synopsis —⋆ What happens when the youngest member of KATSEYE starts to feel drawn to the visual from HYBE’s newest boy group? Only to realise that she isn’t the only idol who’s interested…⋆୨୧˚
Juhoon stared at her for what felt like an unreasonable amount of time. The confession had already left him speechless, but hearing her say it again somehow made it worse. Or better. He wasn't entirely sure anymore. His brain had stopped functioning somewhere around the words I'm in love with you too and hadn't shown any signs of recovery since. The smile on his face hurt. His chest hurt. Everything felt strangely light.
He kept looking at her as though she might suddenly take the words back, not because he thought she would, but because part of him still couldn't quite believe this was real. Na-rae noticed immediately, of course she did, and the corners of her mouth twitched upwards as she fought a losing battle against her own amusement. "You look like you're about to pass out," she said softly. Juhoon laughed before he could stop himself. "I might." The honesty of the answer only made her laugh too.
For a few seconds neither of them said anything. The silence settled comfortably around them, no longer awkward or uncertain. Earlier, every pause had felt loaded with possibility. Now it simply felt peaceful. Juhoon found himself studying details he would've forgotten under normal circumstances. The way the lobby lights reflected in her eyes. The way she kept smiling and then trying to stop herself before inevitably smiling again. The way she looked just as overwhelmed as he felt.
There was something comforting about that. For the first time all evening, neither of them seemed to be hiding behind jokes or careful wording. They were simply standing there, looking at each other, and somehow that felt more significant than every speech either of them had given tonight.
Na-rae glanced down briefly before looking back up at him, her smile softer now. "You know," she said quietly, "this would've been much easier if you hadn't shown up unexpectedly."
Juhoon raised an eyebrow. "Really?" She nodded immediately.
"Absolutely. I would've had time to prepare. I would've thought about what I wanted to say. I would've practiced." The thought made him laugh. "You would've practiced?" A groan escaped her.
"Don't make fun of me." The protest lacked any real annoyance. "I'm serious." Juhoon couldn't stop smiling. "I know you are." The expression on her face suggested she was trying very hard not to laugh herself. The attempt failed almost instantly.
The laughter faded naturally, leaving them standing closer than either of them remembered becoming. Neither stepped away. Neither seemed particularly interested in creating distance again. Juhoon wasn't sure who moved first. Later, he would try to remember and fail. The entire evening already felt blurred around the edges. All he remembered clearly was looking at her and realizing that for the first time in months, there was absolutely nothing standing between what he felt and what he wanted to do.
Na-rae's gaze flickered briefly toward his lips before returning to his eyes, and the tiny movement sent his heart into complete chaos. Her expression softened almost immediately afterward, as though she had realized she'd done it too.
"Hi," Juhoon said suddenly.
Na-rae stared at him for a beat. Then she started laughing.
The sound echoed softly through the empty lobby.
"That's what you're saying right now?" She couldn't help but smile.
"I don't know what else to say."
"You literally confessed your love ten minutes ago."
"I used up all my good lines."
The laughter lingered in her eyes even after the sound faded, and something about that finally settled the last of his nerves. He had spent months building this impossible moment into something larger than life. Something terrifying. Something perfect. Yet standing here now, it didn't feel perfect. It felt real. Better than perfect. Because Na-rae was laughing at him. Because he was laughing too. Because despite everything that had happened tonight, they still somehow felt like themselves.
The smile on her face softened gradually as she looked at him again, and this time neither of them looked away. The conversation slowed naturally until it disappeared altogether. Juhoon became aware of the quiet hum of the air conditioning somewhere above them. The distant sound of traffic outside. The faint reflection of both of them in the glass doors. Then even those details seemed to fade into the background as his attention narrowed entirely to her. Na-rae took a small step forward. He didn't realize he was moving too until the distance between them had nearly vanished. There wasn't any dramatic build-up. No grand declaration. Just a mutual understanding settling comfortably between them.
When she kissed him, it was gentle enough that for a second Juhoon wondered if he'd imagined it. The realization that he hadn't arrived immediately afterward, hitting him so hard that he nearly laughed into the kiss itself. One of his hands lifted instinctively before stopping halfway, as though he was still asking permission despite everything they'd already said to each other. Na-rae's smile brushed briefly against his before she leaned closer again, removing any remaining uncertainty. The kiss wasn't dramatic. It wasn't cinematic. It wasn't the sort of thing people wrote songs about. It felt infinitely better than that. It felt familiar. Comfortable. Like something that had been slowly happening for weeks before either of them had found the courage to acknowledge it.
When they finally pulled apart, neither moved very far. The silence lasted exactly two seconds before Na-rae started laughing again. Juhoon immediately frowned. "What?" The question only made her laugh harder.
"Nothing." It was obviously not nothing.
"Na-rae." She shook her head. "You just look really happy."
The observation should not have been embarrassing. Somehow it was. Juhoon glanced away briefly before looking back.
"Can you blame me?" The answer softened her expression instantly. For a moment she simply looked at him, and whatever joke she had been planning seemed to disappear. The smile that replaced it was smaller. Quieter. Far more dangerous to his emotional stability than the laughter had been.
The next hour disappeared with a speed that felt almost unfair, though neither of them seemed particularly interested in acknowledging it as the conversation drifted naturally from one topic to another without ever settling anywhere for very long, moving from upcoming schedules to rehearsal horror stories to increasingly ridiculous predictions about how their members would react once the truth inevitably came out, and every time one of them glanced at the clock and realized another fifteen minutes had somehow vanished, the realization only lasted a few seconds before something else pulled their attention away again.
Juhoon couldn't remember the last time he'd talked to somebody for this long without checking his phone or worrying about what came next, yet standing here with Na-rae somehow made time feel strangely irrelevant, as though the rest of the world had quietly paused outside the lobby while they remained suspended in their own little corner of it.
At one point they spent nearly twenty minutes ranking which members would become the most unbearable now that they were officially together, a discussion that immediately turned competitive when both of them realized their groups contained several genuinely terrible candidates, and while Juhoon insisted that James possessed a level of dedication to psychological warfare that should probably be studied professionally, Na-rae argued that Daniela armed with this information would become an unstoppable force of nature.
The debate only grew worse when they started predicting specific scenarios, because every hypothetical somehow sounded believable enough to become concerning, and by the end of the conversation both of them had reached the conclusion that they were probably doomed regardless of which group discovered the truth first.
The discussion eventually shifted toward the increasingly ridiculous lengths they would have to go to in order to avoid suspicion, though neither of them could make it through the conversation without laughing because the entire idea already felt impossible. Every example they came up with only reminded them how obvious they'd apparently been for months, and the longer they talked, the more stories emerged that suddenly made far more sense in hindsight. There had been comments. Glances. Strange moments that had seemed insignificant at the time but now looked painfully obvious when viewed through an entirely different lens.
More than once, one of them would start telling a story before stopping halfway through because the memory had abruptly become embarrassing. The resulting laughter usually lasted longer than the story itself.
Juhoon found himself watching her while she talked more often than he probably should have, though at this point pretending otherwise seemed pointless. The difference now was that he no longer felt the need to immediately look away whenever she caught him. Instead, she'd simply raise an eyebrow and ask what he was staring at, and he would respond with increasingly terrible answers that somehow kept making her laugh. The ease of it all surprised him.
Earlier that evening he had convinced himself this conversation might permanently alter their relationship. Technically it had. Yet somehow it still felt like talking to the same person he always had. The comfort remained exactly where it had always been. The only difference was that neither of them had to hide behind careful wording anymore.
Eventually the conversation slowed slightly, not because either of them had run out of things to say but because exhaustion was finally beginning to catch up with them. The day had been long. The week had been longer. Even happiness couldn't completely overpower the reality that both of them had schedules in the morning.
Every so often one of them would yawn before immediately apologizing for it, which inevitably led to the other person doing the same thing a few minutes later. The scene probably would've looked ridiculous to anybody passing through the lobby. Two idols who had already spent an hour refusing to say goodbye now standing around discussing absolutely nothing important while repeatedly insisting they needed to leave soon and then making absolutely no effort to actually do so.
The first serious goodbye attempt happened sometime after eleven. Juhoon had finally picked up his bag, taken several steps toward the doors, and even managed to say goodnight before Na-rae remembered a story involving Megan that she hadn't finished telling earlier, which somehow resulted in another ten-minute conversation and a second goodbye that lasted even longer than the first.
The second attempt failed because Juhoon remembered something Martin had done during training that was too ridiculous not to share. The third failed because neither of them could stop laughing long enough to finish it properly. By the fourth attempt, both had accepted that they were actively sabotaging themselves.
When Juhoon finally did step outside, the city felt completely different from the one he'd walked through earlier. The nervous energy that had accompanied him on the trip over had disappeared entirely, leaving behind a strange sense of contentment that seemed to settle deeper with every step. The streets had grown quieter. Most of the nearby office buildings were dark. The air felt cooler than before. Yet none of those things occupied much of his attention because every few seconds he caught himself smiling again for absolutely no reason.
The expression appeared so frequently that he eventually stopped trying to control it altogether. There wasn't much point. Every time he thought about the evening, the smile returned immediately anyway.
Halfway down the block, he found himself turning around. The action happened instinctively. He hadn't planned to do it. He simply wanted one last look at the building before heading home. Through the glass doors he could still see the lobby lights shining brightly against the darkness outside.
Na-rae had disappeared from view, presumably heading upstairs, and the sight should've been enough to convince him to keep walking. Instead, he laughed quietly to himself and continued down the street, feeling lighter than he had in weeks. Thirty seconds later he turned around again.
This time she was standing there.
The sight stopped him completely.
Na-rae hadn't gone upstairs at all. She was still inside the lobby near the doors, arms folded loosely across her chest as she watched him from the exact spot where he'd left her only moments earlier. The second their eyes met, her expression immediately shifted into something halfway between amusement and disbelief, as though she had caught him doing something deeply embarrassing. The look alone told him she had absolutely noticed the fact that he'd turned around twice in less than a minute.
The smile she was trying to suppress wasn't helping. Neither was the tiny shake of her head that followed. Even from this distance, he could practically hear her calling him ridiculous.
Juhoon couldn't even defend himself.
So instead, he lifted a hand in an awkward wave that immediately made her laugh again. The sight of it carried all the way across the street despite the distance between them, and for a brief moment neither moved. Then Na-rae lifted her own hand in response before making a clear shooing motion toward the road, silently informing him that he needed to stop staring at the building and actually go home.
The gesture should've been insulting. Somehow it only made him smile harder. By the time Juhoon finally turned the corner and disappeared from sight, he was already looking forward to seeing her again the next day.
Na-rae remained standing in the lobby long after Juhoon finally disappeared around the corner, her eyes lingering on the empty stretch of pavement where he'd been only moments earlier as though staring at it for a little longer might somehow make him reappear.
The smile she'd been unsuccessfully trying to hide since his confession still hadn't gone away, and every attempt to force her expression back to normal only seemed to make the situation worse because the second she remembered something he'd said, or the look on his face after she told him she loved him too, or the fact that he had walked all the way across Seoul at ten o'clock at night because he couldn't keep his feelings to himself anymore, the smile immediately returned with twice the strength.
The entire evening felt slightly unreal now that it was over, as though she'd stepped into somebody else's story for a few hours before accidentally finding herself back in her own, yet the lingering warmth in her chest made it impossible to dismiss the experience as imagination no matter how many times she replayed it in her head.
The elevator ride upstairs gave her far too much time to think, which quickly proved dangerous because the second she was left alone with her thoughts, every moment from the evening returned in vivid detail and immediately began replaying itself on an endless loop.
She remembered the nervous look on Juhoon's face when she'd first stepped into the lobby and realized he was standing there waiting for her. She remembered the way he'd stumbled through half of his confession despite clearly rehearsing it a hundred times beforehand. She remembered the way his voice had sounded when he'd admitted he was terrified of ruining their friendship.
Most of all, she remembered the expression on his face after she'd told him she felt the same way. The memory alone was enough to make her press a hand against her forehead as a laugh escaped before she could stop it. She had never seen anybody look simultaneously so relieved, shocked, and happy in her entire life.
The problem was that now there was nobody around to distract her from the reality of what had happened. During the conversation itself, she'd been too busy responding, listening, and trying to keep up with everything unfolding in front of her.
Now, however, she had the luxury of processing it properly. The realization settled over her in waves as she walked down the hallway toward the dorm. Juhoon loved her. The thought still felt strange. Wonderful, but strange. She had spent weeks gradually becoming accustomed to his presence in her life without ever stopping to define exactly what he meant to her.
Somewhere along the way, checking for his messages had become routine. Looking for him at events had become automatic. Noticing when he wasn't around had become unavoidable. She had recognized the feelings eventually, though she'd never expected tonight to force them into the open so suddenly. Now there was no hiding from them anymore.
By the time she reached the dorm door, she had almost convinced herself everyone inside would be asleep. It was late. They all had schedules. Rationally, most people would've gone to bed hours ago. Unfortunately, rationality had never played a particularly large role in KATSEYE's decision-making process.
The second she unlocked the door and stepped inside, she realized her mistake immediately. Every light in the living room was on. Six pairs of eyes turned toward her so quickly that it felt choreographed. The sight was so unexpected that Na-rae physically stopped moving halfway through the doorway, her hand still resting on the doorknob as she stared back at the members assembled in front of her.
The silence lasted approximately two seconds before chaos erupted.
"That is not the face of somebody who went downstairs for five minutes."
"You did not tell me anything."
Na-rae closed her eyes briefly.
The headache arrived immediately.
The problem wasn't that they knew something had happened. The problem was that they looked like people who had been sitting here for an extended period of time constructing increasingly elaborate theories while waiting for evidence to arrive. Judging by the expressions on their faces, they had probably reached conclusions hours ago and were now simply waiting for official confirmation.
The realization became significantly more concerning when Na-rae noticed several phones lying around the room, a half-finished notebook on the coffee table, and what appeared to be a timeline somebody had physically written down. The sight was alarming enough that she almost forgot about the confession entirely. Almost.
"You people are insane," she said eventually, setting her bag down by the door.
"No." Daniela pointed dramatically. "You were downstairs for an hour and forty-three minutes."
Na-rae froze as the entire room immediately became louder.
"Of course we timed you."
Sophia looked genuinely confused by the question. "Why wouldn't we do that? You're our Maknae."
The answer was apparently considered self-explanatory because nobody else questioned it. Instead, six people immediately started talking over each other while demanding information.
Questions came from every direction simultaneously. Had he confessed? Who said it first? Did she confess back? How long had he liked her? Did they kiss?
The final question caused Na-rae to nearly trip over absolutely nothing. The reaction was unfortunately all the confirmation anybody needed.
The room exploded with NO WAY's and YOU'RE KIDDING ME's overlapping each other.
Na-rae covered her face with both hands as the volume somehow increased even further. Any hope of preserving her dignity disappeared instantly. Every detail of the evening was apparently about to become public knowledge whether she liked it or not. Looking around the room at six increasingly excited faces, she suddenly understood exactly how Juhoon must have felt whenever CORTIS cornered him after one of those internet scandals. The realization would've been funny if it weren't happening to her.
"Start from the beginning," Sophia demanded eventually, pulling a pillow onto her lap as though preparing for a feature-length presentation.
"Literally the beginning," Megan added.
Daniela pointed accusingly. "If you skip details, we're stopping you."
Her eyes drifted toward the empty space on the couch before returning to the six expectant faces staring back at her, and the realization hit all over again that there was no escaping this conversation. Not that she particularly wanted to. The entire evening still felt too large to keep to herself.
Every time she replayed it in her head, another detail surfaced. The look on Juhoon's face when she first stepped into the lobby. The way he kept losing track of whatever he had planned to say. The fact that he had apparently spent the entire week suffering while everybody around him watched it happen. The memory alone made her smile again. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a mistake because the second the expression appeared, the room erupted all over again.
"Oh my god, she's smiling again."
Na-rae immediately grabbed the nearest pillow and threw it. Unfortunately, she was laughing too hard for it to be remotely effective. The pillow bounced harmlessly off the couch while everyone celebrated as though they had just won some sort of competition. Looking at them now, she suddenly understood why Juhoon had sounded so resigned every time he talked about his members.
There was no reasoning with people once they became invested in your personal life. The realization arrived approximately three seconds before Megan leaned forward and pointed dramatically across the room.
"Okay. Enough. Start talking."
By the time Juhoon finally reached the apartment, it was a little after midnight. The walk home had felt significantly shorter than the walk there, though he suspected that had less to do with distance and more to do with the fact that he had spent the entire journey smiling like an idiot.
At several points he had caught his reflection in dark shop windows and immediately looked away because the expression on his face was genuinely embarrassing. The problem was that every time he remembered the conversation, the smile came back anyway.
By the time he reached the front door, his cheeks actually hurt. Unfortunately, another problem presented itself the second he stepped into the apartment building. His members were still awake. Every light visible through the living room windows was on. The sight alone made him stop walking for a moment. Nobody with an early morning schedule should've been awake at this hour. Which meant they were waiting for him.
Juhoon suddenly remembered he had told nobody where he was going. He had simply disappeared at ten o'clock at night after spending an entire week acting increasingly strange. From their perspective, there was only one reason he would've left the dorm that late.
A slow grin appeared before he could stop it. The opportunity was simply too good to ignore. By the time he unlocked the apartment door, the idea had fully formed. If his members were waiting up for him, then he was absolutely going to make them suffer first. The thought alone almost made him laugh. He quickly forced the smile away before stepping inside.
The reaction was immediate. Four heads turned toward him so fast that it genuinely looked painful. Martin was sitting on the couch with his phone. James was leaning against the armrest. Keonho had somehow acquired a blanket despite clearly not planning to sleep. Seonghyeon sat nearby looking calmer than everyone else, though the fact that he was still awake at all revealed more concern than anything he could've said aloud.
The room fell completely silent. Nobody even bothered pretending they hadn't been waiting. The atmosphere felt strangely serious. Juhoon almost felt bad. Almost.
"Well?" Martin asked immediately.
The concern in his voice nearly ruined everything.
Juhoon lowered his gaze toward the floor, then sighed.
For several seconds he didn't say anything. He simply stood there looking exhausted while four increasingly worried faces watched him. The silence stretched. Keonho sat up straighter. James looked visibly uncomfortable. Seonghyeon's expression shifted slightly.
Juhoon had never been particularly good at acting, but fortunately his members were so invested in the situation that they immediately filled in the blanks themselves. The longer he remained quiet, the worse their assumptions became. He could practically see it happening in real time.
"Oh." James looked genuinely heartbroken.
"Oh no." Keonho buried his face in both hands.
Martin leaned forward. "What happened?"
Juhoon had to physically turn around so that the other members couldn't see the grin forming on his face. He then quickly snapped back into acting mode.
He decided to sigh again, unable to do anything else without bursting into a fit of giggles.
The room somehow became even more concerned.
For a brief moment, guilt threatened to make him abandon the bit entirely. Then he remembered the amount of emotional damage they had inflicted over the last several months and decided they deserved this.
"I don't really want to talk about it." His eyes even welled up with tears.
The sentence landed like a grenade.
Martin immediately stood up. "No." The devastation on their faces was palpable.
The sheer sincerity on all of their faces almost made Juhoon lose control of the situation entirely. He had expected concern. He hadn't expected this level of concern. Looking at them now, it became painfully obvious how much they actually cared.
Beneath all the teasing and harassment and psychological warfare, these were still his best friends. They genuinely believed he had just experienced one of the worst nights of his life. It should've made him stop. Instead, it somehow made the joke even funnier.
"Look," James started carefully, choosing his words with surprising seriousness, "if she said no, that doesn't mean everything's ruined. Things might be weird for a little while, but eventually - "
Unable to control himself any longer, a small laugh escaped Juhoon.
Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. The laugh had escaped too suddenly and too naturally for anyone to mistake it for anything else, and the second the sound reached the other side of the room, Juhoon watched the entire atmosphere change.
The concern disappeared first. Then the sympathy. Then the carefully constructed speeches they had clearly been preparing over the last two hours. What replaced them was suspicion. Pure, immediate suspicion.
Juhoon could practically see the realization spreading across the room in real time, and the harder he tried to force his expression back under control, the worse the situation became because his shoulders were still shaking slightly from the effort of holding in another laugh.
Nobody spoke for several seconds. The silence felt strangely dangerous. Earlier, they had looked ready to comfort him. Now they looked ready to kill him. Juhoon glanced toward the kitchen as though considering escape before immediately realizing it was too late. Martin had already figured it out. The expression on his face said everything. Somewhere between outrage and disbelief, his features shifted as the pieces finally clicked together. The concern vanished completely.
"No," he said slowly, and the single word carried enough betrayal to make Juhoon immediately lose the battle against his own amusement. Another laugh escaped. The room exploded. Keonho grabbed the nearest pillow and launched it across the apartment with absolutely no hesitation.
Martin pointed directly at Juhoon, almost as if he was accusing him of the worst crime that had ever been committed. "You are the worst person I've ever met."
The shouting overlapped so quickly that individual conversations became impossible to follow. Everyone seemed to be yelling at once. Juhoon collapsed onto the couch laughing because the expressions on their faces were genuinely incredible. If he lived another hundred years, he doubted he would ever witness this specific combination of emotions again. Betrayal. Relief. Confusion. Rage. All existing simultaneously. Every time one of them started speaking, somebody else interrupted before they could finish. The apartment descended into complete chaos
The smile turned out to be a mistake. Eventually Martin stopped yelling long enough to notice it, and the second he did, the room somehow became even louder. "Look at him," he said, physically grabbing James by the shoulder and forcing him to look in Juhoon's direction.
"Look at his face." James obeyed. Then immediately regretted it. A groan escaped him as he dropped backward against the couch cushions.
"Oh my god." Keonho followed his gaze a second later and reacted almost identically.
"He has the face." The phrase meant absolutely nothing to Juhoon, yet everyone else seemed to understand immediately. Seonghyeon looked over, paused for a moment, then shook his head. "He really does." Juhoon stared at all of them. "What face?" The question only made things worse.
"The face people get when they're about to write an album full of love songs."
"I don't write full songs. Only some parts." Juhoon furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.
The accusations continued relentlessly. Every attempt Juhoon made to defend himself immediately collapsed because he couldn't stop smiling long enough to sound convincing. That turned out to be the biggest problem. If he had come home acting normal, they probably would've survived this conversation. Instead, he looked exactly like somebody who had just experienced the greatest night of his life. The evidence was impossible to hide. His mood radiated off him with alarming efficiency. Even sitting completely still wasn't helping. Every time somebody mentioned Na-rae, the smile returned immediately. Martin noticed first. Then everyone else did. After that, the apartment became unlivable.
Eventually the demands for information became impossible to ignore. Questions arrived from every direction simultaneously. What happened? What did he say? What did she say? How long had the conversation lasted? Who confessed first? Did she know already? Did she look surprised? Did she laugh? Did she cry? Did he cry? The final question caused enough damage that Juhoon nearly choked on air.
The reaction alone generated five additional minutes of screaming. Nobody allowed him to answer anything properly. Every explanation created three new questions. Every detail triggered a new reaction. The story that should have taken five minutes somehow stretched into nearly an hour because Martin kept interrupting to demand clarification while Keonho periodically stood up and walked around the apartment whenever the information became too emotionally overwhelming.
The worst reaction arrived when Juhoon finally admitted that Na-rae had liked him back for quite some time. The room fell completely silent. Not joking silence. Genuine silence. Four people stared at him. Processing. Recalculating. Revising months of assumptions. James was the first to recover.
"Wait." His voice sounded deeply offended. "So all that suffering was unnecessary?" Juhoon immediately knew he'd made a mistake.
"What?" James pointed dramatically. "You spent days acting like the world was ending." Martin joined in. "You made us sit through conversations." Keonho looked equally betrayed. "Do you know how many speeches I've listened to?" Juhoon opened his mouth. Closed it again. The evidence wasn't exactly in his favor.
Eventually, as the conversation drifted toward less important topics and people gradually started preparing for bed, Martin looked across the room toward Juhoon and shook his head. The gesture seemed thoughtful rather than teasing for once.
"You know," he said, "I genuinely thought tonight was going to end horribly." The admission softened the room immediately.
Nobody laughed. Nobody interrupted. For a moment, the sincerity settled between them. Juhoon looked around at his members and felt something tighten unexpectedly in his chest. Because despite all the teasing, despite the endless harassment, despite the fact that they were probably going to make his life impossible for the foreseeable future, they had spent the entire evening waiting awake because they were worried about him. The room settled into a comfortable silence. Until...
Martin continued staring, several thoughts forming in his head. "You skipped something."
"You absolutely did." The confidence in his voice made everybody else suspicious too.
Juhoon could practically feel the trap closing around him. The worst part was that he wasn't entirely sure which detail Martin had noticed. There were far too many possibilities. Looking back, sharing any information at all had been a mistake.
"What did he skip?" Keonho asked.
The question immediately shifted the direction of the conversation because, until that point, everyone had been too distracted by the confession itself to notice how many details Juhoon had conveniently avoided. He had spent nearly an hour explaining the lead-up, describing his increasingly questionable mental state throughout the week, recounting the walk to KATSEYE's dorm, and suffering through repeated interruptions every time somebody decided a particular moment deserved further investigation.
Now, however, the room collectively realized there was still a large portion of the evening completely missing from the story, and the silence that followed felt significantly more dangerous than the shouting had.
Martin sat forward slightly, his expression carrying the kind of certainty that immediately made Juhoon nervous because it was the same expression he wore whenever he was absolutely convinced he had discovered something important.
"You've spent the last forty minutes talking about the confession," he said, glancing briefly between the others before returning his attention to Juhoon. "You talked about standing outside, you talked about telling her how you felt, you talked about her saying she felt the same way, and then somehow the story jumped straight to you walking home." The realization spread across the room with alarming speed as everyone processed the gap in the timeline, and Juhoon watched the exact moment Keonho's eyes widened.
The reaction was immediate.
"Hold on," Martin said slowly, sounding as though he was carefully assembling evidence in his head. "You confessed. She said she liked you back. Then you stayed downstairs talking for over an hour." His eyes narrowed slightly before widening again. "And somehow we're supposed to believe absolutely nothing happened during that entire hour?"
The accusation landed with surprising force because, from an outside perspective, it genuinely sounded ridiculous. The second the sentence finished, every pair of eyes in the room snapped back toward Juhoon.
For a moment, nobody moved.
The gesture was so sudden that it startled everyone.
"Oh my god." The volume of his voice immediately caused James to start laughing.
"No." Keonho looked personally overwhelmed by the realization currently unfolding inside his brain.
Juhoon covered his face with one hand almost instantly because experience had taught him that this particular reaction never led anywhere good. Unfortunately, the damage had already been done. The gesture alone confirmed more than he intended
"There is absolutely a way."
The argument lasted approximately ten seconds before Martin abandoned it entirely and skipped straight to the question everybody was already thinking. "Did you kiss her?" he asked, sounding far too invested in the answer. The apartment immediately fell silent. Not because anyone expected Juhoon to respond. Quite the opposite. They were all watching his face. Waiting. Looking for evidence. Looking back on it later, Juhoon would realize that remaining silent was probably the worst possible decision he could have made.
Because his silence answered the question.
The room exploded so violently that somebody nearly knocked over a water bottle. All of them physically stood up at the same time, somehow.
The noise became impossible to follow after that. Questions arrived from every direction simultaneously. Nobody waited for answers. Nobody allowed anybody else to finish speaking. The apartment transformed into complete chaos as four grown men reacted to information that should not have affected them nearly as much as it clearly did.
"That's actually insane."
"Why didn't you tell us that first?"
"How is that not the first thing you said?"
Juhoon genuinely didn't have an answer.
The truth was that the moment itself still felt strangely private in his mind. Everything else from the evening seemed easier to talk about. The walk. The confession. The conversation afterward. Those memories felt comfortable enough to share. The kiss felt different. Whenever he thought about it, the rest of the world seemed to disappear for a moment. The noise in the apartment faded slightly as the memory resurfaced, and before he realized what was happening, a smile had already appeared.
"Ahhhh, He's blushing! Look at him." The boys pointed accusingly at him, laughing at their shyest member's flustered expression.
Juhoon dropped his head into his hands while the shouting resumed around him because, annoyingly enough, they were right. Every time he thought about that moment, the smile returned automatically. There was no conscious decision involved. It simply happened. The memory carried too much weight now. He could still remember the warmth of her hands. The look in her eyes afterward. The way both of them had laughed quietly a few seconds later because the tension that had dominated the entire evening had finally disappeared. Remembering it felt like replaying the happiest moment of his life, and unfortunately his face seemed determined to broadcast that information to everybody within a ten-mile radius.
The teasing continued for another twenty minutes because none of them possessed the maturity required to move on from the topic. Every attempt Juhoon made to redirect the conversation failed almost immediately. Seonghyeon demanded details that Juhoon refused to provide. Keonho kept inventing increasingly dramatic versions of events. James alternated between laughing and acting personally betrayed that such important information had been withheld.
Eventually the noise began settling into something more manageable as exhaustion finally caught up with everyone. The apartment had grown quieter. Water bottles sat abandoned across the coffee table. Several pillows had migrated to entirely different sides of the room. The clock on the wall crept steadily closer to two in the morning. Yet despite the late hour, nobody seemed particularly eager to end the conversation because beneath all the teasing sat something much simpler. Relief. Happiness. The satisfaction of watching one of their closest friends finally get the thing he'd spent months pretending not to want.
"I can't believe Juhoon is the first one to get a girlfriend."
Juhoon sat up. "Wait, I just realized I haven't asked her to be my girlfriend yet..."
The glares that followed were menacing enough to scare a full grown man into hiatus.
taglist:@megamatt43 @darianargll @hrtikeus @usagi22329 @slvdsjjk @jae-n0 @rawrxnne @mochi-nugs @hiiiiiiiomomoko @basking-in-sunlight-shark @steveslefttoe @kallistaki12 @cokewithcameron @loserloveremployee @wwoonniiee @aphantassia @blossomxie @enha4cortis @inadazeee @ikfr777 @eoduuung @seonghwabb @celeya @coerluvvx
