right place wrong person | knj
Pairing: Idol!Namjoon x Reader (f)
Genre: exes!au, forced proximity (because what am i without my fav trope), lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers (kind of), slow burn, angst, second-chance romance, heaps of miscommunication.
Summary: A booking mix-up forces you to share a secluded hanok with Namjoon, the ex you still resent, and who resents you just as much. What begins as an unwanted holiday becomes the closure neither of you knew you needed, and perhaps the start of something worth trying again.
Warnings: language, mentions of suicide and cheating (kind of).
Word count: 9.8k
a/n: this has been sitting in my fanfic folder for almost one year now. and finally decided to publish it because i saw pics of joonie in brussels and well.. i just had to. also, as this is a one-shot, there will not be a second chapter 🤍
check out my: masterlist
The hanok in Andong was supposed to be empty.
That was the whole point of booking it months in advance for seven days. All you wanted was just seven days of no work calls, no calendar notifications of when your next meeting would be, and no one asking you to explain something about work in a 30-minute meeting that could have been a short email. You needed this time alone to yourself. Just you, a stack of unread books that has been sitting around in your to-be-read list, and a wooden veranda that overlooked a persimmon tree.
You did not expect your ex boyfriend, Kim Namjoon, to be standing in the backyard of the hanok when you arrived with a duffel bag slung over your shoulder. And Namjoon was staring at the same booking confirmation on his phone that you had opened on yours.
Neither of you said anything for a good one minute.
“It’s you again,” Namjoon said.
And you just nodded at him because what the heck were you supposed to say to an ex you hated with your guts?
Thankfully the host came out just in time, wiping her hands on her apron, and she was very cheerful. Only because she had no idea what she just did. What booking you and Namjoon in her two-bedroom hanok at the same time would do to the peaceful area of Andong.
"Oh good, you're both here! I ran this as a two-bedroom stay during the off season, but I forgot to change the description in that new website! If you expected to have the whole hanok to yourself, I am so sorry! I swear it was the new website and it's a new update! And I didn't think two separate bookings would land the same week. Lucky you, though, the whole place is yours," the middle aged host said. She was still very cheerful even though she acknowledged she made a mistake.
Lucky would be the very last word you would describe this situation, you almost laughed at the host.
Namjoon just stayed calm. You figured it was the media training of being in BTS for years that he managed to stay so calm. He is the leader of the biggest boyband in the world, he probably has faced more awkward situations than this.
But you knew deep down how Namjoon felt. The two of you despised each other and you really didn’t want to go deep in history to explain to the host in front of you why this was a bad idea.
"I can find somewhere else," Namjoon finally said. Gosh, it has been so long since you’ve heard his voice. Years ago you would have been so wet down there just by listening to him talk, but now, you were trying so hard not to vomit.
"Everything's booked out for the festival," the host replied, "you'll be fine, you'll be fine. The rooms have their own doors and modern bathrooms, you will only have to share the kitchen."
“Are you sure the whole area is booked? I just don’t want this young lady to feel awkward having to share this space with a male stranger,” Namjoon said to the host.
“Yes. I run most of the other places too, and they are all booked. Let’s ask the young lady then, would you be okay spending the next seven days sharing a kitchen with this man? He looks nice to me and looks familiar too!” the host said, smiling at you.
“As long as there is a key to lock my bedroom at night, I don’t really care,” you said, shrugging at the host. But when you turned to look at Namjoon, you showed him a gesture that expressed how you wanted him, the richest and most connected person out of you both, to find another place.
Namjoon understood your gesture. How could he have not? You were his first love, someone whom he had a very, very hard and long time forgetting. But he didn’t care about what you were asking him to do, he booked this place because of how serene and peaceful its location is. Plus, the hanok was featured in an Architectural Digest, it has a beautiful architecture hence why the place is usually booked out. Even as Namjoon of BTS, he couldn’t book it up until now. So no, he wasn’t just about to throw it all out for his ex-girlfriend.
“Well there you go! The key and lock work just fine and I do have CCTV outside of the bedroom, so you will be safe and sound! And there are security guards guarding this neighbourhood 24/7. If you just shout, they’ll come right for you! But I doubt you’ll need them, since this good looking young man doesn’t seem to be the type to hurt others!” the host said, smiling at Namjoon and you.
You couldn’t help the mocking laugh that came out of your mouth. This lady didn’t know how the good looking young man in front of her has put you in so much misery.
“Well then that settles it. How long will you be staying here?” Namjoon said to you. It was the first time he was addressing you, the elephant in his room.
“I booked for seven days,” you replied. You didn’t bother asking him the same question, because you heard the lady say something about having to share the same kitchen for the next seven days.
You assumed there was one thing Namjoon still excelled at: hearing only the parts of a story that suited him.
It reminded you of the final month before your breakup, when he accused you of being too close to a co-worker. What he never understood was that your co-worker had come out to you and was going through a very difficult time. It was not your secret to share especially when your friend had specifically asked you not to tell anyone. Being gay in Korea was not easy, and your friend trusted you with something deeply personal that you were not about to share with any soul.
Back then, you tried to explain. You asked Namjoon to listen to your side of the story, you asked him to trust you, but he did not want to hear or trust you, he never did.
It’s really true that men never change.
“Seven days it is,” Namjoon nodded.
“Enjoy your stay,” the host said, waving at the two of you as she left the hanok.
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The hanok has two bedrooms which are separated by a wall so thin you could hear Namjoon breathing on the other side of it.
You forgot how every hanok has this really thin wall so every king and queen whose bedrooms were separate could still talk to each other. You used to think it was romantic, but now, having Namjoon at the other side of the wall just feels more like punishment.
You dropped your bag on the floor of the room because you didn’t even have the energy to unpack. You sat at the edge of the mattress and you could hear Namjoon doing the exact same thing. You could hear the thud of his duffel bag and the creaking of the bed as he sat down.
You have to spend the next seven days with your ex-boyfriend. It would be fine if it was any of your other ex-boyfriend. But not this one, not Namjoon.
It’s just seven days, what could go wrong really? You can survive seven days of anything.
You’ve survived worse, you technically have survived him and that counts for something.
You never planned this trip around meeting him. You didn’t choose Andong to torture yourself. You chose it because you saw this hanok featured in a magazine, and your coworker mentioned about her trip here once and how peaceful and lovely her trip had been. So you listened to the reviews you have seen online and from your own friend. You didn’t think in a million years that the dates you picked were the exact same one Namjoon had chosen for his own separate getaway.
You expected some quiet.
And you did not, under any circumstance, expect Namjoon.
And yet here he was, on the other side of a wall thin enough you could hear each and every movement he makes. It was as if the universe had a sense of humor you will never once find funny.
You thought about calling the host back out, asking if there was truly nothing else like a motel, a shared room for backpackers, or even a bench in some park that is safe at night. But the host already left to wherever she had to go, and it was nearly dark, and some stubborn, tired part of you decided you would rather sit in silence next to a man who used to love you like you were the only thing keeping him alive.
Well, that was before he eventually found your presence hard to be around.
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Nothing much happened on the first day.
Thankfully, you woke up first before him and could occupy the front yard before he could. And Namjoon, to his credit, understood that you being there meant he would be spending most of his time sitting in the backyard. So neither of you saw much of each other.
And when you did happen to see each other. It was during dinner, and even then, you barely really spoke to each other.
One of the complimentary amenities they give when you stay in the hanok is free dinner because no restaurant around here is open at night. The staff or host, you couldn’t tell since you were too busy resting and reading on a picnic mat in the front yard, left a pot of corn soup, bread, and different types of sides. They also left a note that said: ‘help yourselves, we will pick up the food in 30 minutes so please eat before then and do not eat in the bedroom for cleanliness.’
You found Namjoon already in the kitchen with his sleeves pushed up, ladling soup into his bowl.
"Leave some for me," you said.
Namjoon didn't look up as he said, "Didn't know you had a voice."
You tilted your head at him, “Were you waiting for me to talk to you? That’s new.”
"You wish," Namjoon snorted, setting the bowl down on the counter, hard enough that some of it sloshed over the rim, "I was only saying that because you are usually so loud."
You rolled your eyes at him and grabbed a bowl from the cabinet. You filled the bowl without a word and sat down at the opposite end of the table, putting as much space between you as possible.
Towards the end of your relationship, Namjoon never waited for you. He could go days without calling, texting, or meeting-up, and whenever you brought it up, he always had the same answer; he was busy with everything except you. At first, you tried to understand him. You told yourself he was under pressure and that loving someone meant being patient when life got difficult, especially when his life as an idol is so different from life of most people. So you waited for the calls he promised to make after work, for replies that arrived hours later, sometimes the next day. And you waited for him to notice that you stopped telling him about your day because there was never a good time to say anything.
Eventually, you stopped waiting altogether. So you did the same to him. You gave him a taste of his own medicine; the distance, unanswered messages, the quiet indifference he once made you endure.
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"You’re eating like it's a race," you said, watching him finish half the bowl in what felt like four bites.
"I have things to do," he said.
"Of course, the always busy man. "
"Last time I checked.." Namjoon said, stopping before finally looking up at you just to say, "That used to be your excuse too. "
You didn't have an answer for that one, so you ate your soup in silence and let the silence do what it does best. Because Namjoon was right. You did to him what he did to you, but you did not regret it. He needed that wake-up call, although it didn’t change anything in your relationship.
Namjoon finished first, and rinsed his bowl at the sink with his back to you. You didn’t mean to watch him but the view from where you were sitting was to the kitchen. You couldn’t help but see what was happening there. You remembered this view from three years ago, when the two of you were still together.
You shook your head immediately as the thought of your past relationship crept up your mind.
Remember, your life was a living nightmare with him.
You somehow just noticed that his hair was shorter, and without meaning to, your thoughts slipped out of your lips, "You cut your hair," you said.
You regretted it the moment you said it. You hoped he didn’t hear it, but of course he did.
"Two months ago," Namjoon said, still rinsing his dishes, "you're behind."
"I wasn't exactly keeping up," you snorted.
"Could've fooled me, aren’t we in this situation because you knew I’d be here?” Namjoon said.
“Did you develop narcissistic personality disorder after being in the spotlight for too long? I have a life I love that does not involve you at all. I couldn’t care less whether you keep your hair short or long,” you said angrily.
Namjoon would be lying if he claimed to not winch when he heard what you said. But he shrugged it off, you are someone he could care less about. “You used to like it long," Namjoon said quietly, just like you, he didn’t mean to say it out loud.
"Well, apparently I liked a lot of things that didn't stick around," you said, and you felt a sense of regret the second it left your mouth.
Namjoon turned the tap off, set the bowl in the rack as he said, "Goodnight.”
Then he left the kitchen without looking at you.
You sat with your half-empty bowl a while longer, listening to his footsteps go down the hallway, the sound of his door sliding open, and silence was all it followed.
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That same night, through the wall, you heard him on the phone to Jimin.
“Hey Jimin. Yeah, the mixup by the host is crazy, I didn’t expect to be stuck in this hanok with her.”
There was a pause, probably Jimin telling Namjoon to find some other place.
“I tried, even my manager tried too. It’s just fully booked everywhere.. No, no, you don’t need to come. I’m fine. I just need the week to rest and write, it’s still really nice out here in Andong. It’s peaceful, which is something I really need. Yeah. I know. We thankfully don’t really interact much. It should just be during dinner and that’s because the place only has a 30-minute dining timeslot since they have to pick up the leftover food. Yeah, it sucks, but the place is really nice.”
Then Namjoon went silent for a few minutes and you thought his phone call with Jimin was over but then you heard him say, “Jimin, it’s not because of her that I’m staying here. As much as I dislike that woman, I have been waiting for too long to stay in this hanok and the scenery and ambience is something I do not want to give up. So don’t worry about me, I’m fine. Okay, thank you. Good night to you too, bye.”
That woman?!
Is that what he just referred to you as? Just some woman? You snorted at how ridiculous it was. Did Namjoon forget the two of you spent three whole years together?
What a fucking prick.
You thought about the last time you heard him talk like that, and how it used to be you he was talking to on the other end of the phone. But one of your last conversations with him on the phone wasn’t really something as warm as his conversation with Jimin.
“I know, babe. I know I said I'd be there. I'll make it up to you, ____”
Namjoon was always so good at saying he’ll make it up to you when he never did.
Kim Namjoon is a prick and all of his fans would find him disappointing once they knew that he is just a man.
You rolled onto your side now facing the wall, and let yourself feel the hatred towards your ex before finally falling asleep.
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The second day, you woke up to the sound of Namjoon doing pull-ups on the old wooden beam of the veranda, which was, you thought, an incredibly on-brand way for Namjoon to process anything uncomfortable.
You used to find that endearing, now you just found it loud and annoying. Especially since it is still way too early and you were still tired.
You laid in bed a while longer than you needed to, listening to the creak of the beam, Namjoon’s controlled exhale on every pull, the small grunts he lets out on each pull that he probably didn't know he makes. You used to find his grunts hot and it used to turn you on.
Now you were just irritated.
You got up before the sounds he make could turn your irritation into anything more complicated.
You walked to the kitchen through the front yard, avoiding the side of the house Namjoon was in, and made your coffee black. You sat at the dining table, facing the backyard which was close enough to see Namjoon through the paper screen yet far enough that he wouldn’t have noticed you were there.
Namjoon eventually finished his workout routine and came into the kitchen. His breathing was shallow and fast. His shirt had gone see-through, sticking to his well-built figure from the sweat. His arms looked fuller after the workout, muscles still tense beneath his skin as he reached for a glass filled with water. He stood by the sink with his back to you as he drank. The pull-ups left his biceps, shoulders, and his overall figure look way more shredded, and his veins were faintly visible along his forearms.
It was a view that once would have driven you insane.
You immediately looked away before your thoughts spiral into even more nonsense.
“You’re up early,” Namjoon said, still not turning around to look at you.
“You are very loud,” you answered, “it’s hard to stay asleep when a man is having a breakdown on a pull-up bar.”
“You could’ve said something,” Namjoon replied.
You took a sip of your coffee, “Would you have listened to me?”
“I’m listening now,” Namjoon said, finally turning around to look at you.
You looked at him over the rim of your mug, “That’s a little late, don’t you think?”
"That's rich," he said quietly, "coming from the person who canceled on me six times in one month because work got busy."
"You were on tour for eight weeks straight, Namjoon. Do you really want to talk about who canceled on who?"
"I was working," Namjoon said, defending himself.
"So was I," you said, scrunching your face in disbelief.
"Not the same kind of work. Your job was-"
"Don't," you said, standing up so fast your chair scraped out loud against the floor, "don't you dare tell me my job mattered less or whatever the fuck you said to me then. I’m so sick of hearing you say that shit to me."
Namjoon didn't say anything. He just looked defeated, and mostly because he didn’t know what to say to you. He never meant to make you feel like your job mattered less and he never remembered saying such a thing, but Namjoon understood why you would remember it that way.
Your hands were shaking around the mug, so you set it down before you dropped it and you turned away before he could see your face properly. You did not look back at him as you walked down the hallway and shut your bedroom door behind you harder than necessary, but still not hard enough to feel satisfying.
Through the wall, you could hear him sitting down on the dining chair.
And neither of you said sorry, neither of you ever did.
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By the afternoon, you went out to the backyard, where Namjoon was already sitting on the raised wooden veranda of the house. He barely looked up when you spread a picnic mat beneath the tree. You were there to read, while Namjoon was on his laptop with one earphone in his ear.
"Isn’t this a holiday?" you asked, not looking up from the page of the book you were reading.
"I have responsibilities," Namjoon answered.
“You know you’re allowed to exist without making everything productive,” you didn’t have any spiteful intent behind what you said, you genuinely wanted him to take rest too.
His fingers stopped typing whatever he was typing on his laptop, “And you need to stop looking for something to comment about,” he replied bitterly, "you used to just let things be things."
"I used to let a lot of things slide," you sneered, "look how that turned out."
Namjoon exhaled through his nose, his thumb dragging across the edge of the keyboard as if he was trying to find something to hold on to, “You don’t have to keep dragging what happened between us into everything you say.”
“I made one comment,” you snorted and sighed as you closed your book, “and I actually was trying to be nice.”
“Well, I guess you don’t really know how to be nice to me anymore,” Namjoon said, finally looking up at you.
You stared back at him, unwilling to let him have the last word, “Maybe because every time I tried, you found a reason to make it sound like an attack.”
Namjoon said nothing to that.
After a while, he put his earphones back in and turned his attention to the laptop again, and the sound of his typing continued, but quieter this time.
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The third day, avoiding each other was something intuitive for the both of you. You took your coffee at seven, Namjoon didn't come out of his room until eight. You read on the veranda facing the front yard in the morning, while Namjoon occupied the veranda to the backyard.
The two of you should have felt relieved, but somehow, deep down, you were both still feeling restless.
By late afternoon, you were about to cook some ramen when you accidentally went into the kitchen when he was already there. Namjoon was making eggs, the way he always had, too much heat and with not enough patience for someone who always seemed to preach about being mindful.
"You're going to burn those," you said, before you could stop yourself from commenting on what he was doing. You really didn’t want to start another bitter conversation ending with ugly remarks from you or Namjoon.
"I know how to make eggs," Namjoon replied.
"Do you know? I remember you used to struggle a lot when making eggs, you once set off a smoke alarm trying to make eggs," you let out a small laugh remembering the event that happened in the past.
The corner of Namjoon’s mouth twitched and he eventually gave in and smiled, "That was one time."
"It was still memorable to this day," you said.
"We had a good run didn’t we?" he muttered, flipping the eggs.
"Oh, be careful, Joonie," you said, leaning against the counter with your arms crossed, "you're one comment away from being nice to me."
"God forbid," he chuckled.
"God forbid," you agreed.
For a second, one single, traitorous second, it almost felt like the fun and loving relationship you two had before it all went down. Like the version of the two of you that used to burn eggs together on purpose because neither of you cared about the egg, because doing the activity together was always the whole point.
You went back to the dining table, waiting for him to finish cooking his lunch before taking your turn. Then Namjoon plated the eggs, and nodded at you as he left the kitchen without another word.
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The host left dinner on the table before the two of you even noticed her come in. Tonight’s dinner menu was grilled mackerel, side dishes in small mismatched plates, and a pot of rice still steaming under a cloth. Tonight, the two of you sat down to eat at the same time.
"She made too much again," Namjoon said, nodding at the food on the table as he sat across from you.
“She thinks we’re about to get together,” you replied. It was not exactly a lie because the day before, when you had gone alone to the nearby shop, the owner asked why you didn’t bring your soon-to-be boyfriend with you. When you asked what she meant, she looked at you as though the answer were obvious.
Apparently, your host had told everyone in the village you were staying there with your soon-to-be boyfriend.
“At this point,” you added, “the whole village probably thinks so too.”
"Let them think what they want," Namjoon flatly replied.
“Easy for you to say,” you said, before adding, “you’re not the one who has to keep correcting people since you’re not exactly going to be walking around the village, are you? Celebrity status and all.”
"I didn't realize being mistaken for my girlfriend was such a hardship," Namjoon said looking at you.
"It is," you said, accidentally filling your bowl with more force than it required, "it's just inaccurate and I don't love inaccurate things being said about me."
"You didn’t use to mind what others were saying about you," Namjoon said quietly.
"I used to do and put up with a lot of things," you said, setting the ladle down hard enough to rattle the pot of rice, "doesn't mean I have to keep being that person just because you got comfortable with her."
Namjoon looked up at you, something changed in his face. You could tell Namjoon was furious, “You are being ridiculous. I never said I wanted you to stop being yourself.”
"You didn’t have to say it,” you answered, “you made it clear in every other way.”
"That's not fair,” Namjoon said as he set his chopsticks down, hard enough for it to make a loud noise, "What do you want me to say, exactly? Nothing I said could have fixed anything back then. I don't see why it would now."
"I don't want you to say anything," you snapped, “I want you to stop acting like you were the only one who got wronged here, the only one who got hurt. You canceled on me too, repeatedly. But somehow, in your head and in your version of the story, you're still the only victim."
"I'm not the victim of anything. I'm just tired of being the only one who remembers trying."
"You never even tried, Namjoon," you said with a blank stare.
He picked his chopsticks back up but he didn’t eat anything. He only held them with so much force that his knuckles went pale around wooden chopsticks.
"You actually really think that? That I never tried? I wasn’t the one getting too close to a coworker after I already told you it made me uncomfortable," he said, visibly pissed off.
“Right, because I was the only one who ever made you uncomfortable,” you snapped, “as if you didn’t do the exact same thing with that fucking girl from Twice!”
Namjoon’s expression changed and he was about to speak but you cut him off first before he could get any word out.
“And for the record, my co-worker was suicidal. He was in and out of hospital because he was a closeted gay man who had no one else to talk to, no one else to turn to. I couldn’t tell you because it was his secret to keep and was not mine to tell. I am loyal to my friends the way I was loyal to you.”
You watched the colour drain from Namjoon’s face.
Namjoon never knew any of that.
He never knew that your co-worker had come out to you, or that the constant messages were not some secret relationship unfolding behind his back. He never knew the man had been scared and alone, trusting you with something that was not yours to share.
All Namjoon had known was that he was texting you every day. That he had called when you were with Namjoon and you always picked up. On his last night before leaving for a world tour, you answered someone else’s call instead of staying with him. Namjoon thought you were already tired and bored of waiting for him and so you went looking for someone who was easier to be around, someone who did not keep leaving you.
And Sana, nothing had happened with Sana. Namjoon and her had gone to a bar behind your back, and that was it. But he did that because he was angry at you. Because some part of him wanted to prove that he could do the same thing to you. Because Namjoon wanted you to feel even a fraction of what he felt when your co-worker’s name kept appearing on your phone.
God, Namjoon really fucked it up.
You asked him multiple times to trust you, he remembered that now. Namjoon remembered how frustrated you sounded, how many times you tried to explain before he stopped listening. Still, he wasn’t completely irrational, was he?
He was hurt, Namjoon was insecure. He was about to leave for two months, and you seemed farther away than ever.
But being hurt did not make Namjoon right.
If anything, refusing to hear you out then had turned his fear into something much uglier.
You didn't touch the rest of your food. Just sat there, angry at the situation the world has given you on your holiday off work. Namjoon wasn’t touching his food either, and both of you were too stubborn to be the one who leaves the table first.
But you got up anyway, because you couldn’t stand the sight of him any longer. So you went to your room without another word shared between you.
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If you thought the passive-aggressiveness had peaked during last night’s dinner, day four proved you wrong.
It started with nothing, or something small enough to be nothing.
You left your shoes unorganised by the door, a habit you were never able to break since you were a kid. It used to make Namjoon laugh, but this morning, he tripped over them on his way out to the front yard.
“Could you not leave your shit everywhere?” he snapped as you walked past the door and towards the kitchen.
“They’re shoes, Namjoon, not a crime scene,” you said, matching your tone to the way he was talking to you.
“It’s the same thing it always was,” he shot back at you, “you take up space and expect everyone else to adjust around you.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?” you said, confronting Namjoon.
Were you in the wrong? Yes, but It was one fucking pair of shoes and you did not deserve this much anger over one pair of shoes.
“Oh, you want to talk about adjusting?” you pointed at him, “I adjusted my entire life around your schedule for our whole relationship. I adjusted dinners, weekends, holidays, and my friends' weddings. I even missed a fucking job interview because you only had twelve hours before you had to leave again.”
“I adjusted too,” Namjoon barked.
“You didn’t adjust anything,” you rolled your eyes at him, “you kept doing exactly what you wanted. You chose your career every single time, then you thought feeling guilty about it afterwards made it count as compromise.”
“And don’t act like I forgot about Sana,” you continued, “you went to a bar with her behind my back. Just the two of you then I had to watch people gossip about the two of you everywhere while we were still in a relationship, Namjoon. And you do not understand how hard it was trying to survive a breakup with a fucking celebrity whose face is every fucking where.”
Your throat tightened, and out of anger you said, “I wish we never fucking met.”
“That’s not fair,” Namjoon said, the tone of his voice dropping which was somehow worse than him yelling, “I know I went with Sana out of spite and I was in the wrong, I admit that. But I didn’t know what was happening between you and that fucking co-worker. How was I supposed to know there was nothing going on? Can you really blame me for feeling insecure?”
“It wasn’t my place to tell you, Namjoon. All you had to do was trust me, the woman you claimed to love.”
You laughed bitterly before continuing, “You want to talk about fairness? Well, it wasn’t fair that I had to watch you choose work over me every single time.”
“You could have told me what you wanted from me,” Namjoon said.
“I shouldn’t have had to tell you,” your voice humiliatingly cracked, “that was the whole fucking point, Namjoon. If I had to ask you to try, then it stopped meaning anything.”
Namjoon didn't answer you again as he just looked at you before finally walking out into the garden, leaving the door open behind him like he couldn't be bothered to close it gently either.
You stood there a long time, staring at your own shoes, hating both of them a little for starting this fight. Hating yourself, really.
You thought about the night your relationship had actually ended. It wasn’t dramatic, which was always the part nobody believed when you talked about it later on. There was no shouting or any insults involved. There were only two exhausted people sitting on opposite ends of a couch, each waiting for the other to say the thing first, until you finally did.
You remembered saying; “I don't think this is working out.”
And Namjoon didn’t argue, even when some small part of you wished he did. But he didn’t fight for it at all. He just nodded, like you did something he already privately decided too, and all he said was, “Yeah. I think you're right.”
You remembered cursing him in your head when you realised he wasn’t going to fight for you. Because you wanted, more than anything, for him to be the one who tried and fought for the relationship first for once. And when he didn't, some old and stubborn part of you decided that meant he never would have, not even if you stayed.
Namjoon probably remembered it differently. He probably remembered the months before that, all the times he asked you to make time and all you replied was: “soon”. You did that out of spite, you wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine. And maybe in his version, he was the one who kept reaching out, and you were the one who kept pulling away first. When in reality, you only gave him the same energy he was giving you.
It was funny how the two of you shared three years together, yet left with a different story, and both of you were convinced yours is the true one.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
That night, Namjoon could hear you were still awake through the wall, he could hear the repetitive sounds of short videos playing from your phone bleeding through the thin wood wall between your rooms. He knew you were doomscrolling, you’ve always done it when your mind was too loud for you to fall asleep.
For years, Namjoon told himself that whatever existed between you and him ended because it was supposed to, that too much had happened; too many things were badly said and too many moments were missed. But seeing you again after years, made something painfully clear.
Namjoon has never stopped loving you, and he has always loved you deeply.
He could still read you the way he did back then, even after you’ve spent years apart. And he remembered all of your habits and worse, some part of him still wanted to be the only person who noticed these things about you.
He imagined knocking on your door softly, asking if you were okay, and you letting him in and telling him to sit beside you. The way he imagined it to go almost made Namjoon get up to join you. He imagined taking your phone from your hand and hearing you laugh at something stupid he says, the way you used to when the world had not yet become so difficult between you.
But wanting you again felt cruel.
How selfish would it be for Namjoon to suddenly realise how deeply he loved you only after losing the right to do anything about it?
So that night, Namjoon stayed where he was supposed to.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
The next morning felt different somehow, though neither of you could have pointed out exactly why it felt that way.
You woke to the smell of coffee, so you headed down to the kitchen and found a cup of coffee just sitting there on the kitchen counter with a note next to it that said: I made too much coffee, feel free to drink this one.
You sighed as you wrapped your hand around the warm cup of coffee.
This had always been Namjoon’s version of an apology. He was never good at walking up to you and saying the words ‘I’m sorry’ outright. Instead, he would cook you something, bring home your favourite snack, or leave a coffee waiting for you as though food could say what he could not.
You found him on the veranda, staring out at the garden. He looked like he barely slept, and you probably looked no better. You sat next to him, just a short distance away, far enough not to pretend things were fine but close enough that it did not feel like you were strangers.
For a while, neither of you said anything.
"I called my sister this morning," you eventually said, breaking the silence, “she asked how the trip was going."
"Ah, what did you tell her?" Namjoon said, lifting his cup of coffee to his mouth.
"That it was complicated," you said, looking down at the coffee in your hands, "she laughed at me and said that's basically been the answer to every question about you since… you know."
"Fair," he replied quietly, "what did you use to tell people? About us, I mean, after we broke up?"
"That it just didn't work out," you said as you shrugged your shoulders, "nobody needs to hear the long version. Plus a toxic relationship doesn't really make a good story."
"I see. Well, me either," he admitted, "I always ended up saying we just had different visions.”
You turned to look at him, “Different visions?”
“It sounded better than the truth,” Namjoon said with his gaze fixed on the garden in front of him.
“And what was the truth?” you asked curiously and without malice.
You expected defensiveness, an excuse, or something about work, expectations, and pressure of being Kim Namjoon. You expected anything that would make it easier for him to avoid admitting what he had done.
But Namjoon’s fingers tightened slightly around his cup before he finally said, “The truth was that I kept asking you to make room for my life when I barely made any room left for you in it.”
You went silent for a while, and couldn't really believe what you were hearing. “You could have said that back then,” you said, “you could have told me how you felt, you could have listened to me when I asked you to trust me, you could have tried more instead of making me feel like I was asking for too much.”
“Yeah, I didn’t know it then,” Namjoon replied quietly.
His voice was quiet enough that you almost missed it, so you just nodded while staring at the cup in your hands, “You didn’t make too much coffee, did you?” you asked.
He let out a small and humourless laugh, you just always know what he was thinking about, “No, I made exactly two cups.”
“Is this supposed to be your apology?” you asked, looking at him.
“No,” he replied, turning his head to look at you, “it’s supposed to be me trying to figure out how to start one.”
“Well, you should start with the words itself,” you answered, smiling at him.
Namjoon looked back out at the garden, his shoulders dropping slightly.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a long pause, “I’m sorry if I made you feel like you had to earn space in my life. I’m also sorry for not trusting you enough and acting out of spite to hurt you.”
You didn’t say anything back at him, you just nodded and gave him a small smile.
The rest of the afternoon was neither warm nor cold. You both kept to yourselves, doing what you had come here to do in the first place. Namjoon stayed on the veranda with his laptop, while you wandered between the garden and your room with your book. Whenever your paths crossed, neither of you ignored the other completely; a glance, a small nod, or a quiet “sorry” when one of you had to pass.
And the air now felt less hostile than before.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
By evening, something in the air between the two of you had changed enough that when he set two glasses and a bottle of soju on the dining table, you didn't immediately think it was a bad idea.
You almost skipped dinner that night and told yourself you would just eat something small in your room to avoid the whole exhausting event of sitting across from a man who apparently still has the ability to unravel you in under ten words.
But Namjoon was in the kitchen when you came out to get water, and saw him setting a bottle of soju and two glasses on the dining table.
"I'm not trying to start anything," Namjoon said, before you could even say a word, "I just.. I don't want to spend two more days pretending you're not here or pretending as if there is nothing for us to talk about."
You hesitated at first because it could go bad really quickly, but you knew even if it does, all you would have to do is stand up and walk away, "One drink," you finally said, “and that's it."
"Yes, one drink," Namjoon agreed.
You sat down across from him, as Namjoon poured the soju on the glass. When he filled yours up, you drank it way too fast, the way you always do when you are bracing for a conversation you didn't actually want to have.
"So," Namjoon said, refilling your glass without you needing to ask, "are we going to talk about it, or are we just going to keep circling it for two more days?"
"Talk about what exactly?" you answered, though you knew exactly what he meant.
"What happened to us,” Namjoon said, in a very non-chalant way that almost pissed you off.
You sighed as you looked out at the persimmon tree outside, "Fine, then you can talk first."
Namjoon went quiet for a moment, turning his glass in his hands, "I used to think you left because you stopped loving me," he said finally.
"I didn't stop loving you," the words came out before you could stop them, "that was never it. I just got tired of being the only one who kept trying to fix things. I was so tired, Joon."
"I was trying too," he quietly said.
"Were you? I don’t know. I mean yes, you always felt bad about it afterwards, you feel bad about missing things we’ve planned and tried to make it up in your own ways. But you know, your guilt was still not the same as your presence."
He flinched, just slightly, "That's harsh. You did the same too the last few months, you were around yet somehow never around.”
"Well, I was petty then, I wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine,” you replied.
He nodded slowly, looking down at the table, "Yeah I kinda knew that now. I thought it was not like you to act that way; to always have some excuse. It felt like every time I needed you to just be there, you had somewhere else to be."
"Well, I also had a life, Joon. I wasn't going to put it on hold indefinitely waiting for you to have room for me in yours," you said, giving him a small smile.
"I know," he said it so quietly you almost missed it, "I know that now."
"What has changed? How do you realise it now but not then?" you asked curiously.
He thought about the question longer than you expected to.
"Time, I guess, and distance too. Sometimes you just start seeing things clearer once you're not standing so close to the person you hurt anymore," he said as he turned his glass slowly on the table, watching the liquid move around, "I spent a long time telling myself the story where I was the one who tried harder, it was just easier that way. Easier to be the guy who got left than the guy who let something special slip out of his life because he was too busy chasing something else. But now, I don't think you were as absent as I made you out to be in my head and I don't think I was as present and innocent as I told myself I was, either."
You thought about what he said for a moment, surprised by how open Namjoon was to you. This was the Namjoon you knew the first two years of the relationship, the only difference is that he did seem a lot more mature now.
"I’m sorry about the co-worker thing. I really didn’t have the right to tell you what he was going through. I was the only person in his life who knew. He is now married to his husband and has moved out of the country. He’s happier and we’re best of friends now. I don’t think he would have made it out alive if I wasn’t there for him. I just couldn’t tell you then.." you said.
“Yeah.. I should have trusted you more,” Namjoon said.
“And I should have convinced you harder,” you admitted.
“I’m sorry about the Sana thing, I never wanted to be that guy but I did it out of anger and spite.. I’m really embarrassed of myself to this day that it ever happened.”
“Yeah, I figured you did it just to rile me up. You were never the type to do something like that,” you said, before taking another sip of the glass of alcohol in your hands, "Do you regret it?" you asked, "us breaking up, I mean."
Namjoon didn’t have to think about the answer because he has thought about it ever since the two of you were broken up, "No," he said, before adding, "I don't think I do. I think we would've just kept hurting each other even more. I understand why it happened. I get it now, in a way I didn't back then."
"Yeah," you replied, agreeing with him, "me too."
Namjoon poured another round of drinks and the two of you drank slower this time as the conversation drifted somewhere different. The old memories neither of you meant to bring up, the trip you two had to LA, Tokyo, and Singapore, the time the two of got lost trying to find a bookstore that turned out to be permanently closed, the time where you tried teaching him how to drive only for him to hit someone’s bins, the stories of your families and friends that the two of you have missed, the new music you both listen to, and the ugly ceramic bowl with the crack near the rim that you still refused to throw away.
"You still have that bowl?" he asked, surprised.
"It's a favorite bowl of mine, do you think I would just throw it away?" you said with a smile on your face.
"It's an ugly bowl, and you know how I appreciate artists more than anyone you know, but that bowl is just something else that I cannot even defend," Namjoon said.
"It's an ugly bowl I like," you said, defending yourself and the artist.
The two of you laughed, and the conversation drifted from the ugly bowl to the artists and writers you had both been following lately. Namjoon told you about an exhibition he wanted to see but never found the time for, while you complained about a novelist whose latest book disappointed you after years of being your favourite. For a while, it was easy.
"Can I ask you something?" he said after the two of you just finished debating whether J.K. Rowling would ever write anything that could surpass Harry Potter. "Did you see anyone else? After we broke up?"
“I went out with a few but only dated one guy for about eight months. He was.. " you paused, searching for the right word to describe your other ex, "easy. As in everything was just so easy with him."
“That sounds nice,” Namjoon said, though the slight tightening of his jaw betrayed the jealousy he was trying to hide.
"It was boring," you admitted, surprising yourself with how honest you were to him, "I hated how easy it was. I kept waiting for it to feel like something and it never did. I think I broke up with him because I just missed having something to fight for."
"I think about that sometimes," he said, "whether we would've been better off if it had been easy between us. But then maybe having it easy is just not what we were built for."
"Maybe not," you said, before adding, "maybe we were always going to be difficult. I just wish we had gone through the difficult times together instead of being difficult at each other."
"Yeah," he said quietly, agreeing with you, “me too."
By the fourth glass, or maybe the fifth, you really have lost count, the bitterness in the air shifted into something closer to the version of the two of you that used to sit and talk all night long.
"I missed this," he said, and then, drunk Namjoon, without him probably realising it, confessed, "I have missed you ever since."
You went very still in your seat. Namjoon didn't seem to notice what he just said. His eyes were already heavy, glass tipping slightly in his hand, and the soju and the exhaustion of four bitter days have finally caught up to him all at once.
"Joon," you said softly and when you looked over at him, you found him slumped slightly against his chair with his eyes closed.
You sat there for a while, still with a glass in hand, looking at him in the dim light of the kitchen, "Me too," you whispered to no one, to Namjoon who passed out in front of you, "Me too, Joon."
You got a blanket from his room and draped it over him where he was sitting and sleeping, careful not to wake him up.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
Namjoon woke up the next day in the kitchen with a headache and a blanket he didn't remember getting, and the dread of a man who knew he said something the night before but couldn’t fully remember what. Namjoon got off the chair, folded the blanket, and went looking for you.
You weren’t in the kitchen, and the door to your room was open with your bed already made. He panicked at first, wondering if you had left. But he continued searching for you and he finally found you in the backyard under the persimmon tree, sitting on a stool, with a book open in your lap.
Namjoon walked over to you with his hands in his pockets, "Good choice of book," he said, nodding at the book.
You looked up at him and gave him a small smile before saying, "Thank you."
Namjoon chuckled and let the silence sit for a second before he said, "I'll be checking out early at 4 AM tomorrow."
"I’ll be checking out tomorrow as well," you said looking at him.
"Alright," he nodded, “it's been nice seeing you, ____."
You laughed at him before saying, "Crazy how one night could change the first four days huh? But yes, it’s been nice seeing you too, Joonie.”
Namjoon reached his hand out before he could think better of it and ruffled your hair, the way he used to and you let him.
Then Namjoon walked back towards the hanok, and you watched him go until the sliding door clicked shut behind him.
You just sat there a while longer under the tree, some fruit were starting to drop around you, one by one, and you could hear the soft thuds against the ground.
You weren’t sad, because you knew the past few days had only been an accidental closure for the two of you.
And it was never meant to be anything more than that.
♡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━♡
Three Months Later - Seoul International Airport, 11:47 AM
South Korea was not small enough for this to not be fate.
A country with millions of people, and somehow it kept finding ways to place the one person you had tried hardest to forget directly in front of you.
You had stopped thinking about Andong. At least, that was what you kept telling yourself. Six bitter days and one drunken confession had not undone everything that happened between the two of you. But they had changed something; how you see Namjoon, and how he sees you.
You saw him before he noticed you were there.
Namjoon was standing by the magazine rack, with sunglasses pushed up into his hair, flipping through something he clearly wasn't reading. He looked good and you hated that you noticed.
Just as you considered turning away, Namjoon looked up from the magazine, and your eyes met. The moment Namjoon saw you, everything in him went still as if time had stopped.
After that night where he drank soju with you, he told himself that Andong had given both of you what you needed: an ending that did not involve slammed doors, unread messages, or either of you pretending not to care. The stay in Andong gave the two of you closure and that was what it had been.
Namjoon left at four in the morning exactly as he said he would. What you didn’t know was that he had stood outside your door for longer than he cared to admit, his hand hovering near the wooden door, before deciding against knocking. You both already said what needed to be said and anything more than that would have been selfish of him.
So Namjoon left.
But, you didn’t know that Namjoon had convinced himself that if it was meant to be, if the universe really wanted the two of you to try again, then Namjoon will be seeing you again.
And now you were there.
Standing right in front of him with your handbag over one shoulder and your other hand on the handle of your carry-on luggage, looking just as startled as he felt.
For one second, Namjoon wondered whether he had imagined you. Whether the lack of sleep, the long flights, and the stupid hope he carried with him since Andong had finally caught up with him.
Then you shifted on your feet, your fingers tightening around the strap of your bag the way they always did when you were nervous and did not know what to say, only then Namjoon realised you were real.
Namjoon put the magazine back on the rack, though he had no idea which rack it belonged to. The airport was still moving around the two of you, you could hear the suitcases rolling over the floor, the announcements over the speakers, and people rushing into their gates, but it all sounded far away to the both of you.
Namjoon spent three months telling himself that, if he ever saw you again, he would not waste it.
So he stepped away from the magazine rack and walked closer to where you were standing.
“Hi,” Namjoon greeted, his dimples appearing as he smiled fondly at you.
You gave him a small smile back before answering, “Hi.”
"You look good," he said.
"So do you," you answered, letting out a small laugh.
“Are you leaving somewhere?” Namjoon asked, still smiling at you.
“Yeah, I have a flight in..” you checked your phone to see the time before saying, “in about an hour.”
Namjoon nodded, his eyes dropping briefly to the carry-on luggage you had with you before staring back into your eyes, “Then I guess I caught you at the right time,” he said.
You frowned slightly at him, not understanding what he meant, “The right time for what exactly?”
“For coffee,” he said, “before your flight.”
You glanced at the departure board, then back at him, “One coffee,” you said, saying yes to his invitation, “that’s all I have time for.”
The airport cafe was crowded and loud, which didn’t influence how easily the conversation flowed. You talked about the ordinary things at first; work, travel, mutual friends, the books you had both been reading. Namjoon told you about a museum exhibition he was preparing for, and you complained about a project at work that had been taking up too much of your time.
It was strange how natural it still felt. And by the time your boarding call appeared on the screen, both coffees had gone cold.
Namjoon walked with you towards your gate, neither of you mentioning how none of really wanted the conversation to end.
"Text me when you land," he said.
You looked at him, all confused before saying, "You don't have my number anymore."
"Well, I could get it."
"You could," you said, smiling as you pulled out your phone and giving him your phone number.
And then, just like that, the two of you had to part ways. You walked towards security while Namjoon walked towards his gate, glancing back to each other more than either of you would admit.
You were two people who once tried to be everything to each other, failed and even hated each other for it.
But somehow, years later, after spending an accidental few days together in Andong, you two found something worth sitting down and trying for.
The world, it seemed, was not quite done proving that sometimes the right person only made sense once you both found yourselves in the right place and right time.
