The Bet (AU)
Pairing: student!yang jeongin x student!reader
Summary: all you ever were to Jeongin was a bet, right?
Warnings: angst, heartbreak, panic attacks, anxiety, swearing, bullying basically
Word count: 19.7k. [holy shit, I know]
a/n: so I wrote this about a month ago and never posted it because I couldn’t find the right time but I’m off to Disney for a week so this is a nice filler post!
That first “I love you” had knocked the air right out of your lungs.
It wasn’t because you hadn’t wanted to hear it—God, you had—but because it was Yang Jeongin saying it. Jeongin, with his stupidly pretty smile and effortless charm, who could walk through the halls and have heads turning without even trying. Jeongin, who somehow looked just as good in a wrinkled hoodie at eight in the morning as he did dressed up for a date. Jeongin, who had chosen you.
You still remembered the exact moment he’d said it.
You’d been sat on the swings in the park near your flat, the chains creaking softly as the two of you swayed back and forth under the orange glow of the streetlights. It had been late, later than either of you should’ve been out on a school night, and your fingers were tucked inside the sleeve of his hoodie because you’d forgotten your coat again. Jeongin had laughed at you for that, of course, before shrugging off the hoodie and forcing it over your head despite your weak protests that he’d be cold.
He’d just looked at you then—really looked at you, with that quiet softness he only ever seemed to have around you—and smiled.
“I love you, you know.”
You’d genuinely thought you’d misheard him.
Your swing had slowed to a stop as your eyes widened. “What?”
Jeongin’s ears had gone pink, but he’d still held your gaze, still smiled that tiny, nervous smile that made your chest ache. “I said I love you.”
And because apparently your brain had decided to abandon you in your moment of need, all you’d managed was a stunned, breathless, “Why?”
The second the word left your mouth, you wanted the ground to swallow you whole.
But Jeongin hadn’t laughed. Hadn’t looked offended. If anything, his expression had softened even more, eyes going warm as he stepped off his swing and crouched in front of yours, slotting himself between your knees so he could take your hands in his.
“Why wouldn’t I?” he’d asked gently, thumb brushing over your knuckles. “You’re kind. You’re funny when you forget to be shy. You remember tiny things I tell you that even I forget. You always make sure I’ve eaten when I’m busy, and you pretend not to care but you worry about everyone all the time.” He’d squeezed your hands when your eyes started stinging. “And you look at me like I’m someone worth loving. So yeah. I love you.”
You’d cried. Not cute, movie-style crying either. Actual tears, face burning, trying to hide in the sleeves of his hoodie while Jeongin laughed softly and wiped under your eyes with his thumbs. He’d kissed your cheeks and the tip of your nose and told you that you were ridiculous in the fondest voice imaginable, and then he’d pulled you into his lap on the swing like it was the most natural thing in the world.
That had been a month ago now, and somehow, even after six months together, it still didn’t feel real.
You still caught yourself staring at him across the cafeteria while he sat with his friends, sunlight catching in his hair as he laughed at something one of them said, and thought, he’s my boyfriend. You still felt a jolt of disbelief every time he reached for your hand under the desk in class or kissed your temple in the corridor without caring who saw. You still expected someone to tap you on the shoulder and tell you there’d been some kind of mistake.
Because you were still just… you.
Still awkward. Still quiet. Still the girl who overthought every text before sending it and hated raising her hand in class and had to rehearse what to say before ordering coffee. You weren’t one of the pretty, effortless girls who usually orbited boys like Jeongin. You didn’t know how to flirt properly, and half the time you were convinced you only got by on sheer luck and Jeongin’s apparently terrible taste in women. Yet every day, he chose you anyway.
Sometimes it showed up in big ways—like him turning up at your flat with your favourite snacks after you’d had a bad exam, or dragging you out to watch the sunset because he said you’d been cooped up too long. But mostly, it was in the small things. The way he always walked on the outside of the pavement without even thinking about it. The way he’d wordlessly tug your hand into the pocket of his coat when it was cold. The way he never let go first when you hugged him. The way he’d learned exactly how to calm you down when your anxiety got too loud—guiding you somewhere quiet, rubbing circles into your wrist, talking softly until your breathing evened out again.
And maybe that was why it still felt so unreal. Because Jeongin didn’t treat you like some charity case or a secret or a phase. He treated you like someone precious. Like someone worth being gentle with.
You were thinking about all of this as you stood at your locker after lunch, trying and failing to remember which textbook you actually needed for your next class.
Your fingers hovered uselessly over a pile of notebooks as voices and footsteps echoed through the corridor around you. You could feel yourself getting flustered already, brain fogging over from the noise, and you were just about to give up and take all of them when a familiar hand slid around your waist.
You startled so badly you nearly smacked your head on the locker door.
A laugh sounded by your ear. “Easy.”
You twisted around to find Jeongin grinning at you, his tie already loose despite the fact there were still two lessons left in the day. His hair was a mess from where he’d clearly been running his hands through it, and there was a tiny smear of pen ink on the side of his hand.
You stared at him for a second too long and you saw the moment his grin softened into something fond. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
You blinked. “Like what?”
“Like you’ve just seen a ghost.”
Heat crept into your cheeks. “I was just thinking.”
“Dangerous.” He leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to your temple before glancing into your locker. “Why do you have every book you own in here?”
“I can’t remember what I need.”
Jeongin hummed, utterly unbothered, and reached past you to scan your timetable pinned to the inside of the door. “English, right?”
“I think so.”
He pulled out the correct textbook immediately and handed it to you with a look that was half amused, half affectionate. “Good thing you’re cute.”
Your face burned hotter. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.” He said it with complete confidence, like it was the most obvious fact in the world.
And the worst part was, he was right.
You took the book from him, muttering a weak thanks, and Jeongin just smiled wider before resting his chin on the top of your head. People brushed past in the corridor, some of them glancing your way, and the old self-consciousness tried to creep in at the edges of your mind.
Jeongin must have noticed the way you stiffened, because his hand at your waist squeezed gently.
“You okay?”
You nodded automatically, but he tipped his head, clearly unconvinced.
“You sure?”
There it was again—that quiet softness, that careful attention he always paid to the things you tried to hide.
You looked down at the textbook in your hands. “I just… still don’t get it sometimes.”
“Get what?”
You hesitated, then forced yourself to meet his eyes. “Why you like me.”
Jeongin’s expression changed instantly. Not annoyed, not exasperated—just tender in a way that made your throat tighten.
He reached up and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “You still doing that?”
“Doing what?”
“Acting like it’s weird that I’m obsessed with you.”
Despite yourself, you huffed a tiny laugh. “Obsessed is a strong word.”
“It’s an accurate word.” He said it so seriously that you snorted, and his mouth twitched. “I like you because you’re you. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s true.”
You looked away, embarrassed by how much those simple words affected you.
Jeongin nudged your chin back toward him with two fingers. “Hey.”
“What?”
“I mean it.” His voice dropped, soft enough that the corridor noise seemed to blur around the edges. “I know you don’t see yourself the way I do. But that doesn’t make me wrong.”
Your eyes stung unexpectedly, and Jeongin noticed immediately, just like he always does. His face went alarmed for half a second.
“Oh no, don’t cry at school, I’ll fight someone.”
A watery laugh escaped you before you could stop it. “Who are you going to fight? Me?”
“If necessary.”
“That’s not very boyfriend of you.”
“Actually, it’s extremely boyfriend of me. I’m defending my girlfriend from her own terrible opinions.”
You laughed properly then, shaking your head, and Jeongin visibly relaxed at the sound. He smiled too, small and warm, before leaning down to press his forehead to yours.
“I love you,” he murmured, like it was the simplest truth in the world. “Even when you’re being annoying about it.”
Your breath caught. It still did that every time. Even after a month of hearing it, even after saying it back enough times that the words should’ve settled comfortably by now, they still landed in your chest like something fragile and precious.
You curled your fingers into the front of his blazer. “I love you too.”
Jeongin’s smile turned so bright it made your heart ache. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
He kissed you then—quick and sweet because you were in the middle of school and because if he kissed you any longer you were pretty sure you’d actually combust on the spot. When he pulled back, he stayed close enough that his nose brushed yours.
“Good,” he said softly. “Because you’re stuck with me.”
And maybe, six months in, you still didn’t fully understand how someone like Jeongin had fallen in love with someone like you. Maybe part of you still waited for the dream to break. But as he took your hand and laced your fingers together like it was the most natural thing in the world, leading you down the corridor toward class with that easy warmth only he seemed to have, you thought that maybe understanding it didn’t matter as much as you’d always assumed.
Jeongin loved you. For some miraculous, incomprehensible reason, he did. And maybe—just maybe—you were starting to believe that was enough.
You’d never been to one of Jeongin’s parties before. In six months of dating him, you had always found an excuse. Too much homework. A headache. Your social battery already dead from school. A family thing. Anything to avoid stepping into a house full of loud music, drunk strangers, and the kind of attention that made your skin feel too tight.
Jeongin had never pushed. He’d pout sometimes, tugging at your hand and telling you he wanted to show you off properly, but the second you looked even a little overwhelmed, he’d kiss your forehead and let it go.
So no—parties were not your thing.
But tonight felt different.
Maybe it was because your parents were out of town and you were lonely. Maybe it was because you were tired of feeling like the timid little shadow trailing behind your own life. Maybe it was because Jeongin had been so busy the last couple of weeks—football training, study sessions, his friends constantly dragging him around—that you’d barely had any proper time alone with him. Maybe it was because some ugly, insecure part of you hated that there was this whole side of his life you’d never seen, a side full of people who knew him in loud rooms and flashing lights while you only ever seemed to get the quiet leftovers.
Or maybe you’d just wanted to prove to yourself that you could do one scary thing for once.
Whatever the reason, you found yourself standing in front of your mirror at eight-thirty on a Friday night, staring at a version of yourself you barely recognised.
You’d changed outfits four times. The discarded clothes were in a heap on your bed, and your room looked like a small disaster zone, but eventually you’d settled on a black top with a neckline lower than anything you usually wore and a skirt that made your legs look longer than they actually were. You’d even put makeup on—nothing dramatic, just enough concealer and mascara and lip gloss that your reflection looked softer, prettier, a little less like the nervous girl who always hid in oversized hoodies. You’d spent ten minutes just looking at yourself afterwards, trying to decide if it was ridiculous. In the end, you’d grabbed your coat before you could change your mind.
The whole drive there, your stomach twisted itself into tighter and tighter knots. You almost asked the taxi to turn around twice. By the time you were standing outside the house, music thudding so loudly you could feel the bass through the pavement, your palms were damp and your heart was beating way too fast. Coloured lights flashed behind the downstairs windows. People spilled in and out of the front door, laughing too loudly, drinks in hand, cigarette smoke curling into the cold night air.
You stood on the pavement for a full minute, frozen before you thought of Jeongin’s face when he saw you. You imagined him grinning, surprised and pleased, maybe pulling you into his arms and telling you how pretty you looked. Maybe kissing your cheek in front of everyone. Maybe introducing you properly, proud and warm and gentle in the way he always was with you.
That image alone was enough to get your feet moving.
You stepped inside; the house was chaos.
Bodies packed shoulder to shoulder in the living room, music blaring from speakers so loud it rattled in your chest, the air warm with alcohol and perfume and something sweetly sickly you couldn’t identify. Someone bumped your shoulder before you’d even fully closed the door behind you. You muttered an apology they definitely didn’t hear and pressed yourself closer to the wall, eyes darting over unfamiliar faces.
Your breathing had already started to go funny. It was too loud, too crowded. Too hot.
You reached for your phone instinctively, thumb hovering over Jeongin’s contact. Maybe you should text him. Tell him you were here and ask him to come find you before you lost your nerve entirely. You spotted a group of boys in the kitchen archway—faces you recognised from school, from the football pitch, from the cafeteria table Jeongin sat at when he wasn’t with you and realised you didn’t need to text him after all.
His friends were just there, and with them, leaning against the kitchen counter with a red plastic cup in one hand, was Jeongin.
Your heart gave a stupid, traitorous leap.
He looked unfairly good, of course he did. Sleeves rolled to his elbows, ginger hair falling messily over his forehead, the top few buttons of his shirt undone like he’d tugged at them in the heat of the house. He was listening to one of the boys talk, mouth curved in a distracted half-smile.
And hanging off his arm was a girl.
She was unfairly pretty. Tiny waist, glossy hair, perfect makeup. She was tucked against his side like she belonged there, fingers looped around his bicep as she laughed at something one of the boys said. Jeongin wasn’t touching her back, but he also wasn’t pulling away.
You stopped dead.
For one disorienting second, your brain tried to explain it away. Maybe she was drunk and clingy. Maybe she was someone’s little sister. Maybe you’d just walked in at a weird moment and Jeongin would shrug her off the second he noticed you. So you stayed where you were, hidden half behind the hallway wall, waiting for him to look up.
He didn’t.
One of his friends—Hyunwoo, you thought vaguely—snorted into his drink and said, far too loudly over the music, “I’m still saying you should’ve ended it after the first month. Six months is insane commitment for a stupid bet.”
Your body went cold. The world around you didn’t stop, exactly. The music still pounded. People still shouted and laughed and moved around you. But it all seemed to lurch sideways, sound muffling at the edges as if you’d suddenly been dropped underwater.
A bet.
Someone else laughed. “Nah, you don’t get it. He got attached to the role. Method acting and all that.”
There was more laughter as your eyes locked on Jeongin. He wasn’t laughing. If anything, he looked annoyed—brows drawn together, jaw tightening slightly as he took a sip from his cup. But he didn’t interrupt either. Didn’t tell them to shut up. Didn’t say they were wrong.
The girl on his arm giggled and nudged him with her shoulder. “Wait, seriously? You actually did that? That’s evil.”
Heat rushed to your face so fast it made you dizzy.
Hyunwoo grinned, clearly enjoying himself. “It was his idea? No—whose was it first?”
“Wasn’t mine,” another boy said. “I just said there was no way he could pull the shy girl.”
Shy girl.
Your stomach twisted so violently you thought you might actually throw up but they were still talking, still laughing at your expense.
Someone—maybe Minjae, maybe one of the others, you couldn’t even tell anymore because your ears were ringing—said it plainly, casually, like it was the funniest thing in the world. “Bet was just to see if he could get her into bed, wasn’t it?”
The whole room tilted. You looked at Jeongin again.
Please, you thought wildly. Please say something. Please laugh and say it’s bullshit. Please look disgusted. Please do anything.
Jeongin scrubbed a hand over his face, clearly uncomfortable now. “Can you not—”
But it was too late because you didn’t hear the rest. You didn’t hear whether he was going to deny it or shut them down or tell them to stop talking about you like that. All you heard was the confirmation already carved into your chest, cruel and immediate.
A bet.
A six-month joke.
A challenge.
How stupid had you been? How painfully, humiliatingly stupid?
Of course a guy like Yang Jeongin had never actually fallen for a girl like you. Of course there had to be a catch.
You thought of every time he’d looked at you softly, every whispered I love you, every kiss pressed to your forehead, every careful touch when your anxiety got bad, every tiny moment you’d tucked away like proof that someone like him could really want someone like you.
And suddenly, all of it felt rotten. Fake and manufactured. Something performed so well you’d been idiot enough to mistake it for love.
Your eyes burned.
Not here. Not here. Not here.
You took a shaky step backwards, then another, pulse roaring in your ears. Your hands were trembling so badly you almost dropped your phone trying to pull it from your pocket. You couldn’t breathe properly. The walls felt too close, the room too hot, your clothes suddenly wrong on your body, the makeup on your skin suffocating.
You shouldn’t have come. God, you shouldn’t have come.
You turned blindly, shoulder-checking someone hard enough that they swore at you, but you barely registered it. You just kept moving, head down, vision blurring, one hand clamped over your mouth to stop the horrible little sob trying to crawl out of you.
You were halfway down the hallway when you heard it - your name, Jeongin’s voice, sharp with confusion at first, then louder.
“Y/N?”
You flinched like you’d been hit.
Maybe he’d seen you. Maybe one of his friends had noticed. Maybe he was coming after you because he didn’t want you causing a scene. Maybe he was worried you’d tell someone and ruin the joke and ruin whatever image he had to protect.
You didn’t wait to find out.
You shoved through the front door so hard it slammed against the wall, the cold night air hitting your face like a slap. The sound of the party dulled behind you, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped. Your chest was too tight, your breaths coming in short, painful gasps that never seemed to reach your lungs.
“Y/N—wait!”
His footsteps pounded behind you on the front path as you stumbled down the drive, nearly twisting your ankle in shoes you were suddenly regretting, tears spilling properly now. Your phone screen swam in front of your eyes as you tried to unlock it, fingers slipping, thumb missing the numbers twice before you gave up entirely.
“Y/N, stop—”
A hand caught your wrist. You spun on instinct, ripping yourself free so violently it shocked even you.
“Don’t touch me.”
The words came out cracked and wet and barely recognisable as your own.
Jeongin froze.
He’d followed you out without a jacket, chest rising and falling hard, hair a mess from where he’d clearly run his hands through it. Up close, he looked panicked—actually panicked, eyes darting over your face as if trying to understand what the hell was happening.
And then his expression changed.
He looked at your makeup, your clothes, the tears running down your cheeks, and something awful like realisation hit him.
“Oh my god,” he breathed. “You heard that.”
You laughed, and the sound was horrible - wet and choked off at the origin.
“I heard enough.”
“Y/N, no, listen to me—”
“No.” You backed away from him, hugging your arms around yourself so tightly it hurt. “Don’t. Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like you care.”
His face went white. “I do care.”
The sheer nerve of it made your vision blur again. “You were laughing about me.”
“I wasn’t—”
“You were standing there while your friends talked about me like I was some kind of challenge.” Your voice shook harder with every word, humiliation and hurt and fury all clawing up your throat at once. “A bet, Jeongin? Seriously?”
He took a step toward you, then stopped when you recoiled. His face crumpled in a way you couldn’t bear to look at.
“It started as a bet,” he said, and every single part of you shattered at once. “But it’s not like that now—”
You made a small, broken sound.
Not like that now.
As if that somehow made it better. As if you were supposed to be grateful that somewhere along the way, after lying to your face for six whole months, he’d apparently decided you were worth keeping around.
Jeongin realised what he’d said the second it landed. “No, no, that’s not what I meant—”
“Six months,” you whispered.
Your voice was so quiet he had to lean in slightly to hear you.
“Six months,” you repeated, staring at him through tears. “You told me you loved me.”
“I do.”
“Stop.” Your whole face twisted. “Please stop saying that.”
He looked like you’d slapped him.
You pressed the heel of your hand to your mouth, trying to hold yourself together and failing miserably. “Was everyone laughing at me this whole time? Is that what this is? Some joke I’m the only one not in on?”
“No.” His answer came immediately, fiercely. “No, never. I swear to you, no one’s been laughing at you.”
“I just saw them laughing, Jeongin.” Your voice cracked again. “They all knew, and I didn’t. You let me stand there and believe you actually wanted me, and all your friends knew the truth.”
Jeongin’s eyes were shining now too, whether with panic or guilt or something else entirely, you didn’t know. “I was going to tell you.”
“When?” you shot back. “After you’d slept with me? After you got bored? After graduation?”
He flinched and that, more than anything, made your stomach turn because flinching meant guilt. Flinching meant there was truth buried somewhere in all the things you were saying, and you couldn’t bear to dig through it, couldn’t bear to hear exactly how stupid you’d been.
A car pulled up at the curb behind you—a taxi someone else must have ordered—and you latched onto it like a lifeline. You stepped around Jeongin before he could react.
“Y/N, wait, please—”
You yanked the back door open, eyes avoiding his. “Just leave me alone.”
He caught the top of the door before you could slam it, not hard enough to stop you if you really wanted to close it, but enough to make you look at him one last time.
He looked wrecked. Not annoyed or caught out or defensive like you’d expected.
Wrecked.
His voice broke when he said your name. “Please let me explain.”
For one horrible second, your chest ached with the urge to let him. To hear him out. To let him tell you there was some context you were missing, some version of this that didn’t make you feel like your skin had been peeled off in public.
But then you remembered the kitchen. The laughter. The girl on his arm. The words shy girl said like a punchline. The way he’d admitted it—it started as a bet—without you even having to drag it out of him.
And whatever tiny piece of your heart was still trying to defend him finally gave up.
You shoved his hand off the door. “Go back to your party.”
Then you climbed into the taxi and slammed it shut.
Jeongin was still standing on the pavement when the car pulled away. You didn’t look back for long—just long enough to see him take a step after the car, one hand half-lifted like he didn’t know what to do with himself, his face pale under the streetlights. Then you turned away, curled in on yourself in the backseat, and cried so hard you could barely breathe.
The makeup you’d spent forty minutes doing was probably ruined, black mascara and wet foundation and smeared lip gloss all over your face. Your nice top felt too tight, your skirt too short, your skin wrong, your whole body burning with shame. You scrubbed at your cheeks with the sleeve of your coat and stared out of the window as the streetlights blurred past.
You’d really believed him, and that was the part that hurt most.
Not the humiliation of the bet, not even the image of that girl wrapped around his arm, but the fact that he’d made you feel safe enough to believe him. Safe enough to let him close. Safe enough to hand over all the soft, terrified parts of yourself you usually kept hidden because you were so scared of exactly this.
And he’d taken them anyway.
By the time you got home, your phone was vibrating nonstop in your lap.
Jeongin was blowing up your phone with texts and calls.
You didn’t read a single message.
You let yourself into your house with shaking hands, kicked off your shoes somewhere quietly near the door, and made it all the way to the bathroom before the first sob tore out of you loud enough to echo off the tiles.
The girl staring back at you in the mirror looked like a stranger. Mascara streaked under red-rimmed eyes. Foundation patchy where tears had carved through it. Hair falling out of place. Lip gloss gone. Pretty in the saddest, most pathetic way possible—as if dressing up had just made the whole thing crueller somehow. Like you’d wrapped your hope up in eyeliner and a skirt and walked it straight into a room full of people waiting to laugh.
Your phone was still buzzing crazily, this time on the sink where you’d left it when you’d reached the bathroom. With shaking fingers, you grabbed it.
Jeongin💕: please answer me
Jeongin💕: i’m coming to your house
Jeongin💕: please don’t lock me out. please just let me explain
Another message came through before you could even process that one.
Jeongin💕: i know i don’t deserve it but please
Your throat tightened. You turned the phone face down on the sink and gripped the edges hard enough for your knuckles to ache. You couldn’t do this tonight. You couldn’t hear his voice and listen to him say all the right things in that soft, careful tone and risk being weak enough to believe him again.
So when the buzzing started once more, you switched your phone off entirely. Then you slid down the bathroom wall, pressed your forehead to your knees, and sat there in your ruined makeup and party clothes while the silence closed in around you.
Six months.
Six months of first kisses and late-night phone calls and borrowed hoodies and whispered I love yous. Six months of thinking maybe, just maybe, someone like Jeongin could look at someone like you and mean it.
And now all you could think was that maybe the cruelest part wasn’t the bet.
Maybe the cruelest part was that for a little while, he’d made you believe you were enough.
You didn’t sleep, but it wasn’t from lack of trying.
You changed out of your party clothes with trembling hands, scrubbed your makeup off so hard your skin felt raw, crawled into bed and curled beneath your duvet with every light in your room switched off—but sleep never came. Every time you closed your eyes, you were back in that kitchen doorway.
The shy girl.
Just to see if he could get her into bed.
It started as a bet.
The words played over and over until they felt carved into the inside of your skull.
At some point, there had been knocking at your front door - soft at first, then louder, then desperate enough that you had to bite down on the inside of your cheek to stop yourself from crying again.
“Y/N,” His voice drifted in through your open bedroom window from down below, voice hoarse and strained. “Please. I know you’re in there.”
You’d sat frozen on your bed, knees pulled to your chest, staring at the wall while he knocked.
“Please just let me explain.”
You were silent, part of you wishing he’d disappear whilst another part of you longed to open the door and throw yourself into his arms, longed to forget this whole night.
There was another knock.
“Y/N, please.”
You hadn’t moved. Hadn’t answered his calls, hadn’t replied to his messages, hadn’t gone to the door even when you heard him slide down against it on the other side and stay there long enough that the flat fell quiet around him.
Eventually, sometime after two in the morning, the knocking stopped.
You didn’t know when he finally left.
By the time your alarm went off, your eyes felt full of sand.
For one blissful, stupid second, you forgot. But then you saw your phone on the bedside table—still switched off, still face down—and it all came crashing back so hard it made you feel sick.
Your stomach turned and you lay there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and wondering if you could just stay in bed forever but knowing couldn’t.
School didn’t stop just because your boyfriend was never really yours to begin with.
So you dragged yourself up, showered in water that was too hot, and got dressed with the kind of numb, mechanical movements usually reserved for brushing your teeth. You picked the baggiest hoodie you owned, even though the weather was warming up, and a pair of jeans that hid as much of you as possible. You didn’t bother with makeup this time. There was no point trying to look pretty when you felt like a hollowed-out version of yourself.
You turned your phone back on only because you needed to check the time, and it lit up like a warning sign, messages flooding in so fast the screen almost froze.
Jeongin💕: please answer me
Jeongin💕: i’m outside your house
Jeongin 💕: please just tell me you’re okay
Jeongin 💕: i know you hate me right now but please let me explain
Jeongin 💕: i’m not leaving until i know you’re safe
Then, nearly an hour later:
Jeongin💕: your neighbour told me to go home
Despite everything, a horrible little laugh almost escaped you. You’d need to remember to apologise to your neighbour (but also to thank them).
The messages kept going.
Jeongin💕: i’m sorry
Jeongin💕: i’m so fucking sorry
Jeongin💕: please don’t ignore me at school. please.
That one made your chest tighten, the thought of seeing him in school nearly unbearable.
You locked your phone and shoved it into your bag without replying.
The walk into school felt like walking to your own execution.
Every step closer to the building made your pulse jump harder. Your eyes were gritty from lack of sleep, your stomach too unsettled for breakfast, and you could feel the fragile kind of composure you’d pieced together that morning threatening to crack with every passing second.
Maybe he wouldn’t be there yet, you told yourself. Maybe he’d be late. Maybe he’d be sick with guilt and stay home.
You knew better than to hope for that kind of mercy.
The second you stepped through the front gates, you saw him. Jeongin was standing halfway up the path to the main building like he’d been waiting there for hours, eyes scanning every face that came through the gates. The moment they landed on you, his entire body jolted.
He looked awful. Not in the dramatic, still-pretty way boys in films did after heartbreak. He looked genuinely wrecked. His hair was messy like he’d been dragging his hands through it all morning, his school tie hung loose and crooked, and there were dark shadows under his eyes that definitely hadn’t been there yesterday. He was pale, too, the kind of pale that made his freckles stand out sharply across his nose.
For a second, you stopped breathing before you dropped your gaze and kept walking.
“Y/N—”
His voice cracked around your name, the sound making you flinch. But you didn’t slow down.
Jeongin hurried after you, shoes slapping against the pavement. “Y/N, please, just let me talk to you.”
You tightened your grip on your bag strap and kept moving.
“Please.”
People were starting to look, but what else could you expect? Yang Jeongin chasing after the quiet girl in the oversized hoodie was always going to draw attention, and humiliation crawled hotly under your skin as whispers started to ripple around you. You could feel eyes on the back of your neck, hear the shift in tone from normal morning chatter to something curious, something hungry.
“Y/N.” He caught up enough to step in front of you.
You stopped so abruptly your shoulder nearly collided with his chest.
Up close, he looked even worse. His eyes were bloodshot, and there was something frantic in the way he was breathing, like he’d been holding himself together by threads ever since last night.
“Move,” you said quietly.
Jeongin’s face crumpled a little at the sound of your voice—flat, exhausted, nothing like the way you usually spoke to him.
“Please just give me five minutes.”
“No.”
“Y/N—”
“Move.”
He didn’t, but not because he was trying to intimidate you. If anything, he looked terrified of you. He stayed where he was, hands twitching at his sides like he wanted to reach for you and knew he couldn’t.
“I know how bad this looks—”
You laughed once, sharp and humourless. “Looks?”
His mouth snapped shut and you stepped around him. This time he didn’t try to block you, but he followed, close enough that you could hear every uneven breath.
“I came to your house,” he said quickly, as if you might not know. “I stayed for hours. I texted, I called, I—”
“I know.”
The words came out cold enough to make him go quiet. You kept your eyes fixed straight ahead as you climbed the stairs to the main building.
“I know you came,” you said. “I ignored you on purpose.”
The silence that followed was so abrupt it almost rang. When you finally glanced at him, Jeongin looked like you’d physically winded him.
“Oh.”
It was such a small sound, barely a word at all, but something inside your chest twisted painfully. You forced yourself to crush it before it could become pity.
“Yeah,” you said. “So take the hint.”
You turned and walked into the corridor. Jeongin stood there for half a second, stunned, before hurrying after you again.
The corridor was filling up fast now—lockers slamming, voices echoing, people drifting into classrooms—but the second Jeongin called your name again, it felt like the whole space tilted toward you.
“Please don’t do this.”
You spun around so quickly he nearly walked into you.
“Don’t do what?” you asked, keeping your voice low only because you were one second away from shattering and couldn’t bear the idea of everyone hearing it. “Ignore the fact that my boyfriend started dating me because of a bet?”
His face went white. A couple of nearby students glanced over.
Jeongin’s eyes darted around the corridor, panic flaring. “Can we not do this here?”
“Why?” You swallowed hard. “Worried people will hear?”
“No, I’m worried you’re upset and everyone’s staring.”
You almost laughed again. The nerve of him.
“They stared last night too, didn’t they?” you said. “Didn’t stop your friends.”
Jeongin’s whole expression twisted. “They’re not my friends right now.”
“Well, that’s convenient.”
“Y/N—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“You need to hear it,” he said, voice breaking with desperation. “Please. I know I fucked up, I know I should’ve told you, I know I should’ve shut it down the second they started talking, but please don’t look at me like this.”
Your throat tightened. “Like what?”
“Like I’m a stranger.”
The words hit harder than they should have. Maybe because that was exactly what this felt like. Like every version of Jeongin you thought you knew had peeled away overnight, leaving behind someone unrecognisable.
You looked at him properly then, taking in the red-rimmed eyes, the way his hands were trembling, the raw panic on his face. Six months ago, that expression would’ve destroyed you. Even a week ago, you would’ve reached for him without thinking. Now all it did was make you tired.
“You should’ve thought about that before you lied to me for half a year.”
Jeongin recoiled slightly.
“I didn’t lie about everything,” he said, so quietly you almost didn’t catch it.
You stared at him.
He swallowed hard. “What I feel for you—that’s real.”
Something ugly and wounded twisted in your chest.
“You don’t get to say that to me anymore.”
His eyes filled so fast it startled you.
He blinked hard, jaw clenching, and for a second he looked like he was physically trying to stop himself from falling apart in the middle of the corridor. “Then tell me what I do get to say, because I can’t just let you walk around thinking I never cared about you. I can’t let that be the last thing you believe about us.”
Us.
The word made your stomach lurch.
“There is no us.”
You saw the moment he broke. The composure Jeongin had been clinging to cracked clean down the middle. You saw it happen in real time—the way his shoulders dropped, the way the colour drained even further from his face, the way his mouth parted around a breath that sounded too shaky to be steady.
“Don’t say that.”
His voice was barely above a whisper, and you hated that it still hurt to hear him sound like that. You hated that some stupid part of you still wanted to comfort him even now, even after all of this, even when you were the one who’d spent the night crying on your bathroom floor because of him. So you did the only thing you could think of.
You hardened yourself against the desire to comfort him.
“I mean it.”
Jeongin shook his head immediately, frantic. “No, you don’t. You’re angry, and you should be, but please don’t say things you don’t mean.”
The disbelief of it almost knocked the breath out of you.
“Don’t tell me what I mean.”
“I’m not—I just—” He dragged a hand through his hair, breathing hard. “Please, Y/N, please. Scream at me, hit me, tell me you hate me, I don’t care. Just don’t shut me out.”
Your eyes stung, and he noticed the tears well up in your eyes instantly, stepping forward on instinct.
You stepped back just as fast, Jeongin freezing. The look on his face then was awful. Not dramatic. Not theatrical. Just raw, open hurt, like that one tiny movement had sliced him open from throat to stomach.
You couldn’t do this. Not here. Not with people watching and whispering and pretending not to stare. Not with Jeongin looking at you like you were the one holding the knife.
Your next class bell rang, shrill and sharp through the corridor, the sound breaking the moment in half.
You clutched your bag tighter and forced your voice to stay steady. “If you care about me at all, you’ll leave me alone.”
Jeongin stared at you before he gave the smallest, weakest shake of his head.
“I can’t.”
The honesty of it almost made you falter.
Almost.
“Well,” you said, stepping around him again, “you’re going to have to learn.”
This time, when you walked away, he didn’t follow. You could feel his eyes on your back the whole way down the corridor, heavy and devastated and impossible to ignore, but he stayed where he was.
You made it into your classroom with thirty seconds to spare and sat down in your usual seat by the window, hands trembling so badly you nearly dropped your pen.
Your friend Mia—your only friend, who sat beside you in English and usually spent the first five minutes of class gossiping under her breath—took one look at your face and frowned.
“Jesus,” she whispered. “What happened to you?”
You shook your head, keeping your eyes fixed on the contents of your bag whilst you tried to pull yourself together.
Mia’s expression softened immediately. “Hey, no, seriously. Are you okay?”
No.
Not even remotely.
But the word lodged in your throat and refused to come out, because if you started talking about it, you knew you’d start crying, and if you started crying in the middle of English class you were pretty sure you’d actually die on the spot.
So you just muttered, “I’m fine.”
Mia looked like she didn’t believe you for a second, but before she could press further, your teacher walked in and the room fell quiet. You stared at the board and heard absolutely none of the lesson. Every few minutes, your phone buzzed in your blazer pocket but you ignored it.
At break, you stayed in your seat until the room emptied, pretending to search for something in your bag just so you wouldn’t have to risk walking into the corridor while Jeongin was out there.
At lunch, you ate half a cereal bar in a bathroom cubicle because the thought of the cafeteria made your chest seize up.
By last period, exhaustion had sunk into your bones so heavily that even lifting your head felt like effort.
And still, Jeongin kept trying.
You saw him between classes, hovering at the end of corridors like he was scared to get too close and even more scared to let you out of his sight. He texted. He called once during lunch, then again ten minutes later, then stopped—presumably realising you weren’t ever going to pick up. He looked at you across classrooms, across the courtyard, across the canteen when you finally forced yourself to walk through it for a bottle of water, and every time your eyes accidentally met, the expression on his face made something twist sickly inside you.
Panic. Guilt.
And something that looked too much like heartbreak.
By the final bell, you felt wrung dry.
You just wanted to go home, lock your bedroom door, and sleep for twelve hours. You should’ve known Jeongin wouldn’t make it that easy.
The second you stepped out of your last lesson, he was there, waiting right outside the classroom door like he’d been counting down the minutes. His eyes found yours instantly.
“Please,” he said before you could even turn away. “Just let me walk you home.”
You stared at him. He looked like he hadn’t eaten all day. Like he’d spent every second since this morning spiralling deeper and deeper into whatever guilt-ridden hell he’d built for himself. His tie was gone entirely now, shirt untucked at one side, and there was a crease pressed into his cheek like he’d been sitting with his face in his hands.
For a moment, neither of you moved before you snapped yourself out of it, tightening your hold on your bag and saying the one thing that made his face fall completely.
“No.”
You walked away before he could say anything else.
You made it halfway down the front steps before you heard him behind you.
“Y/N—wait.”
Of course he’d followed.
Your grip tightened around your bag strap so hard your knuckles ached, but you didn’t turn around. The school day had wrung every last scrap of energy out of you. Your head was pounding, your chest still tight from the strain of holding yourself together for eight straight hours, and the only thing keeping you upright was the thought of getting home, shutting your bedroom door, and not seeing another human being until Monday.
“Y/N, please.”
His footsteps quickened until they were right behind you, but you kept walking, speed picking up marginally.
Students spilled around you in clusters, loud and careless and free in the way everyone seemed to be at the end of the day. They streamed out through the gates in laughing groups, bags slung over shoulders, phones in hand, already planning where they were going next. The pavement outside the school was crowded, and every brush of a stranger’s shoulder against yours made your skin jump.
“Can you just stop for one second?” Jeongin asked, breathless.
Your answer came instantly, flat and sharp. “No.”
He was quiet for a beat, then tried again. “You haven’t eaten.”
You almost stumbled - not because the words were particularly shocking, but because it was such a Jeongin thing to notice. Such a Jeongin thing to say. Soft and observant and infuriatingly familiar.
You hated that your chest still reacted to it.
“I’m fine.”
“You had half a cereal bar in the bathroom at lunch.”
That made you stop.
You turned so fast he nearly walked into you. His eyes widened slightly, but he didn’t step back.
“You were watching me in the bathroom now too?” you asked, voice low and dangerous.
Jeongin’s face dropped. “What? No—God, no. Mia told Hyunjin you disappeared all lunch and then I saw you come back with that stupid cereal bar wrapper and—” He dragged a hand over his face, frustrated with himself. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point, Jeongin?”
He looked at you like the answer should’ve been obvious. “You.”
The word hit like a slap. It didn’t hurt because it was cruel, but because it sounded so earnest that it made your throat tighten with anger.
You let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “Right.”
“I mean it.”
“Stop saying things like that.”
His expression crumpled. “Why?”
Because you didn’t get to sound like you cared when you were the reason she’d cried until three in the morning. Because every soft word out of his mouth felt like someone twisting a knife in a wound and apologising while they did it. Because if he kept sounding like Jeongin—your Jeongin, the one who tucked your hands into his coat pockets and kissed your temple and remembered what snacks you liked after bad exams—you might start forgetting that he wasn’t yours at all.
“Because I don’t believe you anymore,” you snapped.
That shut him up.
For half a second, all the noise around you blurred. Cars passed on the road. Someone shouted from across the street. A group of younger students ran past, nearly clipping your shoulder, but you barely registered any of it. All you could see was Jeongin standing there in front of you with that wrecked look on his face, tie gone, shirt untucked, eyes ringed red like he hadn’t slept either.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I know you don’t.”
“Then why are you still doing this?”
“Because I can’t just leave you like this.”
Something ugly and exhausted surged up inside you.
“Like what?” you demanded. “Like I’m upset? Like I’m angry? Like I finally found out my boyfriend was using me and now I’m inconveniently having a hard time with it?”
Jeongin winced so hard it almost looked painful. “I wasn’t using you.”
“Oh my god.” You laughed again, louder this time, the sound wobbling on the edge of something hysterical. “Do you hear yourself?”
“I know how it sounds—”
“No, you don’t.” You stepped closer before you could stop yourself, voice dropping into something sharp enough to cut. “You don’t get it, Jeongin. You don’t get to stand here looking heartbroken and tell me I’ve got the wrong idea when I literally heard your friends talking about your bet to sleep with me.”
His face drained of colour.
“Please lower your voice,” he said, glancing around.
The last thread of your restraint snapped.
“Why?” you said, louder. “Scared people might hear?”
A few heads turned but for once in your life you didn’t care.
Jeongin went pale. “Y/N—”
“No, actually, let’s do this properly, since you seem so desperate to talk.” Your heart was already starting to race, too fast and too hard, but you couldn’t stop. The words had built up all day, hot and poisonous and impossible to swallow down any longer. “What exactly were you waiting for, huh? Were you just seeing how long you could keep me around before you got bored? Did your friends get a good laugh every time I held your hand in public? Every time I kissed you? Every time I told you I loved you?”
“Stop,” Jeongin whispered.
“Or were they waiting for updates?” you shot back, tears stinging now because of course they were. “Did you tell them when I stayed over? Did they know every time I let myself trust you a little more? Was that funny too?”
“Y/N, stop, please.”
“Was I just some pathetic little project to you?” Your voice cracked, and now people were definitely staring, slowing on the pavement, whispering to each other. “The shy girl you thought you’d fix up enough to fuck?”
“Don’t.” Jeongin’s voice broke on the word. He looked horrified now, properly horrified, like each sentence out of your mouth was hitting him in the chest. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? Isn’t that what this was?”
“No!” It came out so sharply that a couple walking past actually turned. Jeongin immediately lowered his voice again, breathing hard. “No, it wasn’t. Not anymore. Not for a long time.”
You stared at him, chest heaving. There it was again.
Not anymore.
As if that somehow made the beginning disappear. As if there was any version of this where you weren’t still the idiot who’d spent six months falling in love with someone who had first looked at her and seen a challenge.
Your vision blurred. You looked away from him, blinking hard, but the pressure in your chest was getting worse now—too tight, too hot, your lungs refusing to fill properly. The pavement suddenly felt unsteady beneath your feet. The noise of the street swelled until it all blurred together: engines, voices, footsteps, laughter, a car horn somewhere in the distance. Too much. Too loud.
“Y/N?”
Jeongin’s voice changed instantly. The anger drained right out of it, leaving only alarm.
You took a step back. “I’m fine.”
You weren’t.
You knew that in the same detached way you knew your own name. Your hands had started shaking. Not subtly—violently enough that you had to curl them into fists to hide it. Your breaths were coming too fast, too shallow, and there was a horrible buzzing in your ears like static.
Jeongin noticed all of it, just as he had these past six months.
“Hey,” he said, softer now, taking one cautious step toward you. “Hey, look at me.”
“No.”
“Y/N, you need to breathe.”
“I am breathing.”
The lie barely made it out. Your voice sounded strange to your own ears—too high, too thin.
Jeongin’s eyes flicked over your face, panic rising. “No, you’re not. Come here, let’s just get you out of the crowd—”
He reached for your wrist, but you shoved him away before he could touch you.
“Don’t touch me!”
It wasn’t enough to actually hurt him, but it made him stumble back a step, shock flashing across his face.
A few people outright stopped walking now. You hated them for looking. Hated Jeongin for being here. Hated yourself for falling apart in public like this, for not even being able to keep your own body under control for five fucking minutes.
Your lungs seized.
A sharp, humiliating sound tore out of your throat as you tried to inhale and couldn’t get enough air. Suddenly everything was spinning—too bright, too loud, your heartbeat hammering in your ears so violently it drowned out everything else.
“Okay.” Jeongin lifted both hands slowly, palms open like he was approaching a frightened animal. His own face had gone white. “Okay, I won’t touch you. I promise. I’m not touching you.”
You backed away again, arms wrapping around yourself so tightly it hurt.
“Go away.”
He looked devastated. “I can’t.”
“I said go away!”
Your voice came out broken, cracking in the middle, and then your body betrayed you completely.
Your knees gave. It wasn’t enough to send you sprawling onto the pavement, but enough that you staggered hard and had to grab blindly for the nearest wall. Your bag slid off your shoulder and hit the ground with a dull thud, papers crumpling inside.
Jeongin moved on instinct. He caught your elbow before you could hit the pavement properly but you jerked out of his grip so violently you nearly lost your balance again.
“Don’t!”
He let go at once, hands lifting back into the air.
“Sorry, sorry—shit, I’m sorry.” His voice was shaking now too. “I’m not going to touch you, okay? I’m not. Just—please stay still for a second.”
You pressed your back against the brick wall outside the school gates and squeezed your eyes shut, but that only made it worse. The darkness behind your eyelids tilted sickeningly. Your chest was on fire. Every breath snagged halfway in and came back out in a sharp, ugly gasp. You could hear yourself making these awful little choking noises and it only made the panic worse.
“Look at me.” Jeongin was in front of you again, crouching slightly so he was in your line of sight without crowding you. “Y/N, look at me.”
You shook your head, tears spilling hot and useless down your cheeks.
“I hate you,” you gasped.
The words clearly hit him, but he swallowed them down.
“I know,” he said, voice cracking. “You can hate me. Just—please look at me for one second.”
You didn’t want to. You didn’t want to give him anything. Not your eyes, not your trust, not the chance to slide back into the role he’d gotten so good at playing—the gentle boyfriend who knew exactly how to calm you down when your anxiety got too loud. But your vision was tunnelling. The pavement had narrowed into a smear of grey beneath your feet. You were dimly aware of people slowing as they passed, of someone whispering is she okay? and another voice saying should we get a teacher?
Jeongin heard it too.
He looked over his shoulder and snapped, “Can you all stop staring?”
The sharpness in his voice cut through the murmurs immediately, people scattering but still throwing worried looks over their shoulder.
When he turned back to you, his face was stricken. “Can you sit down for me? Not with me—just sit. Please.”
You slid down the wall before you could answer, legs folding under you because they’d stopped feeling reliable. The second you hit the ground, Jeongin dropped down too, kneeling a careful distance away.
“Okay,” he said, breathing hard like he was trying not to panic with you. “Okay. That’s good. That’s okay.”
You were crying properly now, shoulders shaking, fingers digging into your sleeves. Your breaths were still coming in short, painful bursts, your chest locking up tighter every time you tried to drag in air.
“Stop—” you choked out, though you weren’t even sure what you were asking him to stop. Talking? Looking at you? Caring? Existing?
Jeongin scrubbed a hand over his face, helpless. “I know. I know, I’m sorry. Just listen to me, okay? You don’t have to say anything back. Just listen.”
He glanced down at his own hands like he was physically restraining himself from reaching for you.
“In for four,” he said softly, voice trembling. “Hold for four. Out for four. You know this. Come on.”
You let out a broken laugh-sob. Of course he’d remember. Of course he’d use the exact same voice he always did when you got overwhelmed—the one that was low and steady and careful, like if he was gentle enough he could smooth all the sharp edges off the world.
It made you want to scream.
“I don’t want your help,” you whispered.
The pain on his face was immediate.
“I know.” His eyes were bright now, his own breathing uneven. “I know you don’t. I’m sorry. I’m still going to help if I can.”
Something inside you twisted so violently it hurt. You shoved yourself to your feet too fast, wobbling instantly. Jeongin lurched forward, hand half-outstretched, but stopped before he touched you.
“Don’t,” you snapped, pressing yourself harder against the wall as if distance could somehow save you. “Don’t act like you still get to do this.”
His hand dropped. For a second he just looked at you, kneeling on the pavement in front of you with his tie stuffed in one pocket and his shirt wrinkled and his eyes red, like some pathetic aftermath of the boy you’d fallen in love with. Then he nodded once, small and broken.
“Okay.”
Your breathing was still awful. Better than thirty seconds ago, maybe, but only in the sense that you no longer felt seconds away from passing out. Your hands were numb, your face soaked with tears, and there was a crowd-shaped awareness hovering at the edge of everything that made humiliation burn hotly through your chest.
You couldn’t stay here.
You bent to grab your bag with shaking hands.
Jeongin stood immediately. “Let me carry that.”
You shot him a look so full of exhausted fury that he actually stopped mid-step.
“No.”
“Right.” His throat bobbed. “Right. Sorry.”
You slung the bag over your shoulder, nearly fumbling it, then turned toward home with your head down and your entire body trembling.
Jeongin fell into step behind you. Not beside you or close enough to touch. Just… there.
You made it ten steps before whirling around again. “Why are you still following me?”
He stopped dead.
“Because I’m not leaving you alone after that.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“I know.” His voice was wrecked. “I know I don’t get to decide anything right now. But you can barely stand up and I can’t just watch you walk off on your own like this.”
“You don’t get to care now.”
His face twisted. “I never stopped caring.”
You let out a shaky breath that felt halfway to a sob. “You don’t understand, do you?”
“What?”
“You caring is the problem.” Your voice cracked, and you hated how weak it sounded. “If you were just an asshole, if you’d only been pretending this whole time, maybe this would hurt less. But you keep looking at me like you mean it, and I don’t know what to do with that.”
Jeongin went completely still. The crowd noise around you seemed to fade for a second, replaced by the awful ragged sound of your breathing and the silence between you.
You saw his eyes fill. It wasn’t dramatic or in a way meant to manipulate. It was just sudden, helpless, like the words had slipped past whatever thin control he’d been clinging to all day and hit somewhere deep.
“Y/N…”
“Don’t.” You stepped back again, swallowing hard. “Just don’t.”
He wiped quickly at one eye with the heel of his hand, jaw clenching. “I’m still walking behind you.”
You stared at him.
“I won’t touch you,” he said hoarsely. “I won’t talk if you don’t want me to. But I’m not letting you go home alone when you can barely breathe.”
You wanted to argue. Wanted to scream at him until your throat gave out, wanted to tell him to fuck off and mean it, wanted to stop caring that the person hurting right in front of you was also the person who had hurt you in the first place.
But you were so tired. So painfully, bone-deep tired.
So instead, you just turned around and kept walking, and Jeongin followed, always a few steps behind. Close enough that you could hear his footsteps, far enough that he never brushed against you once.
The whole walk home, you fought every desire to look back.
By the time you reached your house, your legs felt like they were made of wet paper.
The panic attack had left you hollowed out, shaky in that awful aftershock kind of way where every sound still felt too sharp and every breath still had to be thought through. Your face was sticky with dried tears, your chest ached from how hard it had seized up, and your bag strap kept slipping down your shoulder because your hands wouldn’t stop trembling long enough to fix it properly.
Through it all, Jeongin was still behind you. Far enough back that he wasn’t crowding you, yet close enough that you could hear his footsteps every time the street went quiet.
You hated how aware of him you were. Hated that even without looking, you knew exactly where he was. Knew the rhythm of his walk. Knew when he slowed because you did, when he stopped because you had to press a hand to the wall for a second and get your breathing back under control.
You just wanted to get inside. To lock your front door, go upstairs and collapse in the privacy of your own bed.
But as you turned onto your street, you saw someone sitting on your neighbour’s low brick wall, one long leg stretched out, the other bent, a half-finished can of energy drink balanced in one hand.
Chan looked up at the sound of your footsteps, and immediately stood.
You’d known Chris Chan—just Chan, because he’d laughed the first time you called him Christopher—for nearly a year now. He lived in the house next door, studied at the local university, and possessed the kind of stupidly unfair face that made people turn twice on the street. Tall, broad-shouldered, soft dark curls that always looked slightly messy no matter what he did with them, and warm dark eyes that somehow managed to look kind even when he was exhausted.
The first time you’d met him, you’d nearly dropped your shopping on the street because he’d said hello and startled you so badly. He’d ended up carrying your bags for you while making gentle conversation so easy you hadn’t realised until halfway through that you were actually answering. Since then, he’d become one of those strange, quiet fixtures in your life—someone you’d run into on your way to school, someone who’d fix the boiler when your landlord took too long to help your parents, someone who’d sit with you on the front steps when you’d had a bad day and talk absolute nonsense until your shoulders unclenched.
Chan knew about your anxiety in the vague way neighbours who paid attention sometimes did. He knew what you looked like when you were trying not to panic. And the second his eyes landed properly on your face, every trace of casual ease vanished.
“Hey,” he said, voice instantly gentler. “What happened?”
That was all it took. It wasn’t the words themselves, but the softness of them. The concern. The way he said it like he was already bracing for the answer. Your throat closed as Chan’s gaze flicked from your tear-stained face to the way you were clutching your bag strap, to the boy a few steps behind you.
His expression changed, just enough that something in him seemed to sharpen.
“Right,” he said quietly.
Jeongin stopped at the bottom of the path, chest rising and falling too fast, school bag hanging limply from one shoulder. He looked exhausted, wrung out, eyes still rimmed red from whatever emotional hell the day had put him through.
Chan took one look at him and understood far more than you wanted him to.
“You live here?” Jeongin asked, glancing between the two of you.
Chan ignored the question entirely. Instead, he stepped down from the wall and came to stand beside you—not touching, just close enough that his presence felt solid. Safe.
“You okay to get inside?” he asked you, low enough that the question didn’t feel public.
You nodded, even though you weren’t entirely sure it was true. Chan looked unconvinced, but he accepted it for now. Then he turned his head and fixed Jeongin with a look that was calm enough to be more intimidating than if he’d shouted.
“I’ll take it from here.”
Jeongin stiffened. “She doesn’t want to be alone.”
“I didn’t say I was leaving her alone.”
“I’m serious,” Jeongin said, taking a step forward. “She had a panic attack on the way here. She nearly collapsed and—”
“I know,” Chan cut in, still infuriatingly calm. “And right now, she’s standing next to me looking like she’s one sentence away from having another one, so I’m going to need you to stop talking.”
The silence that followed was instant. You blinked, and Jeongin looked like he was trying his best to keep his cool.
Chan wasn’t cruel about it. His tone never rose. But there was something in the way he stood—steady, certain, already halfway into protective mode—that made it obvious he wasn’t about to budge.
Jeongin’s jaw tightened. “I’m not leaving her when she’s like this.”
“You are,” Chan said. “Because she doesn’t want you here.”
You saw the words hit Jeongin right in the chest. His eyes flicked to you immediately, desperate, raw, as if hoping you’d contradict Chan, or at least soften it somehow.
You couldn’t. You were too tired to even feel guilty about that. Instead, you just looked away, missing the way Jeongin’s face fell.
For a second, nobody said anything. The street hummed quietly around you—distant traffic, a dog barking somewhere, a door slamming down the road. Chan stayed still beside you, arms folded loosely across his chest. Jeongin stood at the edge of the path looking like he was physically fighting the urge to ignore him and come after you anyway.
“Y/N,” he said finally, voice rough. “Please.”
You squeezed your eyes shut, but Chan answered for you.
“She’s done for tonight.”
Jeongin dragged a hand through his hair, visibly unraveling. “I just need to know she’s okay.”
“I’ll make sure she gets inside,” Chan said. “You have my word.”
Jeongin laughed once, bitter and exhausted. “No offence, mate, but your word doesn’t really mean much to me right now.”
Chan’s expression didn’t change. “That sounds like a you problem.”
If the situation had been even slightly less awful, you might have laughed, but Jeongin didn’t. He just looked back at you, face open in that horrible way that made your chest ache despite yourself.
“Please don’t do this,” he said.
Your eyes burned at his words, the pleading tone.
“I’m not doing anything,” you whispered. “I just want you to leave.”
The words came out thin and scraped raw, but they were enough.
Jeongin went still, the fight seeming to leave him all at once, shoulders dropping like someone had cut the strings holding him upright. He looked at you for another long second—at your red eyes, your trembling hands, the way you still couldn’t quite stand straight after crying and panicking your way home—and something in his expression cracked.
“Okay,” he said hoarsely.
It didn’t sound okay at all.
He swallowed, hard, then looked at Chan. “If she gets worse, call someone. Or me. I don’t care if she hates me right now, just don’t leave her alone if it gets bad.”
Chan gave a short nod. “I know what I’m doing.”
Jeongin hesitated, and you could see how much it cost him to turn around. How every instinct in him was screaming not to leave you like this, not with your face blotchy from crying and your breathing still uneven and another man standing where he thought he should be. But after one last look at you—one you couldn’t bring yourself to return—he stepped backwards down the path.
Then he left.
You watched him go despite yourself. Watched the slow, reluctant set of his shoulders. The way he kept glancing back until the corner of the street swallowed him whole.
The second he was out of sight, all the tension holding your body upright seemed to dissolve at once, your knees buckling under you.
“Whoa—hey.”
Chan caught your bag before it slipped off your shoulder again and guided you—not touching, just steering with his voice and presence—towards the low wall outside the building.
“Sit down for me.”
You sat instantly - mostly because your legs no longer felt like they belonged to you. Chan crouched in front of you, elbows resting loosely on his knees, eyes searching your face with careful concern.
“Do you need water?”
You shook your head.
“Tea?”
Another head shake.
“Want me to call someone?”
You thought of Mia. Of your mum. Of literally anyone asking what had happened and forcing you to say it out loud.
“No.”
“Okay.” Chan nodded easily, accepting that too. “Then we’re doing this the boring way.”
You blinked at him.
He tilted the energy drink can in his hand. “You sit there and look tragic, and I sit here and ask annoying questions until you either answer me or tell me to piss off.”
A weak, surprised laugh escaped you before you could stop it, and Chan’s mouth twitched.
“There she is.”
And that—stupidly, embarrassingly—was the thing that finally broke you.
Your face crumpled, the first sob coming out so abruptly that it startled even you, and then Chan was swearing softly under his breath and setting the drink aside, shifting from his crouch to sit on the wall beside you.
He didn’t sit too close, didn’t crowd you. Just close enough that you could feel the warmth of another person there if you wanted to.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he said quietly.
You covered your face with both hands as it all came spilling out in pieces after that. Not neatly. Not in a straight line. Half of it was choked out between breaths and the other half muffled behind your palms, but Chan listened anyway.
About the party.
About seeing Jeongin with a girl hanging off his arm.
About overhearing his friends laughing about the bet to sleep with the shy girl.
About Jeongin admitting it had started as a bet and how the words had split something open inside you.
About him turning up at your flat and you ignoring him. About him waiting for you at school, following you all day, chasing you after class, trying to help when you had a panic attack and you shoving him away because you couldn’t stand the idea of him touching you.
Chan didn’t interrupt much. He only asked questions when he needed to—small, practical ones that kept you going when your thoughts started spiralling.
“What exactly did you hear him say?”
“Did he deny it?”
“Did he ever actually sleep with anyone else while you were together?”
That last one made you look at him, horrified.
“No.”
“Okay. Good.”
“That’s not good, Chan.”
“No,” he said mildly, “but it’s less bad than it could’ve been.”
You stared at him through wet lashes, and he held up both hands. “I’m not saying he’s innocent. I’m saying there’s a difference between a teenage boy making the worst decision of his life and a teenage boy deliberately setting out to humiliate you for six months straight.”
You laughed bitterly. “Feels pretty humiliating either way.”
“Yeah.” Chan’s voice softened. “I know.”
Silence settled between you for a moment as you sniffed and wiped under your eyes with the sleeve of your hoodie. “You think I’m stupid.”
“What?” Chan frowned. “No.”
“I should’ve known.” The words came out before you could stop them. “I mean… Jeongin. Look at him. Look at me. It was obviously too good to be true.”
Chan went very still before he turned to face you fully, one arm draped along the back of the step behind you.
“Don’t do that.”
You looked away.
“I mean it.” His voice sharpened—not harsh, but firm enough to make you listen. “Do not take his stupidity and turn it into evidence that there’s something wrong with you.”
Your throat tightened.
“You didn’t do anything wrong here,” Chan said. “You believed someone you cared about when he told you he cared about you. That’s not stupidity. That’s trust.”
You bit the inside of your cheek hard enough to taste blood, and Chan sighed softly as he scrubbed a hand over his face. “Look, I’m not about to defend the bet. It’s disgusting. If he was twenty-five, I’d tell you to set his car on fire.”
Despite everything, you let out a watery snort.
“But,” Chan continued, “I also don’t think this is as simple as you’re making it.”
You frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I watched that boy’s face while he stood out here.” Chan tipped his head in the direction Jeongin had disappeared. “And unless he deserves an Oscar, he’s not acting.”
Your stomach twisted as you stared down at your hands, thinking about Chan’s words and Jeongin’s pale face.
Chan noticed and sighed. “I know. That’s probably the last thing you want to hear.”
“I don’t care if he feels guilty.”
“I know you don’t.” He paused. “But guilt isn’t the only thing I saw.”
You hated how your chest reacted to that. Hated the tiny, traitorous flicker of hope trying to force its way into a situation where it had no business existing.
Chan seemed to read the conflict on your face, because his tone gentled again.
“I’m not saying forgive him,” he said. “And I’m definitely not saying what he did is okay. It isn’t. It’s cruel and immature and I’d like five minutes alone with him in a locked room, just on principle.”
That got the tiniest smile out of you.
“But,” he said again, “I do think you should hear him out.”
Your head snapped up. “What?”
Chan held your gaze steadily. “Hear him out.”
“Why?”
“Because right now, your brain is doing what anxious brains do best.” He tapped two fingers lightly against his temple. “It’s taking the worst possible version of every missing piece and filling it in as fact.”
You opened your mouth to protest, but he kept going.
“You heard enough to know he fucked up. That part’s real. But you didn’t hear all of it. You don’t know what he was about to say when you walked away. You don’t know how long it stopped being a game to him. You don’t know why he never told you. And unless you hear it from him, you’re going to sit in your room for the next week inventing a hundred different explanations, and every single one of them will hurt.”
You swallowed around the lump in your throat. “He lied to me, though.”
“Yeah.” Chan nodded. “He did.”
“So why should I listen?”
“Because listening isn’t the same as forgiving.” His voice was calm, patient, matter-of-fact in the way it always was when he was trying to guide you out of your own head. “Hearing him out doesn’t mean taking him back. It doesn’t mean letting him off the hook. It just means you get the full truth before you decide what to do with it.”
Your eyes burned again.
Chan leaned back slightly, giving you room to breathe. “And if after that you still want nothing to do with him, fine. Block his number, tell him to go to hell, date someone with better decision-making skills.”
“Like who?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know. A nice cousin of an engineering student with excellent hair and a heroic willingness to carry your shopping?”
A laugh escaped you before you could stop it.
“There you are,” Chan murmured again, smiling a little.
The laugh died quickly, but the knot in your chest loosened just enough to let you breathe around it. You stared out at the street for a long moment, arms wrapped around yourself.
“I don’t know if I can do it.”
Chan was quiet for a second before answering. “You don’t have to do it tonight.”
You looked at him and he shrugged one shoulder. “Make him wait until tomorrow. Or the day after. Let him sweat a little, build character.” Then his expression softened. “But don’t make a forever decision based on the worst ten minutes of your life.”
His words settled somewhere deep. They didn’t fix anything—not even close—but they cracked open just enough space in the panic and humiliation for something else to exist alongside it.
Uncertainty. Questions. The horrible possibility that Chan might be right.
You scrubbed at your face again, exhausted. “I hate that this is your advice.”
“I know.” He bumped his shoulder lightly against yours. “I was annoyed too. I really wanted to tell you to egg his house.”
You snorted as he teased you again. “Still can, if that helps.”
“It doesn’t.”
“Shame. I’d be very good at it.”
You shook your head, smiling despite yourself, and Chan’s expression softened with relief—like seeing even that tiny reaction told him you were starting to come back to yourself.
After a moment, he stood and held out a hand. “Come on.”
You looked at it, and he wiggled his fingers. “I’m not letting you sit outside crying yourself into hypothermia. I’m making tea, and you’re telling me whether Jeongin’s always been this much of an idiot or if it’s a recent development.”
You hesitated only a second before taking his hand. Chan hauled you gently to your feet, steadied you when you swayed, then picked up your bag from where it had slumped against the wall.
As he led you towards his house, he glanced sideways at you.
“For the record,” he said, fishing his keys from his pocket, “if you do decide to hear him out, I’m sitting just next door with a cricket bat.”
You huffed a laugh. “You don’t even own a cricket bat.”
“No, but I can acquire one. I’m resourceful.”
And for the first time since the party, the ache in your chest eased just enough for you to believe that maybe—maybe—you wouldn’t drown in it after all.
The weekend passed in fragments.
You spent most of Saturday in Chan’s house because he’d apparently decided you were a flight risk and kept finding increasingly ridiculous reasons to stop you retreating into your bedroom for forty-eight hours straight. He made tea, ordered takeaway, put on terrible reality television and offered running commentary so sarcastic it dragged a laugh out of you more than once, even when you were trying very hard not to give him the satisfaction.
But no matter what was on the screen or what Chan was talking about, your mind kept circling back to Jeongin and the party.
To the look on his face when you’d told him there was no us.
To the way he’d followed you home at a distance because he knew you didn’t want him near you but couldn’t bring himself to leave anyway.
To the way he’d looked when you shoved him off during your panic attack—hurt, yes, but never angry. Just terrified for you.
And the more you thought about it, the less it fit. That was the problem.
If Jeongin had just been cruel, this would’ve been simpler. If he’d laughed with his friends, if he’d rolled his eyes when you cried, if he’d acted annoyed by your anxiety or embarrassed by how quiet you were or impatient with how long it took you to come out of your shell, maybe you could’ve built a clean, sharp version of him in your head and hated him properly.
But he hadn’t.
He’d held you through panic attacks. He’d kissed the tears off your face after bad exams and stayed on the phone with you until two in the morning when your thoughts got too loud and your chest wouldn’t settle. He’d remembered tiny things no one else noticed—how you hated fizzy drinks unless they’d gone flat, how crowds made you itch under your skin, how you needed five extra minutes after waking up before you could handle conversation. He’d learned exactly where to rub circles into your wrist to calm you down and exactly how to speak to you when your breathing started going funny.
He’d never made you feel like too much. Not once.
And no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t force those things into the shape of a bet.
Saturday night, lying awake in your own bed with the streetlight cutting a pale stripe across your ceiling, you found yourself thinking about the first time he’d told you he loved you.
It wasn’t at the swings in the park under the soft orange streetlights with the hoodie sleeves and the warmth of his hands in yours. It was earlier than that. The first real time.
You’d had a panic attack at his house five months into dating.
It had been stupid, really. One of those ridiculous little things that wouldn’t have affected anyone else—too many people in the kitchen, his friends turning up unexpectedly while you were already exhausted, someone dropping a glass in the next room and the sound slicing straight through you. You’d tried to hold it together because you were in his house, because you didn’t want to be dramatic, because you were still so scared back then of letting him see the uglier parts of you.
You’d made it as far as his bedroom before your lungs gave out, and Jeongin had found you on the floor between his bed and the wall, shaking so hard your teeth hurt, hands clamped over your mouth as if you could physically hold the panic inside yourself if you tried hard enough.
He hadn’t looked annoyed or embarrassed, but he hadn’t looked surprised either. He’d just dropped to his knees in front of you and said your name in that low, steady voice of his. Again and again and again until you looked at him.
After that, he’d sat on the floor with you for nearly an hour.
He’d talked you through every breath. Let you squeeze his hand hard enough to leave marks. Moved slowly enough that nothing felt like pressure, and when the panic had finally ebbed enough for you to stop crying, he’d helped you onto his bed and tucked you under the duvet like you were something fragile. You’d fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion with your face pressed into his shoulder.
When you woke up, it was dark outside. Your head ached, your eyes felt swollen, and for one awful second you had no idea where you were.
Then you realised Jeongin was still there.
He was propped up against the headboard with one arm around you, his phone abandoned on the duvet beside him, his free hand absently combing through your hair in slow, repetitive strokes. He’d clearly been there the whole time.
The second he noticed you were awake, his hand paused.
“Hey,” he’d said quietly. “How’re you feeling?”
Mortification had hit you all at once. You’d pushed yourself upright too fast, face burning, and immediately started apologising. For ruining the evening. For falling asleep on him. For being weird and dramatic and too much and—
Jeongin had cut you off by taking your face in both hands - actually taking your face in both hands and looking at you like you’d said something genuinely absurd.
“None of that,” he’d said.
You’d stared at him, teary and exhausted and still too wrung out to hide how badly you wanted to believe him.
“Y/N,” he’d said again, softer this time. “You don’t have to apologise for panicking.”
“I ruined your night.”
“You didn’t ruin anything.”
“Your friends were here—”
“I don’t care.” His thumbs had brushed under your eyes, wiping away tears you hadn’t even realised had started again. “I care about you.”
Your throat had tightened, but Jeongin’s gaze had gone impossibly gentle. “Do you know how strong you are?”
You’d laughed weakly because the idea was ridiculous. You’d literally just spent an hour on his floor sobbing because you were overstimulated and overwhelmed. But he’d just shaken his head, leaning in until his forehead rested against yours.
“I mean it. You fight your own brain every day and you still keep going. That’s strength.” His voice had dropped quieter, rougher somehow. “And I love you for it. I love all of you. Even the parts you’re still trying to hide from me.”
You hadn’t known what to say, but you’d cried again—less dramatically this time, just silent tears sliding down your face because no one had ever looked at the worst, messiest part of you and called it something worth loving.
Jeongin had kissed your cheeks until you laughed through it before he’d pulled you back against his chest and held you there until you fell asleep again.
That memory stayed with you all Sunday, and you’d tried to pick it apart.
You’d tried to tell yourself he could’ve been acting. That maybe Jeongin was just good at saying the right thing, good at wearing sincerity like a second skin. But every time you pictured his face that night—half-asleep, worried, so careful with you it hurt—you hit the same wall.
No one could fake that for months, not like that and not that consistently. Not when they thought no one was watching.
By Sunday evening, you were still angry, still hurt and humiliated in a way that made your stomach twist if you thought too hard about the party.But underneath all of it now was something else: a quiet, stubborn need to know the truth.
Not the version of the truth that you’d overheard in a kitchen full of drunk boys trying to impress each other; the real truth.
What the bet had been. How it had started. Why he’d done it. Why he’d stayed. Why he’d never told you. Why he’d looked at you on Friday night like the idea of losing you was killing him.
Chan didn’t say I told you so when you admitted that on Sunday night. He just handed you a mug of tea and said, “Good. Hate him with all the facts, at least.”
So Monday morning, you went to school with your stomach in knots and one thought looping over and over in your head:
I’m going to hear him out.
It didn’t make it easier. If anything, it made the walk through the gates worse.
Your hands were sweating around the straps of your bag, your pulse too loud in your ears, every step towards the main building heavy with the knowledge that at some point in the next few minutes, you were going to have to walk up to Jeongin and ask for the conversation you’d spent all weekend dreading.
You spotted him before he saw you. He was standing near the benches outside the science block with three of his friends, school bag hanging from one shoulder, tie half-done like he’d fixed it in a rush. Even from a distance, he looked tired. There were shadows under his eyes again, and he kept rubbing a hand over the back of his neck like he hadn’t quite figured out what to do with his body when he was anxious.
Your chest tightened, and the tightened further when you saw the girl. It was the same one from the party. She was leaning against the bench beside him, glossy hair perfect, one hand wrapped around a coffee cup like she was starring in some kind of campus advert. She wasn’t clinging to his arm this time, but she was standing close enough that your stomach still dropped anyway.
You almost turned around. You got as far as shifting your weight backwards, fingers tightening around your bag strap, panic prickling under your skin, but then you remembered Chan’s face when he’d said don’t make a forever decision based on the worst ten minutes of your life.
You took a deep, steadying breath, and then took another.
You started walking towards them, and the closer you got, the shakier your hands became. Your pulse was so loud you were half convinced everyone around you could hear it. One of Jeongin’s friends noticed you first—Minjae, maybe—and went visibly stiff, his expression flickering from surprise to something a lot like guilt.
Then the others followed his gaze and Jeongin turned to see what had caught their attention.
The effect was instant.
His whole body jolted like someone had grabbed him by the spine. The half-empty bottle of water in his hand slipped a little in his grip, and for one disorienting second he just stared at you. You couldn’t read the look on his face. There was shock there, definitely. Hope so sudden it was almost painful to witness. Fear too, sharp and immediate, like he was scared that if he moved too fast you’d vanish.
No one spoke, and the silence stretched just long enough to become uncomfortable, but then the girl looked you up and down with a lazy sort of disdain and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Oh. The charity case is back.”
Everything went still, and you stopped walking, face flushing in embarrassment.
One of the boys muttered, “Jisoo—”
But Jeongin was faster.
“Shut the fuck up.”
The words cracked through the courtyard so sharply that even you flinched.
Jisoo blinked, clearly not expecting that reaction. “Excuse me?”
Jeongin took a step away from the bench and looked at her with a kind of cold fury you’d never seen on his face before.
“I said shut up.” His voice was low now, but somehow that made it worse. “You don’t get to talk about her like that. Ever.”
Jisoo stared at him. “I was joking.”
“No, you were being a bitch.” He didn’t even hesitate. “And if you ever speak about her like that again, I don’t care whose friend you are, I’m done being polite.”
The entire group had gone silent, and you could see the guilt on his friends’ faces now, plain as day. Minjae looked like he wanted the ground to open up beneath him. Another one—Hyunwoo, maybe—wouldn’t meet your eyes at all.
Jisoo gave a disbelieving laugh. “Seriously? You’re taking her side after the stunt she pulled at the party?”
Jeongin’s expression turned glacial.
“She didn’t pull a stunt,” he said. “She found out something she should’ve heard from me months ago because you all can’t keep your mouths shut for five fucking minutes.”
No one had a response to that, but you barely had one, either. Jeongin’s eyes were on you now, all the anger from a second ago draining away into something much softer. More uncertain. He looked almost scared to speak.
“Can we talk?” he asked quietly.
Your throat felt like it was trying to close in on itself, but was what you’d come here for.
You nodded, and the relief that hit his face was so intense it was almost hard to look at.
“Yeah,” he said quickly, like he didn’t trust the moment not to disappear if he moved too slowly. “Yeah, okay. Of course.”
He turned to his friends, jaw tight again. “I’ll be back.”
None of them tried to stop him.
Jisoo just rolled her eyes and looked away. Minjae muttered a weak, “Jeongin—” but whatever he’d been about to say died when Jeongin shot him a look sharp enough to cut glass.
Then Jeongin was stepping toward you, slower this time, as if he was trying very hard not to crowd you. He stopped a few feet away.
“Is the music room okay?” he asked quietly. “No one uses it before second period.”
You swallowed and nodded again, words still trapped in your throat.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t try to touch you. He just fell into step beside you—careful to leave space between your shoulders—and led you across the courtyard.
The walk to the music block was silent. It wasn’t tense exactly, just fragile. You could feel the weight of a hundred questions pressing against the inside of your ribs now that this was actually happening. You’d imagined this conversation all weekend—angry versions, devastated versions, versions where you screamed and versions where he cried and versions where you walked away after two minutes because hearing him explain made it worse somehow.
Now that the moment was here, all you felt was raw.
Jeongin unlocked the practice room with the spare key he borrowed sometimes for guitar club and pushed the door open for you. You stepped inside first, Jeongin stepping in behind you.
The room smelled faintly of dust and old wood polish. There was a piano shoved into one corner, a stack of music stands against the wall, and a row of chairs under the window. It was quiet in a way that made the rest of the school feel very far away.
Jeongin closed the door behind him, leaving the two of you alone. He didn’t come any closer, though. Just stood with his back to the door for a second, staring at you like he couldn’t quite believe you were really here. Then he exhaled shakily and said, very softly—
“Ask me anything.”
The words hung in the room between you.
Ask me anything.
For a second, all you could do was stare at him. He looked awful up close. Not just tired—exhausted. There were shadows under his eyes, his tie was crooked, and his hair looked like he’d been dragging his hands through it all morning. He was standing too stiffly too, like every muscle in his body was braced for impact, shoulders tense under his blazer, fingers curling and uncurling at his sides.
You hated that you noticed. Hated that some part of you still catalogued every sign of his distress automatically, the same way you always had
Your hands were shaking again, though not as badly as they had on Friday. More a fine, restless tremor in your fingers than anything else. You tucked them into the sleeves of your hoodie and looked away from him, trying to gather your thoughts into something coherent.
There were too many questions, too many places to start, so you went for the one that had been lodged under your ribs since the party.
“Tell me about the bet.”
Jeongin flinched. Just a sharp little jerk of his shoulders, like the words had hit somewhere tender. He dropped his gaze to the floor and nodded once.
The room felt very quiet. Jeongin dragged a hand over the back of his neck, then exhaled through his nose like he was forcing himself to walk into something painful.
“It was at the start of the year,” he said. “Before we started talking properly. Before… all of this.”
You said nothing, so he swallowed, continuing.
“We were in the locker room after practice. Hyunwoo and Minjae were being idiots, talking about girls they thought were fit, and someone brought up you.”
Your face burned instantly, and Jeongin noticed and shut his eyes for half a second, hating himself.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I know. I’m sorry.”
You crossed your arms tighter over your chest. “Keep going.”
“They were joking about how you never talked to anyone. About how you looked terrified every time someone even said your name.” His mouth tightened. “One of them said there was no way anyone could get you to go out with them because you’d run a mile first.”
Your stomach twisted, ashamed of your own anxiety and how easy it made you into a punchline.
“I should’ve told them to shut up.” His voice was flat with self-disgust. “That should’ve been the end of it. But they kept going, and then Minjae made it into this whole thing about who could get your number, who could make you blush, all this stupid, pathetic teenage bullshit.”
He laughed once under his breath, and there was nothing funny in it.
“Then Hyunwoo said there was no chance I’d be able to pull you because you were ‘too shy to fall for someone like me.’” His jaw clenched. “And instead of acting like a normal human being, I got cocky.”
You stared at him. Jeongin met your eyes for exactly one second before looking away again.
“I said I could get you to date me if I wanted to.”
The words landed like a punch no matter how much you’d already known. Your throat tightened, and he saw it happen. He looked sick at his own words.
“It wasn’t supposed to become…” He gestured helplessly between you. “This. It was supposed to be stupid and short and over in a week, maybe two. I thought I’d flirt with you a bit, prove a point, and then find some excuse for why it didn’t work.”
Your laugh came out brittle. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“No.” His answer was immediate. “No, nothing about this is supposed to make you feel better. I’m just telling you the truth.”
You looked away before he could see how much that hurt.
“Did they actually bet money?” you asked.
Jeongin’s mouth twisted. “Yeah.”
“How much?” He hesitated, but you needed to know. “How much, Jeongin?”
“Fifty quid.”
The room went still. You let out a short, disbelieving laugh and turned away from him completely, pressing a hand to your mouth.
Fifty pounds. Six months of your life reduced to the price of a takeaway and a decent bottle of vodka.
Jeongin’s voice cracked behind you. “I know.”
“Did you win?”
You turned back around when he didn’t answer, and you saw that his face had gone white.
“Did. You. Win?”
“No.”
You stared, momentarily confused. “No?”
He shook his head quickly. “I never took anything from them. It didn’t get that far.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Your voice sharpened. “Did you win?”
Jeongin looked like he wanted the floor to open up and swallow him.
“They considered it a win when you agreed to go out with me,” he said quietly. “So technically, yeah.”
Your stomach lurched. “Did they ever give you the money?”
“No.”
“How do I know that?”
“You don’t.” He didn’t even try to defend himself. “You don’t know any of this for sure. You only have my word, and I know that’s worth basically nothing right now. But I swear to you, I never took it.”
You swallowed hard. “When did it stop being a bet?”
That one made him look up properly. The answer was there on his face before he even said it—something raw and immediate and almost pained in its honesty.
“Embarrassingly fast.”
Your eyebrows pulled together despite yourself.
Jeongin let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know exactly. There wasn’t one dramatic moment where everything changed. It was just…” He scrubbed both hands over his face. “You weren’t what I expected.”
“Meaning?”
He gave a humourless huff. “Meaning I was an idiot.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I know.” He looked at you, really looked at you, and something in his expression softened despite how wrecked he still seemed. “You were so nervous around me at first, but you still tried. You still showed up. You still answered me, even when I could tell every conversation was costing you something.”
Your throat tightened, and Jeongin took a step forward before catching himself and stopping.
“The first time I realised something was wrong with me was that day it rained after school and you gave me your umbrella.”
You blinked. “What?”
His mouth twitched faintly, sadly. “You remember? We’d only been talking for like two weeks. I’d forgotten my coat and it started pissing it down, and you stood there in the doorway of the science block looking like you were going to faint from talking to me, and you still shoved your umbrella into my hands because I had football training and ‘you didn’t want me getting ill.’”
You remembered. God, you remembered. You’d spent twenty minutes after that replaying the interaction in your head and dying of embarrassment because you’d practically thrown the umbrella at him and bolted.
Jeongin’s voice softened. “You ran to the bus stop in the rain after that. Got soaked because you were too awkward to stand under the same umbrella as me.”
Heat crawled into your face at his words.
“I asked Minjae that night what the fuck I was doing,” he admitted. “Because I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
Your heart stumbled, traitorous and stupid, but you hardened your expression immediately. You still needed an answer.
“That still doesn’t tell me when it stopped.”
Jeongin nodded, accepting the correction.
“It stopped before I even asked you out properly,” he said. “I know that sounds convenient. I know it does. But it’s true.”
You stared at him, and he held your gaze this time, forcing himself not to look away.
“I asked you out because I wanted to,” he said. “Not because of them. By that point I was already trying to figure out how to get out of the bet without telling anyone I’d bottled it.”
You laughed bitterly. “And you couldn’t think of any way to do that except keep lying to me?”
His face crumpled. “I know.”
“No, answer me.”
Jeongin’s shoulders slumped. “I was scared.”
You almost snapped at him for the audacity, but something in his expression stopped you.
“Scared of what?” you asked.
“Everything.” He dragged a hand through his hair again, frustrated with himself. “Scared that if I told you, you’d hate me before I even got the chance to explain myself. Scared that if I ended things suddenly, you’d think it was because you’d done something wrong. Scared my friends would tell you first. Scared they’d say it in the worst possible way. Scared that if I came clean after we’d already been together for a while, it would hurt even more.”
A hollow laugh escaped you. “Well, good news. It did.”
“I know.” His eyes filled immediately. “I know, and I’m sorry.”
You looked away before the tears in his eyes could do anything dangerous to your resolve.
“What exactly was the bet?” you asked, forcing your voice steady. “Because at the party they made it sound like it was about sleeping with me.”
Jeongin’s expression changed instantly, a flash of genuine anger cut through the guilt.
“It wasn’t.” The words came out hard and immediate. “I swear to you, it wasn’t.”
You folded your arms tighter. “Then why did they say that?”
“Because they’re disgusting.” His jaw clenched. “The actual bet was just that I could get you to go out with me. That was it. It was still awful and manipulative and cruel, but it wasn’t about sex.”
You searched his face. He took a breath, then kept going before you could decide whether to believe him.
“They started making gross jokes later. After we were already together. Because they’re boys and they think they’re funny and I should’ve shut it down the first time it happened.” Shame flooded his features. “That’s on me. Every single part of that is on me. I let them keep treating the whole thing like a joke because I was too much of a coward to tell the truth.”
You thought of Friday night. Of the kitchen. Of the shy girl and get her into bed and the way the floor had seemed to vanish under your feet.
Your chest ached. “So they all knew.”
Jeongin closed his eyes for a second. “Yeah.”
“How many people?”
“Just the boys from the team who were there when it started. And Jisoo because she was dating Minjae for like two weeks and he tells everyone everything.”
You stared at him. “Minjae dated her?”
“Unfortunately.”
The word almost made you laugh. Instead, you asked the next question that had been burning through you since Friday.
“Why was she hanging off you at the party?”
Jeongin looked startled. “Jisoo?”
“Yes, Jisoo.”
He blinked, then swore softly under his breath like he’d only just realised how it must’ve looked.
“She was drunk,” he said quickly. “And annoying. That’s it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is, I swear.” He shook his head. “She cornered me in the kitchen asking where you were because she wanted to know why I’d ‘ditched’ the party for a girlfriend who never even came to them. I told her to mind her own business, she called me boring, and then she started hanging off my arm because she thought it was funny.”
“You could’ve moved.”
“I know.” He looked furious with himself all over again. “I should’ve. I should’ve shoved her off immediately. I didn’t because I was half listening to Hyunwoo talking and trying not to start an argument in the middle of the kitchen.”
His mouth tightened.
“Then you walked in, and I didn’t even see you until you were already leaving.”
Your eyes burned. “You called after me.”
“Yeah.” His face twisted. “Because I heard Hyunwoo say ‘shy girl’ and realised what they were doing.”
You swallowed hard. “What were you going to say?”
The question came out smaller than you intended, and Jeongin’s whole expression softened into something almost unbearably sad.
“The truth.”
You looked at him, unconvinced, but he continued. “I was going to tell them to shut the fuck up,” he said. “I was going to tell them it hadn’t been a bet in months and that they didn’t get to talk about you like that.” He let out a shaky breath. “And then I was going to come after you and tell you everything, because the second I saw your face I knew there was no fixing it any other way.”
“But you still wouldn’t have told me if I hadn’t heard.”
Jeongin went quiet at that. When he finally spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper.
“No.”
The honesty of it was brutal.
“I wouldn’t have told you that night if you hadn’t heard them first.” His eyes dropped to the floor. “And I hate that about myself.”
“Why?” you asked, and the word came out cracked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
He looked up slowly. This, maybe more than the bet itself, was the thing that had been eating at you all weekend. Not just that he’d lied in the beginning, but that somewhere in the middle—somewhere between your first date and your first I love you and every late-night call and panic attack and quiet moment in between—he had looked at you, supposedly loved you, and still kept this one horrible truth tucked away where you couldn’t reach it.
Jeongin’s face crumpled under the weight of the question. “Because every day I waited made it harder.”
He laughed once, shakily, but it broke in the middle.
“At first I told myself I’d tell you after the first date. Then after we’d been together a week, because by then I’d know whether there was even anything real there.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Then you kissed me, and I thought I’d tell you after that because there was no way I could keep something like that from you if we were actually doing this.”
His voice was getting rougher now, more uneven.
“But then every time I looked at you, I’d think, not today. Not when you’re smiling at me like that. Not when you’ve just had a bad day. Not when you’re finally starting to trust me. Not when I’ve just spent an hour convincing you I actually like you and you don’t need to panic every time I hold your hand in public.”
Your chest tightened painfully at the memories.
“So I kept putting it off,” he said. “And the longer I put it off, the worse it became, because suddenly it wasn’t just ‘I made a disgusting bet before I knew you.’ It was ‘I made a disgusting bet, then I fell in love with you, and now I’ve let you build an entire relationship on top of a lie.’”
Tears were slipping down his face now, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I knew if I told you, I’d lose you.” His voice cracked completely. “And I was selfish enough to want a little more time first.”
That one hurt because it was probably the most honest thing he’d said all morning. You pressed your lips together hard to stop them from trembling, before you asked your next pressing question.
“When did you realise you loved me?”
Jeongin looked at you like the answer had lived in his bones for months. “Your panic attack.”
Your breath caught. He took a shaky step closer, then stopped again, leaving the same careful distance between you.
“The one at my house,” he said softly. “When you were on the floor in my room and you were trying so hard not to let me see you like that, and all I could think was that I’d kill anyone who’d ever made you feel like you had to hide from them.”
Your eyes stung, and Jeongin’s own were red-rimmed and glassy.
“You fell asleep on me after,” he went on. “And I sat there with your head on my chest for like two hours because I didn’t want to wake you up. And I remember thinking that if I moved and you left, I was going to miss you even while you were still in the house.”
You had to look away, and Jeongin swallowed hard.
“That was the first time I said it out loud,” he admitted. “Not at the swings. At my house, after you woke up.”
Your head snapped up. “You remember that?”
He gave a watery, disbelieving laugh. “Of course I remember that. You looked at me like I’d told you the sky was green.”
You hadn’t thought he knew you remembered. You’d always treated the moment like some strange, private thing because you hadn’t been sure whether it counted—whether he’d only said it because you were half asleep and crying and he’d wanted to calm you down.
As if he could read every thought on your face, Jeongin shook his head.
“I didn’t say it to make you feel better,” he said quietly. “I said it because it was true, and because I was stupid enough to think maybe if I said it while you were half out of it, I could get away with not explaining why I looked like I wanted to climb inside your ribcage and live there.”
The corner of your mouth twitched before you could stop it, and Jeongin noticed. His own face crumpled a little harder.
“Please don’t do that unless you mean it,” he whispered, voice breaking on the edges. “I’m hanging on by a thread here.”
The tiny almost-smile vanished immediately, silence filling the room. It wasn’t sharp, but it was heavier somehow. More fragile.
You stared down at your sleeves. “There’s one thing I still don’t get.”
“Anything.”
You took a breath. “If you loved me that much… why didn’t you walk away?” Your voice wobbled despite your best efforts. “Why keep going if every day you stayed with me meant lying to me more?”
Jeongin went still, and for a long moment, he said nothing. Then, very quietly, “Because I was weak.”
You looked up. He held your gaze, eyes bright with tears he wasn’t bothering to hide anymore.
“Because every time I thought about ending it or telling you the truth, I’d picture your face when I picked you up from school, or the way you’d fall asleep on my shoulder when you were tired, or how happy you got when I brought you those weird strawberry sweets you like, and I’d think, just one more day.”
His mouth shook around the words. “Then one more day turned into six months.”
You could hear his breathing now—unsteady, almost as uneven as yours had been outside school on Friday.
“I know that makes me selfish,” he said. “I know it makes me a coward. You can call me whatever you want and I’ll agree with you. But none of it was fake. Not one second of it.”
He scrubbed angrily at his face.
“I loved you every day,” he said, voice rough. “Even when you were mad at me for stealing your chips. Even when you got so anxious before presentations you made yourself ill. Even when you’d wake me up at stupid o’clock because your brain wouldn’t shut up and you needed someone to talk to. I loved you when you were laughing, and I loved you when you were crying, and I loved you so much it made me feel sick every time I remembered how this started.”
Your throat closed. You hadn’t meant to cry, but tears were spilling down your cheeks before you could stop them, hot and humiliating and impossible to wipe away fast enough.
Jeongin took one instinctive step forward, but you still stepped back. He stopped dead, and the hurt that flashed across his face was immediate, but he nodded quickly, hands lifting slightly in surrender.
“Sorry,” he said hoarsely. “Sorry.”
You covered your mouth with one hand and tried to breathe through the ache in your chest. This was what you’d wanted, wasn’t it? The truth. The whole ugly, painful, honest truth laid out in front of you so you could stop guessing.
So why did it feel like someone had taken your heart apart with their bare hands and arranged the pieces on the floor between you?
“I don’t know what to do with this,” you whispered.
Jeongin looked destroyed. “I know.”
“I hate that I still—” Your voice broke off.
Still what?
Still loved him?
Still wanted to believe him?
Still wanted him to be telling the truth badly enough that it scared you?
You couldn’t finish the sentence. Jeongin’s face folded in on itself anyway, as if he knew exactly what you’d almost said and hated himself for making it so hard.
“You don’t have to decide anything now,” he said quickly. “I’m not asking you to. I know I don’t deserve that.”
You laughed weakly through your tears. “Then what are you asking?”
He stared at you, and for the first time since you’d walked into the room, there was no hesitation in his answer at all.
“A chance to prove I’m not lying now.”
The words settled in the silence. Your breathing hitched, and Jeongin took a shaky breath of his own.
“I know I don’t deserve another chance,” he said. “I know that. But if there’s even a tiny part of you that believes what we had was real, then let me prove it. Let me spend however long it takes showing you that I mean every word I’m saying now.”
His eyes dropped to your hands, still hidden in your sleeves.
“I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to. I won’t ask you to forgive me before you’re ready. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, answer every horrible question, take whatever you need to throw at me.” His voice cracked again. “Just don’t let this be the end without at least giving me the chance to be honest with you properly.”
You stared at him through blurred vision. This beautiful, stupid boy who had broken your heart with both hands and was now standing in front of you looking like he’d hand you the pieces if you asked.
You didn’t know what to say, didn’t know if there even was a right thing to say. So in the end, all you managed was the truth.
“I’m still angry.”
Jeongin nodded immediately. “You should be.”
“I still don’t know if I can trust you.”
Another nod, but slower this time. “I know.”
“And I’m not promising anything.”
“Okay.”
You wiped at your face with your sleeve and took a shaky breath.
“But…” Your voice wobbled. “I don’t think I’m ready to let go of six months without trying to understand what was real and what wasn’t.”
Jeongin went completely still. You could actually see the hope hit him—small and frightened and almost too fragile to touch.
“So,” you said, swallowing hard, “you can answer more of my questions when I have them. You can be honest. And after that…” You looked away. “I’ll decide.”
For one awful second, you thought he might cry properly. Instead he just nodded, once, twice, jaw tight like he was physically holding himself together.
“Okay,” he said, voice wrecked. “Okay. Anything.”
The bell rang somewhere outside the music room, but neither of you moved. The sound echoed faintly through the corridor, followed by distant footsteps and muffled classroom chatter, but in the little practice room, everything stayed suspended.
You and Jeongin.
The truth between you.
And whatever came next.
[Part Two]
a/n: don’t hate me I gave you warnings okay I love you all mwah xo
a/n2: if you want a part two full of grovelling then I can absolutely do that, just lmk in the comments!
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