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Girl on the Moon

Yu Jimin (Karina) x m!reader

word count: 15K

It's fucking cold and your blazer does exactly nothing to stop it. The wind just cuts right through like the fabric doesn't exist. You should've grabbed an actual coat before leaving, but hindsight and all that. At least you remembered the hat. Small victories.

Your dress shoes click against the pavement. That's the only sound besides the wind. The whole park is basically empty, which makes sense: it's past midnight. Way past. This is the hour when normal people are home in bed, not walking along the Han River with a bag of honey butter chips in one hand and fresh bandages on the other.

The bandages are from earlier. You punched a mirror in your office. Stupid move. The mirror won that fight. Your knuckles are still throbbing to prove it.

The bench comes into view. Your bench. The one you've been visiting since you were seventeen. Back then it was college entrance exams and a father who looked at you like a disappointment. Now it's a hemorrhaging portfolio and a boardroom full of middle-aged men who look at you like you're a child playing dress-up with daddy's money.

Different problems. Same bench. Same river. Same pathetic ritual of sitting alone in the dark until your head stops screaming.

Except tonight, someone's already there.

You slow your pace. A figure hunched forward, elbows on knees, hands pressed against their head, their shoulders shaking. Not from the cold, but from crying. You can hear the faint whimpering. It's a woman. You can tell from the frame, small and slight, wearing this oversized hoodie. Her face is completely hidden, buried in her hands, and she's just... falling apart. Right there. On your bench.

Great. Just what you needed.

You glance around. The pathway stretches empty in both directions. No friends hovering nearby, no security guards, no one at all. Just you and this stranger having a breakdown on your bench at one in the morning. You could leave. Turn around, find another spot, let her have her moment of private misery without some asshole in a wrinkled blazer standing ten feet away like a creep.

But your feet don't move. Eventually, though, she becomes aware of you, because her head snaps up. That’s when the streetlight catches her face. Your own face is obscured by shadows, so she doesn't see your expression of astonishment when you see her.

It's Karina.

Yu Jimin. From aespa. The Yu Jimin whose face you've seen on billboards, variety shows and big stages. She's staring at you with red-rimmed eyes and tear-streaked cheeks and an expression that's rapidly shifting from devastation to alarm. "Who are you?" She scrambles to her feet, putting distance between you. "What are you doing here?"

You don't answer immediately. Your brain is still buffering, still trying to reconcile the idol on the billboards with the crying girl in front of you, but your mouth operates on autopilot. "Well." You gesture at the trees, the river, the general ambiance of public outdoor space. "This is a park. People walk here. I just came to sit on the bench where I usually come to cry… But it seems someone beat me to it."

Jimin's expression flickers. She can't tell if you're joking or genuinely pathetic, and honestly, neither can you. "I'm sorry." She wipes hastily at her face, smearing tears across her cheek. "I'll go. I shouldn't be here anyway."

"No, no." You wave your unbandaged hand in a dismissive gesture. "I'm kidding. Stay. Bench is all yours. I'm leaving."

Who cares about the problems of Korea’s it girl when your own life is falling apart? So you turn. Start walking. Your shoes click against the pavement again, and you're already thinking about the convenience store two blocks over, whether they'll have more chips, whether you can find another bench somewhere that doesn't have a sobbing celebrity on it.

Three steps. Four. Five.

You stop.

Because the thing is: that's Yu Jimin back there. Karina. And you watched the news last week like everyone else. You saw the footage of her walking off stage mid-performance, the confused backup dancers, the fan cams cutting to black. The internet exploded with theories. Mental breakdown. Contract dispute. Secret illness. Nobody knew anything concrete, and SM Entertainment released some bullshit statement about "scheduling adjustments" that convinced exactly no one.

And now she's here. Alone. Crying by the river at one in the morning with no one around. You don’t want to go home, fall asleep, and wake up in the morning to turn on the news and hear the final, tragic headline about Yu Jimin. Knowing you could have done something.

You turn back. Jimin hasn't moved. She's watching you with wary eyes, arms wrapped around herself.

"On second thought," you say, walking toward her again, "I'd like to leave. I really would. But all that social ethics and empathy that one person is supposed to have for another is making it difficult."

"I'm fine. Really. You can go."

You stop a few feet away from the bench. Study her face in the dim light. The swollen eyes, the blotchy skin, the way her lower lip trembles even as she tries to set her jaw.

"You don't look fine."

You sit down on the opposite end of the bench, leaving a solid three feet of space between you. The wood is cold through your slacks. You settle back, stretch your legs out, and stare at the river instead of her.

"If you want to talk about it," you say, "you can. I'll listen." You give her your name. She doesn’t give you hers. Whatever. You already know it.

"I'm not going to open up to a stranger."

"That's fair." You nod. "I wouldn't either. Strangers are terrible. Half of them are serial killers or… you know." Silence. The river laps against the concrete embankment. "I'll just sit here for a while," you continue. "Until you're feeling better. And, you know." You pause. "Stop you from jumping in the river."

"What? I’d never do that.”

"Great." You shrug. "Saves me the trouble. I can't swim."

Another pause. You're not looking at her, but you can feel her gaze on the side of your face, trying to figure you out. Trying to decide if you're making fun of her or genuinely this weird. You open the bag of chips. You pop one in your mouth, chew slowly, then tilt the bag in her direction.

"Want some?"

Jimin stares at the offering like it might be poisoned. Her eyes flick to your face, then back to the chips. She reaches out. Takes one. Eats it.

"These are my favorite," she says quietly.

"I know."

"How... How do you know that?"

You chew another chip. Swallow. "I know who you are. Everyone does. You're kind of famous."

She exhales, then murmurs: "Fuck."

"Yeah."

"You're a fan."

"I own an album or two. Doesn't mean anything. I'm not going to ask for a photo or an autograph or whatever. I'm not going to tell anyone I saw you here." You pause. "Crying alone at one in the morning isn't exactly the image SM wants to project, I'm guessing."

Jimin doesn't respond. She's staring at the river now, the same way you were a moment ago. The water is black and glittering under the scattered lights of the city. "Why are you being nice to me?" she asks finally.

You consider the question. Think about the boardroom meeting from hell, the investors pulling out, the whispered conversations that stop when you enter a room. Think about your throbbing knuckles and your empty apartment and the fact that you came here tonight because you didn't know where else to go.

"I'm not being nice," you say. "I'm being a basic human being." You hold out the bag again. She takes another chip.

"What happened to your hand?" Jimin's question catches you off guard. You'd almost forgotten about it. The throbbing has faded to a dull ache. You glance down at the bandages wrapped around your knuckles, the gauze is already slightly grimy from the evening's adventures.

"This?" You hold it up. "Got into a fight. Some guys. You know how it is." She raises an eyebrow. "Happens all the time," you continue, keeping your face perfectly straight. "You should've seen the other guys. Absolutely wrecked. One of them's probably still in the hospital."

"You don't seem like the type to get into a fight."

"Excuse me?"

"Or to win one."

You press your unbandaged hand to your chest and say, incredibly offended: "That's so rude. I'm very intimidating. You clearly don't know my reputation; I've beaten up half the guys in this city. "

"Uh huh."

"I do."

"Sure."

You hold the pose for another beat, then let it drop. Shrug. "Okay, you've got good eyes. I punched a mirror."

"A mirror?"

"In my office. Full-length. Extremely expensive. Had this whole elegant frame, imported from somewhere in Europe." You flex your fingers experimentally, wince slightly. "It won."

"Why would you punch a mirror?"

"Because the wall was too far away."

Before you can react, Jimin reaches over and takes your hand. Her fingers are cold against your skin as she turns your wrist, examining the bandages with a frown. The touch is clinical, careful, but it still sends something strange through your body.

"Don't do that again," she says. "You could have been seriously hurt. This needs to be rewrapped. Did you even clean it properly?"

"A doctor looked at it."

"A real doctor?"

"The emergency room kind. With a degree and everything."

She lets go of your hand. "I'm serious. That was stupid."

You tuck your hand back in your lap. "Sorry, If I'd known Yu Jimin would be upset about it, I wouldn't have done it."

Jimin's nose scrunches. It's subtle, but you catch it. "That's a weird thing to say to someone you just met."

"I'm a weird person. Ask anyone."

She doesn't respond to that. Instead, she reaches for the chip bag still sitting between you, pulls out another handful, and chews slowly. The crunch is the only sound for a long moment. "Why did you do it?" she asks. "The mirror thing. Were you drunk?"

"Stone cold sober." You lean back against the bench, tilt your head toward the sky. The stars are invisible here. Too much light pollution. Just a flat expanse of urban grey. At the lake house, there are probably stars in the sky. "I was angry."

"At what?"

"Everything. My life is crumbling right in front of me and there's nothing I can do about it. I just have to sit there and watch it fall apart, piece by piece, while everyone stands around waiting for me to fix it." You pause. "The worst part is that it's my fault. All of it. Every single thing that's going wrong right now is because of decisions I made."

Jimin is quiet. Listening.

"Now everyone hates me," you continue. "My investors. My board. My employees, probably. They all look at me like I'm some kind of idiot child who got lucky once and has been failing upward ever since." You give a quiet, self-deprecating laugh. "Maybe they're right."

"What happened?" Jimin asks. "With your company?"

You think about how much to tell her, how much you even want to say out loud. But between the darkness, the late hour, and how ridiculous this whole situation is, this bench and Jimin seem very much like a safe space.

"I made a bet," you say. "A big one. Moved a lot of money into a position that I was sure would pay off. Everyone told me it was risky. Everyone told me to hedge, to be careful, to think about the downside. And I told them they were being cowards." You close your eyes. "I was wrong. The position collapsed. We lost... a lot. More than I want to think about. And now the investors are pulling out, the board wants my head, and the company I built is probably going to be sold off to some private equity firm that'll gut it for parts."

"That sounds..."

"Pathetic? Yeah."

"I was going to say overwhelming."

You open your eyes. Look at her. "Same thing, in my experience."

Jimin pulls her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. "Do you feel powerless?"

"Every second of every day lately."

She nods slowly. "Me too," she says quietly.

You turn to face her more fully. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Then I guess we have a lot in common. Karina and I, united by a shared feeling. Who would have thought, huh?”

A breeze picks up, carrying the smell of water and city and approaching rain. You watch Jimin shiver, then you shrug out of your blazer. It's rumpled, probably smells like stress sweat, but it's wool and it's warm.

"Here."

She looks at the offered jacket, then at you. "No, I'm fine."

"You're shaking."

"It's not that cold."

"Your lips are turning blue."

"They are not."

"Just take it." You hold it out further. "I'm not being polite. I'm being practical. If you get hypothermia out here, I'm the one who has to deal with it, and I really don't want to explain to the paramedics why I was hanging out with an idol at one in the morning."

Jimin hesitates. Then, slowly, she takes the blazer. Drapes it over her shoulders. It swallows her, the sleeves hanging past her hands, the hem nearly reaching her thighs.

"It fits you perfectly," you say.

She looks down at herself. A ghost of something that might be amusement crosses her face. She pulls the blazer tighter around herself and asks: "Are you scared?"

You take a moment before answering. "Yes."

"Of what?"

"Losing everything. Proving everyone right about me. Finding out that I really am just a lucky idiot who got in over his head." You pick at the edge of your bandage. "Waking up one day and realizing I wasted my entire life chasing something that was never going to work out." Jimin nods. Like she understands. Like she knows exactly what that fear tastes like. "What about you?" you ask. "What are you afraid of?"

"Getting lost," she replies. "Not knowing who I am anymore." She presses her forehead to her knees. "I've been doing this for so long. Being Karina. Being what everyone wants me to be. And somewhere along the way, I think I forgot who I was before all of it. Who I am underneath. Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and can’t see myself. A body with no face.” You don't say anything. You just listen. "I don't know who I really am," she continues. "And I don’t know how to figure it out."

"I had a girlfriend in college," you say after a moment. "She was really into esoteric stuff. Crystals, tarot cards, meditation retreats. The whole thing. She used to say that when you think too much, your mind separates from your body. Like it just... drifts away. Floats off somewhere and leaves the rest of you behind." You wave your uninjured hand. "She said the key was recalibration. Bringing your mind back to your body. Grounding yourself in the physical."

"How do you do that?"

You shrug. "No idea. We broke up before I figured that part out." Jimin lets out a breath. It's almost a laugh. "But you'll figure it out," you add. "Eventually. You seem smart."

"You don't know me."

"I know you have good taste in chips. That's something."

You stand up. Your body protests, joints stiff from the cold, but you ignore it. You grab the bag of chips (still half full) and hold it out to her. "Here. Take the rest."

She looks up at you. "I can't take your chips."

"Consider it a gift. From one pathetic person crying in a park to another."

Jimin takes the bag, holds it in her lap.

"My company," you say, "is in the Yeouido financial district. The building with the copper spire that's shaped like a twisted flame. You can't miss it. Only building in Seoul that looks like it's actively on fire." You pause. "My office is on the top floor. If you ever want to talk. Or just sit somewhere warm and eat snacks in silence. Whatever. Just show up."

She stares at you. "You're inviting me to your office?"

"Yeah. Is that weird? I feel like I lost my social instincts a while back."

"Why?"

"Because I have a lot of snacks up there, and no one to share them with." You start backing away, keeping your eyes on her. "It was a pleasure meeting you, Jimin-ssi. Genuinely. Even under the circumstances."

She doesn't respond. Just watches you, the blazer still wrapped around her shoulders, your chips still clutched in her hands.

"And maybe stop going out alone in the middle of the night," you add. "It's not safe. There are weirdos everywhere. Present company included." You take a few more steps backward. Almost trip on a crack in the pavement. Recover with what you hope is dignity. "One more thing."

Jimin tilts her head.

"You're my favorite in aespa," you say. "Always have been. Total diva."

And there it is. Finally. The corner of her mouth twitches, then lifts, and she smiles. It’s small, tired, still a little broken, but it’s there. Real.

“Thank you,” she says.

You turn and walk away before you can say another stupid thing. At least tonight, you’ll go to sleep knowing you made Karina from aespa crack a small smile.

—

It's a hallway big enough for everyone, but they insist on staying close to you. Your chief financial officer walks on your left, rattling off numbers that stopped meaning anything to you three days ago. Your head of operations flanks your right as he lists every reason why this trip is a terrible idea. Behind you, your assistant struggles to keep up while she reminds you about the seventeen emails you haven't answered.

You? Well, you’re starting to get pissed about the lack of personal space.

"You can't just leave," the CFO says. "There's too much happening here. The quarterly reports need your signature by Friday, and the auditors are asking questions about the Singapore accounts."

"I'm taking my MacBook." You don't slow down. "I can do everything remotely. That's the whole point of technology."

"With respect, sir, you said that last time and then you disappeared for three days without answering a single call."

"It won't happen again. You have my word."

Your operations head cuts in. "The meeting will also be on Friday. The board meeting. You need to be there. Everything is at stake. They're going to vote on whether to accept the acquisition offer, and if you're not present to argue against it, they'll sell us off without a second thought."

"I'll be there." You reach the elevator bay and press the button. "I'll be back on Friday morning. I'll sit in that room and I'll argue until I'm blue in the face. But right now, today, I'm getting on a plane."

"Sir, please, we need to discuss the restructuring proposal. The legal team has concerns about the liability clauses, and the PR department wants to schedule a press conference to address the investor concerns, and there's the matter of the pension fund adjustments that require your direct approval, and honestly we're all very worried about your mental state given recent events and we think perhaps you should speak to someone, a professional, someone who can help you process what's happening because this level of avoidance behavior is concerning and we care about you as a person not just as our employer and—"

The elevator doors open and there she is: Seol Yoon-a. Standing dead center like she's posing for a photoshoot. Her hair's down, these perfect brown waves past her shoulders, so glossy that makes you wonder if it's even real. Angular face, delicate features, coral pink lipstick. She's tall. Taller than you right now, but it's because of the high heels. The short blue dress is definitely designer, you can tell just by looking at it. And she's holding her dog. A tiny white Pomeranian with a rhinestone collar, cradled in her arms like it's a purse.

She looks absolutely furious.

"I have been trying to reach you all morning," she says. "All. Morning. I called seven times. Seven. I texted you fourteen messages. I even tried emailing."

You step into the elevator. The doors close behind you, sealing you in with her and the world's most judgmental Pomeranian.

"I was in meetings."

"You were avoiding me."

"Those aren't mutually exclusive."

"You've been so irresponsible lately," she continues. "Missing dinners. Canceling plans. Last week you forgot we were supposed to go to that gallery opening, and I had to show up alone like some kind of abandoned housewife."

"My company is on the verge of collapse." You watch the floor numbers tick upward. "I think I've earned the right to be a little irresponsible."

"That's not an excuse."

"It's literally the definition of an excuse. A reason for not doing something. My reason is corporate bankruptcy."

She huffs. The Pomeranian huffs with her. You wonder if she trained it to do that or if it just absorbed her personality through proximity.

"What about dinner tonight?" she demands. "With my parents? They've been wanting to meet you for months now, and I finally convinced them to fly in from Busan, and the reservation at that restaurant took three weeks to get, and my father is very particular about punctuality, and my mother is going to ask me why you're not there, and what am I supposed to tell her? That my boyfriend is too busy having a crisis to show basic courtesy?"

"We've already talked about this: I'm not your boyfriend,” you remind Yoon-a and see her face deflate right before your eyes. You exhale and add: “Yet. I’m not your boyfriend… yet. And I can't do that right now. I have too much going on. Your parents will have to wait."

"You always say that. You always have some excuse. I'm starting to think you don't even like me anymore."

You exhale slowly. Count to three. Try to find the diplomatic answer, the gentle deflection, the words that will smooth this over without actually addressing the underlying issue.

"I like you," you say. "But sometimes you can be a little... clingy."

Yoon-a's eyes go wide. Her mouth drops open. The Pomeranian actually stops yapping, like even it knows you've crossed a line.

"Clingy?" She repeats, completely horrified, like it’s the most offensive thing a guy could ever say to a girl. "You think I'm clingy?"

"I said a little."

"How could you say that?" She clutches the dog closer, and her outrage reaches a fever pitch. "How could you say that in front of our son?"

Your eyes sweep over the tiny fluffball, unimpressed, before flicking to her. "Pretty sure our son doesn’t shed this much.”

"Excuse me?"

"That dog isn't our son. You've had him for four years. We've been together for eight months. The math doesn't work."

Yoon-a literally gasps. Like you've said something unforgivable. She claps one hand over the Pomeranian's ear, pressing his fluffy head against her chest.

"Don't listen to him, baby," she coos. "He doesn't mean it. He's just having one of his moods."

"I'm not having a mood. I'm stating a fact."

The elevator dings. The doors open onto the ground floor lobby. Yoon-a steps out. Turns to face you. Her eyes are glistening (whether from genuine hurt or theatrical effect, you can't tell.)

“If you’re gonna be petty and take your frustration out on our innocent kid, then we’re done," she announces. "It's over. Don't look for me again. Don't call me. Don't text me. Don't even think about me." She spins on her heel and strides away.

"Yoon-a." You step out of the elevator, follow her a few paces. "Yoon-a, wait. We should talk about this."

She doesn't turn around. Doesn't slow down. Just keeps walking. You stand there for a moment. Processing. Then you shake your head and keep walking.

You're maybe twenty steps from the main exit when someone intercepts you. A young woman from the front desk. "Sir? I'm sorry to bother you, but there's someone here who wants to speak with you."

"I cancelled all my appointments today."

"I know, sir, but she was very insistent, and she's been waiting for almost an hour, and she said you'd want to see her."

You frown. "Who is it?"

The receptionist hesitates. Glances over her shoulder toward the lobby seating area. "She says her name is Yu Jimin. Karina. From… aespa.” You stop walking.

It's been two weeks since that night by the river. Two weeks since you sat on a bench with Yu Jimin and shared chips and talked about falling apart. Two weeks since you gave her your blazer and told her where to find you and walked away thinking that was probably the last time you'd ever see her. You'd convinced yourself she wouldn't come. Why would she? You're a stranger. A random guy she met while crying in a park. The invitation was impulsive, probably inappropriate, definitely weird. Any sensible person would have thrown your blazer in the trash and forgotten the whole thing.

And yet.

"Where?" you ask. The receptionist points toward the seating area near the windows. And there she is: Jimin sits on one of the low leather couches, her posture slightly hunched, her hands folded in her lap. She's wearing a baseball cap pulled low and a face mask that covers half her features, the standard idol disguise that fools absolutely no one. On the couch beside her sits Yoon-a.

Oh no.

You move closer, and fragments of conversation reach you: "Are you Karina?" Yoon-a is asking, leaning in with that curiosity she gets when she thinks she's discovered something interesting. "From aespa? You look exactly like her."

"No." Jimin's reply is quiet, muffled by the mask. "I get that a lot, though."

"The resemblance is insane. Like, identical. Are you sure you're not her?"

"I'm sure."

Yoon-a tilts her head, studies Jimin for another moment, then seems to accept the answer. "Well, whoever you are, your hair is gorgeous. What products do you use?"

"Um. Thank you. I don't really—"

"Anyway, I have to go. My ex-boyfriend is being dramatic and I need to go post something on Instagram that will make him jealous." Yoon-a stands, adjusts the Pomeranian in her arms, and sweeps away without a backward glance.

Jimin watches her go with visible relief. Then she sees you. She stands quickly, pulling down her mask. Her face is bare of makeup, her hair tucked under the cap. "Hi," she says.

"Hi." A beat of silence. The lobby hums around you, people coming and going, phones ringing, the distant chime of elevators. "I thought I’d never see you again," you say. "Honestly. I thought you'd written me off as some weirdo who talks to crying strangers."

"You are a weirdo who talks to crying strangers."

"Fair point."

She shifts her weight, uncertain. "Is this a bad time? I should have called first. I didn't have your number, so I just showed up, which is probably weird, I know, I can leave if you're busy—"

"Any time is a bad time right now." You shrug. "My entire life is a bad time. So it doesn't really matter."

That seems to relax her slightly. She reaches into the bag slung over her shoulder and pulls out something familiar. Your blazer, folded neatly. "I came to return this," she says. "And also... I don't know. I've been thinking about that conversation we had. About you. About everything you said." She pauses, searching for words. "I thought it might be nice to see you again. If that's okay."

You take the blazer from her hands. The fabric still smells faintly of her perfume. "It's okay," you say.

Her gaze drops to the overnight bag slung over your shoulder, the coat draped over your arm. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Yeah. I'm..." You hesitate. "I'm taking a trip. Getting out of the city for a few days. Clear my head."

"Oh.” Her eyes flick down for a moment. “Then I should let you go. I didn't mean to interrupt your plans."

You should probably just let her go. Say goodbye, wish her well, catch your flight solo like you'd originally planned. Be a normal, sensible person about this. That's what you're supposed to do here. That's the appropriate move.

But you're looking at her standing there, and you're thinking about two weeks of radio silence. You're thinking about how she smiled at you that night. Just once. Just barely. But she did. "Come with me," you say.

"What?"

"Come with me. On the trip."

"I—what? I can't just—you're not serious."

"I'm going to my family's lake house. A few hours outside the city. I'll be the only one there. Totally empty. Totally quiet." You pause. "Company would be nice. If you want."

She stares at you like you've lost your mind. Which, to be fair, you might have. "Don't you have a girlfriend or something?" she asks.

"The girl who was talking to you a minute ago, she was almost my girlfriend. Emphasis on was and almost." You sigh. "Pretty sure I ruined that. Again. It's becoming a pattern."

"She was beautiful."

"Yeah. In another universe, she's probably an idol. Could give you a run for your money." You tilt your head, considering. "In this universe, she's just a kind of ditzy rich girl. Good heart, though. Deep down." Jimin doesn't seem to know how to respond to that. "The offer stands," you continue. "Private jet. Lake house. Fresh air. It might be my last trip on that plane, actually. I'll probably have to sell it soon to cover some debts. Might as well enjoy it while I can."

"I'm not ready," she says. "I don't have a suitcase. I don't have clothes. I didn't plan for this."

You check your watch. "You have an hour and a half. Go home, pack a bag, get your documents and meet me at Gimpo airfield. I'll text you the details."

"This is insane. I shouldn't be traveling alone with someone I barely know."

"Definitely not. Objectively, this is one of the stupidest things anyone could do."

She crosses her arms. Narrows her eyes at you. "How do I know you're not going to murder me or something?"

"I don't like blood." You hold up your hand, showing her the healing scars across your knuckles. "When I punched that mirror and saw it bleeding, I almost passed out. Had to sit down for ten minutes. My secretary had to bring me juice."

Her expression softens slightly. "How is it? Your hand?"

"Better. See? All healed up. No lasting damage."

"Good."

"So no murders," you say. "I'd honestly prefer to keep all your blood and organs exactly where they are. Inside your body. Where they belong."

Jimin just looks at you. For a while. Long enough that you're starting to wonder if she heard you correctly. She's clearly thinking it over. You can see it on her face. The mental math she's doing: how bad could this go versus how bad is everything already? Scary unknown versus scary known. Taking a chance versus playing it safe. "Okay," she says finally. "I'll come."

You grin. "It's going to be great," you tell her. "Sun. Water. Peace and quiet. You should bring a bikini.”

"A bikini."

"For swimming. In the lake. It's very refreshing."

"Uh huh... You realize you sound completely deranged right now, right? 'Come to my isolated lake house, strange woman I met while she was crying. Bring a bikini.'"

"When you say it like that—"

"How else should I say it?"

"More... optimistically?"

She laughs. "You're crazy. Like, genuinely crazy. I should probably run."

"But you're not going to."

"No," she admits. "I'm apparently just as crazy as you are."

—

By the time you and Jimin make it from the car to the front door, you're both soaked from the knees down despite your best efforts. The wind keeps changing direction, driving sheets of water sideways, and the umbrella is basically decorative at this point. You fumble with the keys. Drop them once. Curse under your breath. Finally get the door open and practically shove Jimin inside before following her, slamming the door shut against the storm.

The house is dark. Quiet. You find the light switch and the entryway floods with warm yellow glow, illuminating hardwood floors and cream-colored walls and the faint layer of dust on the decorative table by the door. Jimin sets two small suitcases in the corner. You drop your bag beside it. Water drips from both of you, pooling on the floor.

"So," you say, before she can say anything. "Yeah. I know. I said there would be sun. I specifically mentioned sun. And a lake. And bikinis." She looks at you. Doesn't say anything. Just looks. "This is climate change," you continue, gesturing at the windows where rain lashes against the glass. "The weather's completely unpredictable now. Changes overnight. There's literally no way I could have known this was going to happen. It was sunny when we left Seoul." Still nothing. Just that steady gaze. "But hey." You move further into the house, hitting more light switches as you go. "At least the power works. See? Fully functional. Lights, electricity, the whole deal. Modern amenities."

To prove your point, you grab the remote from the coffee table and turn on the television mounted above the fireplace. The screen flickers to life, and a news anchor's face fills the frame. "—unprecedented storm system that meteorologists have been tracking for weeks now," the anchor is saying. "Residents in the affected areas have been advised to stay indoors and avoid unnecessary travel. The storm is expected to continue through the weekend, with rainfall totals potentially reaching—"

You become very aware of Jimin standing behind you. "Okay." You clear your throat. "So apparently they have been talking about this. For weeks. Allegedly."

"Allegedly."

"I don't watch the news. Who watches the news anymore? It's all doom and gloom. Very bad for mental health." You turn to face her, attempting something like an apologetic expression. "I'm sorry. You must be upset."

Jimin shrugs. Pulls off her damp jacket and drapes it over the back of a chair. "It's fine."

"It's not fine. I promised you sun and delivered a monsoon."

"I wasn't really in the mood for sun anyway." She looks around the living room, taking in the leather couches, the stone fireplace, the floor-to-ceiling windows that currently showcase nothing but grey sheets of rain. "This is better, actually."

"See?" You point at her triumphantly. "I manage to get things right even when I completely screw up. It's a gift."

"—still no word on the whereabouts of Yu Jimin, known professionally as Karina of the K-pop group aespa. The idol, who mysteriously disappeared earlier this week, has not been seen publicly since—" You watch Jimin's expression freeze. "—sources close to the group suggest she may be traveling alone, though her exact location remains unknown. Fans and media alike have expressed growing concern following her abrupt departure from the group's final tour concert last month. SM Entertainment has declined to comment on the situation, releasing only a brief statement asking for privacy during this difficult time—"

You turn off the TV. "Did you tell anyone where you were going?" you ask.

Jimin moves to the window. Stares out at the storm. "I told them I was traveling. That I was fine. That I needed some time."

"But not where."

"No. Not where."

"People are going to be worried. Your members. Your family."

"I know." Her breath fogs the glass. "But it's better this way. If they knew where I was, they'd come. They'd try to help. And I can't... I don't want that right now.” You don't push. Don't ask why. "So." Jimin turns away from the window. "What are we going to do here?"

You scratch the back of your neck. "Honestly? I have no idea."

"You didn't plan anything?"

"The whole trip was impulsive. I wasn't thinking past 'get out of Seoul before I lose my mind.' And now..." You gesture at the rain. "There's not much we can do in this weather anyway."

Another silence. You both avoid looking directly at each other, which is ridiculous, because you're adults and this is just a house and there's nothing weird about any of this except for the part where everything about this is incredibly weird. You're a businessman on the verge of bankruptcy. She's a global pop star who just disappeared from the public eye. You're standing in your family's lake house in the middle of nowhere while a storm rages outside, and neither of you has any idea what you're doing here.

"Do you want to see the lake?" you ask suddenly.

"In this?"

"There should be raincoats somewhere. My family used to keep outdoor stuff in the mudroom." You pause. "But first, let me show you the house. So you know where everything is." She nods. Follows you as you move through the ground floor.

The lake house is two stories of weathered wood and large windows. The ground floor is mostly open plan, the living area flowing into a kitchen that hasn't been updated since the early 2000s but still works fine. A dining table that seats eight people who no longer gather here. A fireplace that you should probably light later, assuming you remember how. Sliding glass doors that lead to a deck overlooking the water, currently being pelted by rain so hard you can barely see the lake beyond. You flip on lights as you go, chasing away the gloom. "This is all very nice," Jimin observes, running her fingers along the edge of the kitchen island. "Your family has money." She opens the refrigerator. Stares at the contents. "There's food in here."

"Yeah, I called ahead. There's a company that does this, stocks up vacation homes before people arrive. Groceries, supplies, fresh linens. Very convenient when you're rich." You lean against the counter. "Or when you used to be rich..."

"That's very... prepared of you."

"I have my moments."

She closes the refrigerator and you continue the tour, showing her the small bathroom off the hallway, the laundry room with its industrial-sized washer and dryer, the study lined with bookshelves that your father never actually read.

The stairs creak as you climb to the second floor. The sound is familiar. Kind of comforting, in a strange way. "Master bedroom is at the end of the hall," you say, pointing. "That one's mine when I'm here. There are two guest rooms. This one—" You open a door on the left. "Has the better view."

Jimin steps inside. The room is simple but comfortable. Queen-sized bed with a white duvet, wooden dresser, soft carpet underfoot. But the window takes up most of the far wall, and even through the rain, you can see the lake stretching out beyond the property line, grey water merging with grey sky. "It's beautiful," she says softly. "Even with the storm."

"Yeah." You lean against the doorframe, watching her watch the view. "It's a peaceful place. Was, anyway."

"Was?"

"My family's been thinking about selling it. The whole area used to be full of families who came for the summers. Kids running around, barbecues on the weekends, boats on the lake. But over the last few years..." You shrug. "People started leaving. Selling their houses. The economy changed, people's priorities changed. Now half the homes around here are empty. The ones that aren't belong to people who only show up once or twice a year."

Jimin turns from the window. "That's sad."

"It is what it is." You examine a scratch on the doorframe, remembering when you put it there. You were twelve. A hockey stick. Your mother had been furious. "I told my father I'd buy the place myself if he tried to sell. He laughed at me. Said I was being sentimental."

"Were you?"

"Probably. But I don't care." You look around the room, at the walls that have witnessed more of your life than most people. "My family stopped coming here years ago. Now it's just... a graveyard of memories, I guess. A place where ghosts of who we used to be hang out."

"That sounds lonely."

"It is. But it's also one of the few places where I can pretend my problems can't reach me." You meet her eyes. "It's not true, obviously. They're still there. Waiting. But here, I can ignore them for a while. Act like they don't exist."

Jimin is quiet for a moment. Processing. "Then we'll pretend together," she says. "Both of us. For however long we're here. No problems. No expectations. No outside world."

You smile. Actually smile, not the sarcastic smirk you usually default to, but something genuine.

"Yeah," you say. "That sounds like a good plan. Come on, let's grab our raincoats.”

The raincoat is bright yellow and two sizes too big, clearly designed for someone with broader shoulders and longer arms than you possess. The sleeves hang past your wrists and the hood keeps slipping forward into your eyes. Jimin's raincoat is green, equally oversized, and she looks like she's being slowly consumed by a plastic tarp. Neither of you comments on how ridiculous you both look.

The wind hits you the moment you step off the porch, sharp and wet and insistent, pushing against your chest. You shove your hands into the raincoat's pockets and start walking, and Jimin falls into step beside you without a word. The path to the lake is overgrown. Weeds push through the gravel, and the bushes on either side have grown wild. Your family used to keep this place immaculate. Hired groundskeepers, regular maintenance, the whole thing. Now it's slowly returning to nature, one missed appointment at a time.

Rain drums against your hood in a constant, rhythmic patter. Your sneakers (you'd changed out of the dress shoes, thankfully) squelch in the mud. The air smells like wet earth and pine. You don't talk. Neither does Jimin. The trees thin out and suddenly the lake is in front of you, stretching gray and vast and choppy under the assault of the storm. Waves roll across the surface, small but persistent, breaking against the rocky shore with soft, repetitive sounds. The far side of the lake is barely visible through the rain, just a smudge of green that might be forest.Jimin stops at the edge of the water. Stands there. Watches.

You watch her watch the lake for a moment, then your attention drifts downward. Stones. The shoreline is littered with them. You bend down, pick one up, test its weight in your palm. Your arm snaps forward. The stone hits the surface at an angle and skips once, twice, three times before sinking.

"Not bad," you mutter to yourself. You find another stone. Skip it. This one gets four jumps before disappearing. Jimin still hasn't moved.

"What's your favorite memory of this place?" You pause mid-throw, stone in hand, and actually think about it.

"Fishing," you say finally. "With my grandfather."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." You let the stone fly. Three skips. "He used to take me out on this little rowboat he kept tied up by the dock. Every summer, without fail. We'd go out early in the morning, before anyone else was awake, and just sit there on the water with our lines in."

Jimin turns to look at you. The rain runs down her face, dripping off her chin, but she doesn't to care. "Did you catch anything?"

"Never." You laugh. "Not once. My grandfather said the fish in this lake were too smart for us. I think he just didn't know what he was doing, honestly. But it didn't matter. We'd sit there for hours anyway, talking about nothing, watching the sun come up. He'd tell me stories about when he was young. I'd complain about school. It was nice."

"That sounds nice."

"It was." You find another stone. Don't throw it. Just turn it over in your fingers, feeling the smooth surface. "I've never fished since he died. Haven't been on that boat either. I don't even know if it's still there."

"You should check."

"Maybe."

Jimin is quiet for a moment. Then: "I've never been fishing."

"No?"

"No. I grew up in the city. The closest I ever got to nature was the park near my apartment, and that was just grass and pigeons."

"You should try it sometime. Fishing, I mean. It's boring as hell, but in a good way."

"Would you teach me?"

You laugh again. "I would, but I don't actually know how. My grandfather died before he finished teaching me everything." You pause. Shrug. "At least I know how to bait a hook. That's something."

"I'm sorry," Jimin says softly. "About your grandfather."

"It's okay. It was a long time ago." You throw the stone. It skips five times. Your best one yet. "He was old. Sick. It was expected. Doesn't mean it didn't suck, but... you know. Life." Jimin nods. Doesn't offer any platitudes, any empty comforts. Just accepts the statement for what it is. You throw a few more stones. The rain keeps falling. The lake keeps churning. "How are you feeling?" you ask eventually. "Inside, I mean. Not just the wet and cold part."

Jimin doesn't answer immediately. She wraps her arms around herself and stares out at the water. "Tired," she says. "Really tired. Which doesn't make sense, because I'm not doing anything. I haven't been doing anything for weeks. But I wake up exhausted and I go to bed exhausted and the sleep in between doesn't help."

"Are you sleeping?"

"Not well. A few hours here and there. My brain won't shut up." She kicks at a stone near her foot, sending it tumbling into the water with a plop. "It's like there's this constant noise in my head. Thoughts that won't stop. Worries that won't go away. And the more I try to quiet them, the louder they get."

"Yeah," you say. "I know what that's like."

"At the same time..." She trails off. Takes a breath. "At the same time, I feel like I want to scream. Just open my mouth and let everything out. All the frustration and the fear and the anger and whatever else is stuck inside me. I want to scream until my throat is raw and my lungs are empty and there's nothing left."

You pick up another stone. Hold it. Don't throw. "So scream," you say.

Jimin looks at you. “What do you mean?"

"Scream. If you want to scream, scream."

"I can't just... scream. In the middle of nowhere. That's crazy."

"Why not? There's no one here to hear you. Just me, and I don't care." You gesture at the lake, at the rain, at the empty expanse of wilderness surrounding you. "This is literally the perfect place to scream. No neighbors. No fans. No cameras. Just water and trees and a storm that's loud enough to drown out anything." She's looking at you like she's trying to figure out if you're serious. You get that look a lot. "I want to scream too," you admit. "I've wanted to scream for weeks. Maybe months. Maybe years, honestly. There's a lot of stuff in here—" you tap your chest "—that needs to come out. And I figure if I'm going to do it, might as well do it now. Might as well do it here." Jimin still looks uncertain. Skeptical.

So you turn toward the lake. Plant your feet. Fill your lungs with wet, cold air. And you scream. It's not a word. Not a name. Not anything coherent. Just sound, raw and loud, ripping out of your throat and hurling itself across the water. You scream until your lungs are empty, until your voice cracks, until the sound dissolves into the rain and the wind and the endless grey. Then you stop. Breathe. Your throat burns slightly.

Jimin is staring at you with wide eyes. "Your turn," you say.

She hesitates. Looks at the lake. Looks back at you. Then she screams.

It starts small, tentative, like she's testing the waters. But then something breaks loose inside her, something that's been building for god knows how long, and the scream grows. It gets louder, longer, more desperate. Her whole body tenses with the effort of it, hands clenched into fists at her sides, face tilted toward the sky. She screams like she's trying to empty herself out. Like she's trying to purge every bad thought, every fear, every moment of doubt and pain and exhaustion that's been weighing her down.

When she finally stops, she's breathing hard. Her eyes are wet, and you can't tell if it's rain or tears. "That was great," you say. "Really solid scream. Eight out of ten."

She lets out a shaky laugh. "Only eight?"

"Room for improvement. Here, let's do it together. On three."

"This is ridiculous."

"One."

"I'm not doing this."

"Two."

"You're insane."

"Three." You both scream. Together. Two voices rising over the lake, tangling with the wind and the rain, filling the empty space with something loud and alive. You scream until you can't anymore, until you're both bent over with your hands on your knees, gasping for air, throats raw. Jimin starts laughing. It's a small sound at first, barely audible over the storm, but it grows. She laughs until she's clutching her stomach, until she has to sit down on a wet rock because her legs won't hold her anymore.

You sit down next to her. Don't say anything. Just let her laugh. Eventually, she calms down. Wipes her face with the back of her hand, which doesn't help because her hand is just as wet as her face.

"How do you feel?" you ask.

"A little better," she admits. "Not fixed. But... lighter, maybe.”

"That's the magic of screaming into the void," you say. "I should start charging for this."

Jimin snorts. "Please don't."

"Fine. Free screaming sessions for you. Special discount." You stand up. Offer her your hand. "Come on," you say. "Let's walk around the lake. The path goes all the way around if you follow it. Takes about an hour." She takes your hand. Lets you pull her to her feet. Doesn't let go immediately, and neither do you.

"An hour in this rain?" she asks.

"We're already soaked. Can't get any wetter."

"That's not technically true."

"Are you always this pedantic?"

"Are you always this impulsive?"

"Yes," you say. "You better get used to it.” You start walking. She falls into step beside you, close enough that your shoulders almost brush. The rain keeps falling. The wind keeps blowing. Neither of you talks much. Just walks. Breathes. Exists in the same space.

The path curves around the eastern edge of the lake, narrowing where the trees press closer, their branches heavy with rain. Your sneakers make obscene squelching sounds with every step, and you've given up trying to keep your socks dry. That battle was lost about twenty minutes ago. "Have you thought about what you'll do?" Jimin asks suddenly. "If things don't work out?"

You glance at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean..." She hesitates. Kicks at a pebble on the path. "I know it's going to work out. Everything will be fine. But hypothetically. If it doesn't. Have you thought about it?" She pauses again. "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

You consider deflecting. Making a joke. Changing the subject. That's what you usually do when conversations get too close to the things you don't want to look at. But you don’t.

"There's a very good chance I'm going to end up completely screwed," you say. "Like, financially devastated. Career over. Reputation destroyed. The whole thing. I still have my family, technically. My father would probably let me crawl back. He'd love that, actually. His disappointing son finally admitting defeat. Finally proving that he was right all along, that I was too young, too arrogant, too stupid to run a company… That's the worst part, honestly. Not the money. Not the failure. The thought of looking him in the eye and seeing that smug expression. That 'I told you so' face he's been waiting years to make."

"Would you go back? To your family?"

"I don't know. Maybe. Probably." You shrug. "Or maybe I'd just do what rich guys who lose everything always do in this situation." Jimin's head snaps toward you. Her eyes narrow. "I'm kidding," you say quickly. "That was a joke. Dark humor. Bad timing." She keeps staring at you. "Mostly kidding," you murmur under your breath.

"That's not funny."

"I know. Sorry." You clear your throat. "Okay, real answer. Plan B. If everything falls apart and I can't face my father and I don't want to do anything... dramatic. I move into this house permanently. Live off the land. Become one with nature."

Jimin's expression shifts from concern to skepticism. "You?"

"Me."

"Living off nature?"

"Why not?"

"You don't seem like the type who could survive out here for more than a week. You probably don't even know how to start a fire without a lighter."

"I absolutely do. I watched a YouTube video once. Have you seen that movie? Into the Wild? About a guy who gives up everything and goes to live in the wilderness. That could be me. I'm basically the same. Trust fund baby, disillusioned with society, seeking meaning in the natural world."

"Didn't he die at the end?"

"Yeah, but that's not the point."

Jimin snorts. "I think that's exactly the point."

"The point is that I would adapt. I'm very adaptable. Give me a few months out here and I'd be hunting my own food, building my own shelter, communing with the wildlife." You gesture grandly at the surrounding forest. "In a few years, I'd be able to take on a bear. Hand-to-hand combat. Mano a mano."

"You'd be mincemeat," Jimin says flatly. "A bear would destroy you in about three seconds."

"Three seconds is a bit of an exaggeration."

"It's realistic. You'd see a bear up close and you'd wet your pants before it even touched you."

"Excuse me?” Resting your palm over your heart, you arch an offended brow. “You clearly don't know who you're talking to. I'm incredibly brave. Fearless, even. Ask anyone."

"I'm asking you, and you're lying."

"I am not lying. I have faced many dangerous situations in my life and emerged victorious every single time."

Jimin rolls her eyes. "Name one."

"I once killed a spider in my apartment that was the size of my hand."

"That doesn't count."

"It absolutely counts. That spider was a monster. It looked at me with malice in its eyes. I had to use a shoe and everything."

"You're proving my point."

"I am not. The point is that when properly prepared, mentally and physically, there is no animal on this earth that could scare me. I am a fortress of courage. An unshakeable pillar of—"

Something leaps out of the underbrush. It happens fast. A blur of movement, a flash of wet green, something small and quick launching itself toward your legs. You scream. It's high-pitched and utterly devoid of the courage you were just bragging about. Your body reacts before your brain can catch up, jerking backward, feet scrambling for purchase on the muddy path. Your left foot slides. Your right foot tries to compensate. Neither succeeds. You go down hard, ass-first into the mud with a wet, squelching thud.

The frog that caused this catastrophe hops away into the grass, completely unbothered. For a moment, you just sit there. Stunned. Covered in mud from the waist down, rain pouring onto your face, trying to process what just happened. Then Jimin starts laughing.

Not a polite chuckle. Not a restrained giggle. Full-body, doubled-over, tears-streaming laughter that shakes her entire frame. She's pointing at you, like a child who just witnessed the funniest thing in the history of comedy. "I was caught off guard, by the way," you say, trying to salvage some shred of dignity. "That's not fair. That doesn't count." She laughs harder, completely at your expense. “It could have been anything. A snake. A raccoon. A small bear." Jimin is wheezing now, bent over with her hands on her knees, struggling to breathe through the laughter. "This is a serious situation. I could have been badly hurt. I could have broken a leg. An arm. My spine.”

"Your face," she gasps out between laughs. "You should have seen your face."

"What about my face?"

"The fear." She straightens up slightly, mimics an exaggerated expression of horror. "Like you'd seen death itself."

"It was a large frog."

"It was a tiny frog."

"Size is relative." She dissolves into laughter again. You sit there in the mud, rain soaking through the seat of your pants, watching Yu Jimin, Karina of aespa, international superstar, laugh at you like you're the funniest thing she's ever seen. You should be annoyed. But you're smiling. You can't help it. Because she looks alive right now, alive in a way she hasn't since you met her."This is incredibly rude," you say. "I'm injured and traumatized and you're mocking me in Dolby Atmos. You're creating psychological damage in real time. Karina, my favorite idol, the woman I have supported since debut, is actively ridiculing me in my moment of weakness."

"I'm sorry," she says, still laughing. "I'm so sorry, it's just—it was so funny—you screamed like—"

"I did not scream."

"You absolutely screamed."

"I'm filing a complaint with your company."

She wipes tears from her eyes, still grinning. "I really am sorry. But I can't stop picturing it. The frog jumping and you just—" She mimes falling backward, makes a ridiculous sound effect.

"Are you done?" you ask. "Are you finished mocking me? Because I'm sitting in a puddle of mud and my dignity is hanging by a thread."

"I'm done." She takes a breath, tries to compose herself. "I'm done. I promise."

"Good." You extend your hand toward her. "Help me up." Jimin steps closer, reaching down. Her fingers wrap around yours.

You pull.

She yelps as her feet slide out from under her, balance completely gone, and then she's falling, landing in the mud beside you with a splat that sends brown water splattering across both of you. For a moment, she just stares at you. Mouth open. Eyes wide. Absolutely covered in mud.

You grin. “Guess the fun’s over, huh?”

"You did not just do that."

"I absolutely did."

"I was trying to help you!"

"Never trust strangers, that’s what they say.”

A slow narrowing of her eyes pins you in place; Okay, maybe you made a big mistake. "You shouldn't have done that," she says quietly.

"What are you going to—"

A handful of mud hits you square in the face. You sputter. Spit out grit. Wipe your eyes.

Jimin is already scooping up another handful, a wicked smile spreading across her face. "Oh no," you say. "No no no. You should not have done that. You have no idea what you've just started." You grab your own handful of mud. Cold and wet and absolutely disgusting. "This is war," you declare.

"Bring it on." She throws. You dodge (mostly). You throw back. She shrieks and retaliates.

And suddenly you're both scrambling in the mud, slipping and sliding and hurling handfuls of wet earth at each other like children. Jimin gets you in the chest. You get her in the shoulder. She tries to run and falls again, and you try to capitalize on her weakness but slip and go down beside her. You're laughing. She's laughing. The rain keeps falling and the mud keeps flying and somewhere in the chaos you lose track of who's winning because it doesn't matter anymore.

Jimin smears mud across your cheek with her palm. You retaliate by dumping a handful directly on top of her head. She gasps in outrage and tackles you, both of you rolling in the mud until you're completely unrecognizable, two brown figures wrestling on the shore of a grey lake while the storm rages overhead.

—

The towel is damp and your hair is still dripping slightly when you emerge from your bedroom, but you've given up on achieving actual dryness. Some battles aren't worth fighting. You're wearing sweatpants and a hoodie. Jimin is in the living room. She's standing by the couch with her own towel draped around her shoulders, running her fingers through wet hair that hangs in dark strands past her collarbone. She's changed into leggings and an oversized sweater. "That was a terrible idea," you say.

She looks up. Nods emphatically. "The worst idea. I spent thirty minutes in the shower trying to get mud out of places mud should never be."

"I found some in my ear. My ear. How does that even happen?"

"You fell face-first into a puddle at one point."

"I was pushed."

"You tripped over your own feet."

"Semantics." You toss your towel over the back of a chair and stretch your arms above your head, feeling your spine pop. "At least we've upgraded our immune systems. All that bacteria exposure has to be good for something."

"That's not how immune systems work."

"Are you a doctor?"

"No."

"Then how would you know?" Jimin rolls her eyes. She finishes squeezing water from her hair and drapes her own towel beside yours. "Are you hungry?" you ask.

"Starving."

"Great. Let's cook something." You head toward the kitchen with purpose, like a man who knows what he's doing. You do not, in fact, know what you're doing. The kitchen is a foreign country and you are an undocumented immigrant with no language skills. Jimin follows you, watching as you open the refrigerator and stare at its contents like they might spontaneously arrange themselves into a meal.

"What are you thinking?" she asks. "Pasta? Stir fry? There's chicken in there, we could do something with that."

"Yes," you say. "One of those. Whichever one requires the least... cooking."

She tilts her head. "Have you ever cooked before?"

"Define 'cooked.'"

"Prepared food using heat and ingredients."

"Then no."

Jimin stares at you. "You've never cooked anything? Ever? In your entire life?"

"I've made toast. Does that count?"

"Toast is not cooking."

"It involves heat. And bread. That's basically the same thing."

"It's really not." She moves past you, gently but firmly shouldering you aside to access the refrigerator. "Okay. I'll cook. You just... stay out of the way."

"I can help."

"No."

"I'm very capable. I run a company. I manage hundreds of employees."

"Can any of those skills fry an egg?"

"I could learn."

"Not tonight." She pulls out chicken, vegetables, a carton of eggs, various bottles and containers whose purposes you can only guess at. "Tonight you sit over there and let me handle this."

You retreat to the kitchen island, hoisting yourself onto one of the stools. "This feels emasculating."

"Good."

"What if I just hand you things? I can be your sous chef. I saw that on a cooking show once."

"You don't know what anything is called."

"I know some things. That's a pan." You point. "That's a spatula. That's..." You squint at a utensil she's holding. "Some kind of... stabbing implement?"

"It's a whisk."

"I was close."

Jimin sets the whisk down and begins organizing ingredients on the counter with efficiency. You watch her work, the way her hands move with confidence, the way she seems to know instinctively where everything should go. "Where did you learn to cook?" you ask.

"My mom. And necessity." She cracks eggs into a bowl, one-handed, smooth. "When I was a trainee, we didn't have money for delivery every night. If you wanted to eat something that wasn't instant ramen, you had to make it yourself."

"That sounds rough."

"It was fine. I like cooking, actually. It's relaxing." She glances at you. "When I'm not being watched by someone who doesn't know what a whisk is."

"I know what a whisk is now. You just told me."

"Do you want to try?"

"Try what?"

She holds out the whisk. "Beating the eggs. It's simple. Even you can't mess it up." You slide off the stool and take the whisk from her hand. The bowl of cracked eggs sits on the counter, yellow yolks floating in clear viscous liquid. You stick the whisk in and start moving it around. "Not like that," Jimin says immediately.

"What's wrong with this?"

"You're stirring. You need to beat. Like this." She steps closer, her hand closing over yours on the whisk handle. Her fingers are warm. "Faster. In a circular motion. You're incorporating air, not just mixing." You try to follow her guidance. The eggs slosh around in the bowl, looking more or less the same as before. "You're hopeless," she says, but she's smiling.

"I told you. I'm a businessman, not a chef."

"Most businessmen can still feed themselves."

"You’re so cruel sometimes."

She takes the whisk back, bumping you out of the way with her hip. "Go sit down. You're a hazard."

You return to your stool, watching as she takes over the egg-beating with movements that are quick and sure. Within seconds, the eggs are transformed into a uniform yellow mixture. "Show-off," you mutter.

"Competence isn't showing off."

"It is when you do it that fast."

The cooking continues. Jimin moves around the kitchen like she owns it, heating pans, chopping vegetables, seasoning things with pinches of this and dashes of that. You try to help twice more. The first time, you're assigned to wash vegetables and somehow manage to spray water all over the counter and yourself. The second time, you're asked to stir something on the stove and immediately turn the heat up too high, nearly burning the contents. "Out," Jimin says after the second incident. "Get out of my kitchen."

"Hey, it's technically my kitchen."

"Not anymore. I'm annexing it. This is my territory now."

You raise your hands in surrender and retreat to the living room, collapsing onto the couch. The rain continues outside while the house feels warm and enclosed. Forty minutes later, Jimin emerges with two plates. Some kind of rice dish with vegetables and chicken, topped with a fried egg. It smells incredible.

"This looks amazing," you say, accepting your plate.

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not surprised. I'm impressed." You eat on the couch, plates balanced on your laps, the rain providing ambient soundtrack. The food is good. Really good. Possibly the best thing you've eaten in weeks, though that might be the hunger talking. "This is incredible," you say around a mouthful.

"Chew first. Compliment later."

"I can do both."

Jimin snorts and focuses on her own plate. After dinner (you handle dishes, since it's the one task you can manage without supervision), the evening stretches out ahead with nothing particular to fill it. The storm shows no signs of stopping. Your MacBook sits on the coffee table where you left it earlier, the screen dark, full of emails you don't want to read and spreadsheets you don't want to look at.

"Movie?" you suggest.

"Sure."

You scroll through the streaming options, arguing amiably about genres (she wants something light; you suggest a psychological thriller just to see her reaction) before settling on a comedy neither of you has seen. It's mediocre. You spend half of it making sarcastic commentary and the other half distracted by work, pulling the MacBook onto your lap to respond to emails that can't wait while Jimin curls up on the other end of the couch with a blanket she found in the closet. At some point, you look up from a particularly frustrating spreadsheet and realize two hours have passed. The movie is over. The credits are rolling. Jimin is fighting to keep her eyes open, head tilting dangerously toward the armrest.

"Hey." You close the laptop. "Bedtime."

She blinks. Straightens. "I wasn't sleeping."

"You were about to."

"I was resting my eyes."

"Sure." You both stand. Stretch. The house has grown quiet around you, just the rain and the occasional creak of old wood settling. The hallway to the bedrooms is dim, lit only by the light spilling from the living room behind you. You stop at your door. She stops at hers. Directly across the hall, maybe six feet apart. "I should warn you," you say, keeping your expression completely neutral. "There was a murder in this house."

Jimin's hand freezes on her door handle. "What?"

"Years ago. A whole family. They say the killer was never caught."

Her eyes narrow. "You're lying."

"I'm completely serious. So if you hear footsteps in the night, or see shadows moving, or feel something cold touch your shoulder while you're sleeping..."

"Stop."

"Just stay in your room. Don't investigate. That's how people die in horror movies. They hear a noise and they go toward it instead of away from it."

Jimin points at you. "If I can't sleep tonight because of this, I'm blaming you."

"Blame me all you want. I'll be in my room. Behind a locked door. Safe from the vengeful spirits that roam these halls."

"There are no vengeful spirits."

"That's what they want you to think."

She opens her door, shaking her head. "You're the worst."

"I know." You lean against your own doorframe. "Hey. Jimin." She pauses. Looks back at you. "I'm happy you're here," you say. "Today was strange. And wet. And I'm probably going to find mud in weird places for the next week. But it was also... nice. Really nice."

"Yeah," she says quietly. "It was."

"So. Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

You both just stand there for a second. Across the hall from each other, maybe six feet of space that feels like more. Neither of you moves. Then you step inside. Close the door. Lean back against it and just... breathe. The room's dark. Quiet. Empty. And you're thinking about today. About laughter and mud flying everywhere and screaming at a fucking lake until your throat hurt. About all of it.

You fall asleep easier than you have in months. No nightmares about board meetings or bankruptcy or watching everything crumble. Just sleep. Real sleep.

—

Morning takes its sweet time arriving, dragging itself through that grey half-light that seeps past the curtains. The rain's still going. Actually, scratch that, it's gotten worse overnight, upgraded from steady downpour to something that sounds like the lake house is under siege. The idea of leaving this bed, of exposing yourself to the cold air outside these blankets? That's asking a lot. That's asking for genuine courage. You stay put for a while. Just lying there with eyes tracing invisible patterns on the ceiling, letting the sound of the storm fill the space where thoughts should be.

Eventually, hunger wins out over laziness.

The kitchen smells like coffee when you shuffle in, still wearing the sweatpants and hoodie you slept in. Jimin is already there, perched on one of the stools at the island, both hands wrapped around a steaming mug. She's cocooned in blankets, layers of them draped over her shoulders and pooling around her on the stool, so only her face and fingers are visible. She looks ridiculous. She looks cozy. She looks unfairly cute for someone who's essentially transformed herself into a human burrito.

You grab a mug from the cabinet, pour yourself coffee from the pot she's already made, and lean against the counter. "Good morning."

"Morning." Her response is muffled, half-swallowed by a yawn.

"How'd you sleep?"

She takes a sip of coffee. Doesn't meet your eyes. "Not great."

Guilt flickers through you. "Look, I'm sorry about the murderer thing. I was just messing around. I didn't think it would actually keep you up."

"It wasn't that."

"No?"

"No."

You wait for her to elaborate. She doesn't. "Okay," you say, letting it go. Pushing won't help. You've learned that much about her in the short time you've known each other. "So what do you want to do today? I was thinking we could walk through the woods when the rain lets up. There are some trails behind the house that go pretty deep."

Jimin nods slowly. "That sounds good."

"Cool." You take a long drink of coffee, feeling the warmth spread through your chest. "What do you want for breakfast?"

She looks up at you. "You're not cooking."

"I could try."

"You'd burn the house down."

"That's a slight exaggeration."

"Is it? You almost set fire to the stove last night stirring vegetables."

"That was a learning experience."

"For everyone involved." She slides off the stool, blankets still wrapped around her like a cape, and starts moving toward the refrigerator. "I'll cook. Just tell me what you want."

"You don't have to. I can figure something out. There's probably cereal or something."

Jimin fixes you with a look. "If I don't cook for you, you'll starve. You literally cannot feed yourself. I've seen the evidence."

There's no arguing with that. You sigh. "Fine. Eggs? And toast. Whatever's easiest."

"Eggs and toast it is." She cooks. You stay out of her way, nursing your coffee and watching from a safe distance. The kitchen fills with the smell of butter and browning bread, domestic and warm, and you think about how strange this is. How comfortable. How much it feels like something that's been happening for years instead of hours. After breakfast, you head to the bathroom to clean up. You're standing at the sink, face covered in shaving foam, razor in hand, when Jimin appears in the doorway.

"I found new raincoats," she says, holding up two plastic-wrapped packages. "These ones actually look like they might fit. They were in the hall closet, buried under a bunch of—" She stops. Stares at your face. "You look like Santa Claus."

You glance at yourself in the mirror. The white foam does cover most of your lower face, spreading from cheek to cheek and down your neck. "Ho ho ho."

"That's disturbing. Never do that again."

"What, shave? I'll just grow a beard. Become a mountain man. Really commit to the living-off-the-land thing."

"Please don't." She steps into the bathroom, setting the raincoats on the counter. "Do you want help?"

You pause mid-stroke. "With shaving?"

"There are spots you can't see. The angle's weird." She holds out her hand. "Give me the razor."

"Have you ever done this before?"

"No."

"That's incredibly reassuring. Thank you. I feel very safe."

"Shut up and give me the razor." You hand it over. She moves closer, positioning herself in front of you, one hand coming up to tilt your chin toward the light. "Stay still," she instructs.

"If you cut my throat, I'm going to haunt you forever."

"Then don't move and you'll be fine." She brings the razor to your cheek. Draws it down in a slow, careful stroke, leaving smooth skin in its wake. Rinses the blade. Repeats. You hold very still.

It's strange, having someone this close to your face. Strange having someone else's hands on you like this, performing such an ordinary task with such focused attention. Jimin's brow is furrowed in concentration, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she navigates the curve of your jaw. "Tilt your head back," she says softly. You comply. She works on your neck, the blade gliding over your Adam's apple, and you're acutely aware of how much trust this requires. How vulnerable you are right now. One wrong move and she could open your jugular.

She doesn't make any wrong moves. "Turn this way." She guides your chin to the left. "I'm getting the sideburns."

"I didn't ask for sideburn maintenance."

"You're getting it anyway. They were uneven."

"They were not."

"They absolutely were. The left one was at least a centimeter longer than the right. It was bothering me."

"You were analyzing my sideburns?"

"I was trying not to stare at the Santa Claus foam beard. The sideburns were the only safe place to look." She finishes the left side, moves to the right. Her face is very close to yours now, close enough that you can see the faint freckle near her left eyebrow. "There." She steps back, surveying her work. "Done."

You turn to the mirror. Your face is smooth, cleanly shaved, better than you usually manage on your own. She got the spots you always miss, the tricky angles under your jaw, the patch near your ear that always gives you trouble. "Not bad," you admit.

"Not bad? That's perfect. I should quit being an idol and become a barber."

"The pay's probably worse."

"But the hours are better."

You splash water on your face, rinse away the last traces of foam. When you straighten up, Jimin is still there, watching you in the mirror. It's the most intimate thing you've experienced in a long time. A girl shaving your face. It shouldn't feel like much. But it does. "Thanks," you say.

She smiles. Just a little. "You're welcome."

The rain tapers off around noon, fading from downpour to drizzle to a fine mist. Good enough. You grab a small backpack from the hall closet, throw in a flashlight (the woods get dark even on bright days, and today is anything but), some bottles of water and some food (snacks). Jimin wears one of the new raincoats, forest green this time, properly fitted. You take the other one, navy blue.

The trail starts behind the house, a narrow dirt path that winds into the trees. Your footsteps are muffled by fallen leaves, soft sounds that disappear into the vastness of the forest. For a while, neither of you speaks. Just walks. The silence is comfortable, companionable, broken only by birdsong and the drip of water from branches overhead. "This is absurd," you say eventually.

Jimin glances at you. "What is?"

"This. Us. Two strangers walking through a forest in the middle of nowhere. Alone. And it feels... normal. Like we've been doing this for years."

She's quiet for a moment. Considering. "I feel really comfortable," she admits. "Being here. With you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She steps over a fallen branch, her raincoat rustling. "You don't ask questions."

"I ask plenty of questions."

"Not the ones I don't want to answer." She looks at you sideways. "I like that about you. You let me have my silence. You don't push."

"I push sometimes."

"Not really. Not about the important things." She pulls her hood up against the mist. "Most people, when they find out someone's struggling, they want to fix it. They want to give advice, offer solutions, tell you it's going to be okay. They mean well, but it's exhausting. It makes you feel like your pain is a problem to be solved instead of just... experienced."

You nod slowly. "I get that."

"Do you?"

"Yeah." You kick a pinecone off the trail, watch it roll into the underbrush. "I understand you completely. We're alike, you and me."

Jimin raises an eyebrow. "We're nothing alike."

"We're very alike. I don't have hair as beautiful as yours, obviously. That's unfair. Genetics failed me there. But inside..." You tap your chest. "In here. We're similar. Same kind of broken. Same kind of lost."

She doesn't respond immediately. The trail curves ahead, winding between two massive oaks whose branches interlock overhead like fingers. "You say you know what I'm going through," she says finally. "How? How could you know?"

"Because I've seen it before."

"Seen what?"

"Someone losing themselves. Forgetting who they are underneath everything else. Getting so caught up in what everyone expects them to be that they can't remember what they actually want."

Jimin stops walking. Turns to face you fully. "Who? Who did you see that with?"

You study her face. The curiosity there, the hunger for understanding. She wants to know. Needs to know, maybe, because she's hoping your answer will tell her something about herself.

You smile. "I'll answer that."

"Okay."

"If you can catch me."

Her expression shifts. Confusion first, then realization. "What do you mean?"

You point ahead, where the trail opens into a small clearing and, beyond it, the dark mouth of a cave carved into a rocky hillside. "There's a cave over there. If you get there before me, I'll tell you everything."

"That's not fair. You have longer legs."

"Then you'd better start running." You take off down the trail.

"Wait!" Jimin shouts. "That's cheating! You didn't even count down!"

You don't wait. You just bolt.

Behind you, Jimin curses, and then you hear her footsteps pounding after you. She's fast. Way faster than you expected for someone having an existential crisis. The forest blurs into streaks of green, brown and grey, mist hitting your face, and you're laughing. Actually fucking laughing, breathless and stupid, running through the woods like you're ten years old again.

She's gaining on you. You can hear her breathing, hear her laughing too. "I'm catching you!" she yells. "And then you're telling me everything!"

"Gotta earn it first!"

The cave's getting closer. Trees thinning out. Your legs are burning but you push harder.

You run. Then a duck happens. A goddamn duck.

It explodes out of the bushes with this aggressive-ass quack, wings flapping everywhere, and you stumble sideways. Your foot catches a root. Your momentum dies instantly. By the time you catch yourself, Jimin's already blown past you at a speed that would make Olympic sprinters jealous.

She touches the rock face with her palm, spins around, and throws her arms up in victory. "I won!"

You stagger up behind her, hands on your knees, gasping for air. "That doesn't count. There was a duck."

"A duck?"

"It attacked me."

"It quacked at you. From ten feet away."

"Aggressively. It quacked aggressively." You straighten up, pressing a hand to your side where a stitch is forming. “You’d be surprised how many people get killed by ducks every year. Absolute menaces. Anyway, I demand a rematch."

"No way. I won fair and square." She's breathing hard too, cheeks flushed from the run. "You owe me answers now."

"Fine." You gesture toward the cave mouth: a dark opening in the hillside about eight feet wide and maybe six feet tall. "But let's go inside first. I want to show you something." You click on the flashlight and lead the way in. The cave isn't deep, maybe thirty feet before it narrows to nothing, but the ceiling is high enough to stand comfortably, and the walls are dry despite the rain outside. "I used to play here with my cousins," you say, sweeping the flashlight beam across the walls. "When we were kids. We'd pretend it was a fortress. A pirate hideout. A secret base for our spy operations."

The light catches something on the far wall. Scribbles. Crude drawings scratched into the rock with sharp stones. Stick figures with oversized heads. A wobbly boat on wavy lines that might be water. Names and initials surrounded by hearts, the kind of thing kids carve when they're young enough to think love is simple.

"Cave paintings," Jimin says softly.

"Our contribution to human artistic history." You trace the flashlight over a terrible rendition of what might be a dog or possibly a horse. "I made that one. I was seven. I thought it was a masterpiece."

"What is it supposed to be?"

"A dragon."

She squints at it. "I don't see it."

"Yeah, nobody ever did."

You set the backpack down near the wall and lower yourself to the ground, your back against the stone. The floor is cold through your pants, but not unbearably so. You unzip the bag and start pulling out its contents. Snacks. Lots of them. Chips in various flavors, chocolate bars, gummy candies, dried fruit, the honey butter cookies she mentioned loving during some variety show you watched. You spread them out between you like a picnic.

Jimin settles down across from you, cross-legged, eyes widening as she takes in the selection. "You packed all of this?"

"I figured we might get hungry."

"These are all my favorites."

"Are they? Weird coincidence."

She gives you a look that says she knows exactly what you did, but she doesn't call you out on it. Just reaches for the honey butter cookies and tears open the package. "Okay," she says, chewing. "I won. Tell me everything."

You pick up a chocolate bar. Unwrap it slowly. Take a bite, letting the silence stretch.

"You've been an idol since you were young," you say. "Trainee years, debut, all of it. You were, what, sixteen when you started? Seventeen?"

"Around there."

"No one that young is prepared for what you went through. What you're still going through." You break off another piece of chocolate. "I'm not saying this to be mean. I'm saying it because it's true. If I had been in your position at that age, I would have cracked a lot sooner than you did. The routine. The pressure. The cameras, the fans, the expectations. And on top of all that, there's this persona you have to maintain. Karina. This perfect, polished version of yourself that exists for public consumption. But that's not really you, is it? That's a character. A role you play." She's very still now. The cookie in her hand forgotten. "And then there's Jimin. The real you. The person underneath the makeup and the choreography and the carefully managed public image. The girl who likes honey butter cookies and doesn't know how to fish and laughs until she cries when someone falls in mud."

A tiny smile flickers at the corner of her mouth. Gone almost immediately.

"The problem is, you have to switch between them constantly. Jimin at home, Karina on stage, Jimin with friends, Karina in interviews. Back and forth, over and over, every single day. And I can imagine..." You pause, choosing your words carefully. "I can imagine there comes a point where the switching gets exhausting. Where it starts to feel pointless. Why bother going back to being Jimin if tomorrow you'll just have to be Karina again? Why not just stay Karina all the time? It's easier. It's simpler. It's what everyone wants anyway." Jimin's hands have tightened around the cookie package. The plastic crinkles. "So you do that. You stay Karina. For days, weeks, months. You let Jimin fade into the background because it's just too hard to keep pulling her back. And then one day, you need her. Something happens and you need to be yourself, really yourself, and you reach for Jimin and she's not there." You meet her eyes. "You can't find your way back. You look in the mirror and you don't recognize the person staring at you. You don't know who you are anymore. What you want. What you're supposed to be."

"How do you know all that?" Jimin whispers.

"Because I've been there. I've watched it happen." You take another bite of chocolate, chew slowly. "To myself."

"You?"

"Me. Different circumstances, same result." You lean your head back against the stone. "My job requires me to be someone I'm not. All the time. I deal with people I can't stand, people who are shallow and greedy and only care about money. And I smile at them. I shake their hands, I laugh at their jokes, I pretend to be one of them because that's what the job demands. That's how you survive in my world."

"That sounds awful."

"It is. But I got good at it. Too good. I wore the mask so often that I forgot what my real face looked like underneath." You pause. "There was a period, maybe two years ago, where I genuinely couldn't tell the difference anymore. Between the person I was pretending to be and the person I actually was. I'd lost myself completely. But that's what I am… Underneath all the pretending. I'm just a guy who likes going into caves to eat snacks with strangers." You gesture at the space around you, at her. "A stranger who happens to be the it girl of Korea. Which is kind of surreal, honestly. But here we are."

You reach over and tap her shoulder gently with your knuckles.

"You'll find your way back to who you are. I know you will. But here's the thing." You hold her gaze. "You're the one who creates it. You're the one who decides who Jimin is. Not SM, not the fans, not the media. You. And if you don't know who that is right now, that's okay. You get to figure it out. You get to make it up as you go."

"How?" She asks with evident desperation. "I'm so lost. Every day I feel less and less like a real person. Like I'm fading away and no one notices because Karina is still there, performing, smiling, doing all the things she's supposed to do. But inside there's just... nothing."

"Then start with nothing." You open a bag of jelly beans and offer it to her. "What do you want right now? In this exact moment?"

"I don't know."

"Do you want to be on stage?"

"No."

"Do you want to be in Seoul?"

"No."

"Do you want to be anywhere other than this cave, eating snacks with a guy you barely know?"

She hesitates. Thinks about it. "No."

"Then you already have what you want. Right now, in this moment, you want nothing. You want to just... exist. Without expectations. Without pressure. And look." You spread your arms. "You're in a cave in the middle of nowhere. That's pretty close to nothing. That's about as far from Karina as you can get." She takes a jelly bean. Red one. Pops it in her mouth. "Tomorrow you might want something different," you continue. "The day after that, something else. And that's fine. That's how it's supposed to work. You don't have to figure out your entire identity in one afternoon. You just have to find the will to keep looking. To keep hoping that the pieces will eventually fit together." You shrug. "That's how we survive. One day at a time. One want at a time."

Jimin chews slowly. Swallows. Reaches for another jelly bean.

"But here's the important part," you say, and your tone shifts, becomes more serious. "Don't go alone. You have people who love you. Family, friends, the other members. People who care about Jimin, not just Karina. Let them help you."

"They wouldn't understand."

"Maybe not perfectly. But they'd try." You pause. "And if you really can't bring yourself to turn to them, then turn to me. I'm just a stranger. A shadow that passed through your life at some random point. Sometimes that's all we need. Someone with no expectations, no history, no stake in who you're supposed to be."

She looks at you. "A shadow?"

"Yeah." You pick at the wrapper of your chocolate bar. "That's what I am. Empty. No form of my own. I just darken the people around me. Cast gloom wherever I go."

"That's not true."

"It's a little true. Ask anyone who works for me." You smile, but it's thin. "But with you... I want to be different. I want to be the kind of shadow you can hide behind. A place where nothing can reach you. Where no one can touch you or demand anything from you." You meet her eyes. "For as long as you want. However long you need. You can stay hidden behind me, and I'll keep everything else out."

Jimin doesn't say anything for a long time. Processing. You let her have that moment. Until finally she asks: "What am I to you? If you're a shadow, what does that make me?"

You think about it. The question deserves a real answer.

"The moon," you say.

"The moon?"

"Right now, you feel distant. Untouchable. Like you're a million miles away from everyone, even from yourself. And maybe you feel like your light has gone out. Like whatever used to make you shine has faded. But you're still shining. Even if you don't realize it. It's softer now, yeah. Quieter. But it's there. I can see it." You gesture at her. "And I like it. I like this glow better, honestly. It's not blinding. It's not overwhelming. It's the kind of light that enhances things. That makes the darkness easier to bear... The night we met, you were like a girl sitting on the moon. So far away. So alone. But even then, you were beautiful. Even crying on that bench, you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen." You laugh quietly. "And after that, I went back to that same bench every night for a week. Just sat there by myself, hoping you'd appear again. Like a complete idiot."

When you look at Jimin, there are tears in her eyes. "Hey." You lean forward, concerned. "Are you okay? Did I say something wrong? I'm sorry, I talk too much when I'm nervous, I didn't mean to—"

"How can you be so stupid and so intelligent at the same time?" she interrupts.

You pause. "I... don't know if I should be flattered or offended by that."

"Both." A tear spills over, tracking down her cheek. She wipes it away impatiently with the back of her hand. "Be both."

"Okay. I'll work on that."

She laughs, wet and shaky, and takes another handful of jelly beans. "Thank you. For saying all of that. I liked it. Even if it made me cry like an idiot."

"Crying doesn't make you an idiot. Punching mirrors makes you an idiot. You're fine." She laughs. A real one this time, not that sad half-laugh from before, and reaches for the honey butter cookies. So here's the thing about dumping all your feelings in a cave: afterward, it just gets quiet. Not weird quiet. Just regular quiet. You're sitting there with the flashlight between you, surrounded by empty chip bags and candy wrappers, staring at the dumb drawings you scratched into the rock as a kid. Neither of you says anything. Neither of you needs to.

But you can't sit here forever. At some point, you start cleaning up. Grabbing wrappers, shoving empty bags into the backpack. You're kind of obsessive about it, actually - checking every corner, making sure you get every piece of trash, every crumb.

"You're very thorough," Jimin observes, watching you hunt down a stray chocolate wrapper that's trying to escape into a crevice.

"Mother Nature and I have an understanding. I don't pollute her forests, she doesn't send bears to maul me in my sleep."

"I don't think that's how ecology works."

"I prefer not to test the theory."

The backpack zipped, you stand and stretch, feeling your spine crack in several places that probably shouldn't crack. The cave has gotten colder, or maybe you've just noticed it now that you're not distracted by existential conversations about identity and moonlight. "We should head back," you say. "I fancy some hot chocolate."

Jimin rises to her feet, brushing dirt from her raincoat. "By that, you mean you want me to make you hot chocolate."

"What? No. I can make hot chocolate myself. I'm not completely helpless."

She tilts her head and studies you… Yeah, she's definitely reviewing the evidence of the past thirty-six hours. "I find myself unfortunately skeptical," she says.

The honest truth is that she's probably right. Hot chocolate involves heating milk, which involves using the stove, which involves not setting things on fire. Your track record in that department is not encouraging. "Well," you say, with as much dignity as you can muster, "perhaps I'll supervise while you demonstrate the proper technique."

"Supervise."

"Offer moral support. Quality control. That sort of thing."

The corner of her mouth twitches. She doesn't argue further. You're about to head toward the cave entrance when Jimin goes still. Her eyes fix on something just past your shoulder. Then she steps toward you. Close. Very close.

Your heart immediately races. Your brain, helpful as ever, immediately begins cataloguing the distance between your mouth and hers (approximately four inches), the angle of her face (tilted slightly upward), and the probable softness of her lips (considerable, based on visual evidence). She's going to kiss you, you think. Or possibly you're going to kiss her. Someone is going to kiss someone, that much seems certain, and you should probably—

Her hand reaches past your shoulder and taps you lightly on the back.

"Spider," she says.

You nearly leave your skin.

What emerges from your mouth is not a word, exactly. More of a strangled yelp. You jerk away from her, spinning around, your hands doing that frantic brushing motion that accomplishes nothing except making you look like you're having some sort of episode. "Where?! Where is it?! Is it on me?! Is it still on me?!"

"It's gone," she says, giggling. "I flicked it off. Relax, it was just a small one."

"Small spiders are the most dangerous ones. Everyone knows that. The smaller the spider, the more concentrated the venom."

"That's not scientifically accurate."

"I don't care about accuracy, I care about not dying."

She's properly laughing now, the same bright unrestrained sound you heard during the mud fight. It's a good sound. You'd be enjoying it more if you weren't still vibrating with residual panic. "You're like a frightened kitten," she says. "So tough about bears, but one tiny spider and you completely fall apart."

"I am not a frightened kitten. A spider the size of a frisbee would scare anyone."

"It was the size of my fingernail."

"Size is irrelevant. Deadliness is what matters."

She eyes you with amusement, smiling. "Why are you so red?"

Ah. Yes. That would be the blood that rushed to your face approximately thirty seconds ago when you thought you were about to be kissed. The blood that's still there, betraying you, making your cheeks feel like they're radiating heat. "Allergic reaction," you say immediately. "To the spider. My skin is extremely sensitive. Delicate, really. Like a Victorian-era duchess. I've always had this condition."

Jimin's eyebrow rises slowly. She doesn't look even slightly convinced. "A Victorian-era duchess, huh?"

"Yes. It's genetic." You rub your hands together, partly because they actually are cold and partly because you need something to do that isn't looking directly at her face while lying badly about the source of your blush. "It's colder than I expected," you say, desperate to change the subject. "I'm genuinely surprised neither of us got hypothermia yesterday. All that rolling around in the mud. Very irresponsible, in retrospect."

Jimin watches you fumble for another moment. Then, without ceremony, she reaches out and takes your hand. Her fingers interlock with yours. Palm to palm. A simple gesture, completely natural. At least, that’s how Jimin makes it look. "Come on," she says. "Let's go back. I'll warm your hand on the way." A pause. "No running this time."

What needs to be understood about this moment is that you are, fundamentally, not a person who holds hands. You're not a person who does casual physical intimacy. In your experience, touch is either transactional (handshakes, back-pats) or romantic (which requires intention and buildup and usually alcohol). This middle ground, this easy, uncomplicated contact, is foreign territory.

And yet… "Okay," you murmur.

Her hand is small in yours. Delicate in a way that makes you hyperaware of your own roughness, the calluses on your palm from gym equipment you barely use anymore, the healing scars across your knuckles from your ill-advised confrontation with interior glass. Her fingers are cool at first, but they warm quickly, or maybe your hand warms them, or maybe the warmth is coming from somewhere else entirely. You walk out of the cave together. The rain has stopped completely now, leaving the forest dripping and fresh, every surface gleaming with moisture. The path back to the house stretches through the trees, dappled with grey light, and you follow it slowly. No running. No racing. Just walking, side by side, hands clasped between you.

Neither of you says much. There's nothing that needs saying.

—

Later that night, the house has settled into that particular brand of quiet that only exists in remote places. No traffic noise, no neighbours, no ambient hum of civilization. Just the creak of old wood, the whisper of wind against windows, and the distant rumble of thunder from a storm that's circling somewhere beyond the mountains. Jimin is yawning in the hallway, dressed in pajamas that are somehow both sensible and unfairly attractive. Soft cotton, pale blue, slightly too long in the sleeves. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, still slightly damp from whatever evening routine she's completed, and she looks like someone who's ready to surrender to unconsciousness.

"Goodnight," she says, her hand on her bedroom door.

"Goodnight," you reply.

She opens the door. Steps inside. You follow her. She turns, eyebrow rising in that way you're beginning to recognize as her default expression of mild incredulity. "What are you doing?"

"Coming in."

"I can see that. Why?"

You move past her into the room, which is tidier than you expected. Her suitcase sits in the corner, mostly unpacked. A sweater draped over the chair. The bed turned down, waiting.

"I thought I'd keep you company," you say. "Until you fall asleep."

"I'm not a child."

"I never said you were."

"Then why do you think I need someone to tuck me in?"

You're not looking at her. You're scanning the bookshelf built into the wall near the window, running your fingers along spines that haven't been touched in years. Children's books, mostly. Relics from a time when this room hosted cousins and nieces and nephews, when the house was full of noise and laughter instead of dust and silence. "You said you didn't sleep well last night," you say, still searching. "And you wouldn't tell me why." Jimin is silent. "I'm not asking you to tell me now, either. But I thought..." You find what you're looking for and pull it from the shelf. "I thought this might help."

She stares at the book in your hands. It's thin, the cover worn soft with age, illustrated with a girl in a blue dress and three bears of varying sizes. "Goldilocks," she says flatly.

"A classic of Western literature."

"You want to read me Goldilocks."

"My grandmother used to read it to me when I was small. When I couldn't sleep. When things felt too big and too scary." You turn the book over in your hands, tracing the faded illustration on the back. "I'm not saying it'll work for you. But it can't hurt to try."

Thunder rumbles outside. The windows rattle faintly in their frames. "This is absurd," she says.

"Probably."

"You're going to sit there and read me a children's story."

"That's the plan."

"Like I'm five years old."

"I won't judge your age. I'm barely functional myself."

She hesitates for another moment. Then, with a sigh that suggests she's humoring you against her better judgment, she climbs into bed. The covers come up to her chin, white duvet swallowing her small frame. You settle onto the edge of the mattress, back against the headboard, book in hand. The lamp on the nightstand casts a warm circle of light, leaving the rest of the room in comfortable shadow.

"Once upon a time," you begin, "there was a little girl named Goldilocks."

"Original name."

"Hush. I'm reading." You clear your throat. "She went for a walk in the forest. Pretty soon, she came upon a house. She knocked and, when no one answered, she walked right in."

"Breaking and entering."

"It was a different time. Less security-conscious." You turn the page. "At the table in the kitchen, there were three bowls of porridge. Goldilocks was hungry. She tasted the porridge from the first bowl. 'This porridge is too hot!' she exclaimed." Jimin's eyes are on your face now, watching you read with an expression you can't quite decode. "So she tasted the porridge from the second bowl. 'This porridge is too cold,' she said. So she tasted the last bowl of porridge. 'Ahhh, this porridge is just right,' she said happily, and she ate it all up."

You pause. Lower the book slightly.

"Now, here's what I don't understand."

Jimin groans. "Oh no."

"Three bowls of porridge. Same batch, presumably. Made at the same time, served at the same table. How is it possible that one is too hot, one is too cold, and one is just right? They should all be the same temperature."

"It's a children's story."

"I understand that. But the physics don't make sense. Unless—" You hold up a finger. "Unless the bowls are made of different materials with different heat retention properties. Papa Bear's bowl is ceramic, holds heat longer. Mama Bear's bowl is metal, conducts heat away faster. Baby Bear's bowl is wood, perfect insulation."

"You're overthinking this."

You grin and continue reading. The three chairs, the three beds, Goldilocks's continued disregard for personal property. But you can't help yourself. Every few paragraphs, another observation emerges. "Why is Baby Bear's chair so small that it breaks under a child's weight? That's a safety hazard. Someone should report the manufacturer." Jimin pulls the covers over her face. "And another thing. The bears come home and immediately notice the porridge has been disturbed. But they don't smell a human intruder in their house? Bears have exceptional olfactory senses. They should have detected Goldilocks from the moment they walked through the door."

"Please stop."

"I'm just saying, the internal logic—"

"The internal logic is that it's a story for children who don't care about porridge thermodynamics or bear olfaction." Jimin pulls the covers down just enough to glare at you. "Just finish the story. Without commentary. I'm begging you."

"Fine," you say. "No more interruptions."

"Promise?"

"Cross my heart." As promised, you finish the story without any more interruptions. Then you flip to a different book. Little Red Riding Hood. Another classic. "Once upon a time," you begin again, "there lived in a certain village a little country girl..."

This time, you don't interrupt. You read the story the way it's meant to be read, letting the words flow without commentary, without analysis. The girl in the red hood. The path through the woods. The wolf with his clever tongue and hungry eyes. The grandmother's cottage with its strange occupant in the bed.

What big eyes you have. What big ears you have. What big teeth you have.

Jimin's breathing slows. Her body relaxes into the mattress, tension bleeding out of her shoulders. Her eyes grow heavy, then heavier, then finally close. You finish the story anyway. The huntsman, the rescue, the happily ever after. You're not sure if she hears the ending or if she's already drifted too far into sleep to catch it.

You finish the story and close the book. Gentle, so you don't wake her. Set it on the nightstand.

You look at her face in the lamplight. She's out. Her face is completely relaxed. Peaceful. You haven't seen her look like this since you met her.

The rain keeps going outside, but she's dead to the world.

You reach over and turn off the lamp.

—

Morning arrives with the same grey light as yesterday. The same rain. The same cold. Not that you're complaining, really. You’re starting to get used to the place’s melancholic, desolate atmosphere. There’s a bleak, nihilistic charm to it that’s hard to ignore.

Jimin is in the living room when you emerge, curled into the corner of the sofa with a mug clasped between her palms. She's wrapped in that same blanket from yesterday.

You pour yourself coffee from the pot she's made. Take a sip. Let the warmth spread through your chest. "Good morning."

"Morning." She shifts slightly, making room on the sofa, though there's plenty of space already.

"How'd you sleep?" And here's where you expect the usual deflection. The vague answer, the change of subject, the careful maintenance of boundaries. But instead, Jimin tilts her head and actually considers the question.

"Well, actually," she says. "Really well. I didn't wake up exhausted for once."

You settle onto the opposite end of the sofa, mirroring her position. Feet tucked up, body angled toward the centre, a careful distance maintained between.

"The Goldilocks technique," you say. "Scientifically proven to induce restful sleep."

"Or the fact that you read it so slowly I passed out from boredom."

"My pacing was deliberate. It's called dramatic tension."

"It's called you don't know how to read without stopping to argue with the text." You concede the point with a shrug and drink more coffee. The rain continues its assault on the windows. Inside, the house feels warm and enclosed, a bubble of safety floating in an ocean of grey. The fire you lit last night has burned down to embers, casting a faint orange glow that doesn't quite reach the corners of the room.

"What's the situation with work?" Jimin asks, nodding toward the MacBook sitting closed on the coffee table.

You follow her gaze. The laptop looks deceptively innocent sitting there, like it isn't a portal to your slowly imploding professional life. "Still a mess," you say. "The numbers haven't magically improved overnight. The investors are still pulling out, you know, the usual." You take another sip of coffee. "But I've decided not to look at it until after the meeting. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen whether I obsess over spreadsheets or not."

"That's very zen of you."

"I'm trying something new. It's called 'strategic denial.'"

Jimin smiles into her mug. "What about today?" she asks. "Any plans?"

You consider the question. Outside, the rain shows no sign of letting up. The lake will be churning, the paths muddy, the woods unwelcoming. Not exactly ideal conditions for outdoor activities. "I wanted to make a campfire," you admit. "Roast some marshmallows. But in this weather… Not really feasible."

"Can you even make a campfire?"

"Theoretically. I understand the basic principles. Wood, fire, not dying."

"That's not very specific."

"I contain multitudes of vague competencies."

You shift position, tucking your feet further under you, and find yourself talking without quite meaning to. "Did you know I fell into a bonfire when I was a child?"

"My God. Where did this happen?"

"At a family gathering. I was maybe six or seven. Someone had built this big fire on the beach, and I was running around not paying attention, and I just..." You mime tripping. "Went right in. Second-degree burns on my hands and knees. My mother nearly had a heart attack."

"That's horrifying."

"It was mostly embarrassing, honestly. Everyone made a huge fuss, and I had to wear bandages for weeks, and my cousins called me 'fireball' for the rest of the summer.” You pause. “I also almost drowned once. At a pool party when I was twelve. Jumped into the deep end without knowing how to swim properly. Had to be rescued by a lifeguard in front of everyone." Jimin stares at you. "Sometimes I'm genuinely surprised I survived to adulthood. The odds were not in my favour."

She's looking at you weird. Or not weird, exactly, but you can't quite figure out what the expression is. Her eyes are bright, almost shiny, and there's this thing happening with her mouth. The corners are turning up.

She's smiling. And it's a smile you've never seen on her before.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" you ask.

"Like what?"

"Like... that." You gesture at her face. "With the smiling."

"Am I not allowed to smile anymore?" She raises an eyebrow. "Does it bother you?"

"Yes, actually. A bit."

"My smile bothers you."

"I can't look at you when you're doing that." You find yourself staring at your coffee mug instead. "It's distracting. You're easier to deal with when you're crying. All pathetic, with snot coming out of your nose."

The pillow hits you square in the face. "I did not have snot coming out of my nose."

"You absolutely did." You catch the pillow before it can fall, hold it against your chest. "That first night, on the bench. There was definitely nasal discharge. Very attractive.”

"I'm going to kill you."

"See, this is what I mean. Murderous anger is much easier to handle than whatever that smile was."

She's moving before you realize what's happening. One moment she's at her end of the sofa, the next she's crossing the distance between you, blanket abandoned, and you don't know what she's going to do. Hit you, maybe. Smother you with another pillow, who knows.

But what Jimin does is completely different from what you might expect: her knees settle on either side of your hips, her hands bracing against your shoulders, and suddenly you're lying back against the sofa cushions with Yu Jimin straddling your body, looking down at you with an expression that's no longer angry at all.

"We don't have to do anything today," she says quietly. You open your mouth. Nothing comes out. Your hands hover uselessly in the air, unsure where to land, unsure what's allowed. "I just want to be with you," she continues. "Like this. Is that okay?"

And then she kisses you. The barest press of her lips against yours, tentative and questioning and achingly sweet. She tastes like coffee, and your hands finally find their place on her waist, settling against the curve of her body. The kiss ends. She pulls back just far enough to look at you with her hair falling around both your faces.

"You just kissed a stranger," you murmur.

"I know." She's smiling again, that same smile that you couldn't look at before, except now it's inches from your face and impossible to avoid. "It was very good."

She settles against you, her head finds the curve of your shoulder. Your arms wrap around her automatically, pulling her closer, and she makes a small sound of contentment. "You said I could hide behind you," she murmurs against your neck. "But I think I prefer this. Hiding in your arms."

"That works too."

You lie there together, tangled on the sofa, rain drumming against the windows, and for a long moment, neither of you speaks. There's nothing that needs saying. Just the warmth of her body, the rhythm of her breathing, the impossible fact of this moment existing at all. But the thought surfaces anyway. The one you've been pushing down since the cave, since the forest, since the moment she took your hand and started walking.

"You know none of this is real," you say quietly, and Jimin goes still against you. "You're an idol. One of the most famous women in the country. And I'm… I'm a businessman on the verge of bankruptcy. This can't exist. Outside of here. In the real world."

She lifts her head. Looks at you. "I know," she says. "Nothing this good could be real."

"Then why—"

"Because we're here to pretend." She kisses you again and your hands tighten on her waist involuntarily. "Remember? That's what you said. We'd pretend together. That our problems can't reach us. That the outside world doesn't exist."

"I remember."

"So let's pretend this is real too." Her forehead rests against yours. "Just for now. Just while we're here. Let me have this."

You don’t resist. You know better, but you still don’t argue "Okay," you say. "We'll pretend." She smiles. Settles back against your chest. Your arms tighten around her, and she sighs, and the sound is the closest thing to peace you've heard in months.

Here's something you've never told anyone: you don't actually know what love feels like. You've had relationships. Girlfriends who lasted months or years, who shared your bed and your time and eventually your boredom. But love? That consuming, transformative thing that poets write about? You've always assumed it was exaggeration. Metaphor. A beautiful lie people tell themselves to make the mundane feel meaningful.

But lying here with Jimin's heartbeat pressed against your ribs and her breath warm on your neck, something changes. It's not dramatic. No fireworks, no movie moment. It's just... you can't tell where your body ends and hers starts anymore. Her breathing matches yours. Her heartbeat syncs up with the rhythm in your chest. You're this close, this tangled up together, and for the first time in your life you understand what people mean when they talk about feeling complete.

This is probably what love feels like

—

Yes, what you're thinking eventually happened.

You and Jimin spent the day together. All of it. The cooking lessons she insisted on giving you, standing at the stove with her arms around you from behind, guiding your hands through the motions of chopping and stirring and not setting things on fire. You made a spectacular mess. Flour on the counters, sauce splattered across the backsplash, something that might have been an egg but ended up more on the floor than in the bowl. But you also made progress. Actual, measurable progress. By evening, you'd produced something edible. Not good, exactly. But edible. Jimin ate it anyway, and the look on her face when she swallowed was only slightly pained.

And then there was the rest of it. The parts that don't need narrating. The parts you can probably imagine if you've been paying attention to the story. The parts that happened after dinner, and then again after midnight, and then once more in the grey hours before dawn.

Which brings us here. The next morning.

You're in bed together, sheets tangled around your legs. The storm hasn't stopped. You're beginning to think it never will. That you've been transported to some alternate dimension where the sun is a myth and the only weather that exists is this endless, drumming wet.

Jimin is lying beside you, wearing nothing but white cotton panties and a thin tank top. Her nipples press against the fabric, visible outlines that draw your eye every time you try to look elsewhere. Her hair is spread across the pillow in dark waves, messy from sleep and from everything that came before sleep, and there's a mark on her collarbone that you don't remember making but are reasonably certain is your fault.

Your finger traces a slow line along her bare thigh. From knee to hip and back again. Her skin so soft, warm from the cocoon of blankets, and she shivers slightly when your touch skirts too close to the edge of her underwear. "I wish I knew how to draw," you say.

Jimin turns her head on the pillow, looking at you through half-lidded eyes. "Why?"

"So I could draw you. Right now. Like this." Your finger continues its lazy path, up and down, up and down. "That would be romantic, wouldn't it? The tortured artist capturing his muse in charcoal and shadow."

"You'd probably draw me with three arms and a head shaped like a potato."

She's not wrong. You've never had any talent for visual arts. Your handwriting looks like a seismograph reading during an earthquake, and the one time you tried to sketch something in college, your girlfriend at the time asked if it was supposed to be a horse or a pile of laundry. “Babe, you’ve gotta trust me a little more,” you say. “Still… you’re not wrong.”

"Is there anything you actually know how to do with your hands?" Jimin asks, light, teasing. "Cooking, no. Drawing, apparently not. What skills do you possess?"

You shift closer to her, your hand sliding higher on her thigh, fingers dipping beneath the hem of her tank top to trace along her hip bone. "I don't want to brag," you say, "but you seemed to enjoy what I did with my hands yesterday. And last night. And this morning, around three a.m."

Her breath catches slightly. Just a small hitch, barely noticeable, but you're paying attention. "Conceited," she murmurs.

"Confident."

She rolls toward you, her body pressing against yours, and then she's climbing on top of you, knees settling on either side of your hips, hands bracing against your chest. The tank top rides up, exposing the flat plane of her stomach, the delicate curve of her waist. And when she leans down to kiss you, you taste sleep and warmth. "Conceited," Jimin repeats against your lips. She tilts her head, searching your face. "What do you think of me?" she asks quietly. "After everything I told you last night?"

And there it is. The things she said in the dark, when the barriers were down and the words came easier. Things you won't repeat, not here, not now. They belong to her, those truths. You're just the vessel she chose to pour them into. "I think..." You reach up, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, letting your hand linger against her cheek. "I think there are more questions in the answers. I think you're more complicated than you let anyone see. I think you've been carrying weight that no one person should have to carry alone."

Your hand slides down, tracing the line of her jaw, her neck, her shoulder. Down her arm and back up again, mapping the geography of her body. "I wish I could do more for you," you say. "Fix things. Make it better. Be more than just..." She knows what you mean. The room, the rain, the strange, unlikely bubble you ended up creating together. "This."

"What is this?"

"One last day,” and it tastes bitter saying it. True, but still bitter. "That's all I can give you. Tomorrow I have to go back. The meeting. The board. The slow-motion car crash of my professional life."

"That's all I want," she says, tracing random patterns on your chest, a hint of heat moving across your skin. "One more day. With you. Here. Where nothing outside can reach us."

She shifts on top of you, adjusting her position, and the movement drags her hips across yours in a way that makes your breath catch. You're hard already. Have been since she climbed on top of you, probably. Her body pressing against yours through thin layers of cotton, the heat of her seeping through the fabric. Jimin feels it. Her lips curve into something knowing.

"Someone wants another round," she observes.

“That honestly wasn’t even on my mind, I swear.”

She smiles and leans down to kiss you. You feel her tongue sliding against yours as her hips begin to move. A lazy grind that drags the thin cotton of her panties across your length, creating friction that makes you grip her waist involuntarily. Her hand slides between your bodies. Fingers hooking into the waistband of your underwear, tugging downward, working the fabric past your hips. Your cock springs free, hard and aching, and she wraps her fingers around it immediately. A light grip at first, her thumb sweeping across the head in a teasing circle.

"Better?" she asks against your mouth.

Your hips jerk involuntarily. "Getting there.”

She continues stroking you, her grip finding a rhythm that's maddeningly unhurried, and her mouth never leaves yours. Kissing you slow and deep while her hand works your cock with the same patience. Then she shifts, adjusting her position, and suddenly the head of your cock is pressed against the thin cotton barrier of her panties. Right there. Right against her cunt, where the fabric is already damp, where you can feel the heat of her radiating through the material like she's burning from the inside out.

Your hand finds her ass. Squeezes. And god, the way it fills your palm, the perfect yield of soft flesh under your fingers, the way she gasps quietly into your mouth when you grip harder. She has the kind of ass that makes you want to spend hours just touching it, mapping every curve, learning exactly how much pressure makes her breath catch. Jimin lifts her hips slightly. Her free hand reaches down between her legs, fingers hooking into the cotton of her panties and pulling them aside, and then she's lowering herself back down and you feel it. The wet heat of her pressing against your bare cock, no barrier anymore, nothing between you but skin and slick warmth.

She takes you in slowly. Her body opens around you, her walls gripping you tight as she sinks down. Your hands tighten on her hips involuntarily, fingers digging into soft flesh. "Fuck," you breathe. She bottoms out. Takes all of you, her hips flush against yours, and for a moment she just stays there. Adjusting. Letting her body accommodate the stretch. Her eyes are closed, lips parted, and you can see the flutter of her pulse at the base of her throat.

Then she starts to move. Slow at first. A gentle roll of her hips, circular and smooth, grinding down against you in a way that creates friction without urgency. Her pussy is perfect. Tight and wet and hot, clinging to your cock with every movement, and you have to remind yourself to breathe because the sensation is overwhelming in the best possible way.

Her breasts sway gently inside her tank top with each roll of her hips. The thin fabric does nothing to conceal their shape, the way they move, the outline of her nipples pressing against the cotton. You want to push the shirt up, expose her completely, take those breasts in your hands and feel their weight. But there's something almost more erotic about this. The hint of concealment. The suggestion of skin without the full reveal.

And speaking of which: Jimin's pale skin glows in the grey morning light. She looks ethereal, otherworldly, something you dreamed up in a fever. Her dark hair cascades over her shoulders, brushing against her collarbones, and when she opens her eyes to look down at you, it knocks the breath out of you.

"You feel good," she murmurs, low, breathy, slightly unsteady.

"You feel incredible."

She smiles at that. Leans down to kiss you again, her breasts pressing against your chest through the thin fabric, and her hips never stop moving. That slow, sinuous rhythm that's driving you slowly insane. Your hands slide from her hips to her ass, palming both cheeks, guiding her movements even as she sets the pace. She feels unbelievably good. Every roll of her hips drags your cock through her slick heat, you can feel how wet she is, the evidence of her arousal coating your length, making every movement smooth and easy.

"I like watching you," you say. "Like this. On top of me."

Jimin's rhythm falters slightly. A flush spreads across her cheeks, down her neck, disappearing beneath the collar of her tank top. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Your hands squeeze her ass, pulling her down harder on the next stroke. "You're beautiful."

She kisses you instead of responding, and her pace increases. Still not fast, not urgent, but more intentional now. Rising up until you're almost slipping out of her, then sinking back down in one smooth motion that makes both of you gasp. Her breasts bounce more noticeably with the increased movement, and you can't help but slide one hand up from her ass, up the curve of her waist, until your palm cups her breast through the tank top.

Her nipple is hard against your palm. You roll it between your fingers, and Jimin moans. A real sound, unguarded, and her hips stutter in their rhythm. "Don't stop," you tell her.

Her pace settles back into something steady, a little faster than before, her thighs flexing with each rise and fall. Your cock slides in and out of her perfect pussy, slick and hot and so fucking tight around you. The sound of it fills the room. Wet and rhythmic, obscene in the quiet morning, and somehow that makes it better. Knowing what you sound like together. Knowing you're making those sounds.

Jimin braces her hands on your chest, using the leverage to ride you deeper. Her head tips back, exposing the long column of her throat, and you watch her move on top of you with something approaching reverence. The way her body undulates. The way her breasts sway beneath the cotton. The way her lips part around soft sounds of pleasure. "God," she breathes. "You feel so good inside me."

You thrust up to meet her on the next stroke, and she cries out. A sharp, surprised sound that dissolves into a moan as you do it again. And again. You're timing it now, driving up when she comes down, and the rhythm locks in. You're both moving together, perfectly synced, like you've been doing this for years instead of minutes.

The pace builds gradually. Her eyes are closed. Head tipped back. Lost somewhere inside herself, inside the sensation, inside the place where pleasure builds and builds until it becomes impossible to contain. You can feel it in her body. The way her pussy grips you tighter with each stroke. The way her rhythm becomes less controlled, more instinctive. The way her whole frame trembles with the effort of chasing something that's just out of reach.

"Oh god," she breathes, shaky and desperate. "Oh god, oh god—" Her pace becomes erratic. Faster, harder, grinding down against you. Her breasts bounce beneath the rumpled tank top, nipples dragging against the fabric, and the sounds she makes are the sweetest thing you've ever heard. Soft, broken moans that spill from her lips without permission. Little gasps and whimpers that she can't seem to control. "I'm close," she manages. "I'm so close, I'm going to—"

"Cum on my cock,” you say, guiding her hips. “I want to feel you cum, Jimin. Let go."

She cries out. Her rhythm shatters completely, hips jerking in uncoordinated movements as she chases the edge. You thrust up into her, faster, giving her what she needs, and you watch her face as she breaks apart. The orgasm finally hits her. Her whole body goes taut, spine arching, mouth falling open in a silent cry that finally releases as a long, trembling moan. Her pussy clenches around you in rhythmic pulses, squeezing your cock so tight it almost hurts, and you can feel the rush of wetness as she comes undone.

She's beautiful when she cums. The way her face transforms, all the tension and control stripped away, nothing left but pure, unfiltered pleasure. The way her body moves through it, riding the aftershocks, her hips still twitching against yours even as the peak begins to fade. Her moans taper off into soft, breathless sounds. Little whimpers of oversensitivity as her body comes down from the high. She's trembling, her thighs shaking on either side of your hips, and when she finally opens her eyes, they're glazed. Unfocused. Lost in the aftermath.

She collapses against you. Her full weight settles onto your chest, warm and boneless, and you catch her automatically. Wrap your arms around her. Hold her close while she breathes against your neck with her heart hammering so hard you can feel it through her ribs. "That was..." she starts, but doesn't finish. Doesn't need to. You turn your head and she lifts hers and then you're kissing, deep and tender, lips soft against yours, her tongue sliding lazily against your own, and you could stay like this forever. Wrapped up in her, surrounded by her, still buried inside her.

But your cock is still hard. Still aching. Still desperate for release. Slowly you roll her over. She makes a small sound of surprise as her back hits the mattress, as your weight settles over her. Her dark hair fans across the pillow, and she looks up at you with eyes that are still hazy with pleasure but beginning to sharpen with interest. You pull out of her.

First things first. Your underwear is still tangled around your legs, shoved down but not removed. You kick free of them impatiently, finally bare, finally unrestricted. Then her panties. The white cotton that she'd only pushed aside, that's still clinging to her hips, damp with her arousal. You hook your fingers into the waistband and draw them down slowly. Over her hips. Down her thighs. Past her knees, her calves, her ankles, until they're gone and she's completely naked beneath you except for that thin tank top.

You settle between her legs. Spread her thighs wider with your hands, making room for yourself, and she lets you. Opens for you willingly, eagerly, her breath quickening again as you position yourself.

Your cock brushes against her entrance and you both shudder. She's soaked. Absolutely drenched, her arousal smeared across her inner thighs, and when you look down at where your bodies almost meet, you can see it. The cream forming at her opening, thick and white, evidence of how thoroughly she came on your cock just moments ago.

"Look at you," you murmur, dragging the head of your cock through her folds, coating yourself in her wetness. "So fucking wet for me."

Jimin's hips twitch, trying to chase the contact. "Please."

"Please what?"

"Please fuck me again. I want to feel you inside me."

You rub your cock against her entrance one more time, teasing, watching the way her cream clings to your shaft. Then you push forward. She takes you easily this time, her pussy still loose and slick from her orgasm, and you slide into her in one smooth stroke that makes both of you groan. She's even wetter inside than before, hot and welcoming, and you can feel her walls flutter around you as her body adjusts to being filled again. You start slow. Long, deep strokes that pull almost all the way out before pushing back in. Taking your time now that the first desperate edge has been taken off, savoring the sensation of her body wrapped around yours. The bed creaks softly beneath you, a rhythmic accompaniment to the wet sounds of your cock moving inside her.

Jimin's hands find your shoulders, her nails digging in lightly, and her legs wrap around your waist to pull you deeper. Her eyes are locked on yours, and there's an intimacy to this position that wasn't there when she was on top. Face to face. Breath mingling. Nowhere to hide.

"You feel so good," she whispers. "So fucking good inside me."

You lean down and kiss her, swallowing her next moan as you sink deep and hold there, grinding against her, feeling every inch of her pussy clenching around your cock. You fuck her slowly at first, savoring every sensation, committing every detail to memory because you know this can't last. The wet heat of her pussy wrapped around your cock. The way her body yields beneath yours, soft and welcoming. The small sounds she makes with each thrust, breathy little gasps that escape her parted lips.

But your hips find a rhythm eventually. Pulling back until just the head of your cock remains inside her, then sliding forward in one long stroke that buries you to the hilt.

"Harder," she whispers. You comply. The pace increases incrementally, your hips snapping forward with more force, driving deeper into her slick heat.

Then Jimin's hands leave your shoulders. They travel down her own body, fingers trailing over her collarbones, her chest, until they reach the hem of her tank top. She grips the fabric and pulls it up in one fluid motion, bunching it above her breasts, exposing herself completely. And god. Her tits.

They're perfect. Large and full, pale as cream against the grey sheets, capped with nipples that are flushed pink and hard. They bounce with each thrust, a rhythm that matches the movement of your hips. Soft flesh rippling with every impact, swaying gently when you pull back, jiggling when you slam forward. "You like watching them?" Jimin asks.

"I fucking love watching them."

She smiles. Her hands come up to cup her own breasts, fingers spreading to contain the soft weight. She squeezes them together, lifts them slightly, presents them to you, then her fingers find her nipples, pinching lightly, rolling the hard peaks between thumb and forefinger.

The sound she makes is devastating. A low, throaty moan that vibrates through her chest as she touches herself while you fuck her. Her eyes flutter closed, lips parting, and she plays with her nipples like she's putting on a show just for you. Tugging at them, circling them, pressing down and releasing to watch them spring back.

Your pace increases again. The sight of her touching herself, combined with the tight grip of her pussy around your cock, is driving you toward an edge you're not ready to reach. You need to make her cum again first. Need to feel her fall apart beneath you one more time.

Your hand leaves its position beside her head, travels down her body, over the soft curve of her stomach, until your fingers find the place where your bodies meet. You can feel your own cock sliding in and out of her, can feel the stretch of her pussy around your shaft. And just above that junction, her clit waits. Swollen and sensitive, peeking out from its hood, begging to be touched.

You press your thumb against it. Jimin's reaction is immediate and violent. Her back arches off the bed and her pussy clamps down on your cock so hard you see stars. Her hands abandon her nipples to grip the sheets instead.

"Oh fuck," she gasps. "Oh fuck, right there, keep going, don't stop—"

Your thumb circles her clit in tight movements, matching the rhythm of your thrusts. Pressure and friction and the relentless slide of your cock inside her, all working together to push her toward the edge. Her breasts bounce freely now, no longer contained by her hands.

"That's it," you murmur, watching her face contort with pleasure. "That's it, let me feel you cum again."

Her moans become more urgent. Higher pitched, more desperate. Her hips buck against yours, meeting your thrusts with movements of her own, fucking herself on your cock while your thumb works her clit without mercy. The wet sounds grow louder, wetter, her arousal practically flooding out of her with each stroke.

"I'm gonna—" she starts, but can't finish. Her whole body is trembling, muscles tensing, pussy fluttering around your cock in a way that tells you she's right on the edge.

You press harder on her clit. Fuck her deeper. Give her everything you have. She shatters.

The orgasm rips through her with enough force to make her scream. Her spine curves impossibly, her head thrown back against the pillow, and her pussy clamps down on your cock in rhythmic pulses that threaten to drag you over with her. But that's not all.

A sudden rush of wetness, a pressure releasing, and then she's squirting. A clear stream of fluid spurts from where your bodies meet, soaking your stomach, coating your cock, splashing against your thighs. Not a lot, but unmistakable. Evidence of just how thoroughly you've wrecked her.

"Holy shit," you breathe, but you don't stop. You keep fucking her through it, keep rubbing her clit, and her orgasm seems to go on forever. Waves and waves of pleasure crashing through her, her pussy spasming around you, her whole body shaking with the force of it. And every time you thrust back in, another small squirt accompanies it. Like her body can't contain everything you're making her feel. Like she's overflowing with pleasure and it has nowhere to go but out.

"Oh my god," she's babbling, "oh my god, oh my god—"

You're relentless now. Fucking her through the aftershocks, feeling her squirt around your cock with each stroke, watching the mess spread beneath you both. The sheets are soaked. Your thighs are dripping. And still you don't stop.

You can feel your orgasm gathering, inevitable, and you know you need to make a decision about where you're going to finish.

One last long thrust. You bury yourself inside her as deep as you can go, hold there for a moment, feeling her pussy pulse around you, feeling the last tremors of her orgasm ripple through her walls. Then you pull out.

Your cock emerges glistening wet, coated in her cum and her squirt and your own precum. You shift position, moving up her body until you're kneeling over her chest, your cock positioned directly above her breasts. She knows what you want without being told.

Her hands come up immediately, cupping those perfect pale tits and pressing them together, creating a valley of soft flesh for you. She looks up at you with dark eyes, lips curved in invitation. "Cum on me," she says, seductive and utterly filthy. "I want to feel it. I want to see it."

You wrap your hand around your cock and start stroking. It only takes seconds. You're too wound up, too desperate, too overwhelmed by everything that's happened. The first spurt hits her chest with enough force to reach her collarbone, a thick rope of white against her pale skin. "Yes," Jimin breathes, squeezing her tits tighter together. "Keep going. Cum on me. Give me everything."

The second spurt lands between her breasts, pooling in the valley she's created. The third stripes across her left nipple. You groan, hand working your shaft, and you can't stop cumming. It just keeps coming, wave after wave of release, painting her chest white.

"That's it," she encourages. "Cum for me. Every last drop. I want it all." Her words drag another spurt out of you, splashing across her right breast. Your hand keeps moving, milking your cock, drawing out every last bit of cum until you're finally, completely empty.

You look down at the mess you've made. Her perfect pale tits, covered in streaks and pools of your cum. Some of it sliding down toward her stomach. Some of it caught around her hard nipples. Some of it still sitting in the valley between her breasts, warm and thick.

Jimin smiles up at you. Pleased. Satisfied. Looking at the cum on her chest like it's a gift she's been waiting for. "Come here," she says.

You shift forward, and she guides your softening cock toward her mouth. Her lips part and she takes just the tip inside. Her eyes close as she wraps her lips around you, sucking gently, her tongue swirling to clean away the remaining traces of cum. The sensation is too much on your sensitive flesh, but you don't pull away. You watch her. The way her cheeks hollow slightly with each gentle suck. The way her lashes rest against her cheeks. The way she hums contentedly around your cock like she's savoring something delicious.

When she finally releases you, there's a single drop of cum clinging to the corner of her lip. You reach down, brush it away with your thumb. Before you can pull back, her mouth opens and she takes your thumb inside, sucking it clean with the same attention she gave your cock.

Her eyes open, finding yours. "I love your taste," she says quietly, releasing your thumb.

You lean down and kiss her, tasting yourself on her tongue, and you think that this might be the closest thing to perfect you've ever experienced.

—

The morning unfolds in this weird, borrowed way. Like you've stepped into someone else's life for a bit. Domestic and quiet and strangely... normal? Jimin makes breakfast. You're planted at the kitchen island just watching her move around. You're memorizing this. The angle of her shoulders, the way she reaches for things, how natural it all looks. Filing it away in that part of your brain where you keep shit you know you'll want to remember later.

She notices you watching. The look she gives you is knowing, maybe a little amused.

You accept the plate she offers and make some comment about your inevitable starvation back in Seoul. She points out you could learn to cook. You counter that this has been definitively proven impossible. She mentions yesterday's attempt. You clarify that successfully cracking a single egg without shell contamination doesn't qualify as progress; it's barely basic human function. That gets a smile out of her. She grabs her own plate and settles in next to you. You eat together without talking. Outside, the rain keeps doing its thing.

Later, you bundle yourselves in raincoats and venture outside.

The storm's died down to a drizzle. You grab two umbrellas before heading out, even though you're both already wearing raincoats. It feels like the right thing to do. Jimin takes your hand without asking. Just reaches over and laces her fingers through yours, natural as breathing, and you start walking down the overgrown path that connects all the lake properties.

"These were all occupied when I was a kid," you say, pointing at the first house. Two-story cabin, wood siding, completely empty now. The garden's a mess: bushes everywhere, grass up to your knees. "The Choi family lived there. Three kids my age. We played together every summer."

"What happened to them?"

"Moved to Busan, I think. Dad got a job there. They sold it to some development company that bought it and then... nothing. Just left it to rot." You keep walking. More houses, all the same story. Families moved away, companies bought them, promised they'd fix them up and never did. The whole neighborhood's just sitting here empty and falling apart.

"It's sad," Jimin says, looking at one house where the roof's caved in on one side. "All these empty places."

"Everything ends eventually." You squeeze her hand. "Not always a bad thing. Sometimes it just is what it is." She doesn't say anything, but her grip gets tighter. Makes you wonder if she's thinking about endings too.

Then the lightning hits. One second you're fine, pointing out the old dock where you used to fish with your grandfather. The next second there's this massive crack of thunder and a flash so bright you can't see anything. The bolt strikes somewhere across the lake, close enough that you both freeze.

Jimin gasps and presses into you. "That was close," she says.

"Not that close. Maybe a kilometer."

"It felt close."

You pull her under a big oak tree. Yeah, you know you're not supposed to stand under trees during lightning storms. You know that's literally the worst place to be. But her hand's shaking in yours and you need to hold her for a second.

"We should go back," you say. She nods against your chest.

You walk back way faster than you came out. The umbrellas are basically useless now anyway - the wind's picked up and you're getting soaked from every direction. By the time you get to the house, you're both completely drenched and laughing about it.

—

Night hits different out here. No city lights means when the sun goes down, it really goes down. Total darkness.

You're in your bedroom changing clothes when your phone lights up on the nightstand. Honestly, you'd kind of forgotten you had a phone. Since getting here, you've basically only used the laptop for work stuff. The phone's just been sitting there, ignored. But now the screen's going crazy. One notification. Two. Three. They keep coming. Missed calls, texts, voicemails. All from the same person: Yoon-a.

Over a hundred missed calls. A hundred. Who the fuck calls someone a hundred times? Like, what level of panic or obsession even drives that? You pick up the phone anyway. Stare at the screen. From the living room, you can hear Jimin doing something. Cabinet doors opening and closing. She's looking for something.

You call her back. She answers on the first ring.

"Oh my god!” she exclaims. "Oh my god, you're alive. Where have you been? Why haven't you answered? I've been calling for days. Days. I thought something happened to you. I thought you were dead. I thought—"

"I'm fine," you say. "Yoon-a. I'm fine. Calm down."

"Calm down? Calm down?! You disappear without telling anyone, you don't answer your phone, you don't respond to texts, and you want me to calm down?"

"I just needed some time. To clear my head. Get away from everything."

"Get away from—" She stops. You can hear her breathing hard on the other end. "I watched this movie last night. This stupid movie, I don't even know why I watched it. About this businessman who loses everything. All his money, his company, his reputation. And at the end he… He shoots himself in the head."

"That's dark."

"I thought of you. Immediately. I couldn't stop thinking about you. Alone somewhere. Going through everything you're going through. And I kept calling and calling and you never answered."

"I'm flattered you think I'm that dramatic."

"This isn't funny." She's crying now, you can hear it. Small, hiccuping sobs that she's trying to suppress. "This isn't a joke. I was terrified. I am terrified. You're out there alone, not talking to anyone, dealing with all of this by yourself—"

"I'm at the lake house. My family's place. I'm fine. Completely fine."

"The lake house?"

"Yeah. I just needed to get away. I should have told you. I should have answered. I'm sorry."

There's a pause. A long, shaky exhale. "I'm sorry too," she says. "About the fight. In the elevator. I was being ridiculous. Clingy, like you said. I shouldn't have pushed you about dinner with my parents when you had so much going on. I shouldn't have made everything about me. I was an idiot."

"No." You sit down on the edge of the bed. "It's not your fault. I'm the one who should apologize. I've been distant. Distracted. I've been treating you badly for weeks, and you didn't deserve any of it."

"You've been stressed. I should have understood that. I should have given you space instead of demanding things."

"You shouldn't have had to. I should have talked to you. Explained what I was going through instead of just... disappearing."

"I love you," she confesses. "I love you, okay? And I know things are hard right now. I know the company is falling apart and everyone's giving you shit and you feel like the whole world is against you. But I'm not against you. I'm with you. No matter what happens." You close your eyes. Take a deep breath. "Come back to me," she continues. "Please. Come home. I'll take care of you. We'll figure this out together. I don't care if you lose the company. I don't care if you lose all your money. I mean—" A wet laugh. "I'd prefer if you stayed super rich, obviously. The lifestyle is very comfortable. But if you become poor, that's fine. I'll adapt. I'll support you. I'll love you anyway."

"Yoon-a—"

"Our son misses you. He's been moping around the apartment, looking for you. He keeps sleeping on your side of the bed." The dog isn't yours in any way... but you don't feel the need to correct her this time. "Are you lonely?" she asks. "There by yourself?"

You think about Jimin. In the living room right now, probably curled up on the sofa, surrounded by blankets, waiting for you to come watch a movie with her. Jimin, who kissed you this morning. Who rode you until she came. Who walked through the rain holding your hand. "No," you say. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure? Because I could come. I could catch a flight tonight—"

"I'm coming back tomorrow. The board meeting. I have to be there." You rub your forehead with your free hand. "We can talk properly then. Figure things out."

"Promise?"

"Promise."

"Okay." She sniffles. Takes a breath. "Okay. Tomorrow. I'll be waiting."

"Don't cry," you say. "Not for me. I don't deserve it."

"That's not how emotions work, dummy. You don't get to decide what other people feel about you."

"Goodnight, Yoon-a."

"Goodnight." A pause. "I love you." The words hang there, waiting for a response. Three simple syllables that should be easy to say. That would be easy, probably, if you hadn't spent the last three days falling into something with someone else.

"Goodnight," you say again. "Sleep well." You end the call. The phone sits in your hand, screen dimming, then going dark. You stare at it for a long time.

Look, being a shitty person isn't like the movies. You don't sit there twirling a villain mustache or cackling while you kick puppies. You're not Darth Vader. You're not even a recognizable bad guy. You're just... you. A regular person making regular choices that happen to hurt people. You took a trip without telling your almost-girlfriend. You invited a stranger along. Held her hand. Kissed her. Fucked her until she came so hard she squirted all over you.

None of it felt villainous while it was happening. All of it was, in its own way, beautiful.

But beautiful things can leave ugly messes behind. And the people you hurt don't give a shit about your good intentions. Damage is damage, regardless of whether you meant it. So you sit there on the edge of the bed and just... feel it. The guilt. The self-loathing. That growing certainty that you've fucked up in ways you won't even understand until later.

Then you breathe. Stand up. Run your fingers through your hair and Just say "fuck it.”

You're not dealing with this now. There'll be plenty of time for beating yourself up later, back in Seoul, when everything comes crashing down. Right now? You've still got a few hours left. A few more hours in this bubble. A few more hours with Jimin.

You walk back to the living room. She's on the sofa, exactly where you pictured her, except there's a massive bowl of popcorn balanced on her lap. She looks up when you enter, and her face breaks into a smile. "I made popcorn," she announces proudly. "And before you say anything, yes, I used the stove. No, I didn't burn down the kitchen. Some of us have basic survival skills." You force a smile back. It feels stiff on your face, but she doesn't seem to notice. "Impressive," you say. She shifts to make room for you on the sofa, and that's when you notice what she's wearing.

Your shirt. The Oxford button-down, light blue, slightly too big on her. The sleeves are rolled up to her elbows and the hem falls to mid-thigh, and she looks impossibly good in it. Cozy and rumpled and unreasonably attractive. Your brain helpfully reminds you that Yoon-a loves this shirt. Used to steal it constantly, wear it on lazy Sunday mornings, always threatening to keep it for good.

The timing of that memory is really fucking inconvenient.

"You okay?" Jimin's watching your face now. "You seem kinda weird."

You shake it off. Plaster on a better smile. "I'm fine," you say. "Just tired." You drop onto the sofa next to her, close enough that your legs touch, and pull her into your side. Your arm settles around her shoulders naturally and she leans into you without hesitation. The popcorn bowl balances between you both.

For now, you're fine. You can deal with everything else later.

—

The last morning arrives with an unexpected guest: the sun. Jimin finds you in the kitchen, already dressed, already packed, already holding a cup of coffee that you made yourself. Her eyes widen slightly at the sight. "You're awake."

"I'm awake."

"You made coffee."

"I did."

She approaches the counter slowly. "How?"

"YouTube tutorial. How to Use a Coffee Maker: Tutorial for Beginners. Fourteen minutes long. Very thorough. I now understand the concept of water reservoirs and filter placement."

"You've never used a coffee maker before?"

"I've never had to. That's what staff are for." You pour her a cup, slide it across the counter. "Apparently regular people just make their own coffee every morning. Wild concept."

She takes a sip. Her eyebrows rise. "It's good."

"Don't sound so surprised. I'm a quick learner when properly motivated."

The last few hours unspool in a series of small, practical tasks. Packing bags, making calls to confirm arrangements, to coordinate schedules, to begin the process of reintegrating into a world that's been waiting impatiently for your return. Your pilot answers on the second ring. Yes, the jet is ready. Yes, everything is prepared. Yes, he'll be waiting at the scheduled time. His voice is professionally neutral, giving no indication of what he thinks about his employer disappearing for days without explanation.

Through the windows, you watch the sun climb higher, burning off the last traces of mist that cling to the lake. The water is blue now, no longer the churning grey it's been since you arrived. It looks like a postcard.

Jimin makes her own calls. You try not to listen, but the house isn't big enough for real privacy, and fragments drift toward you anyway. Words like "schedule" and "statement" and "the members are worried." She responds in tones you haven't heard from her before. More certain.

There's still food in the kitchen. More than you could possibly eat, more than made sense to order in the first place. You make a mental note to call someone, have them come clear it out, donate it somewhere useful. It seems wasteful to just leave it here to rot in an empty house.

The drive to the airfield is quiet. The jet trip is quieter still. You sit across from each other in leather seats, Seoul approaches through oval windows, and neither of you says much of anything. There's nothing left to say, really. Everything important has already been communicated in other ways. In touches and silences and the space between words. Jimin wears her disguise again. Baseball cap pulled low, face mask covering everything below her eyes.

Your car's waiting at the private terminal. You toss her suitcases in the back, hold the door open for her, then get behind the wheel. Seoul hits you immediately. Traffic everywhere. Buildings stacked on top of buildings. Twelve million people all doing their thing at once. After the quiet of the lake house, it's a lot. Too much, actually. Too loud. Too crowded. Your brain doesn't know what to do with all the stimulus.

She tells you the address and you start driving. Neither of you talks. You just navigate the same streets you've been driving for years, except everything feels off now. Like you left for a weekend trip and came back to find the city rearranged. Or maybe it's the same and you're what changed. Hard to tell.

Her building's in Gangnam. Naturally. Big glass tower with lobby security and doormen and cameras everywhere that'll definitely catch her getting out of your car. You pull up to the entrance. Put the car in park. Sit there for a moment, hands on the wheel, staring straight ahead. "I don't know what to say," you admit. "I've never been through anything like this before. There's no template. No script."

Jimin pulls her mask down to her chin, and you can see her face properly for the first time since you left the lake house. "You don't need to say anything," she tells you.

"That feels wrong somehow. Like we should mark the moment. Acknowledge it."

"We are acknowledging it. This is what acknowledgment looks like when there's nothing left to add."

You drum your fingers on the steering wheel. Outside, a man walks past with a dog. A taxi honks in the distance. The city continues, indifferent. "Will we keep talking?" you ask. "After this?"

Jimin is quiet for a moment. Considering. "I don't know," she says finally. "Let's see what happens over time."

"That's very noncommittal."

"It's honest. I don't know what I want yet. I don't know what's possible." She shrugs, a small movement. "Right now, all I know is that I need to go back to my life and figure out what that looks like. Everything else is... uncertain."

"Fair enough."

You stare out the windshield, watching a delivery truck navigate the narrow street. "It's a shame," you say. "That things can't work out. Between us."

"I'm an idol. You know how it works. Dating scandals, public scrutiny, sasaeng fans digging through every aspect of my personal life. Even if we wanted to try, the logistics would be impossible."

"I know."

"And you have a girl who likes you."

You turn to look at her. "She was never my girlfriend."

"I know. But she cares about you. That call... she was really worried."

"Did you hear—"

"Yes." She cuts you off gently. "I heard it. The walls aren't that thick."

A beat of silence. The engine hums. "I'm going to talk to her," you say. "When I get back. I'm going to be honest about what happened. About everything." You pause, meeting her eyes. "I won't mention you. I won't say who I was with. That's not my secret to tell. But I can't lie to her about the fact that something happened."

Jimin nods slowly. "That's fair."

"I don't know how she'll take it. She might hate me. She probably should."

"Maybe." Jimin's gaze drifts to the window, to the building waiting to reclaim her, to the life she's about to step back into. "But you should do what you think is right. Whatever that looks like for you."

"What I think is right," you repeat. "That's a terrifying amount of freedom."

"Welcome to being an adult. It's mostly just making decisions and hoping you don't fuck everything up."

"You're very wise for someone who was crying on a park bench two weeks ago."

"Growth happens fast when you're forced into it." Her lips curve slightly. "Besides, I learned from the best. Some random guy who talks too much and can't operate a coffee maker."

"I can operate a coffee maker now. Technically."

"Congratulations. You've achieved baseline functionality."

You both laugh, and it feels good. Easy. Like maybe this doesn't have to be the end of everything, even if it's the end of this particular chapter. She reaches between the seats and retrieves her suitcases from the back. Two small bags, barely enough for a weekend, containing everything she brought to a trip she never planned to take. She opens the door, but she doesn't get out. "Sometime," she says, "we should get coffee. You and me."

"Coffee."

"We're still strangers, technically. Two people who met once in a park and then spent a few days in a bubble that doesn't count as real life. But I'd like to be your friend. If that's something you'd want."

"That would be cool," you say. "Yeah. I'd like that."

"Good." She pauses, glances at the door. Then back at you. "You're a good person," she says. "I know you don't believe that. But I do."

Before you can respond, she leans across and presses her lips to your cheek. A soft, brief contact, there and gone. Then she pulls her mask back up, hiding the lower half of her face, becoming Karina again before your eyes. "Good luck," she says. "With the meeting. With everything. It'll work out for you. I know it will." And then she's gone. Out of the car, through the building entrance, swallowed by the elevator and the security guards and the life that's been waiting to reclaim her.

You sit there for a while. Engine idling. Watching the space where she used to be. Good person.

You don't know how true that is. The evidence suggests otherwise, honestly. The choices you've made. The way you've hurt people without meaning to, without even fully understanding the damage until it was already done. Nothing is fixed. Not your company. Not your relationships. Not who you are or who you could become. Everything is still in motion, still being decided, still waiting for you to make the next choice.

Your phone buzzes. A text from your assistant. Thirty minutes until the meeting starts. You look at the message. Look at the building where Jimin disappeared. Look at the road ahead.

If you can save your company (and you're going to try, you're going to fight like hell), then maybe other impossible things aren't so impossible either. Maybe the logistics that seem insurmountable right now will look different in six months. A year. Maybe being an idol and being with someone doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. Maybe you just need to prove to yourself that you can actually fix something before you try to build something new.

One problem at a time. That's how you survive.

You put the car in drive. Pull away from the curb. Merge into traffic, becoming just another vehicle in the endless flow of the city. The meeting is in thirty minutes. The board wants your head. The investors have lost faith. Everyone is waiting for you to fail.

But you're not going to fail. Not today. Not if you have anything to say about it. And when you've saved the company - when, not if - you're going to call Jimin. You're going to take her up on that coffee. And you're going to see what's possible when two people stop pretending and start trying for real.

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