Jan 7, 2022
ditto eatachu, don't forget to ping metroid
he’s a lil confused but he’s got the spirit :)
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ditto eatachu, don't forget to ping metroid
he’s a lil confused but he’s got the spirit :)
this is the only review on my letterboxd and i straight up don't remember writing it
under his skin
in which your friend felix introduces you to his friend group. you immediately know you're not going to get along with their leader. he's arrogant, controlling and becoming your number one enemy. but neither of you can deny the deep-rooted desire for each other.
mdni!
warnings: heavy sexual themes, enemies, fem reader, jerking off, mentions of porn, name calling (bitch/whore/slut), a little sprinkle of degradation, deep throating (choking on his cock), use of toys (vibrator), oral, fingering, marks (hickeys/bites), bondage, safe words, spanking, unprotected sex, breeding (let me know if i forgot anything), mentions of food
wc: 9.6k
based on this drabble
felix should have warned you before introducing you to his group. instead, he had only grinned the entire drive over, one hand lazily drumming against the steering wheel while saying things like “just don’t let chan scare you off.” as if that could have prepared you for what would happen.
but you understood the second you walked in. the room shifted around him. conversations paused when he spoke. people looked at him before making decisions. even sitting back against the couch with one arm slung over the backrest, chan carried himself like he owned the place and everyone inside it.
and apparently, everyone let him.
your first impression of him settled quickly: arrogant. controlling. the kind of man who expected obedience simply because he existed.
his first impression of you formed just as fast. too observant.
he noticed the way your eyes tracked everything, the way you watched interactions instead of trying to force yourself into them. most people met him and got nervous. eager to please. careful with their words.
you didn’t. worse, you looked at him like something didn't sit right.
felix introduced you with an easy grin, entirely unaware of the tension that sparked the moment chan’s gaze landed on you.
chan leaned back slightly, eyes dragging over you once before he gave a curt nod. “heard a lot about you.” you smiled politely but your tone sounded anything but. “ditto.”
a few people in the room choked on their drinks. felix looked between the two of you like he’d just realised he accidentally lit a match near gasoline.
chan's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. and that was the beginning of it.
after that, it became a pattern, predictable in the most irritating way possible. every time you showed up, chan noticed immediately.
it didn’t matter if he was mid-conversation, or across the room pretending not to pay attention, the second you walked in, his focus shifted. like some invisible thread pulled tight between you.
you noticed it too. the way his eyes found you first. always. and somehow, every single interaction between the two of you turned into a fight.
“we’re ordering from rossi’s,” chan announced one night from the kitchen, barely glancing up from his phone. “rossi’s is awful,” you said immediately.
a silence fell over the room. han muttered, “oh, here we go.” chan looked up slowly. “awful?”
“their pasta tastes microwaved.”
“it’s italian. one of the only italian places around here."
“that doesn’t automatically make it good.”
he stared at you for a second too long before scoffing softly. “you always this difficult?”
you leaned against the counter. “you always this bossy?”
his mouth twitched, like he was trying not to smile.
that should’ve warned you. because after that, he started seeking you out. deliberately.
if you sat somewhere, suddenly chan needed that exact spot. if you disagreed with something, he’d argue just to keep you talking longer. if someone else interrupted your banter, he looked annoyed by it.
and the worst part? you kept engaging. every single time.
“move,” he told you one evening when you stole his usual seat on the couch. you looked up from your drink. “there are six other places to sit.”
“that’s my spot.”
you scoffed, “sounds made up.” the room went quiet again. felix was already grinning into his drink.
chan stepped closer, towering over the couch while you refused to move even an inch. “you enjoy testing me.”
“you enjoy acting like a fucking dictator.”
“someone has to keep order around here.”
you snorted. “order? how dramatic."
his eyes narrowed. yours sparkled with amusement.
and there it was again, that awful little pull between irritation and entertainment that neither of you seemed capable of escaping.
because no matter how much chan acted annoyed by you, he kept looking for reasons to provoke you. he’d throw comments your way from across the room just to watch you snap back.
he learned exactly what got reactions out of you. the fastest way to make you glare. the quickest way to make you roll your eyes. the comments that made your lips twitch because you were trying not to laugh.
and god, he loved when you laughed. especially if it was usually at his expense.
“you know,” you said one night after he interrupted somebody for the fifth time, “normal people let others finish speaking.”
“normal people have useful things to say.”
you groaned in annoyance, “see? this is exactly why i can’t stand you.”
“funny." he drawled, eyes fixed on you over the rim of his drink, “why do you keep talking to me then?"
your stomach flipped annoyingly hard at that. because he was right. you looked away before anyone noticed the heat crawling into your face.
but later that night, while everyone else talked around him, you caught chan watching you from the other side of the room, completely focused, making it feel far more dangerous than the arguing ever had.
chan realised something was wrong the first time you followed him without actually being there.
he was at the studio, headphones hanging around his neck while he stared blankly at the unfinished track glowing on the monitor in front of him. one hand tapped impatiently against the desk. the bass loop repeated. and repeated. and repeated.
all because his brain kept replaying something stupid you’d said three nights ago. “you always act like you’re in charge even when nobody asked you to be.”
he could still hear the smugness in your voice. could still picture the look on your face when you’d said it.
“for fuck’s sake,” he muttered under his breath, dragging both hands over his face. it was ridiculous. you were ridiculous. annoying. argumentative. impossible.
so why the hell was he thinking about you while trying to work? even worse, why did the thought of you make his chest tighten strangely?
he shoved the feeling away immediately. hatred. obviously. that had to be what this was.
except hatred usually didn’t make his pulse jump every time his phone lit up with a message in the group chat, secretly hoping it was you.
hatred shouldn't make his cock hard. and it definitely shouldn't make his thoughts slip to you when he was jerking off.
hatred shouldn’t have made him notice your absence the second he walked into felix’s apartment friday night.
he asked about you before he could stop himself. felix looked up so fast it was almost suspicious. “damn,” he said slowly. “you didn’t even say hi first.”
chan frowned immediately. “i was just asking.” felix smirked at that, “sure you were.”
he ignored the grin spreading across felix’s face and scanned the room again anyway. you weren’t there. and suddenly, the night felt off. quieter, less entertaining. he hated that most of all.
and once he noticed it, he couldn’t stop noticing it. every room he entered, his eyes searched for you automatically. every conversation felt slightly duller when you weren’t interrupting him halfway through it. every joke landed flatter when it wasn’t making you roll your eyes.
it got worse after that. at the gym, he caught himself thinking about the way you looked at him whenever you argued, so... unimpressed. like you enjoyed challenging him just as much as he enjoyed provoking you.
this was the first time he felt the pressing need to jerk off. to the thought of you.
he rushed home from the gym, cock already half-hard in his pants. had been for the past hour. even an ice-cold shower did nothing.
he dropped his gym back to the floor, making his way to his room immediately, dropping onto his bed. he ran his hands over his face, grabbing his hair.
"fuck you." he said into the empty room before grabbing his hard on through his shorts, squeezing it.
he didn't want to do it, jerking off to you. his pride, his ego, screamed at him to stop. to not do this with you on his mind. he grabbed his phone, unlocking it with one hand while his other slipped into his pants.
porn should do it. watching any other chick, hearing her moans instead of your fucking laugh in his mind. porn used to be his remedy when his mind wouldn't shut up about you. but right now it did nothing. he only saw you. only heard you.
he groaned in frustration, closing the tab on his phone, forcing his hand to stop working his cock. it twitched desperately in his fist, demanding more.
he wanted to text you. to tell you to stop invading his thoughts. tell you how much he hated you. for being so fucking mouthy. for making it impossible for him to jerk off properly. to demand you to do something about it. but he knew you'd only mock him for it.
his thumb moved on its own as it opened his photo gallery. he didn't notice what he was searching for until he found pictures of the last time you hung out with the group.
he loved the shirt you were wearing back then. loved how it made your tits look. fuck. suddenly he was thinking about your tits, wondering what they'd feel like in his hands. he imagined you arching your back, leaning into the touch as he grabbed them, squeezed them, pinched your nipples until you were whimpering.
his hand started moving on his cock again without him realising. his mind was too far gone. he thought about swirling his tongue around your nipples, sucking on them, wondering what your moans would sound like.
but he didn't only want to suck your nipples. he wanted to suck the soft flesh surrounding them. sucking, biting until it left a mark. right on your precious tit. he'd cover you in them, leaving marks all over you. fuck, you'd look so beautiful when he was done with you.
he noticed his fist jerking his cock only when he groaned involuntarily, his eyes fixated on the screen, on the picture of you. he wanted you. needed you. so bad it made his balls tighten.
he felt his orgasm approaching. fuck no, he couldn't cum to the thought of you. no matter how many times he thought of you while jerking off, he always managed to distract himself enough, think of anything but you when he found his release.
but right now he couldn't stop. couldn't stop imagining leaving his marks on you. he wanted to spank you until your butt cheeks were all red and covered in his handprints. finally making you realise who was in fucking charge.
the thought of you surrendering to him, to having his way with you, finally made him come undone. he gave his cock a few more strokes, tearing his gaze away from his phone, head thrown back against the pillow. and he blew his fucking load to the thought of you, whispering your name into the dark room.
after that, chan started gravitating towards you unconsciously. if you were in the kitchen, suddenly he needed a drink. if you were outside, he somehow ended up outside too. if you sat on the couch, he’d lean against the wall closest to you without even realising it. and then there was the hugging thing.
god, he hated the hugging thing. you hugged everyone. felix. the other members. friends arriving. friends leaving. everyone except him.
the first time he noticed it, irritation flared so fast it startled him. the second time, it became impossible not to watch.
you’d grin at somebody, arms wrapping around them casually while chan stood nearby pretending not to care. pretending not to notice. pretending he didn’t immediately wonder what it would feel like if you touched him like that. if your tits pressed against him. your scent surrounding him.
it got even worse when someone else made you laugh. especially men.
one night, seungmin had you nearly doubled over at the kitchen counter, laughing so hard you grabbed his arm for balance.
chan felt something ugly twist in his chest. before he even realised what he was doing, he crossed the room. “what’s so funny?” he asked flatly.
your laughter faded slightly as you looked up at him.“nothing you’d enjoy.”
“try me.”
"you don’t have a sense of humor.”
seungmin laughed awkwardly before quickly excusing himself the second chan looked at him.
coward.
you narrowed your eyes immediately. “did you just scare him off?”
“if he got scared that easily, that’s his problem.”
“you’re unbelievable.”
“then stop talking to me.” he said quietly, stepping closer.
the words settled heavily between you. your expression flickered for half a second. and christ, that was another problem entirely.
because lately, every time you looked at him, he forgot for a moment that this was supposed to be hatred at all.
a few days later, a heavy summer storm hit the city. and it had gotten bad fast.
rain hammered against the streets hard enough to blur the city lights, thunder rumbling low and heavy overhead while you hurried towards the studio building with your jacket pulled uselessly over your head. you and felix had made plans to go out for dinner after the studio tonight.
by the time security let you upstairs after recognising you as “one of felix’s people,” you were completely soaked. your shoes squeaked against the floor as you pushed open the studio door with an exhausted sigh already forming, only for it to die immediately when you saw who was inside.
chan sat alone in the swivel chair in front of the mixing desk, one arm resting against the armrest while music played quietly through the speakers.
of course. you sighed dramatically. “you’ve got to be kidding me.”
he glanced over his shoulder lazily. “nice to see you too.”
“where’s felix?”
“not here, obviously.”
you rolled your eyes, already pulling your phone out.“helpful as always.”
“i try.” but when chan turned fully in the chair, whatever sarcastic response he’d been about to make stopped short.
his eyes dragged over you slowly. rainwater clung to your clothes, your shirt damp enough to stick to your skin, droplets still sliding down your neck and disappearing beneath the fabric. his dick twitched. for once, chan looked genuinely speechless.
your stomach flipped annoyingly at the expression on his face. “take a picture,” you muttered.
his jaw tightened immediately, like he’d just been caught doing something illegal. before he could answer, your phone buzzed.
felix: « storm’s too bad. roads are fucked. can’t make it tonight sorry 😭»
you stared at the message in disbelief. “you’re joking.”
“what?”
“felix bailed.”
chan snorted softly. “smartest thing he’s done all week.”
and then the power cut out. the room dropped into darkness instantly. you jumped hard enough to knock your knee against the couch beside you. “shit—”
a laugh echoed through the dark. “you scared of a little darkness?”
“absolutely not.”
“you literally jumped just now.”
a flashlight flicked on a second later, illuminating the room dimly from below as chan leaned back in his chair, looking entirely too entertained by your suffering. the lighting made him look unfairly attractive. which only irritated you further.
“what, no candles around?” you asked dryly. “could make this whole thing a little cosier.”
his brows lifted. “this is a fucking studio.”
“and?”
“not exactly a place that calls for romance.”
you snorted. “pity. you probably bang a lot of chicks here considering you’re basically married to the studio. could’ve at least provided them with ambiance.”
chan barked out a laugh at that. an actual laugh. "trust me,” he said, eyes glinting in the flashlight glow, “i don’t need romance for that.”
“oh, i’m sure your personality alone does all the heavy lifting.”
“you saying i’m charming?”
“i’m saying you’re bossy. probably sucking up to people if you want something.”
he shook his head slowly, still staring at you in that intense way that always made your heartbeat feel uneven.
outside, thunder cracked loudly enough to rattle the windows. you crossed your arms instinctively, suppressing a shiver.
unfortunately, chan noticed immediately. his eyes narrowed slightly as another tremor ran through you. “you’re freezing.”
“i’m fine.”
“you’re shaking.”
“wow,” you deadpanned, “your observational skills are incredible.”
he rolled his eyes before reaching behind him blindly, grabbing a black sweater from the couch and tossing it towards you.
it hit your chest. you looked down at it suspiciously. then back at him. “…you own sweaters? wow. didn't expect that with you always running around in your stupid tank tops." you loved the stupid tank tops.
“hilarious.”
you held the sweater between two fingers. “this thing probably reeks of ego.”
“put the fucking hoodie on.”
you snorted softly, still not moving. “i think i’d rather suffer.”
“christ,” he muttered, dragging a hand down his face. “stop being so fucking stubborn.”
“make me.” the words slipped out too naturally. too easily. and the second they did, the room changed.
chan went still. the flashlight from his phone cast shadows across his face as his eyes locked onto yours with dangerous intensity.
your pulse skipped. his gaze dropped briefly to your mouth before lifting again. slowly. oh, he knew exactly how to make you less stubborn.
“careful,” he said quietly. your breath caught despite yourself.
but instead of backing down, you tilted your head slightly. “or what?”
his eyes darkened slightly at that. the storm outside seemed louder suddenly, rain hammering against the windows while the studio sat in near darkness around you.
chan leaned back slowly in the chair, one hand still holding his phone loosely against his thigh. “you really don’t know when to stop talking.”
you clutched the sweater against your chest. “you say that like you aren’t the one constantly starting arguments with me.”
“because you make it easy.”
“or maybe you’re obsessed with hearing yourself speak.”
he laughed quietly under his breath. “see?” he murmured. “there it is.”
“what?”
“that mouth.”
heat crept annoyingly up your neck. you tried to ignore it. “you mean the one that hurts your feelings every other day?” you said sweetly.
“please.” his gaze dragged over you again, slow enough to make your stomach tighten. “if anything, i think you enjoy getting my attention.”
you scoffed immediately. “you’re unbelievable.”
“you came here soaked out of your mind during a storm.”
“to see felix.”
“sure.”
“god, your ego is exhausting.”
“and yet you ended up alone with me.”
the words landed heavier than they should have. you hated that your heartbeat reacted instantly. and chan noticed, your flushed face making him way more aroused than it should.
his eyes narrowed slightly, like he was studying every tiny shift in your expression.
“you know what your problem is?” you said, mostly to regain control of the conversation.
“enlighten me.”
“you think everybody wants you.”
one corner of his mouth pulled upward. “you saying you don’t?”
your breath caught for half a second. just enough. his expression changed immediately the moment he noticed. to satisfaction? or interest? something far more dangerous underneath both.
“wow,” he said softly. “that almost sounded convincing.” you glared at him. “you’re insufferable.”
“and you’re nervous.”
“i’m cold.”
“right.” his voice dipped lower on the word. you hated the way it affected you. hated the way the flashlight glow caught against his jaw, the way his eyes stayed fixed on you like he was trying to peel apart every reaction you had.
outside, thunder cracked again. you instinctively stepped closer to him. not close enough to touch. but close enough for him to notice.
a mistake. because chan's gaze dropped briefly to your bare legs before lifting back to your face.
“put the fucking sweater on,” he said quietly this time. “why? worried about me?”
his eyes held yours. “more than i should be.”
the room went painfully still after that. your pulse stumbled hard enough to make you angry.
you ended up leaving the studio an hour later once the rain calmed enough to be manageable again. not before chan practically shoved the sweater at you a second time after catching you trying to hand it back. “put it the fuck on,” he said flatly.
“wow. so caring.”
“don’t flatter yourself.”
you rolled your eyes, but you still wore it out into the storm. and annoyingly enough, by the time you got home, you realised it smelled exactly like him.
cedar wood and clean laundry. you hated that.
hated it even more when you caught yourself pulling the sleeves over your hands and burying your face into the fabric for half a second while kicking your shoes off near the door.
“oh, this is bad,” you muttered to yourself immediately. because now your apartment smelled faintly like chan too.
meanwhile, back at the studio, chan sat alone in the chair staring at his phone like it had personally offended him. the power had returned twenty minutes ago. music played softly through the speakers again. but he hadn’t gotten any work done since you left.
his mind kept replaying the way you looked wearing his sweater. sleeves hanging past your hands.
your hair still slightly damp from the rain.
fuck.
he scrubbed a hand over his face aggressively. this was getting ridiculous. you were annoying. stubborn. mouthy. constantly arguing with him.
he did not fucking care whether you got home safe. so why was he still staring at your contact like a man possessed? his thumb hovered over the keyboard. stopped. started again. stopped.
don’t text her. seriously. don’t. you’d never let him live it down.
he tossed the phone onto the desk. picked it back up thirty seconds later. “for fuck’s sake,” he muttered.
before he could overthink it again, his fingers moved.
chan: « got home okay? »
he stared at the message the second it sent, immediate regret settling in. what the hell was wrong with him? his phone buzzed less than a minute later. and despite himself, his heart kicked hard against his ribs.
« no actually. died halfway there. »
his mouth twitched instantly. god. there it was again. that stupid rush every time you answered him.
« tragic. hope my hoodie survived though. »
you snorted softly to yourself while curling further into your couch.
« barely. still reeks of your fucking ego. »
he leaned back in the chair, smiling before he could stop himself, like an idiot.
« you still wearing it? »
your eyes narrowed at the message.
« why? you miss it? »
three dots appeared almost immediately. disappeared. appeared again. you stared at your screen way too intently.
« maybe i just don’t trust you with my clothes. »
heat crept into your face annoyingly fast.
« relax. i’m not trying to steal your precious hoodie. »
« already did. »
your stomach flipped. you hated how much you liked this version of him. because somehow, over text, the banter felt even more entertaining. like all his attention narrowed directly onto you. you bit your lip before typing back.
« you this annoying with everyone or am i special? »
this time, his reply took longer. far longer. chan stared at the message for a while, jaw tightening slightly because the answer came too easily.
you’re the only person who talks back.
you’re the only one i think about this much.
you’re the only one who gets under my skin.
instead, he typed:
« don’t let it get to your head. »
a couple days later, you found yourself back at the studio again. mostly because felix had begged you to bring him lunch after claiming he was “seconds away from starving to death.” dramatic.
you sat cross-legged on the couch while felix inhaled noodles beside you, rambling about some artist they'd been working with while music played quietly through the speakers.
you were halfway through making fun of him for nearly setting the break room microwave on fire earlier when the studio door opened.
and immediately, your attention shifted. chan walked in wearing all black, headphones hanging around his neck, one hand pushing through his hair tiredly before his eyes landed on you.
his expression barely changed. but his heartbeat did. fast enough to irritate him instantly. because there you were again, sitting comfortably in his space like you belonged there now. laughing, talking, wearing that exact expression that always made him want to argue with you just to keep your attention on him longer.
“look who decided to show up,” you said casually.
“look who keeps invading my studio.”
felix looked between the two of you with immediate interest.
chan dropped into the chair across from you before his eyes narrowed slightly. “did you bring my hoodie?” you blinked innocently. “no.” his brows lifted. “no?”
“that’s what i said.”
“you keeping it now?”
you snorted softly. “maybe i like it.”
his gaze flickered over you slowly. "should i be worried?”
“depends,” you said lightly. “you emotionally attached to it?”
“not usually.”
felix looked absolutely delighted. “jesus christ,” he whispered to himself.
you ignored him. mostly because chan was still staring at you with that infuriatingly focused expression that made you feel overly aware of yourself.
“i can go get it right now if you’re gonna be dramatic about it,” you said.
the smart response would’ve been no. he knew that. he should’ve said: don’t bother. it’s just a hoodie. bring it whenever.
instead, his mouth betrayed him. “go ahead.”
you stared at him for a second before laughing in disbelief. “you are such a fucking pain in the ass.”
“you took my hoodie.”
“you told me to wear it!"
“didn’t say permanently.”
you narrowed your eyes at him while felix openly watched the exchange like live entertainment. “see?” you muttered. “this is exactly what i mean. you always need things your way.”
“and you always pretend you don’t like giving me a hard time.”
“i could think of a million things i'd rather do.”
“sure.” god, that smug look on his face made you want to throw something at him.
instead, you leaned back against the couch dramatically. “well, too bad. i’m not going home right now just because you snapped your fingers.”
his jaw twitched slightly. “fine,” he said after a second. “i’ll pick it up tonight after the studio.”
your heart stumbled instantly, hard enough to genuinely piss you off. because suddenly all you could think about was chan standing inside your apartment. wearing that look, talking to you in that low voice, being alone with you again.
you forced yourself to stay casual. “fine.” but the word came out thinner than you intended.
his eyes stayed on you for one extra second too long before the corner of his mouth tilted upward slightly, satisfied. like he’d already figured out exactly what that idea did to you too.
a little after eight, your phone buzzed. you stared at the notification longer than necessary.
« address. »
your thumbs hovered over the keyboard while your heartbeat steadily picked up speed. this was a bad idea. letting chan into your apartment, alone, at night, after whatever the hell had been happening between you lately, felt objectively stupid.
his hoodie sat freshly washed and perfectly folded on your desk like evidence of a problem you refused to acknowledge. you should’ve just brought it to the studio earlier.
after another minute of overthinking, you sent him your address anyway. the three dots appeared almost immediately.
« be there in thirty. »
your stomach flipped. “this is so fucking stupid,” you muttered to yourself. and yet you still fixed your hair before he arrived. fucking pathetic.
exactly thirty minutes later, there was a knock at your door. of course he was punctual. you had no idea why the smallest thing about him annoyed you this much.
you grabbed the hoodie quickly before opening the door just enough to shove it towards him immediately. “here. now leave.”
chan looked down at the folded sweater in your hands before slowly lifting his eyes back to your face. “cute welcome.”
“you came for the hoodie. here it is."
instead of taking it right away, he leaned one arm against the doorframe casually. his gaze stayed fixed on you while he finally took the sweater from your hands. and then he noticed it. the scent. your detergent.
his fingers tightened slightly around the fabric. fuck. he hated how much he liked it. hated the immediate thought that crossed his mind.
you narrowed your eyes. “why are you looking at it like that?”
“nothing.”
“you’re literally glaring at your own hoodie.”
“i’m thinking.”
“dangerous hobby for someone like you.”
his mouth twitched. there it was again. that tiny almost-smile that only ever seemed to appear around you. “you washed it.”
“obviously.”
“didn’t think you had it in you.”
you scoffed immediately. “god, you’re annoying.”
“you say that every time you see me.”
“because it remains true every time i see you.”
he laughed quietly under his breath before his eyes drifted past you briefly into your apartment. “you gonna make me stand out here all night?”
“that was actually the plan.”
“rude.”
“you'll survive.” but despite the sarcasm, you stepped aside anyway.
the second chan walked past you, the atmosphere shifted. you shut the door quickly behind him before you could overthink the fact that you were now alone with him again.
his eyes landed on you again almost immediately. “you nervous?” he asked suddenly. you blinked. “what?”
“you keep fidgeting.” you immediately stopped moving out of spite. “you’re imagining things.”
“am i?”
“yes.”
he hummed softly, unconvinced. “interesting.”
“what is?”
“you only get defensive when i’m right.”
“and you only talk this much when you want attention.” his brows lifted slightly. "you think i want your attention?”
you laughed once in disbelief. “please. you practically orbit around me at this point.”
that hit harder than intended. you could tell immediately by the way his expression shifted.
chan stepped closer slowly, enough to make your pulse spike.
“careful,” he said quietly. “you’re sounding very confident for someone whose heart is racing right now.”
your breath caught. “you’re insufferable.”
“you already said that.”
“because you keep proving it.”
“then tell me why,” he murmured, eyes dropping briefly to your mouth, “you still let me in?"
the tension snapped tighter instantly.
“don’t flatter yourself,” you said, though your voice came out weaker than intended. “you came here for a hoodie.”
“right.” the way he said it made heat spread low in your stomach. because suddenly it very much did not feel like this was about the hoodie anymore.
the room felt unbearably small now. every sarcastic comment, every lingering glance, every argument between you two over the past weeks suddenly sat heavy in the air between you.
chan stayed close. close enough that you could see the tension in his jaw every time you opened your mouth again. which, naturally, only made you want to push him further.
“you know,” you said lightly, even though your pulse was completely betraying you now, “for someone who supposedly can’t stand me, you spend an awful lot of time in my personal space.”
his eyes narrowed. “you think this is me trying to be close to you?”
“i think you’re obsessed with annoying me.”
a humourless laugh left him. “trust me,” he murmured, “if i wanted to annoy you, you’d know.”
your stomach tightened hard at the tone of his voice. but you still crossed your arms stubbornly. “wow. terrifying.”
chan couldn't help but stare at your arms crossed over your tits. those goddamn tits. “you should be scared.”
“of what?”
his gaze locked onto yours completely. “of how much i’m trying not to lose my patience with you right now.”
the words hit like a physical thing, your breath catching slightly. his expression darkened. “there it is,” he said quietly. you swallowed once. “there’s what?”
“that look.”
“what look?”
“the one you get when you stop pretending you hate this.”
heat flooded your face instantly. “you’re delusional.”
“am i?” he stepped even closer. your back nearly brushed the edge of the counter behind you now. every instinct screamed at you to move. you didn’t. because despite the tension winding painfully tight in your chest, despite how impossible he was, you wanted him close.
“you talk too much,” chan muttered suddenly, eyes fixed on your mouth now instead of your eyes.
you scoffed softly, though it came out shakier than intended. “yet you’re always listening.”
“that’s the problem.” your heartbeat stumbled at his low voice. “do you have any idea,” he said slowly, “how fucking badly i want to shut that smart mouth of yours?”
silence crashed between you. your breath came shallow now. because suddenly all the tension between you two finally had a name. and judging by the way chan looked at you, he’d stopped trying to deny it entirely.
you should’ve stepped away. should’ve said something sarcastic. something sharp. something safe.
instead, your eyes flicked briefly to his lips before you whispered, far too softly: “what’s keeping you then?”
that was it. whatever restraint chan had left snapped instantly. his hand caught your jaw almost desperately before he crashed his mouth against yours. like he’d been holding himself back for weeks and finally lost the fight.
the kiss was all heat and frustration and ruined patience. you kissed him back immediately, fingers gripping the front of his shirt as his other hand braced against the counter beside you.
and god, chan kissed exactly how he argued: intense and demanding. like he tried to be in control even in the heat of the moment.
a quiet sound caught in his throat when you pulled him closer, like he couldn’t quite believe this was finally happening either.
his forehead pressed briefly against yours when he pulled back just enough to breathe, both of you visibly affected now. and then the idiot actually muttered: “still think i’m annoying?”
you let out a breathless laugh despite yourself. “the most annoying."
his mouth curved against yours again. “yeah,” he murmured, already kissing you again, “but you kiss me anyway?"
you snorted against his lips. "just trying to see whether your ego is justified."
a dark chuckle escaped chan's throat, his hands gripping your waist, pulling you flush against him, his erection pressing against your lower belly.
"think you can impress me with a hard cock?" chan's hands twitched at that. he wanted to smack that smug expression of your face so badly. wanted to make you shut that goddamn mouth of yours.
instead, he inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. "watch it." he said through gritted teeth, trying to hold onto his last bit of self control.
"or what?" you replied confidently, looking up at him, smiling way too sweetly. chan's breaths came out heavier, his hips grinding against you instinctively.
"or i will show you exactly what this cock is capable of doing to you. and spoiler alert, you're not gonna like it."
you snorted at that. actually snorted, right in his face. "yeah? think you're gonna break me, channie?" the soft nickname on your lips were his complete undoing. his cock twitched, you felt it through the fabric. he placed his hands on the counter on either side of you, pulling back but caging you in. he could no longer be this close to you, he had to get his cock away from you. because he was about to snap.
"you have no idea what you're doing to me." he spoke, voice rough. a smug expression crossed your face, you leaned forward, breath hot against his ear as you whispered, "what if i know exactly what i'm doing to you?"
his hand shot up, grabbing your hair so hard it hurt, tilting your head back. you couldn't help yourself but moan out, legs clenching together. chan smirked, grip tightening in your hair, "you fucking like that? being manhandled? where's your fucking smugness now?"
you stared at him, hating how your body betrayed you. "fuck you, chan." you muttered. but that only encouraged him. he knew he had you.
"that the only comeback you can think of?" he mocked, his other hand now grabbing your jaw, holding your head in place. he pressed his body against you again. "c'mon, put that smart mouth to work. i dare you."
but you remained silent, breaths coming out in puffs as you tried to calm your racing heart. "where did your attitude go, hm?" he asked, pushing his leg between yours. he pressed his thigh against your core, making your breath hitch, looking at you with mocking eyes.
"you asked me if i think i can break you? yes, i can. tell me to stop and i will leave right through that door. but if you say yes to this, i will make sure you forget your own fucking name."
he waited. patiently. for any answer. for a simple yes or no. you blinked up at him, mind racing, until you finally nodded your head confidently. "is that a yes?" he asked, tone still mocking. "use your fucking words." his tone was commanding as ever. but he needed to hear it, needed your verbal consent.
"yes—" you choked out. and after that, all hell broke loose.
a low sound escaped chan's throat, his grip on your hair tightening, yanking your away from the counter and towards the couch. it hurt, the way he was handling you. he pushed you towards the sofa, finally letting go of your hair. "undress." he said, standing tall in front of you, arms crossed as he watched you. "i'm not gonna ask again."
your fingers trembled slightly as you started undressing yourself, eyes never leaving his. "for fuck's sake." chan muttered, clearly impatient. he smacked your hands away, basically ripping your clothes away. his hands roamed over your body, feeling your warm skin against his fingertips. you felt better than he could have ever imagined. he groaned, his mouth suddenly back on yours. the kiss was laced with desperation as his hands grabbed your tits, squeezing them through your bra before taking it off with skilled fingers. "fucking perfect." he muttered more to himself than you.
he pinched your nipples hard, needing to know how you react to it. you hissed, biting your lip, gaining a smirk from chan.
he pushed you down on the couch, standing tall in front of you. his thumb traced over your lower lip. "open." he grabbed your hair, tilting your head back. "tongue out." your jaw clenched slightly, not wanting to obey him, wanting to challenge him. but when his grip in your hair tightened painfully, you opened your mouth, sticking your tongue out. chan leaned forward, spitting into your mouth before sliding two fingers along your tongue. he moved them further into your mouth, his cock twitching in his pants.
"i'm gonna show you how to put that smart mouth of yours to good use, yeah?" he muttered as he started sliding his fingers in and out of you. you wrapped your lips around them, looking up at him. he pulled your hair harder, tilting your head further, retrieving his fingers from between your lips and smacking your cheek hard. "fucking answer when i'm talking to you."
your breath caught in your throat, eyes watering the slightest bit. "well right now, you're all big words and no fucking action." your snappy response earned you another slap against your cheek, coating it with your saliva that was still on his fingers.
"you fucking bitch." chan just shook his head, unable to believe that you still had the audacity to talk back. he yanked your hair. hard. moving you to lie on your back, head on the armrest of the couch. he pulled you further until your head was hanging over the edge.
he was already working on his pants, pulling them down, freeing his cock, right over your face. he gave it a few strokes, watching you. he didn't waste another second, tapping it against your lips. you smelled him, the saltiness of his precum coating his tip.
he didn't push in, not yet. he smeared his precum over your lips. "tap my thigh three times in a row if it gets too much. understand?" he asked, growing more impatient by the minute. you nodded. fucking nodded. "words, sweetheart." he said through gritted teeth.
"i understand." you said.
"good girl."
"don't fucking call me that. i'm not your good girl."
chan only grinned at that. "you'd rather i keep insulting you?"
"i'd rather you finally put that cock to use." you snapped back. he smacked your tit, making you flinch. "yeah, i fucking should. shut that goddamn mouth of yours for once."
and with that, he pushed his cock past your lips, his hips snapping involuntarily, shoving his length down your throat. "fuck—" he cursed loudly, watching your throat, how it took shape of his length. "holy—"
you immediately gagged around him, not having expected him to just shove his entire length in with no further warning.
and he fucking kept it there, making you choke, cutting off your air supply. you tapped his thigh three times, and he immediately pulled back, realising that he got caught in the moment. you immediately took a deep breath, coughing.
"you want to be treated like a fucking whore, then fucking take it like one."
"you're a fucking asshole, bang chan, you know that?"
a dark chuckle erupted from somewhere deep inside him. "yet you still take my fucking cock like you're my own personal slut." and before you could say anything, he rammed his cock back into your mouth, deep down your throat.
his hips moved in quick little thrusts, fucking your mouth till you couldn't breathe, pulling back to let you get some oxygen before repeating his movements. his hand reached for your throat, squeezing it, feeling the pressure of his own hand around his cock buried deep down.
you choked. hard. your body started jolting until he finally pulled out, a long strip of saliva still connecting your mouth to his cock.
"you're trying to fucking choke me to death?" your voice sounded hoarse, your throat so raw it hurt to talk. chan just grinned down at you, his fingers smearing your own saliva all over your pretty lips. you caught his finger, biting it.
"fuck! you bitch!" chan called in surprise, withdrawing his hand, connecting it to your cheek with a hard smack. and of all possible things you could have done, you fucking moaned at his action. "you're un-fucking-believable." chan muttered through gritted teeth.
"on your hands and knees." he ordered, voice way too calm for the storm inside him. you snorted. "don't fucking boss me around like that."
chan was losing his patience. he grabbed you, handled your body with a strength that left you breathless as he flipped you over on your stomach. "don't make me tie you the fuck up."
you snorted again. fuck, it drove him wild. he wanted to punish you for fucking breathing. "be my guest. i don't own any ropes."
a slow, wicked grin spread on chan's face. "oh, trust me. i can get very creative." and with that, his hands left you and you heard him wander off. you turned your head to the side, watching him waltz around your apartment like he fucking owned the place.
"what the fuck are you doing?" you snapped, already shuffling to get up.
"if you dare move even a fucking inch, i'm gonna spank your ass till it's burning red." your breath hitched at his words. but that still didn't stop you from rising to your feet and following him. who did he even think he was?
you found him in your bedroom, picking up a belt that was stored neatly in one of your drawers. he looked ridiculous. going through your stuff, half naked, his stupid cock still glistening with your saliva.
you stood there, butt naked, crossing your arms over your chest. "stop fucking going through my stuff."
"why? hiding something you don't want me to find?"
you snorted, "no. just don't like fucking assholes going through my things."
he walked past your bed, opening the drawer of your nightstand. "oh my god! you have no fucking respect!"
you knew what he would find. and you couldn't care less. he held up your pink vibrator a few seconds later, grinning like he found a precious treasure. "cute." he muttered.
"oh wow, blame a girl for owning a goddamn vibrator."
chan turned around, standing in front of you, vibrator in one hand, belt in the other. "you get yourself off with this thing?" he asked, eyebrows raised.
"yes." you replied confidently but couldn't suppress the soft flush spreading from your neck to your face. chan grin only widened. his eyes travelled past you, landing on a light scarf hanging over the back of your desk chair. "perfect." he muttered, walking past you to grab it. "remember how i told you not to fucking move?"
you rolled your eyes, "remember how i told you not to boss me around?"
chan came up behind you. you could feel the heat radiating from his body. he threw the vibrator and the scarf on the bed. your eyes followed the items. "you know, that scarf is actually my favourite, if you ruin it—"
"don't care." he cut you off, grabbing your wrists, yanking them behind your back harshly. he tied the belt around them, making you gasp.
"and the only thing i plan on ruining," he moved his hands up your arms, fingertips ghosting over the skin, giving you goosebumps. "is you."
his lips connected to your shoulders, leaving a few kisses till he reached your neck. his arms snaked around you from behind, pulling you flush against him, his cock hard against your butt. he bit your neck hard, making you hiss, before sucking the flesh, making sure to leave a fucking mark.
he pulled back slightly, watching the skin change colour, grinning in satisfaction, before repeating it a little further up. your ass ground against his cock, making him suck your skin harder.
"fuck, you like getting marked like a fucking whore?" he whispered against your skin, his hands squeezing your tits, thumbs brushing over your nipples, making you moan. "chan—"
you moaning his name like that was his complete undoing. he needed more. needed more of you moaning his name, screaming it.
he grabbed the small vibrator from the bed, turning it on and guiding it over your hardened nipples. you pressed yourself harder against him, soft moans now constantly leaving your lips. he started grinding his hard cock against you, moving the vibrator down to your cunt, running it over your clit lazily. you arched your back, your hips starting to move against the toy. "chan, please—" you couldn't suppress the soft whimper, no idea where the sudden needy tone came from. but it made him lose his mind.
he threw you on your bed, yanking your ass up before you could even gather yourself, your hands still tied tightly behind your back.
he started wrapping your scarf around your thighs in figure 8s, tying them together. once he was done, he took a step back, admiring the view. you turned your head to the side, pressed against the mattress, ass in the air. you tried to get a glimpse of him. he stood there, swallowing hard, just... watching you.
"you're a fucking weirdo, bang chan."
his eyes didn't move away from your bare core, "shut up or i will gag you." he said as his eyes finally met yours. he moved closer to the bed, leaning forward, brushing a few loose strands of hair out of your face. "if anything gets too much, you use the word 'red' and i will stop immediately, okay?" you blinked at him a few times. the fact that he still ...cared, despite the hatred, despite you riling him up constantly, made something warm settle in your chest. "okay."
his hand started caressing your butt cheeks, way too softly. the serious expression on his face was replaced by a smirk. and then he smacked you. hard. you couldn't move, hands tied together, thighs tied together. all you could do was flinch.
"you should learn to fucking listen. if i tell you not to move, you don't fucking move." another smack. you opened your mouth, wanting to protest. he cut you off with another deliberate slap. "don't you fucking dare talking back right now." he said, making you grin. fucking grin.
"god—" he shook his head, his next smack making you wince from the sting. and then his finger just entered you with no fucking warning. you moaned out loud in surprise, moving back against his touch.
chan let out a dark chuckle. "you're so fucking desperate, it's pathetic." he said, his finger moving in and out of you with ease. "so fucking wet."
his free hand slapped your ass again, so hard it left a handprint. he added a second finger, curling them inside you, making you moan involuntarily. "fuck, chan—"
his cock twitched at you moaning his name again. fuck, that did things to him. "again." he muttered, teeth clenched, trying to keep any bit of self-control. "moan my fucking name again." he pumped his fingers faster, curling them at just the right spot, his name leaving your lips in soft moans, driving him insane.
he dropped to his knees, pulling his fingers out of you and burying his face into your cunt. "fuck!" you cried out, body jolting forwards. he grabbed your hips harshly, holding you in place as he fed on you like a man starved.
"tastes so fucking good." he groaned against you, his tongue swirling around your clit a couple of times before licking up to your entrance, pushing inside you. he reached for the vibrator again, turning it on, bringing it to your clit, while his tongue moved in and out of your hole.
you ground your cunt against him, moaning shamelessly as you felt your orgasm build up. "chan—" you moaned and he knew. he wanted to deny you the orgasm, wanted to edge you, to make you feel as desperate as you always made him feel. but he couldn't. not when you were moaning so sweetly. not when your cunt was grinding against his face so desperately.
your legs started trembling and he threw the vibrator away. it scattered on the floor somewhere as chan grabbed your hips harder, fingers digging into you so hard, they'd leave bruises. he held you in place, burying his face deeper inside you.
"just fucking come on my face already." he murmured into you, big hands moving to your ass, squeezing the cheeks harshly.
you tried to hold back your orgasm, not wanting him to feel even the slightest amount of pride for making you come. and he noticed. noticed the way you tried to hold back.
"for fuck's sake!" he groaned, pushing two fingers back inside you, curling them right where you needed them, making you cry out.
"stop being so fucking stubborn." his fingers pumped into you relentlessly, hitting your g-spot again and again, making you see stars, head spinning. until you finally could no longer hold back. with one last flick of his tongue over your clit, you came undone. he guided you through your orgasm and you could feel his fucking grin against your cunt.
"that's it." he murmured, clearly satisfied with himself. "just shut the fuck up." you snapped. bad idea. he smacked your cunt so hard, it made you lose balance, collapsing onto the mattress. with your legs and hands still tied, you couldn't lift yourself up, legs still shaking from the intensity of your orgasm.
chan just chuckled darkly behind you, giving his cock a few pumps, watching you being completely at his mercy. he's been dreaming about this, fantasising about it. his eyes wander over your body, spotting every goddamn mark he left. bites, hickeys, fingerprints. he loved it. but he needed more.
he reached forward, grabbing your hair and yanking you back. his breath was hot against your ear, his cock pressing against your ass. "i'm gonna fuck you now, yeah? fill that pretty little cunt. mark you properly."
he gave you a few seconds to protest, but you didn't. you were still catching your breath, body still trembling. he let go of your hair, starting to undress himself. you didn't want to look. you knew he was handsome as fuck, didn't need a proof of that. but you couldn't help turning your head, watching him over your shoulder. fuck.
"stop staring." he said, not even looking up as he neatly placed his clothes over the chair at your desk. your eyes traced his toned body, all the way to his perfect ass. goddamnit.
"don't fucking flatter yourself." you snorted, but your words lacked any bite. chan ignored it, standing behind you, cock fucking throbbing and all. "ass up." he ordered. you struggled against the restraints, trying to move back onto your knees.
"fucking pathetic." chan murmured as he gripped your hips and pulled you up. his hands sprawled over your butt cheeks, squeezing them. you hissed. they still hurt from earlier.
chan just watched you for a while, with you getting impatient. "stop staring." you repeated the words he just threw at you, grinning to yourself. his hands flinched against your butt cheeks, ready to smack the shit out of you, but he took a deep breath instead.
he spit down on his cock, using one hand to spread his saliva over it, before pushing inside you with no further warning. "fuck!" you cried out, jolting forwards. "godfuckingdamnit chan!"
you were so fucking wet, he just slid right in, all the way. he gritted his teeth, trying not to think too much about how fucking good you actually feel. trying not to think about how he actually, finally, has his cock buried inside your fucking cunt. trying not to think about— fuck. his cock twitched inside you, realising how your walls are clamping down on him.
it pissed him off. how good you felt. how warm you were. how fucking wet. how much he wanted you, even though he finally had you.
he grabbed your hair, wrapping it around his hand, yanking you back forcefully, his cock buried to the hilt. he yanked until you were pressed against his chest. "i'm not gonna last long if you keep clenching your fucking walls around me."
your soft moans turned into a snort. "who's pathetic now? you haven't even fucked me properly, channie."
he lost it at the sweet nickname on your lips. his free hand smacked your ass. hard. grabbing your hips. the grip in your hair tightened as he started moving. his hips snapping brutally, each thrust into your sensitive cunt making you whimper.
"you drive me fucking insane." he murmured against your neck before biting down hard, making you cry out in surprise. he groaned against your skin, keeping a steady rhythm. you cried out his name again, and again, making his head spin.
he let go of your hair, forcing you to fall onto the mattress, grabbing your hips, fucking deeper into you. his pace brutal and intense. until your legs could no longer hold you up. they shook so violently, you collapsed onto the mattress.
but he didn't stop. he adjusted to the changed angle within seconds, pushing your hips further down, hips slamming against you, fucking you into the mattress. he moved one hand between your shoulder blades, the other staying on your hip, almost his entire weight holding you down.
"chan—" everything was overwhelming and the familiar knot started tightening in your stomach. his cock rubbed against that sweet spot deep inside you, making your walls clench violently around him as you came hard.
chan cursed under his breath, your orgasm triggering his own. his thrusts become sloppy, desperate to fill your cunt with his load. desperate to fucking breed you.
with a guttural groan, he stilled deep inside you. his arms shook slightly as he emptied himself into you. you felt it, his thick load warm inside you. "fuck, that's it." he murmured almost inaudible, his hips doing small micro thrusts.
he removed his hands from you, placing them on the mattress beside you. but he didn't pull out. not yet. he reached for the belt around your hands, undoing it, freeing you.
you were both breathless, panting heavily. chan's hand reached for your face, swiping some loose strands away. "you okay?"
your body was sore. you were hyper aware of every mark he left on you, your skin burning. but you nodded. the intensity of both your orgasms was enough to make up for the soreness.
he pulled out slowly, sitting back, watching you. your legs were still tied together, looking absolutely perfect to him.
when his cum started dripping out of you, his eyes widened, addicted to the view. "fuck," he groaned, fingers catching the thick liquid, smearing it over your cunt. when more started dripping out, he groaned.
he collected every drop, pushing two fingers inside you. "chan?!" you called out in surprise, but his name died on your lips, turning into a moan. his mind was fucking gone, as he started fucking his cum right back into you with his fingers.
"fucking appreciate the load i gave you." he said, voice dark. he smacked your ass, fingers pumping in and out of you, pushing his cum back inside.
"don't lose a single fucking drop or i'll have to fill you up again."
and right then, fucking his seed back into your cunt, having you whimper at his touch, moan his name with a broken voice, one thing became perfectly clear to him. that he didn't want this to be a one time thing. already too obsessed with the way your body reacts to his.
taglist: @inlovewithstraykids @leewayout @alondra6011 @smiileflower @iconicallyher @aiyanotfound @velvetmoonlght @11racha @nightmarenyxx @thatonegirlonhere @chranassaurus @iamwritteninyourstars @vxyselectric @maddy24207 @smuttaburger @chimmyn0chu @emilyywhyy @ebnabi @mbioooo0000 @pineapple-in-a-burgah @xx-all-purpose-nerd-xx @lixxstay @keymeadoww @tsunderelino @afararraaaa @burntbang @kpopgirliez @scarlet789 @niku-official @emeraldgem22 @vernorica123
for this fic: @skitzyyyloverrrr
some reactions to a love confession
“…”
“…what?”
“What? Are you serious? Right now of all places, you really think it’s the time to just blurt something like that out? You fucking-, urghh….”
“Wait, what?”
“…oh.”
“Cut the bullshit, what do you really want? Because you should damn well know by now that kind of talk doesn’t work on me.”
“Excuse me?” *fucking clutching my pearls*
“Oh, no…”
“No, please don’t. Please don’t do this.”
“Please stop saying that.”
“Just don’t.”
slap them.
“I hate you.”
“I hate you.” (affectionately)
“No you don’t. I know you may think you do, but you don’t, not really.”
“Okay.”
“…okay…”
“Oh, okay…. uh…. look, I care about you too, so much, but just not like that. I’m really sorry.”
“Alright. Tell me again when you finally mean it.”
“Tell me again when we make it out of here alive.”
“Ah, sure you do.”
“I thought I was always just a friend in your eyes…”
“Since when?”
“I had no idea… why did you never tell me before?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t… I want to, but I can’t…”
just kiss them instead of finding the words.
kiss them as soon as they confess and thereby shut up whatever else they wanted to say.
“Took you long enough.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I love you more.”
“Ditto.”
“I know.”
start tearing up.
start full on crying.
start crying happy tears.
start crying angry/confused/frustrated tears.
“Shut up.”
“Shut up.” (affectionately)
“Seriously?” (hello early seasons of grey’s anatomy with all of the seriously’s ♡)
“Say it again.”
“Oh my god, it all makes so much sense now!”
start giggling uncontrollably.
start laughing uncontrollably.
goes nonverbal.
:ঌ HOME;RUN ⭑ A.KN ㅗ ໒:
📬 ❤︎ swimmer!keonho 𝔁 track athlete!gf!reader ─── ৻ꪆ clinking together your matching gold medals after a comp.
❤︎ warnings+tags ─── ৻ꪆ one kiss (1) · fluff
💌 ❤︎ notes ─── ৻ꪆ unrelated but deadass idk how people run anything >100m 💀 i always stuck to 100m and 100x4 relays thank god ☺️ · uhhhh i love athlete aus for james, keonho, sunghoon, etc for a reason; you can tellllll 🩷 · this one’s for nana @bananagirl222 ily ig wtv baby, here u go, as promised <3
❤︎ wc ─── ৻ꪆ 1.5k
𝄞 𓏸 my cortispilledmasterlist »﹙合﹚
❝ tracklist ❞ ─── home;run—svt ❦ tamed-dashed—enha ❦ ditto—njz ❦ my pace—skz ❦ fighting—bss (svt) ❦ also unrelated, but these are all my fav songs that were on repeat when i used to practice (+ lots of skz’s 5star and rockstar songs) ⭐️
the scoreboard flickered. for one agonizing second, nobody in the aquatic centre seemed to breathe. then, the screen buzzed with the final rankings.
1. KEONHO AHN — 21.42s
a new meet record.
the stands exploded into a wall of sound, but your scream somehow cut straight through the noise.
“keonho, let’s go!”
every swimmer in the pool was still hanging onto the lane ropes, chests heaving as they gasped for air, but keonho’s head snapped toward the sound immediately—toward you. because it was always you. you always stood in the exact same spot during his races—right beside the metal barrier nearest his lane, ensuring he’d see you the absolute second he surfaced.
the moment his eyes found yours, your hands flew over your mouth, your feet practically bouncing off the concrete.
“oh my god, you won! you actually won!”
his exhausted expression broke into the widest, most uncharacteristic grin you’d ever seen on him. then he hauled himself out of the pool and immediately started running.
officials were yelling things after him, his teammates trailing behind to offer hurried congratulations, but he ignored every single one of them, because you were already leaning over the barrier, waiting.
“keon—”
he reached you in seconds. the steel barrier cut between you, a cold piece of infrastructure, but apparently neither of you cared. his damp arms wrapped tightly around your waist as yours flew around his broad shoulders. a breathless laugh tore from both of you because he was absolutely soaking wet.
“you won!”
“i won!”
“you came first!”
“i know!”
water dripped from his dark hair onto your shoulders, his wet palms pressing against the back of your shirt until the fabric was completely drenched, transferring the chill of the pool straight to your skin. neither of you let go.
“you did it,” you murmured against his neck.
his smile softened, the manic energy settling into something quiet. “i did.” then he leaned forward, resting his forehead against yours. “but i heard you before i even saw the rankings.”
your face immediately heated. “shut up.”
“no.”
“you’re embarrassing.”
“you screamed like i saved the country,” he teased, a low rumble in his chest.
“because you won!”
his laugh echoed around the pool deck, a bright, resonant sound, and somehow that made your heart race faster than the actual clock had.
an hour later, he stood at the top of the podium—gold medal; national anthem; official photos. everything he’d spent his entire youth working for.
the heavy medal settled around his neck.
flash! another photo.
flash! another.
the organisers began guiding the winners away, treating them like prized cattle, and then keonho did something nobody expected—he jumped off the podium; he literally cleared the steps in one fluid motion.
“keonho-ssi!” an official sounded thoroughly horrified.
he was already jogging toward you. you blinked, holding your breath. “wait—”
before you could finish the thought, he slipped his gold medal over your head. the heavy ribbon settled against your stiff competition jacket.
your mouth fell open. “keonho—”
“you keep it.”
“what? no.”
“you earned it too.”
“i did not swim fifty meters, baby.”
“no,” he said softly, his voice dropping below the ambient noise of the stadium. “you just spent every single morning waking up at five in the morning to cheer me on when all i wanted to do was quit.”
your eyes stung immediately. “that’s different.”
“not to me.”
then he cupped your face—his palms finally warm, smelling faintly of chlorine—and kissed you sweetly, gently. the kind of kiss that made the entire world blur at the edges for a second.
the crowd absolutely lost their minds, but you didn’t even notice.
☆
a few hours later, it was your turn. the track stadium buzzed with a completely different kind of energy. you had your competition uniform on, and spikes tied tightly. your hair was secured away from your face.
meanwhile, keonho had finally changed into dry clothes, thank goodness, because you’d threatened to throw him back into the pool if he kept wandering around the stadium in wet swim briefs.
now he sat on the bench beside the track while you went through your warm-up stretches.
his medal still hung around your neck. your fingers absentmindedly traced the ridged edge of the gold.
“you nervous?” he asked, watching your ankles.
“a little.”
“you’re going to win.”
“that’s not how sport works, keonho.”
“it is when it’s you.”
“there are seven other girls in my heat.”
“doesn’t change anything.”
you rolled your eyes, switching legs. “terrible logic.”
“yet somehow always correct.”
you laughed, the tension leaving your shoulders. then the race marshal called your heat, and suddenly the domesticity vanished. everything became serious. you gently pulled his medal away from your neck and returned it to him before running to the start line.
heat one: qualified.
heat two: qualified.
semi-final: qualified.
final: lane four—your favorite lane.
the stadium seemed ten times louder than it had all afternoon. you bounced on your toes, shaking out the nerves by force, and took your position in the blocks.
the gun fired, and you ran. nothing but wind, noise, the rhythmic thud of your own breathing, and the white line of the finish.
when you did cross the finish line, your eyes fell on the scoreboard.
1. YN — 11.11s
gold medal—you’d done it. the crowd erupted into a deafening roar. your hands flew to your face, your knees nearly giving out. “oh my god.”
officials immediately surrounded you like a wall of high-vis jackets. photos, interviews, directions, congratulations—everything happened too fast, a blur of flashing lights and handshakes.
but all you could think through the noise was that you really wanted to find keonho.
you wanted to run to him the way he’d run to you, but more people rushed you toward the podium before you could even locate him in the sea of faces. you barely had time to process the weight of the gold settling around your neck. you smiled for the cameras, waved mechanically, tried to focus.
“that’s my girl!”
your head whipped around. the voice was unmistakable—keonho’s. he was standing halfway up the bleachers, cupping his hands around his mouth, screaming as loud as possible. “let’s go, yn!” the people around him were staring and laughing, but he didn’t care even a little bit. “you’re the coolest runner ever!”
“keonho!” you yelled back, your face splitting in two. “i told you i’d win!” you started laughing so hard you nearly missed the cue for the final official photograph.
the second the ceremony ended, you were gone. the moment the handlers released your arm, you took off, still wearing your medal, still in your spikes, running faster down the field than you had during the actual final.
“yn!—” keonho barely had time to brace himself before you launched yourself at him. the collision sent both of you tumbling backward, limbs tangled, straight onto the infield grass.
“oh my god!—”
“you idiot!” you gasped, your face buried in his clean shirt.
“you won!”
“so did you!”
both of you were laughing too hard to breathe, arms wrapped around each other, making absolutely no effort to stand up. then you pulled your medal off and dropped it over his head. “there.”
he blinked down at it, then smiled. “you’re copying me.”
“maybe.”
he reached into his pocket, his fingers fumbling with something fabric. you frowned, propping yourself up on an elbow. “what are you doing?”
then he pulled out his own gold medal—the swimming one, still neatly rolled up in its lanyard.
“keonho—”
he slipped it over your head again. now, his swimming gold hung around your neck, and your athletics gold around his, the heavy metal clinking against your collarbones in tune. your heart felt suspiciously close to exploding.
“matching,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
“matching.”
you both sat up in the grass, holding each other’s medals, grinning like complete idiots. then, simultaneously, you lifted them. the gold discs bumped together with a soft, metallic clink. neither of you stopped smiling.
somewhere nearby a click! sounded.
you both turned to see martin—your close friend, who had somehow been accepted as a temp to shoot footage for the day—standing several meters away, his heavy media camera raised, looking absolutely delighted with himself.
“oh, that’s the cover photo,” martin murmured, adjusting his lens.
“martin!” you groaned, though you didn’t move away from keonho’s side.
“front page. no question.”
keonho just laughed, pulling you a little closer against his shoulder. martin checked the digital image on his small screen, then let out a soft whistle because the picture was perfect—two exhausted athletes, grass-stained uniforms, arms wrapped around each other, gold medals hanging from both necks, clinking together right in the middle, and smiles so bright they looked almost ridiculous—the kind of photo that would end up framed on a dusty mantelpiece years later.
the kind that people would point at and say, ‘yeah. those two were always each other’s biggest win.’
© hyuneskkami ❦
4c is now canonically a shiny pokemon on the ccsmp, including the noise and effects! Bonus: a conversation had when 4c discovered this fun feature
Transcript under the cut
Legundo: (faint shiny noise, sounds like tinkling of bells)--like, mud brick looking pokeball. But it'll be just big enough that like, we'll be able to do the--(shiny noise) little like, level fi-- Jaw: Do you need--wait. I hear a shiny. Nom: It's occurred to me that-- Legundo: I also hear a shiny. Nom: Oohh. (he snorts) Jaw: Wait!…What? (Nom snorts again, and the shiny noise plays) Oh, is he playing it on a soundboard? Nom: (sounding amused) No, I'm not. You'll--it--don't worry about it. (shiny noise, Nom laughs) Jaw: (quietly) What? Legundo: Oh, 4c, is that you? (shiny noise) Jaw: (sadly) Oh. Is he? Legundo: I don't think it is. Jaw: Hold on, is there--(shiny noise) No, it is, I hear someone moving! Nom: Do you guys have the map on? (two seconds silence, then the shiny noise) Jaw: It's like, right--here? Nom: If you have the map on you can see the yellow outline for shinies-- (shiny noise) Jaw: Okay, it's definitely fake then. Legundo: Alright, get up here. Nom: Depending on-(shiny noise) if you have the texture pack on. (shiny noise, five seconds of silence as Legundo digs, then shiny noise again) Jaw: Do you think it's under there? Wait Legs, wait Legs--(Legundo spots 4c hiding underground, and the shiny noise plays again) 4c: So I have a situation. (Legundo laughs, and Nom joins in) Jaw: Oh-- Legundo: Hi buddy. (shiny noise) 4c: I have a situation-- Nom: Hey look, its a shiny. 4c: --this isn't a soundboard. Nom: It's a shiny ditto. Legundo: This isn't a soundboard? (shiny noise) Jaw: What? 4c: (voice small) No. Nom: (sounding gleeful) Nope! (4c giggles) Legundo: Wait, have you been made shiny? (Nom is laughing, shiny noise plays, and Jaw throws a pokeball at 4c) Jaw: What! Nom: He's a shiny ditto! 4c: I logged on-this--it is sick and twisted, (Legundo begins laughing) it is sick and twisted. Jaw: That is-- 4c: I logged on today, and--(shiny noise) I can't sneak around, I can't pretend to be other people, I--(Legundo laughs even harder) I literally--I logged on and I get a DM from Cherri-- Legundo: Did we canonically make you a shiny ditto? (shiny noise) 4c: I--it's not--I don't even-I don't even say that! That's not even a thing that I started! (Legundo laughs) That's not a-that's (shiny noise) not a me thing! (Legundo laughs harder) Jaw: That is awesome. (Legundo claps, still laughing)
4c: Cherri-Cherri sent (shiny noise) me a message saying "do you like that you sparkle?" and I said "how could you," and Cherri goes, "now we can tell you a part," smiley face. (shiny noise) Actually sick and twisted. Legundo: Oh my god, this is sick and twisted but in the best way possible. 4c: This is just messed up. Jaw: (reading chat) "We could just hug him or something," that's so funny. 4c: I-look, I sparkle. (shiny noise) Jaw: You literally sparkle, this is like you're on MCCI right now, crazy. (shiny noise) 4c: When did they have the time to do this? (everyone laughs quietly) Legundo: They probably just added the (shiny noise) shiny tag onto you. Jaw: Mhm, probably. 4c: But like, you can't catch me, I'm not a pokemon. (Jaw throws a pokeball through him) Legundo: (running to grab the pokeball that dropped, shiny noise) No but it's just MBT data, so like, they probably just-- Jaw: Stop picking up my-my po-(descends into laughter) 4c: This is my way of getting (shiny noise) pokeballs, I've gotten so many. Legundo: I don't want these, they're too shiny. They're too-they're too yellow. Jaw: (overlapping Legundo) What, the yellow ones? Yellow! (shiny noise) Legundo: This is glorious. 4c: I'm gonna have to live with this, it's so loud, it's like very loud on my end. (shiny noise) Legundo: I can only imagine what it is from your own perspective. 4c: My only joy is going to other people and pranking them now while (shiny noise) they're live by making them-by making (through laughter) the sound effect wherever I am. They'll never know (shiny noise) if it's a shiny or me. Legundo: Oh no. 4c: I'm never going to be able to find shinies though, that's the worst part. (shiny noise) Like I-I'm screwed. Jaw: You're--that's, that's actually insane. You-you've been (shiny noise) you've been like damned to hell, like that's crazy. Legundo: Oh, that's the worst, cause you just hear it-- 4c: (overlapping Legundo) Not the first time--(shiny noise) Legundo: --all the time. What--(he coughs) Jaw: Yeah! This is your own personal hell dude. Legundo: I'm gonna say this, and this is gonna come across as cruel. (shiny noise) Have you tried dying. 4c: No. Legundo: That might reset your data. (shiny noise, then five seconds of silence as 4c races over to the bed to set spawn) Jaw: Alright-- Nom: Wait, I heard we're killing 4c(shiny noise), hold up. Jaw: Alright soldier. Legundo: Now hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on--no no no no no-- 4c: I have twenty-two levels-- Legundo: No. No no no no no no. No. We can make this--(shiny noise) Jaw: Wait, let's use this! Legs, look-- 4c: I have twenty-two levels, are--you know you're killing-- Legundo: (overlapping 4c) No. 4c: --a shiny Pokemon if you do this. (shiny noise) Jaw: Right here. Legundo: We can make this interesting. Hold on. (Jaw gasps) Jaw: Oh that's true! 4c: Twenty-two levels, I have to say goodbye. Legundo: Let me get a trapdoor. Just give me a second. Jaw: Alright, Legs, here. I mean, we got one right here, I think this is good enough right here. (shiny noise) Legundo: Okay, that's-- 4c: I'm losing all my levels-- Jaw: Alright, let me know when, Legs, you pull the trigger.
Legundo: Well, this will be fun. Go for it. (4c shoots Legundo, lighting him on fire) Ow. Jaw: (softly, sadly) Goodbye 4c. 4c: That didn't do damage. Legundo: Happy birthday 4c. (shiny noise) Jaw: Did that to anything to you? 4c: No. That did nothing. Nom: Oh it's happening again. Legundo: You should probably take your armor off, dude. Nom: Oh, it's happening again. (shiny noise) Legundo: Okay, maybe take the armor off, dude. Nom: Or maybe go more than four blocks above his head. (shiny noise) Jaw: Yeah, here, toss it up to me, toss it up to me. Nom: (through laughter) Like. Are we so for real. Jaw: Or actually, let m--I'll come down, I'll grab it, hold on. 4c: I'm low health now. (goat horn noise) I should die here. (shiny noise) Jaw: Alright, toss it up. (Legundo tosses it up, it falls to the ground and Jaw drops down with it) Okay. Legundo: That didn't hurt, that didn't work. Jaw: Alright. (shiny noise) Why did it-why am I not picking it up-- Nom: This is… Jaw: Alright, there we go. 4c: The experiment. Will I be cured. (shiny noise) Jaw: It's the Atropos Machine all over again. Alright, here we go--(shiny noise) 4c: I wonder if milk solves it. Jaw: Alright 4c-- Legundo: Milk will not solve it, it's not a potion effect. (shiny noise, then two seconds of silence) Happy birthday 4c. Jaw: (like speaking through tears) You're such a good friend, 4c. (Nom places down a crafting table above 4c's head) 4c: Do I even look? (when the dripstone hits the crafting table, Legundo laughs, smacks Nom, as Nom begins laughing as well) Jaw: What??? Legundo: You absolute gremlin, you absolute gremlin. 4c: I saw-I didn't even have to see it. Legundo: You absolute gremlin. Jaw: Are you kidding me? (Nom continues laughing) Luckily, I have four left. 4c: Jaw-does Jaw even have dripstone left? Oh, yes. Jaw: Yeah, I have multiple. (He drops the dripstone on 4c again, who moves a block out of the way) I fricken hate you. (Legundo begins laughing) 4c: Jaw, why did you miss? Legundo: Jaw, how did you miss? (shiny noise) Jaw: Look, I'm sorry! It's hard to aim with drip-I'm not Fluxion, alright? C'mon. (he drops dripstone on 4c, who dies, and then the shiny noise plays) Yay! Oh, he's still shiny. Oh, he's still shiny. Legundo: Oh, you're still shiny. Nom: Ooooh. Jaw: (falls from his pillar) Owchie. 4c: (moans in pain) Legundo: Oh nooooo. Jaw: Oh he's cooked, oh he's actually cooked.
diary entry number 1: how did you and bakugo katsuki rekindle your yearn-ship.ᐣ ☽ ˚ . ⋆ table of contents next chapter
you and bakugo don’t start as soft. but honestly— nothing about ua ever really was.
back in class a, your paths crossed in the way explosions cross with air pressure: messy, loud, but somehow compatible. you were the one who always seemed to be in his blast radius during training, either because aizawa paired you together or because bakugo had this compulsive habit of measuring himself against people who refused to back down.
the first real shift happened after the all for one fight. the city was dust and sirens and the metallic taste of fear still sharp on your tongue. everyone was shaking when it was over, even if no one wanted to show it. you remember sitting on the hospital rooftop, legs swinging over the edge, watching the sky grow pale.
he shoved open the door, bandages wrapped around his hands and neck, stubbornly upright even though he was clearly exhausted.
“of course you’d be up here,” he’d grumbled, dropping down beside you with all the grace of a brick. “thought you might’ve floated off with all that damn air you throw around.”
you’d snorted, nudging his shoulder. “look who’s talking. you detonated an entire block and then argued with the doctors about needing more ‘fucking gauze.’”
he’d gone quiet after that. and then, with the same reckless courage he took into battle, he’d said, “you did good. you always do good.”
it became a rhythm after that. late night patrols with him at your side, arguments in the training yard that turned into strategy sessions, him dragging you to lunch and calling it “food, not a date, stop being weird.” he was too prickly to call it friendship out loud, but you watched him start saving you a seat, start looking for you in crowded rooms, start huffing when someone else partnered with you for sparring.
then graduation came.
everyone scattered like shrapnel across japan. internships, sidekicks, offers, agencies. you had the insane idea of turning down every “come be a sidekick” letter and building something from scratch in another city. your own agency, your own rules, your own battle plans. it felt right. it felt like what you were meant to do.
you still remember the way bakugo clicked his tongue when you told him.
“so you’re just gonna ditch us and go play boss lady somewhere else?”
“you say that like it’s a bad thing,” you’d teased. “and i’m not ditching you. i’ll just be… a train ride away.”
“yeah, well.” he’d shoved his hands in his pockets. “you better be worth that damn train fare. don’t half ass it.”
you didn’t. you whole assed it. jk. over the next few years you clawed your way up from unknown independent to pro hero number three. your name started getting called on national broadcasts. your agency’s logo started popping up on sponsor boards and disaster reports and charity drives.
your phone, somewhere in between all that, buzzed less.
at first it was scheduling conflicts. “sorry, patrol.” – “sorry, meeting.” – “sorry, i’m literally in another prefecture stopping a landslide.” the rain checks piled up, the check ins got farther apart, the calls shorter, the jokes less frequent. it wasn’t a fight. it was just life. busy, relentless, swallowing hours and days.
so when todoroki shoto sends you a message one afternoon that simply says:
hi friday we are having a dinner party celebration. here is the address
you stare at the address for a long time. it’s a rented private room at a nice restaurant, of course it is. he also attaches a terribly screenshotted photo of the group chat arguing over the cake flavor.
kaminari: CHOCOLATE. literally head to toe. jiro: she’ll kill you if it’s just chocolate sero: red velvet? mina: matcha strawberry swirl! she loved it when we had it! my girl knows ball bakugo: if you bring some dry ass cake i’m blowing you all to hell. sato: um ditto
you blink at a particular name.
bakugo is going to be there.
and so instead of declining, you say sure. why not. it’s not like you wanna see bakugo katsuki—your friends—
the restaurant is too warm, all dark wood and soft lighting and the low hum of other parties leaking through the walls. someone’s perfume catches in your throat. laughter rises from the main table where most of class a already sits. shoto is at the head, expression mild, eyes softer than they used to be, a faint contentment curling around his features while midoriya excitedly gestures beside him.
you slip into the room and immediately get swallowed by noise.
“holy crap, number three in the flesh.” kaminari throws an arm around your shoulders. “i told everyone i know you. nobody believed me. please please sign my chest.”
“denki, get off,” jiro mutters, tugging him back by his collar.
mina grabs your hands, spins you in a circle, squealing about your costume upgrades. kirishima hugs you so hard your chest complains. you do your rounds, grinning and breathless, answering a dozen questions about your agency.
you can feel one missing weight in the room. like a habit your body still has. your gaze scans automatically for ash blond hair and a scowl, but he isn’t here yet, and you find yourself pretending that neither the relief nor the disappointment matters.
eventually, between the champagne and shoto’s very literal speech about “appreciating statistical growth,” you excuse yourself for the bathroom.
the hallway outside the private room is quiet. dimmer. your shoes make noise on polished floor as you walk. in the mirror, under the softer lighting of the bathroom, you get a good look at yourself. more lines at the corners of your eyes. stronger shoulders. the faint, familiar tension that never leaves your jaw anymore.
you take a breath, press your fingers to your temples, adjust the fall of your clothes. “you’re fine,” you murmur to your reflection. “it’s just a class reunion with nicer food.”
you step back into the hallway, distracted, trying to fish your phone from your pocket when you round the corner.
you hit something solid.
no, not something. someone.
you make a soft “oof” as you run right into a broad chest. your balance tips. before you can eat floor, a hand snaps out and catches your elbow, another bracing at your waist. you feel the heat of palm through fabric, the reflexive strength in his grip.
“watch where you’re going, idiot.”
you know that voice before your brain even finishes processing the words.
you look up.
bakugo is staring down at you, eyes wide in that split second before he remembers how to wear his usual scowl. he looks different and exactly the same. hair still wild, still like he just walked out of a blast zone. jaw sharper, shoulders broader—like BROADDD. jacket sitting nice over a chest that has absolutely no business being that solid.
he smells faintly of smoke and cologne that costs more than your first apartment.
“katsuki…” you breathe, helplessly.
his fingers flex at your waist like he wasn’t expecting you to say his name like that. then, like a switch flipping, he clicks his tongue and lets go, hands darting back to his pockets.
“you nearly leveled me in a hallway,” he says. “still graceful as ever.”
“you walked into me.” you smooth your clothes out even though they don’t need it. “some things never change, huh?”
his lips twitch, just a little. “some things do.”
you stand there, half blocking the corridor, the sounds of the party muffled behind the door. you can feel the distance of years in the place where the air hangs between you. it feels stupid and weird and heavy, like you’re both stuck at 18 and 25 at the same time.
“heard you’ve been busy,” he says finally, like the words have rocks tied to them. “number three. a big shot. took you long enough.”
you huff a laugh, trying to move, but it gets tangled in your chest on the way out. “someone had to give you a decent rival ranking. you were getting bored being the only one in the top ten with a working brain cell.”
“ha?” he bristles on instinct. “what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“means you missed me,” you say, because if you don’t push him he will never say it himself.
his ears go pink. it’s faint, but you know what to look for. “who said that? don’t put words in my mouth.”
“fine.” you shrug, a little smile tugging at your lips. “i’ll put something else in it. like food, since apparently you’re very passionate about that.”
he gives you a look. “you’re still mouthy.”
“you’re still annoying,” you shoot back, softer this time.
the hallway quiet wraps around it.
he looks away first, gaze drifting past you for a heartbeat, like he’s making sure no one is watching. when he looks back, there’s a restless energy under his skin. the same kind he gets before a big fight. his hands come out of his pockets, then go back in, then out again like he can’t decide what to do with them.
“tch.” he exhales sharply, like he is annoyed with himself. “this is stupid.”
“wow,” you say lightly. “reunion going great so far.”
“shut up.” he hesitates, then jerks his chin down at you. “gimme your phone.”
you blink. “for what purpose?”
“i said shut up.” his hand is out now, palm open, fingers tapping once in impatience. “your phone. give it.”
curiosity wins. you pull it out and place it in his palm. his hand practically eats the thing, fingers curling around it with that careful, explosive strength you remember from training. he unlocks the screen with an ease that makes you freeze. (that was a bar i fear.)
“you know my code?”
“you’ve had the same stupid four numbers since we were sixteen,” he says, thumbs already moving. “you are terrifying on the battlefield and tragically shit in civilian life.”
“you remembered.” you say, still struck and it slips out before you can catch it.
his shoulders tense. he doesn’t look up from your phone. “didn’t forget,” he mutters. “there’s a difference.”
he taps his number in, saves a contact, then presses call. a muffled ringtone goes off inside his pocket. he ends the call, shoves your phone back into your hand, and if his fingers brush yours a second longer than necessary, you don’t comment on it.
“there.” he clears his throat. “that’s my new number. you never… you never texted the old one anyway. but it’s dead.”
“katsuki,” you say, staring at the new contact: GREAT EXPLOSION MUDER GOD DYNAMIGHT
you look up at him, eyebrow raised. “really?”
he bristles. “what, you got a problem with the name?”
“you put it in yourself.”
“of course i did, i don’t trust you to put some dumb shit like ‘explosion boy’. i have standards.”
“i was just gonna put your name as bakugo. it’s—”
“well you never know.” he rolls his eyes
you laugh softly, trying to swallow down the sudden warmth in your chest. “so. what, you’ve been lurking in hallways outside bathrooms just to put your number in girls’ phones now? this your new courting method, dynamight?”
he goes scarlet this time, the color blooming across his cheeks and up to the tips of his ears. he looks away, jaw flexing.
“i wasn’t lurking,” he grinds out. “i was… i saw you head out and…” he trails off, bites the inside of his cheek, then exhales like he is about to headbutt fate itself. “i wanted to talk to you before the nerds swarmed you again, alright?”
your heart does a weird, traitorous little lurch.
“so… you wanted my number…” you say, voice quiet, threading humor through it to keep it from shaking. “big deal.”
“yeah.” he meets your gaze head on now. his eyes are sharp as ever, bright and hot. “i did.”
you open your mouth to say something, anything, but your brain scrambles for once. all the clever comebacks scatter. you are acutely aware of how close you are to him, how the hallway feels suddenly too small, how the sound of your classmates talking and laughing from inside the room feels like it is happening in another world.
he watches your face like a tv. like art on the wall. his fingers drum once against his thigh.
“i’m not losing touch this time,” he mutters, almost to himself. “you’re not just disappearing to go build more shit without me knowing where you are.”
you swallow. “so what, you’re going to text me every day now, dynamight? get clingy on me?”
“i’m already behind,” he says bluntly, picking his phone out of his pocket. “so yeah. i’m gonna catch up.” he smashes the keyboard.
your phone buzzes in your hand. you glance down.
very obviously bakugo: oi. it’s me. don’t ghost. i’ll blow up your office.
you huff out a laugh that feels a little like breathing for the first time in a long while.
“threats already?” you tease. “...so nostalgic.”
“yeah, well.” he shifts his weight, then jerks his head toward the door where the others are. “come sit next to me when we go back in.”
you hum as you both fall into step and ignore him. he rolls his eyes, but there is a small, unmistakable smile tugging at the corner of his mouth now. he reaches past you to push the door open, warm palm brushing the small of your back as he does, the low roar of your old friends spilling into the hallway as light floods over the two of you.
you sit next to him. it’s like the years apart were just a really long lunch break and you both finally wandered back to homeroom.
the table shifts for you without anyone asking. mina scoots over, shoto glances up with the tiniest hint of a knowing look, midoriya brightens like someone turned the lights up a notch. katsuki pulls your chair in with his foot, casual, but his hand comes up behind you for a second, fingers brushing the back of your chair as you settle.
you are halfway through unfolding your napkin when it happens. mineta says something greasy and whiny, and you just smile and go, “mineta, i promise you, if i ever wake up and want the opinion of a man shaped like a bitch, you’ll be the first to know.”
the table goes silent for half a second, everyone caught mid drink, mid bite. then mina snorts. kaminari chokes on his water. even shoto’s shoulders twitch.
“what!” mineta sputters. “i was just—i mean. we all know she was not exactly approachable in school.”
“yeah,” jiro cuts in, brow arched. “because she was busy saving your life every time you got punted into a wall during training.”
“and she was nice to you!” kaminari adds helpfully. “which is more than you deserved if we’re being honest.”
“you tried to steal her hero costume once,” mina says, pointing a breadstick at him like a microphone. “you cried when she caught you.”
“i did not cry!” mineta protests.
kirishima leans forward, eyes shining. “bro. you farted and asked her not to tell us but we heard you anyways. then you grabbed her leg when she laughed at you. it was a lot.”
laughter spills over the table, big and warm and stupid. you find your shoulders loosening. katsuki beside you is quiet, but you can feel the faint heat rolling off him, that simmering annoyance that always shows up whenever someone disrespects you in a five mile radius.
you bump your knee against his under the table. it is like nudging a guard dog to let him know its fine.
“leave him,” you say lightly, picking up your drink. “he’s providing valuable comedic relief. unpaid, even. very generous of you, mineta.”
the class breaks again. even midoriya laughs, cheeks flushed, mumbling something about how you always had the best timing with your comebacks.
the conversation drifts, as it always does, into stories. one memory turning into three, turning into ten. someone drops the word “fireworks” and suddenly you are all seventeen again.
“remember when we snuck out that summer night,” mina says, eyes going dreamy. “the big fireworks festival. we were all grounded for some reason.”
“for breaking school rules, ” aizawa’s voice echoes in your collective trauma, even though he’s nowhere near the restaurant.
“oi. that was not all of us,” katsuki mutters. “some of us were just guilty by association.”
“so all of us then,” kaminari grins.
you cover your mouth as you laugh, remembering. the cramped dorm hallway, the whispered plans, the way you had used your quirk to gently shift the air pressure so the floorboards did not creak when you stepped. mina in borrowed sandals. tokoyami trying to act like he wasn’t excited about fireworks. katsuki grumbling the whole time and still coming.
“we almost got away with it too,” you say. “we made it like what, halfway down the hill?”
momo nods. “four hundred and thirty two meters from the front gate,” she says. “approximately.”
“of course you know the distance,”
kirishima is already cracking up, hands on his chest. “guys. your faces when aizawa’s scarf grabbed you. all in a row. like fish on a freakin’ line.”
you can feel it. the phantom tug around your torso, that dry voice cutting through the night. you thought i would not notice an entire class trying to escape the premises. what am i, stupid?
“we were literally a train,” mina wheezes. “aizawa express. you were at the front,” she points at you, “like the head car.”
“and you,” you point back at katsuki, eyes watering from laughter, “were at the very end trying to blast out of it and just spinning like a busted fireworks wheel.”
“shut up,” he growls, but his lips curl despite himself. “if you had just floated us, we would have been out of there.”
“first off i cannot float twenty freaking people in one go.” you correct
“and you really think i’d try to fight against mr. aizawa.” you shake your head. “absolutely not. that is how we die.”
“romantic,” jiro says dryly.
from there someone mentions third year, which can only mean one thing.
“ok, ok,” kaminari says, clapping his hands. “shiketsu prank. i think about that at least once a week.”
“of course you do,” tokoyami murmurs. “it was the only time you managed effective stealth.”
you lean your elbow on the table, grin stretching slow and dangerous. “we spent three months planning that.”
“you spent three months planning it,” katsuki corrects. “we all just followed orders.”
“teamwork,” you sing. “everyone had a role.”
third year. the peace treaty event with shiketsu high. official/faux lectures and boring diplomacy and this smug little undertone of rivalry the whole time.
you had gone to the administrators with a perfectly reasonable proposition about “joint morale exercises and harmless bonding.” they had signed off on it, blissfully unaware that your definition of harmless was flexible at best.
“i still cannot believe you got the principal to pay for it,” mina giggles.
“it was educational,” you protest. “we tested response time, spatial awareness, teamwork, and stress resilience.”
mineta shudders. “i still see it in my nightmares.”
the prank had been simple in theory, unhinged in execution. pressure pockets seeded throughout shiketsu’s dorm grounds. every time someone walked a certain path, stepped on a certain stone, opened a certain door, you released one.
confetti bombs. glitter bombs. fake dramatic smoke. little pressure pops that overturned harmless buckets of slime. their alarms going off all night with increasingly unhinged reports.
“the slime waterfall in the common room was overkill,” midoriya says, covering his mouth as he laughs. “inasa slipped.”
“character development,” you say. “he needed to get used to unpredictable terrain.”
“the best part was the message in the sky,” kirishima grins, pointing at you. “whole night, all of shiketsu looking up at their training field, giant glowing letters.”
jiro slaps the table. “what did it say again?”
you lean back in your chair, basking. “congratulations on your reoccuring 2nd place to my class. love, aizawa”
“and you signed aizawa’s name,” mina hiccups, wiping tears from her eyes.
“he yelled for twenty straight minutes,” you sigh fondly. “i have never felt so alive.”
the server drops more food. drinks clink. the story shifts again, someone bringing up the annual ua festival and then, inevitably, the pageant.
“speaking of glory days,” mina sing songs. “miss ua.”
you groan. “we are not doing this.”
“we are absolutely doing this,” kaminari counters. “2 years straight. even the general course had a meltdown.”
“you killed it,” kirishima beams. “first year, talent show with the pressure dance thing. second year, full hero costume catwalk. the crowd loved you.”
“she had fan signs,” sero adds. “actual printed banners, like a boy band concert.”
you blow on your drink so the ice swirls, trying to act unaffected. “i will admit my speech was pretty fire.”
shoto tilts his head. “you said, and i quote, ‘a true hero is not just capable of saving lives, but capable of holding them gently.’”
the table quiets for a second, a soft little silence settling. kirishima’s smile goes a bit misty.
“yeah,” he says. “that one.”
“that was the year bakugo lost his mind,” mina says very casually, which means she is about to cause problems. “remember?”
you blink. “what?”
kaminari perks up. “oh my god, yes. tell it. for shits ‘n gigs.”
you feel katsuki tense beside you. just a little. the kind of stillness that comes before a detonation.
“mina,” he warns, voice low. “no.”
she ignores him with the suicidally brave cheer of an old friend who knows he’s all bark at this range.
“so,” she launches in, leaning forward like a conspiratorial gremlin. “second year? third year? i’m not even sure anymore. miss ua results come in. she wins! we all go nuts, right? class a is freakin’ screaming. kirishima almost dislocates his shoulder trying to wave a banner. bakugo is at the front of the crowd, yelling about how of course she won, she is not an extra, everyone else is blind.”
you stare. “he said that?”
“oh, he said more,” sero grins. “but the best part was later.”
kirishima slaps the table like he couldn’t hold it in anymore. “dude. your dorm room.”
“shut it, shitty hair,” katsuki hisses, already red.
“he had your picture as his background for like, a month,” kirishima barrels on, delighted. “full lock screen. midoriya saw by accident and choked on air. i thought he was going to pass out.”
heat rushes up your neck so fast it makes you dizzy. you whip around to look at katsuki.
his face is on fire. not literally, but close. his ears are red, the bridge of his nose tinged pink. if you put a kettle on his head it would boil.
“you what—” you say, breathless.
“i am going to kill you,” katsuki tells kirishima, ignoring you entirely as tiny sparks crackle at his fingertips. “you are dead. fuckin’ dead.”
“oi, no quirks in the restaurant,” mina hisses, grabbing his wrist. “for the love of god, there is a chandelier. todoroki went all out!”
a few embers spit against his palm, heat shimmering in the air. the nearest water glasses tremble. midoriya’s eyes are bright and panicked in a very familiar way.
“kacchan,” he stage whispers. “kacchan, please, structural damage, collateral, think about the insurance.”
“you had. my picture. as your background?” you repeat, mind stuck, looping.
“it was from the pageant,” kirishima offers helpfully. “she was in the dress with the long train. remember. hair all done up. you took like twenty photos.”
“twenty six…” midoriya murmurs under his breath. then freezes when katsuki swivels on him.
“you want to die together, nerd?” katsuki snarls.
you reach out blindly and curl your fingers around his sleeve. the fabric is warm under your hand, his arm solid. he stops trying to explode things, mostly because his attention yanks to you like metal to a magnet.
“katsuki,” you say, and your voice comes out a little softer than you plan. “you never told me that.”
he clenches his jaw, eyes cutting away.
“wasn’t a big deal,” he mutters. “shitty phones needed something on the screen. your picture wasn’t ugly. that’s all.”
mina makes a high pitched noise that is one octave away from a shriek. jiro kicks her under the table.
your heart does a slow, stupid flip. you do not know what to do with it, so you default to teasing, like you always have.
“not ugly?” you repeat, biting back a smile. “wow. stop, you’re making me blush.”
“you already are,” he fires back before he can stop himself.
you blink.
he realizes what he has said about one second after you do. his eyes widen, then narrow, like he wants to physically catch the words and stuff them back into his mouth. sparks flare once in his palm, and he slams his hand flat on the table to smother them.
the whole group goes quiet for a heartbeat.
then kaminari screams into his napkin like an opera singer. mina just slides out of her chair and onto the floor, kicking her feet silently. kirishima looks like his soul has left his body from secondhand delight.
“oh my god,” jiro whispers. “we live in this timeline.”
you should say something snappy. something light. instead, you put your hand over his on the table.
his fingers twitch under yours.
“you were my background too, you know,” you say, not looking at him, eyes fixed on the candle in the center of the table. it flickers as if your heartbeat messed with the air.
midoriya gasps. mina shrieks forreal this time. shoto actually smiles with his teeth, small and pleased, like a cat that has finally watched two dumb birds figure out what mating is.
katsuki goes very, very still. you can almost hear the whirring in his head as he replays every interaction you ever had in school with this new information.
“you’re lying,” he says eventually, voice hoarse.
“class trip to the training camp,” you say softly. “that picture where you were yelling at the camera because kaminari called you ‘kacchan’ too many times. you had ash on your face. hair all over the place.”
“that was a terrible picture,” he mutters.
“i liked it,” you shrug. “looked like you.”
his hand turns under yours so your palms meet. his fingers curl, rough skin against yours, holding on. only a little.
around you, the conversation bubbles back up. the others dive into another story, someone pulling up old photos on their phone, aizawa’s scarf train captured in grainy lightning and flailing limbs. the hum of voices wraps around you both, the clatter of plates, the clink of glasses.
katsuki leans in, just enough that his shoulder brushes yours, his voice dropping so only you can hear.
“send me that picture,” he says.
“which one?” you murmur, somehow still breathing.
“the one you had. from the camp.” his eyes flick to your mouth, then back up. “if it was your background, i want it.”
you smile, slow and helpless.
“you asking for more pictures of yourself, dynamight?”
“no,” he says. “i’m asking for proof you were as obsessed with me as i was with you.”
your laugh gets stuck somewhere behind your teeth. you take a sip of your drink instead, trying to cool the heat in your face.
“fine,” you say. “i’ll send it tonight.”
“good.” his thumb strokes once along your knuckles. “and tomorrow. we are not waiting another five damn years to see each other again.”
you glance sideways at him. “oh. are we making plans now?”
“hell yeah we are,” he says. “you are not getting rid of me this time.”
you look at him for a long moment, the world at the table blurring into warm color and sound. katsuki, close enough that you can count his lashes, close enough that you can feel the quiet promise humming under his words.
“ok,” you say finally, soft.
your phones vibrate almost at the same time. mina has sent a flurry of old ua photos into the group chat. one of them pops up on your screen. a younger you in a dress and crown, glitter on your shoulders. and just behind you, slightly out of focus, katsuki, in the crowd, yelling louder than anyone else, eyes on you like there is no one else in the frame.
you glance at his phone. it’s the same photo. his thumb hovers over it, jaw tight
you save it anyway.
the night spills out into the street in pieces. laughter first, then chairs scraping, then bodies squeezing through the restaurant doorway in a loose, messy stream. someone is arguing about the bill, mina is trying to take a group selfie and only getting half of people’s faces
you stand up with the others, shrugging into your coat. by the time you turn around, katsuki is already there, like your orbit snapped him into place.
“come on,” he mutters, like you’re already in the middle of a conversation, not at the end of dinner with a billion sets of eyes on you. “i’ll walk you out.”
you blink. “oh. ok.”
it’s automatic, the way you fall in beside him. shoulder to shoulder. his hand brushes the small of your back as you pass one of the servers. completely casual. completely not casual. every nerve in your spine notices.
you file out with everyone else, the private room door swinging shut behind you. the hallway blurs, the restaurant foyer, the clatter of cutlery and distant chatter. the air outside is cooler than you expect when you push through the front doors. city lights, the low hum of traffic, the smell of street food clinging faint in the distance.
katsuki sticks to your side like gravity. like the rest of the world is background noise and you are the only fixed point on the map.
your classmates spill onto the sidewalk, grouping up in familiar clusters. mina and jiro are already planning an afterparty, tokoyami is pretending not to listen. shoto is politely taking a call from his sister, midoriya is half talking to ochaco and iida, half tripping over the curb.
“ok,” kaminari says, clapping his hands together. “alright, bakugo, uber time, but free, cause we’re best bros.”
you hear it in stereo. kaminari, kirishima, midoriya.
“oi, bakugo.”
.
“bro, you’re our ride.”
.
“kacchan, the parking lot closes at midnight, we need to go get the car, remember…”
you glance back automatically.
but bakugo doesn’t. he’s busy reaching for your elbow, guiding you gently around a puddle in the pavement. his head is angled down, mouth moving as he grumbles about how your agency’s neighborhood has terrible street lighting and if they don’t fix it he is going to send a curse ridden email. or a grenade if he was feeling kind.
he doesn’t even know where your agency is located at. that’s how you know he’s full of shit and fueled by his high school crush
his hand finds yours without even looking…?!
your fingers slot together, palm to palm, warm and solid. his thumb drags an absent line over your knuckles as he talks. he doesn’t even seem aware he’s doing it.
“bakugo!” kaminari yells, louder this time.
“katsuki, bro—” kirishima adds, scandalized. “our ride.”
midoriya is hovering by the curb, phone in hand, eyes ping ponging between the parking garage and you two like he’s watching a nature documentary
“kacchan, your car is over here…”
you squeeze katsuki’s hand.
“they’re calling you,” you say, amused.
“they can wait,” he fires back, not missing a beat. “they’ve got two feet. two legs. aizawa has one.”
you snort. “oh come on now, that was uncalled for. he’s not even here to defend himself. and plus he has a prosthe—”
“mmh, semantics.” bakugo cuts you off,
you make it halfway down the block before reality finally tackles him.
“wait,” midoriya whispers dramatically behind you, the sound carrying on the cool air. “is he… walking her to her car first…?”
that’s all it takes.
the noise that erupts from your friends is ridiculous. there are actual hoots. hollers, even. mina lets out a shrill “oooooooohh ok husband” that echoes between the buildings. kaminari starts slow clapping. someone wolf whistles, you’re pretty sure it’s sero. kirishima laughs so hard he has to bend over, hands on his knees.
“no way,” kaminari crows. “this man ditched his own car. new car— mind you.”
“whipped,” jiro announces, wiping her ears away. “immediately. one dinner.”
“i give it three days before he’s carrying her bag and proposing to her,” mina adds, delighted.
katsuki jerks around.
you feel his hand jolt in yours, fingers tightening like he’s bracing for impact. his shoulders snap up, muscles under his shirt pulling taut. his jaw clenches.
“oh. my. god,” he mutters, low and vicious. “shut up. all of you.”
“but i didn’t even say—”
“todoroki.”
he hasn’t let go of you.
you can see it happen in real time, the realization hitting him. the way his eyes flick down to your joined hands, then up to the peanut gallery behind you, then away like he’s trying not to explode the entire block out of sheer embarrassed rage.
kaminari hollers. “look at him! look at him! he’s gone, he is finished.”
“bakugo, the heel turn into devoted boyfriend is crazy,” sero cackles. “five years no contact and now he is like ‘sorry guys, gotta walk my girl to her car like a gentlemen.’”
kirishima straightens enough to throw an arm around midoriya’s shoulders, wheezing. “he is so gone, dude. i respect it.”
you would feel bad for katsuki if you weren’t having so much fun.
his cheeks are a deep, furious color. a few sparks flicker harmlessly against his palm, heat licking between your fingers. you squeeze tighter, steady, and the sparks die down.
“ignore them,” you murmur.
he clicks his tongue, eyes still darting everywhere except your face. “hard to do that when they’re screaming in my ear.”
“they have always screamed in your ear,” you remind him. “and you have always ignored them when you actually wanted something.”
and right now, you can feel exactly what he wants. the way his hand is holding on, even as his pride is having a meltdown in the middle of the sidewalk.
you lean closer, shoulder bumping his. your voice drops, just for him.
“it’s sweet, you know. you walking me to my car.”
his eyes finally snap to yours. you watch his bravado falter for a heartbeat, something softer bleeding through.
“yeah, well,” he mutters. “someone’s gotta make sure you don’t get jumped by a stray fan or some shit.”
“oh, is that what this is?” you tease. “security detail?”
“shut up,” he says again, but it has lost all its bite. “if i wanted to be smooth about it, i wouldn’t be doing it in front of these extras.”
behind you, mina cups her hands around her mouth. “sorry, what was that, bakugo? couldn’t hear you over the sound of you being in loooove.”
you almost choke.
bakugo whips around so fast the air stirs.
“you wanna get blasted, pinky?” he hollers, all dignity gone. “keep talking.”
“public romance arc, for the mighty dynamight” kaminari sings. “i am witnessing history.”
“look,” kirishima calls out, pointing blatantly at your hands. “he’s not even letting go.”
you laugh, the sound bubbling out of you helpless and bright. your fingers tighten around katsuki’s, deliberately now.
“they’re going to do this all night,” you say. “you know that, right?”
“they can choke,” he mutters.
“but,” you add, tipping your head so he catches your smile, “i’ll call you when i get home.”
he stops walking. just for a second.
the noise from the others blurs, softens. the streetlight overhead paints everything in a hazy gold. “you better,” he says quietly.
the embarrassment seems to bleed out of him all at once, like you pulled the pin and let it vent. his shoulders loosen, the line of his mouth easing back from a scowl into something closer to a smirk. the hooting behind you becomes background static again.
“see,” you murmur. “not so bad.”
“tch, ” he rolls his eyes, but there’s the hint of a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth now. “they can scream all they want. if you’re calling, they can sit their asses on the curb and wait.”
“wow,” you say. “claiming your schedule, i see.”
“damn right.” he shrugs, looking away like it is obvious. “you said you’d call. that’s my priority.”
your car comes into view in the side lot, sitting under a dim lamp. the night is a little quieter here, the noise from the restaurant fading. you can still hear mina faintly in the distance, doing color commentary, but it feels far away.
you stop by the driver’s side, turning to face him fully. you are still holding hands. neither of you seems in any rush to change that.
“thank you for walking me,” you say.
“basic manners,” katsuki replies. his eyes are on you though, and they are warm, a little too intense, like he is trying to remember this, exactly how you look with the city light catching on your face.
you lift your joined hands, give his a small, soft squeeze. something like a promise, something like see you later instead of goodbye.
“i’ll text when i’m home,” you repeat.
“call,” he corrects. “i wanna hear your voice.”
you feel heat crawl up your neck.
“oh,” you say, trying to play it cool and probably failing. “soo demanding.”
“yeah.” he leans in just a fraction, enough that his breath fans across your cheek. “you got a problem with that?”
you don’t. not even a little.
you unlock your car and the headlights blink, soft. he finally lets your hand go, fingers trailing from yours like he’s reluctant to lose the contact, like it’s an ending.
katsuki glances over his shoulder, middle finger twitching like it is begging to be used, then looks back at you instead, jaw set, eyes steady.
“drive safe,” he says.
“text me if your fan club gives you too much shit,” you shoot back.
“they will,” he snorts. “but it’s fine. i got something better to do.”
you arch a brow. “oh yeah. what’s that?”
he smirks, slow, a little crooked.
“waiting on your call.”
next chapter: firsts! first kiss, first date, first proposal!?
likes reblogs & comments appreciated! lmk if you want to be on the taglist!
JEJU HEAT: Chapter 23
ACT VI: Ashes And Embers
Ditto
Chaos in laughter, comfort in closeness. A perfect night warmed by love without names.
word count: ~11k Characters: aespa, ITZY, LE SSERAFIM Yunjin
Intro | Masterlist | Series Index | Read on Fanprose Previous Chapter | Interlude (Chapter 23.5) | Next Chapter
[DAY 3 - AEWOL BEACH RESORT, JEJU ISLAND] [KARINA’S POV]
Can a night get more perfect than one surrounded by everyone you need?
A week ago, Karina would’ve rolled her eyes at that line. But leaning back onto her palms in the cold sand, shielded by the black lava rock, she caught herself believing it anyway.
Seoul never actually got dark like this; it just gave up and went grey. But out here, past the resort, where the black lava rock dropped off into the ocean, the darkness wiped the horizon clean. Overhead, the Milky Way painted a violent smear of white across pitch black. For once, something actually looked better in reality than it had on the curated Instagram accounts Karina had exhaustively scrolled through when booking the trip, looking less like a postcard and more like a direct act of God.
Yesterday morning, when Yeji jumped into her DMs with paragraphs about Chaeryeong’s desperate need for an American beach fire and Lia’s promise of zero light pollution, Karina had read the texts flat on her back. Mostly because her body was still thoroughly wrecked from what Yeji and Minho had done to her the night before. She’d been too busy tracing a ring of faint, finger-shaped bruises on her left breast to care about roasting marshmallows.
But sitting in the sand now, freezing in the coastal wind while the Pacific crashed somewhere in the dark, she had to admit Lia was, in fact, totally right. The stars kept multiplying every time Karina looked up, white and shameless over the water, and her neck started to ache before she made herself look away. Annoyingly, inconveniently, she wanted to pray about it.
By the time the sun fully dropped behind the water, ITZY had essentially relocated their Seoul dormitory and dropped it directly onto the beach. They’d claimed their patch of sand long enough for their belongings to scatter into that comfortable chaos they somehow lived in every day without falling apart. On the sand sat a cracked-open cooler bleeding condensation onto a discarded million-won hoodie, half-kicked-off slides sinking near the driftwood, and Lia’s phone tripod jammed into the dirt to record the impending disaster unfolding by the unlit fire.
Karina watched as her own members wasted no time getting comfortable.
Over on the main blanket, Winter had already fished out the honey butter chips meant for later and declared them chips for right now, hugging the bag to her chest while Ningning and Giselle successfully stole bites anytime Winter looked away. Winter had her knees tucked up inside a Doraemon blanket and her cheeks puffed full of chips, chewing with solemn focus. With Winter, snacks always demanded discipline and respect.
Yeji sat off to the side with one knee drawn up to her chin, silently watching Minho fail, while Yuna tucked her legs under herself and accepted a chip from Ningning, holding it suspended in the air for a long time before finally taking a bite.
Karina glanced over and watched as the boys struggled with fond cynicism. Delegating the fire to them had been an unspoken group consensus, the sort of primitive task men were supposed to handle when they weren’t busy being horny and useless. Although right now, they were just being useless.
Out by the driftwood, Sunwoo was trapped in a miserable loop of polite intervention. He kept taking an eager half-step forward with his mouth open to help, then immediately second-guessing himself and shoving his hands violently back into his pockets out of sheer politeness. It was agonizing to watch.
Down in the sand, Minho crouched beside a questionable pyramid of sticks, repeatedly striking a lighter into the sea breeze while Minjun nodded along as if the effort looked promising.
“You look like a sad YouTuber,” Giselle called from the blanket, clutching a bottle of soju. “Like ‘Man survives one day without wifi’.”
“It’s called airflow,” Minho said, shielding the tiny spark with his palm.
“More like arson cosplay,” Lia chimed in, tapping her screen to take a video.
Minjun nudged a stick with his toe. “No, because if we just -”
“Not like that,” Sunwoo finally interjected.
Ningning popped up on her knees, chewing a stolen honey butter chip. “Wait, I know this! You put the tiny ones under the big ones.”
Winter, still bundled in the blanket, lifted one hand like a student answering in class. “Maybe the small sticks are babies. They need protection.”
Giselle stared at her. “Minjeong-ya, we’re burning them.”
Winter’s face folded into immediate distress. “Unnie, then why did you call it kindling? That sounds gentle.”
Ningning patted the top of her head while still observing Minho’s collapsing stick pyramid with unfettered amusement. “Don’t worry, unnie. They’re brave babies.”
“Oh.” Winter accepted this at once and shoved another chip into her mouth.
When Minho brought the lighter too close to his thumb again, Yeji inhaled sharply enough to be heard over the surf. She folded her arms immediately, squaring her jaw, and Karina watched the tension lock into Yeji’s shoulders.
Giselle sighed loudly over the rim of her cup. “Dude, just use lighter fluid. You’re not winning any prizes for doing things the hard way.”
“I know how to do it naturally.” Minho adjusted the smallest sticks with two careful fingers.
“Dude,” Giselle scoffed, staring at him. “The natural part is fucking failing right now.”
He clicked the lighter again, caught empty air, clicked it once more, and singed his knuckle with a sharp hiss, shaking his hand out fast.
Before he could try again, Sunwoo stepped in, nudged two bits of driftwood apart, crouched, and lit one twist of paper. The kindling finally caught and sent a bright flame crawling up through the center of the pile.
As the wood popped and caught, Chaeryeong clapped loudly, then tucked both hands under her chin in a tiny victory pose.
“See? This is why I brought him,” she beamed, claiming total victory for a fire she hadn’t touched. “You’re all very welcome.”
Sunwoo gave her an appreciative glance across the rising heat.
Chaeryeong smiled sweetly, ambled over, and snuggled into his side. “You looked cold doing all that.”
Orange light spilled across the blankets, catching Winter’s cheek when she turned to ask Ningning for her charger, and flashing off Lia’s rings as she lowered her phone. Karina sat back on her hands, digging her fingers into the cool sand, letting the fire warm her knees.
***
Phone flashlights swept the beach path, throwing long, distorted shadows down the sand dunes before Ryujin’s voice even reached them.
“I told you, this is the right one. Why would I kidnap you to the wrong fire?”
“Bro, what the fuck are you being so mysterious for then?!” Another voice cut loudly over the crashing surf. “You literally dragged me past three empty beaches!”
LE SSERAFIM’s Yunjin emerged from the dark path wearing an oversized flannel peeling off a tight brown crop top and black denim cutoffs so frayed they put the ‘short’ in shorts. Karina watched her from the sand, her aesthetic eye taking in the unapologetic power of Yunjin’s build. Legs for days, thighs with actual power to them, and good bones under all that muscle, the whole package looking like it had told standard idol thinness to fuck off the New York way. She’d always enjoyed casually swatting Winter’s ass onstage, but this was on another planet.
While the rest of the circle clutched maekju and soju bottles, or in Winter’s case - juice boxes, Yunjin bounced on the balls of her feet, carelessly swinging a massive iced americano. Stopping right where the firelight thinned out, she took in the sprawled blankets, the half-buried coolers, the dark stretch of ocean beyond, and finally lifted her cup in approval.
“Damn, okay.” Yunjin laughed. “Fuck. This is kinda cute.”
Ryujin ambled in right behind her wearing a sleeveless hoodie over torn denim shorts and sandals, both hands shoved in her pockets like she owned the fucking place. She’d clearly forgotten to turn off her phone’s flashlight, leaving one side of her hoodie glowing a bright, oblivious white from the inside out. Seeing her, Karina let out a slow, quiet breath into the sea breeze.
“JENNIFER!”
Ningning kicked her blanket off in a flurry of limbs. Chaeryeong shrieked loudly enough to make Minho flinch, nearly flinging her drink into the sand as both hands flew up.
“Wait, is that - “ Yuna scrambled up, dropping her phone in the sand.
Giselle raised her bottle. “Oh my gosh. Jennifer Huh.”
Yunjin swung her iced americano back in a lazy, sarcastic toast. “Aeri Uchinaga. Still drinking on a Tuesday.”
“It’s a vacation Tuesday, so technically it doesn’t -”
Giselle didn’t even get to finish her retort before Yunjin’s attention snapped past the firelight, her face breaking into a delighted beam as she spotted Ningning and Winter. “MY DORMIES!”
Ningning scrambled past the snacks, grabbing Winter by the hood to drag her into the fray.
“Wait, no -,” Winter protested, refusing to pull her hands out of the chip bag. She got crushed into the three-way hug anyway, letting out a startled, high-pitched yelp before abandoning the chip bag and squeezing Yunjin back tightly.
Yunjin practically bounced on her heels, managing to keep her massive iced americano perfectly level with impressive wrist control. She pulled back just far enough to grab Winter by both shoulders. “MINJEONG, YOU GOT HOT! THE WORLD IS YOUR OYSTER, BESTIE,” she screamed, loud enough that Winter’s bangs literally blew back from the force of it.
“You got louder,” Winter gasped, blinking rapidly.
“Y’all are gorgeous, I’m tight,” Yunjin was cracking with sudden sentimentality. “I missed you guys so much!”
Yeji stayed seated, resting her chin on her knee, staring at the three-way hug. “Where are your members, Yunjin? You didn’t leave them unattended near open water, did you?”
Yunjin straightened so fast her iced americano sloshed against the lid. “Bro, don’t even. They’re dead to me. Deadass. They’re at that samgyupsal place down in Seogwipo.”
“That place is so good.” Winter nodded earnestly from inside the throng of overexcited female energy.
“Told you to go.” Ningning stole another chip.
“I sent you the Naver pin,” Giselle called over the fire.
“Okay, I GET IT.” Yunjin locked her fingers around her plastic cup. “I got spammed by the three of you about pork belly, alright?! But I’m literally on my vegetarian comeback-prep bullshit right now! Chewing on leaves! Surviving on water and vibes!”
Yeji spoke from across the fire. “Right, isn’t your comeback at the end of the month?”
“Literally the thirtieth! This is our pre-release getaway, and shit’s CRAZY right now. Actually crazy.” Yunjin rattled the ice in her cup hard enough to underline every word. “Anyway, I had to bounce because they went feral in the restaurant while I had to breathe fumes.”
“Tragic,” Ryujin muttered, dropping onto the sand beside Lia.
“Feral,” Yunjin repeated, gesturing wildly with her free hand. “Chaewon-unnie defected from leadership the moment she got off the plane. She thinks she’s five again or some shit. Giggling and making the staff take four hundred photos of her by the ocean all fucking day -”
Yuna lifted her head from the blanket, her voice devoid of its usual bounce. “Wait. Yunjin-unnie... did you seriously just, like, abandon Eunchae? Why would you do that to me?”
“Zuha has her,” Yunjin clarified, taking a massive, rattling drag of her iced americano. “Actually, knowing Zuha, Manchae’s probably drowning in a koi pond right now while Zuha maintains unbroken eye contact with some local gym bro’s biceps at the next table.”
Lia blinked slowly across the fire, taking an impossibly tiny sip of her drink. “So you did abandon them and decided to follow Ryujin into the dark instead. Valid choice.”
“Ryujin straight-up kidnapped me! We literally just landed! I’m trying to live, yo!” Yunjin threw her free hand in the air, spinning to address the circle. “Wait, how long have you guys been here? What did I miss?”
Yuna crossed her arms and collapsed back onto her blanket, sounding instantly miserable. “Literally everything. Like, you actually missed BLACKPINK at the pop-up concert. Just like me. Which is fine! I’m completely fine! My life is just a tragedy, it’s totally fine.”
“Wait, BLACKPINK was here?!” Yunjin exclaimed, ignoring her woes. “You deadass?!?”
Karina hugged her knees, laughing at the sheer volume of the intrusion. “Yeah, a few nights ago. We’ve been here almost four days. Leaving tomorrow morning.”
“We’ve got three more,” Yeji added, evidently unbothered by all the screaming.
“No way, you guys are leaving?” Yunjin stared at Karina, then whipped around to glare at Giselle. “Are you kidding? I just got here!”
Before Yunjin could demand answers, Ningning grabbed her by the wrist. “Unnie, come here. No, here. Sit here. Wait, why are you drinking coffee?”
“At night,” Lia pointed out, looking directly at the iced cup. “On a beach.”
“Yeah, and?” Yunjin challenged. “Digestion is a sacred process, okay? Some of us didn’t eat the meat and need energy! Gotta keep the fire in the belly going, you know!”
“You texted me at 2 AM asking if the resort had room service bagels.” Giselle watched her over the fire.
Yunjin whipped around, clutching her americano to her chest. “See? This is what I mean. Aggressively West Coast. Smug on contact.”
Giselle smirked. “And you came in shouting. So New York of you.”
“I AM from New York! You went to an international school in Tokyo! You’re the opposite of a California girl, Aeri!”
Ningning looked back and forth between them, utterly delighted by the chaos. Winter leaned close to her, tugging on the hem of Ningning’s sundress twice in a tiny, urgent rhythm, her brow furrowing in concern.
“Are they fighting?”
“No,” Ningning corrected, patting Winter’s knee with solemn authority. “They’re bonding.”
***
Yunjin dropped onto the edge of the blanket, while Ryujin landed beside her with a quiet thud, and within seconds they’d taken over the group dynamic. Yunjin loudly interrogated everybody about their drink choices, yelled at Sunwoo for laughing at her coffee, demanded to know who failed to start the fire, and claimed immediate territory over the disputed honey butter chips. She reached across the blanket to steal one, pausing just as her hand hovered over the bag, her eyes dropping immediately to the movement beside it.
Minho had just blindly passed Yeji a fresh can of Pepsi - one of the new IVE Summer Festa promos with Wonyoung’s face dominating the aluminum. Yeji took it silently, cracked it open with her thumb, tipped it against her knee, and kept listening to whatever Chaeryeong was saying.
Yunjin’s hand froze over the chips. She pulled it back, squinting at Minho over the rim of her iced americano.
“Wait,” Yunjin said, squinting aggressively through the firelight. “Who the fuck are you?”
Minho just blinked at the plastic cup aimed at his nose. “I’m Minho. Yunjin, right?”
“Yeah, but why do I know your face?” She kept squinting at him, the ice rattling as she studied him. “You look SO familiar. Are you staff?”
“I helped run the boards when you tracked Fearless,” Minho answered, giving her a polite little nod.
Yunjin’s eyes went wide. “Oh shit! Studio monitor guy! Yeah!” Yunjin brightened on the spot, then squinted harder like that only made the situation worse. “Wait. So what are you doing on a dark beach with ITZY?”
“He’s a friend,” Yeji answered, fast enough to trip over the words.
Minho let out a slow, visible exhale. “I’m Yeji’s friend.”
“From when we were trainees,” Yeji added, layering on a desperate, aggressive casualness that only made it worse.
Sitting in the sand, Karina closed her eyes. Slowly, with profound spiritual exhaustion, she tilted her head back and made direct, metaphorical eye contact with God.
When she finally brought her gaze back down to earth, Ryujin was staring at the sky like she’d found enlightenment, Chaeryeong had both hands pressed to her temples, and Giselle was taking the slowest drink Karina had ever witnessed. Around the blanket, the same verdict passed from face to face: terrible lie.
Yunjin’s hand froze over the chips. The americano dropped to her lap, forgotten for one precarious second. “Wait. Wait, wait.”
She looked at Ryujin, then at Yeji and Minho, then back to the group, dropping into a conspiratorial whisper that cleanly overpowered the Pacific Ocean. “Are they together?”
The only sound was the snapping wood. Yeji blinked, Minho stared at the sand, and Karina wondered if anyone else was praying for divine intervention or just her.
Chaeryeong scrambled onto her knees so fast the blanket hitched under half the circle. “THANK you! Finally. Okay, because if you watch the way he hands her things, it’s very - I mean, SO not casual. And yesterday morning he rescued her eggs, which unfortunately you weren’t there for, which sounds normal until you understand she was in his shirt, glued to his arm, and then at breakfast her hand kept ending up in places that were very much not friend-coded -”
“Chaeryeong,” Sunwoo interrupted mildly.
“- and there’s a look he does when she’s ignoring him which is textbook drama male lead, except he’s also carrying coolers and fixing drinks which means he’s already full-blown husband-coded -”
“Baby.”
“I have NOTES! Wait, baby, give me my PHONE -”
Chaeryeong stopped mid-reach. She lowered her hands and turned to look at the one person on the blanket who wasn’t looking at her.
“Wait!” Chaeryeong tucked one hand against her mouth. “Ryujin-unnie -”
Ryujin slouched further back on her elbows and stared at the flames. “Nope.”
“Nope?” Chaeryeong echoed.
“No trial by bonfire.” Ryujin crushed an empty chip bag into a tight ball and tossed it toward the cooler. “If Yeji wants to be weird about her trainee friend with nice forearms, she can be weird in peace.”
“I’m not being weird,” Yeji said instantly.
Ryujin let her head tip sideways. “You introduced him like a hostage statement.”
Yeji’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
“Yeddeong,” Ryujin muttered, turning back to the fire. “Fix your face.”
Yeji stared at her for too long, then looked down at her Pepsi.
Chaeryeong froze.
Yesterday morning, Ryujin had seen Yeji holding onto Minho-oppa in the kitchen and walked out before anyone finished breakfast. Clean plate, dishes dumped in the sink, posture stiff enough to instantly launch a side plot in Chaeryeong’s head.
Then that massive living room fight later that night never actually made sense anyway. Ryujin had tried to make Yeji rate Minho like some cheap hookup the way they always used to, called him a golden retriever, and pushed until Yeji pulled rank just to shut it down. Then she had lost her mind over it, backing Yeji into a corner to force her to admit he was her boyfriend. But Chaeryeong knew Ryujin didn’t even do boyfriends. She hadn’t been jealous over the guy. She seemed more devastated that Yeji refused to play their old game anymore.
There was a massive hole in the plot. Whoever wrote their scripts was taking the whole ‘show, not tell’ thing a little TOO far. Because right now, Chaeryeong could really use a lot of telling.
Instead, Yeji was sitting in the firelight with that same soft mouth, and Ryujin just... stayed.
Chaeryeong sank back onto the blanket and blinked. “I missed an episode.”
Yunjin dragged her iced americano closer to her chest like she needed it for protection. “Girl, I missed the whole season.”
Ningning let out a scandalised shriek, and Winter made a soft ‘ohhhhh‘ of comprehension despite grasping almost none of the actual context. The noise bounced around the circle, everyone talking over each other. In the blur, Karina caught Yuna laughing. The sound hit a note too sharp. Her mouth was thrown wide, but her eyes were already darting away before anyone could meet them.
Through the chaos, Yeji finally looked away from the fire. She shifted her gaze down the sand to find Minho. He was already watching her. He let out a slow, visible exhale, his shoulders dropping in resignation.
Ningning chose that moment to poke the fire with a driftwood twig. The end caught at once, flaring violently. She pulled it out and held the tiny torch up in triumph.
“See? You just have to be aggressive with it.”
“You’re waving it too close to the chips!” Winter shrieked, hugging the bag tight against her chest. “If the chips burn, we’ve got nothing!”
“The chips are safe, unnie, calm down.” Ningning never shied away from any opportunity to be a menace.
The circle shifted after that, the group relaxing their postures as drinks changed hands and people readjusted their spots. Someone mentioned their flight time for tomorrow, prompting Giselle to groan loudly into the sleeve of her sweater. Winter asked the group for the fourth time where her charger had gone, openly accusing the beach itself of theft. Over by the driftwood, Sunwoo and Minjun fell into an easy, low-voiced conversation with Minho. Chaeryeong successfully stole Sunwoo’s sleeve again, pulling it over her knees, while Lia leaned back to snap a photo of Winter digging for a snack right as Yeji lunged across the blanket to rescue a tipping beer can.
***
Karina watched Yuna from across the fire.
ITZY's maknae sat bracketed by Ningning and Giselle, staring straight through the flames. She had drowned herself in an oversized hoodie pulled past her hips, the sleeves bunched tight over her knuckles, gray sweatpants swallowing the legs she usually treated like a public service. Yuna lived in crop tops, bikini bottoms, and whatever gave her legs the most mileage. Tonight she was a ghost in thick cotton.
Her phone lay blank in the sand. Every few minutes, she picked it up, stared at the black reflection, and dropped it back into the dirt like it’d been poisoned. Between checks, she tipped soju into her mouth in sharp, impatient sips, forcing the liquid down her throat like she was trying to erase the taste of something else.
Karina pushed up from her blanket and crossed to Yeji. “Your maknae’s unusually quiet,” she said, dropping down beside her friend.
“Yeah.” Yeji tracked Karina’s gaze. “She’s been off since yesterday. Told me she had a beach hookup while we were out the day before, and that it went bad.” Yeji dragged a thumbnail along the rim of her Pepsi can. Condensation wept down the aluminum, running straight through Jang Wonyoung’s printed summer-festa smile. “She shut down when I asked for details, but I saw the bruise on her chest. Right here.” Yeji tapped high on her own breast. “A dark one. She tried to hide it from me. I think whoever she brought back hurt her, and she’s too embarrassed to admit it.”
Karina watched Yuna force a wide, loud smile at whatever Ningning was saying. The muscles around her mouth worked hard, but her face sank right back into a flat stare the second Ningning looked away.
“You want me to talk to her?” Karina offered.
Yeji exhaled, her shoulders sinking. “Would you? I tried again this morning, and she just ran away. Better if it comes from someone else.”
Karina stood and navigated the minefield of blankets and kicked-off sandals, before stopping at Yuna’s shoulder. The girl was dissecting the label on her soju bottle, peeling the paper back in thin, violent strips.
Karina folded her legs and sat, pressing her shoulder against Yuna’s. The ocean wind whipped sand over their shoes. Yuna stiffened. Her thumbnail locked against a scrap of paper.
“Unnie,” Yuna chirped, pitching her voice high and loud. “What’s up?”
A massive, practiced smile snapped onto her face. It looked like hard work.
Karina let out a slow breath, slumping her shoulders to tip her head sideways and drop her cheek heavy against Yuna’s shoulder. Yuna’s breath hitched at the sudden contact, but Karina just stayed there, pressing in until the muscles holding up Yuna’s fake smile started to shake, twitching at the corners before her whole face dropped.
Yuna’s hands dropped back to the bottle, shredding the remaining label into a pile of green confetti.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to perform for me,” Karina murmured into her sleeve.
Yuna’s jaw clicked shut. She stared at the scraped glass of her bottle, her thumb pinned against the sticky glue residue.
“I’m fine, really,” Yuna said.
Karina leaned sideways, sealing the gap between their arms. Behind them, Giselle shrieked over whatever Yunjin had just claimed. The fire popped, throwing hot sap onto the sand.
Yuna dragged in a hitched, uneven breath. She bit the inside of her cheek until the skin went white. Her spine bowed inward, collapsing her tall frame, and she dropped the glass bottle into the dirt.
“I’m not -” Yuna whispered. “I’m not fine.”
Karina shifted deeper into the sand, letting her arm stay heavy against Yuna’s to block the wind.
“Keep the reason,” Karina said. “Just sit here with me.”
Yuna blinked. Thick, glassy wetness gathered along her lower lashes. She swallowed a hard knot in her throat and snapped her gaze back to the wood smoke.
“Does it get easier?” Yuna asked, the words scraping her throat. “Feeling like you... totally wrecked everything?”
Karina watched the orange sparks spiral upward into the black. “Eventually. Once you admit you’re the one who actually got cut on the glass.”
Yuna took that in with a slow nod. She pulled her knees to her chest, caging her sweatpant-covered shins with both arms, and dropped her forehead onto the soft cotton over her knees. Karina kept her shoulder pressed into Yuna’s arm while the fire burned down. They stayed side by side in the dirt, letting Yunjin’s screaming and the crashing surf handle the noise.
***
“I’ve made a decision,” Chaeryeong announced, dropping Sunwoo’s sleeve and projecting clearly over the crashing surf. “I need an actual s’more. Properly roasted.”
“Seconded!” Ningning agreed immediately from across the fire.
Winter froze, her hand buried deep in the massive canvas snack tote sitting by her knees. Her eyes went round above her puffed cheeks. She peered down into its depths and started digging, both hands tossing a box of Pepero and a stray pack of gummies onto the sand in a frantic scramble.
She stopped. She looked up at Karina, blinking sheepishly.
“Ummm. Unnie -”
Everyone looked over.
Winter pulled a crumpled, completely empty plastic bag out of the tote and held it up by the corner.
“There’s no more marshmallows...”
“How many did she eat?” Giselle asked, already knowing the answer.
“It’s not my fault,” Winter protested, clutching the empty wrapper. “You guys stole all my sour candy the other night!”
“I was helping you,” Giselle said nonchalantly, licking chip dust off her thumb. “You were hoarding. Besides, someone needs to go get more s’mores.”
“And chips,” Ningning added, casually chewing on the last piece she’d snuck from the bag.
Winter shot a cutting side-eye at Giselle across the fire.
Ningning loudly took Winter’s side, arguing that honey butter chips were a cultural imperative, while Chaeryeong betrayed that side at once purely because she wanted her s’mores fantasy to be perfect. Karina got to her feet while the argument was still rising into the night air.
“I’ll go.”
Winter brightened instantly, tugging on the hem of Karina’s dress. “Honey butter chips, unnie. Please. Only the yellow ones.”
Yuna looked up from the sand.
Karina dusted off her shorts and scooped up the empty canvas shopping tote by the straps. “Yuna-ya, come help me carry stuff, will you? We’ll take the golf cart.”
Yuna blinked, startled by the direct order, but nodded quickly and scrambled up. Karina caught her hand mid-step, lacing their fingers together with a firm grip and pulling her forward. Yuna’s shoulders hitched at the sudden contact, her hand staying stiff until she finally forced her knuckles to relax against Karina’s palm.
Ducking her chin into her hoodie, she let herself be towed up the dark beach path toward the road, leaving Yeji watching their retreat until the dunes swallowed them.
***
[YUNA’S POV]
At the top of the dune, the golf cart coughed to life on the second try. Yuna climbed into the passenger seat and tucked her knees up to her chest, the baggy gray sweatpants bunching around her ankles while the narrow road out past the resort ran dark beside the water, the cart’s single working headlight throwing a shaky, pathetic yellow path through the night.
Normally, she lived for this midnight aesthetic. Riding shotgun in the dark with her hair whipping around should’ve given immense main character energy, but tonight her brain refused to enjoy the fun part. The Levitating soundtrack from two days ago when she’d walked down to the beach thinking she was hot shit? Yeah, that was dead. Now it was just the same bruising facts spinning on loop until she wanted to unzip her own skin and climb out, leaving those perfectly manicured nails behind.
“You’ve been quiet all night,” Karina said over the rattle of the engine, keeping her eyes on the road.
“I’m fine,” Yuna shot back on pure instinct, hating how the lie came out coated in that automatic idol-trained gloss she saved for Cosmopolitan. Great, even her denial sounded media-trained. She bit her lip and stared at the dark tangerine trees whipping past while Karina kept driving in silence, giving Yuna way too much time to obsess over the glowing green numbers on the dashboard clock.
Minutes later, the GS25 sliding doors parted in a blast of freezing AC and offensive lighting. Yuna caught her reflection in the door glass and actively flinched. The overhead fluorescents were violently anti-woman, blowing out her features until she just looked exhausted and pore-heavy. The whole store was just dead-silent aisles of ramen and lighting totally optimized to ruin your self-esteem.
Karina stepped through the automatic doors a second later, the entry sensor chiming loudly in the empty store. She caught Yuna rigidly staring at the glass and immediately let her gaze slide past her to the aisles, offering the easiest out possible. “I’ll go hunt down the marshmallows,” Karina quipped, cutting right through the hum of the freezers. She nodded toward the back wall. “You grab the rest.”
They split up, leaving Yuna to speed-walk down the chip aisle, desperate to grab the honey butter chips and make this whole mini-trip strictly about sodium because carbs were safe and junk food didn’t judge you for hooking up with your leader’s terrifyingly competent non-boyfriend. Just a normal midnight snack run. Very casual. SO fine.
Blue Pepsi cans sat stacked in clean rows behind the glass, each label turned forward for the 2024 summer promo - IVE Summer Festa. The same one Yeji had been holding back on the beach. Wonyoung smiled from the aluminum at eye level, glossy and too perfect under the fridge light, her printed face repeating down the shelf until the whole fucking display looked like a creepy fan account with a beverage license.
Yuna stopped with one hand on the door handle.
The dark bedroom came back in phone light and twisted sheets. The article she’d already read twice. The comments scrolling under her thumb while her body lay there refusing to cooperate.
Face and body-wise, she and Jang Wonyoung are the top two.
Her fingers slipped through the gap before she decided to move. She touched the can with Wonyoung’s face on it, one fingertip resting against the printed cheek.
“Nice to look at...” she whispered.
“Yuna-ya,” Karina called from the next aisle. “Did you find it?”
Yuna snatched her hand back so fast the cans clinked together. She grabbed the nearest box of plain crackers off the shelf and hugged it to her oversized hoodie.
The Wonyoung can kept smiling at her from behind the glass. Yuna grabbed two cold cans of maekju from the next row and pinned them against the crackers.
“Yep!” She answered, trying to force some bouncy, maknae-line charm into the suggestion that fell flat against the hum of the freezers. “Found crackers. Very chips-adjacent. Honestly, genius.”
She tracked down Karina leaning one shoulder against the freezer glass with her thumb glowing over her phone screen.
“Wait, what if we just - like - give Minjeong-unnie these?” Yuna asked, holding up the crackers.
It was a photo of Karina at twenty in a sheer purple stage outfit, face rounder but expression blank, that porcelain-doll stare she’d perfected in rehearsal rooms, scrubbing out every trace of the actual human until only the weaponized avatar remained.
Yuna frowned as a weird spike of annoyance hit her. “Jimin-unnie. Who is that?”
Karina’s thumb twitched like she was going to snap the phone against her thigh, but she stopped and left it face-up under the harsh store lights.
“Me. When I was twenty. Black Mamba era, the year I debuted.”
Yuna stared at the screen. “Unnie, you look so...” She couldn’t find the right word. ‘Empty’ didn’t cover the sheer amount of effort it took to look that devoid of life. “...CG.”
“I was trying so hard, you’ve got no idea,” Karina cut in, bereft of her usual smoky polish. “I thought that was everything I wanted... if I could just get that sexy look right, then I’d be happy.”
“Always thought that was the goal, you know? To train my face out of the picture until there was nothing left but the brand. I thought if I just became the perfect blank slate for SM, then people couldn’t hurt the real me.”
Yuna lowered the crackers onto the top of the freezer case, the cardboard hitting the glass with a quiet, hollow tap. Why did Karina look so vacant under all that pretty, and why did that vacancy look so horribly familiar? That was supposed to be the dream version - twenty, pretty, famous, wanted. So why did the girl in the photo look like a completely empty shell?
Karina dragged her thumb across the glass to reveal a waiting room selfie featuring heavily styled hair. “Music Bank. I think I’d been awake forty straight hours at that point. Somebody told me to fix my face right before they took this.”
She swiped again, bringing up a bulletproof smile flashing beneath Seoul streetlights. “Dispatch. Didn’t even know they were following me.” She stared at the phone. “Saw it online the next day and that’s when I realized... my face just does that now. Smiles before I even know someone’s there.”
Yuna stared hard through the glass at the girl in the picture while her own brain traitorously fired off a rapid highlight reel of her own broadcast habits. The chin tilt. The breathy laugh. The hip angle that said hot but not desperate. The pout that tested well with male fans but didn’t alienate female ones. She’d practiced all of it until her face knew the drill better than she did, and suddenly, the daily grind of being the visual felt less like a flex and more like a burden.
Karina locked the phone, shutting down the screen. "You can get very, very good at being what people think they want."
Yuna’s posture caved inward, her face flushing so hot that wearing that massive hoodie and sweats suddenly felt like the most honest choice she’d made all week. She swallowed, the movement catching awkwardly in her throat.
“Does it help?” Yuna asked timidly.
Karina laughed once under her breath. “It helps them, until they’ve taken everything they can and you don’t even remember your name anymore.”
The freezer’s hum buzzed loudly in Yuna’s ears as she reached for the crackers again, her fingers hovering over the box before gripping the cardboard and pulling it tight against her ribs.
Up at the front of the store, a NewJeans track trickled through the cheap ceiling speakers. The sad one, of course, because even after two days unhinged idol disaster, the universe never relented with its impeccable sense of comedic timing. It was the one with the girl filming the girls like they were her actual friends, then boom - surprise, bestie - your emotional support idols were a coping mechanism with great styling. Parasocial damage, director’s cut. Yuna knew the lore because nobody survived fourth gen without studying every competitor’s cinematic universe like it was the CSAT. Though, hearing that song over the ramen aisle while she was having a face-and-body crisis in a GS25 felt weirdly personal.
They carried their items up to the counter, dumping marshmallows, cracker boxes, chocolate, and Yuna’s two beers onto the counter. Yuna slapped two Melonas on top because the freezer glass had given her the shakes.
Behind the counter, the cashier kept his eyes glued to his lap. A guy in his late twenties rotting in a rumpled uniform vest, he locked his thousand-yard stare on his phone, mashing his thumbs through some mobile game.
She draped herself over the counter, leaning forward to deploy her best, most desperate variety-show pout to get his attention. “Sir. SIR?? Do you have honey butter chips too?”
Her reflection stared back from the black acrylic security screen bolted to the counter, locking Yuna in place. She’d instinctively snapped into that broadcast-approved pout, rolling her shoulder forward and widening her eyes for a guy who clearly wasn’t giving a shit about her. The cringe hit her muscles before her brain caught up. She abandoned the posture instantly, shrinking her spine down against the counter and yanking her hoodie strings tight to hide her blazing cheeks.
Karina took a step back.
“Honey butter?” he droned, as he blindly dragged the marshmallows across the scanner. “A young lady came in the other night and cleared out the whole shelf.”
“Sold out?” Yuna gripped the edge of the counter, her cute act dissolving into actual horror.
“You heard me.” The cashier hauled his gaze over his phone, squinting at the two of them under the buzzing lights. His eyes passed from Karina’s face to Yuna’s and back again. “Actually, she looked a lot like Winter from aespa. Are you two -”
“Nice of you to think that,” Karina cut him off, flashing a hollow smile. “But no.”
He shrugged, dragging the crackers across the scanner and dropping his eyes right back to his screen. “Whatever. You girls all look the same with the plastic surgery you get on the mainland anyway.”
Yuna dropped her forehead against the edge of the counter, breaking into a messy laugh. A copy-paste job sitting on the same mainland shelf. Karina called it thirty seconds ago and here was the universe proving her right in real time. Yuna slapped a hand over her mouth, her shoulders shaking. If she let the laugh stop, she was going to have to exist in a world where some random GS25 guy reduced her entire life to a joke. Karina’s face softened, the diamond edge melting off and leaving the cashier standing there holding a box of crackers like a malfunctioning NPC.
***
The drive back was slower.
Karina tore open one of the Melonas and passed it to Yuna before unwrapping her own, steering the cart with her knees while she peeled back the paper. The wind dropped to a steady push off the water, rattling the plastic bag between their knees while the cart’s single working headlight threw its sad yellow cone over the asphalt.
Yuna bit into the green ice, neon syrup running down to the corner of her mouth. She didn’t notice until Karina pulled a tissue from her pocket and handed it over while keeping her eyes on the road. Yuna took it and scrubbed at her face, the sticky residue smearing before it came clean.
Karina kept one hand on the wheel. Yuna held the Melona wrapper in her fist, green syrup drying sticky on her thumb, and stared at the dark tangerine groves passing on the left.
The cashier’s voice was still in her ears. You girls all look the same.
Same shelf, same idol face under a fluorescent tube. Yuna wanted to be mad about it. Instead, she kept hearing her own laugh from the store, too loud and too sharp. She’d bully herself for if it ever aired on a variety show.
“Boys are fun, aren’t they?” Karina said, her eyes on the road.
Yuna’s head snapped sideways. Karina kept her eyes on the road, mouth flat, dark hair whipping across her jaw.
“Yeah,” Yuna said, and the answer came out in the bright broadcast tone she’d used on every variety show since debut, breathy and cute with the vocal fry that tested well. She bit the inside of her cheek the second it left her mouth. Great. Even this had a rehearsal room stink on it.
“Fun,” Yuna repeated, quieter, trying to mean it this time. “Like - yeah.”
Karina glanced over. “What fun?”
The pool flashed back. Yeji’s cum still glossy on his cock the second the towel hit the tile, and Yuna’s brain locking onto it like an exclusive drop unnie had been gatekeeping. That’s why she keeps him around. Her personal premium subscription. She’d thought if she could just get him to beg for her instead - if she could make him pick her, even for thirty seconds going feral underwater in the deep end - she’d unlock the cheat code that made Yeji-unnie untouchable. She’d climbed out of that pool confident she’d secured the ultimate flex. But the thing unnie actually had with him didn’t live in his cock or his cum or getting chosen; it was the part Yuna couldn’t just serve face and fuck her way into. The way he held unnie’s face like she was a literal human being and not a 4K fancam. When she’d overheard him telling her “they’re perfect” through the wall after she’d complained about her tits being small.
“People thinking I’m hot,” Yuna finally said. “That’s the fun part. Knowing they want me.”
She’d never said it that plainly before. It sounded worse out loud than it did in her head, which was REALLY saying something because it hadn’t sounded great in her head either.
Karina nodded once, watching the road. “I used to think that too.”
“Used to?”
“Mhm.” Karina shifted the cart around a curve, the headlight sweeping across a low stone wall. “Being wanted was the best feeling I knew. For a long time.”
Yuna turned the sticky Melona wrapper between her fingers, pressing the green residue into thin lines on her skin. “So what happened?”
“I got everything I wanted.” Karina rubbed the back of her neck, her fingers digging under her dark hair. “But they only wanted Karina from the magazines. The girl who skips carbs and finds the right smile for every room.”
Karina let out a short, dry laugh. “Three nights ago. After the BLACKPINK set. Ryujin wanted to run through some Yonsei frat boys she found in the mosh pit. Dragged me along for bait.”
Yuna’s head snapped around, completely forgetting the sticky Melona wrapper. “Wait. FIVE? Unnie. You didn’t.”
“I tried.” Karina slouched forward, bracing her forearm against the steering wheel. “I literally stripped naked on their shitty leather couch, spread my legs wide open so they had a perfect view, and waited. You know what they did?”
Yuna didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“They fucking gawked.” Karina shook her head, an ugly smile twisting her mouth. “Stood there with their jaws slacked, drooling over my tits like I was a hallucination.”
Yuna swallowed, the sweet taste of the Melona suddenly completely gone.
“I was lying there wet and desperate for someone to just fuck me hard like a normal girl,” Karina said. She steered the cart around a pothole with the heel of her hand. “Which - you know what I mean. We’re young. We’re allowed to just want good sex.”
Yuna nodded once, scraping her sticky thumb against the soft cotton over her knee. She definitely knew what she meant.
“Except half of them busted the second they pushed inside,” Karina snorted. “The rest just used me like a human fleshlight. Hammering away without giving a single shit if I actually got off.” She glanced over, her eyes catching the dashboard light. “They didn’t want me, Yuna-ya. They just wanted to stick their useless dicks in the poster so they could brag about unlocking a trophy.”
The cart rattled over an uneven patch and Yuna grabbed the oh-shit bar, her sweatpants brushing against the plastic bag.
“And the thing is,” Karina continued, “you can give them that forever. Skin, performance, the girl they showed up for. You can keep handing it out, and they’ll keep taking it, and everyone keeps calling it love.”
Yuna’s throat went dry.
“Until one day you want one single thing for yourself,” Karina finished, “and they tell you it’s a betrayal.”
The wind filled the cart. Tangerine groves blurred past. Yuna opened her mouth, then closed it again.
She thought about her own Instagram, the comments she scrolled through at 2 AM calling her the hottest fourth-gen idol alive, the DMs from industry guys opening with compliments about her waist and closing with hotel names, the fancam numbers she tracked like a stock portfolio. She’d treated all of it like proof she mattered. Karina had collected the prize and ended up writing an apology for having a life.
Yuna swallowed.
The question had been poking at her since before Jeju, since the group chat, since the BLACKPINK tickets Ryujin gave to Karina because Karina was still apparently a mess three months after a relationship that lasted five weeks. But also because Yuna was too busy fucking some random guy to return Ryujin’s calls, and later ranted about it to herself on the beach like the entitled brat she was.
“Jimin-unnie. What actually happened with him?” She asked quietly.
Karina didn’t flinch. She kept her eyes on the road and her hand steady on the wheel.
“We met in Milan,” she said carefully. “At the Prada show. He was smart and handsome, and he looked at me like I was real.” She took the cart around a bend in the road. “Rare enough that I thought it meant something.”
“Did it?”
“For about a month.” Karina adjusted her grip on the wheel. “We went on walks late at night near his apartment. He’d buy me iced coffee from the GS25 near his building, and we’d talk about dumb things, like what dramas were good and whether cats or dogs were better. Normal things.”
She went quiet long enough that Yuna thought she was done.
“Then Dispatch got it,” Karina said. “And everything became content.”
Yuna looked down at the Melona wrapper in her fist. Content. The same word she used for her Instagram grid. The same word her manager used when reviewing her fancam numbers.
“They sent a truck to my company,” Karina sighed. “With a billboard on it. Asking if I didn’t feel loved enough by my fans. Asking why I’d betrayed them.”
Yuna’s hand froze on the Melona wrapper.
“I wrote an apology,” Karina continued, her shoulders dipping as the cart rolled over cracked asphalt. “On paper. By hand. Posted it to Instagram. I told fourteen million people I was sorry for having a boyfriend.” She took the next curve. “He told his agency he wanted to focus on his drama. That was it for him. Clean exit.”
He went back to work. She wrote sorry by hand and posted it where everyone could zoom in. Same relationship, same breakup, different cost.
“Five weeks, Yuna-ya,” Karina said. “We were public for five weeks. I apologized for longer than I dated him.”
Yuna remembered her own rant from the beach, the bitter little monologue she’d delivered to her shadow about Karina moping over a guy she’d barely been with and costing Yuna her BLACKPINK tickets. Her toes curled against the cart floor.
“I had every version of what you think you want,” Karina said, her fingers tightening once on the wheel. “The face. The fame. The beautiful man. The feeling of being chosen.” The road bent left and Karina followed it. “And I still couldn’t tell you the last time any of them knew who was actually in the room with them.”
“The sex was easy. They wanted it, I gave it, everyone left happy.” Karina adjusted her grip on the wheel. “Took me a while to realize they weren’t fucking me. They were fucking the girl from the magazine. I was just the one who had to show up for it.”
Yuna sat still with green Melona syrup on her thumb and the plastic bag crinkling against her sweatpants. Karina kept her hand steady on the wheel while the dark road unspooled ahead of them.
She’d thought Karina was weak for hurting that long over something that short. Now the timing made sense. Five weeks of having someone see her, then the industry stole it away with a press release, and Karina was still walking around with the handprint.
The worst part was that Minho had wanted her. Her body made that impossible to deny, which was the whole reason she’d treated it like a win. But even then, between every wet little victory lap her brain had turned into content, his eyes kept cutting back toward the bedroom like Yeji had a hand on him from afar.
“Unnie,” Yuna said, very quietly.
“Mm?”
“I was such a bitch about the BLACKPINK tickets.”
Karina let out one breath through her nose.
“I did wonder why Head Blink wasn’t there,” she said, and one corner of her mouth lifted wryly. “You don’t seem like someone who misses BLACKPINK by accident.”
Yuna pressed her sticky thumb harder into the vinyl seat. Yeah. Funny story. Hilarious, actually. Five stars. No notes. She kept all of that inside her mouth and stared at the headlight shaking over the road.
They drove the rest of the way in the dark, the resort lights growing brighter through the trees. Yuna pressed her sticky thumb against the vinyl seat and watched Karina in the passing headlights of an oncoming car.
Karina looked beautiful, because of course she did. The annoying part was that Yuna could see the dark smudges under her eyes now too, and they made the beautiful harder to lie about.
Yuna thought she might want to learn that too. Eventually. Not tonight. Tonight she just had to carry a bag of marshmallows back to a bonfire and figure out how to fix the thing she broke without cutting herself again.
The resort gate opened. The headlights found the beach path.
“You good?” Karina asked.
Yuna wiped the green syrup off her thumb with the napkin Karina had given her earlier.
“Yeah,” she said. “Better.”
They rolled back into the firelight moments later, the plastic shopping bag resting loudly against Yuna’s sweatpants as she climbed out. Winter spotted the marshmallows from the blankets and let out a high squeal while brandishing a wooden skewer, prompting Ningning to snatch the bag from Yuna with both hands and instantly assign jobs nobody had requested.
Yeji looked up from the fire the second Karina stepped back into the circle, and when their eyes met across the sand, Karina gave a small nod that Yeji reciprocated.
Before Yuna even sat down, Ningning shoved a half-assembled s’more directly into her hand, declaring she looked like she needed chocolate before going straight back to nearly setting another marshmallow actively on fire. Karina lowered herself back onto the sand where Ningning immediately slumped against her shoulder as if she’d never left. Across the roaring fire, Ryujin threw her head back, laughing loudly at something Yunjin had just said while Yuna looked down at the chocolate melting into the cracker in her hand, letting the noise of the beach wash over her.
***
[MINHO’S POV]
By the time the second round of marshmallows got underway, the fire had burned down into that nice, competent middle stage, impressive enough to validate the effort and dangerous enough to keep Ningning interested. Sunwoo and Minjun were on the other side, half committed to a long story about a manager in Osaka who’d somehow locked himself in a hotel bathroom, while I stood behind Yeji with my thumbs pressed into the tight muscles at the base of her neck.
Finding her took no effort anymore.
She had her chin tipped forward, one knee drawn up, both hands wrapped loosely around a Pepsi can while I worked my fingers over her shoulders. Moving firelight caught the sharp edge of her cheekbone and the bridge of her nose, then slid away. Every now and then she’d smile at something Chaeryeong or Lia said, and my fingers stopped against her hoodie until I remembered to move them.
I kept swallowing the same thought over and over.
I almost lost all of this.
Yuna came out of the dark with a cold beer in each hand, and Minjun stopped talking mid-sentence.
She crossed the last stretch of sand with her eyes down, oversized hoodie swallowing her hands, gray sweatpants dragging low over her heels. I thought she was coming to give Yeji the drink until she stepped around Yeji’s shoulder, set both cans carefully in the sand by my foot, wrapped her arms around my middle, and pressed her face into the front of my zip hoodie hard enough for one rough breath to catch against the zipper.
My hands stayed useless in the cold air while everyone watched.
Yeji looked up first, her head turning beneath my arm. Her eyebrows pulled together, confused, then her face softened when Yuna’s fingers clenched in my jacket.
“Yuna-ya?” she asked. “What happened?”
Yuna shook her head once against me and turned her face until her mouth brushed my ear.
“I thought being wanted meant I was worth something,” she whispered. Her fingers tightened once in my jacket. “You saw me anyway. So stop feeling bad for being decent to me. Yeji-unnie chose you, so... don’t make her regret being brave.”
I shut my eyes. For days, I’d been carrying that pool like evidence against myself, replaying it every time I looked at Yeji or Yuna went quiet until my jaw hurt.
Yuna stood there in her huge hoodie, crying into my jacket, and told me to stop.
I lowered one hand to the back of her head, keeping my palm light and my body still, close enough to comfort her and careful enough for Yeji to see exactly what I meant.
“You’re worth plenty.” I said quietly, keeping my hand still against her hair. “You don’t have to prove it like that.”
Her shoulders hitched once, and Yeji was on her feet before anyone else moved. She stepped close, one hand landing on Yuna’s back, her attention narrowing the way it did when one of her members came offstage pale and pretending not to be hurt.
“Yuna.” Yeji’s hand moved once between Yuna’s shoulder blades. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”
Yuna lifted her face from my jacket. Her lashes were wet, cheeks blotchy, nose pink from the wind, and when she tried to smile, her mouth shook out of it.
“I messed up.” Yuna rubbed her sleeve under her nose and looked at the sand between Yeji’s feet. “And Minho-oppa helped me after. That’s all. He was... he was nice to me when I didn’t really deserve nice.”
Yeji looked at me, and I held still until her shoulders dropped. She nodded once, then pulled Yuna out of my arms and straight into hers.
Yuna went with a choked little sound, folding into Yeji so fast my hand was left hanging there. Yeji wrapped both arms around her and tucked her chin against Yuna’s temple, rocking once in the sand.
“You’re our maknae. You always deserve nice,” Yeji murmured, rubbing the back of Yuna’s hoodie with her thumb.
Karina sat near the blankets with her drink held loose between both hands, watching Yuna over the rim. When Yuna finally peeled herself off Yeji and wiped both cheeks with her sleeves, Karina gave her a small nod of approval, and Yuna’s eyes immediately found the ground again.
Yuna’s mouth trembled before she bent, picked up one of the maekju she’d brought, and pressed it into my hand.
“For you.” Yuna cleared her throat, grabbed the other bottle, and shoved it toward Yeji. “And for unnie. Because apparently I’m mature now.”
“Apparently,” Yeji said, taking it.
Minjun waited until Yuna had shuffled back toward the blankets and collapsed between Karina and Ningning before leaning over.
“Did I miss a whole redemption arc?”
I cracked open the maekju Yuna had given me. The hiss cut clean through the fire crackle.
“Yeah,” I said, watching Yeji turn the can once in her hands before she looked back at Yuna. “You really did.”
***
Behind us, Yunjin and Giselle had sought each other out again and were currently deep into their third or fourth argument of the night. Except this one had drastically pivoted to anime. Ryujin had made the fatal mistake of trying to contribute and was already looking for a way out.
“Gojo Satoru is the best character ever written in any medium,” Yunjin announced, projecting her voice over the fire. “I will die on this hill and I’ll look hot doing it.”
“He’s a thirst trap with a backstory.” Giselle tucked her hands deeper into her oversized sleeves.
Yunjin slapped her thigh in outrage. “Okay, a thirst trap can also be a genius! Why does it have to be one or the other with you, it’s exhausting.”
“Shinji Ikari. Better written. It’s not close.”
Yunjin stared at her in pure horror. “I don’t care about better written, I care about iconic. Shinji is iconic at having one breakdown in a robot.”
“That’s still writing.”
“Crying in a giant robot isn’t automatic literature, Aeri.”
Ryujin leaned in between them, committed and doomed. “Okay but Zoro would clap both of these guys, so -”
Both of them turned on her with lethal synchronization.
“How much have you actually seen?” Giselle asked.
Ryujin hesitated, sensing the trap. “Like... the first three arcs?”
Yunjin dramatically clutched her own chest. “That’s the trailer, babe.”
“You haven’t watched One Piece, you waved at it from across the room.” Giselle waved a hand to dismiss her.
Ryujin looked betrayed.
From the main blanket, Winter leaned toward Ningning again, holding her half-burnt marshmallow upright like a tiny ruined microphone. “Are they still bonding?”
“Yep.” Ningning nodded solemnly, critically examining the charcoal side of her marshmallow. “Still bonding.”
***
That was how the rest of the night went. People pairing off, arguing, and drifting back again. Chaeryeong kept stealing bites directly from Sunwoo’s s’more, claiming it was strictly quality control. Lia snapped photos across the fire, timing them for when people stopped posing. Karina laughed with her head bent, one hand over her mouth, while Yunjin switched seamlessly into English to complain. Yeji leaned close to Ryujin for a quick, quiet exchange that ended with Ryujin rolling her eyes dramatically but handing over her drink anyway.
Then Winter’s phone lit up and rang loudly from the sand, and she practically scrambled over Ningning to grab it, knees slipping in the blanket and one socked foot kicking free.
She looked at the screen, her face splitting into an instant grin. “Wait. Wait, everybody. Say hi.”
She answered the FaceTime already smiling, aiming the camera out at the fire.
“HI!” the entire beach circle yelled in unison, hands waving at the lens.
A deep voice rumbled a laugh through the phone speaker. A massive dog shoved its face briefly into the frame underneath a tattooed hand, prompting Winter to shriek in sheer delight and clap both hands over her mouth, trapping the phone between her palms for one dangerous second.
“Unnie.” Ningning rescued the bottom edge before the screen tipped toward the sand.
“Puppy,” Winter whispered back, reverent and useless as an explanation.
Within seconds, she turned the phone right back around to hoard the screen to herself, tucking her chin down and curling around it. Giselle let Winter burrow against her shoulder and lazily patted her hair, keeping her drink steady.
Yeji had drifted back to my side at some point during the call, settling into the sand close enough that her shoulder brushed my knee. I tipped my chin toward Winter, who was curled around the phone whispering at the screen.
“That dog’s huge,” I said.
“Mhm.”
“And that hand had a lot of ink on it.”
Yeji took a slow sip of her maekju. “He’s a sunbae.” She tucked her chin against her knee, the smallest curl at the corner of her mouth. “Friend of ours. He’s good to her.”
“That’s all I get?”
“That’s all anyone gets.” She bumped her shoulder against my thigh gently. “That’s how she keeps it.”
***
The fire started to burn low, the orange flames retreating back into the wood. I pulled the collar of my jacket up against the ocean chill as somebody tossed another thick piece of driftwood into the center. Propped back on one hand in the sand, I just sat and watched everybody find comfortable, tangled shapes around each other to block the wind. aespa had tucked in a little closer together, apparently bracing for their flight out tomorrow. ITZY sprawled across their blankets like they’d owned this beach for a week.
Yunjin had fully abandoned her flannel jacket, sprawling back on her elbows in the sand, and was currently delivering a loud, tipsy state-of-the-union address on the Seoul dating pool.
“I opened Tinder before the plane even got to the gate,” Yunjin announced, waving her phone at the fire. “Mapo-gu is a fucking wasteland. I needed to see if the island roster was carrying.”
“Is it that bad?” Chaeryeong asked, leaning forward over her knees.
“It’s bleak, bro,” Yunjin ranted, letting her head drop back. Her throat caught the firelight. “Do you know what comeback prep does to a bitch? I’ve been doing six hours of choreo a day on iced americanos and spite. I even fully shaved for this trip. Do you know how exhausting that is on two hours of sleep? I’m down so astronomically bad I could walk into the ocean. PLEASE get me a guy who can rail me so hard I forget my own name.”
Ryujin laughed into her beer can. “Girl, just hook up with one of your backup dancers like a normal person.”
“HUH-larious. But nah.” Yunjin slashed a hand through the air. “They get weird. The second you try to choke them with your thighs, they panic about HR. You open your legs for some Gangnam industry fuckboy and half the time he’s trying to network mid-stroke or asking about Spotify streams. I don’t want a fan, I want a menace. I want some dude who can actually fold me like a lawn chair and shut me the fuck up.”
Beside me, Yeji let out a soft snort of agreement, taking a slow sip of her drink.
“I thought a Jeju local might actually have some stamina,” Yunjin sighed, scrolling aggressively with her thumb. “Fishermen. Surfers. Dudes who don’t own a twelve-step skincare routine and can actually rearrange my guts. Give me calluses or give me death.”
"Or crypto bros," Yuna muttered darkly from inside her hoodie.
On the other blanket, Ningning stopped chewing on the end of her wooden skewer. She turned her head, very slowly, and stared dead at Giselle.
Winter caught the look. Her head snapped toward Giselle too, her eyes widening.
Giselle took a maddeningly slow sip of her drink, the ice clinking loudly in the plastic cup. She lowered it, maintaining a completely blank expression as her members zeroed in on her.
Yunjin sat up fast, sensing blood in the water. “Wait, why are you all looking at her?”
Giselle adjusted the heavy blanket over her legs. “I commit vibes.”
“Aeri.” Yunjin started. “AERI. Did you get your back blown out while I was stuck in a recording studio?”
Lia put her phone face down in the sand and crossed her arms. Even Karina went still, attention snapping in.
Giselle picked a piece of lint off her sleeve, looking thoroughly unbothered by the sudden interrogation. “Dude, if it helps your thesis, he wasn’t local. He’s a cinematographer I knew from high school. Lives in Gangnam. So your Seoul facts are off.”
“That’s a full confession,” Yunjin gasped, already way too invested. “Spill. Right now.”
Winter paused mid-chew, looking between them with wide, sincere eyes. "Wait, so how did your networking go, unnie? You never told us."
The fire popped sharply, throwing a sudden burst of bright orange sparks up into the dark space between us.
I looked across it.
Yeji was already watching me. She raised one eyebrow, her chin still propped on her knee, and waited me out. I broke eye contact first, conceding the point, and I caught the corner of her mouth twitching up into a smirk right before I faced the water.
Across the circle, Giselle took one last long drink and finally started.
“So we were at that really hyped samgyupsal place in Seogwipo, right?” she began, channeling that thoroughly pseudo-West Coast energy. “And that place was so smoky I couldn’t see a fucking thing. Anyway, we were meeting this cinematographer guy I knew from high school...”
Intro | Masterlist | Series Index Previous Chapter | Interlude (Chapter 23.5) | Next Chapter ――――――――――――――――――
Author’s Note
I know this chapter is a little heavier than the title suggests, but I hope it was worth the wait. Honestly, this was probably my least favorite chapter to work on - not because it didn’t matter, but because the subject matter is dark and philosophically complex in a way that’s far from the smut and romance I actually enjoy writing most. But alongside “Nobody Like You,” this might be the most emotionally deep chapter in the series. This story wouldn’t be complete without it, and I think it stands on its own.
If you’ve made it this far into the series, there’s a good chance you’re not just here for the smut anymore. One of the unintended consequences of using bodies to tell emotional truth is that you inevitably hit the philosophical questions underneath - specifically, what it actually costs to live in that body professionally.
I wanted to explore that parasocial damage in a way that felt real and personal. Karina’s history was the best way to close off Yuna’s arc, because Yuna had to learn that being desired as a product isn’t the same thing as being seen as a person.
Quick housekeeping before I get into it - I renamed this chapter. It started life as "Dynamite and Drama," which was a clean little ensemble title (Dynamite is ITZY, Drama is aespa, two groups colliding on a beach, very tidy, right?) But by the time the final draft was done, it was obvious the bonfire wasn't actually the heart of the chapter - the golf cart and convenience store was. So Ditto it is.
And honestly, the more I sat with it, the more "Ditto" earned its keep on three separate levels at once, which is an absurd amount of layering for one word:
The NewJeans song. Parasocial damage, the thematic spine I was building toward the whole time (more on that in a sec).
The literal meaning. "Same thing." Karina IS Yuna's ditto - the older mirror, the same girl three years and eight months down the road who chased exactly what Yuna's chasing now and ended up writing an apology for having a life. The GS25 cashier flattening them with "you girls all look the same with the plastic surgery you get on the mainland" is the universe twisting the knife on the exact same idea: interchangeable products on the same shelf.
The Spirited Away nod (see below). Once you let the industry rename you, you become a copy of yourself. Ditto.
Which brings me to that first point.
This chapter is heavily based on the themes from NewJeans’ “Ditto,” which, deep down, is about how parasocial love is a one-way mirror. The idol performs and gives so much of themselves, but gets nothing real back. The fan loves and supports unconditionally, but never actually connects with the person, and both end up alone.
It’s also why Karina’s line about forgetting your name is a direct nod to Spirited Away. Just like Yubaba steals Chihiro’s real name to bind her to the bathhouse, the idol industry demands the human (“Jimin”) give up her identity to the persona (“Karina”). They exist just to serve the masses, trapped in the performance until they forget who they really are.
Rather than leaving you with another long-ass note this time, I’ll assign some homework. I think this video is a really interesting deep dive on the MV that thematically inspired this chapter and the core of Yuna and Karina’s arcs. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I also think this article is a really good read on the topic!