you?"
You dug your nails into his back, feeling the pleasure build uncontrollably. You nodded, tears in your eyes at the sensation of being so full of him, and gasped, the words barely escaping between moans. "It’s so big," you panted. "But it feels so good... being taken by a cowboy..."
He smiled against your skin, his teeth grazing your neck lightly as he continued to move inside you. "Yeah, it feels good to be fucked by a cowboy," he whispered in a rough voice, "But only I can do this, noona... only me." You saw how possessive Jungwon could be with you, and it drove you wild in the best way. You nodded, too lost in pleasure to respond, but he wouldn’t let you escape—he wanted to hear you say it, not just see it.
"Answer with that pretty mouth of yours, noona," he ordered, his hot breath against your ear. "Tell me it’s only me, only I can make you tremble, moan, and make you mine." He spoke against your ear as his thrusts grew faster, and you felt your body tense toward orgasm, your walls slowly tightening around him. Then you came, your nails dug into his back, leaving red marks that would last for days, as your body arched against his. A broken cry escaped your lips as you felt your orgasm grow stronger, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he kept moving inside you, prolonging your climax as he felt your excitement grow, soaking his cock and making each thrust even slicker and more intense than the last.
"Fuck, noona..." he growled, his fingers gripping your hips with a force that would leave bruises for days. With his face buried in your neck, he whispered, "You’re so wet for me... so perfect..." His lips brushed your ear as he continued to thrust inside you, each movement making you tremble at the sensation of being completely his. Without realizing it, your legs tightened even more around his hips, as if you wanted to keep him inside you forever. He groaned against your skin.
"Where do you want me to come, noona?" he asked in a hoarse whisper against your neck, his thrusts becoming sloppy and irregular. His body tensed above yours, his muscles contracted with the effort of holding back from releasing everything inside you. You didn’t answer with words instead, you wrapped your legs even tighter around his hips, as if you wanted to pull him deeper, as if you wanted no space left between you. He understood your choice.
"Fuck, noona..." he cursed as his thrusts grew faster, more desperate. He lifted your chin slightly as your eyes met at the same time, and he said, "Say it... tell me you want me to come inside you."
You stuttered something, but he didn’t need to hear the words—he already knew what you were feeling. He knew everything from the way you clung to him, from the way your nails dug into his skin, from the way your body welcomed him as if it were made only for him, and from the way you looked at each other like lovesick teenagers. Against his lips, you whispered, "I’m yours, Woonie..." You moaned as you felt his cock open you completely, as if he wanted to mark every inch of you. You kept talking, saying, "I... I’m all yours..."
And when he heard those words, Jungwon didn’t need to be told twice. His thrusts became deeper, more irregular, as if he wanted to reach the most intimate part of you, as if he wanted to paint every fold of your body with his seed. "Fuck, noona..." he panted, his hot breath against your ear, "I’m about to... I’m about to come..."
You nodded, your nails digging into his back, your body tensing in anticipation of that moment. Then, after a couple more thrusts, you felt the warm strands of his cum flood your vaginal lips, filling you completely and marking you as his. You moaned together at the sensation of your bodies moving in unison, your breaths merging into one desperate cry of pleasure.
"Woonie..." you cried out, your back arching as he hit your G-spot with a precision that made you see stars. Your fingers gripped his hair, pulling with a force that made him groan, while your body clenched around him as if it wanted to keep him inside you forever. He stuttered something, his words lost between moans, as he continued to thrust even after he had come, as if he wanted to fill you, as if he wanted nothing left between you. You couldn’t pull away from him.
Jungwon collapsed on top of you, burying his face in the crook of your neck while his body remained inside you, as if he never wanted to leave. He held you tightly in his arms, and a smile spread across your lips because Jungwon was seriously the clingiest, most physical guy you had ever met and you loved that about him. You were usually much colder when it came to physical contact.
After a few minutes that felt like hours, your breathing had calmed slightly, and the silence in the room was wrapped only in the sound of your hearts beating in unison and the faint murmur of the stream beyond the ranch. You felt Jungwon continue to place small kisses on your neck, his warm lips giving you goosebumps with every kiss he pressed against your skin. Your fingers caressed his hair, still damp with sweat but now soft and silky between your hands.
Neither of you dared to speak, as if words could break the bubble of intimacy surrounding you. But then, after what felt like an eternity, Jungwon lifted his gaze and smiled at you. It wasn’t his usual mischievous, bold smirk, but something sweeter, almost shy—as if for the first time, he felt vulnerable in front of you. You returned his smile, equally shy, your cheeks still flushed and your heart beating a little faster at the sight of his dimples. He leaned in and kissed your forehead in a gesture so tender it made your chest tighten.
"Is everything okay?" he asked in a low, concerned voice, as if he were afraid you might regret what had happened. You nodded, still feeling the warmth of his body against yours and his length still filling you, as if he didn’t want to detach from you.
"More than okay," you whispered, your voice trembling slightly. Your gaze drifted down to where your bodies were still joined, and you felt a shiver run down your spine.
Jungwon stuttered something, his cheeks flushing even more. "Maybe... maybe I should pull out, noona," he said, his voice half embarrassment, half reluctance, as if deep down, he didn’t really want to. You chuckled, feeling a thrill run through you at the thought of what had just happened.
"Yeah, maybe it’s better," you replied, even though you didn’t really want him to pull away. He moved slowly, and you heard a wet sound as he slipped out of you, followed by the sight of strands of excitement trickling down your thighs. Jungwon closed his eyes for a second, as if that sound and sight made him even more possessive of you.
"Christ, noona..." he murmured in a hoarse voice as he looked at you as if you were the most precious thing in the world. Immediately afterward, he handed you one of his shirts the black one you liked so much, which he also loved and put it on you with a gentleness you didn’t expect from him. Then, without saying a word, he took your hand and led you to the bathroom, where he washed you slowly with such tender gestures that they brought tears to your eyes. His hands were warm and sure, and every touch felt like a promise of what had been during those summer months.
Soon, you found yourselves back in bed, wrapped in each other’s arms. This time, it was him gently caressing your hair, his fingers getting lost in your honey-colored strands while you clung to him as if you wanted to melt into his body.
"We should rest," Jungwon said in a low, calm voice, feeling you tremble slightly. "Tomorrow, we’ll have all the time in the world to talk about what happened between us."
You nodded, knowing he was right, and said, "It’s the best idea right now. We’re too caught up in what just happened,"you whispered, even though deep down, you knew it wouldn’t be that simple. In a few hours, you would be leaving forever. But at that moment, you didn’t want to think about anything. You just wanted to feel him beside you, breathe him in, and memorize every second of that night because you knew it would be the only memory you’d have left. No one would ever enter your heart the way that boy with feline eyes and adorable dimples had.
Jungwon held you tighter, as if he had sensed your thoughts, and said, "No matter what happens, noona, remember that tonight... tonight is ours, and no one can ever take it away from us because it was the most beautiful night of my life."
After these words, both of you fell into a deep sleep.
The morning sun filtered through the curtains, casting golden stripes across the wooden floor of the ranch. You could hear the rustling of the trees outside the window and the gentle flow of the stream that had lulled you to sleep all summer. Honestly, you preferred it to the endless sirens that jolted you awake even in the middle of the night in New York. You felt Jungwon’s steady breath against your neck, his nose lightly tickling your skin.
When you lifted your head slightly, you saw his cheeks still flushed from the night before, his lips slightly parted in a small pout that made him look adorable and vulnerable at the same time. It reminded you that he was just a boy of almost 22, a rodeo champion, but in that moment, he seemed like nothing more than a perfect boy, even as he slept.
But when you turned your head, your heart stopped at the sight of the calendar on his desk: September 20th, the day of your departure.
A lump formed in your throat. On one hand, you wanted to stay... forever by his side. You wanted to feel his breath every morning, see his dimples when he laughed, and feel his hands holding you as if he never wanted to let you go. But you had to return to New York, your life, your job, your independence, and most of all, the real life you had dreamed of since you were a child.
With a trembling breath, you gently shifted Jungwon, who groaned in his sleep with a soft, hoarse sound that made your heart ache. You paused when you heard him speak in his sleep:
"Mmm... noona..." he murmured sleepily, as if even in his dreams he sensed your presence. You looked at him one last time, imprinting every line of his face, every strand of his dark hair, and every muscle moving beneath his golden skin into your memory. You leaned down to kiss one of his dimples and whispered words you knew he wouldn’t hear but needed to say because you hadn’t managed to last night:
"I love you, Jungwon."
The world stopped in that moment for you. He smiled in his sleep, as if he had heard you, as if his heart had somehow responded to yours. With one last glance, you dressed silently, each movement slow, as if you could stretch out that moment and stop time. But you couldn’t... You couldn’t stay there forever, because if he woke up, you wouldn’t have been able to leave.
Before stepping out, you left a letter that slipped into his room as you closed the door. Writing that letter had been painful but necessary—for both you and him. You had poured out all your feelings, every unspoken word, every emotion that had overwhelmed you that summer. You explained why you had to go, why New York was your life, but also how much the ranch, he, and everything here would always remain in your heart.
A tear slid down your cheek as you walked away... forever.
As you approached the car, you saw your aunt already sitting inside with the engine running, the luggage loaded and ready to go. She looked at you as you got in, her eyes searching yours as if she already knew what you were feeling.
"Are you ready to go to the airport?" she asked without really looking at you, and you nodded with a trembling voice. You didn’t say goodbye to your grandpa... you didn’t say goodbye to Jungwon. You knew you wouldn’t have had the courage, it was the only way to leave without breaking down in front of everyone.
After an hour, you found yourself in front of the airport doors. Your aunt helped you unload the luggage, and you felt her hands squeeze yours for a moment longer than necessary, as if to say, "Stay, Y/n."
"Are you sure you want to leave?" she finally asked, looking into your eyes. You smiled, even though your eyes burned from the tears that had fallen during the trip and your throat was raw from the sobs. In a weak voice, you said, "Yes... I’m sure."
But your voice trembled, and she knew you were lying. She didn’t say anything, though—no one ever had stopped you before, and she didn’t want to be the first. After hugging her, you said:
"You’ll come visit me at Christmas, right? In New York?" you asked, trying to sound cheerful. Your aunt caressed your cheek in a maternal gesture that brought tears back to your eyes, and she said:
"I can’t promise you anything, sweetheart. You know we’ll have a lot of people for the winter season, especially after the world championship win and all the publicity we got this summer at the ranch."
You lowered your gaze to process her words and said:
"Well... then you could come in February... we all know it’s a slower month for bookings."
You saw her nod with a sad little smile on her lips. As you struggled to pull away from her embrace, she asked:
"Was it nice spending these months here in Montana?"
You looked around at the landscape that had seen you grow up—the mountains that had protected you, the air that smelled like home for the first time in so long. You replied, "Yes. It was nice, but all good things come to an end, and Montana is one of them." You walked toward the entrance with your aunt, but just before you crossed the threshold, she stopped and said:
"Remember, Y/N, New York doesn’t own you. You were born here, and this will always be your home, sweetheart... here, you’ll always find someone who will love you forever."
You didn’t understand who she was referring to, and her words felt like a punch to the gut. You swallowed hard, knowing that if you spoke, you would break down.
"I know, Aunt... I have to go now... goodbye, Aunt," you whispered, stepping into the airport without looking back just like you always did when you were running from something bigger than yourself.
Your heart was pounding so hard you could feel it in your ears as you sat on that cold airport chair. Your eyes were glued to your phone screen, and every passing minute felt like torture, every second, a fading hope. All it would take was one message from Jungwon... just a simple "Don’t go, noona," and you would have stayed. You would have run to him, forgotten New York, forgotten everything. But Jungwon wasn’t the type to ask—he was the one who solved problems, who took action. And the screen remained black forever.
Your eyes darted from your phone to the airport’s sliding door, as if hoping Jungwon might suddenly appear with that crooked smile of his, his golden eyes full of determination to stop you from leaving. But every time the door opened, it was never him. Your heart slowly began to break, until you heard the flight attendant’s voice:
"The passengers on the flight to New York, please proceed to check-in. The gate will close in less than ten minutes."
You closed your eyes. It was time to return to your real life—New York was waiting, your job, your commitments, your independence. With a trembling breath, you stood up and got in line. Around you, others were heading home, but deep down, you would have been happy if Jungwon had come with you to New York. Because ever since you’d met him, you’d felt at home with him.
As you pulled out your phone to show the hostess your boarding pass, it vibrated and rang. With shaking hands, you unlocked it but it wasn’t Jungwon. It was Mr. Weber from the bank. You pressed the green button, and your voice came out trembling and curious.
"Good morning, Mr. Weber. Why are you calling?"
He coughed, as he always did before delivering important news—though lately, the news hadn’t been good.
"Good morning, Miss Y/N. It seems today is your lucky day—for you, for your whole family... but especially for the ranch."
You raised an eyebrow slightly, shifting toward the hostess, not understanding what he was referring to.
"A lucky day? Did something happen? If you’re talking about Jungwon’s win yesterday... yes, but..."
"No, no," he interrupted. "I remember you always wanted updates on your family’s debt, right?"
You nodded, even though he couldn’t see you. "Yes, but I don’t understand..." until you heard the words that caught you off guard:
"The ranch’s debt has been fully cleared. 100%."
You froze. A suitcase bumped into your leg, and someone behind you muttered something about how slow you were, but you didn’t hear anything the announcements, the people telling you to hurry. Only those words.
"Wait... what? The debt is fully cleared? We still had over $100,000 to pay... How is this possible? If this is a joke, it’s in really bad taste, especially since I’m in a bit of a complicated situation right now."
Weber chuckled. "Miss Y/N, open the email I just sent you."
With trembling fingers, you opened your inbox. There, in black and white, was the confirmation...every line of debt was green. No more interest, no more debt. You didn’t understand how this was possible all that money couldn’t have just fallen from the sky.
"This is impossible... Who paid all this?" you asked, your voice trembling. Weber didn’t answer, and neither did you, because the hostess in front of you took your ticket and scanned it.
"Please place your bag on the scale for weighing," she said with a sweet smile, but you were in shock. The world around you seemed to stop. Then, like a bolt of lightning, you realized who had cleared all the ranch’s debts. You and Weber said his name at the same time:
"Yang Jungwon."
Tears burned your eyes at the sound of his name. "He..." you whispered, your voice breaking. The hostess looked at you, waiting for you to put your bag on the scale, but you couldn’t move. You couldn’t leave, not now, not after everything he’d done for you and your family. With a sudden motion, you ended the call with Weber, grabbed your suitcases (which, strangely, felt half as heavy as when you’d arrived), and ran away, ignoring the protests of the people in line.
When you were outside in the parking lot, tears in your eyes and your heart pounding in your chest, you looked for a taxi—because you had to go back to him. You had to tell him you loved him, that you’d been stupid, that you didn’t want to run anymore. And then, to your surprise, you saw your aunt still there in the car, as if she’d been waiting for you.
When she saw you, she got out of the car, her eyes full of concern, and hugged you. "Sweetheart..." she said, but you shoved the suitcases back into the car with shaking hands.
"I’ve been so stupid," you sobbed, tears streaming down your cheeks. "I have to go to him... I love him, Aunt, but he’ll never forgive me because I ran away like his mom did..."
But your aunt hugged you tightly, as if she wanted to protect you from everything, and said:
"Sweetheart, you’re not running away right now...you’re going back to him. And he’ll be so happy to see you."
So in the car, you explained everything: Weber’s call, the cleared debt, Jungwon, how you’d only just realized how important he was to you.
The car ride back to the ranch felt endless, but finally, you and your aunt arrived. You quickly got out of the car and saw your grandpa talking to a guy. For a moment, you hoped with all your heart that it was Jungwon, but this guy was taller, didn’t have his dimples, and had dyed hair. When they saw you, you recognized him as Heeseung. He looked confused and said:
"Weren’t you supposed to be on your way to New York?"
Your grandpa was clearly shocked to see you back at the ranch, and you could see a hint of disappointment in his eyes. Without greeting them, you immediately ran to find Jungwon, but there was no sign of him. You checked where the bulls were, but he wasn’t there either. When you entered the stables, you noticed that Spirit was gone. You cursed under your breath:
"Damn it, Jungwon, where the hell are you?"
As you ran back toward Heeseung and your grandpa, you thought of one particular place, Jungwon’s favorite spot, where you had shared your first kiss. You saw Heeseung’s iconic white horse near the fence, and thankfully, the saddle was already perfectly mounted. Just as Jungwon had taught you, you climbed up and mounted the horse.
When Heeseung saw you on his horse, he ran toward you, shouting:
"Where do you think you’re going with my horse?!" You stammered and looked at him with that innocent-girl smile, saying:
"I...I have to go to Jungwon... I’ll bring her right back, I promise!"
You pointed at the mare, and Heeseung tried to stop you, yelling: "Don’t even think about it! I’m not letting you go who-knows-where with Julì!"
But you ignored him and gave the command. The mare began galloping at full speed. You heard Heeseung shouting behind you that you were crazy, but you didn’t care about anything or anyone. You had only one goal: to find Jungwon.
The gallop of Heeseung’s mare, Julì, was slightly different from Spirit’s. Spirit was like Jungwon: sweet but with a hint of arrogance toward the other horses, while Julì was a bit too reckless for your taste. Yet, every command you gave, she followed perfectly.
When you reached the fence with the sign "Protected and Reserved Area," you pulled the reins sharply. You remembered exactly where the secret entrance to the prairie was. You tied Julì next to Spirit, who looked at you with a mix of skepticism and curiosity, as if sensing something was wrong with Jungwon. You walked along the path covered in dry leaves, your heart pounding in your chest, until you spotted that hole in the fence, the secret passage leading to the prairie... your prairie. Because a few months ago, everything had started there with that kiss, and now, what you and Jungwon had created would continue for a long time.
And there he was, lying on the grass in the same spot where you had kissed for the first time months earlier. His arms were crossed behind his head, his eyes closed as if he were trying to forget everything—including you. Because you, too, had left like everyone else important in his life. Until you shouted:
"JUNGWON!"
He didn’t move at first. He just lay there, motionless, as if he hadn’t heard you.
"Damn, now I’m hearing hallucinations, Jungwon. You’re too young to go crazy!" he muttered to himself. "That girl has completely messed with your head." He almost chuckled, but then, a few seconds later, he heard his name again. This time, he lifted himself slightly onto his elbows, his gaze landing on you. And there you were, just a few meters away, wearing his hoodie, your jeans hugging your legs, your hair tied in a messy wind-blown braid.
For a moment, he thought he was dreaming that you were just a hallucination. But then he saw you approaching, step by step, and his breath caught.
"Noona?" he whispered, incredulous. You ran to him and, without hesitation, threw yourself into his arms. You felt his hands instantly wrap around you, his fingers tangling in your hair, his body tensing in surprise before pulling you close, as if afraid you might vanish.
"What are you doing here?" he asked, his voice trembling. "Weren’t you supposed to be on a flight to New York?"
You shook your head, tears streaming down your cheeks, and looked up at him. "Why did you do it?" you asked. "Why did you pay off all the ranch’s debts? Why did you come into my life? Why did you make me fall in love with you?"
Jungwon looked at you with wide eyes, as if he hadn’t expected all those questions. He leaned in until his lips were a breath away from yours.
"I wanted you to be free, Y/n," he whispered, his voice trembling. "I paid off all the debts because this ranch means everything to me. I didn’t want to see you come back in a few years, still trying to fix everything. I hoped, no, I wanted, you to come back... because there’s something, or someone, that would make you say, ‘Damn, I miss that place, or that person.’"
You couldn’t hold back a sob. His words pierced your chest like a blade, cutting away every doubt, every fear. Because you loved the boy in front of you. Last night, you hadn’t been able to tell him to his face, but now you could:
"I love you," you whispered, your lips trembling against his. "That person you mentioned...it’s you, Jungwon."
You saw him smile with that crooked grin you loved but also wanted to strangle sometimes. "I know, noona," he replied, his lips brushing yours. You looked at him, slightly curious. "How do you know?" you asked, a little surprised.
He shrugged as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I heard you this morning... when you told me you loved me."
You opened your mouth to respond...why hadn’t he stopped you? Why hadn’t he told you he loved you too? But he didn’t let you finish. Against your lips, he said:
"I love you too, noona," he said before capturing your lips in a sweet kiss in the same spot where, a few months earlier, you had kissed for the first time. "In case it wasn’t clear."
And in that moment, for the first time, you felt like you would never run away again... not from him.
You’re an Omega with rare, selective instincts, untouched by every Alpha you've ever met. That is, until you catch a scent that stops you cold and ignites a hunger you’ve never known. It leads you straight to Park Jongseong—the quiet Alpha who barely acknowledges your existence.
Now, every encounter becomes a quiet war with your own body. You try to ignore the pull, and yet, you can’t shake the fear that he might be the only Alpha your instincts will ever respond to… and the only one your heart will ever want.
content tags/warnings: omegaverse (alpha!jay x omega!reader), slooowburn, emotional angst, female pursuer trope, pinning, marking, touch starved mc, nonchalant jay, she fell first and he fell HARDER trope. uhm humor?... pick me behavior, looots of second hand embarassment. eventual smut (explicit warnings will be listed on the chapter), long ass wc so brace yourself. MDNI.
note: if you are not into complicated characters with deep internal conflicts then this might be the story for you. feedback is welcome, but hate toward any characters will not be tolerated—any such behavior will be reported and blocked immediately.
1: MAKE ME YOURS ─── you want him? soo hard to get him.
2: PROVE I'M YOURS ─── and... the table has been turned.
2.2: I'M YOURS... OR NOT? (RATED M)
3: ALWAYS YOURS ─── just confused alpha trying to "emotionally communicate".
Kim Sunoo has always been one of the girls: soft-spoken, pretty, utterly devoted to the allure of men, men and more men. Women were never his thing, not really—especially not you. You, with your cigarette-drenched, red fucking lips, that wicked mouth always spitting nonsense. He loathed your strut, your cruel tongue, those perfect, infuriating tits that made his cock twitch no matter how hard he tried to look away. And he hated the thought that maybe — he’s starting to think that he swings both ways after all.
content tags/warnings: queer!sunoo x queer! reader, slowburn, one sided enemies to fubu to lovers, misandry comments, gentle angst, reader is a heavy smoker and have a lots of piercings and tattoos. jealousy, mentions of cheating (past rs). light emotional manipulation, toxic behaviors, second chances, queer coded relationship dynamics. sunoo is a nursing student and reader is a fashion design major. two years age gap, reader is shorter than sunoo. explicit content (smut): plot with porn. four different smut scenes. blowjob, some content might be dubious, pussy eating, fingering, protected and unprotected sex: public sex, rainbow (period) sex, multiple sex positions and places lmao, sunoo have a big dick, also dom! sn <3 WC: 45.4K (long ass ride)
note! this is a work of fiction and is not intended to offend anyone in the lgbt community or to fetishize any identities. the themes and characters are purely imaginative and should not be taken as a reflection of real people or experiences. and if you don't like it? don't read it. :)
KIM SUNOO has never truly identified as a man, not in the way society tries to define it.
He was born with what people like to label as "male," but the label never felt like it belonged to him. He's always been one of the girls. Not because he was trying to be anything other than himself, but because that's where he belonged, where he felt seen, understood, and safe. There's no pride in masculinity for him, no comfort in aligning with a category that has done nothing but let him down. Whatever was hanging between his legs didn't mean he owed anything to the idea of manhood, and he sure as hell wasn't going to start pretending it did.
And yet, for all his clarity, all his softness, all his truth—Sunoo, no matter how sharp his wit or clever his comebacks, keeps getting cheated on. It used to be just the straight boys he rolled his eyes at, but the betrayal has evolved. Gays aren't safe anymore either. There's no longer a clean line between "they'd never" and "they did." Gay, straight, bi, whatever — the problem is not orientation, it's the universal mediocrity of modern manhood. There's a plague of emotional negligence infecting them all. He trusted boys who called him beautiful, who knew how to flirt over text, who said "I'm not like the others" — and then turned out to be exactly like the others, but with worse excuses!
And still, the question haunts him: Why? Why does it keep happening? Why do they always cheat? What is it about commitment that scares them so much? He's been good. He's been better than good! He listens, he nurtures, he gives. He doesn't ask for much. Is that really too much? Because it feels like no matter how much effort he puts in, no matter how present he is, no matter how he softens himself to make space for someone else, it never ends with someone choosing him back. The worst part is how often he wonders if it's his fault—if maybe he's just not enough. Not hot enough, not loud enough, not strong enough, not whatever version of "desirable" men have invented that week. It eats at him.
"Good thing you broke up with him. He's not better for you, anyways." Sunoo rolled his eyes, brushing his hair back as he stared blankly at the colorful crochet pieces arranged neatly in front of him. They were at the National Art Celebration, wandering through the Art Museum's marketplace.
He didn't respond to his friend's comment. What was there to say?
His fingers hovered over a small adorable crochet strawberry keychain, the kind of thing he'd usually buy without hesitation but he didn't pick it up, because his mood didn't match the softness in front of him. It hadn't even been a full week since everything crashed. His ex had been sleeping with more than just one person behind his back. Sunoo had confronted him head-on, shaking with anger, and left. The next day, he was at a clinic, filling out forms with numb fingers, waiting for results that thankfully came back clean. Still, the damage wasn't something that a negative result could fix.
"I hope he chokes on his small dick and dies," Sunoo muttered under his breath, not even trying to sound playful about it. He turned from the crochet booth and walked a few steps over to the next one, where rows of stickers were arranged neatly across a dark velvet cloth.
His lips twitched slightly as he noticed a sticker of a cat holding a cigarette in its mouth. The drawing was a little messy nothing like the soft pastel style he usually liked. The rest of the stickers shared the same energy—guitars, ghost-like figures, strange shapes in heavy red and black tones. The entire table had a darker, rougher feel to it, but instead of pushing him away, it pulled him in. Something about the way the lines were drawn, the way the art didn't try to be friendly, and it felt honest, that honesty intrigued him. He picked up the cat sticker, turning it slightly under the light. "This is so cute. Are you the artist?" he asked, glancing up at the boy behind the table.
The boy shook his head with a small grin. "Thank you, but no. I'm just her cousin. She went to grab some food. I'm babysitting her table for now."
Sunoo nodded, eyes still scanning the stickers laid out in front of him. He wasn't even sure where he'd put them if he bought any—his laptop was already full, his tumbler too—but something about them felt worth having. Maybe he just wanted to support someone who clearly put effort into making something different. Without thinking too much, he picked out five more, dropped a bill in the little payment box, and gave a quick thank you before stepping back into the flow of the crowd.
"I'm gonna get the car. Just wait here. The parking lot's, like, so far and it's insanely hot," his friend said, already fanning her face with a brochure as she walked away. Sunoo just gave her a lazy nod and stayed in the shade, sipping his strawberry soda and lightly tapping the tip of his shows against the concrete to keep himself distracted.
It was Saturday, supposed to be relaxing day, but Sunoo's mind didn't know how to slow down. The breakup still clung to him, but even beyond that, the stress of his return demo for nursing school kept replaying in his head. It was getting close, and he still didn't feel ready. His eyebags were starting to sink into his face again, darkening with every late night he spent crying or spiraling in bed, wondering how things managed to fall apart this fast. He'd thought about going out again, just to dance, to pretend, to flirt with someone but he already knew it wouldn't help.
Just as he was about to take another sip from his drink, he froze. His nose twitched — Was that... cigarette smoke? Sunoo immediately grimaced, pressing his fingers over his nose and mouth. What the hell? Who the fuck smokes around here? The whole place was filled with kids and art booths, and there was a giant NO SMOKING sign that was printed in bold red letters, stuck on a wall not even ten steps away. His eyes scanned the shaded rest area until they landed on the source.
There you were—sitting alone on the bench with one leg drawn up, smoke curling lazily from your lips, completely unbothered.
"The fuck?" he muttered, eyes narrowing as another wave of smoke drifted toward him, already starting to irritate his throat. He wasn't trying to start anything, but the longer he stood there, the more it felt like the smoke was reaching out, wrapping around his skin, sneaking into his lungs, clinging to his clothes. He was already dealing with a bad day, and now this?!
You exhaled again, your gaze flicked toward him, catching the look he gave you but you didn't react. If anything, you just blinked, relaxed, fingers still holding the cigarette loosely between them.
Sunoo stood there, clearly expecting you to look guilty or maybe at least pretend to care, but when you didn't, he clicked his tongue in frustration and glanced at the sign again, like pointing it out. "Do you not see the sign?" he said, irritation in every word. "This is a public area, kids are here, and secondhand smoke—do you even know it's worse than smoking yourself? God, the sign is literally right there. It's huge."
You looked at him again, blinking like you didn't quite catch what he was saying. Your hand, holding the cigarette near your mouth, paused midair. Then, slowly, you turned your head to glance over your shoulder, as if making sure he was actually talking to you and not someone else behind the bench.
When your eyes met his again, they stayed on him a second longer. He stood there with a roughness that didn't match the soft features on his face. You let your gaze move over him without shame, noting the little details—the way his hair was clipped back by a cute pink clip, the pale tone of his skin that looked untouched by the sun, smooth, almost too perfect. His lips had a natural flush, a little swollen like he'd been biting them out of stress, and even with that annoyed look carved into his face, there was nothing harsh about him.
What a beautiful man, you thought, not even trying to hide it. You let the moment hang for a bit longer, then flicked the ash off the end of your cigarette with a small movement. Your voice was unbothered when you finally spoke. "You always pick fights with strangers, or am I just lucky today?"
He blinked, caught off guard by how casually you responded. "Start fights?" he repeated, eyes narrowing further. "You're the one breaking the rules. 'No smoking' doesn't mean smoke quietly. It means don't fucking smoke."
You took another drag without rush, then exhaled away from his direction, watching him. "Right. And you yelling about it in public—real mature. Definitely better than me just sitting here minding my own business."
Sunoo stepped forward slightly, jaw tightening. "You're not minding your business. That's the problem."
You shrugged, leaning back just a little on the bench, clearly not moved. "Then move somewhere else. No one's forcing you to breathe next to me. I don't fucking care."
You saw the way the color started creeping into the tips of his ears, how his hands curled into tight fists at his sides like he was holding himself back from saying something worse. He was clearly seething, barely keeping it together. You smiled to yourself then turned your head away to take another drag from your cigarette, the smoke curling softly from your lips.
"Bitch," you heard him muttered under his breath.
You turned your head back toward him, one brow lifting as you exhaled the smoke without rushing. "Excuse me?"
You started to shift, one foot planting on the ground like you were about to stand, but before anything else could happen, a small car pulled up right in front of you. Sunoo didn't waste a second. He walked straight toward it, yanked the passenger door open, and slipped inside as if the vehicle were his escape hatch. He slammed the door, and through the window, you could see the tension still sitting in his shoulders. But what caught your attention was how he didn't look away. Even as the engine came to life, even as the car rolled slowly forward, Sunoo kept his eyes locked on you. His glare was sharp and it's lingering.
You pressed your tongue into your cheek as you took another slow hit from the cigarette, still watching. When the car passed, you caught his reflection in the side mirror, and there he was—still glaring.
You flicked the smoke away from your face, the faintest smirk on your lips as the car disappeared down the road. Hah. He's such a pretty guy. You liked him already.
"Who's that guy?"
Sunoo didn't even try to hide his curiosity as he pointed across the room, eyes fixed on the one person who'd completely pulled his attention. The music was loud, bass thumping through the floor, and bodies moved around the house party in various stages of drunken celebration. It was supposed to be a simple gathering, just something to celebrate surviving midterms and their return demonstrations. He wasn't expecting anything wild tonight. Honestly, he'd shown up mostly out of pressure and to avoid looking like a killjoy. As someone in healthcare, he was all too aware of the risks, especially when it came to hookups. The rise of HIV cases was something that always lingered in the back of his mind, and the weight of what his ex put him through was still fresh. He wasn't exactly in the mood to relive that. But even so... looking didn't hurt, right?
"That's Park Sunghoon," someone answered beside him, casually sipping from their red cup. "Physical Therapy."
Sunoo's eyes narrowed slightly, studying the guy. He was leaning against the wall, laughing, drink in hand, head tilted just enough to show off a clean jawline and that effortless hair. "Does he have a girlfriend?" Sunoo asked, still watching. His friend shrugged. "I don't know? Maybe? You interested? Go talk to him!"
Sunoo rolled his eyes and sipped from his drink. "I don't even know if he's into men." His friend leaned in, grinning. "Ngeh, I don't know either, but he looks like he's giving off some BL energy. Just try!"
Sunoo didn't respond right away, but his gaze drifted back to Sunghoon, eyes half-lidded from the buzz. There was something about him, the kind of guy who knew he looked good but didn't make a show of it. And okay, maybe there was something about the way he stood that didn't exactly scream masculine authority. There was a softness to it, or maybe just an openness that made Sunoo curious.
He tapped his fingers against his cup, considering. He wasn't looking for anything serious but after everything he'd been through, a little fun wouldn't hurt. And if Park Sunghoon happened to be fun and hot? Well... why the hell not?
With one final sip, Sunoo set his cup down and gave his friend a sly look. "Fine. I'll try."
He took a breath, adjusted his shirt, and began walking through the crowd, weaving past groups of loud classmates and half-finished games of beer pong until he finally reached the corner where Park Sunghoon stood. The table beside them was lined with vodka, soda, and mixers. Sunoo casually took his place beside him, pretending to look through the drink options while stealing a glance at the boy he'd just been staring at across the room.
Sunghoon turned his head slightly, noticed him, and smiled. He raised his cup. "Cheers?" he offered.
Sunoo smiled back, trying not to let it show how fast his heart had just jumped. He reached for a drink off the table, tapping his cup gently against Sunghoon's. "Physical Therapy?" Sunoo asked, trying to keep his tone light, confident and a little sweet.
"Yeah. Nursing?" Sunghoon replied smoothly, and when Sunoo nodded, something about the way Sunghoon smiled deepened, more focused now. That voice—fuck. Sunoo could already feel the heat crawling up his neck. His body wasn't even trying to be subtle about how attracted he was. And God, those hands—Sunghoon reached for the bottle of rum to refill his cup, and Sunoo caught a flash of the veins along his forearm, the easy flex of his wrist, the way his fingers moved with control. For a second, Sunoo lost the ability to form a proper thought. Break my bones. Please. I beg.
They were already halfway through the conversation, and Sunoo could feel himself falling a little too deep for comfort. Sunghoon wasn't just attractive—he was engaging in a way that didn't feel forced. He spoke with confidence in his voice, and Sunoo found himself drawn in with every word. It surprised him how someone could make something as dry as tendons sound this interesting, especially when he usually avoided any talk of lectures once he stepped out of school. But with Sunghoon, it felt different. His voice was soothing, and the way he explained things had a rhythm that made Sunoo want to listen, even if he already knew the topic.
"And you know the tendons that connect from the—" Sunghoon started, his fingers gesturing as he spoke.
Sunoo nodded along, genuinely interested, eyes fixed on him, but then, right in the middle of the sentence, Sunghoon stopped. His posture shifted, back straightening, and his eyes flicked past Sunoo's shoulder like something—or someone—had just pulled his attention. Sunoo frowned, eyebrows drawing together, expecting him to finish the sentence, but instead, he watched as Sunghoon tilted his head slightly, his expression softening in recognition, lips curving upward.
Sunoo glanced behind him, confusion setting in. Then Sunghoon cleared his throat, gave him a polite smile, and said, "Uhh, sorry. If you'll excuse me. Nice meeting you, Sunoo," before lightly tapping his shoulder and walking off.
Sunoo's mouth fell open, completely caught off guard. He barely had time to react before his eyes followed Sunghoon's retreating figure—and then he saw exactly where he was heading. Fuck?!
You were leaning casually against the wall near the hallway entrance, drink in hand, watching the whole interaction. You didn't look surprised to see Sunghoon making his way over. In fact, you barely blinked. The moment he reached you, your body turned just slightly to make space for him. Sunghoon leaned in, said something only you could hear, and your quiet laugh in response said everything else Sunoo didn't want to believe.
Sunoo blinked, chest tight. He could almost feel something short-circuiting inside his brain, like a wire snapping clean. His thoughts were a blur, but one thing was clear—you. His pulse quickened as his body processed the shift, his amygdala practically lighting up with one conclusion: you are a threat.
A threat to his night, his mood, his already bruised ego. God, how was it even possible for someone he'd only met twice to piss him off this much? The universe really had the audacity to let you show up again, and not just exist, but actively ruin his chances at getting laid. Because let's be real—he wasn't looking for love, just something to distract him, and now even that had been snatched by the same cigarette-smoking bitch who couldn't be bothered to respect a no-smoking sign?!
His friend appeared beside him, holding a fresh cup and scanning the room. "Hey, where'd Sunghoon go? You two looked like you were hitting it off."
Sunoo didn't turn to look at her. He just brought the rim of his cup to his lips, finished what was left in a single gulp, and slammed it back on the table. "He went to hell," he muttered. "With someone who clearly lives there." His friend blinked, confused. "Wait—what?"
Sunoo turned to her, face tight with a forced smile. "Don't worry about it. Just remind me next time I say I'm open to meeting new people—slap me."
He exhaled sharply as his eyes drifted back to where the two of you had returned from the hallway. And when he really looked—when he took in your outfit, the way you were dressed like you didn't give a single shit what anyone thought—he almost laughed out loud.
A strawberry shirt? Jorts? Those shoes? That's what Sunghoon left him for? Sunoo scoffed under his breath, shaking his head slowly, barely believing it. He looked down at himself—his carefully styled hair, his clean lines, and then back at you. "Seriously," he muttered, eyes still locked on you. "That's the one?"
He couldn't decide if he was more offended for himself or embarrassed for Sunghoon. Whether you were just a friend, a fling, or something in between, one thing was clear to him now: Park Sunghoon had no taste. And if he did, it was broken.
Anyway, there were plenty of fish in the sea. Sunoo wasn't going to waste his energy sulking over one guy, especially not if you were somehow involved. If Sunghoon had any sort of connection to you then Sunoo would rather tap out early and save himself the trouble. He had enough baggage without adding someone who came with your name attached.
At least, that's what he told himself.
But then again, Sunoo had also said there were so many fish in the sea—yet somehow, it felt like every damn fish was just swimming in circles around you. It was getting ridiculous. He wasn't being dramatic, either. There was always something—some random detail, some little coincidence, and suddenly, boom. You. Right there again.
Date number one: a gym instructor. Hot, yes, a little edgy, had that calm, slow-talking voice Sunoo secretly liked. Things were going okay, until the guy pulled out his phone to show pictures of his niece's birthday party and proudly pointed to a group photo. Sunoo was nodding politely, until his eyes caught on one specific person in the background, holding the cake and grinning. He blinked. Zoomed in. Yup. You. Holding a cake with your horrible strawberry tank top. Niece, cousin, whatever—you were related. Add to that the guy reeked of cigarettes the whole time, and Sunoo was done before dessert.
Date number two: a Med Tech student. Good on paper, clean cut, same healthcare background, probably understood his schedule and stress levels. Sunoo was really trying with this one. But on their second date, as they were walking to a café near the guy's family's shop, Sunoo noticed someone standing out front during a break—leaning against the wall, cigarette between your lips, looking bored out of your mind. You. Again. You even smirk at him! Sunoo didn't even finish the coffee. He went home and ghosted the guy the next morning.
Okay, maybe he was being petty. Maybe, in a community as tight as theirs, having overlap wasn't that deep. But could anyone really blame him? Sunoo could admit it—he was petty, fine. He could own that. His feelings were valid. He was the one showing up, putting in effort, trying to start something new while somehow tripping over you every single time.
And if anyone dared to question why he was so quick to shut people down the moment your name and face got involved, well—he'd like to point them toward basic psychology. According to research, the brain forms first impressions within seconds. These impressions are shaped by appearance, voice, body language, even scent—and they trigger implicit biases, unconscious reactions that color how we feel about someone before they even say a word. And what had his brain learned to associate with you? Cigarettes, interruptions, stolen men, smug grins, and the color strawberry.
So, yes. Sunoo was triggered. And he was allowed to be.
"Damn, my neck is killing me from all these hospital duties. I'm seriously craving mint ice cream right now," Sunoo groaned, letting himself collapse face-first into the couch at Jungwon's dorm. He had no energy left and zero motivation to head back to his own apartment. Everything hurt—his back, his neck, even his brain.
"I'm begging for a break," Jungwon said from his desk, not looking up from his laptop. "God, give me a date."
Sunoo's voice came out muffled, his face still buried in the cushion. "I'm fine with God not giving me a date as long as I get a decent eight hours of sleep."
"What happened with all those dates you went on?" Jungwon finally asked, turning slightly in his chair. "None of them worked out?"
"I'd rather not talk about it," Sunoo muttered, one hand waving in the air like he could physically dismiss the topic. He sat up slowly, rubbing the back of his neck. "Forget it. I'm going to grab ice cream before I start crying about my life again. Want anything?"
Jungwon leaned back and grinned. "Can you buy me some lube?"
Sunoo rolled his eyes so hard. "Get your own, freak."
He stood up, grabbing his wallet off the coffee table and brushing off invisible lint from his pants. He didn't even know if he actually wanted ice cream anymore or if he just needed an excuse to be alone for a bit. Either way, he needed air. And distance. And ideally, a world where you didn't exist in every corner of his social life.
But of course, fate had other plans—because who else would be behind the counter of the convenience store at 10:42 PM but you, punching in his order with that same lazy grin plastered on your face as your eyes dropped directly to the bottle of lube and box of condoms on the counter.
Seriously. How many fucking jobs did you have? Sunoo stared at you, disbelief turning to horror, then to full-blown irritation. "Can you not grin like that?" he snapped, arms crossed. "What happened to discrete and nonjudgmental service? I need to speak to your manager."
You tilted your head slightly and blinked at him with exaggerated innocence, hand pausing over the touchscreen like you were truly offended. The expression only made his eye twitch harder. "That's discrimination," he added, glaring. "I should be allowed to buy whatever I want without being mentally harassed by your face."
Your lips twitched. You tried to play it cool, but the smirk slipped out before you could stop it. There it was again—that look of yours, amused and smug. So ugly!
Honestly, you hadn't expected to see him again so soon. It was the third time now, and at this point, his dramatic reactions were starting to feel like a reward. The moment he walked through the door and made eye contact with you, something in you shifted—your lips curled up instinctively, and the weight of the day suddenly didn't feel so heavy. "Huh?" you said innocently, your voice small as you tilted your head slightly, letting your bottom lip pout just enough to be annoying.
Sunoo looked like he was one breath away from combusting, especially when his eyes flicked to your mouth and you knew he caught the glint of the piercing on your lower lip, because his gaze lingered just a second too long before his face twisted in irritation.
"Huh?" he mocked, eyebrows raised and lips pushed out as he mimicked your expression, only to immediately roll his eyes so hard. Without another word, he reached across the counter and snatched the bag from your hands, the plastic crinkling loudly in the quiet. He slapped a $50 bill on the counter, pointedly avoiding your eyes.
"Keep the change and never show your face again," he snapped, already turning on his heel. "God, bye," he added with a dramatic flick of his head, tossing his hair back.
You barely held in the laugh bubbling up your throat. Cute! you thought, bracing your hands on the counter as your smile widened. "Enjoy your night, sir!" you called after him, loud and obnoxiously cheerful.
You caught the twitch of his shoulders as he froze for half a second at the door. Then, without turning fully around, he glanced at you over his shoulder, hand lifting to flash you a very clear middle finger before pushing the door open and disappearing.
You leaned back, shaking your head with a quiet chuckle. Yup. Definitely your favorite regular now.
With Sunoo buried in nonstop clinical duties, he was starting to believe that God had decided to personally test his patience. Every day was a cycle of waking up too early, surviving rounds with barely any caffeine, and crashing into bed with a brain too tired to think but still too anxious to sleep. If this was divine character development, he wanted a refund. But fine, he'd give credit where it was due. At least he wasn't in a relationship. He couldn't imagine juggling a partner on top of exams, hospital reports, and constant reminders of his nonexistent social life. That would've been a mental breakdown waiting to happen.
Sunoo still hated men or so he said. But hatred, as he often reminded himself bitterly, was a slippery slope. The more you hated, the more they crawled under your skin. And men, those confusing, beautiful disasters, were impossible to avoid. The way they smiled, the stupid flex of their arms when they weren't even trying, those veiny hands that somehow haunted his imagination late at night—ugh. It was criminal, really. He wasn't desperate, but he wasn't made of stone either. If he said he didn't miss at least a little action, he'd be lying.
So when Jake asked him to tag along to the university gym because he was meeting a friend there for a commission, Sunoo agreed—reluctantly at first. But the moment they stepped into the gym and his eyes landed on the group of basketball players practicing on the court, all thoughts of regret evaporated.
"I was waiting for my friend. Sorry to drag you into it. I have a commission with her, she told me to meet her here. Is that okay?" Jake asked, casually.
Sunoo could barely hear him over the internal scream in his head. Of course it's okay. It's so okay he might cry. His gaze was locked on one specific figure—Lee Heeseung, the captain of the university's basketball team, currently making shots. Sunoo's mouth may not have been literally on the floor, but it was dangerously close. His eyes followed every movement of how Heeseung's shirt clung to his back, how his arms flexed with every jump, how sweat dripped down his neck—
Jake nudged him. "You good?"
"Peachy," Sunoo replied, voice an octave too high as he cleared his throat. "Just... appreciating," his eyes scanned the gym, trailing slowly over the players until, inevitably, they landed on the captain, Lee Heeseung. Sunoo raised his hands vaguely, motioning toward the court as if trying to justify the way he was staring. "...physical education."
But of course, like in some movies he never signed up for, the metaphorical glass shattered the moment you appeared. Just walked right into his field of vision. The air shifted, his stomach dropped, and his brows furrowed. His expression twisted into something between disgust and disbelief as his arms dropped in surrender. What the hell were you doing here?! Oh God?! You and him are in the same university?!
And then, just as Sunoo thought the scene couldn't get worse, Jake stood up, grinning wide. "There you are!" he said before pulling you into a hug and pressing a kiss on your cheek.
Sunoo's entire soul left his body. What. The. Actual. Fuck.
Jake was gay—openly and proudly gay—and Sunoo, as judgmental as he sometimes got, couldn't help but squint suspiciously. Are you seriously friends with his friends? Because if anyone was giving homophobic vibes, it was definitely you. Sunoo blinked hard. The math wasn't mathing. Did Jake not feel the same tension he did? Oh no. Jake needed help. Jake needed saving. God, someone had to sit him down and explain a few things before it was too late.
"Oh! Meet Sunoo! He's my best friend from nursing."
And there it was—the inevitable moment where Sunoo had no choice but to lock eyes with you. The second your gaze met his, you smiled so sweetly it made his entire body crawl. You even added a little wave, like this was the friendliest encounter on earth, and not the fourth time you'd popped up in his life. Sunoo felt the twitch in his eye before he could stop it, jaw clenching as he forced the most plastic smile onto his face. The corners of his eyes crinkled with pure performance. He stood up, cheeks already aching from pretending, leaned in for a polite cheek-to-cheek like he wasn't imagining pulling your hair back in pure rage, and was immediately hit with a mix of cigarette smoke and YSL Libre perfume. Ugh.
Jake, completely oblivious to the silent war unfolding, beamed as he gestured between the two of you. "She's a fashion design major! Does commissions too—drawings, paintings, cakes, you name it."
Sunoo nodded stiffly, barely reacting. Inside, he was sighing so loud he could practically hear himself. As Jake went on, clearly proud to know someone like you, Sunoo watched you nod and smile with just the right amount of humility, your tone gentle, polite, soft—like butter wouldn't melt in your mouth. This is fake. You're fake. This whole performance is fake. God, Jake deserves better friends. He forced another smile, barely hanging onto his sanity. Because the way you were looking at him right now and you knew he was crumbling inside was enough to make his blood boil.
And worst of all, you looked delighted about it. Bitch. You're a bitch. Sunoo didn't even try to be polite about it in his head anymore. He had fully accepted the fact that you existed in his life for the sole purpose of testing his patience.
But of course, it didn't stop there. Since Jake thought you and Sunoo were getting along just fine, he began inviting you everywhere. Lunch, coffee breaks, study sessions—any time he had a free hour, he'd text both of you like this was some little trio. Fuck him!
And every time you showed up, Sunoo could feel that familiar twitch start behind his eye, the one that pulsed when he was one annoyance away from losing it. Your voice would float into the conversation like you had no idea you were driving him slowly insane.
But the worst part? The absolutely most humiliating part? He was starting to notice things. Little details that stuck with him even though he never asked for them. You smoked Marlboro Reds, but you always kept a strawberry-flavored vape in your bag. You wore outfits like you just rolled out of a punk indie concert, all black with layered chains and boots that could kill a man, but he'd bet money your favorite color was red—based on the red phone case, the red liner under your eyes, the strawberry pins you sometimes wore on your bag. You had a piercing on your tongue—he found that out when you bit into a donut one afternoon and casually stuck your tongue out in surprise because of the powdered sugar.
He didn't mean to remember all of this. He didn't even talk to you. Not directly, at least. Every time Jake tried to bridge conversation between you two, it felt like some weird form of punishment. Sunoo would answer, you'd smile knowingly, and Jake would keep chatting like this three-way exchange wasn't slowly draining Sunoo's soul.
"Jake has a fear of needles, so maybe stop trying to convince him to get a piercing or a tattoo," Sunoo said, not even glancing up from his drink.
He hadn't meant to speak, but with Jake in the restroom and the silence between you two stretching, the words slipped out. His tone was calm but the way his fingers tightened slightly around his cup betrayed the irritation simmering under his skin.
You turned your head, raising a brow slowly as if deciding whether to entertain this or not. "Hmm? I didn't know we were handing out unsolicited advice now," you said, tilting your glass to make the ice clink. "Is that your subtle way of joining the conversation, Ddeuno?"
His jaw flexed the moment the nickname left your lips. He finally looked at you, eyes sharp. "It's not joining if I'm already in it. Jake was talking to both of us. And it's Sunoo. Not that hard."
You smiled, amused by the twitch in his expression. "Sure, Sunoo. But don't you think Jake's capable of making his own choices?"
"He is," he said, voice a touch tighter as he leaned forward and crossed one leg over the other. "Which is exactly why I know he wouldn't have asked if you didn't plant the idea in his head."
You rested your elbow on the table and glanced at him with casual ease. "I didn't plant anything. He saw my piercing and asked. Maybe you're just not used to people being curious about something you can't control."
He scoffed, shaking his head as he stirred his drink, the metal spoon tapping against ceramic. "Right, because nothing screams freedom of choice like peer pressure with a side of aesthetic superiority."
"I never pressured him," you said, eyes locked on his. "But if he wanted to try something new, I wouldn't stop him. You, on the other hand, sound like you'd tackle him to the ground before he could book an appointment."
Okay, fuck this. Sunoo's patience was thinning by the second, and he could feel the irritation rising and rising and rising! He hadn't come here to argue, but the way you kept smiling, like you knew how to push every single one of his buttons, made it impossible to let it slide.
He wasn't trying to control Jake. He was just looking out for him because someone had to. Sunoo had this belief, stubborn as it was, that people who covered themselves in piercings and tattoos didn't exactly value their skin the way they should. It wasn't about being judgmental, it was about keeping things clean, presentable, safe. Sure, he wouldn't tell strangers how to live their lives, but when it came to the people around him? The people he cared about? He preferred them untouched.
He turned to you again, eyes hard. "There's nothing wrong with wanting the people I care about to take care of themselves properly."
You didn't flinch, just tilted your head slightly, like you were waiting for more. "Tattoos and piercings aren't unhygienic if done right," you replied. "But sure, let's pretend this is about safety and not just your obsession with control."
Sunoo laughed under his breath, the sound hollow. "Yeah? And let me guess—you're the expert now because you sat through a couple needle sessions and watched some tattoo TikToks?"
You leaned forward slightly, elbows on the table, gaze unshaken. "No. But I'm someone who understands that self-expression doesn't need your permission."
The tension in the air crackled. And just when it felt like one more word would tip things over the edge, Jake returned to the table, smiling. "Miss anything?" he asked, completely unaware.
You leaned back smoothly, picking up your drink like nothing happened. "Not a thing."
That was it. He couldn't keep letting this slide. As much as he tried to convince himself he was just being overprotective, he knew deep down he was past the line of tolerating your presence. You were a bad influence on Jake—he was sure of it—and sooner or later, someone had to say it. That someone was going to be him.
Later that day, when you'd left first and it was just the two of them walking toward the station, Sunoo finally spoke. "Do you... ever feel a certain vibe from her?"
Jake blinked, looking over at him with an innocent confusion that made Sunoo want to scream. "Huh? Vibes? What kind of vibes?"
Bitch vibes, Sunoo almost blurted out. He had to stop himself from saying it out loud. He cleared his throat, trying to sound more composed. "Just... like, the way she talks. She always has something to say, and it's never just casual. It's like everything's meant to get a reaction."
Jake tilted his head slightly, clearly trying to follow. "You mean, like, she's too witty?"
Sunoo narrowed his eyes. "No, like... she's too comfortable? It's weird. And I don't trust it."
Jake just laughed, brushing it off too easily. "She's just chill. That's how she is with everyone. She's a good person, Sunoo. You just haven't gotten used to her yet."
Sunoo sighed, irritated. "That's the problem. I don't want to get used to her. And maybe you shouldn't either." He let the word slipped on his mouth.
Jake glanced at him, and for the first time, his smile faded a little. "She's my friend. You're my friend. Just... try not to be mean, okay?"
Maybe he had sounded a little too harsh, a little too pointed—but it wasn't like he was being mean for the sake of it. Sunoo knew what it looked like, but deep down, it wasn't about jealousy or drama. He was just trying to protect something that mattered to him before it got tangled up in whatever messy situation. He didn't trust easily, and the way you walked into their lives set off every internal alarm. But Jake... Jake wasn't the type to see danger. Not like Sunoo did.
"Sorry," he said quietly, reaching out to gently hold Jake's hand with a small smile. Jake just nodded and gave his hand a soft squeeze in return, the silence between them filled with a quiet understanding even if they didn't see eye to eye on everything.
Meanwhile, from your side of things, things were quite different.
The more time you spent around Kim Sunoo, the more curious you became. You weren't really interested in men. They were too predictable, too performative, too eager to please and too quick to disappoint. They were fun, sometimes, but they didn't hold your attention. But Sunoo was something else. You didn't even notice when it started. Maybe it was the way he carried himself. Maybe it was the way he bit back when provoked, or how he tried so hard to hide that he cared too much about the people around him.
You'd seen beautiful people before. You'd had flings, hookups, distractions. But Sunoo... he stuck. You were clearly interested. and there were moments that he annoyed you, sure. Challenged you. Threw shade but he made your brain work. He made your skin itch in that specific way only people you couldn't quite figure out ever did. And fine, maybe it was because he looked a little like a girl. Soft skin, pouty lips, those lashes that curled perfectly for no reason. You couldn't stop looking at him.
Well, too bad for you, he didn't seem the least bit pleased with your presence. And honestly? The feeling was mutual. He had that almost condescending way of speaking that made everything sound like a warning label. Foul controlling mouth, always ready with a "don't do this," or a "you shouldn't do that." He was a walking killjoy wrapped in pretty skin, constantly policing the air around him like joy was something to be monitored.
It didn't make sense. How could someone so tightly wound be friends with someone like Jake, who floated through life like a balloon one gust away from flying into the sun? What were they even talking about when you weren't around? Did Sunoo lecture Jake on posture and caffeine intake? Did Jake actually listen?
"Are you getting along with Sunoo well?" Jake asked.
You paused mid-hit with your vape, the familiar strawberry taste lingering on your tongue as you raised your leg up onto the bench, shoulders lifting in a shrug. You exhaled slowly, letting the smoke drift upward as you looked off to the side. "Define 'well,'" you murmured.
Of course, Jake would ask. And of course, Sunoo had probably said something. It was expected. That boy had a hard time keeping anything off his chest, especially when it came to people he clearly couldn't stand. Jake sighed, slumping back against the bench like your answer had physically disappointed him. "Aww, come on. I really want you two to get along," he muttered, pouting.
You glanced at him, the corner of your mouth pulling into a faint smirk. "Jake, I don't not get along with him. We just don't operate on the same wavelength." You watched as Jake's shoulders dropped a little, disappointment settling in. There was a pause, not long, but long enough for you to notice the way he kept looking at you like he was hoping for a better answer. So you gave him one, even if it came reluctantly. "He's interesting, though."
That made Jake perk up, turning to face you more fully, hope flickering back into his expression. "You think so?"
And with that soft look on his face, that typical sunshine that you could never seem to say no to, you found yourself giving in. Fine. The next time you saw Sunoo, you wouldn't provoke him. You'd leave his nerves alone for once, maybe even make an effort not to smell like smoke. You already knew that Sunoo probably hated the smell of cigarettes. The way he wrinkled his nose when you were near, how he subtly shifted his body away like he didn't want to breathe the same air, said more than enough.
He was the type who liked rules. Cleanliness. Probably thought smoking was a character flaw rather than a habit. So controlling. But if it meant keeping peace with Jake, you could give it a shot. And you really want to get along with him, though. Not just a friend.
If men were animals, Sunoo would absolutely agree they were monkeys but honestly, even that felt unfair to monkeys. At least monkeys had a sense of community. They groomed each other, protected their own, had an instinct to care. Men? Men could barely carry a conversation without twisting it to revolve around themselves, like everything was orbiting their fragile egos. And what did it even say about him that he'd still actually tried to be patient with that last one? The man had poor communication skills, grammar that made Sunoo want to cry, a sense of humor so dry it could choke a cactus, and hygiene that was clearly not taught with enough urgency in his household. Sunoo had still shown up, been kind, understanding, even offered grace where he really shouldn't have.
And he got ghosted. After all that effort, after tolerating body spray that didn't cover the scent of unwashed laundry, and laugh emojis used in places where no jokes existed—Sunoo was the one who got left on read.
And as if the universe hadn't done enough damage, this morning, their Clinical Instructor decided to nitpick his grooming. Said his hair was too long and should be "cleaned up to maintain a professional image." Too long? It was barely brushing his ears!
Sunoo slammed his locker shut, lips pressed into a thin line as he yanked his lanyard off and stuffed it into his pocket. "I need a mango shake," he muttered under his breath, storming out of the building. "Or I need a drink. Or I need to get laid. Honestly, at this point, any of the three will do. Fuck this life."
And as if the day hadn't already tried to ruin him, it just kept going. Sunoo tripped over one of the uneven bricks in the university garden—in front of three freshmen and a couple from Dentistry—and his whole body hit the ground like it had something to prove. The worst part? He was wearing his white clinical uniform, freshly ironed this morning, and now it had mud on the knee, a grass stain on the sleeve, and his shoe was ruined. The sole peeled at the side like it was giving up on life, just like him.
He stood there for a moment, fists clenched, eyes locked on the sky like he was daring it to rain. His pride was already dented, his clothes dirty, his patience snapped and now, of course, not a single damn taxi in sight was stopping. He raised his arm again, waved it with enough energy to summon a ghost, but every car either sped past or pretended not to see him. People were staring. He could hear the soft chuckles, see the sideways glances. He was half a second from screaming into the void or kicking a bush, whichever came first.
And then came the low sound of motorbike. He turned his head, expecting just another person speeding past him like the rest of the universe, but the bike slowed down instead. The helmeted rider stopped in front of him, casually lifting the visor.
His eye twitched instantly. Of course it was you. Like the universe had specially selected you to appear right when he had the least energy to deal with anything, especially you. His grip on his bag strap tightened out of habit, maybe even to stop himself from doing something regrettable. The strap strained against his palm as he imagined how satisfying it would be to swing it straight at your little helmet.
You didn't speak but the amused curve of your lips said everything. Your eyes scanned his state—mud on his uniform, one shoe visibly damaged, face flushed with humiliation and frustration—and that damn smile only grew. "Rough day, pretty boy?"
Sunoo closed his eyes, shoulders rising with a deep inhale of your voice. He hadn't seen you in weeks, maybe months, and yet here you were, showing up when his life was at its absolute worst. He opened his eyes slowly, and instead of giving you the satisfaction of a scowl, he gave you a sweet, polite smile. "Fuck off."
You tilted your head slightly, helmet still on, visor up, as if you were genuinely trying to decide whether his attitude deserved a response. "Hmm," you murmured, nonchalant. "Need a ride, or are you into being publicly humiliated? Because you're doing a great job."
"I'd rather crawl," he muttered under his breath, shifting his weight, and instantly regretting it when his soaked shoe made a gross squish. Disgusting. This day was disgusting.
"Great," you replied, gripping the throttle. "Let me know how far that gets you. Good luck."
The engine growled once beneath you as you rolled the bike forward a little, just enough to make it clear you were ready to leave him standing there. And that should've been fine. He didn't need you. He didn't want your help.
Except he did. Because his legs were aching, his socks were wet, and none of the taxis had stopped for the last fifteen minutes, and to make things worse, he had class at two o'clock sharp. There was no way he could show up looking like this, not with the nursing department's obsession with cleanliness and grooming. One look at his uniform and they'd send him straight home. He didn't have the time or energy to risk that.
So, against every ounce of pride in his body, he swallowed hard and called out, "W-Wait."
The second it left his mouth, regret settled in. You didn't even bother to turn off the engine. You just tilted your head again, that damn helmet catching the light, your eyes already locking on his with that same irritating amusement you always wore around him.
Sunoo's eye twitched. His fingers curled tighter around the strap of his bag. Every part of him wanted to kick your stupid motorbike over and walk away barefoot, but his common sense—the part that knew wet shoes, strict instructors, and a late clinical check-in didn't mix—kept him rooted in place.
You raised your brows. "Changed your mind?"
"No," he snapped. "The universe is just clearly mocking me and you're the cherry on top."
You let out a short laugh. "That's not a no."
He clenched his jaw and looked away for a second, like maybe if he didn't see your face, he could pretend this wasn't happening. Then finally, after a long pause, he muttered, "I need a ride. That's it. Don't talk. Just drive."
You patted the back of the seat, without another word, the engine rumbled beneath you as you steadied the bike, shifting slightly to pull your helmet off and offer it to him. Sunoo blinked, hesitating. "You're not wearing one?"
You tilted your head, brushing your hair out of your face as you balanced the bike with one leg. "You're in a clinical uniform. If we get stopped, guess who they'll blame for not following safety rules? Just take it, Nurse."
He didn't reply, just snatched the helmet from your hand and mumbled something under his breath that sounded like, I hate you, though it came out too tired to carry any real hatred. He shoved it on, adjusting the strap a little too aggressively before climbing on behind you.
"Jake said your place is near the Avenue, right?" you asked, eyes already ahead. "I'm going the long way. No checkpoints."
Sunoo gripped the back handle awkwardly at first before giving in and placing his hands lightly on your waist for balance, trying not to think too hard about the contact. "Whatever," he muttered. "Just drive."
The wind wrapped around both of you, warm against his face, tugging at his hair and slipping into the space between his collar and neck. He hated how natural it felt to sit there with you, hated how the scent of your perfume still clung to the inside of the helmet. He hates the smell of the strawberry yet he don't know why it was giving him comfort right now.
"Drop me off at that corner," he said, leaning closer to make sure you heard him, pointing toward the shaded part of the sidewalk ahead.
You didn't say anything—just pulled over smoothly and tapped the brakes until the bike came to a steady stop. The second it did, he got off like the seat had turned hot, quickly removing the helmet and smoothing down his messy hair. He held the helmet out toward you stiffly.
You took it, setting it on the handlebars, and exhaled a breath. "You know," you started, giving him a once-over, "for someone who acts so obsessed with respect and rules, you're really bad at saying thank you."
Sunoo let out a breath that was halfway between a scoff and a sigh. "I didn't ask for your help."
You shrugged, hands settling easily on the handles. "Yeah. But you still climbed on."
He looked at you for a moment, lips twitching like he wanted to say something else but couldn't find the energy. Instead, he turned his gaze away, cheeks flushed from heat.
"Fine," he said, barely above a mutter. "Thanks. For the ride."
Your smile widened, "anytime, pretty boy."
He rolled his eyes, turned around, and walked off before you could enjoy the look on his face any longer. But you were already watching his back as he stormed away, your fingers brushing against the helmet. Cute. So damn cute!
"What do you mean you're not going?" Sunoo asked, frowning as he walked alongside Jake through the hallway.
"I'm busy," Jake replied, reaching for his locker and spinning the lock. "Jungwon's coming anyway, right? Just vibe with him for now. You'll survive a night without me."
Sunoo let out a dramatic sigh and stomped his foot, clearly not in the mood to be reasonable. "But I want you there! It's not fun without you."
Jake pulled out a thick review binder and glanced at him over his shoulder. "I've got a summative test on Monday, remember? It's kind of important. We could just crash at my place after, maybe do a sleepover?"
"Ihhh," Sunoo whined, dragging out the sound. "I don't want to sleep, I want to drink."
Jake raised an eyebrow, already sensing where this was headed. "Don't tell me this is about that guy from the other school ghosting you. Again."
Sunoo rolled his eyes and waved a dismissive hand. "It's not about that. I just... feel like drinking. That's all."
Jake stared at him for a moment, closing his locker slowly, trying to read beneath the surface. "Right. Totally not about him." He slung his bag over one shoulder and sighed. "Look, let me get through these notes first. If I finish early, I'll come join you. But until then, just go with Jungwon, okay?"
Sunoo pouted but didn't argue further. He hated going without Jake, but sulking alone wouldn't change the plan. He was going out tonight, one way or another and with Jake or not, he was going to forget every bit of bullshit the week had piled on him. Even if it meant dragging Jungwon into whatever he was about to step into.
He swore it was going to be just one drink—maybe two, while waiting for Jake but the moment they arrived, it turned out the party was practically a shrine to drinking games. The music was loud, the lights were low, and every corner had someone yelling "bottoms up!"
Jungwon, despite his initial confidence, was barely holding it together after three rounds of some game that involved slapping the table and chanting nonsense. He stood up abruptly, wobbling slightly as he pressed a hand to his stomach. "Oh my God, I feel like I'm going to vomit. Why am I such a loser?" he groaned, and without waiting for a response, excused himself, muttering something about needing air—or a toilet.
Sunoo, meanwhile, wasn't faring much better. His head was spinning, cheeks flushed, and his limbs felt like they were being operated by someone else. He didn't even realize when the giggles turned into sniffles, and the sniffles turned into full-blown tears. He ended up kneeling by the edge of the marble platform near the open balcony, smacking his fist weakly against the cool surface as the alcohol dragged his emotions right out of him.
"Ehhhhhh," he cried, voice cracking pitifully. "I want a boyfriennnnddd!"
Jay, who had been casually sipping beer on the couch nearby, looked up in alarm as Sunoo stumbled toward him with watery eyes. He stopped in front of him, wiping at his cheeks like it would hide the mess.
"Pleaseee," Sunoo sniffled, leaning close. "Find me a boyfriend. I want to be loved. I'm so soft. I'm so kind. Why am I suffering?! Ugh."
Jay blinked, glanced around the party like someone might swoop in and handle the situation for him, and when no one came, he slowly set his beer down. "...Do you want water?"
Sunoo gasped, "I want love, not hydration!" he wailed, continue to sob.
Before Jay could figure out what to do with that level of emotional spiral, someone approached from behind.
"Jay, the owner's already handing us the money—what the fuck?"
Sunoo blinked through his tears and looked up, vision blurry as your voice rang out. You stood just inside the balcony doorway. Red halter sando clinging to your shoulders, he noticed a tattoo. Ink, in a soft pinkish-red tone, winding delicately along your shoulder and upper arm. The design was detailed floral vines and swirls that traced across your collarbone and around your bicep. It was so beautifully done, it almost looked like it was growing from your skin, and that pissed him off even more. Your baggy jeans low on your hips, your hair twisted into a messy bun. A guitar strap slung diagonally over your body, cigarette hanging loose between your fingers. Your eyeshadow was smudged black and glittery, clashing violently with your red lipstick, but somehow you made it work—though Sunoo would never admit that out loud. Not even if he were dying.
There was no smirk this time, no teasing glint in your eyes. Just a quiet kind of concern as you stared down at him. And he hated it. Absolutely hated it!
So, naturally, he raised his middle finger at you with zero hesitation. Jay glanced between the two of you and awkwardly took a step back. "You know him? Can you, like... deal with that? I need to talk to someone real quick." And just like that, he vanished quickly into the crowd, getting the guitar off on your shoulder to avoid any responsibilities.
Sunoo only sobbed harder. You sighed, dragging your foot across the cigarette to put it out before crouching in front of him. "What the hell happened to you?" you asked, eyeing his flushed cheeks, watery eyes, and hands tugging uselessly at the front of his shirt. "Where's Jake? Did he leave you here like this?"
Sunoo sniffled, bottom lip trembling. "I want to get laaaaaiiiid," he wailed, grabbing your shoulder. "Why can't people stay? What's wrong with me?!"
You blinked slowly, barely reacting to him shaking your shoulder with every word. "Maybe... because you're controlling?"
Sunoo froze, then glared at you, eyes wide and offended. "Fuck you! You can't even give me basic emotional support? What kind of monster are you?"
You let out a breath and sat down fully in front of him. "You want emotional support? Fine. You're hot. You're smart. You've got flawless skin and cheekbones people would sell their soul for. Now stop crying like the world ended. You're embarrassing both of us."
Sunoo sniffled again, staring at you with eyes too round and glassy for his own good. "Do you mean it?"
"Yes, I mean it," you muttered, already unlocking your phone to text Jake. "Now let's get out of here before you sob all over someone else's balcony—"
"No!" he snapped, suddenly snatching your phone and stepping back.
Your eyes widened in disbelief, your fingers twitching in the air where your phone had just been. Sunoo stood tall now, swaying only slightly, the alcohol clearly still sitting heavy in his limbs, but his grip on your phone was surprisingly solid. "Sunoo—" you warned, reaching for it, only for him to lift it higher. Damn his height.
He looked down at you, still flushed, lips pulling into a mischievous little smile that was way too proud for someone who had been sobbing on the floor five minutes ago. "It's my turn to be annoying," he said, tilting his head. "Am I actually hot?"
"Sunoo—" you sighed through your teeth, rising onto the balls of your feet. "Yes, you're hot. Now give me my phone back."
He raised it even higher. "So I'm not ugly?"
"You're pretty, Sunoo. Very pretty," you said, swallowing a dry knot in your throat as you felt your face heat up. His body was too close again, and this was definitely not where you thought the night would go.
Before you could collect yourself, he slumped forward, head landing against your neck with the weight of all his sadness. "Then why the hell does everyone cheat on me?" he wailed, and the force of him nearly knocked you backward until your spine hit the metal railing.
You stood there, half-pinned under a very clingy Kim Sunoo, awkwardly patting his back as you tried to retrieve your phone. But his grip only tightened.
He pulled away slightly, just enough to look at you, eyes still red, but his lashes clumped and wet and his lips trembling. "L-let's drink?" he mumbled. "You're annoying. I still hate you a little but I'll forget it. J-just... just don't smoke, okay? I don't like it when people smoke, okayyy?"
"Sunoo," you exhaled slowly, adjusting your balance as he kept his weight partially slumped on you, "I'm not drinking. I only came here for a gig. And I'm driving my bike. I have work tomorrow—"
"Owww-kayyy?" he cut you off with a lopsided pout.
You stared at him, unblinking. "I'm going to call Jake now."
"Owww-kayyy?" he repeated, holding your phone.
You sighed and pressed your fingers to the bridge of your nose. "Okay," you muttered.
That was all he needed. Sunoo let out a soft cheer, grabbing your hand with enthusiasm as he pulled you back into the party. You thought you were just going to drink with him, maybe a shot or two to shut him up, but Sunoo clearly had other plans.
His version of "let's drink" turned out to mean filling an entire cup with whatever was on the table and practically forcing it into your hands. You barely had time to brace yourself before he was tipping the rim toward your lips, eyes wide and sparkling.
You coughed through the first one, gagged through the second, and by the time the third hit your throat, you were wincing with every swallow. It burned all the way down and you already knew you wouldn't survive the night. For someone who smokes like it's your job, your alcohol tolerance was embarrassingly low and hangovers always hit like a truck. But then again, Sunoo was too pretty to say no to when he smiled like that, even with that annoying bratty glint in his eye.
"Party, partehhh! Yeahh!" he shouted, twirling you into the crowd like you were suddenly best friends.
Somehow, you ended up in the middle of the dance floor. Lights spinning, bass vibrating through your chest, and before you could stop yourself, your body had already leaned back against him. His hands found your waist automatically, and you didn't know if it was the alcohol or something else entirely, but your hips were moving, grinding gently against him in time with the beat.
You tilted your head slightly, cheek brushing his jaw as you muttered, "Maybe... men aren't for you, Sunoo."
He blinked down at you, clearly dazed, but still gripping your waist. "What?" he said, almost laughing.
"Swing for girls this time," you slurred with a half-smile, your fingers lightly tracing his cheek, your eyes struggling to focus. "Girls won't cheat on you."
He snorted. "Women were never my thing, bitch."
Your smile faltered just a little, and you pouted up at him, thumb brushing over the edge of his cheekbone. "In a relationship... or in sex?" You tilted your head and looked up at him through half-lidded eyes. "Because girls? They'll treat you right. They'll adore you. They'll give you the kind of head that makes you forget your own name."
Sunoo's breath caught for a second, but he didn't move away. "I know that," he muttered. "I'm one of the girls."
You hummed, dragging your gaze along his features, watching the way he blinked slower now, how his lips parted slightly as your words pressed deeper. "Mmm. But have you ever been treated like that by a girl?" you asked again, your hips shifted, rolling back just enough to press against the heat of him.
Sunoo bit his bottom lip, hard enough to leave a mark. He wanted to shove you away, curse you out, remind you just how much you irritated him—but something burned hotter in his veins than the alcohol and it was how intoxicating you looked.
He shouldn't be doing this. You were the last person on earth he should be doing this with, but then again, nothing about tonight was going according to plan. And before he could stop himself, his hands gripped your waist tighter, dragging you closer as his lips crashed into yours.
The next thing he knew, the two of you were stumbling into the restroom at the end of the hallway, the door slamming behind you. His fingers tangled into your hair, pulling tight as your back hit the sink. He hated the taste of your cigarette on your tongue, but he kissed you harder anyway. Your hands were already under his shirt, nails scraping lightly down his spine, pulling a sharp breath from his throat.
You feel his tongue exploring your mouth, moving slow, tasting you with a hunger that makes your body respond without thinking. A moan slips from your lips as heat builds between your thighs, your panties dampening at the way he kisses you.
When you finally break the kiss, your lips trail down to his neck, licking and sucking lightly until you reach his collarbone. He presses closer, breathing heavily into your hair, hips grinding into you with shaky rhythm. Both of you moan at the friction, your bodies feeding off each other's heat.
Your hand finds his waistband, fingers tracing the bulge that's been growing harder against you. The shocking huge shape beneath makes you sigh, anticipation curling low in your belly. "Fuckkk," you moan, dropping to your knees without hesitation.
Sunoo's body fell back against the sink, one hand gripping the edge, the other running through his hair like he didn't know what to do with himself. His hands were trembling as he tried to undo his belt, and he almost laughed at how clumsy he felt. But the moment was too charged, his head was light, his blood too loud. The part of him that used to think only about what it felt like to be touched was now spinning with curiosity. This—this was different. He never imagined being on the receiving end like this would feel so... unreal.
He glanced down, and the sight of you kneeling for him, eyes locked on his, lips slightly parted and ready—his mind just blanked. The way your tongue pierced glinted under the light, the tip teasing out like you were offering it, patient and inviting, made his stomach tighten painfully. "Shit," he whispered, voice cracking slightly, pulling his pants and briefs down. You stared up at his cock, your lashes fluttering at the sight. Your mouth watered at the sheer size of him, and without hesitation, you leaned closer, resting your hands on your knees like you were waiting for a command.
He couldn't believe this was what guys saw. No wonder they were obsessed with it. The view of you like that, lips ready, eyes dark with need, tongue out with that cold little metal ball waiting to touch his skin, it was pure insanity. No fantasy ever looked like this. "Fuck," he groaned again, gripping the back of your head gently as he pushed his tip toward your tongue. The second the metal touched him, he hissed, his thighs twitching from the shock of cold piercing against the heat of his cock.
And as you looked up, never breaking eye contact while slowly letting him in—he knew. He knew exactly what he'd been missing.
Sunoo had always been the one with his knees pressed down, the one getting grabbed and pulled and used, and he loved every second of it. But this was different. The way your mouth wrapped around him, how you looked so eager, how your tongue pressed and moved with purpose—his stomach was already tightening with every wet glide and suck.
"Ahh, fuck, fuck..." he whined out, head falling back as his fingers tangled in your hair, pushing you down farther. He heard the sound of your throat struggling to keep him in, your soft choking only making his hips twitch with more urgency. It was too wet, too warm, too fucking perfect.
You stayed steady, letting your throat open the best you could as you followed the rhythm of his grip. Your tongue dragged along the underside of his length, right at the base where you knew it would hit different. His moan echoed across the small room, shameless and wrecked, not caring who could hear him anymore. All he cared about was the heat wrapping around his cock and how your mouth didn't stop. You glanced up again, needing to see him, and the view made you moan around him. His skin was flushed, red climbing up to his neck, his lashes low and trembling, mouth open as he gasped through each thrust. He looked completely undone—eyes barely staying open, hands gripping you like he needed you to stay exactly there.
Your throat tightened as he gave you no space to breathe, and still, you didn't pull away. Your hands stayed planted on your knees, nails pressing into the denim as tears blurred your eyes, your breath hitching through your nose. But the way your pussy clenched from it—the helpless feeling, the rawness of it—made it all the more addictive.
Especially when both his hands now gripped your head tighter and pushed until your nose pressed flush against his navel. "I-I'm close... oh fuck, I'm close, I—I'm—" Sunoo cried out, his voice cracking with how intense it felt. His hips were moving faster now. The sound of your mouth choking around him only pushed him over the edge harder. He didn't think it could feel this good, he didn't even know he could feel this way at all.
And you didn't either. You didn't know why it felt so right, so filthy, so addicting. You'd never had anyone this desperate for you before. And Sunoo had never had anyone take him like this.
His moan was loud, body trembling as his legs struggled to keep him upright. His hips kept moving on instinct, grinding into your mouth until he finally came, thick and hot down your throat. You felt it hit the back of your tongue, swallowing quickly as he groaned above you, the pleasure written all over his flushed face.
"God, fuck... it feels so good," he breathed out, chest heaving while his hands held you there, not even realizing how hard you were trying to breathe through it. Your eyes fluttered shut as you swallowed the last of him, head light and lungs burning.
You tapped his thigh with a shaky hand, and after a moment, he loosened his grip, letting you fall back slightly. You coughed a bit, trying to catch your breath, throat sore but mind still hazy from the alcohol and heat. Everything felt like it was spinning a little when you stood up, your body swaying slightly as the room tilted around you.
Sunoo reached out, catching your shoulder to steady you, and turned on the sink. He cupped a bit of water in his palm, guiding it to your lips. You leaned in, letting the cold water cool your mouth, then wiped your lips with the back of your hand. You coughed again, softer this time, and both of you stood there in silence for a beat—still too drunk to make sense of anything, too tired to care.
"I want to sleep," Sunoo mumbled, voice groggy as his arms hung by his sides. You helped him pull his pants back up, your fingers clumsy, and when you looked up, he was already leaning into you. His lips brushed against your neck, then your jaw, then a small kiss landed on your lips softly, a quiet thank-you or maybe just a mistake.
Neither of you said anything as you stumbled out of the bathroom together. Your feet dragged, his weight slumped against you. When you pushed open one of the nearby rooms, the two of you collapsed onto the bed without thinking. His body pressed into yours, your hand resting on the curve of his thin waist, and with a final exhale, his breathing evened out into soft snores.
You stared at the ceiling for a moment, the night still buzzing in your head, and quietly hoped that come morning, Sunoo wouldn't look at you like it was all just a drunken blur he wanted to forget.
Well. You woke up to a loud squeal beside you, the sound shooting straight through your skull. Your head was pounding, every throb pulsing deep at your temples. This was exactly why you preferred smoking over drinking, at least cigarettes didn't make the world spin like this.
"Oh my God! W–why are we cuddling?! Why are you here in the first place?! D–did something happen to us?!" Sunoo's voice cracked in pure panic, his hands clutching the blanket to his chest. Even though he was fully clothed, he looked scandalized beyond belief.
You groaned and squinted against the light, trying to sit up despite the dull ache in your body. Your fingers pressed to your temples, trying to remember what the hell even happened. The room was unfamiliar, the sheets smelled like detergent, and your mouth tasted like cotton.
Before you could even collect a full thought, Sunoo slapped your back hard. You let out a sharp whine and turned to glare at him. "Aww, fuck! What the hell was that for?"
"Did something happen between us?!" he repeated, eyes wide and clearly on the verge of spiraling.
You stared at him for a second, still processing. "How would I know?" you mumbled, rubbing your face. "I drank more than I should have, and my memory's a blur. You're fully clothed, I'm fully clothed. Relax."
But he didn't calm down. In fact, he froze completely, the color draining from his face as something clearly hit him. You watched as his hands slowly moved to grip his hair, fingers tangling at the roots while his expression twisted into disbelief.
"No. No. No no no—" he whispered, and then gasped. "Oh my God. Oh my fucking God."
He wasn't even looking at you anymore. His eyes were somewhere far away as flashes from last night started to crash into him. Your lips on his, your hands tugging on his belt, your mouth sinking down while he leaned back against the sink. The heat. The noise. The way he came so hard he couldn't feel his legs. His whole body went stiff.
"You... you gave me head," he said in a whisper, voice dead with disbelief. "Oh my God. You gave me fucking blowjob."
You blinked, trying to place it. You remembered the bathroom. The taste. The sound of his moaning echoing off the walls. Shit. "Something did happen to us, you fucking bitch!" he suddenly screamed, face flushed red with shock and rage. "I'm reporting you—I'm serious, I swear—"
You screamed when he lunged and grabbed a fistful of your hair, the shock of it making you yell right back. "Fuck! Let go of me, psycho!" you snapped, swatting at his hand, your own hangover making it feel ten times worse.
"What the hell is wrong with you?!" he screeched, shaking your head like he could shake the memory out with it. "Why would you—?!"
"Why would I?!" you shouted, finally pulling away, hair a mess and heart racing. "You literally moaned like it was the best thing that ever happened to you!"
"Because I didn't know what was happening! I thought it was a dream! I was drunk!"
"So was I, dumbass! You kissed me first!"
Sunoo froze again, mouth open, his chest rising and falling. You watched him in silence, heart sinking a little at the way he looked at you—like he was scrambling to make sense of something that never should've happened.
Your mouth felt dry again. There was this strange weight in your chest, like disappointment settling in even though you couldn't quite figure out why. You were both drunk. He was gay. Of course it didn't mean anything. And, if you weren't drunk, you wouldn't have done it either. You lowered your gaze, biting the inside of your cheek as that silence started to stretch between you.
"L-let's just pretend this never happened," Sunoo finally said, breaking the quiet as he stood up. His voice was shaky, not angry anymore, just desperate to erase it all. He dragged his palm down his face, then pressed it against his mouth like the words were spilling out faster than he could stop them. "I'm gay... and you're... whatever. Uhh... Let's not tell this to Jake, okay?"
You rolled your eyes as you got to your feet, fingers brushing through your hair while ignoring the lump tightening in your throat. "Whatever you want," you muttered, focusing instead on searching for your socks and bag, anything to avoid the way your chest ached for reasons.
"This will never happen again. God. I feel like I just betrayed my own kind," Sunoo muttered, slapping both cheeks with enough force to make you wince. "I need to go. I need to wash everything. This is disgusting. I'm disgusting."
You didn't say anything. Just watched him from the corner of your eye while pulling your socks on, keeping your back straight and blank face.
Sunoo glanced over, eyes catching on the side of your face. Something about the way you sat there so still, lips pressed together, skin marked faintly made his chest tighten. The memory crept in again—your hands, your mouth, the sound of your moan swallowed around him—and it made his stomach twist in the worst way. He shook his head. He was sober now. He shouldn't be feeling this again.
"Let's never see each other again," he said before leaving without waiting for a response.
You stared at the floor for a long second, blinking slowly. Never see each other again, huh? You almost laughed. As if you'd let him go that easily.
Sunoo didn't even understand why the memory was still stuck in his head, looping in the background of every moment like some curse he couldn't shake. It had already been a seven full days and yet the image of your lips, the sound of your moan, the warmth of your mouth still haunted him like it just happened yesterday. Worse, every time he thought about it, his dick twitched like it had a mind of its own, getting hard embarrassingly fast without warning.
He tried to brush it off as stress. He was tired, overloaded with work, and his hormones were probably all over the place. It made sense, right? Wet dreams weren't exactly rare. They were involuntary, normal even, just a sign of the body releasing tension during sleep. But the part that bothered him the most wasn't the act itself. It was who was in them. Why you? Out of everyone, why was it you? He would've understood if it were someone like Byeon Woo Seok. But no. It was your voice in his ear, your mouth on him, your name falling from his lips as he woke up in cold sweat with a sticky cum in his pajama pants. It was fucking humiliating.
He had just started to zone out again when a voice broke through his thoughts, snapping him back to reality.
"Erection is normal," Jungwon said clearly, standing at the front of the room with a microphone in hand. The school's seminar hall was full of restless teenagers, and he was doing his best to keep the attention. "It's a biological response to arousal or stimulation, often caused by elevated testosterone levels, especially during adolescence. That's why morning wood or even spontaneous erections can happen—it's not always sexual. Sometimes, it's just hormonal regulation or increased blood flow."
Sunoo swallowed hard, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. Great. As if he needed that lecture right now.
"It's also common to have sexual dreams," Jungwon continued. "It's the brain's way of releasing suppressed feelings or stress. It doesn't always mean you're in love with the person in your dream—it could just be your mind reacting to unresolved tension."
Sunoo sat motionless, trying not to roll his eyes. He knew Jungwon probably didn't believe half the words he was saying and was just parroting the textbook to get the presentation over with. Unresolved tension? Please. That had to be the most bullshit, overused explanation. Sexual dreams were normal, just a biological function. A reflex. Wet dreams, erections, the occasional stray thought—they were all just part of how the body worked.
It was only men who liked turning every little reaction into some psychological crisis. Like it wasn't enough that your dick got hard at the wrong time, you now had to wonder why. No. He refused to play into that.
Still, he felt hot under the collar. He shifted in his seat as Jungwon kept talking, his voice fading into background noise while Sunoo's thoughts crawled back where they weren't supposed to go. Your mouth. The pressure of his hands on your head. That one sharp breath he let out when your tongue pressed against him just right. The way he swore he could still feel the metal ball of your piercing even when he was lying awake, sweating in bed, trying not to think about it —
"Sunoo!" His whole body jolted forward when someone suddenly slammed into him from behind. He turned sharply, only to see Jake grinning as he wrapped him in a tight hug.
"Long time no see! How've you been?" Jake beamed, eyes crinkling at the corners.
Sunoo blinked, his heart still racing from being startled. He squirmed out of Jake's grip, pulling his arm away from around his waist with a small scowl. "You fake bitch," he muttered, brushing off his uniform. "You said you'd go to the party last week!"
Jake tilted his head and gave him a sheepish grin. "I did! I just didn't come up to you because you were already with someone," he said, voice light but teasing, his smile carrying that knowing edge that made Sunoo freeze on the spot.
The words hit him like a cold splash of water, cutting straight through the fog of his thoughts. Shit! Sunoo's back straightened as his chest squeezed uncomfortably tight. "I-It's not what it looked like, Jake," he said quickly, voice pitching higher than he meant. "I can explain. N-Nothing happened, I swear—"
Jake raised an eyebrow in confusion, his playful smile returning as he slung an arm over Sunoo's shoulder again. "What are you talking about?" he laughed. "I'm just happy you're getting along with her! You know how much I wanted the two of you to be friends. So when I saw you drinking with her, I thought, finally! I didn't want to bother you two."
Sunoo's jaw went slack for a second. He blinked slowly as Jake's words settled in and then his face flushed with heat, the panic collapsing. You two. Drinking. Laughing. And Jake saw it. He saw it and just... assumed it was some innocent bonding moment. Sunoo nodded stiffly, forcing a laugh that came out more like a wheeze. "Y-Yeah... totally. Just... friends."
Jake didn't notice his discomfort, he just kept smiling, talking about the seminar and how awkward Jungwon looked trying to talk about erections with a straight face, but Sunoo could barely listen. If only he knew that every time Sunoo closed his eyes, it wasn't friendship playing behind his eyelids.
All your life, you've gotten things on your own terms. It wasn't about being selfish—it was about knowing what you wanted, and not being afraid to take the steps to get there, even if it meant breaking a few unspoken rules. You never apologized for it. Why should you? The world had never handed you anything easily, so you carved out space with your own hands, shaping your wants into reality.
You liked pretty things. You liked strawberries. You liked painting girls with soft collarbones and delicate fingers. You liked drawing in sharp eyeliner and wearing red lipstick even when it didn't match your outfit. You liked the way women looked in moonlight, skin glowing and bare emotion written on their faces. Women were softness and power and aching beauty, and for a long time, that's all you thought you'd ever want.
Boys were always just background noise. You flirted with them when you were bored, when you needed a distraction or when you were too tired of explaining to everyone why you leaned toward women. It was easier to let boys talk, to let them orbit around you. Most of the time, they never lasted long. They'd get close enough to realize they couldn't figure you out, and then drift away. It never bothered you. You liked being the one who stayed in control anyway.
But Sunoo was too pretty to be background noise. Too loud in your mind, even in his silence. He was sharp and delicate all at once. Sunoo is not boring. He was vibrant. Infuriating. Complicated. Unlike everyone else, Sunoo wasn't supposed to want you. And you weren't supposed to want him. You didn't chase boys. You didn't even like most of them. But with Sunoo, it wasn't about gender—it was about him. His contradictions. His moral high ground that cracked when his lips were on yours.
Now that you got a taste, you wanted to keep him. You wanted to grab him by that pretty throat and tie a little ribbon around it, mark him, stake your claim. All that fire in him, all that sharp defiance, the self-righteous storm he carried — it would be such a waste to let someone else come along and break him in the wrong way. Someone who wouldn't know how to cherish it like you would.
The wanting was dangerous. But so was he. And it was so much fun to want something you weren't supposed to have. And lucky you—Jake, in all his well-meaning sunshine, handed him right into your lap.
"I'm really glad now that you're friends," Jake grinned, arms flinging around both of you as he squeezed you close. "I can finally call us a trio now!"
You blinked in mild surprise. You hadn't even known this was a sleepover. From the way Jake had worded it earlier, you assumed it was just the two of you catching up over snacks and maybe a few drinks. But now here you were, wedged on the couch with Sunoo stiff on your other side, Jake's warmth pressed between you both. How thoughtful of him. You smiled. Jake was far too kind for his own good and far too generous with forcing proximity, but you didn't mind this time.
Sunoo, on the other hand, looked like someone had physically unplugged him. He was hugging his pillow so tightly it, eyes unfocused as he stared at nothing in particular. His face was blank, but you could read the confliction in every inch of him. Like he was holding himself together by a thread.
What you couldn't see was how hard he was trying to think of anything else besides the fact that he could smell your perfume again and it triggered something in his body. He clenched his thighs together subtly, trying to shift his hips so the growing problem in his pants wouldn't become visible. But the effort was a losing game. God, what the hell was wrong with him? He was still angry, still confused, still mortified that it happened in the first place and yet, his body clearly had no loyalty to his conscience.
What made it worse was Jake who had somehow tricked him into showing up for a supposed movie night and now had them sandwiched together like nothing ever happened between you and him. Jake didn't know, of course. And he couldn't know! Sunoo would rather choke on his own tongue than have to explain why his best friend's not-so-favorite person was suddenly invading his dreams at night and, worse, making him wake up soaked and panting like a hormonal teenager.
"What movies should we watch?!" Jake practically bounced on the couch, his grin wide as he looked back and forth.
You leaned closer, sliding your arm around Jake's. Your gaze flicked to Sunoo, who sat stiff on the other end of the couch, his posture awkward, eyes avoiding yours. "What about horror?" you said as you tilted your head, pretending not to notice how Sunoo seemed to sink deeper into the couch cushions. "Sunoo?"
Sunoo blinked, eyes snapping toward you. "Huh?" His voice cracked, his hand subtly dragged the throw pillow over his lap, fingers clutching the edges.
"Horror is gonna be fun! Imagine the thrill!" Jake turned toward you with shining eyes, already fired up. "Remember Sunoo during Evil Dead Rise? He was screeching like someone dipped him in cold water!" He burst out laughing.
You joined in, not because it was that funny but because you liked the way Sunoo glared at you when you did. His eye twitched, lips tightening in a way that made you want to press your thumb against the corner of his mouth just to see if it would twitch again.
"I didn't scream," Sunoo muttered under his breath. "It was a reflex."
Jake leaned forward to grab the remote, still chuckling. "A reflex that shook the entire floor. I had to check if we were having an earthquake."
Sunoo gave a tight, silent laugh that didn't reach his eyes. You stretched slightly, draping one leg over the other, your foot brushing lightly against Sunoo's knee. "So horror it is," you said.
Sunoo immediately jerked his leg away. "I'm not scared," he snapped, voice thin with defensiveness, eyes flicking toward you but never staying long.
"Who said you were?" you asked sweetly, lips twitching. "But maybe I can hold your hand if you get too nervous."
"I'd rather hold hands with a corpse," he muttered.
Jake, oblivious to the growing tension between you, scrolled through the options. "Let's start with Hereditary. That one's a classic."
You leaned back, settling comfortably against the couch cushion, your arm still loosely around Jake's. But your gaze stayed fixed on Sunoo, watching how he tried to keep his composure. The way he looked everywhere but at you made it all the more tempting to push again.
"Oh my God!" Jake screamed, flinging himself off the couch just as the possessed girl on the screen leapt out from the shadows.
Sunoo jumped, too, not because of the film but because Jake's yell had blasted straight into his ear. "Fuck you!" he gasped, swatting at Jake's shoulder. "You're louder than the demon, you idiot!"
Jake laughed breathlessly, holding a hand over his chest. "I told you it was gonna be scary! I warned you!"
"You didn't say you were gonna be the jump scare," Sunoo muttered, rubbing his ear.
You couldn't help laughing from your corner of the couch. It was warm in the living room, the ambient light from the TV casting deep shadows across everyone's faces. The horror movie had wound itself tight with dread, and now, near the end, the tension in the room had shifted.
Jake reached for the remote to pause it. "Okay, okay, let's all take a break. My heart can't take it. I'm gonna set up the bed and grab more snacks before we finish the last part." He stood up with a stretch, already walking toward the shared room.
You watched Jake disappear down the hallway, the sound of his slippers dragging against the floor fading behind him as he excitedly prepped the bedroom with pillows and snacks, then turned your eyes to Sunoo, who had sunk deeper into the couch, hand rubbing his temple.
Your gaze drifted past him, toward the hallway where the bathroom light glowed faintly at the end. And just like that, the tiniest smirk curled at the corner of your lips. Bingo.
You grabbed the water bottle from the table and tipped it back, pretending to take a long drink—only for the opening to "accidentally" spill, the cold splash soaking the neckline of your shirt and running straight down your chest.
"Shit!" you hissed, jumping slightly as you stood up, swiping at your top with both hands in panic. The fabric clung to your skin, the damp cotton tracing the curve of your collarbone and neckline.
From the corner of your eye, you caught Sunoo's head snap toward you. His eyes widened for a moment before narrowing again, his signature glare sliding back into place. "Are you an idiot who can't drink water like a normal person?" he snapped. His eyes flicked from your face to your soaked shirt and back again before he shifted uncomfortably, adjusting the pillow over his lap again.
You scowled. "It was an accident," you muttered, pinching the hem of your shirt and pulling it slightly away from your body to keep the wet fabric from clinging too much. "I'm going to the bathroom." You turned your back, already halfway to the hall, but then paused just before you rounded the corner. You peeked back over your shoulder with a faux-hesitant voice. "Sunoo," you said sweetly, "can you... come with me?"
He straightened in his seat, eyes narrowed immediately. "What are you, five? You can walk to the bathroom on your own."
You turned around fully and gave your best pout. "But I'm scared," you said, dropping your voice. "What if something jumps out of the mirror and eats me?"
His lips parted slightly in disbelief. "It's literally a bathroom, not a haunted house. Get a grip."
You blinked at him with wide, innocent eyes, the corners of your mouth twitching. "I'm telling Jake—"
That was all it took. Sunoo moved fast. His hand shot out and wrapped around your wrist before you could finish the sentence, his grip is tight, more panicked than forceful. "We agreed to forget that already!" he whispered harshly, dragging you toward the hallway with quick steps. His face was already flushed as he pushed the bathroom door open and practically shoved you inside.
He followed, slamming the door shut behind him and twisting the lock.
You raised an eyebrow, lips twitching with suppressed laughter. "I meant I was gonna tell Jake you were being mean to me. What exactly were you thinking, Sunoo?"
The color that spread across his face deepened from pink to a furious red, blooming up his neck and across his cheeks. His eyes darted away from yours, jaw clenched so tight you could see the tension ripple along the muscle there. He didn't answer immediately—his thoughts were clearly a mess, the memory of that night dragging up feelings he didn't want to admit were still there.
God, you were such a bitch. A beautiful, infuriating, unreadable bitch. "Fuck you," he muttered through clenched teeth, pressing his back to the door. His arms crossed over his chest, defensive, but it was already too late for that. "What the hell do you even want?"
You smiled, taking a small step forward, head tilting like you were weighing your options. You let your gaze drop slowly—first to his parted lips, then to his hands clenched into fists at his sides—and then back to his eyes.
"Hmmm," you hummed, fingers brushing lightly against the edge of the sink behind you as you leaned back, unbothered by how tense he was. "You."
Sunoo's pulse jumped so hard he felt it in his ears, and it really annoyed him.
"I think we're past the point of shyly pretending we're not attracted to each other, don't you think?" you asked casually, your foot tapping against the floor. "I mean, unless you're really going to pretend you don't think about it."
Sunoo swallowed hard, jaw tightening as he forced his expression into a cold and distant. His voice came out with a bite. "I was drunk. Whatever happened, it wasn't real. I'm sober now, and clearly, you're forgetting something—I'm gay." He stepped forward, huffing, defensive, like he needed to say it aloud to remind himself. "Even if I wasn't, even if I magically woke up straight, do you really think I'd be into someone like you? I wouldn't even hold your hand."
You smiled, unshaken. Your gaze dropped to the tile floor for a moment, nodding slowly like you were mulling it over, like you could almost believe him. "Hmmm. Really?" you said again, softly. Then you looked up and held his stare. "That's interesting."
"What happened was a mistake," he pressed. "Stop getting it twisted. You're not going to change anything. I like men—I've always liked men—and if I ever did like women, it sure as hell wouldn't be someone like you."
His words were sharp and cruel, but his voice cracked slightly on the last sentence. Your eyes flicked down to his hands again. Still clenched and shaking, you almost laughed, he was angry because he didn't know where to put this feeling, and his body was betraying him in every way.
"Okay," you said. "Sorry."
You didn't look sorry. You didn't even sound sorry. Then, without warning, you reached for the hem of your shirt and pulled it over your head. Sunoo nearly yelped. "What the fuck?!" he squealed, spinning around so fast. His hands flew up to cover his face. "Are you insane?! Put that back on! Jesus Christ, are you trying to traumatize me?!"
You didn't say anything at first. Just laughed softly, "you said you weren't interested, right? So what are you panicking for?" You rolled your eyes slowly and watched his stiff posture as he stayed plastered to the door. "Relax," you muttered, fingers reaching behind your back, unclasping your bra and letting it fall to the floor. "I'm wet, Sunoo. I'm not trying to seduce you—I already got my answer. Now, move."
His spine straightened at your words like you'd just smacked him. "What the fuck? Move where?!" His voice rose in panic, still facing away from you.
"I didn't bring an extra shirt. My bag's in the living room," you said flatly, stepping closer. "Now move."
He hesitated, like if he turned around something irreversible would happen. But his curiosity, or maybe his stupidity, got the better of him. Slowly, cautiously, he peeked over his shoulder—and then froze completely.
You were naked from the waist up. Completely bare, with a confidence. Your arms were crossed beneath your chest, body leaning against the sink like you were just waiting for him to get over himself. And God, he should've been used to this. He'd seen breasts before—he had female friends who changed clothes in front of him all the time. It never bothered him. It wasn't a big deal.
He tried to look away and he really, really did, but his eyes kept coming back to you like they were on a leash. Your skin glowed under the light, smooth and warm-toned, shadows carving down your ribs and hips. He noticed the tattoos. The delicate ink on your shoulder had already left an imprint in his brain from that day, but now he saw more. A fine, detailed floral design wrapped along the side of your torso, just above your hip and curling slightly toward your waist. A single lily bloomed in black and soft pink, with gentle shading that made it look almost alive. Watercolor-like strokes trailed from the petals, fading like smoke. The lines followed your curves perfectly.
Sunoo was breathless. He never cared for tattoos, they weren't pretty, but on you, they looked dressed as an art. And fuck, he couldn't stop staring. His gaze flicked to your chest, and a fresh wave of heat rolled through him. Your nipples were tight from the air, drawn and pointed, resting against full, natural curves that made his stomach knot. Why was he getting hard? This didn't make sense. Fuck. You were so hot it pissed him off.
You were staring at him, head slightly tilted, waiting for him to move. "Sunoo?"
Sunoo's fists clenched. He could feel saliva collecting in his mouth, and he swallowed hard like that would put out the fire already crawling down his spine. He blinked quickly, shaking his head. "You—fuck, you need to put something on," he said.
"My shirt's in the living room—"
"I don't care. Put something on," he cut in sharply, brows furrowed and his gaze turned firmly to the wall.
You didn't budge. "Jake already saw my tits, Sunoo. It's not a big deal—"
He didn't even know why it made his stomach flip and his chest burn, but it did. The thought of Jake seeing you like this, made a feeling claw up the back of his throat.
Sunoo was a nursing student. He studied hormonal response, human behavior, and the mind's reactions to stress and desire. But this wasn't in his textbooks. This wasn't just dopamine or misplaced frustration. Human emotions were more complicated than any clinical definition. No scientific framework could fully explain the way you made him feel.
"You're hard."
Sunoo felt his entire body go still. He could feel it too. The tight pressure in his pants, the unbearable way his cock had hardened while his mind scrambled to deny everything. He turned toward the mirror above the sink, refusing to meet your eyes as he muttered, "I-It's normal biological reaction."
The excuse felt paper-thin, almost pathetic in his mouth, but it was the only thing he could reach for. He was clinging to whatever logic he had left, because logic was safer than whatever the hell this was. Logic didn't leave him aching in places he shouldn't be aching. Logic didn't twist his insides just from looking at you.
You were still standing there, unfazed, topless and confident, your arms crossed under your chest like you were waiting for him to catch up. "Sunoo," you said his name softly.
He finally looked at you, eyes glaring. "I told you I'm gay," he said, and he hated how shaky his voice sounded. "This—this shouldn't be happening."
You took a slow step closer, and he didn't move. "You said that," you nodded, voice calm. "But I didn't ask what you are. I just told you what I want."
His eyes narrowed slightly, as if trying to read between your words, searching for an angle, a trick. "So what is this to you? A joke? Some kind of game?"
"No. You're the one making it complicated."
His chest rose and fell unevenly. His mind kept trying to name what he was feeling—confusion, tension, desire, maybe all of it at once—but it was all bleeding together in a way that felt like drowning. "I've never—" he started, then stopped himself.
You waited. "Never what?"
"I've never felt this confused before," he said, eyes searching yours like he was hoping you'd give him a reason to pull away, something to ground him. "I don't even like women. I'm not supposed to want this."
"Then don't want it," you said simply, shrugging your shoulders. "But don't lie about it. Do you want me, Sunoo?"
He hated that. Hated how sure you sounded, how unapologetically honest you were while he was still tangled in his own fear and guilt, still gripping the edge of what he thought was certainty. You made everything seem so simple, so easy to name—want, touch, feel—while he was still trying to unlearn the rules he had been clinging to for so long. He wanted to push you away, wanted to hate you for making him feel like he was coming apart in his own skin. But even as that thought surfaced, his eyes dropped again to your lips, and lingered there too long. He hated how much he wanted you to close the space between you, how much he needed you to.
His breathing grew shallow, his chest rising in uneven waves, and when you leaned forward, he didn't retreat. Instead, his eyes fluttered closed. The second your mouth brushed against his, something inside him cracked open. He kissed you with a kind of desperation that made it clear he'd stopped pretending.
There was no hesitation when he wrapped his arms around your waist, pulling you flush against him. The warmth of your body beneath his hands made his head spin. He held you tightly, anchoring himself to the moment, to the gravity of your touch. His lips moved against yours, his hands trembled as they explored the lines of your back, fingertips pressing into your skin. You knew he was falling, and you welcomed it. You let him cling to you, let him kiss you and when your lips finally parted, you didn't say a word. You just let your hands trail down his chest, eyes locked on his flushed face as you sank down onto your knees before him.
Sunoo's breath hitched audibly. His hands flew to the edge of the sink behind him, trying to steady himself. You looked up at him, gaze dark and patient, and he looked down at you. His cock strained against his pajama, and when you undid the strings, your fingers brushing against him through the fabric, he nearly buckled.
The moment you freed him, he hissed through his teeth. You didn't tease him this time, you took him into your mouth. His hand instinctively reached for your head, gripping your hair too tightly as you slid your tongue over him, slow at first, deepening only when he let out a choked moan that vibrated from somewhere deep in his chest.
"F-fuck..." he whispered, eyes fluttering open, and the sight of you on your knees—bare, hungry, focused only on him. This time, there was no alcohol to blame. No drunken impulse to hide behind. Both of you were entirely sober, breathing the same heavy air. And you were right. You were far past the point of pretending you're not attracted to each other. Because, fuck...
He bit down on his bottom lip, struggling to hold back the sound threatening to crawl out of his throat when you pulled your mouth off him. The cold air brushed his wet skin for only a second before your hand wrapped firmly around his cock. You were looking up at him with such dark, focused eyes, and the glint of your tongue piercing when you stuck your tongue out made his stomach twist in ways.
His moan trembled out of him, a low, broken thing he tried and failed to swallow. His eyes fluttered shut as you began to stroke him, slow and tight, your fingers knowing exactly where to squeeze, where to drag your thumb. His hips jerked forward against your fist without thought. He was trembling, his thighs already straining, and when his hand moved to your head again, he didn't even register that he was holding you there, like he needed you in that position, grounded and close, while everything else slipped away.
With a choked sound, his release surged forward, hips stuttering as thick, hot ropes of cum spurted from him—painting your face, your tongue, and even your lips. You closed your eyes, but kept your mouth open, breathing heavy, letting it drip and settle across your flushed skin. The sight of you on your knees, panting, tongue out, face stained with the proof of what he'd given you—was too much. He'd never seen anything that fucking beautiful.
Sunoo's breath came out in short, ragged gasps. He couldn't look away. You were absolutely wrecked, eyes half-lidded, mouth still parted, tongue twitching slightly as the last of him spilled from the tip. His knees nearly buckled. And even as shame flickered somewhere in the distance, it didn't touch the way his chest clenched with need.
You were far past the point of pretending you're not attracted to each other. Because, fuck... in Sunoo's mind— You're really, really, really, attractive. You tilted your head, eyes still soft despite the mess on your face. "It's okay, Sunoo."
And that simple assurance hit harder than anything else had tonight, he had never felt so completely defeated and relieved at the same time.
Sunoo always joked that he was betraying his "gay motherhood," whatever the fuck that meant, but deep down, he was unraveling more than a label. His whole sense of self was spiraling, not because he didn't like men anymore, but because he couldn't stop liking what you did to him.
He was raised sure—sure he liked men, sure of who he was, sure of how the world saw him. But your mouth? Your hands? Your eyes on his body? That changed something. And maybe it wasn't even about gender or attraction or breaking rules, maybe it was just about how good it felt. Because, it did. Every time your tongue slid down his length or your lips curled into a smirk right before you swallowed him whole, he would grip your hair like it was the only thing tethering him to earth.
And he still hated it. Hated you. Hated how easily you pulled those sounds from him, how willingly he spread his legs, how badly he wanted to feel your throat tighten around him when he was too stressed to think straight. But hate was a weak word when it came to you because what he really felt was full of hunger and questions he couldn't answer, of relief he couldn't explain, and of moments when he forgot who he was supposed to be.
Somehow, this arrangement—whatever fucked-up kind of companionship it was—had become routine. He was stressed? You showed up, dragged him onto the bed, and made him forget the weight in his chest. You were tired of people? You'd drop to your knees and pull his pants down, muttering snarky words before your tongue did all the talking. When Jake invited you both for café dates, you'd suck Sunoo off in the bathroom beforehand, as if taking the edge off made you more tolerable in public.
And in between all that, without either of you saying it, you started learning each other. You knew the way his breath caught when you traced the tip of your tongue along the underside of his cock, the way he liked his thighs rubbed when he was overwhelmed, the way he pretended to hate your voice but kept asking you to hum while he was inside your mouth. He knew the difference between your smirk and your real smile, he noticed the way you always fixed his collar before he left for class, the way you paused before walking away like you wanted him to stop you, just once.
"Did you see my guitar pick? I was really sure I left it here." You asked, already half on the floor as you looked beneath his bed, your voice muffled against the floorboards. "My pen? Where did you put my pen?"
Sunoo didn't answer right away. He just scratched the back of his head, eyes skimming over his textbook. "Also, I think I left my hoodie here last week," you continued, lifting his blanket and peeking underneath. You spoke like it was nothing, like this wasn't the fourth time you'd been here this week, like you hadn't sucked him off on this very bed two nights ago while the rain beat against his window. "The red one? Oversized. The one you said was ugly."
"Stop leaving your things here and expecting me to be your lost and found," Sunoo muttered with a sigh, rolling his eyes as he stood from his desk. His hands moved to the drawer beside his bed, fingers quickly rifling through the clutter until he pulled out the small pile of things you'd been searching for.
Your guitar pick. A pen with a chewed-up cap. The scrunchie you claimed you didn't care about but had asked about three times. "Yay!" you chirped, voice bright as you threw your arms around his neck without hesitation. Your enthusiasm was full of sunshine and zero awareness of boundaries—not that he'd set any for you lately. Your body leaned into his, so warm, and for a moment, he didn't pull away. He didn't even stiffen. If anything, he just stood there with his jaw tight and eyes soft, letting you hang onto him.
Sunoo had learned a lot of unexpected things from you, but the first was this: you were clingy. Not in the way people usually mean it. You were clingy in the way a storm was clingy, so loud and unpredictable, but always returning, always right on time. You'd barge into his room to ruffle his hair without asking, leave lipstick stains on the rim of his mugs, and curse while crocheting in his living room.
Despite your sharp tongue, your smug smirks, and that bitchy little smile you wore whenever you knew you had the upper hand, there was something about you that kept curling into the edges of his life. The softness you tried to bury always slipped through—like now, as your arms wrapped loosely around his neck, your breath warm on his collarbone.
You hadn't even fucked, not really. Whatever this was between the two of you, it never crossed that final line. Sure, you'd given him head more times than he could count now, slipping between his knees, sometimes right after class or before dinner. Sometimes with a joke still on your tongue, your fingers working his zipper like it was just part of your daily routine. You'd even played with yourself while looking him dead in the eyes, teasing him, daring him, and yet still somehow managing not to strip yourself bare.
Pleasure was always good. You knew exactly what to do to unravel him. But it confused him on the way you stayed after. The way you talked to him about your professors and complained about your classmates, how you crocheted lopsided sweaters and left your yarn all over his room, like you expected to come back and finish them.
It was how you kissed his cheek when he looked stressed, how you'd fall asleep next to him fully clothed while he studied and pretend not to notice when he pulled the blanket over you.
"You need to stop acting like this is your place," he muttered, trying to keep his voice flat.
You didn't take the bait, instead, you leaned in and kissed his cheek loudly. Sunoo's entire face twitched in immediate response. His hand shot up, rubbing his cheek with the heel of his palm. "Eww," he muttered under his breath.
"Sorry!" you giggled, clearly not sorry at all with that look you always wore when you knew you were testing his patience, and then your hands were on his face again, squeezing his cheeks with affection. "You're just so adorable when you're cranky. I can't help it."
He groaned loudly, swatting at your wrists, trying to pry your hands off. "Stop calling me that."
You didn't flinch. In fact, you leaned closer, squishing his cheeks harder, and making a cooing sound that only made him more irritated. He slapped your arm but when you laughed again, that same light, reckless laugh that always made his ears feel too warm, he grabbed a fistful of your hair and tugged.
"Ow, ow, ow!" you yelped, wriggling in place with a pout. You batted his hand away, fingers tangled in your strands, while your eyes stayed locked on his with a mixture of amusement and challenge.
"Leave me alone. I'm trying to review for my exams," Sunoo muttered, barely glancing at you as he rolled his eyes and turned back toward his desk. His hand reached for the highlighter beside his textbook, the yellow ink already bleeding into the edge of a paragraph he'd probably read four times without actually absorbing anything.
You walked over anyway, you squeezed into the tiny space beside him on a chair meant for one, and Sunoo groaned out loud, shifting his body to the side. The chair creaked beneath your combined weight, and your thigh was pressed flush against his. "I just need a favor from you," you said, casually brushing your hand across his table.
Sunoo let out another sigh. He looked over at you, unimpressed. "Favor? Only friends do favors," he replied flatly.
You turned to him with a gasp, placing a hand to your chest in mock offense. "Wow," you said, eyes wide and sarcastic. "Damn, after all the blowjobs I gave you? After the way we've made out on your bed, your floor, and that one time in your fucking kitchen? After all the hours I spent here telling you about my day while you pretended not to listen? You're telling me we're not even friends?"
He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. His tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, his hand frozen halfway through underlining another sentence. You weren't wrong. You'd been coming around so often that your scent had started to cling to his sheets, your hair ties and red lipstick had begun appearing in random corners of his room, and your laugh had started to echo in his head long after you'd gone home.
You leaned in a little, close enough that he could feel your breath fan across his neck. "If this isn't a friendship," you added softly, "then what is your definition of friendship, Sunoo?"
He made a show of thinking, lifting his eyes like he was searching the ceiling for inspiration, but there was a glint in his expression that gave away how amused he actually was. "I don't know, girl. We haven't even properly introduced ourselves because you were too busy sucking my dick off," he replied, words nonchalant but his ears tinted red. He tried to keep his voice flat, sarcastic even, like that would mask the heat crawling up his neck.
You laughed, unbothered, and leaned your head against his shoulder with a casualness that shouldn't have felt so intimate, but somehow, it did. Sunoo shifted under the contact, scoffing, rolling his eyes, acting like he didn't care but you could feel it in the way he didn't move away.
"Okay, let's do this properly then," you said as you let your hand play with the edge of his sleeve. "I'm twenty. Fashion design major. I work part-time at two different cafés. I play gigs when I can, lead guitarist and vocalist of Jay's band. I crochet, bake, draw, paint—basically anything that can bring in money for tuition. I have three ex-girlfriends, all toxic in very different ways. And I like—"
"Wait," Sunoo cut in, body suddenly stiffening as he pulled back just enough to stare at you. His eyes were wide, lips parted slightly like he couldn't believe what he just heard. "You're gay?!"
Your mouth dropped open, blinking at him as your brain scrambled to rewind what you'd said. "I—I mean, isn't it obvious?" you managed, slightly flustered, though a part of you also found his surprise endearing in a frustrating way.
Sunoo didn't say anything right away. He kept looking at you, brows furrowed, lips parted in a stunned kind of silence like he was trying to piece you together again with this new piece of information you just casually dropped. You watched the flickers of confusion, surprise, maybe even a bit of disbelief in his face, and though you didn't fully understand why it mattered so much to him. "I like girls," you clarified again.
There was a beat of silence. Then Sunoo blinked hard, like he'd just snapped out of it, and his reaction was nothing short of dramatic. "I—I thought you were straight, girl!" he cried out with a squeaky kind of disbelief, and before you could defend yourself, his hand flew out and smacked your arm. Hard. The kind of smack that made your whole upper body jerk slightly from the force. You almost flew off the chair.
"Shit, Sunoo!" you yelped, rubbing your arm and glaring at him with a twisted expression of both pain and outrage.
But Sunoo wasn't listening. He was laughing—loudly, eyes crinkled, hand over his mouth like he couldn't believe what he was hearing and also couldn't stop himself from reacting. "I really didn't like you at first," he gasped between giggles. "Like, genuinely. I thought you were giving homophobic vibes! You were too confident, too flirty, and you stared at me like you were ready to fight or fuck, and I swear to god I thought you were trying to make me your weird little experiment!"
You blinked again, thrown off by the way he said it all so fast. "What the fuck, Sunoo," you muttered, half-offended but also kind of shocked that he thought all that while still letting you suck him off on the regular.
He slapped your shoulder again and kept cackling, his entire body tilted forward as he wheezed through it, completely losing himself in his own joke. "I mean, it makes sense now," he managed between laughter, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. "That's why you're such a bitch—because you're gay!"
You didn't hesitate. Your hand landed right on his arm, a loud smack echoing through the room. "Are you forgetting that you're gay too, idiot?" you shot back, trying to sound annoyed but failing to hold back your grin.
Sunoo hissed dramatically, rubbing the spot, though the smirk tugging at the corner of his lips betrayed him. The teasing should've stopped there—should've stayed in that usual back-and-forth where you both knew the lines and how far to push. But something in his expression shifted. "I still don't get it," he murmured, the laughter dying down to a softer tone, his hand now gently pressing the spot you'd hit. "If you're into girls, then what does that make... this?"
For a moment, you didn't know how to answer. So many things about you didn't fit into the easy explanations people seemed to expect, and honestly, you never cared to try and fit them. "I don't know," you said at last, "I've hooked up with guys before, and it was never really a big deal. I always knew I liked girls more, but that never stopped me from doing stuff with boys when I felt like it." You shrugged, then leaned back a little, giving him space to process what you were about to say. "Sexuality is just a word people use to make sense of themselves. I might call myself bisexual—or gay—but honestly, it never fully explains what I want or how I feel. Labels don't always fit."
He looked at you then, and there was something quiet different in his eyes. It wasn't annoyance or mockery for once. You continued anyway, because you needed him to understand. "All I know is that I like doing things with you. Whether it's talking, teasing, sitting around doing nothing, or yeah... getting on my knees for you. It sounds messy, but it's the only thing I'm sure of."
That made his throat bob. His heartbeat, already unruly from earlier, thudded faster at your words, and he could feel the heat creeping into his face before he could stop it. He wanted to brush it off, wanted to say something sharp or stupid to deflect, but nothing came out.
He forced himself to roll his eyes and gave your shoulder another slap, more gentle this time. "Ewwww," he groaned with an exaggerated squeal, scrunching his nose. "It might be our routine, but could you not say that in my ear? It's still weird hearing you talk so casually about sucking me off!"
You only grinned wider, catching the flush starting to bloom across his cheeks. "What? Are you blushing?" you teased as you reached up and pinched his cheeks between your fingers, delighting in how quickly he tried to jerk away.
He groaned, then reached up to grab a fistful of your hair in retaliation. "You're so annoying," he muttered, tugging hard enough to make you yelp and try to push him off.
"Fuck!" you shrieked through laughter, smacking his arm and trying to wriggle away. But the tangled mess of limbs ended with both of you tipping sideways and falling back into the chair. He hit the floor and let out a long-suffering groan as you collapsed on top of him in a heap.
"Great," he muttered, pressing a hand to his lower back. "Now I'm going to fail my exam with spinal damage." You were still laughing, unbothered as you rested your chin on his chest. Even now, with your weight on top of him and your hair tickling his face, Sunoo couldn't bring himself to shove you off.
Instead, his eyes wandered to the ceiling, mind replaying the words you said earlier. Maybe you were right. Sexuality was just a word. A way to make sense of something that couldn't always be explained. And maybe the way he felt this complicated, frustrating, strangely comforting pull toward you wasn't something that needed a label at all.
"Get off. You're so fucking heavy," Sunoo hissed, snapping himself out of it as he tugged at your hair again, a little rougher this time. But deep down, buried under every eye roll and complaint, he enjoyed doing things with you, whether they were sexual or not. That part, at least, he could admit to himself. Maybe not out loud. Definitely not to you. He'd rather drop dead than say it out loud.
The favor you had asked was to practice your creative makeup on him, get his measurements, and use him as some sort of living mannequin for the designs you'd been working on. It sounded harmless enough when you first mentioned it, though the way you said it—bright-eyed, insistent, and practically buzzing with ideas—made it sound like you were dragging him into something bigger than he could imagine. He hadn't thought much of it back then, especially since hospital duties had swallowed him whole. The weeks stretched on, filled with endless shifts, late nights, and exhaustion so deep he barely had the energy to eat before collapsing into bed.
But still, in the middle of those long nights, he'd catch himself thinking of you. Of how irritating you could be, how you texted him nonsense memes at ungodly hours, how you spammed his phone like you had nothing better to do. He never admitted it, but the absence of your loud presence gnawed at him. The quiet felt heavier without you around to annoy him into feeling alive. That was what made him finally agree to see you again, even if it meant dragging his tired body to your apartment after his shift.
At the bus stop, Sunoo sat slumped beside Jungwon, eyelids heavy as the night air pressed around them. Jungwon let out a long groan, stretching his arms above his head. "Do you want to sleep over at my place instead? Later, I'll order Jollibee. Kinda been craving their spaghetti."
The offer was tempting—comfort food and a soft bed—but Sunoo only shook his head, his lips curving faintly as he pulled out his phone. "Maybe next time. Thanks for the offer, though. I've got some business to attend to."
"Business?" Jungwon repeated, his voice laced with skepticism. "At this hour?"
Sunoo didn't answer right away. His thumb scrolled down the flood of messages on his screen—your name glowing at the top of the chat. Rows of texts, some with too many exclamation marks, others filled with random pictures, all ridiculous enough to make his scrunched-up expression betray him with a small, undeniable smile. Jungwon noticed. He tilted his head, narrowing his eyes. "That's new," he muttered, side-eyeing. "So... where exactly are you going?"
"Just there," Sunoo replied vaguely, sliding his phone back into his bag before Jungwon could ask too much. And then, Sunoo leaned over and kissed Jungwon on the cheek, accompanied by a rare, boyish grin. "I'll get going now. Bye-bye!"
Jungwon froze, eyebrows shooting up in disbelief as he watched Sunoo walk away, his figure retreating down the street with a kind of restless energy. Jungwon's mouth fell open, his thoughts spinning in circles. He looked off to the side, considering whether to press or not, but in the end he only sighed and rolled his shoulders in resignation. "Huh. Weird," he muttered to himself, shaking his head as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "But whatever."
When Sunoo finally stepped into your apartment, you didn't hold back. You practically launched yourself at him, arms flinging around his shoulders as though you had been waiting for this moment for weeks—which, in truth, you had. The sound of your laughter filled the air immediately, loud and full of the joy that spilled out of you so naturally.
Sunoo, on the other hand, reacted exactly the way he always did when you overwhelmed him with affection. His face scrunched into that familiar look of feigned annoyance as he huffed, one hand coming up to shove your face away. "Geez," he muttered, though the corner of his mouth twitched like he was fighting a smile, "it's already ten in the evening and you're still bouncing around? Spare me, please." With a heavy sigh, he slipped his bag off his shoulder and tossed it onto the nearest chair. "I'm just going to change my clothes."
Your eyes widened immediately, and you froze mid-step. "Wait—does that mean you're going to sleep here?"
Sunoo rolled his eyes dramatically, as if the answer should have been obvious. "What? You really think I'd go home after letting you disturb me at this hour?" he said, his voice dry. He rubbed the back of his neck, glancing around your apartment for the first time.
It was nothing like his own space. The moment his gaze swept over the room, he felt an odd tug in his chest. Guitars lined one wall, their strings gleaming faintly under the shifting glow of LED lights taped along the corners. The posters that filled your walls, mostly of metal bands he actually recognized—thanks to one of his friends who was just as obsessed with that scene as you seemed to be. There were canvases, too, half-finished and scattered against the sofa. The whole place felt alive, buzzing with your energy even when you weren't moving.
"Missed me?" you teased, leaning closer with a grin.
Sunoo didn't even spare you a proper glance. He rolled his eyes and shoved you lightly away, muttering under his breath as he dug into his bag. "As if. The only reason I even bothered coming here is because your annoying ass wouldn't leave me alone."
You watched him unzip his bag, pulling out a neatly folded set of clothes, and despite his flat expression you noticed the way his shoulders sagged, how exhaustion clung to every movement. He had been working himself to the bone, yet here he was, standing in your apartment at ten in the evening. That alone made your chest warm.
"God, I need to shower," he muttered, already moving toward the hallway without waiting for directions. He pushed open a random door, somehow guessing correctly that it was the bathroom, and slipped inside. The door shut firmly, leaving you behind in the living room with your laughter spilling out in echoes.
You padded after him without hesitation, knocking against the bathroom door with force. "Let me join!" you shouted through the wood.
From inside, there was a short pause, followed by the sound of the shower starting, and then his indignant yell. "Fuck you!"
You laughed so hard you had to lean against the wall for support, the sound echoing through your apartment. There was something deeply satisfying in knowing you could still pull that reaction from him even when he was drained from his long shift.
Sunoo ended up on your bed, sitting stiffly. His eyes moved slowly over your room, taking in the mess sprawl of your belongings. Clothes half-folded, books stacked unevenly, random brushes and palettes scattered across your desk. He bent down with a sigh, picking up a stray eyeliner pencil and a crumpled sheet of paper from the floor before dropping them on the bedside table. "Unbelievable," he muttered, glancing at you. "How do you even live like this?"
You ignored his complaint, too caught up in your own excitement. With the measuring tape in hand, you motioned for him to sit still. He shifted reluctantly, rolling his eyes but letting you circle around him, brushing against his shoulders and arms as you worked. You could feel the weight of his gaze following your movements even though he tried to pretend he wasn't paying attention.
"Our theme is under the sea," you began, your tone lively, words spilling out in a rush. "The makeup I have in mind isn't too heavy—it's soft, glowy, more like a douyin-inspired style, but with hints of shimmer, like reflections on water."
Sunoo raised a brow but said nothing, still trying to sit as if he wasn't secretly curious. "Wait, hold on." You darted to your desk, shoving aside piles of papers and empty cups, searching frantically until you found your sketchpad. The mess you made in the process only made him sigh louder, and when you finally returned, your arms were full of sheets, pencils, and smudged notes. You plopped beside him on the bed without an ounce of care, your hair brushing against his shoulder as you flipped the sketchpad open to the right page.
"Here, look!" you said eagerly, turning the pad so he could see. The drawing wasn't perfect, but it was vibrant, full of details—flowing lines like waves, soft glitter patterns around the eyes, hints of pearlescent tones. You leaned close enough that your knees brushed his, smiling up at him as if waiting for approval.
He glanced at the sketch, then at you, then back again. His face was blank, though his lips twitched as if fighting back a reaction. "You did all this just for practice?" he asked finally.
"Of course," you said without hesitation, tilting your head at him. "You're my muse tonight. Who else would I trust to pull this off?"
That word—muse—hung in the air between you. Sunoo blinked, looking away quickly, pretending to study the messy corner of your room instead. He scoffed under his breath, though his ears betrayed him with the faintest hint of red.
"Whatever, just do your job so I can sleep," he said, voice carrying that familiar sharpness. Still, he didn't shift away when you leaned in, didn't flinch when your hand brushed against his wrist as you measured, nor when you adjusted the tilt of his chin so you could see him better. He stayed still, letting you come closer.
If someone asked you at that moment how you felt, you would have answered easily—you were happy. Happy in a way that was simple yet overwhelming. Happy because lately, it felt like things were turning in your favor, even the little things. Happy because just yesterday you'd gotten a new tattoo for free. Happy because sitting here, in your messy room that never seemed good enough for guests, you had a boy in front of you who was almost too pretty to be real. A boy who had an attitude sharp enough to cut, but whose presence made you feel full.
You weren't known for being soft. People said you were rough around the edges, cunning, always quick with words that made others falter. But with him, it was different. You couldn't help yourself from speaking, from filling the silence with random stories, thoughts, jokes—anything. To most, your voice could be overwhelming, but Sunoo had already grown used to it.
"And Jake was also planning his first date to a hotpot—" you rambled on, your hand steady as you blended shimmer onto his eyelid.
Sunoo let out a heavy sigh, his lips parting slightly as he resisted the urge to open his eyes. He had been sitting there with his lids closed for what felt like an eternity, and still you weren't finished. "Do you ever shut up?" he muttered.
You grinned, your brush tracing along the curve of his brow bone as if you didn't hear the complaint. "Why would I? My voice keeps you awake."
"More like gives me a headache," he countered. You tilted his face to the side, carefully catching the light so you could see your work better. These were just trial runs, after all, and even though you hadn't used foundation or concealer—because his skin was already annoyingly perfect—you still wanted everything to look right. The green-brown lenses had shifted the color of his eyes into softer glow, and with the eyeshadow fanned out at the corners, it gave him a kind of effortless charm that made you pause. There was something about working on his face that always made you fall quiet for a second, like you were afraid any sudden movement might break the moment. His features, up close, were unfairly beautiful—the curve of his cheekbones, the sharp line of his jaw, the small, barely-there freckles you'd playfully added to give him a more sun-kissed look. Everything about him was pretty in a way that didn't feel delicate, but confident. His lips especially—plump, soft, and just slightly parted while he sat there with his eyes closed.
You turned, rummaging through your pile of lip tints and glosses until you found the shade that instantly reminded you of him. It was a sheer pink with a little bit of shimmer, and you already knew how good it would look. Without warning, you swung your leg over and settled onto his lap, grinning as you balanced your weight. The reaction was immediate—Sunoo's eyes snapped open, brows pulling together.
"Seriously?" he sighed, exasperated, but his hands came to your hips anyway, holding you steady so you wouldn't slip off the edge of the bed. "Are we done now?"
You tilted your head and gave a sheepish smile, not answering as you leaned in to carefully dab the gloss over his lips. The shape of his mouth, the way it gave the tiniest twitch when your finger brushed the edge—it made your pulse jump. You were so close now that his breath brushed against your cheek, and you had to focus hard not to let your hand shake. You wanted to kiss him. The urge sat so close to the surface that it made your chest feel tight, but you didn't. You just pulled back and admired the finished look with a soft exhale.
"Perfect," you whispered to yourself, more than him. You reached behind you and grabbed the mirror without moving from his lap. Sunoo rolled his eyes but took the mirror from your hand. You stayed right where you were, watching with quiet excitement as he looked at his reflection. There was silence at first. He tilted the mirror slightly, studying one angle, then another. He reached up to touch his hair, fixing a stray strand, then let his gaze drift toward his lips. His expression shifted slowly, quiet surprise then the corner of his mouth curled upward.
"Hmm, it doesn't look bad," he murmured.
Still straddling his lap, you leaned in closer until your face hovered just near the side of his neck, taking in the soft scent of his body wash still lingering from his shower. Your voice dropped as you murmured, "You look so much prettier than me."
Without missing a beat, Sunoo gave a soft scoff, his eyes still on his reflection. "Of course. I should be."
That earned a laugh from you. Typical Sunoo. You didn't stop yourself when you leaned forward and pressed your teeth lightly against his neck, a teasing little bite that made him flinch. Sunoo immediately pinched your waist, just hard enough to make you jolt. "Don't leave marks, I swear I'll kill you," he hissed, finally putting the mirror aside and turning to glare at you.
You only grinned wider, pressing closer until your hands slid up to frame his jaw and your nose brushed against his. "What if I want to leave marks?" you whispered. "What if I want people to know you've been thoroughly used?"
He stared at you, deadpan, though the faintest flush started to bloom across his cheeks. "Used?" he echoed, blinking slowly.
You nodded, the tip of your tongue peeking out as you teased, "Yeah. Like a good little stress toy. I could sit on your face"
His jaw clenched in restraint. "You're disgusting," he muttered, but his hands never left your hips. In fact, they gripped a little tighter now.
"That's not a no," you said sweetly, letting your thumb trail along the curve of his throat. "You're holding me so well. Kinda makes me think you like this. You want me to keep going, Sunoo?"
He inhaled sharply and leaned back just slightly, giving himself space to think. The dim light of the room cast a soft glow across his cheekbones. The red LED strip near the ceiling bled into shadows, blending into the yellow hue of your little desk lamp, illuminating parts of your skin in warm patches. Your hair messily pinned up, strands falling out of your bun, wearing that worn-out Hello Kitty sando and those barely-there shorts. He swallowed hard.
And for a moment, he just stared. The edge of lust in his expression softened. The corner of his lip twitched like he wanted to say something but couldn't find the words. He was thinking, really thinking. and the thoughts weren't just about your lips or your thighs or the heat pooling between you. He was imagining your face twisted in pleasure, not because you were teasing or in control, but because he was the one making you fall apart. He wanted to see that. Wanted to own it.
His body betrayed him first. You both felt how hard he was getting beneath you, the tension radiating off him as you shifted on his lap and rolled your hips in a slow circle against his clothed cock. Your breath hitched as your core dragged over the growing bulge beneath his sweats, and you felt his fingers dig in harder.
Sunoo bit down on his bottom lip and didn't break eye contact. His voice came controlled, but his expression betrayed how much restraint it took. "Sit on my face, then."
Your entire body tensed. The shift was immediate. The teasing smirk that once played on your lips faltered. Your hips stopped moving, stilling right on top of him. You blinked, staring down at him, wide-eyed and visibly caught off guard. "H-huh?" you stammered, breath shallow.
His hand slid up beneath your sando, fingertips grazing over the soft skin of your waist, then higher toward your ribs, slow and unhurried as his gaze didn't flicker. "Sit on my face," he whispered again. "What's the matter? You seemed so eager earlier."
You could barely form a thought. Your pulse thundered in your ears, your breath caught somewhere between a laugh and a plea. "I was just joking," you mumbled, already shifting as if to climb off his lap, trying to dismiss the thought. "You don't have to. I mean—vaginal fluid doesn't even taste good..." You avoided his eyes, flustered and scrambling for your scattered makeup products, needing something to shift the atmosphere. But before your fingers could wrap around the nearest compact, Sunoo moved. He caught you by the wrist and pushed you back onto the bed in one quick motion. You let out a small, surprised squeal as your back hit the mattress.
His body hovered over yours, his knees pinning either side of your hips, eyes fixed on you. "I've let you get me off with your mouth more times than I can count," he said in annoyance. "And now you're acting like I don't get to touch you back?"
Your heart kicked harder in your chest, thudding against your ribs as you stared up at him. "I—" you started, but your voice came out small. "Sunoo, I didn't even shave..."
He didn't blink. He sat back just slightly, his fingers slipping under the waistband of your shorts. "And?" he muttered, raising a brow as if that wasn't even a detail worth considering. When you moved to stop him, hands fluttering at his wrists, he caught one and pressed it into the mattress. His other hand cupped you through your panties, his palm fitting against the damp heat between your thighs.
Your breath hitched. Your back arched into his touch instinctively, and you saw the way his eyes darkened, how his lips parted ever so slightly. "You're soaked," he said, thumb pressing a little firmer.
You tried to deflect, though your voice wavered. "Do you even know what to do with it?" Your tone was teasing, but your body betrayed you—already trembling under his touch, heat pooling low in your stomach, breath quickening. You weren't expecting his answer.
"No," he said simply, like he wasn't embarrassed by it. Then his fingers hooked into the waistband of your panties, dragging the fabric down your thighs in one slow motion before tossing it somewhere across the room. "So teach me."
He slid a hand under your thigh, lifting and spreading your legs. Then he leaned down, his lips brushing soft kisses along your inner thigh slowly, all while keeping his eyes on you. The contact made your pussy flutter, a pulse of need tightening in your abdomen. Your breath hitched again, your hips twitching with anticipation. The sight of him makeup still intact from earlier, your lip gloss still lingering faintly on his mouth—made your body anticipate.
He dipped his head between your legs and dragged his tongue along your folds, one long, unhurried stroke from your entrance to your clit. The sensation made you jolt, the sudden wave of pleasure catching you off guard. "Fuck," you gasped, one hand flying to his hair, fingers curling in his soft strands.
Sunoo's tongue was slow at first, careful in a way that almost betrayed how new this was to him but he was quick to find what made you tremble. He closed his eyes, letting the taste of you settle on his tongue as he circled your clit with careful strokes before dragging his mouth lower to collect everything your body was offering. For a second, he could barely breathe.
So this is what pussy tastes like. That thought rang in his head, the warmth, the wetness, the way your whole body jerked when he hit the right spot—it was more than he imagined. He'd spent years scoffing at the way straight guys romanticized it, mocked their obsession, swore he'd never enjoy it. But fuck, now he understood why they bragged about it. Now he understood the hype.
His hands gripped your thighs as he dragged his tongue through your folds again, slower this time, savoring it. He moaned into you when he heard you whine his name, your voice shaky and breathless. The vibration of his voice against your pussy made your whole body twitch, and Sunoo's cock throbbed from the sound alone. If he wasn't already half-hard before, he was fully aching now, painfully so.
"S-Sunoo," you whimpered, hips lifting off the bed in a desperate rhythm that told him just how good he was doing. His mouth moved instinctively—less cautious now, more eager, more confident—as he pushed his tongue deeper, tasting you from your entrance all the way up, mouth hot and greedy. You were clenching around nothing, so tight and needy, and he wanted to bury his face even deeper, get drunk off you.
When your thighs began to tremble and squeeze around his ears, he didn't stop—instead, he pressed your legs apart with both hands, holding you open like a meal he wasn't finished with yet. Your slick coated his lips and chin, dripping down, and he didn't care. If anything, it made him hungrier. He licked through it all, mess and all, letting it smear over his tongue and down his throat as he sucked your clit hard, then softened his strokes just enough to tease again.
"Ahhh!" Your body writhed underneath him, moans louder, messier, fingers clawing at his hair. His nose bumped into your clit as he worked his tongue into you again, his face wet with your slick, breathing through his mouth as he chased the way you tasted.
His mind was spinning—nothing existed in that moment except your moans, the heat of your pussy, and the steady throb in his pants that begged for release. And when you cried out his name again, legs shaking harder, nails digging into his scalp as your hips rocked into his face, Sunoo moaned so loud it vibrated against your cunt, eyes rolling back as he thought—fuck, he could come from just this.
Sunoo's hips were already grinding against the mattress, his clothed cock rutting helplessly into the sheets as he kept his mouth buried between your legs, tongue swirling slow, then fast, then slow again as he tested how you reacted to every flick and drag. But it was your clit that made him obsessed, the way it throbbed, the way you twitched whenever he sucked it, the way you squealed when he circled it just right. He focused there now, licking harder, more deliberate, tasting every ounce of you like he was making up for all the time he'd dismissed ever wanting this.
This wasn't just payback for all the times you teased him, for every shameless comment or cocky flirt that came from your mouth. No, this was Sunoo owning you. Silencing you. Making you feel exactly what you put him through—restless, aching, desperate.
Your moans started to rise uncontrollably, your voice shaky, your fingers now tangled tightly in his hair as your hips rolled in sync with the rhythm of his tongue. "Wait! Fuck!" you gasped, thighs twitching as your climax built hard and fast, threatening to snap. But Sunoo didn't let up, if anything, he gripped your legs tighter, keeping them wide open, anchoring you in place so you couldn't run from it.
He looked up at you, flushed and wrecked, your eyes squeezed shut in overwhelmed pleasure, lips parted as your body trembled. His cock throbbed painfully from just the sight, and his tongue moved faster, dragging flat and then curling upward to suck your clit hard before flicking again.
When you came, it hit like a wave crashing through your entire body, your back arched off the mattress, mouth open in a cry you barely recognized, legs shaking hard in his hold. Your breathing turned ragged, stuttering as the orgasm took over, intense and blinding.
But Sunoo didn't stop. He lapped through it, almost like he was trying to drag more out of you, milking the high as long as he could. His mouth was soaked, face buried so deep you had to push at his head with trembling hands, voice breaking as you choked out, "Too much—fuck, I can't—"
He let you go, finally, pulling back with a smile. His lips glistened with your cum, cheeks flushed, and his hair was a mess from your grip but those green contacts made his eyes look almost unreal in the soft red light. And god, the makeup you'd done earlier was perfect. Smudged only a little at the corner of his lids, giving him an edgier look that made your cunt clench again.
Sunoo was pretty. Too pretty. Pretty enough to ruin you without even trying. What made it worse—or better, depending how fucked up your brain was—was the way his tongue slowly dragged along his bottom lip, catching the last traces of you. "How was it?" he asked, tilting his head to seek of your approval.
You couldn't even answer at first. Your legs were still trembling, thighs sticky and wet, your heartbeat thudding too loud in your ears to think straight. You swallowed, chest rising and falling fast as you tried to catch your breath. Then you looked at him again—at the shine on his mouth, the hunger still flickering behind those pretty green eyes, the way he sat back slightly.
"Not that bad," you breathed out, voice shaky as your trembling legs bent down and your fingers slowly pressed against the hard outline of his cock through the soft fabric of his sweats. You didn't even try to hide how your hand lingered, almost testing him—your palm flat, applying a bit of pressure. Sunoo raised his brow at your answer but you didn't meet it. You were too busy fighting off the embarrassment clawing at your chest from the way you moved so eagerly, so unlike how you usually carry yourself.
"Down to fuck?" you asked, forcing a playful smirk as you tilted your head, though your voice cracked slightly at the end and your legs still hadn't stopped trembling. The moment you saw the way he blinked at you, you almost backtracked, your lips parting, about to laugh it off like you were only playing.
But then Sunoo was already pulling down his sweats. His cock sprang free, hard and flushed and angry-looking, the head pink and glistening, practically pulsing with tension. You stared. Your mouth went dry. Then wet. You swallowed thickly, clenching your thighs, heat crawling under your skin and settling low in your stomach. There was no hesitation in him now, no teasing smile, just hunger written across his face as he sat back on his heels. His hand wrapped around himself, stroking slowly as he watched the way your breath caught. You didn't even try to hide your stare.
Your mouth went dry, your legs pressing together out of reflex, and you could feel your whole body heat at the sight of him. He looked desperate, flushed, needy, barely holding himself back. "W-Wait," you blurted, hand reaching out like you meant to stop him, even though your body clearly didn't agree. Your pulse was racing, and your thoughts were already spiraling, too many emotions crashing into each other all at once—desire, fear, anticipation.
Sunoo let out a rough sigh, dragging his eyes up to your face. His brows furrowed and his lips parted like he was going to say something else, but then his jaw clenched tight. You could see the frustration in his eyes. "What more do you need?" he asked, voice low and strained. "Do you want me or not?"
You swallowed hard, because the truth was yes, more than you'd ever expected to. But something about how exposed both of you were now made it suddenly harder to breathe. "I just..." you began, "I don't want to ruin this. You've never done this before and I—what if it's too much?" It was fear—real and sudden fear. The weight of what you were about to do had finally caught up, hitting somewhere deep in your chest. This wasn't just another messy hookup. Not with him.
Sunoo stared at you in silence. You could see the flicker in his eyes, between disbelief and restrained annoyance. He almost looked like he was about to roll his eyes and shove you back down onto the mattress with that sharp tongue of his, throwing some cutting comment about how ridiculous this was when you were both already naked, your legs trembling and his cock painfully hard between them. But he didn't. Instead, he took a breath, he reached out, fingers brushing gently against the inside of your knee. You felt the warmth of his palm slide up your thigh until it rested there. "It's already too much," he said. "It's been too much since the first time you kissed me."
You swallowed hard as you sat still beneath his touch. Then his hand slid a little higher, his thumb brushing softly against the crease where your thigh met your hip. "So..." he tilted his head, the corners of his lips twitching into a slight smirk that couldn't hide the heat still simmering in his eyes. "Are we gonna fuck or not?"
You let out a shaky breath, laughing despite yourself. You leaned in, pressing your mouth to his jaw, feeling the slight tremble in his skin. Your hand slid down between you, curling around the base of his cock, hot and twitching in your grip. His breath stuttered, hips jerking slightly. You looked up at him, lips brushing his cheekbone as you whispered, "Lay back for me. Let me take care of you first."
Sunoo obeyed without a word, his body moving almost too quickly. He leaned back against the headboard, chest rising fast, lips parted as he tried to steady his breath. You saw the way his cock twitched in anticipation, pre-cum glistening at the tip, practically begging for friction.
You pulled your sando off, discarding it somewhere off the bed. The bra came next, your bare form revealed under the room's dim lighting. You weren't shy—at least you tried not to be—but you were aware of the way Sunoo's eyes darkened the moment he saw you fully.
Sunoo stopped breathing altogether. His lips parted slightly, stunned, staring at the shape of you, the ink on your skin, the curve of your breasts, and the subtle shimmer of sweat from earlier. Everything about you was too much. Too fucking beautiful.
You straddled him slowly, settling over his thighs as you reached toward your drawer and took out a condom. Sunoo's eyes didn't leave yours, not even when you tore the packet open and rolled it down the length of his cock with deliberate care. His head fell back against the pillows as he let out a groan, hips twitching up into your hand.
"Fuck," he groaned, hips bucking just slightly into your hand. His cock throbbed under your touch, hard and leaking. He couldn't believe how sensitive he was. How badly he wanted this.
You smirked at the sound, giving him a slow stroke just to see him twitch again. "First time?" you teased. "You better tell me later what's better—dick or pussy."
He let out a breathless laugh, but didn't answer. Not when you were already lifting your hips and guiding the tip of his cock to your entrance. That wiped the grin from both your faces.
As he breached you slowly, you gritted your teeth, trying to hide the way your body resisted the stretch. Your hands pressed against his chest for support, and you felt his hands move instinctively to your hips, holding you steady but not forcing anything. His grip was trembling. So were your thighs. You widened your legs as best as you could, adjusting inch by inch, trying to take him fully without showing how much it burned on the way in. You tried to play it off—tried to look confident even when your face couldn't hide the pinch of discomfort.
The truth was, you didn't have a lot of experience with men. Maybe just one, and that didn't really count. It was fast, fumbling, and forgettable. You'd never ridden anyone before. You knew how to move your hips with girls—scissoring, grinding, finding the angles—but this was different. This was slower, deeper, stretching you in ways you hadn't prepared for. You didn't want to look clueless. You didn't want to ruin the moment.
Still, you refused to back down. You braced yourself, breathing through your nose, trying to remember every move you'd given and received, every grind and swivel you'd learned with women—just enough to give yourself rhythm. You focused on how wet you were and how turned on he clearly was, Sunoo gasped beneath you, both hands tightening on your waist like he was afraid he'd lose himself the second you sank further.
"Fuck—" he choked, voice cracking. "You're so—tight. Oh my god—don't move yet—just—fuck—"
His head tilted back, lips parted in a perfect 'O' as he moaned, eyes squeezed shut. His reaction made something clench in your chest and between your legs, but you held still, letting yourself adjust, letting him calm down before either of you pushed too far too fast.
You looked down at him, sweat already starting to gather at his temples, and leaned over just enough to press your forehead to his.
You finally managed to sink down all the way, and the stretch was so intense it knocked the air out of your lungs. Your mouth fell open in a breathless moan, your walls clenching tight around him, struggling to adjust. The pain hadn't completely faded, but it was being overtaken by a creeping pleasure that curled low in your belly. Still, your legs were shaking violently beneath you, the burn in your thighs making it impossible to lift yourself.
Sunoo blinked up at you, concern slipping into his dazed expression as his hands rubbed your waist slowly, gently. His fingers were trying to soothe you, but he could feel the tremble beneath your skin, could see the panic flicker in your eyes. "You okay?" he asked quietly.
You couldn't answer right away. You pressed your face into the curve of his neck, hiding the stutter in your breath as your hands gripped his shoulders. You nodded, though it was shaky. "I'm fine," you said but it came out weak, and the moment you tried to lift yourself, your legs gave out again. You choked out a sound, "just... g-give me a minute."
Sunoo stiffened underneath you when he felt the hot tear that rolled down onto his skin. His brows furrowed as he turned his head slightly, lips brushing your temple. He almost felt bad, guilty to be exact. He knew what that stretch felt like, that burn of being too full, and for a second, he almost paused. Almost. But then you clenched around him again, and it told him everything he needed to know.
"You're such a liar," he breathed out, a soft laugh slipping past his lips. "All that talk... and look at you now."
You didn't respond—just let out another breathy moan, face still tucked into his neck, skin hot with embarrassment. He could feel how tight you were, feel how you clenched around him every time he moved even the slightest. Without warning, he planted both feet flat on the mattress and thrust upward, driving himself deeper inside you. Your entire body jolted, and the moan that tore out of your throat was loud and desperate. He clenched his jaw at the sound of it, biting back his own curse.
You tightened around him, body clenching in response, and his hips bucked again, this time slower, more deliberate. His mouth moved to your ear, breath ghosting over the sensitive skin there as you trembled in his hold. "Let me take over," he whispered. His arms wrapped around your waist, locking you in place, and his hips moved again—shallow but deep, fucking into you from below.
You both moaned out loud. It was past one in the morning and the silence outside made it worse, like every sound would carry past the walls, but Sunoo didn't seem to care. His rhythm picked up, hips snapping against yours with rising urgency, chasing the high he'd only ever imagined.
His thrust hit that perfect spot inside you and your whole body arched, a sharp cry ripping from your throat. Your hands fumbled to hold onto something—his arms, the sheets, your own sanity—but it was already slipping.
Sunoo didn't pause, didn't even look apologetic as he murmured, "Fuck, that's it," like he'd just discovered your weakness. Your pussy was gripping him so tight he could barely move, but that only drove him further. The struggle made it more satisfying.
And then, he pulled out. You barely had time to protest when he shifted your position, guiding you back onto the bed with your legs spread wide. He stared, breathing hard, hands trailing down your thighs before his fingers spread your folds gently. He took a second just to look at you, to admire how wet and swollen you were for him, how much you wanted it. Then, with two fingers, he circled your clit—light, teasing touches that made your hips jerk and your legs try to close on instinct.
So this is why tops get cocky, he thought, watching the way your eyes fluttered, the way your lips fell open in a silent moan. This is why they hold someone down, grip their legs, call them pretty, beg them to take more. He could feel the power of every thrust, feel the way your body reacted. He never understood it before. He always thought tops just liked being in charge, that they were addicted to control—but it wasn't just about that.
"You always run your mouth," he muttered, watching your body twitch with every motion. "But where's all that attitude now?"
He caught your leg, draping one over his shoulder as he lined himself up again. The stretch was immediate, deeper now in this new position, and he pushed in slowly, inch by inch, dragging his cock along your walls until the tip pressed against the spot that made your back arch on reflex.
"You always talk too much," he muttered, groaning at the way you clenched again. "Guess my dick's the one to shut you up."
You sobbed harder, face turning to the side as your hands gripped the sheets. Your breasts bounced with each thrust, tears streaking your cheeks as you moaned his name. "P-please, Sunoo."
Sunoo's stomach tightened at the sound. He threw his head back, letting out a moan that was nearly a growl. His grip tightened on your thighs before he grabbed both, pushing your knees up beside your head as he leaned in close. His arms braced on either side of you, the shift pressing you into the mattress, trapping you with his weight.
Then, he pulled almost all the way out, letting you feel every inch slip from your body before slamming back in with a force that made your eyes roll back. The bed creaked beneath you, the room filled with the slick, wet sound of skin on skin.
"Fuck!" you screamed, arching harder beneath him, your voice cracking on the edge of a sob. Without a second thought, he dropped his hand between your bodies, fingers finding your clit and rubbing fast, precise circles. "G-gonna cum, wait! Wait, wait, wait—" your voice dissolving into a high-pitched wail, so loud and unfiltered that Sunoo instinctively leaned down to kiss you, swallowing the sound against your lips.
The moment his mouth covered yours, your walls spasmed around him, tight and wet and so hot that he couldn't think. Your climax hit, your hips jerking uncontrollably as your pussy clenched around him over and over, fluttering in a rhythm that made his own control snap completely.
Sunoo moaned against your mouth, almost choking on it, his own breath ragged as he held still for a heartbeat but your body pulled it out of him. He couldn't stop moving, not when it felt like this. He gripped your waist tight and kept thrusting, shallow and fast, keeping the head of his cock angled against the soft, spongy spot inside you. He wanted to feel all of it, ride it out, draw it out until you were crying again.
Your legs shook violently as you clung to him, your mouth parting beneath his kiss in gasping, sobbing breaths. You didn't even care that you were a mess now, sweat-slicked, trembling, lips swollen from kissing and crying. You couldn't stop clenching around him, couldn't stop shaking from how intense it was.
And Sunoo, he'd never felt anything like it. That pressure, the way you pulsed around him, the wet squeeze of your walls, the heat, the smell of sweat and sex, the muffled sobs against his mouth—it was too much. He buried his face in your neck as his hips stuttered once, then twice more, before he groaned loud, biting down on a moan that still escaped him in a rush.
"Shit! Ah! Fuck, fuck fuck." He came hard, harder than he ever remembered. His body curled over yours as the orgasm crashed through him, his muscles locking up, breath ragged as his cock twitched deep inside the condom. The sound he made was almost a sob of his own because the moment you clenched around him like that, it was over. He had no chance.
He stayed inside you, breathing hard against your collarbone, trying to get control of his heartbeat. His arms wrapped tighter around your waist, holding you close. You blinked up at the ceiling, dazed, chest rising and falling in erratic waves. Sunoo pulled back just enough to look at you, brushing hair out of your face with one trembling hand.
"One more?" you asked, voice still breathy as you gave him a weak smile, your lashes still wet with the remnants of your tears. There was a glow in your face from that dazed, post-orgasmic haze.
Sunoo let out a scoff, tossing his head to the side. "My legs feel like noodles. Leave me alone." He covered his eyes with one arm.
You let out a small laugh, too drained to do more than let your body sink deeper into the sheets. You didn't push back with another tease. Sunoo sighed as he finally peeled himself off the bed. He removed the condom carefully, tying it off and tossing it into the trash. His limbs felt too light, a little shaky, and for a second he just stood there, catching his breath with a hand braced against the edge of the drawer.
Most of his exes never really gave a shit after sex. They'd turn their backs, light a cigarette, or scroll through their phones. And Sunoo hated that—hated how cold it used to make him feel, even if he pretended it didn't. He wasn't about to become that kind of person, no matter what this thing was between you two. No matter how casual you both claimed it was. So he pulled on his briefs and then his sweatpants, still trying to recover as he looked at your spent body lying there, eyes fluttering closed, chest flushed and rising slowly. You weren't asleep yet, but you looked like you could drift off at any second.
"Don't pass out on me," he muttered under his breath as he leaned down, arms sliding under your knees and back. His muscles protested immediately. "Shit—what are you eating?" he groaned as he lifted you, stumbling a little. "Why are you so heavy? Fuck, my back hurts."
Your laugh came out as a soft wheeze, your head dropping onto his shoulder. "You're so sweet," you mumbled, not even bothering to open your eyes.
Sunoo let out a sharp, incredulous sound as he adjusted his grip on you. "Sweet?" he scoffed. "Bitch, I'm carrying you to the bathroom so you don't get a UTI. That's not sweet, that's basic sexual hygiene."
You didn't even have the energy to be embarrassed, just groaned and buried your face deeper into the crook of his neck as he trudged down the hall. "Still sweet," you mumbled against his skin, barely audible.
After that night, you truly believed something had shifted between the two of you. And if anyone asked how you felt, you'd say the same thing every time: you were happy. Deeply, undeniably happy.
4 Months Later.
"Ah! Harder!F-fuck, Sunoo!"
Your voice cracked as Sunoo pressed a firm hand against the small of your back, forcing your hips higher while his other hand anchored tight around your waist. He dug his nails into your skin without realizing, the sting only mixing into the heat already flooding your body. His pace grew rougher, steady and merciless, and when your moans pitched too high, he slid his palm up to the back of your neck, pinning your face into the mattress to muffle the sounds.
Sunoo's eyes dropped, gaze fixed on the red lilies etched into your lower back. The ink bloomed outward in delicate, mirrored curves, the lines dark against your sweat-slick skin. He hated to admit it, even to himself, but he had become addicted to this view. From behind, with your ass high and that tattoo staring back at him, he always came harder than he thought possible. He'd never say it aloud, of course—he'd just brush it off with some offhand jab about your face being annoying. But deep down, he knew the truth: doggy had become his favorite position because it gave him this sight, this control, and it drove him insane.
His thrusts grew uneven, his groans breaking apart as his orgasm built and finally tore through him. A strangled moan left his lips as he spilled into the condom, his hips stuttering before he slowed to a stop. Breathing harshly, he carefully pulled out, muscles trembling.
He tied off the condom and tossed it into the trash, staring at the small pile already gathering there. "Fuck," he muttered, dragging a hand through his damp hair. "We should've stopped after the third round. My head feels groggy every time and I still have duty tomorrow."
You collapsed forward onto the bed. "You're the one who kept asking for more," you teased, voice hoarse but playful as you reached for the drawer by your side. You pulled it open and slid your fingers around the familiar box of cigarettes, only to flinch when Sunoo's hand smacked yours away with no hesitation.
"No cigarettes while I'm here," he snapped, eyes narrowing as he shoved the box back into the drawer and slammed it shut.
You turned your head lazily to glare at him, lips jutting into a pout. "Come on, I always smoke outside. Just one, it won't kill me."
Sunoo rolled his eyes and flopped down beside you, his arm heavy as it landed across your waist. "Yeah, and you'll say the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, and then you'll be coughing your lungs out when you're thirty. No thanks, I'm not kissing an ashtray." He buried his face briefly against your shoulder, breathing in your scent, before pulling back with a huff.
You stared at Sunoo for a moment, your palm brushing over his damp hair as you gently pushed it back from his forehead, fingertips catching against the fine strands still slick with sweat. His skin was flushed, chest rising and falling in steady breaths, the aftermath of exhaustion softening his features in a way you rarely got to see. He let out a low sigh at the touch, his eyes fluttering closed just for a second before he opened them again, blinking up at you like he didn't want to move. "Come on," he murmured, "let's take a shower and sleep already. I'm leaving at six-thirty."
You nodded, smiling as you leaned down to nuzzle your nose against his cheek. Your legs slipped around his waist without needing to be asked, body folding into him easily. Without a word, Sunoo shifted and lifted you up, muttering something under his breath about how clingy you were.
It wasn't often he had time like this. With his final year piling up and hospital internships consuming his days, Sunoo was constantly in motion, constantly drained. But when he made space for you, it was always in small, quiet ways—sitting still long enough for you to do his makeup, letting you slip him into the clothes you had designed, experimenting with textures and colors against his skin. He'd roll his eyes, complain about the shimmer on his cheeks or how ridiculous he looked, but he never told you to stop. And more often than not, those moments ended the same way—clothes discarded, skin pressed together, his sharp tongue replaced by soft moans. Always sex.
By morning, you usually woke up first. You'd reach for him half-asleep, sometimes without even meaning to, and he'd let it happen—sleepy eyes cracking open as he let you ride him or even give him a morning blowjob.
He told you to keep things quiet, especially when it came to Jake. Around other people, you played your part, but your restraint never lasted long. When the three of you were together, you couldn't help but lean too close to Sunoo, let your fingers graze over his hand or your palm rest lightly on his thigh. He'd shoot you that withering look, roll his eyes and he'd always yank your hair or slap your hand away.
You yawned as you bent over to pour cat food into Luna's bowl, the dry sound of the kibble clinking against ceramic echoing through the quiet. Your cat was rarely ever home, she rubbed against your ankle before settling to eat, her sleek black fur rising and falling with every breath.
Behind you, Sunoo stepped out from the bathroom, towel draped around his neck, still drying his hair. He passed by silently, stooping to give Luna a little scratch behind the ear before wandering around your room to gather his things. "I ironed your scrubs already," you said, yawning mid-sentence, arms stretching overhead as you turned to face him. "Your bag's on the table."
He paused mid-motion, glancing at you. You weren't the type to hover or fuss over anyone, but with him, it was different. You'd stopped staying at his place, mostly because you knew how little sleep he got. You didn't want to disrupt the hours of rest he did manage to find. So instead, you made sure that whenever he came over, everything he'd need by morning was already in place. Scrubs clean and folded. Bag packed. Sometimes even the lunch you'd made slipped quietly into his bag.
"I bought an energy drink yesterday," you mumbled, already at the fridge, grabbing out a pack of three. "Bring one for your friend. Sungwon, right?"
Sunoo scoffed, eyes narrowing in exaggerated offense. "His name is Jungwon. You've met him—don't act fake now."
You grinned as you handed him the cans, laughing softly as he leaned in and kissed your temple. "Thanks, girl," he muttered against your skin, then he pulled back slightly, still toweling off his damp hair, and gave you a small smirk. "Can you dry my hair and slick it back for me?"
You blinked, a little taken aback. Usually, Sunoo did things on his own, and even when he didn't, he rarely asked for help like this. You nodded without thinking, already reaching for your comb. "Yeah. Sit down," you said gently. "I'll make you look hot so Jungwon doesn't think you crawled out of bed with someone."
"I did crawl out of bed with someone," he quipped back, dropping onto the edge of your bed as you moved behind him, towel still around his shoulders.
You smiled to yourself as you began combing through the strands, towel-drying with care. "Yeah, but no one needs to know she's me."
Sunoo didn't say anything back. His eyes were on his phone, scrolling through whatever filled his morning—probably messages from classmates, schedules, maybe even memes. You didn't ask. You just stood behind him, carefully guiding his hair into a clean, slicked-back style that you knew he preferred when he was headed out for his hospital duty.
The peace felt normal, but something about it pressed against your chest. Still, you stayed silent as he finally set his phone down on the table with a soft clatter and picked up his makeup pouch, moving with ease as he dabbed on light concealer and patted a cushion over his skin. When you finished, you lingered for a moment. Then, without thinking, you leaned forward, wrapped your arms around his neck and pressed a kiss to his cheek. He groaned in that exaggerated, irritated way he always did when you got too clingy but he didn't push you away.
"I'm just happy," you murmured against his skin in a smile as your cheek rested against his. He didn't respond. Just rolled his eyes and reached for his lip balm, uncapping it with one hand. And even though he didn't say anything, you still held on for a second longer, memorizing how he felt beneath your arms.
Another week passed, and the days slipped by faster than you expected. Between classes, looming project deadlines, and juggling your part-time job, your schedule blurred but you never forgot to check in with Sunoo. You messaged him like always, updates about your day, stupid memes, or little notes like "Don't skip meals." His replies were dry, short, sometimes just an emoji or a thumbs up. But you clung to them anyway.
You were in your living room when Jay flopped down onto your couch, letting out a breath. Your electric guitar rested on your lap, fingers absentmindedly plucking at the strings, trying to memorize the fretwork. "Sunghoon's been asking about you again," Jay said, casually scrolling through his phone. "So, what do you wanna play for the university event this week? You're singing, so it's your call."
You adjusted the tuning pegs, focused on the strings. "Tell Sunghoon I'm not interested," you muttered without looking up. "What about Supermassive Black Hole?"
Jay raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? That's a hard pick. You really think you can handle both vocals and electric?"
You shrugged, chin tilted slightly as your fingers slid back into place on the neck of the guitar. "I've done harder."
Practice didn't go as smoothly as you wanted. Your mind wandered more than it should have, eyes flicking to your phone every other minute. Jay tried to stay patient, but the third time you missed your cue, he slammed his palm lightly against the back of the couch.
"Can you focus, please? You're the one who wanted this song," he said. "We barely even see you these days."
Kai, sitting behind the drum kit, tossed his sticks onto the floor with a sigh. "You keep zoning out. It's starting to get annoying."
You didn't even defend yourself. Because in that moment, your phone vibrated and your heart jumped. Sunoo was calling! You nearly knocked your guitar off your lap as you scrambled to answer, pressing the phone to your ear before the first ring ended. "Hello!" you said, voice too eager and too bright. It was the first time Sunoo had ever called you.
Kai made a face, motioning to Jay to take over. You turned away, trying to keep your voice low, your heart pounding.
On the other end, Sunoo didn't even greet you. His tone was flat, a little rushed. "I left my record book at your place. Can you get it for me?"
You blinked, straightening a little. "Oh—yeah, okay. Where are you now?"
"I'm on duty," he said, barely giving you time to respond. "At the hospital. Can you make it quick?"
There was no softness in his voice, no hint that he missed you or even cared that you answered. He just sounded tired, and you understand it since being in a healthcare is not a joke. You looked over your shoulder at your bandmates. Jay met your eyes but didn't say anything, just waved you off. "Yeah, okay. I'll head over now," you said quietly, gripping the phone tighter.
"Thanks," was all he said before the line went dead. You didn't waste time. Back in your room, you found his record book tucked between his internship folders and some folded clothes he had left the last time he stayed over. The edges were a little bent from being stuffed into your shelf, and you smoothed them gently with your palm before grabbing your helmet.
Jay's voice followed you from the couch as he sat up, confused. "Where the hell are you going?"
"Something important," you answered quickly, pulling your jacket on. "I'll be back later. Just need to drop this off."
Kai muttered something under his breath, likely a curse about your priorities, but you didn't stop to listen. You slipped out the door and rode your motorbike across town like muscle memory guided your body, even if your mind was still stuck on the way Sunoo sounded.
When you pulled in on the parking lot, the first thing you saw was him. He was leaning against a pale concrete wall near the entrance, half in shadow. Even from a distance, he looked worn down to the bone. His scrubs hung slightly loose on his frame, and the dark circles beneath his eyes were stark against the paleness of his skin. He wasn't even looking at his phone, just staring off, hands limp at his sides.
Your steps were careful as you approached, "Sunoo..." His head turned, eyes sluggish to find you. You stopped in front of him and took a breath, holding the record book out with one hand, the other brushing lightly against his forearm. "Are you okay, baby?" The nickname slipped out unconsciously, concern laced around the softness in your voice.
"I'm fine." He reached out and took the record book from your hand without looking you in the eye. "Just... duty being toxic."
You nodded, swallowing down the worry bubbling up your throat. "Have you eaten yet? You look—Sunoo, you look really out of it." You stepped closer, trying to meet his gaze. "Can I bring you something? Coffee? Bread? I'll wait for you until you're off."
His lips tightened, jaw locking like he was holding something back, but you continued. "What about we go to the—"
"God, can you just stop?" he snapped suddenly, voice louder than it should have been. You flinched. He immediately looked away, dragging a hand down his face in frustration. "I don't want any of that shit. I just needed the damn book."
You blinked, stunned for a second. Not because it hurt—though it did—but because it was the first time he'd ever raised his voice at you like that. Your fingers curled tightly around the edge of your jacket as you tried to steady your breathing. "I know," you said quietly, forcing your voice to stay even, "but you sounded upset. And I was worried."
Sunoo didn't answer right away. He just stood there, shoulders rising and falling as he breathed through whatever storm he was holding inside. "Look," he said, voice lower but still strained. "I just need to get through today. I don't have time for anything else right now."
You nodded slowly, though your chest tightened at the way he phrased it. Anything else. That included you. You took a small step back, out of understanding, even if it stung.
"I'll go," you said, your voice barely above a whisper. "Just... take care of yourself, okay?"
He didn't respond. Just turned and walked back toward the sliding doors of the hospital, the record book clutched in his hand.
You've been meaning to apologize to Sunoo ever since that day, but every time you thought of dialing his number or dropping a message, you paused. He was under so much pressure already, barely sleeping between hospital shifts and classes, and you didn't want to be another thing that made his chest feel heavy.
You sat alone at the campus cafeteria, your fingers working over the delicate rows of yarn as you crocheted slowly, the hook moving again and again. A small collection of handmade tulips lay across the table in a neat cluster—pinks, reds, a few white ones that hadn't taken shape yet. Your brows were furrowed, not from the difficulty of the pattern, but from the thoughts you couldn't seem to untangle from your mind.
"You've been zoning out a lot," Sunghoon's voice cut through the silence. He slid into the seat across from you, his tray untouched. "Jay said he's one tantrum away from kicking you out of the band."
"I'm not zoning out," you answered without looking up, looping the yarn again. "I've just been doing something more important."
Sunghoon leaned in, resting his elbows on the table as his eyes scanned the colorful flowers in front of you. "These commissions? I thought you stopped doing them."
You didn't respond, the sound of yarn slipping through your fingers filling the silence instead. He watched you for another moment before asking, "Are you seeing someone?"
Your hands faltered slightly, just for a second, then picked up again as if nothing had happened. "No," you said quietly, eyes fixed on the work. "It's for a friend."
Sunghoon gave a soft hum, like he didn't believe you but wasn't going to press. "You know I've liked you for a while, right? Since high school."
You finally looked up, just enough to meet his gaze for a brief second before dropping your eyes again. "Sunghoon, I don't have the energy for one of your talks right now."
"I'm not here to make a scene," he said, more gently this time. "I just... I know how you are when you start liking someone. You act like you're fine, like everything's under control, but you start giving too much of yourself without realizing it."
Your jaw tensed, fingers tightening slightly around the hook. "You let your guard down," he continued. "And you start doing all these little things—waiting around, making things for them, dropping everything just to show up. Even when they stop treating you the same way, you keep giving."
"Sunghoon, stop," you muttered.
"I'm not judging you," he said, watching the way your hands moved a little slower. "I just don't want to see you get hurt again."
You didn't bother to look at him. The words weren't new. You shoved the last tulip into the paper bag and stood from your seat, brushing your hands on your jeans as if to shake the weight off. "It's none of your business," you said. "I do what I want to do." You left before he could answer.
Lately, everything felt like a blur. The hospital was suffocating, patients piling up, charts demanding constant attention, the head nurse always finding something to criticize. Sunoo hadn't slept in two days, and even when he did manage to collapse onto his mattress, his chest stayed tight. There wasn't room for anything else. Not for laughter, not for texting back, not even for eating. And eventually, not even for you. He didn't realize how much time had passed since he last answered your messages. He hadn't even opened them. He kept telling himself he would later, when his head wasn't pounding, when he could at least form a sentence that didn't sound like a sigh. But later kept moving farther away.
So when he opened his apartment door and saw you standing there at 9 PM, hands clutching a paper bag with that small, nervous look on your face—he froze. "S-sorry," you muttered, voice soft. "I will not disturb you, just rest. I-I just need to drop this, and wish it make you feel better."
He blinked. Then looked at the bag. Then at you again. He didn't think. He stepped forward and pulled you into his arms before you could even take a step back. The paper crinkled between you, but he didn't care. The second he buried his face into your neck, something in him cracked. A quiet sob escaped before he could hold it in, his hands shaking slightly against your back.
He couldn't remember the last time someone had brought him anything without asking for something in return. "I've never received any flowers," he mumbled. "No one's ever given me anything like this."
You didn't say anything, but your hand was there. The warmth of your touch made his chest ache in a different way. "I'm sorry for being an asshole," he whispered, breathing in your scent, a small comfort in the chaos of his days. "I didn't mean to push you away. I just—everything's been too much."
"I know," you murmured, your chin resting on his shoulder. "It's okay. You don't have to explain."
But he wanted to. You didn't deserve silence. You didn't deserve to be left hanging, wondering if he even cared. He just couldn't bring himself to say it all, but not now, not while his throat was tight and his eyes were stinging and your arms were the first place he felt human all week. "I should've answered. I just... didn't have the energy."
You didn't move away. You didn't scold him. You didn't ask for anything. You just stayed. He pulled back slightly, wiping his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie, trying to look somewhat composed. "Do you want to stay? Just for a bit?"
You nodded without hesitation, and the two of you ended up in his room, laughing your ass out.
He let out another burst of laugh as he leaned over to look at your tablet. "What even is that supposed to be?"
"Wait, I drew you!" you blurted out, your finger swiping across the screen excitedly. You tapped on a picture and turned it to show him—the chibi version of him with devil horns, an exaggerated pout, and glitter under the eyes.
Sunoo squinted, then narrowed his eyes dramatically. "You little shit," he muttered, before slapping your shoulder.
You shifted without thinking, climbing into his lap, your back settling against his chest as you held the tablet up between you. His arms wrapped around your waist loosely, his chin resting over your shoulder
"Wait, you drew this one too?" Sunoo's voice pulled you from the moment. He pointed at a little sticker design on your tablet—a black cat holding a cigarette between its tiny fingers. "I bought this! From the Art Museum's student booth a few months ago. I stuck it on my old clipboard."
You turned your head slightly to meet his stare. "Are you serious? That was my booth. That's literally my design!"
Sunoo's mouth dropped open in disbelief. "What the hell? Why weren't you guarding your own booth?! You're such a bad artist!"
You scoffed, turning to half-face him, "Excuse me, I had a nicotine addiction to maintain. I took a break."
He groaned. "Turns out it was you sneaking off to light up under a 'No Smoking' sign."
"You bought my sticker and called me a bitch. How dare you insult me and support me at the same time?"
"I didn't know it was you!" he defended, laughing again. "But honestly, you deserved it. I hate people who smoke where they're not supposed to."
You twisted slightly in his lap, now facing him more directly. "So do you still hate me?" you asked, teasing, a small smile tugging at the corner of your lips as your fingers played with the hem of his hoodie.
Sunoo didn't look away. He rolled his eyes like he always did. His voice was soft, almost playful. "Yes. Obviously. You're still annoying."
You pouted at his answer, dragging out a whine. His smile lingered, and even though his words were stubborn, his hands had tightened just slightly around your waist. "I'm not joking," he added, resting his forehead against yours. "You're so, so, sooo annoying."
The night ended up your thighs trembling around his head, your hands tangled in his hair, your voice broken from the way his mouth worked between your legs. He made you come three times with his tongue alone, not stopping until you pushed at his shoulders with tear-brimmed eyes and slurred, begging words. Then he let you ride him, your back turned to him, your head lolled to the side as his hands gripped your hips.
The next morning, the weight in your chest had lifted. You didn't feel guilty for smiling. Even when Jay clapped his hands together loudly the moment you walked into the studio and said, "You're in a good mood, thank God," you just grinned wider and grabbed his electric guitar, pretending to tune it like nothing had happened.
"You want a hit?" Kai asked, waving his vape your way.
You shook your head without even thinking. "I already quit smoking," you said casually, even though that choice had been harder than you liked to admit.
You and Sunoo didn't put labels on what was happening—not yet—but things fell into place anyway. There was a rhythm to it. You spent weekends at his apartment, usually coming over late Friday, falling asleep on his couch after watching movies and ordering junk food. Saturday mornings meant waking up tangled together, cooking breakfast with your hair a mess and his arms still lazy around your waist, and Sunday nights usually ended with you riding him slowly before passing out from exhaustion. Mondays, he walked you to your motorbike before his duty started again.
One Sunday afternoon, sprawled on his bed while you were half-scrolling through TikTok and half-dozing on his lap, he suddenly shoved his phone in your face. "I think this type of style suits you more," he said, showing you some random Pinterest board filled with soft, layered outfits—more structured, a little feminine, clean silhouettes with warm tones. "You need to upgrade your wardrobe."
You squinted at the screen, unimpressed. "Hmm. I think you're just projecting your type in girls on me," you teased, nudging his thigh with your elbow.
Sunoo rolled his eyes, clearly expecting that answer. "No. I just think it looks presentable. And it would look good on you."
You looked down at yourself—baggy ripped jeans, an oversized acubi-style shirt, sneakers worn down from all your bike rides. Not exactly the most polished look, but it was comfortable. You shrugged with a small grin. "Okay, I'll try," you said. "Anyway, can we visit that new café that opened last week? I saw it on Instagram and they have a bunch of Bon Jovi albums on display."
Sunoo blinked. "Bon Jovi?"
"Yeah, like actual vinyls. The post said there's a listening booth too." You leaned closer, eyes brightening. "And the interior looks so nice. Real vintage vibe. I figured you'd like it."
He tilted his head, pretending to think. "Hmm... okay, maybe next week?"
You nodded, trying to keep it casual, but the smile that broke out on your face gave you away. Excitement bloomed in your chest like it was something new. It wasn't just another plan. It wasn't just a random meet-up. This one felt different. You kept thinking about it all week. Every small moment your mind wandered, it wandered to that café. To how you'd sit across from him, to the lighting, to the smell of the place, maybe to the way he'd laugh when you'd try to act cool about your favorite album being on display. You weren't even sure if it counted as a real date, but you were choosing to believe it did. That belief made your stomach flutter.
By Saturday, you had cleaned your room twice, even reorganized your crochet materials—something you only did when you were nervous. Your playlist was full of Bon Jovi songs now, looping endlessly while you stared at your closet.
That morning, you found yourself standing in front of your mirror, staring at your reflection longer than usual. Your piercings were gone—well, mostly. You'd taken out the ones on your face, letting the skin breathe, letting yourself look softer. The change made you feel exposed, a little too bare, but also like you were trying.
"Do you think I look presentable now without the piercings?" you asked, turning slightly in front of the mirror. The floral dress you wore was one of the few pieces in your closet that wasn't oversized, black or red. You smoothed the fabric down nervously, then glanced at Jay who was lounging nearby.
Jay lifted his eyes from his phone, a cigarette loosely held between his fingers. His face twisted slightly like he couldn't decide whether to laugh or roll his eyes. "What's with all this performative energy? You still look like an emo girl who got dragged into church."
You shot him a glare. "I'm being serious."
"So am I." He took a drag, blowing the smoke toward the window. "You look like yourself, just with fewer metal parts. That's not a bad thing, by the way. It's still you."
"You don't get it," you said quietly, adjusting the straps of the dress again. "I need to look like I have my shit together. I'm going somewhere... and I want to be seen a certain way."
Jay rolled his eyes, walked over, and stood behind you, he stubbed out his cigarette on the ceramic ashtray near the window and reached toward you, pushing your hair behind your shoulders without asking. He squinted as he examined your face. "You'll look better if you tie your hair up," he mumbled, the filter of his half-lit cigarette still stuck between his lips. "Ponytail or something. The dress opens your collarbone. It works."
You blinked at him, surprised by how serious he sounded, then reached up instinctively to gather your hair into your hand. You tilted your head, testing the look in the mirror. Something about it clicked. You could see it now—the way your eyes opened up more, how your features looked cleaner without the strands framing your face. A bit bare, sure. A little too soft maybe. "I think you're right," you said with a small smile, already grabbing a scrunchie from your pocket. "That actually helps."
Jay shrugged. "Whatever. You asked."
You turned to face him, grateful even if he looked bored out of his mind. "Thanks, Jay. Really."
"Wow, you look really good, girl."
The compliment came with a spark in Sunoo's eyes the moment you stepped inside the café, and it sent a flush creeping up your neck. His gaze lingered, tracing your figure with genuine awe that he didn't even try to hide. You hadn't brought your motorbike today—not in a dress like this—and walking into the café with heels clicking and your hair tied back suddenly felt worth it.
"Only good?" you teased, pouting as you twirled the hem of your floral dress playfully in front of him. With a soft push of your fingers, you tucked your hair behind your ear and tilted your head, smiling shyly as you searched his face for a better reaction. You wanted him to say beautiful, maybe even breathtaking, but even without the words, the look in his eyes told you everything.
Your heart had been thumping ever since you saw him seated by the window, casually checking his phone. Now, up close, it was worse. The sunlight streaming into the café highlighted the soft brown fall of his hair, the gentle curve of his cheekbones, the way his denim shirt hung open over a simple white tank top. He looked effortless—too effortless for someone who always drove you to such nervousness. And yet, despite that nervousness, you found yourself loosening.
The longer you stayed in his presence, the easier it was to talk, to laugh, to let go of the performance. There was something so calming about talking to him about things you loved, sharing songs you liked, memories from art class, favorite old movies, dumb fashion trends—simple things, but they became important because you were sharing them with him. Talking about your likes with someone you liked—it felt too rare to take for granted.
That's when it hit you. Maybe it was finally time to talk about what was happening between the two of you. The affection, the growing intimacy, the weekends together, the sleepovers that blurred the line between casual and committed—it had all been there. But neither of you had dared to define it. He had always been honest with you. In the four months you'd been tangled into each other's lives, he never lied about what he felt or where he stood. So maybe, it was time for you to take the risk again and ask.
As the two of you wandered near the wooden display cabinet filled with vintage Bon Jovi and Queen albums, your fingers reached for his and laced through gently. He let you. Your hands stayed linked, a quiet statement hanging between you, even while your mouth continued to talk about vinyl sleeves and weird 80s cover art. That peace only lasted seconds before a familiar voice cut through the space.
"Sunoo?"
Sunoo's body tensed before he turned around, his eyes wide in surprise. You perked up too, smiling with recognition, you gasped as you waved at the approaching figure. Jake, lively as ever, grinned brightly as he made his way to you.
But just as you were about to speak, Sunoo let go of your hand. The action was subtle, but it was sharp. His fingers pulled away quickly, and his body leaned ever so slightly to the side, creating distance between the two of you. You tried to ignore the way your smile faltered, tried to hold it together as Jake reached you both
"What are you doing here? Are you two bonding?" Jake asked with his usual exaggerated pout before leaning in to kiss your cheeks in greeting, then doing the same to Sunoo. "Without me?"
Your mouth opened, ready to answer, to explain but Sunoo spoke first. "No, we just ran into each other," he said too quickly, a small nervous laugh escaping his lips. "And we couldn't help but talk for a bit. It's been so long since we last saw each other, you know?"
He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. And your heart sank. Jake, ever the extrovert, nodded along cheerfully, completely unaware. "Ahhh! That's so cute! I'm just glad you two are hanging out again. We seriously need to set up another sleepover, right?"
You forced a small chuckle, brushing your hand along the side of your skirt. "T-that's a great idea," you said, trying to match his enthusiasm. But your eyes flicked back to Sunoo. He was tapping his foot against the floor, fast and impatient, not meeting your gaze.
It was like something had shifted in an instant. And now you were standing in that silence again, not sure if the version of Sunoo who held your hand minutes ago was still there... or if he had just vanished with Jake's arrival.
Even after Jake finally waved goodbye and disappeared down the street, your mood stayed where it dropped. Sunoo stood next to you like nothing happened, releasing a sigh and forcing a new topic as if the tension wasn't heavy in the air. He spoke casually, talking about a song he'd heard recently, about trying a different drink next time, anything to ignore the silence growing between you. But you couldn't pretend like him. You couldn't look him in the eye or laugh at something meaningless when your chest felt like it was being squeezed in slow, deliberate pulses. You kept your gaze down, watching your feet move with every step, barely hearing a thing he was saying.
Sunoo started to notice. His tone shifted—less patient, more irritated. The lightness in his voice faded and was replaced with annoyance. He didn't like when you shut down, and now it was clear he was blaming you for the sudden weight between you.
By the time you reached the door of his apartment, you knew the conversation was inevitable. He stepped in first, then turned, and before you could even take your shoes off, his voice came tight and harsh.
"Are you seriously getting all moody just because I let go of your hand when Jake showed up?" His eyes narrowed, his words clipped. "We agreed to keep this between us, not to say anything to Jake. You knew that. Why are you acting like this now?"
You stayed by the doorway, not moving. "It's not just about that," you murmured, your voice already thin. You didn't want to argue. You didn't want to cry either, but your body was already betraying you, tightening up.
He scoffed. "Then what is it? Because I didn't hold your hand in front of him? That's it?"
"It's just..." you took a breath, and even that was hard to push out. You felt like the words were caught in your throat, slicing through. "You looked—ashamed."
Sunoo didn't pause. He didn't soften. "Of course I'm ashamed," he blurted, not even giving the sentence time to sit. "How the hell are we supposed to explain that we're what—fucking each other? What do you want me to say to him?"
You flinched at his word, you looked up slowly, heart pounding so loud you could hear it in your ears. "It's not that hard to admit, is it?" you said, your voice shaking as you took a step forward, eyes stinging. "People do that all the time. Fuck buddies aren't a secret anymore. It's normal. You think Jake would've been shocked?"
"That's not the point—"
"It is the point, Sunoo!" You cut him off, your voice rising despite the tremble in it. "We've been doing this for months. We spend every weekend together. We sleep in the same bed. We talk like we mean something to each other, so why is it so hard to tell him that we're — something?"
You didn't expect him to shout back, but he did. "Because I'm supposed to be gay! Do you get that? I'm not supposed to feel like this about you!" The words came out angry. "And you keep pushing it like it's that simple."
You stared at him, your face falling, your fists curling. "Who fucking cares if you're gay? I never made you not be." You took a step back, voice cracking. "Just say it. Just say you're ashamed to be seen with me."
Sunoo's face twisted, but he didn't back down. His chest was heaving now, like something in him had snapped too. "You're projecting your insecurity on me! You act like I owe you something just because you decided to catch feelings! I never promised you more than what this was. That was you. That was always you!"
Your breath caught in your throat, and you stumbled back, blinking fast as the first tear broke past your lashes. "You're the one who came back after that night," he went on, voice rising with frustration, like he couldn't stop himself anymore. "You kept showing up, acting like this was something serious, like this was going to turn into something. I just—" he stopped, looking away like he couldn't even look at you when he said it, "I just gave in. You were tempting, okay? You made it hard to say no."
All the blood in your body seemed to rush to your ears, and still, you couldn't hear anything but the sound of your heart breaking. Another tear slipped down your cheek, and your lips parted like you were going to respond—but nothing came out. Sunoo blinked, realizing too late what he had just said. The way he looked at you shifted instantly, as if he wanted to take it back, but the damage was already there. "...Wait," he whispered, reaching for you instinctively. "I didn't mean—"
But you just nodded, slowly, painfully, like someone waking up from a dream they didn't want to end. "I- I get it," you said quietly, stepping past him and walking out his door like your legs weren't shaking. You didn't even turn to look at him. "I'm sorry," you added, trying to keep your voice steady, though the sound cracked anyway. You wiped under your eyes, but the tears kept falling, soft and warm against your skin. "You were right. I was annoying. I was pushy. I caught feelings, I shouldn't have. I thought maybe... I don't know what I thought."
You paused to breathe, your throat tightening as you tried to keep the sob from escaping. "What could I even expect, right? You're still a man. Of course this meant n-nothing."
Sunoo's chest tightened so hard he couldn't breathe for a second. He wanted to stop you, to wrap his arms around you, to tell you it wasn't true—none of what you were saying. That he did care. That this wasn't nothing to him. That he didn't think you were annoying, or a mistake, or something to be ashamed of. But he couldn't get the words out. The fear clenched too tightly around his ribs.
"I'm sorry," you said again, a whisper this time. Another tear slipped free and this time you laughed, short and broken. "God, I sound pathetic. S-sorry, Sunoo. I'll go. I'll leave you alone. You won't have to worry about me again."
You turned, fast, footsteps uneven as you tried to get away before he could see the full collapse happening inside you.
Sunoo didn't stop you. And you broke. You didn't wait to cry. The tears came fast and violent, your chest aching as you stumbled down the street, wiping your face on the back of your hand like it would help. At the bus stop, you sat hunched on the bench, arms wrapped around yourself as if holding your own body could keep you from falling apart. On the bus, you curled near the window, staring out at the dark streets, your reflection barely visible through the glass. You didn't care who saw you. The ache inside you was louder than embarrassment.
By the time you made it to your apartment, your hands were trembling. You didn't even bother turning on the lights. You made your way straight to your room, tugging the dress zipper with shaking fingers. When it wouldn't budge, frustration bubbled up, too hot to contain. You gritted your teeth and yanked, but it wouldn't move, so you grabbed the fabric near your shoulder and ripped it down your back with a cry of frustration. The fabric tore, seams giving way under your rage.
You tossed it to the floor like it burned you. Chest heaving, you stormed over to your nightstand and grabbed the crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds. Your fingers trembled as you pulled one out, jamming it between your lips, and fumbled with the lighter until the flame caught. You inhaled sharply, letting the smoke burn down your throat as you collapsed into the chair near the window.
"Stupid," you muttered under your breath, blinking away more tears that wouldn't stop coming. "So fucking stupid."
You thought you were strong enough not to let this happen again. You thought you could handle it. But what did you expect? You were so obsessed with ruining him when you first met, so fixated on getting under his skin, that you didn't notice he was already getting under yours. You didn't even get the chance to ruined him—he got to you first.
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Sunoo had never experienced a heartbreak that ached like this. He had felt sad before—moments of longing, fleeting attachments—but those had always passed with time, fading within days, maybe a week at most. They never lingered, never left anything permanent behind. So why the hell had he been sulking for nearly a month now, barely able to focus, barely able to sleep, staring blankly at the tulip bouquet on his desk like it could somehow explain what went wrong?
He told himself he should be relieved. There were no more complications in his way, no emotional distractions to deal with. He was finally free to focus on his demanding internship, on his future, on everything he had planned for years. And yet every late-night shift, every quiet weekend, every exhausted morning waking up to silence felt impossibly hollow without you. You used to send him silly selfies while he studied, comfort him through voice notes when he ranted about how hard nursing was, remind him to eat when he was too tired to remember. Now, all he had was the buzzing of lights, the clinking of stainless steel, the silence of the hospital—and that goddamn tulip bouquet collecting dust in the corner.
His eyebags were darker, heavier, like they carried the weight of everything he never said to you. His thoughts were loud, looping over what he should've done differently, what he should've said the moment he saw your face fall.
Fuck. He missed you so much it made his whole body ache. Every fucking night he lay in bed, biting his fist to muffle the cries. Were you okay? Were you eating? Were you still crying? Were you still thinking about him? God, he hoped not. He didn't deserve your thoughts, your sadness, your softness—but deep inside, he still wished he lived rent-free in your head the way you haunted his.
He wanted to hold you again, to collapse into your arms after a hard shift, to hear your voice teasing him when he whined about school. He wanted to kiss your neck like he used to, trace the little freckles on your collarbone, let you thread his hair through your fingers while he laid on your lap. He wanted to watch you feed your cat, complain about his bad taste in coffee, laugh when you purposely messed up his eyeliner just to annoy him. He wanted the boring things with you. The quiet, gentle things he once brushed off like they were nothing. He regretted every time he took you for granted.
"Sunoo!" Jungwon's voice jolted him out of his thoughts. His friend clapped him on the back, grinning. "Congrats! Why do you look like someone just died? We're graduating! Where's the joy, girl?"
Sunoo forced a weak smile, shrugging his shoulders as he kept his gaze locked on the soccer field in front of them, watching the high schoolers running laps, laughing with no clue how cruel it was to grow up. "You've been M.I.A. lately," Jungwon continued, nudging him. "Not cool. You ghosted everyone. No more parties? No more hangouts? We should celebrate. It's not fun without you."
Sunoo exhaled quietly, shoulders sinking. "Jungwon," he said under his breath. "I think I got infected by men's emotional negligence," Sunoo muttered bitterly, eyes still locked on the field, watching a soccer ball bounce and roll across the grass
Jungwon blinked at him. Then snorted. Then burst out laughing so hard he doubled over, hitting Sunoo's back again. "What? What are you saying? You're not even dating anyone! You've been so secretive about your love life lately, I thought maybe you were going through a dry spell or something." He leaned back, grinning. "But don't worry—men are assholes. It's honestly safer to hurt them first before they get the chance to hurt you—"
"It's not a man," he said quietly.
And Jungwon stopped laughing. He stiffened beside him, eyes blinking wide. "Wait. What?"
Sunoo didn't look at him. He just kept watching the field, the blurry shape of a boy chasing a ball, the sun dipping lower behind the school buildings. "It's not a man," he repeated. "I wish it was. It would've been easier."
His lips curled bitterly as he looked down at his white sneakers, scuffed and dirtied from weeks of walking to class in silence. "I miss her. No shit. I miss her so fucking bad."
There was a small and self-deprecating laugh, tugging at the edge of his voice, but it cracked halfway through. "It's stupid, isn't it? It hurts more when you know it's your fault. I keep thinking about all the things I told myself I'd never become. I always talked about how men treat people like shit—how they use and walk away, how they never apologize for the damage they leave behind. How they shrink from softness because they're scared of what it says about them."
He rubbed at his chest with the heel of his palm like it might ease the tightness building there, but the pressure only grew heavier. "I always swore I'd never be like that. And then I went ahead and did it anyway. I made her feel that way, Jungwon. Like she was something to be ashamed of. Like she was just a mistake I wanted to keep hidden. Like the feelings she gave me were inconvenient." He let out a shaky breath, shoulders caving in slightly. "And the worst part? I never even told her how much I liked her. How much she meant to me."
Jungwon's mouth opened slightly, stunned into silence by the sight of Sunoo—the usually sharp-tongued, composed Sunoo—sitting beside him with tears slipping quietly down his cheeks. "I'm sorry," Sunoo whispered. "You can laugh at me now. Tease me. Say I got soft. Say I turned my back on my sexuality. Or that I lost my mind over a girl when I always said I wouldn't—"
"Girl," Jungwon interrupted, his tone softer than as he scooted closer and draped an arm across Sunoo's back. "Relax. Why the hell would I laugh at you for this? You're clearly hurting. I'd have to be heartless to find that funny."
Sunoo sniffled, wiping his face. Jungwon sighed, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "You know, I think sometimes we get so wrapped up in the idea of who we're supposed to be, or what we're supposed to feel, that we forget we're just... human. You always said you didn't want to be like the guys who hurt others, right? Well, maybe you fucked up. Maybe you acted like one of them. But you realized it. You're sitting here crying because of it. That already makes you different from most."
Sunoo didn't speak, but his jaw trembled, and the tears didn't stop. Jungwon tilted his head, speaking more gently now. "Men can be assholes. A lot of them are. But being born with a dick doesn't mean you're destined to be one. What makes someone a real man is taking responsibility. Owning up to your shit. Making it right when you can."
He paused, then smiled faintly. "We might be one of the girls, sure. We squeal, we wear blush, we cry over small things, and we talk too much when we drink—but we also carry the weight of things like this. Of hurting people we care about."
Sunoo's breath hitched again, and this time when he wiped at his face, he was a little slower, a little calmer. "You know what you need to do," Jungwon said, nudging him gently. "If she meant something to you... you owe her more than silence. And you owe yourself more than sitting here pretending you're okay."
"Do you think it's too late?" he asked finally.
"I don't know," Jungwon admitted. "But people forgive stupid things when they see you're actually sorry. And you are. I see it. Maybe she will too."
"You're definitely insane," Jay said. "Because why the hell would you decide to do your nails when you know you have to play electric guitar tomorrow?"
You didn't even look up. Your fingers were too focused on the torn fabric in your lap, guiding the needle carefully through the jagged tear. You tugged gently at the thread, the tension sliding through the cloth as you murmured, "It's just minor chords."
Jay groaned, dragging a hand down his face. "Minor chords and you're still skipping practice like you've got this down. God, you're making my head hurt."
"I said I'll show up," you replied flatly.
Jay scoffed in the background, but you ignored it. Let him roll his eyes. Let him sigh and throw another fit about perfection. It wasn't like he'd understand anyway. The nails weren't the problem. Jay and his perfectionist self always had something to complain about when people didn't bend to his rhythm. But you liked your nails. You liked how they shimmered when the light hit them. They made you feel decent—like maybe, just maybe, you were still capable of taking care of yourself.
Except you were too stupid to realize you'd chosen that exact shade of mint green. That soft, sweet color he once said reminded him of summer. The one he jokingly suggested would look cute on your nails if you ever ditched the blacks and reds you usually wore. The color had haunted you since then, just like everything else tied to him.
You stared down at your fingers, freshly painted and curled slightly as you guided the needle through the torn seam of the dress. You had sworn to never touch it again, but here you were, piecing it back together with trembling hands.
Heard from someone that Sunoo made it into the Latin honors list. Top of his class, just as you expected. And good for him. Really. You hoped he was sleeping well, smiling like he always did, charming everyone with that beautiful, soft voice and those ridiculously perfect eyes.
You hoped he forgot you — Because it wasn't fair that you were still waking up thinking about him.
"Fuck," you hissed, jerking your hand back as the needle pricked the pad of your finger. Blood welled up, a small drop blooming at the surface. It smeared faintly against the fabric—right over the seam you'd been trying to fix. "Ugh, shit," you muttered, staring at the new stain forming on the pale material.
Perfect! Just perfect. You sucked on your finger for a second, breathing hard through your nose, trying to hold everything back. "You could've just bought a new dress, you know." Jay said, looking at your face.
"I didn't want a new one," you said quietly, still looking at the ruined thread. "I wanted to fix it."
If someone asked you what exactly you were feeling right now, you wouldn't know how to answer. There wasn't a word that fit—nothing specific. You were functioning just fine. You got out of bed. You drank your coffee. You worked. You smiled when people talked to you, even laughed when the joke was decent enough. So, you were fine, right?
But then why did everything feel so dull? Why did the silence in your room stretch too long, and why did the nights feel colder, even when the fan wasn't turned on?
Maybe it was because you quit your part-time job. Maybe it was because you'd thrown yourself into freelance commissions, desperate to stay busy, desperate to drown out the thoughts by making yourself useful. Drawing until your eyes hurt, until your hand cramped. It worked for a while—until even the deadlines stopped scaring you.
The truth was, you had too much space now. And all that extra room made it harder to ignore the feeling gnawing at the edges of your chest.
Jay had once said, "That's why it's hard for me to watch you fall in love. You're the kind of person who gives everything without realizing it. You show up without fail, but somehow still feel so far away."
You didn't understand what he meant back then. Thought he was being dramatic, maybe too sentimental. But now you did. You were always present, always dependable. But your heart? You'd locked it away for years, guarded and watchful, convinced no one would be careful enough to hold it.
And when you let your walls down. You gave in completely, all at once, as if you'd been waiting your whole life for a reason to. And he didn't stay... Now you sat alone again, trying to rebuild the barricade you'd once worn. You tried patching yourself up with work and distractions, thinking if you filled your days enough, the ache would fade. But some nights, it came back stronger. A ghost knocking on your ribs, reminding you of the softness you once allowed.
You regret letting him see you that clearly. Regret peeling yourself open, showing the tender parts you swore no one would ever get close to. You used to be so good at keeping people at a distance, but you ruined yourself when you made an exception.
"Putting my defenses up, 'cause I don't wanna fall in love."
Your voice rang out, echoing through the crowded room. You stood at the front of the stage, clutching the mic, and the lights hit your face just enough to make everything outside the spotlight blur into nothing.
"Never put my love out on the line..." The lyrics spilled from your lips. Your eyes drifted to the floor where your foot tapped in rhythm, then to the strings of your guitar as your fingers pressed down the chords. "Never said yes to the right guy. Never had trouble getting what I want..."
A faint smile tugged at your lips. "But when it comes to you, I'm never good enough..."
You looked up then, stealing a glance toward your bandmates. They were all focused on their instruments, lost in the music like they always were, eyes down or closed, rocking slightly with the beat. None of them looked at you. You were glad for it. You didn't want them to see the way your hands were trembling on the fretboard, or how your throat threatened to close the moment his face flickered in your mind. "When I don't care, I can play 'em like a Ken doll..."
You swallowed thickly and tried to stay in rhythm, tried to keep your tone playful like the song intended—but your mind was far from the lyrics now. It drifted elsewhere. To him.
"Won't wash my hair, then make 'em bounce like a basketball..." Your breath hitched, but you kept going. "But you make me wanna act like a girl..."
You closed your eyes then. "Paint my nails and wear high heels..." Your fingers slid along the guitar strings automatically. And then, without warning, his face appeared—soft eyes, dimpled smile, that maddeningly gentle voice. Sunoo.
"Yes, you—" You faltered. "—make me so nervous that I just can't hold your hand."
You pushed through the chorus, the words twisting in your throat. The beat thundered in your ears, drowning out the sound of your own thoughts. You didn't miss a note, but you felt every crack forming inside you. And when the song finally ended, the stage lights dimmed and the crowd's cheers erupted like static in your chest, you barely smiled.
You brushed your hair back, exhaling hard as you stepped off the stage. The adrenaline was already wearing off, leaving only the sweat sticking to your skin and the tightness in your throat. You grabbed the water bottle waiting for you and took a few long gulps, letting the cool liquid settle your nerves.
"I thought you hated pop songs."
You turned your head slightly, recognizing Sunghoon's voice before you saw his face. He was already beside you, grinning. You sighed, long and loud, then handed him the water without looking, forcing him to take it. "You're annoying," you muttered, adjusting your loose sando, tugging the strap back up your shoulder and trying to fix your tangled hair with one hand. "You know I didn't pick the setlist."
"But you sang the hell out of it."
"Don't push it," you warned.
Then his voice dropped again, quieter but curious. "You got a new tattoo?"
You stilled for a moment. Your hand went to your nape instinctively, brushing over the still-healing skin just below the red ink etched across your upper spine. You didn't answer, just gave a hum of acknowledgment before slipping your hand down your back. Without shame, you reached beneath your shirt and unhooked your bra, letting your chest finally breathe after hours under the stage lights.
Sunghoon didn't say anything for a moment, but you felt his gaze linger. "Are you free tonight?" he asked. "Thought maybe we could hang out. Talk or something. Just us?"
Another sigh escaped you, this one heavier than the last. You didn't try to hide the exhaustion in your voice this time. "Sunghoon..." you started, turning to finally face him properly. "You're a good friend. You've been sticking around for longer than most people would, and I get it. You think there's something here, maybe because I let you hang around or because I'm too tired to fight your flirting half the time."
He opened his mouth to say something, but you raised your hand. "But I'm not interested," you said, carefully but clearly.
He blinked. The corners of his mouth twitched, like he didn't know whether to frown or fake a laugh, but then his lips settled into a small, almost understanding smile. "You're not interested in boys," he said, a little too quickly, trying to soften the blow for himself.
"No," you cut in, sharper this time. "I'm not interested in you."
Sunghoon looked down, then up, that crooked smile still hanging on his lips. "You know I won't stop, right?" he said, brushing off rejection with a joke.
You raised an eyebrow. "That's your choice," you replied plainly. "But don't expect me to change my mind."
"Okay," He nodded, his gaze dropped before you even finished your sentence, trailing down lazily across your chest.
Your fingers snapped in front of his face. "Seriously?" you said with irritation.
Sunghoon blinked, caught, his mouth twitching up. "Sorry, sorry," he mumbled quickly. His eyes flicked back up to your face. "Is that a new piercing?"
You didn't respond right away. You crossed your arms instead, trying to hold onto your patience and bite back the exhaustion blooming across your shoulders. The days had been long, your emotions threadbare. "Ni-ki did it," you said finally, eyes narrowing as your annoyance deepened.
When your gig finally ended, you let out a long breath you didn't realize you'd been holding. You made your way toward the bar where the owner usually handed out the cut for the night, hoping it wouldn't take long because all you wanted was to go home and lie down. But before you could even reach the counter, you were nearly knocked off balance by someone throwing their arms around you.
"Oh my God! I haven't seen you in forever!" You tensed instinctively, blinking as you looked up—Jake. He pulled back slightly, still gripping your shoulders, eyes shining.
You forced a small smile. "Hi. How are you?" you asked politely, brushing a loose strand of hair away from your face. "I've been... busy. Really busy. You know how it gets."
Jake nodded eagerly, releasing you as he leaned against the edge of the bar. "Yeah, I get it. It's fine. Just figured I'd bump into you sooner or later. Hey—are you attending Sunoo's graduation this week?"
You froze. Your fingers twitched slightly as you curled them into the hem of your shirt, the smile on your face faltering before you managed to hold it steady again. "I—" you started, stumbling over your words. "You know we're not... that close anymore. So..." You trailed off with a shrug, trying not to look too affected even though your heart had suddenly picked up its pace.
Jake tilted his head, eyes narrowing like he was about to laugh. Not in a cruel way, but in that clueless, teasing way. You didn't give him the chance. You pushed the conversation forward before he could press further. "But how was he?" you asked quickly, pretending not to care too much even though the question burned on your tongue.
Jake leaned back and sighed dramatically. "I don't know! That bitch is ghosting everyone—just like you!" He chuckled, nudging your arm. "The only time I ever saw him was when he was at the university doing paperwork for his graduation. He's been MIA otherwise. You? Any dating updates?"
You gave another tired smile. "Not really my priorities lately," you replied, brushing your fingers over your wrist, suddenly aware of how cold your skin felt. "I'm glad he's graduating though. That's good for him."
There was a pause. Jake didn't seem to notice, already moving on with a laugh.
"What about you?" you asked before he could dig any deeper. "When's your graduation? I pity you guys. I still have two years."
Jake groaned, rubbing his face. "Ugh, don't remind me. I'm stressing because my coat won't fit."
You laughed softly as Jake rambled beside you, jumping from topic to topic like someone trying to make up for lost time. He was always like this—talkative, friendly, too eager. You tried your best to follow along, nodding when appropriate, giving short answers even though your energy was already hanging by a thread. Every bone in your body felt heavy after the performance, your shoulders stiff from standing so long, your throat dry even after the water.
He launched into another round of questions, asking about your gigs, your commissions, and whether or not you'd finally taken time off. Then, inevitably, he brought up Park Sunghoon.
"People still think we're together? Fuck that shit." You let out a grunt.
"They just like to talk," Jake offered with a shrug, as if that made it any less irritating. "You know how it is."
You rolled your eyes and tucked the bills into your bag, already thinking about what cheap meal you could get on the way home. "Then they should talk about how I'm not interested in anyone right now. Spread that."
"Not even Shin Ryujin?" he said, clearly enjoying how far he could push the conversation. "I swear you used to have the biggest, fattest crush on her. I mean—she agreed to model for you! That's a move, right?"
You tilted your head slightly. "Or maybe she just liked my art."
Jake paused for a beat, as if waiting for you to say more, but you didn't. He smirked, already forming a thought to your answer. You just shrugged, like you didn't care anymore, you wish it did. None of them ever made you feel the way he did.
Let Jake think what he wanted to think. Let people gossip and spread whatever they wanted. You were too tired to keep defending your disinterest, too tired to explain that the only person you'd really wanted was Kim Sunoo. Fucking Kim Sunoo.
And ironically, the universe had its own cruel sense of humor.
Jake didn't expect to see Sunoo the very next day—standing in front of a flower shop. Without warning, Jake squealed and slapped him on the back so hard that Sunoo's entire frame jolted forward. His eyes flew wide, mouth parting in surprise as he turned to glare.
"Fuck you," Jake laughed, hitting him again before he could dodge. "Who's the lucky person, huh? Don't tell me you're finally confessing to someone?"
Sunoo winced, rubbing his stinging shoulder and trying not to groan. "Can you not hit so hard? Shit."
It had taken him three whole days just to muster up the courage. Three days of Jungwon talking sense into him, helping him run through scenarios and worst-case outcomes, of typing and deleting countless drafts of what he wanted to say. Three days of checking your schedule like a lovesick stalker, memorizing the time and place of your fashion show just to make sure he'd catch you when you weren't buried in fabrics or fixing last-minute outfits.
He didn't really know what he was doing. The idea of bringing flowers felt old-fashioned, maybe even stupid, but he clung to it because it gave him something to hold—something to fill his trembling hands with when he finally stood in front of you. Because if he admitted it to himself, he really fucking missed you.
Jake, as usual, wouldn't shut up. He rambled about school, his thesis, some fight in a group chat he got dragged into, asking random questions in between like Sunoo was giving him the attention he wanted. Sunoo tapped his foot impatiently, nodding absently, eyes flicking to his wristwatch. He knew your show was scheduled to start soon. Jungwon had confirmed it just last night. If he moved now, he could probably sneak into the venue and find you. He wasn't sure how it would go, but he knew he didn't want to delay it any longer.
But then, Jake said your name.
"She looked so good last night, by the way. I talked to her after her gig," he said, chewing on his gum, unaware of the way Sunoo's shoulders tensed. "And I think she's dating that model of hers."
Sunoo stopped tapping his foot. Slowly turned to face him. Jake kept going. "You know Park Sunghoon? He really, really likes her! But she's totally into this girl—Shin Ryujin. If Sunghoon finds out he got rejected again for a girl, he's gonna be pissed."
The bouquet almost slipped out of Sunoo's hands. "Wait, what?" he asked.
Jake blinked, startled by the shift in tone. "Well, I mean—not confirmed or anything. But it looked like it, right? I mean, come on! If you know Ryujin, she's hot! They had crazy chemistry onstage."
But Sunoo didn't hear the rest. His pulse pounded so loudly in his ears it drowned everything else. The bouquet in his hands felt like it weighed a thousand pounds, the crinkling paper suddenly unbearable beneath his tightening grip. He could feel that familiar burn in his chest. The weight pressing down on his lungs, stealing the air from him. It wasn't just surprise, or confusion. It was anger.
No. That can't be true. Jake said it wasn't confirmed. He said maybe. But even maybe was too much for Sunoo.
Because that wasn't just anyone. That was you. His you. Even if he hadn't been able to say it properly before, even if he spent weeks keeping his distance, fumbling over his feelings, even if he was too much of a coward to tell you when he should've—he never once stopped wanting you.
And the idea of someone else having you, touching you, making you smile the way he used to, hurt more than he thought it would. His stomach twisted with jealousy. His mind raced with every memory he had of you—your laugh, your stubbornness, the way you always acted like nothing touched you until he looked close enough to see it did. He hated the thought of anyone else getting that close. It didn't matter if it was a guy or a girl. No one else could understand you like he did. No one else deserved to.
"I need to go," Sunoo muttered, already turning on his heel.
Jake blinked again, stepping forward. "Wait, go where? Sunoo—hey!"
But Sunoo didn't answer. He didn't look back. He walked faster, feet moving, bouquet still clenched tightly in his hand.
All he could think about was the image of you standing beside someone else. Laughing for someone else. Looking at them with the kind of softness you used to show only to him. The thought alone made his blood boil. He wasn't just jealous. He was angry. How dare someone else think they could have you like that?
No. That's not how this ends. He wouldn't let it. Even if it was his fault for waiting this long, even if he messed everything up from the beginning—he wasn't going to let someone else win. He wasn't going to stand on the sidelines any longer. Not when he still had something to fight for.
You were his. You've always been his. And he was going to prove it.
Sunoo made his way toward the university, his stomach twisting with every step. Most of the Fashion Design majors were still holed up on campus despite the start of summer break, preparing for the big event. He didn't know fashion shows involved this many people, this much movement, or noise. Navigating through all of it felt like trying to breathe underwater. He should've asked Jungwon for more specifics.
The halls were lined with racks of clothes, students rushing in and out of rooms, arms full of fabrics, makeup brushes, clipboards, and coffee. Sunoo tried to ask where the waiting room was, but everyone was too preoccupied to answer. He turned corner after corner, scanning every face with increasing frustration—until his eyes landed on someone painfully familiar.
Standing outside the theater room, arms crossed and relaxed was Park Sunghoon. Just seeing him made Sunoo's eye twitch. His jaw clenched so tightly he thought it might crack.
"Sunoo, right?" Sunghoon greeted him, smiling as if they were old friends. Sunoo glanced down at the flowers in his hands. Suddenly, they looked ugly. The colors didn't look as soft anymore. The petals looked dull. He couldn't believe he ever fell for a face like that.
He forced a polite sweet smile, his lips twitching with the effort. "Sunghoon," he returned. "Where do fashion majors usually stay? I need to deliver this to someone." His tone stayed casual, but he had to bite down the irritation growing inside his chest.
Sunghoon beamed. "Oh! I was just heading to the backstage area too. Come with me."
Sunoo's jaw ached with how hard he was grinding his teeth behind another fake smile. Every muscle in his body screamed to walk the other way, but he needed to get to you. If that meant dealing with this guy, so be it. Still, it took everything in him not to roll his eyes or punch the smirk off Sunghoon's face. How dare he stand there so casually, acting like he belonged beside you?
"Is the eyelash glue irritating your eyes?" you asked Ryujin, checking the final touches of her makeup. Your fingers hovered near her temples, adjusting the corner of her lashes even though they looked fine. "And your heels? Are they stable?"
"They're fine, I promise. You don't have to worry," she said gently, offering a small smile.
You turned to Beomgyu, voice tighter this time. "The fabric on the lining—is it itchy? Are you uncomfortable at all?"
Beomgyu tilted his head at you like he was trying not to laugh. "You need to stop freaking out. I already told you I feel great in this."
Your chest was heavy with nerves, and your stomach churned, not just with anxiety but with the familiar, dull pain of your first-day period cramps that made everything ten times worse. The weight of responsibility was pressing on your shoulders. What if the seams tore? What if the models tripped? What if the fabric wrinkled wrong under the lights?
And before you could spiral further, a voice cut through your thoughts. One you recognized instantly.
"Sunghoon," you said wearily, not even trying to hide the exhaustion in your voice.
He stood there with a smile too bright for the atmosphere, holding out a bouquet of flowers to you. "Good luck later! I know you're going to get so many compliments for this."
You took the flowers without much thought, fingers curling around the stems as you exhaled through your nose, trying to keep yourself from snapping. You closed your eyes, drawing in a deeper breath. "Why are you here?" you muttered, already rubbing your temple. "This is our waiting room. You shouldn't be—"
"I came with Sunoo!" Sunghoon interrupted brightly. "Didn't know he was your friend too!"
And that stopped you. Your body tensed instantly. The flowers in your hand suddenly felt like they were cutting into your skin. You looked up, already feeling your throat tighten. And there he was.
Sunoo approached you slowly. Without saying a word, he reached out and gently took the flowers from your hand—the ones Sunghoon had just given—and replaced them with the bouquet he brought. Then, with a calm that felt almost too controlled, he handed the previous bouquet back to Sunghoon, whose brows furrowed in confusion.
Your fingers stayed frozen around the fresh flowers now in your hands. Sunoo stepped closer, voice dropping low as he met your eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "Can we talk?"
Something in your chest pulled tight. You forced yourself to swallow the lump rising in your throat, jaw tensing as you tried to stay composed. You could already feel Ryujin and Beomgyu watching silently, even as Sunghoon stood there, confused and observant, his brows lifted like he could sense there was something here. "I'll be back," you muttered under your breath, barely glancing at them. Then, turning to Sunoo, you gestured with a subtle wave of your hand for him to follow.
You walked fast, ignoring how your heart was pounding too hard in your chest. The backstage halls were tight and filled with noise, but the moment you stepped into the music room and closed the door behind you, everything else faded out. The silence between you was loud. "What are you doing here, Sunoo?" you asked, turning to face him. You hated how soft your voice sounded. You hated that he still had that effect on you.
Sunoo didn't answer right away. He just looked at you, his lips parted, trying to decide how to speak, what words wouldn't end in a disaster. Then he said, carefully, "Is it true? That you're dating your model?"
You blinked. That's what this was about? You let out a harsh breath and rolled your eyes, pressing the heels of your palms into your forehead. "Seriously? That's why you're here?"
He flinched at the tone. "Is it true?" he repeated, almost like he was afraid to hear the answer. "You and your model. Are you—"
"Where the fuck did you even hear that?" you snapped, your patience finally cracking. "You think I'd seriously let rumors decide who I'm sleeping with now?"
Sunoo opened his mouth to speak, but you didn't let him. "Why are you even here, Sunoo?" you pushed. "To say sorry? To wave some flowers around and pretend like that's enough?"
He didn't answer. He just stood there, looking at you, his silence impossibly loud. You exhaled, your shoulders sinking with the weight you'd been carrying alone since he left. Your voice dropped out of emotional exhaustion. "I'm tired," you whispered, almost like admitting defeat. "I have a show to finish. I have deadlines. People are counting on me. And if all you came here for was a half-hearted apology, then don't bother—because I've stopped thinking about that night."
But your voice cracked on the last word, and you hated that he might've heard it. "I still think about that night." He said and that made your heart clench.
"You were right," he said quietly. "I came here to say sorry." He looked at you fully now. "And to tell you that I want to make you mine."
You blinked, stunned. "What?"
Sunoo stepped forward, his voice trembling even though he tried to sound certain. "I hurt you. I pushed you away. I made you cry and I said things I'll never stop regretting. I ran because I was scared, and I was selfish enough to believe I could come back when it was convenient for me."
And then, to your absolute disbelief, he lowered himself to the floor, dropping to his knees. His hands found yours, gently curling around your fingers, then pressing your palm to his face. His eyes fluttered shut as he leaned into your touch. "Every time I close my eyes, it's you," he murmured. "Every time I wake up, I hope it's a day I get to see you again. It's always you. "
Even though his voices cracked, Sunoo pushed through it. "I hated seeing that Sunghoon guy give you flowers. I hated thinking about you with your model even if it's not true. Because I want to be the one. I want to be the person you choose, over and over again, even when I don't deserve it. Even when it's hard, and messy, and complicated."
"I didn't come here just to be forgiven," he continued, voice cracking now as his forehead nearly pressed against your hand. "I came because I want you. Because I love you. And because if there's even a part of you—any small part—that still wants me, then I'll do whatever it takes to prove that I'm worth that second chance." He looked up at you, eyes glistening, his knees still on the ground.
You didn't realize you were crying until you felt the tear slide down your cheek. The warmth of it startled you. No matter how much you tried to build walls around yourself, he had always been able to slip through. Even now.
He looked up at you from where he knelt, eyes glassy, red-rimmed. Your fingers trembled in his hands, but you didn't pull away. "You hurt me, Sunoo."
His expression broke completely, a quiet whimper escaping from his lips as he held your hands tighter, desperate. "I know," he choked out. "And I hate myself for that. I'd take it all back if I could. But I can't... so all I can do now is ask you to let me fix what I ruined."
The silence stretched again, before he whispered, almost breathlessly, "...Please?"
That single word cracked something inside you. You sniffled, blinking fast as more tears welled in your eyes, and without thinking, you slowly lowered yourself to your knees in front of him. You leaned in, heart pounding wildly, and kissed him. It wasn't rushed. It wasn't desperate. It was tender—heartbreaking in its softness, and yet full of everything you'd been holding back. The pain, the longing, the anger, the love—it was all there, pressed into the seal of your lips against his.
When you finally pulled back, your forehead rested against his, both of your eyes closed, breath mingling in the small space between you. "I never stopped wanting you," you whispered, your voice hoarse from the tears. "Even when I tried. Even when I told myself I should."
He shuddered at your words, his breath catching, fingers lifting to cup your cheeks. "I swear I'll spend every day proving I can be someone you deserve," he murmured.
You nodded faintly, your forehead still resting against his. Then, slowly, you leaned in again, brushing your lips against his—soft at first, searching, before you kissed him fully. This time, you didn't hold back. Your lips moved against his with purpose, and he responded just as eagerly, his head tilting to meet you, to match your rhythm.
When you deepened the kiss and your tongue slipped into his mouth, his breath hitched. He moaned softly, the sound catching in his throat as he melted further into you, hands tightening at your sides. "I missed you," he whispered breathlessly between kisses.
You smiled into his mouth, sniffling as your hands cupped his damp cheeks, wiping at the tears that kept trailing down. "Missed you too," you whispered, your voice breaking as you kissed him again, even longer this time. Your fingers curled around the back of his neck, pulling him closer.
He kissed you like he was making up for lost time, like every second he spent away from you had left him starving. His hands slid gently under your arms before he lifted you and your legs instinctively wrapped around his waist. You could feel the way his breathing picked up as he moved, sitting down on the old couch in the corner of the room, never letting his lips stray too far from yours.
You settled on his lap, knees bracketing his hips, your mouths still moving together in sync. You could feel the way his body was reacting—how tightly he held you, how his hands gripped your back. "I love you," he whispered against your lips.
Your breath caught, your heart thudding as he pressed a trail of kisses down your neck, slow and open-mouthed. His hands, once tentative, slid to your chest, cupping you through your clothes before he gently kneaded one breast in his palm. The sensation made you shiver, your back arching into his touch instinctively as you sucked in a breath.
"Say it again," you murmured, your eyes fluttering shut.
He leaned back just enough to look up at you, both hands still resting on your waist. "I love you. I'm not letting you go again."
You leaned forward to kiss him again, your lips brushing over his. His fingers slipped under your shirt, tugging it up carefully, revealing the curve of your breast and the soft lace of your bra. His breath hitched when he saw your nipple, the silver glint of the heart-shaped piercing catching the light. He paused, stunned, swallowing hard, the outline of his arousal now pressing clearly against his pants.
"W-wait," you breathed, your hands clutching at his shoulders as his face dipped lower. "It's not fully healed yet..."
Sunoo froze, his lips just grazing the swell of your breast. He pressed the gentlest kiss on your areola, lips lingering as his thumb toyed with the other nipple through your bra, tracing slow circles that made your hips twitch above him. Your body reacted, grinding slightly against the solid pressure beneath you. His breath grew ragged against your skin, hands sliding up your back, holding you tighter.
You rocked your hips against him with slow pressure, letting the friction build until the heat between your bodies felt like it might burn right through your skin. His hands moved restlessly, tugging at your waistband, already working to unbutton your pants.
But your hand caught his wrist, halting him. "N-No... we can't," you murmured, your voice ragged from panting. You glanced down at him beneath you—his brows were drawn together in frustration and confusion, his face flushed with heat, sweat starting to gather along his hairline, and his lips—red and kiss-swollen—were parted.
"I... I have my period."
He blinked, then tilted his head slightly like he couldn't understand why that would matter. His hand slid back down, cupping you through the fabric of your underwear, right over your pad. You gasped, the heat of his touch making your body tense with shame and anticipation. Your cheeks flared hot with embarrassment.
"I-It's not clean," you whispered, voice wavering. "It's messy..."
"And?" he muttered, his gaze never left your face. Without waiting for your approval, his hand dipped beneath the waistband of your underwear, carefully maneuvering around the pad as his fingers brushed against your pussy.
His finger slipped in, and your jaw dropped open, a soft cry catching in your throat. The feeling was slow, filling, a deliberate push deeper until he bottomed out and curled his finger inside you, testing your sensitivity. "You know," he began, "orgasms help relieve cramps. The body releases endorphins that ease pain. It's not gross... it's your body asking for what it needs."
You whimpered, unable to argue. Especially not when his finger began to move—slow at first, then building pace, retreating and sinking back in until your hips were grinding helplessly against his palm. Each stroke hit something deeper than just your body, pulling breathy moans from your throat.
"S-Sunoo—" you choked, your hands gripping his shoulders for balance. His other hand slid up your shirt again, pushing the fabric away so he could lean in and press his mouth to your chest. His lips wrapped around the soft swell of your breast, and the sharp contrast of your piercing against his tongue made him groan. "I-It's gross."
"No, it's not." He whisper, biting your neck, tongue swirling at it, he mumbled against your skin before adding another finger, spreading you wider. "It's hot. You're hot."
Your only answer was a louder moan, your thighs trembling as you rode his fingers, your body clenching around him. The pressure inside you coiled tighter and tighter, until everything snapped all at once. You came hard, body clenching around him as your head tilted back, breath stuttering and vision swimming.
Sunoo shifted you easily, guiding your body until you were bent over the couch, his grip firm and sure as he moved you exactly how he wanted. But then he stilled, breath catching when his eyes landed on your back. His palm slid over your spine, tracing the ink.
"Fuck," he hissed. You felt the way his fingers trembled slightly, how he cupped your hips and coaxed you into an arch, dragging his touch down the trail of black lines and crimson lilies that ran from your shoulder blades to the curve of your lower back. "You always know how to drive me crazy... and now you go and get this?"
You tried to speak, but all that came out was a choked sound as he pulled your pants lower, exposing the heat between your legs. He groaned behind you, dragging the tip of himself along your entrance, already soaked and messy, your blood mixing with everything else. It should've made you feel embarrassed but instead, it only made the tension between you burn hotter.
"Please," you breathed, turning your head just enough to look at him over your shoulder.
Sunoo didn't need to be told twice. He eased into you slowly, his body pressing close, chest flush against your back as he wrapped an arm around your shoulders, anchoring you to him. His breath stuttered against your skin, his face buried in the crook of your neck as he moved deeper, his other hand gripping your waist so tightly.
Your eyes caught sight of his hand, streaked with red from earlier, and instead of disgust, all you felt was a strange kind of thrill that twisted low in your belly. You clenched around him involuntarily, another moan slipping from your lips.
He kissed your jaw, then your cheek, then finally your mouth again, hungrily this time, tongue sliding against yours as his hips found a faster rhythm. His hands trembled where they held you, but his movements were certain, desperate. "Ah—fuck—I love you," he gasped, his voice cracking open as the pace quickened. "I love you so much. So fucking much."
Your breath caught, heart slamming in your chest. "Sunoo—wait—" your voice was barely audible between moans, "you're not wearing—ah—no condom—!"
He stilled for a second, his breath rough in your ear. But instead of pulling away, he leaned in closer, murmuring, "I know."
Your pussy clenched around him on instinct, as if reacting to the rawness of it all, to the fact that he was really inside you like this. The feeling of his bare cock dragging against your soaked walls was overwhelming, hotter, slicker. Your eyes rolled back as a loud moan escaped your throat, your fingers tightening on whatever they could grab.
"F-fuck," he whimpered, as your walls fluttered around him. Sunoo sounded like he was unraveling in real time. His hands gripped your waist harder, his breath shaking as he slowly pushed back in, deeper this time. He whined against your skin, overwhelmed, almost breathless at how good it felt. "I missed you. Missed this—missed you so fucking much."
His voice cracked, raw emotion bleeding into every word. "Don't leave again, hmm? Please. I'll treat you better this time. I swear—I love you. Fuck, I love you. I'm so fucking in love with you."
He didn't give you time to answer. His fingers slid down between your thighs, finding your clit without hesitation, rubbing slow, dizzying circles that made your knees buckle. His cock hit your g-spot mercilessly and your voice broke into a scream, loud and unfiltered, but you didn't care—the music room was soundproof, and even if it wasn't, you wouldn't have stopped him.
"S-Sunoo—I'm gonna cum," you choked out, your voice hoarse, hips jerking uncontrollably from the way his fingers pressed harder into your clit. Your pussy clenched down around him, and the orgasm crashed into you so fast it nearly knocked you off your feet. Your whole body shook and your thighs quivered, but Sunoo held you tight through it, one hand gripping your waist as the other kept you grounded, kept fucking into you with more force, chasing his own high.
"God, I love you, my baby," he whined. His hips started stuttering, the sound of skin slapping echoing faintly against the padded walls, getting messier, needier. "C-can I cum inside you? Please—let me?"
You couldn't speak at first, just nodded frantically, your fingers digging into his arm where it hugged around your waist. "Yes," you breathed, still panting, "Yes, yes—Sunoo, please—cum in me. I love you."
He let out the loudest, rawest moan of the night, something close to a sob, his whole body tensing as he came hard. You could feel it flood inside you, the warmth of it thick and hot as he kept fucking you through it, like he couldn't stop, like he needed to push it deeper, make sure it stayed.
Even after he was spent, his hips kept rocking slowly into you. His cum leaked around his cock, dripping down your thighs, and still he stayed buried inside, forehead resting against your shoulder, breath warm on your skin.
Neither of you spoke for a long moment, just the sound of ragged breathing filling the space between kisses—gentle ones now. He kissed your neck, then your jaw, then the corner of your mouth. "I love you," he murmured, then kissed your temple, eyes shut, holding you.
You turned in his arms, legs shaky, body still pulsing from the aftershocks, and cupped his face with both hands, pulling him into a messy, open-mouthed kiss. "I love you too," you whispered.
EPILOGUE
Sunoo made his way to the stage with a confidence he hadn't felt in a long time, holding up his medal and certificate for the photographer with a proud grin. Applause echoed through the auditorium, and for a moment, all the weight he had carried over the years—every sleepless night, every self-doubt, every quiet breakdown—seemed worth it. Sitting down on the chair at the side of the stage, his heart swelled with something deeper than relief. He wasn't just happy—he felt fulfilled. Things were finally going his way, and more than that, he had done it on his own terms.
"You look so good—God, I love your makeup!" Giselle said beside him, nudging him with her shoulder. He turned to her with that signature Sunoo smile, wide and sweet. "Your blush is perfect. It suits you so well," she added.
He smiled softly, cheeks glowing with more than just the highlighter dusted on them. "Thanks. My girlfriend did my makeup."
Giselle blinked, then gasped. "Wait—did I hear that right?"
Sunoo didn't respond, just chuckled to himself. When the program ended and the crowd was released into the open hall, he barely waited before slipping into the crowd, eyes scanning eagerly for one person. He weaved through clusters of families and graduates, ignoring the flashes of cameras, until his eyes finally landed on you. His whole face lit up instantly.
Without a second thought, he squealed and ran straight into your arms, wrapping you in a tight, all-consuming hug. You squealed too, and the sound made a few people turn their heads, curious. But Sunoo didn't care. You were in his arms, and that was all that mattered.
"Congratulations, my love!" you beamed, pinching both his cheeks before kissing his forehead.
He immediately slapped your hands away with a playful pout. "Stop! You're gonna mess up my makeup."
You laughed and leaned in. "I could always retouch it, dummy. I was the one who did it, remember?"
Sunoo squinted, finally taking a proper look at you now that he wasn't rushed or nervous. You had left before him earlier, after helping with his look, and now he was seeing you fully—your hair tied neatly in a bun, soft clean makeup that felt too tame for you, and a bright, modest outfit that covered every inch of your skin.
His gaze lingered. "You... took off your piercing?"
You nodded and gave a small shrug, your smile faltering. "Yeah. I figured... maybe you'd want me to look presentable today. Like, for your big day. It felt like the right thing to do."
He tilted his head slowly, eyes narrowing as he looked you over again. "Presentable?" he repeated. "I love the way you look with your piercings on, your tattoos showing, your red lipstick. That's you."
Your chest tightened, emotion catching in your throat so fast you couldn't even respond with words. Instead, you stepped forward and hugged him again, burying your face into his neck as your arms wound around his waist. "I love you," you whispered against his skin.
Sunoo's eyes widened slightly. Then slowly, he melted into your hug, wrapping his arms around you just as tightly. He rested his chin on your shoulder, and for a moment. "I love you more," he murmured softly. Then, pulling back a little to meet your eyes, his brows furrowed. "Wait—did I make you feel like I didn't want you to be yourself? Like I was forcing you to be someone else? I'm sorry."
You shook your head, tears beginning to pool despite the smile on your lips. "No... It wasn't you. I just... I didn't want to mess anything up today. I thought maybe if I toned myself down, it'd be easier."
Sunoo's eyes shone with emotion as he wiped your tears with his thumbs. "You could never mess anything up just by being yourself," he whispered. "Especially not with me. I want you loud, and messy, and bright. I want you with the piercings, with the tattoos, with whatever the hell makes you feel like you. That's the person I want beside me, every day. I'm sorry if I ever made you feel like I was changing you. Forgive me, hmm?"
You leaned into his touch, forehead resting against his. "Then I'll never tone myself down again."
"Good," he smiled, brushing a kiss to your nose. "Because we've got a lot more milestones coming. And I want all of them with the real you."
You laughed lightly, the tension in your chest finally melting as you cradled his face. "Our only problem now is how to tell Jake without him fainting."
That made Sunoo snort before leaning in again to kiss you properly, his smile still pressed to your lips. You could hear a few surprised gasps from the crowd nearby, but you didn't care—and clearly, neither did he.
"It's fine," he whispered playfully, nuzzling close again. "We'll just plan a sleepover. That way, when he faints, we'll already be somewhere private... and have all the time in the world to celebrate without interruptions."
You smirked, squeezing his hand as it found yours. "I have a gift for you later when we get home."
His eyes sparkled with mischief as he raised a brow. "Hmm... A blowjob?"
You gave his shoulder a soft shove, rolling your eyes with a laugh. "No, not that, idiot."
He broke into a laugh too, the sound warm and carefree, then reached for your waist and pulled you in close again. His hand rested securely there, thumb drawing small circles, grounding you both in that moment. "Thank you for loving me as I am," he whispered against your ear. "Even on the days I forget how to love myself."
You leaned in, letting your head fall against his shoulder, smiling as his lips pressed a kiss to your temple. "I love you in every version of you, Sunoo," you whispered, and you meant every word.
The two of you continued walking hand in hand through the crowd. And if someone had asked you what you were feeling at that exact moment you would've said that you were in love. You were content, completely at peace with who you were and who you were becoming. And more than anything, you were happy, so much more happier than ever. Because Sunoo was beside you.
