Oct 22, 2025
⊹ ࣪ ˖ 𝒻reaky 𝓉exts ⌖ ⌗soobin
seen from Singapore
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seen from United States
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seen from Singapore
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seen from Australia
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seen from China
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seen from United States
⊹ ࣪ ˖ 𝒻reaky 𝓉exts ⌖ ⌗soobin
• drunk in love . ִֶָ་. ་༘
⌗drunkinlove — soobin comes home drunk and needy …
( c. soobin x fem!reader ) • warnings. drunk soobin, face sitting, language, lowkey sub!soobin 𓄵 word count. 682 { back to library }
( yeni’s notes ). when is talking about drunk soobin im always talking about the picture about 😭
the sounds of the continuous banging on your door ripped you completely from your slumber; getting up , barely putting your slippers on before making your way to the door.
“baby!”
you could hear your boyfriend through the door. “baby open up!” he was drunk. you opened the door , the taller boy flew into your arms. “no!” he yelled out , probably waking up a few neighbors in the passing. “no don’t look at her.” he stared down at you. “why are you in your underwear baby?”
“well i was sleep before you started banging on my door , waking up the building”
his friends looked confused; “he’s been drinking all night.” taehyun said. “we told him to calm down , but obviously he doesn’t listen.”
he started mumbling incoherently ; swaying your bodies back and forth. “yeah i can see that.” they scratched the back of their necks awkwardly. they said their goodbyes and you dragged you boyfriend to bed.
“baby , baby i missed you.” his words slurred , you stood in between his legs , taking his flannel off. “i missed you all day.”
his face was red; his cheek pressed against your bare stomach as he pushed your shirt up under your boobs. “soobin you’re drunk , you’re crazy if you think we’re having sex tonight.”
“why?” he kissed your stomach. “don’t you want me to eat your pussy?” he licked your stomach , you felt a tingle , lightly tugging on his hair , pulling him back to look at you — his eyes blown out.
“behave.”
“please.” he whined , pulling you down on top of him , you straddled his waist. “i’ve been thinking about you sitting on my face all night.” he left sloppy kisses along your collarbone. “i could practically taste you all over the soju baby.”
you bit down in your lip to not fuel him anymore , but he wasn’t letting up ; he wasn’t even looking you in your eyes anymore ; zoned in on your covered pussy — you could’ve sworn you saw him drooling before you lightly slapped his face. “come on let’s get you to bed.”
“not until you sit on my face.”
“soobin.” he pulled you on his chest , he could practically taste your cunt. “you’re unbelievable when you’re drunk.” your protest slowly stopping though , soobin taking notice of that , pulling you even further , his mouth so close you can feel him breathing on your pussy.
“fu-fuck soobin,” his stuck his tongue on slightly , teasingly licking your cunt through your panties. “shit.” getting a little taste , setting him off , pulling you fully on top of him , opening his mouth and engulfing your clothed cunt.
he held you down on his face , suffocating himself as he messily ate you through your panties , like the barrier didn’t matter to him , he was getting his fill regardless. “fuck bin i’m gonna cum.”
your body folded over , holding yourself up as you came , moaning his name loudly; but that didn’t stop him , he kept going , still hungry for more. “fuck so-soobin i came.”
he moaned , finally pulling away. “i’m sorry i got carried away.” he sounded even drunker than before. “you just taste so sweet i cant help myself.”
soobin was hard as a rock; palming his cock through his jeans , moaning shamelessly. “i’m so hard , i need you.” he whimpered pathetically. “please can i put in?”
knowing he’d just fall asleep , you came up with a different solution , helping him take off his shoes and pants. you laid down on your back; taking your panties off, inviting him into your arms. “good boy.” whispering in his ear.
“please.” he whimpered , you pulled his cock out from his boxers , jerking him off , feeling him rut into your hand. “please just let me put it in.”
you guided his cock into your hole; he let out a loud whimper; pushing himself all the way inside. “fu-fuck , don’t move.” you moaned , he obeyed. “good boy”
you ran your fingers through his hair softly; he sighed , his eyes fluttering closed , his red drunken face falling still. “i-i love you.” his words slurred , you kissed his forehead.
“i love you too.”
©️LUVYENI
Love, in Translation || Choi Soobin
There are loves that blossom silently, and there are loves that consume. Love chose him as its sole vessel the moment you stepped into his still life and made it breathe. Because you were not merely the person he loved.
You were the garden and the grave where Soobin would bury himself. Willingly, ardently, and without return.
⊹₊⟡⋆ 21k
pairing: florist!choi soobin x fem!reader
tags: florist au, friends to lover, slice of life, mild slow burn if you squint, mutual pining, simp!soobin, portrayal of feelings through flowers, lots of yearning, mild jealousy because why not, somehow even became a sick fic, SOOBIN WEARS GLASSES! [probably missed some]
[MDNI] smut warning: explicit sexual content, munch!soobin, oral (f.), fingering, tummy bulge, subspace (but it's soobin being pussy drunk), cumming in pants, pathetic!dom!soobin, spit as lube, praise kink if you squint, multiple orgasms, missionary, unprotected sex (not huzzah!), creampie (please don't) [definitely missed some]
so umm. somehow it became 21k. NOW IN MY DEFENSE—IT WAS GOING VERY WELL UNTIL I STARTED THE SMUT! i might have went extremely overboard with it guys it was an out of body experience. but hey on the bright side, you have 3k words worth smut of soobin being pathetic! it's a win, right? *laughs nervously* alright jokes aside, i hope you enjoy reading this story as much as i enjoyed writing it <33 Reblogs and feedbacks are appreciated!
© filmsbyun ── please do not copy, translate, or repost my work without permission.
Time flew in a strange way on SUNDAYS.
There was a jar of lemon candies near the cash register that no one ever touched, except for you. He kept refilling it anyway. Once, you’d told him that sour things make you feel awake. He didn’t like lemon candy, never has — but now the shop feels incomplete without that bright little jar amidst the plethora of greens.
Soobin liked being a florist. He loved flowers more. Perhaps it was because the shop stopped feeling like a shop and rather a person to him. It woke up with him every morning, breathed with the breeze when he slid the door open, and hummed softly when he watered the hanging plants. He worked there most days, except for Tuesdays, when his employee took over so he could attend his classes. For the remaining days of the week, Soobin arranged his schedule meticulously so that he could finish his classes early in the morning and put his entire focus on flowers. The arrangement’s practical, he liked to believe.
The shop sat below his apartment, which is really just one big room pretending to be three. His uncle handed it to him when he moved here for university, saying, “It’s old but it’ll love you back if you take care of it.” Perhaps that’s what got him thinking about flowers in the first place.
Why flowers, specifically? — because the most romantic thing about flowers is that they could say what people couldn't. Flowers, to him, are translators. They turn the things people mean into color and shape, into scent and softness. He liked to imagine that every arrangement he made carried a small story.
He didn’t always know what it was, but he liked guessing — a confession with roses, an apology wrapped around white lilies, and carnations carrying gratitude for the loved ones. He took joy in translating those feelings and that’s what drew him in; the thought that he’s helping people say things they can’t always phrase. He liked that flowers never lie. They just bloom, fade, and start again. In their short lives, they manage to say everything worth saying.
In the middle of tending to a new shipment of red gerberas, Soobin blinked back into focus when your distant laugh drifted inside. Realizing he’d been standing still for a while with a pair of shears in hand, staring at nothing in particular, he clipped the stem he was holding.
There was a quaint nursery at the back of the shop. Once an unremarkable yard attached to his uncle’s apartment now repurposed into rows of neatly aligned pots and every colour of flowers one could imagine. You were there, showing the elderly couple around and explaining differences between varieties with the knowledge you got from Soobin after months of hanging around. They were regulars, always appearing on Sundays, and they’d long decided they preferred you over him when it came to choosing plants though you didn’t even work there.
He liked the friendly company you brought, as he liked to tell himself, but each time he looked through the windowpane to catch you smiling — that conviction thinned. You looked impossibly beautiful standing there among the green, pointing something out to the old woman who was nodding along with delight. There was dirt on your fingertips, probably your sleeves too, but you were radiant nonetheless.
The sight made him feel a strange tug somewhere in his chest, which was funny, because it resembled what one would call envy. Soobin was envious that sunlight got to touch you first.
When you led the couple back inside, he quickly turned his gaze to the counter, focusing on trimming the stems before the flowers lost too much moisture. Your voice was honey to him, your presence the sun.
“Soobin, they’re thinking about keeping some plants in their kitchen. They want to know which ones will last.” You placed two small tubs of chrysanthemums in front of him, their leaves still wet from misting.
The old man gave a soft laugh, rubbing the back of his neck as if the admission embarrassed him. “My wife says the kitchen looks too plain without a bit of life.”
“I told him,” the old woman interrupted fondly, “that if we’re going to cook every day, we might as well have something nice to look at while we’re doing it.”
Soobin smiled, leaning forward to inspect the tubs. “You could try pothos,” he said after a moment. “They don’t need much light, and they’ll forgive you even if you forget them for a few days. Basil too, if you want something useful. It grows better near a window, though.”
The old woman’s eyes brightened. “Basil sounds lovely. I could use it for our soups.”
“Soup!” You chirped when you came back from washing your dirt smeared hands. “Oh, Mrs. Park, I need to know how your soup tastes.”
The couple laughed at that, the sound pulling Soobin’s attention as he stole a glance at you with a smile of his own. “I will make sure to give you kids some the next time we come by!” she promised.
“Then it’s settled,” you said warmly, turning back to Soobin. “You won’t regret getting the basil. Everything grown and cared for by Soobin in this shop is full of love.”
The wife smiled, cheeks crinkling. “You’re as sweet as these flowers, dear.”
Sweeter than any of them, Soobin thought. Prettier too.
He wordlessly passed you a towel and you took it with a murmured thanks while he went back to arranging the couple’s purchase. As he packed, the woman’s gaze caught on the gerberas beside him.
“Those are lovely,” she said, eyes softening at the red bloom. “It’s been years since I’ve seen them this bright.”
You followed her gaze. “They really are, aren’t they?” you said, tapping your finger lightly against the counter. “Maybe you should take a few stems home too. They’ll add some color to your living room.”
“They would,” the husband agreed, already pulling his wallet from his coat. “Let’s take a few.”
There was this magic in you. Some people didn’t need flowers to speak for them — their presence was already poetry, their laughter already a language. You were one of them. And you were his exact opposite. Soobin, who could shape meaning through petals and stems but stumbled when it came to words, was terrified of letting his thoughts spill unchecked from his heart to his mouth, terrified that they might reach you and ruin the ephemeral beauty of what already existed between you. So he relied on flowers, always.
He held up a single red gerbera between his thumb and index finger. His eyes drifted to where you stood beside the elderly couple, now showing them the tulips on display. The flower symbolizes a passionate and profound declaration of love, representing a love that filled every part of the soul until it became difficult to breathe. It made him wonder what it would feel like to hand the bouquet to you instead, to let the flower say what he couldn’t. The idea itself was enough to trip his pulse.
The old couple soon gathered their plants and bouquet as they bid farewell to you both. Gerberas suited them — he thought as he watched them leave — still vibrant after all these years, their love so full of life. A love like that, he hoped, was not beyond him. A love like that, he wanted to be capable of giving and also worthy of receiving.
That want, that wish of his didn’t seem to be so far off because his brain came to a comforting pause when the same words were spoken out loud, by you.
“Arent they wonderful?” you sighed dreamily, watching the couple disappear down the street. “I hope a love like theirs finds me.”
“You have nothing to worry about,” he murmured, arranging the leftover stems. “You’re very lovable. People tend to love you without needing to be asked.”
You blinked, caught off guard for half a second before recovering with a teasing smile. “Do they, now?”
He nodded, still not looking up, but the corner of his mouth lifted. “Even Mr. and Mrs. Park. They barely let me talk to them anymore.”
You gasped softly in realization and snapped your fingers. “Right! They never ask for your help, do they?” You leaned in across the counter and it took everything in Soobin not to fold right there. “Watch out, Soobin. At this rate, I might just learn enough to open my own shop across the street. Then what will you do?”
Soobin chuckled, dimples deepening as he pushed his glasses up with the back of his wrist. “I’ll have a scary competitor then.”
You giggled, amused by the thought. “You think I’m scary?”
He narrowed his eyes just enough that the look read more fond than fierce, and then, by a measure that felt modest because he was taller, he bent at the waist until his face aligned with yours. He leaned forward the barest fraction.
“Terrifying.”
He whispered the words with a cheeky squint of his eyes and let his gaze find yours with a small, almost solemn smile. For a fleeting second, Soobin allowed himself the luxury of memorizing you up close as you burst out into a fit of laughter.
Time flew in a strange way on Sundays. It stretched and folded in ways that defied reason. With you in the shop, time seemed to slow just inside that shared space surrounded by flowers for him. Nothing more than your mere presence, not even the brilliance of the fresh floras and their honeyed fragrance, could make him feel alive. Yet at the same time, the hours slipped from his grasp because it is never enough. The day always ended too soon, and every time you reached for your bag Soobin found himself wishing for just one more hour with you. One more exchange that he could replay in the stillness of his mind when night fell.
He never asked, of course. Love, to him, was a quiet thing — a bloom meant to be nurtured, not confessed too soon. So he contented himself with the gentle ache you left behind until you came by the next day to heal him.
When you finally left that evening, he tucked a single red gerbera stem into your bag, wrapped in paper the colour he knew you adored.
MONDAYS were rather boring.
Everything was as it always was, except it wasn’t. It was the only day when your schedule didn't align with his, meaning, when Soobin’s classes ended and he began his shift, yours started. Even in a place overflowing with color and life, with beauty and extravagance, your presence was what always made life vibrant in his eyes. Without you, everything paled inside the shop. Even the new batch of flowers he’d receive for the day refused to liven up as if they were waiting for you to show up and breathe life into them. Soobin was like the flowers.
He missed you more than he could justify. To the point he’d foolishly perk up — like a bunny perking up in the gentlest alarm, as you’d like to call him — whenever the shop door’s bell jingled. Every time, he flt like a part of him slowly died whenever he’d see it wasn't you but rather a customer.
On such days, Soobin felt like a machine serving its purpose. Greet the customers, tend to the flowers, make arrangements and repeat. To be fair, the monotony used to comfort him once. Two years ago, that had been his entire life. It used to be only him and the flowers, and sometimes his part-time employee taking turns behind the counter so he could balance his studies and tutoring. That changed when you became friends with him.
Soobin couldn’t remember when or how it began but he really enjoyed it when you started showing up in his humble shop like this. You expressed genuine interest when he first told you about his little business, and he couldn't forget the look on your face when he first took you to the shop. No flower could rival the raw look of enrapture you had on you. You started coming by more often — at first to talk, then to help, then simply to exist there. You loved flowers as much as he did. So there was no reason for him to stop you from showing up.
He doubted he could ever ask you to stop showing up. Frankly, it’s something he always looked forward to because you manage to bring comfort with you. You had a way of making the space feel lived in; of making him feel seen. So now your absence, even if for one day, felt tortuous to Soobin.
Whenever his employee Jisoo showed up, Soobin would manage the shop together with him. The lunch brought by Jisoo was shared between the two of them. Some days, Soobin would almost hear your phantom nagging at him for never learning how to cook. On others, when Jisoo happened to bring the dishes you loved, Soobin would simply stare at them for a moment too long, thinking of how you’d probably hum with satisfaction after the first bite, your expression glowing with unguarded joy that made his heart ache in the most tender way.
On such a monday, after Jisoo left finishing his shift, Soobin brewed himself a cup of tea as he put on some song in the background. Leaning against the counter he took a sip of his tea and stared out of the window. Outside, a pair of children ran past, their laughter echoed down the path. Soobin’s gaze drifted toward the doorway. The space looked too still without your movement.
The only movement that tugged on the edges of his thoughts was the gentle sway of the daffodils by the breeze that came from the open nursery door. The bright yellow flowers beckoned him to caress them.
Daffodils, known for their ability to emerge after the darkness of winter symbolizes hope and the promise of better times, alongside joy and happiness. He wondered, as he gently brushed his across one of the petals, if in another life or in some other universe entirely — these daffodils were growing inside his chest, their roots weaving through his lungs, their golden blooms stealing his breath. Perhaps that was why his heart ached this way every time he thought of you. He decided he wouldn’t mind suffocating, not if it meant the air that left him was filled with your name.
Love had made its home in him long ago. Flowers of love bloomed in his chest, threatening to slip out of him whenever he looked at you which he disguised as breathless laughters, as words, as the ineffable fondness that ran through his veins at your mere existence.
Another chime from the bell. Again, he looked up. Again, it wasn’t you.
He hated Mondays for how long they felt, for how they made the absence of you stretch into hours he could count by the way the sunlight changed. Still, there was a strange comfort in missing you. It meant you existed somewhere beyond these walls, and tomorrow, when the bell chimed again, it might really be you.
Until then, he had the flowers. He had the scent of the daffodils. He had the echo of your voice stored in memory. And for a boy like Soobin who loved through petals and silence, that was sufficient to keep breathing through the slow, pale hours of Monday.
From morning lectures to late afternoon tutoring, Soobin’s hours always blurred into a monotony of words and fatigue on Tuesdays. Other than that, these days were simply to say, pretty uneventful.
But it was such a TUESDAY that reminded him that even ordinary days could bloom.
Soft morning light pooled across the courtyard benches where Soobin sat with Taehyun and Kai. The three of them huddled together as they discussed writing their reports, but it was mostly them and not Soobin who engaged in the conversation. Soobin found his attention drifting to the faint rustle of leaves above them.
Then, from the corner of his eye, he saw you waving. You appeared in a rush of sunlight and apologetic smiles, which made him sit up straighter. He almost did the foolish act of fumbling to catch his heart because it skipped a beat so hard, Soobin truly felt like it was about to leap out of his ribcage.
“Soobin!” You called, already halfway to them. You were visibly out of breath but why was it him who felt breathless? The way your eyes caught the sunlight made it impossible for him to look anywhere else. “I don’t have time to stay—I’m already late for my lecture—but here.” You held out a paper bag toward him. “Don’t skip lunch, okay? I’ll see you later!”
Before he could say much beyond a thank you,you were already stepping back, waving to the other two. “Bye, guys!” — and running off toward the building.
For a second, everything surrounding him seemed to still in the wake of your absence. He opened the bag, saw the croissant sandwich wrapped in neat folds and a water bottle nestled beside it. You were his friend, yes, what you were doing was nothing more than just a friend looking out for another. You’d always been thoughtful, always been a loving and caring person. Still, he couldn’t stop feeling warm by this small act of care because you knew Tuesdays were hectic for him and went out of your way to make sure he gained the energy to push through.
Kai’s malicious groan disturbed his sweet bubble of thoughts. “Must be nice having someone like that,” the younger said, gesturing lazily at the bag. “You’re lucky, man. I’d kill for a lunch delivery mid-day and— ow!”
It was Taehyun who smacked the back of Kai’s head to hush him, signalling him with a single stare that translated ‘read the room’. The two then turned to Soobin who still looked lost in his head, glasses slightly dropping down his nose by the way his head was tilted downward.
Taehyun softly cleared his throat, trying to mask his question as friendly as possible. “Are you two together?”
Soobin flinched. He could have said no, a neat dismissal that left nothing to broker between them. Instead he found himself saying, “We’re just friends.” The phrase came out tasting bitter and wrong on his tongue, betraying him with a half-second’s hesitation between just and friends that suggested how the truth refused to fit into any box.
“Ah,” Taehyun said simply, leaning back in his chair. “Alright.”
Kai, rubbing the back of his head, tried to reclaim the moment, about to offer some light commentary that would have widened the circle of awkwardness, but Taehyun’s small, admonishing look cut him off. There was nothing for Soobin to explain anyway, or maybe there was too much.
By evening, the exhaustion sat heavy in his bones. Lecture after lecture had chipped away at him until all that remained was a dull ache behind his eyes. He had texted you out of habit in the afternoon between class breaks.
Not feeling very uplifted today.
He hadn’t meant for it to sound like a plea. Your reply came almost instantly.
I understand. I’ll be around if you need anything. Don’t push yourself too hard.
Typical of you — never intrusive, always there in the way only you could be. He appreciated it, but the distance between you remained, as it always had.
After finishing his last tutoring session of the day, he walked down the nearly deserted hallway. He hadn’t thought about you much during the time he spent wallowing in stress and fatigue. But when he turned the corner toward the elevator, the sight before him stopped him in his tracks.
There, just outside the elevator, sitting on one of the chairs by the wall, was you.
For a moment, he simply stood there, the dull exhaustion inside him replaced by something wordless and vast. You looked up, and when your eyes met his, a small smile, tired yet radiant at the same, bloomed across your face.
What are you doing here? — was all he could think, though words deserted him for a few more seconds after approaching you.
“You’re still here?” he managed. “Your class ended hours ago.”
You stood stretching slightly, your smile widening just a fraction. “Figured you’d need someone to walk home with.”
He blinked, dazed, as if the meaning of your words had to travel through too many walls before it reached him. “Didn’t you have somewhere to go?” he asked, trying to reason.
“No,” you replied simply, “I wanted to make sure you weren’t walking home alone.”
His pulse thrummed with an inexplicable ache that felt too alive for his exhausted body. It wasn’t like you to wait around this long, especially when you could be using this time to focus on anything better. Anything or anyone better than him. But you had waited for him because of a single text.
He didn’t know what he had done to be worthy of your patience, nor did he know how to articulate the reverence that rose in him now, the fierce, aching wish to deserve it. He wondered whether his heart could bear much more of you before it gave itself away entirely.
“Oh? Um. Thank you,” he murmured, the words far too meager for all he wanted to say.
The elevator chimed. You gestured toward it with a small nod, and he followed, still unsure if his gratitude was delivered to you properly. You leaned back against the wall, and let out a sigh that relaxed your posture. He took his place against the opposite wall. Now, with the distance of the day collapsing between you he noticed the weariness clinging to you which he had missed when he first saw you sitting outside. He still couldn’t fathom the fact that you waited for him, all because he expressed feeling a little blue.
“Did you eat everything?” Your voice was soothing and gentle that in his overflowing love fueled headspace, he almost felt like he could fall asleep listening to you. “The croissant—was it alright?”
“It was better than alright,” he, too, spoke in a low tone to match your cadence. “I didn’t realize how hungry I was until I opened the bag.”
You smiled, eyes meeting his for the briefest second before drifting toward the faintly glowing floor indicator. “I knew you needed it. I know how hard you work all the time.”
He felt a drowsy calm settle over him. If either of you noticed the way his eyes were locked onto you after your admission, neither you nor he made a comment about it. He wanted to take your tiredness and scatter it away, to cup your face and let his gratitude pour through his touch just as a way to give back, to make you feel the way you made him feel. The impulse to kiss you was so overwhelming that it startled him though not because it was new, but because it had never been this close to breaking through. His hands twitched at his sides, every instinct begging to bridge the distance, yet reason kept him still.
Nevertheless, what he felt for you had already outgrown the safety of words. It was already too alive, too consuming, blooming inside him like a garden that asked only to be watered by you.
When the elevator doors opened, the spell broke. Soobin turned his head, meaning to speak, to say thank you again in a way that might capture what you had done for him but the words withered again before they could take shape.
If love could be measured by waiting, then you had just rewritten every definition he knew.
By the railing near the exit, a row of potted forget-me-nots watched in blue silence, as though they, too, understood what it meant to wait and to be remembered.
If affection could take form, Soobin learned that WEDNESDAYS could be its sunlight.
When he orders for a shipment, it is mostly on Wednesdays that the new batch of fresh floras arrive. It wasn’t necessarily a constant occurrence, but it had happened often, which is why Soobin liked to keep important shop related agendas particularly on this day.
Two weeks later on a Wednesday. Soobin stood behind the counter with sleeves rolled above his forearms, a clipboard in hand, his glasses slipping slightly down his nose as he ticked off names and numbers. The bell jingled — and of course instinctively he looked up — smiling brightly with his dimples deepening at the sight of you.
“Hey,” you greeted him with a cheerful smile.
He reached for the glass jar beside the register, fished out a lemon candy, and rolled it across the counter toward you.
“Morning,” he greeted, his smile softening. “You’re here earlier than usual.”
“Prof was feeling generous today, I suppose. She ended the class early so I came as soon as I could,” you replied, picking up the candy. The lemon filled your mouth with a tangy sting, a small burst of summer. Behind him, Jisoo was sorting tulips with exaggerated concentration, pretending not to eavesdrop. You waved at him anyway, earning a sheepish smile before he ducked his head.
“Everything arrived fine?” you asked, glancing toward the mountain of crates by the window.
Soobin followed your gaze, pushed his glasses higher, and exhaled as though only now realizing how much work still lay ahead. “More or less. The supplier mixed up a few labels again—I might have accidentally ordered twice the usual number of sunflowers.”
“Accidentally?” you repeated, your brows arching in suspicion.
He met your look with one of his own — a small smile of oops before setting the clipboard down. “Maybe not entirely. Actually,” he began, pausing because he wanted to choose his words with care, “do you have plans for the day?”
“Nope,” you said at once. “Why? Planning to put me to work again?”
“Something like that,” he said, straightening a small stack of receipts only to set them down again. Soobin felt a tender warmth in his chest as you stared at him expectantly. “How would you feel about coming with me to the sunflower farm? I need to sort out the delivery issue in person. Could use the company.”
The candy nearly slipped from your tongue. “A sunflower farm?” you echoed, disbelief giving way to delight. “You’re asking me to go to a sunflower farm?”
“Unless you have something better to do,” he teased lightly, though his hand still brushed the edge of the counter with a nervous anticipation.
You shook your head far too quickly. “Even if I did, I’d cancel it immediately. Who in their right mind would say no to a sunflower field?”
You said those words so earnestly that Soobin couldn’t stop the bright laugh from escaping him. He hadn’t meant to react so openly, yet your enthusiasm had a way of undoing his restraint piece by piece until all that remained was this foolish, giddy pulse under his ribs that refused to calm down.
“You’re right, no one in their right mind should say no to that,” he humored you, adjusting his glasses to mask the giddiness still threatening to spread. “Give me around ten minutes and we’ll go, yeah?”
You saluted him playfully before turning toward the doorway. Behind you, his voice followed, threaded with an affection he didn’t bother to hide. “And grab a hat—it gets hot out there. Jisoo will show you where we keep them.”
He didn’t really need to solve the delivery issue in person — he could’ve just sent an e-mail clarification and been done with it. But Soobin, being Soobin, saw the outing as a chance to “deepen professional ties.” That was how he phrased it in his head at least. Both work-wise and, well… you-wise.
He told you it was for work, and he told himself that too. And technically, it was true. He was going for work. But what his mind could justify, his heart refused to understand. His heart had long stopped behaving like something he could reason with. It thrashed and pleaded, spinning songs out of nothing whenever you were near and lured out all the thoughts he’d buried in the farthest corners of his head. It told him things his reason wouldn’t dare put into words. Things like asking you to accompany him to a sunflower farm was the equivalent of asking you on a date. Scratch that, it wasn’t really a date because, again, work. Except his heart couldn’t care less.
If sunflowers yearned toward the sun, then his heart tilted helplessly toward you. You had your fingerprints all over his heart, left on his thoughts, his gestures, the smallest habits he could no longer call his own. You touched him without touching him, and he felt it deep in his bones.
By the time they arrived at the sunflower farm, the late afternoon light had turned syrup-thick, golden and drowsy, coating everything it touched. It took less than half an hour for him to settle the shipment issue which he was most thankful for because it meant he could spend more time with you looking around. He carried the paperwork in one hand checking the state of the flowers as they walked, though his mind was far from logistics.
You walked a few steps ahead, the hem of your shirt catching in the breeze and sunlight glancing off your hair as you did. Every few seconds, you’d turn back to point something out with a smile — a stretch of wildflowers, a crooked fence post and each time you did, he felt that same small collapse inside him, the one that whispered he could spend a lifetime looking at you and still not feel full.
He wanted to reach for your hand. God, how badly he wanted to. It wasn’t even about the touch — it was about what it meant. It was to feel your pulse beneath his thumb, to know that the warmth in his chest had somewhere to belong. But do friends hold hands like that? With the kind of longing that burned holes through reason and plagued his senses?
Soobin noticed a patch of young sunflowers and bent before them, one knee pressed into the dirt, eyes tracing the fragile stems swaying in the mild breeze. His fingers brushed the soil with care, tracing the tender line of roots that had begun to weave through the earth. The ground was still warm from the afternoon sun, faintly damp against his skin.
You came to stand beside him, your shadow falling across the flowers. “Are these newly planted?” you asked, crouching a little to match his height.
He nodded, flicking a bit of soil from his fingers. “Mm. A few weeks old, maybe.”
You tilted your head, smiling at the shy blossoms. Then you glanced at him with a grin that glowed warmer than the light itself. “How pretty.”
Though you meant the flowers, the words seemed to settle somewhere deep in him. He didn’t dare look up. He could still feel you there, your presence bright beside him. The weather’s heat was a little tacky but your warmth felt heavenly. Then, all at once, your weight beside him vanished.
“Soobin,” you called sweetly from somewhere behind him.
He looked up and was met with a sprinkle of cold droplets landing across his cheek. He blinked, a startled laugh escaping him. You stood a few steps away with the watering can in both hands, trying to hide your grin.
“Oops,” you said lightly. “Got confused for a second—which one was the real flower.”
“Oh my god.” He raised his brows, disbelief flickering across his face. “You’re not usually the type for corny lines.”
“What can I do when you’re so pretty?”
That made him stop. The laugh died halfway through his throat, dissolving into a soundless exhale. You said it so easily, without any awareness of what it did to him and maybe that was what made it worse, that you could wound him so sweetly without even knowing.
He rose to his feet, slow enough to steady himself. Reaching for the watering can, he caught your wrist gently before he dipped his hand into the water. When he lifted it again, droplets slid between his knuckles, catching sunlight as he flicked them in your direction.
You gasped, a small sound that made his stomach twist, your lashes catching stray drops.
“Guess I’ll have to water you too,” he said, tapping his wet fingers once against your cheek, eyes dipping for a second too long. “You look parched.”
And the moment they left his mouth, his heart raced in his throat. He could almost feel the words replaying in his own head. What are you doing? What are you saying? His mind scrambled to fix what his mouth had already done. He hastily drew his hand back.
You seemed to still for a moment before wiping your face with the back of your hand, eyes narrowing playfully. “It’s flattering to know you think I’m pretty, Soobin.”
He hesitated — a heartbeat too long — before forcing a grin and patting your head. “I think you need water to grow taller,” he countered steadily though his pulse was anything but.
“Wow,” you said flatly, dragging out the word. “How rude.”
Soobin had to look away and laugh, which sounded way too nervous to be called one. He tugged at the top button of his shirt before it came undone and a low exhale slipped past his lips. He was already in some sort of trance. Maybe the sun had found its way into his bloodstream, making him reckless enough to muddle reasons. Because blaming his erratic need to lose control in front of you on the sun was easier than to admit he was truly losing it.
One moment you were standing in front of him then the next you moved in front of a bigger batch up ahead. "You really shouldn’t be talking about height here," you said, pointing to a sunflower that swayed slightly in the breeze. "That one’s taller than you. In fact, most of them are towering above you."
Soobin, caught in the moment, let his traitorous heart take control and began humoring you. “Is that so?” He moved beside the flower. It towered impressively, yes, but the top of his head passed the blossom by only a few centimeters. His shoulders straightened with faint defiance as he glanced down at you, half a smirk playing on his lips. "Seems I still win."
You squinted up at him. "Don’t cheat by standing on your toes," you teased, reaching out to tug lightly at his sleeve.
The sunlight spilled across your face in such a way that made you look otherworldly. He was already far too gone in the trance put on him by the magic of you, and right at that moment, Soobin forgot how to stand. He forgot the line between reason and impulse (nothing to be surprised of), between what he should do and what he wanted.
He leaned down before he could stop himself, close enough for his shadow to blur with yours on the road. “Is it better this way?” he murmured.
It was a mistake. He knew it the moment his voice reached your ears, when your laughter stilled and your eyes flicked up to meet his, wide and startled and so alive that his breath trembled. How easily he could close that last distance between you and him. How impossible it truly was.
Then his senses caught up to him all at once. He straightened abruptly, hand flying to the bridge of his glasses — his oldest defense — adjusting them even though they hadn’t slipped. It gave him a moment, just one, to hide behind the pretense of composure. His jaw clenched faintly as he looked away.
But even as he stared forward, he could feel your gaze on him — the soft burn of it trailing along the curve of his neck, tracing the space he had left between you. He didn’t dare look at you. If he did, you’d see everything he’d been hiding, everything that now pulsed under his skin like fever.
“Do you—” he paused, clearing his throat as the words got caught, “do you want to take pictures? Before the sun goes down.” he sounded a little too careful but it did what he needed it to — it changed the air.
You glanced toward the horizon, where the light had begun to mellow into amber. “That’s a good idea,” you said after a beat. “You can take photos for the catalog too—the blooms look perfect today.”
He nodded, grateful for the excuse. Grateful to have something to do with his hands. He unzipped the canvas bag slung across his shoulder and pulled out the small, cream-colored Polaroid camera — a gift from you months ago, when you’d told him to capture memories before they faded. He took his time to capture everything he deemed beautiful but every few seconds, his gaze flickered to where you stood among the taller sunflowers, tucking loose strands of hair behind your ear which kept swaying by the breeze.
He raised the camera again, this time framing you against the wide sky.
When the film slid out, he watched it develop in his hand, the color slowly blooming into form. You tilted your head, watching him. “That’s not for the catalog,” you remarked with a gentle smile.
He met your gaze then. It was only for a second but enough to betray himself. He still wanted to indulge a little.
“No,” he admitted softly, “this one’s for me.” As well as be honest a little.
You let out a soft chuckle. Taking a few steps closer, you reached for the camera.
“Then this one—” you said, holding it toward him, “—is mine.”
He blinked, almost unmoored, before breaking into a helpless smile that could only exist when you were around. Hiwever, it was genuine.
As the photograph emerged, you held it by its edge beside the one he’d taken. Two fragments of the same light, caught forever in the same field of gold.
The metro was far more crowded than it had any right to be at that hour. Soobin stood near the door, one hand around the pole, the other hovering just behind your shoulder to keep anyone from bumping into you. You looked uneasy, shoulders drawn in, trying your best to fold into yourself without seeming rude.
Soobin knew you never liked standing amidst people in a densely populated place. He should’ve known better than to suggest the metro. And though it wasn’t entirely his fault, the sight of you pressing into the corner made his chest twist in guilt. So, without thinking much, he reached out and guided you gently by the elbow until you were tucked between him and the wall.
You fit there perfectly, shielded from the crowd completely by the breadth of his frame. You blinked up at him, a little startled. He looked down, suddenly aware of the closeness. His hand dropped back to his side almost immediately, flexing.
“Sorry,” he spoke in a hush tone. “I just thought you’d be more comfortable here.”
You shook your head with a smile, the corners of your eyes folding with quiet affection. “Dont be sorry. I appreciate you for always looking out for me, Soobin.”
He exhaled a soft laugh that came out more self-deprecating. “I’m not doing a great job right now. This was my bright idea, remember? Now you’re stuck here because of me.”
Your reply came with a small huff but still smiled. “I’m doing just fine. You're worrying too much.”
That shut him up in the gentlest way possible. You leaned your head back against the cool metal wall, eyelids fluttering shut. The sway of the carriage rocked your frame ever so slightly which seemed to lull you into a momentary calm. The tension in your shoulders eased little by little, and Soobin felt like he could rest assured now, eyes drifting to the reflection of the lights skimming across the glass.
The train lurched forward again and Soobin instinctively braced his hand on the wall beside your head to steady himself — and you. He was acutely aware of how close you were, of how the space between seemed to shrink with every passing second.
He debated whether to speak, to ask if you were all right just npw, but the question felt redundant. So instead, his free hand stayed close to yours, fingers twitching with the faintest restraint, close enough to offer balance if another sudden jolt came, but not near enough to betray the thought behind it.
Soobin didn’t like how your head was softly but repeatedly bumping against the wall with the vibration of the carriage. He at once balanced his hand on the handrail attached to the pole and the wall beside him, and angled his body in such a way that separated you completely from the crowd.
“Lean on me,” he said, with a faint trace of hesitation, almost shy.
Your eyes fluttered open, drowsy and questioning. “What?”
“You look like you’re about to fall asleep,” he reasoned though his heart was thudding in his chest. “Might as well be comfortable.”
You laughed under your breath, the sound sleepy. “What if your arm starts to cramp?”
He shook his head once, smiling faintly. Your protests fell deaf to his ears when the least he could do right now was to offer you even the slightest form of comfort. Even if it meant at the cost of his own.
“It won’t,” he simply stated. “I don’t mind.”
You studied him for a second longer before giving in. Slowly, tentatively, you tilted your head until it found its place against the crook of his arm. The weight was light but real, it was you and your warmth, and it sent a quiet tremor through him that he tried to swallow down. The realization that you trusted him enough to rest there so freely did wonders to his feelings.
“Comfortable?” he asked.
“Mhm,” you hummed, content. A few beats later, in a mellow tone, you added, “I had a really good time today.”
Soobin couldn’t help — and didn’t really fight — the glow of fondness from showing in his face. From anyone else’s eyes, the sight might have looked like a simple, affectionate tableau between lovers. But to him, it felt like standing on the edge of a dream he could neither step into nor wake from. The thought of being yours, even in some alternate world, felt cruel in its sweetness. It filled him and hollowed him out all at once like a heart beating for what it could never hold.
The vision of you as his lingered even when he dropped you off at your home. When you stopped in front of your door, he did too, his hands deep in his pockets, trying to mask the restlessness running through him. You waited for a few moments, causing him to question if everything was alright.
You didn’t use words. You stepped forward and wrapped your arms around him.
Soobin’s body went rigid before his instinct — no, longing — took over, and his hands found their way out of his pockets, hovering uncertainly. You fit so perfectly against him that it almost hurt. He prayed you couldn’t hear the chaotic thrum of his heartbeat. He was feeling so exposed, so bare in your embrace. After what felt like eons, he steadied himself before returning the embrace.
“What’s this? Are you missing the sunflowers already?” He joked despite feeling like he was on cloud nine.
It earned him a soft scoff from you before you mumbled a ‘oh, shut up.’ He wanted to breathe in your scent but he didn’t dare. Because if he did, it wouldn’t just be longing anymore. It would be surrender.
With your head still resting on his chest, you said with a smile, “Thank you for today, Soobin.”
It was the gentlest of words and yet it split him open cleanly without mercy. He felt, absurdly, as though the gods had reached into his chest and taken his heart between their hands, just to remind him what it meant to feel alive. You should never have to thank him. Being with you was never something that demanded gratitude.
When you pulled away, it was almost too much. He managed a smile, steadying his voice though it trembled at the edges. “Of course,” he said, meaning every word like a vow. “Anything for you.”
You lingered for a heartbeat longer before stepping inside. Soobin remained where he was, hands back in his pockets, watching as the door closed and the warm light spilled into the dusk for one final moment.
He felt like he could mimic a sunflower just fine.
Who knew that his love could deepen so irrevocably on an ordinary Wednesday?
There was a stem sitting in a chipped vase by the window. Once, it held a bloom — a pale carnation he’d forgotten to include in a bouquet he sold. Now it drooped, half-leaning toward the glass as though yearning for the outside light. He should throw it away, he thought, but didn’t. Instead, he watered it every morning, knowing it will never stand upright again.
Soobin never dreaded THURSDAYS until they became the most sorrowful day of the week.
The reason wasn’t because you stopped coming (that would have been easier to bear, he thought) but because you started bringing someone with you. A friend, who looked way too close to you than to Soobin’s liking.
His name was Choi Beomgyu.
When you first brought him over, Soobin’s smile faltered in the smallest way, mimicking a petal folding in on itself before falling. You’d introduced him brightly, and Beomgyu had offered a handshake and a grin that reached his eyes. He complimented the shop, the flowers, and the careful order of the bouquets but Soobin found himself unable to match his tone. Normally, such praise would have filled him with pride; after all, he loved his flowers and he loved it even more when others saw their worth and the effort he put behind his shop. But this time, every kind word felt like a stone dropped into his chest, until he could no longer tell whether it was jealousy or shame that weighed more.
Out of habit, Soobin reached for the jar near the counter to fish out a lemon candy, the way he always did whenever you came by. But as he was about to offer it to you, this Choi Beomgyu guy went, “Woah, lemon candy? I love those! Mind if I take one?”
And without waiting for an answer, he plucked one straight from the jar — your jar — and tore the wrapper open with his teeth, tossing the candy into his mouth. Soobin could only stare at the audacity, the scene unfolding before him like an intrusion into a world he thought was private. You laughed softly beside him, eyes bright as you turned to Beomgyu and said how glad you were to find someone else who liked lemon candies just as much as you did.
Soobin had a dozen things to say to you. He had stories to share, small and ordinary things of the mundane, and most importantly, you were supposed to talk his ears off as he worked. But with Beomgyu there, every thought dissolved on his tongue before he could speak it, melting away like the candy itself — leaving behind a bitter aftertaste he couldn’t swallow.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t seen you this giddy before, this radiant joy that came when you walked in every Thursday now with Beomgyu trailing behind as you show Beomgyu around, repeating the flower meanings Soobin himself had taught you. Maybe it was because when you explained how yellow carnations meant rejection and disappointment, you were unaware of how the words sat cruelly poetic in his chest. Maybe it was because on Thursdays, you two sat side by side, working through your assignments while Soobin watered stems that no longer needed tending.
It was ridiculous, he knew; you were right there, just a few feet away, but each passing moment made it feel like he was watching from behind glass, separated by a barrier invisible yet impenetrable.
He didn’t expect jealousy to feel like this smoldering ache that crawled up from his ribs, until even breathing felt like torment. So he looked away from where you sat with Beomgyu and fixed his eyes instead on the vase in front of him — a vase full of yellow carnations — and wished the water would somehow saturate the burning ache within him.
Even if he had you to himself for the rest of the week, this single Thursday without you felt like an emptiness that could not be reasoned with.
By the fourth Thursday, Beomgyu had somehow folded himself into the routine. The first few times, Soobin told himself it was temporary, that your friend would grow bored of tagging along to a flower shop but no. It wasn’t even surprising anymore to hear his voice before yours. Soobin was going to need a while to get used to it.
Soobin had tried, for a time, to dislike him on principle. But Beomgyu was unfairly difficult to hate because in all honesty he was a really nice guy. Even Jisoo liked him — especially Jisoo, which only made Soobin’s quiet resentment feel more childish. His morals acted up quickly and Soobin started to feel ashamed for even trying to villanize that poor dude.
Sometimes, at lunch, the four of them ate together. Jisoo would bring pasta or kimbap, Beomgyu would start talking about anything and could turn a dull story into something worth listening to. And you would laugh until your eyes disappeared into crescents. It should’ve been a pleasant routine — it was pleasant — but to Soobin, every laugh sounded like a reminder that the world was far too eager to share you. As stupid as it sounded, but oftentimes, it made Soobin feel like an intruder in his own shop.
On such a Thursday, they gathered around the small table full of disposable boxes, eating lunch and chatting. It wasn’t like Soobin wasn’t participating; he was. With everyone, just to be clear. Even Beomgyu, who for some reason had taken an immense liking to him, declaring him an honorary holder of the “platinum bro code card” and insisting they were now bound by friendship. Said friendship was in the stage where it was mostly Beomgyu landing actual good jokes. And to his inner horror, Soobin actually took them — found himself laughing along, responding, even joking back.
Amid the easy back-and-forth, Soobin’s gaze landed on you for the briefest moment, and his breath caught at the sight of you smiling softly — at him — like you were proud of something he’d said or done without realizing. The sight scattered his composure so he averted his eyes too quickly and, to cover the moment, picked up a forkful of pasta from Beomgyu’s box and shoved it straight into the other’s mouth. Beomgyu squawked through a laugh, nearly choking, while you laughed behind your hand.
By the time the food had dwindled to scraps, Jisoo was the first to excuse himself to check on the nursery. Beomgyu started helping with the clean-up, handing Soobin the empty boxes, and the three of you continued to talk about everything and nothing — university projects, the upcoming rain, some movie Beomgyu insisted you both needed to see.
Soobin stood up from his chair with the boxes when he noticed a smear of sauce at the corner of your lips. He looked around for some tissue to grab but his mind went static when he heard Beomgyu talk.
“Hey, you’ve got—wait, here,” Beomgyu said, pointing at his own mouth, laughing. “You’ve got something right there—”
That — that imagination of Choi Beomgyu wiping sauce off your lips, right in front of him as he watched it happen, was immensely and totally wrong on many levels. It didn’t sit right with him. He would be one of the biggest fools to walk on earth if he allowed it to happen.
Soobin had already grabbed your chin before Beomgyu could even lift one finger. His knuckles curled beneath your chin, guiding your face toward him before tilting your face up to look at him. Soobin’s eyes were unreadable when he gently wiped the smudge of sauce from the corner of your lips with his thumb — when he brought that thumb to his mouth and licked it clean.
If someone dropped a pin at that moment, the sound would resonate through the entire place.
Without a word, Soobin walked away toward the sink at the back of the shop. He dumped the boxes into the bin, pressed both hands to the edge of the sink with his head bowed and exhaled hard.
He couldn’t explain what possessed him. His pulse was loud in his ears, his thoughts a mess of disbelief and heat. He pressed the back of his hand against his mouth, trying to erase the phantom feeling of your skin beneath his thumb. Your lips were so soft. Fuck.
It shouldn’t have felt that good. It shouldn’t have felt like anything at all.
He stood there in disbelief realizing how much he wanted to feel it again.
Behind him came the sound of you choking slightly on your next bite of pasta, Beomgyu’s startled voice asking if you were all right followed by the scrape of a chair. Soobin shut his eyes and cursed under his breath, feeling the heat crawl up his neck.
Despite feeling like his entire body was on fire, Soobin’s lips twitched, the faintest ghost of a smirk forming before he exhaled and tipped his head back to stare at the ceiling.
He couldn’t believe he’d done that. But God, it felt good.
It was a Thursday like any other. Except this time, when the bell above the door chimed, it wasn’t you who entered. It was Beomgyu, and he was alone.
His mind needed an extra beat to process that the space beside Beomgyu was empty. Soobin’s first thought was something’s happened to you. He hastily checked his phone to see if he missed any texts or calls from you, but there was none.
His focus was momentarily pulled away from you by Beomgyu’s greeting. Soobin, still thrown, returned it with a polite nod while fixing his glasses. But the question pressed insistently behind his composure — what was he doing here, and alone of all things? He never came without you.
“You can wait in the shop until she comes over. It should be another hour or so.” His hand was already moving toward the small fridge at the corner. “Want anything to drink? I’ve got—uh, iced tea. Coffee, too, if you’d rather—”
A low chuckle interrupted him, stopping him mid-step. “Oh, no.” Beomgyu shook his head. “I’m not here for her. Well—technically, I am.” Then, after a pause that sounded too intentional to make Soobin turn, Beomgyu added with a grin, “But not in the way you think.”
Soobin frowned faintly. “I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on that, Beomgyu.”
Beomgyu didn’t answer right away; he drummed his fingers against the counter, gaze sweeping across the room as if admiring the shop. “I wanted a bouquet made.”
The words, on their own, were harmless. Soobin had heard them countless times before. Yet, paired with the conversation’s earlier turn, they carried a strange undercurrent that made his chest constrict. Still, he defaulted to familiarity, grasping at professionalism. “That can be done,” he said, pulling the small catalogue closer and flipping it open to the section on mixed arrangements. “Any idea what kind of flowers you’re thinking?”
“All her favourites.”
The catalogue stilled between his fingers. It took a moment for the words to truly register, and when they did, Soobin felt devastation sinking in his chest. He looked at Beomgyu hastily, mortified. “What?” he blurted out without schooling his tone.
Beomgyu gave a small shrug, his hands slipping into his pockets as if this entire conversation weren’t splitting Soobin open from the inside out. “You know her favourites better than anyone,” Beomgyu said lightly, like that explained everything. “So, really, asking you just made sense.” Then, he tilted his head slightly, that same grin curving into a sly smirk. “I’m thinking of asking her out.”
For a brief, excruciating second, his entire world swayed. Everything around him dissipated until all that remained was white noise that rested upon his eyelids. All he could hear was that sentence repeating itself over and over in the confines of his skull. I’m thinking of asking her out.
“She’s not—” The rest of the sentence collapsed, leaving the words half-born and useless. You weren’t his to defend, and yet, how could he stop the instinct? You were the unreachable star he loved from afar because he thought loving you silently was the only way to keep you safe from his inadequacy and the cruelest part was that it had been entirely his choice. But now, hearing Beomgyu say those words aloud — words that should have belonged to him if he weren’t so terrified of deserving you — was like standing at the edge of a cliff.
“She’s what?” Beomgyu pressed. He straightened, his expression open but his eyes glinting. “What’s stopping me? Unless—” He let his voice trail off, pretending to think, before leaning his elbows on the counter with an exaggerated look of realization. “Unless you’ve got a problem with it.”
Soobin’s fingers curled against his palms until his nails bit into skin. He had no claim, no right — you were not his, not an object to be guarded or possessed but every fibre of him still burned with the injustice of it. Because his heart always refused to obey what his mind already knew.
“You had your chance,” Beomgyu leaned closer, his voice dipping into a quiet, almost friendly murmur. “You didn’t take it. So tell me, Soobin—why shouldn’t I?”
A terrible and hollow realization dawned upon Soobin that he was standing on the edge of that same invisible cliff again, staring into an expanse where only your name existed, carried faintly by the wind. The room had gone still again; Beomgyu’s words still echoed in the air, but vaguely now. It was almost like Soobin had lost grip on reality.
His love for you had always been immense, alive and untamed, too large for the body that tried to hold it. But what if it wasn’t enough? What if Beomgyu could give you something more deserving than the silent devotion of a man who couldn’t even say the words out loud?
He loved you — so much, so fervently, so ardently — that sometimes he feared his heart might tear itself apart from the strain of it. His love spilled through the cracks of him, too much to hold in his cupped hands. It drenched every part of him, soaked through every thought, and yet he could never seem to give it shape. He was a florist, and perhaps that was why his love had always been wordless. He loved in petals and stems, in silent acts of care hoping you’d somehow see his heart in the language of flowers.
But that was never enough, was it?
He wasn’t a poet, and he was barely a lover. Just a man hopelessly in love, drowning in devotion he could neither voice nor abandon.
When he spoke, his voice sounded unfamiliar to his own ears. “Just—give me a moment,” he murmured to Beomgyu, in almost the same voice he used with customers. “I’ll start on your bouquet right away.”
He turned toward the rows of flowers. Blooms in every shade of tenderness and grief — and he stood there for a long time without moving. Part of him thought, absurdly, that he could be cruel. That he could choose the wrong flowers, something mismatched, something unworthy of you, and hand it to Beomgyu. It would’ve been easy — so heartbreakingly easy — to let pettiness bloom where love had once been.
But his hands wouldn’t listen. Even now, even when his chest ached like an open wound, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He could not arrange a bouquet meant for you with the wrong flowers. He could not betray his love by staining it with spite.
So his hands reach for the stems with memory, with love. He picked the soft pink roses first — the only shade of rose you adored — and paired them with tiny clusters of baby’s breath, white and blush-pink, your favourite of them all. A few sprigs of lavender followed, delicate and faintly fragrant, the scent you always said reminded you of calm. He filled the spaces with greens to make the bouquet feel whole. When it came to wrapping, he didn’t even hesitate to choose a transparent paper, you loved it because it let the colours breathe.
He tied it all together with a thin white satin ribbon, hands steady despite the tremor beneath his skin. By the time he was done, his heart stopped thrashing but there was still a small, sad smile on his lips. When he slid the bouquet across the counter, his voice was distant.
“It’s done.”
Beomgyu looked at the arrangement, eyes scanning the blooms before smiling almost kindly. “Ah,” he sighed, eyes still on the roses. “These are her favourites, huh? Figures. You really do know her best.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few bills and placed them neatly on the counter — but before Soobin could reach for them, Beomgyu nudged the bouquet back across the counter. “Keep the bouquet.”
Soobin’s head lifted, his brow creasing faintly. “Stop the crap, Beomgyu, why would I—”
“You really are hopeless,” Beomgyu muttered, clicking his tongue. Over the counter he jabbed a finger at Soobin’s chest looking him dead in the eye. “You think she doesn’t notice the way you look at her? Take it, before I change my mind.” Beomgyu straightened with an exasperated sigh before softly, like an afterthought, added, “You make it too easy to feel sorry for you, hyung.”
Soobin did not get a chance to ask for an explanation because Beomgyu was already half out the door, then paused with a thoughtful glance over his shoulder. “But I’ll still ask her out,” he said easily. “Because I don’t like losing, or stepping back from a challenge.”
With that, he was gone.
Soobin stood there in the silence that followed. His eyes lingered on the bouquet that still rested on the counter, petals trembling faintly in the draft that came from the open door.
Somewhere behind him, from the vase crowded with yellow carnations, a single bloom loosened from its stem and fell soundlessly onto the shelf below.
It was the first time Soobin ever kept the shop closed on a FRIDAY.
He stood in the university courtyard, eyes vacant and upturned to the sky as the first drops of rain slid through his hair and seeped into his collar. Yesterday’s encounter with Beomgyu left him grappling with his haywired emotions and then, a few hours later, your text came.
soobiiiin im sorry i cant come by today :((
That simple line added insult to injury. It felt like confirmation of every fear that had been gnawing at him since he saw Beomgyu. He imagined the two of you walking home together under a sky that should’ve been his to share with you. Soobin had spent the rest of that Thursday staring at the same page of the shop ledger, pen idle in his hand, unable to make sense of numbers or words.
Now, as he came out from his early morning class and stood under the dismal sky, it was as if the sky too understood the depth of his grief and let down its showers in hopes of washing some of it away. He should have looked for shelter but he lingered instead, watching the way water gathered in the cracks between cobblestones, how it carried fallen petals and bits of paper into small streams.
It was, admittedly, not a wise decision to walk home in it. By midday, his throat burned with every swallow, and his nose prickled from the chill. The fever was faint then — a warning he ignored. It became by afternoon, one of the reasons he had to keep the shop closed. When Jisoo offered to take over for the day, Soobin refused, insisting on locking up entirely and sending him home.
Isolating himself when he was at his lowest was one of Soobin’s many flaws. Despite granting him the space to think, it did nothing to help the fact that he was sick and most of his consciousness had now become a slave to drowsiness. Paired with heartbreak, Soobin was not in the right state of mind to be greeting customers with a smile in a place full of beauty that only reminded him of you.
Had he known you before this? In some other life, were you someone he had loved and lost over and over again? Because none of this made sense. This ache didn’t belong to the present — it felt older, as though it had lived in him long before he ever met you. How long had he been without you to feel this way now?
The fever came and went, mostly in the evenings, leaving him weaker each time it ebbed. One moment he was shivering under the blanket, and the next, heat licked through his skin until even breathing hurt. On the bedside table sat a half-empty glass of water and a few crumpled tissues, a tableau of his own negligence. The medicine packet lay open, though he couldn’t remember if he had taken the next dose or not. His head throbbed too much to care.
He lay sprawled on the bed, hair damp against the pillow. His throat scraped with every swallow, raw from hours of coughing. He’d given up on sitting upright hours ago — even lifting his head felt like work.
Through the blur of half-sleep, he caught sight of the camellias on his balcony swaying in the wind. Their petals were bright even under the grey sky. He stared until the colors melted into the haze of his fever. You liked camellias. He wondered if you were with Beomgyu. The idea soured his stomach and before he realized it, his eyes were watering. He sniffled, pressed the back of his hand to his nose and turned over, trying to will himself into sleep.
He wasn’t sure how long he had been asleep before through the haze, he thought he heard his name. Hallucinating, he decided dimly. Fever dreams, that’s all. But the sound came again, clearer now, closer, and when his eyelids fluttered open, the blur at the edge of his vision focused into… you?
What were you doing here?
You were standing in the doorway of his room holding a closed umbrella. Your eyes were wide with alarm. For a long second, he wondered if this was still part of the dream. Your voice sounded too real though for it to be a dream. Panicked, even.
“Oh my god—” You crossed the room in an instant, dropping your bag somewhere near the chair. Your hand landed on his forehead, then his cheek. “Soobin, you’re burning up. What the hell, why didn’t you tell me?” Your voice broke off mid-sentence, tangled with disbelief. “Okay, okay, it’s fine, um—just… just wait for me, okay?”
You disappeared into the kitchen. He picked up a few distinct sounds like the clatter of cupboards, the rush of water from the tap and your hurried footsteps. The mattress dipped beside him, and the next thing he knew, you were pressing a damp towel against his forehead. The shock of it made him flinch, but the relief that followed was enough to draw a small, strangled sigh from him.
You exhaled shakily, wringing out the towel in the bowl you’d brought. “Did you even drink water? Have you taken your meds?” You glanced around at the bedside table, frowning at the open packet. “You probably didn’t take the next dose, did you? Of course you didn’t.”
He tried to speak, but it came out as a rasp, and you shushed him while adjusting the towel again. “Shh, don’t talk,” you said, hand brushing damp hair from his eyes. “You’re such an idiot. You could’ve just called.”
He would have laughed if his throat didn’t hurt so much. He forced his eyes open a little wider, though the effort drained what little strength he had left. It didn’t matter because he wanted to see you properly.
He must still be dreaming. The fever might have reached its cruelest peak, gifting him a hallucination so gentle it hurt to believe in it. Because how could you be here — in his apartment, taking care of him — when he had spent the past day convincing himself you were better off somewhere else? With someone else.
“I didn’t…” he started weakly, voice little more than a whisper. “Didn’t wanna bother you.”
You stared at him for a beat, lips parting as though to speak. Then you exhaled sharply, almost a laugh but not quite. “Bother me?” you echoed, shaking your head. “You idiot, you—” The words tripped over a breath and you bit them back, your shoulders sagging as if scolding him required more strength than you had. “God, Soobin.”
He closed his eyes when you pressed the cold cloth to his neck this time. You kept changing it, wiping his forehead, brushing damp strands of hair away, murmuring half-thoughts under your breath that he could barely piece together. He caught fragments: too hot, should’ve called, stupid boy, what if.
After a long silence, he whispered, “Are you mad at me?”
You seemed to still completely, towel halfway to the bowl. Your head turned, confusion written across your features. “Mad at you?” you repeated softly, the disbelief in your voice almost tender. “Soobin, why would I be mad?”
“I didn’t answer your texts,” he mumbled. His voice cracked halfway through. “I thought… maybe you’d—”
His words fell apart midway as a cough wracked through his chest until his ribs ached. You were already reaching for the glass, one hand steadying his shoulder as you lifted it to his lips. “Slowly,” you said, coaxing him to drink. “Small sips. You’ll choke otherwise.”
He obeyed, taking in just enough to ease the burn in his throat. When he settled back, he found you watching him, your expression softening that made his heart twist. You let out a quiet sigh and caressed his temple, fingertips cool against his fevered skin.
“Don’t be stupid,” you said, this time without any sharpness, just a weary affection. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
He looked at you, eyes glossy from fever, and for a moment he felt like he fell in love with you all over again. Te realization that you were — in fact — still there and close enough for him to see the faint tremor of your lashes, to count the breaths you took as each one anchored him to this specific moment.
“Can you stay?” His hand found yours, clumsy and shaking. “Please? I know you’d rather be—”
“Nowhere else.”
Your fingers tightened around his as your thumb traced steady lines over his knuckles. Then your other hand threaded gently through his hair, brushing it back from his damp forehead.
“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than with you,” you murmured, cupping his cheek.
He thought he might cry again from this strange, fragile joy that flooded his chest. The room soon dimmed, your presence the last thing he felt before sleep dragged him under.
When Soobin woke, the light filtering through the curtains had turned a pale gold that made him squint. His throat still felt scraped raw, but the fire beneath his skin had cooled into a dull warmth; more tolerable now than torturous. He blinked toward the window, then at his phone on the nightstand that read 10:03 a.m.
The sight should have been comforting had it not been for suddenly seeing your sleeping figure on the couch. You were still in yesterday’s clothes, a blanket draped clumsily over your legs, your head tilted toward your shoulder in an uncomfortable angle. A book lay facedown beside you and on the table next to it sat a glass of water gone flat. You must’ve skipped class, or worse, missed it completely because of him.
He tried to sit up, a poor decision that immediately sent a rush of dizziness through him. He reached out blindly for the bedside table, his palm knocking against the glass and sending it rattling against the wood. The sound startled you awake.
You straightened abruptly, blinking against the light before your eyes snapped to him. “Soobin—hey, what are you doing?” You were already up, the blanket falling from your lap as you crossed the small space between the couch and his bed. The book hit the floor with a dull thud.
He gaped at you, disoriented. “You’re gonna be late,” he said again, fumbling for the blanket as if he could somehow usher you out. “You should go—it’s morning already—you have class—”
You caught his wrist before he could push himself up again, guiding him back to prop up against the headboard. “Soobin,” you lowered your voice, as if coaxing a restless child back into bed. “It’s Saturday.” You pressed a hand to his shoulder, keeping him from rising again.
“Oh,” he said lamely, eyes dropping to the blanket pooled at his waist. “Right. Saturday. Sorry, I still feel a little out of it.” He remembered, belatedly, that you didn’t have classes on Saturdays.
“Clearly,” you muttered, moving to pick up the fallen book from the floor. “You scared the hell out of me last night.” You set the book down on the nightstand this time, glancing at him over your shoulder before coming to sit at his side on the bed. Soobin scooted away a little to make space for you.
You stayed seated at his side for a while, waiting until the uneven rhythm of his breathing steadied again. He felt the need to talk to you; didn’t know about what but he still wanted to. You, however, beat him to it.
“Yesterday…” you started, drawing your knees up onto the edge of his bed, “you weren’t answering any calls. I thought maybe you fell asleep early, but then it got late, and you still didn’t text back. So I panicked—a little,” you added quickly, though the faint crease between your brows said otherwise. “I grabbed my umbrella and ran to the shop, thinking maybe you were still there, only to find the door locked and lights out.” You gave a small, humorless laugh, shaking your head.
He did not interrupt you, letting you spew out everything.
“I stood there for five minutes like an idiot before remembering you gave me a spare key, and thank god you did.” You exhaled sharply, pressing your lips together. “I was honestly pretty terrified seeing you like that. You were burning up, Soobin. I know a fever’s supposed to be harmless most times, but it didn’t look harmless to me.”
“It was raining,” he tried to weakly argue but his resolve faltered when you narrowed your eyes. “You could’ve caught a cold. You didn’t even know if I was at home.”
“Even if I knew,” you shot back with a small frown. “What did you expect me to do? Just text ‘feel better’ and go to sleep?”
He let out a small, rough laugh that broke too easily into silence. “I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“You didn’t mean to,” you echoed softly, glancing down at your hands, “but you still did. Next time, just send a message, alright? It takes two seconds. My heart can only take so much near-death panic.”
He thought about how easy it was to fall into silence, to let the days fold over him until people stopped asking if he was fine. He’d told himself solitude made things simpler, but looking at you now, eyes still red from lack of sleep and worry, he felt the truth of what it cost.
“I’m sorry,” he said finally, voice thin as paper. The words weren’t only for last night; they bled from deeper parts of his heart for all the times you were made to go through exhausting situations for him.
You leaned forward, reaching for his glasses on the nightstand. “Apology accepted,” you said softly, slipping them on him with care. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I’d hate it if something happened to you and I didn’t know.”
Your fingertipss brushed against his skin before you drew your hand back. His soul felt like it was cleaved wide open.
The moment was disrupted by the doorbell.
Soobin met your eyes for a brief moment. He had a feeling you both already guessed the identity of your uninvited visitor. Sure enough, Jisoo stood at the door. He was visibly fuming with smoke coming out of his ears. In one arm, he balanced two paper bags, the other occupied with pointing an accusatory finger behind you before you could even greet him.
“Do you have a death wish?” he demanded, stepping inside without invitation. “Because that’s the only logical explanation for this level of idiocy. You look like a dying Victorian child!”
“Good morning to you too,” Soobin muttered from the bed, waving a hand.
Jisoo ignored that entirely and instead turned back to you to greet you with a smile. He set the bags down on the table, tearing one open. “Breakfast,” he announced, though it sounded less like generosity and more like punishment. “Because apparently I’m surrounded by idiots who forget they are human.”
You tilted your head, assessing the situation. “Soobin, did you tell Jisoo to leave early last night?”
“Oh, he did,” Jisoo fired back, dropping into the chair beside the bed. “he said, and I quote—‘I’m fine, Jisoo, go home, I’ll lock up.’” He deepened Soobin’s voice with painful accuracy. “And now look at him—he looks like he’s been through hell and back!”
Soobin exhaled through his nose, rubbing a palm over his face as if that could erase both fatigue and embarrassment. “I didn’t think it was that bad,” he said, though even he didn’t sound convinced.
Jisoo scoffed, pulling out a thermos from one of the bags and unscrewing the lid with unnecessary force. “That’s the problem—you never think it’s ‘that bad’ until someone has to carry your half-dead body off the floor.” He poured steaming porridge into a bowl and shoved it toward Soobin.
You stifled a laugh behind your hand, murmuring, “He’s not wrong.”
Soobin gave a weak shrug, though his mouth curved slightly. “I’m sorry for making you worry. But I really am fine now.” He hesitated, eyes flickering from you to Jisoo. “I really don’t deserve you guys.”
Jisoo groaned. “You’re damn right you don’t,” he said, though his hands betrayed him by reaching over to pull the blanket back up to Soobin’s chest. He glanced at you briefly, muttering under his breath, “You spoil him too much.”
You arched an eyebrow. “Someone has to. He nearly cooked himself alive yesterday.”
Soobin felt his lips curl into a smile when he saw you and Jisoo exchange a look then — shared exasperation wrapped in affection. Jisoo gave him the stink eye.
“Don’t look at me like that. You’re banned from the shop until you can stand without wobbling.” Jisoo straightened his posture and jabbed a finger toward Soobin’s nose, trying to summon authority in front of his boss. Soobin decided to let it go this once. “I’m running it till you’re back, and I don’t wanna hear a single word of protest.”
Soobin raised his hands in surrender, that same faint smile growing genuine. “I wasn’t going to argue.”
“Good,” Jisoo muttered, snatching up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. “Because I’ve already hidden the spare keys. Don’t even try to look for them.”
You snorted. “He will, you know.”
“Then I’ll move them again.” Jisoo huffed, shooting Soobin one last warning glance before heading for the door. He paused, turning back just long enough to add, more softly, “Just rest, alright? You can’t run a shop if you drop dead first.”
The days blurred into each other after that. You came every day, sometimes with food, sometimes with books and the only difference was that before, it was you coming over to his shop, and now, in his home. In a sense, nothing really changed at all.
He had told you it wasn’t necessary, more than once, but you never listened. And though he tried to keep a respectable distance in fear of spreading his flu to you, standing by the counter while you moved about the stove, he couldn’t stop the thoughts that crept in. the same treacherous ones that painted pictures of you staying longer than you should, of your books finding space beside his, of a life that wasn’t temporary.
A vision of you living with him; something he wanted to coin as ‘forever’.
He had to snap out of his daydreams before the longing killed him.
One afternoon, you appeared holding a small stack of papers bound together with a paperclip. You placed it on his lap where he was sitting on his bed reading a book.
“What’s all this?” he asked, pushing his glasses up and flipping through the pages.
“Notes,” you replied, as if it were obvious. “I asked your classmates to send me what you’ve missed so far.”
He glanced from the stack to your face and back again. He was stunned by your thoughtfulness, and perhaps he looked like a gaping fish at a loss of words because you took one look at him and snorted.
You didn’t look particularly pleased with yourself. You sat cross-legged on the floor near the coffee table and uncapped your pen with a click. “It’s not a big deal. You’d do the same if it were me.”
He didn’t say anything to that but you both knew you weren’t wrong about it. Yet, Soobin learned that being around you makes him want to do better, and be more outspoken with his feelings. And he wanted to be better for you.
He let out a soft, “Thank you.”
You waved a hand, already bent over your workbook. “Don’t get sentimental on me. It’s barely anything.” A pause, the faint scratch of your pen against paper, and then you added almost absently, “Oh—Beomgyu’s coming by to help at the shop.”
The back of his neck stung. “Beomgyu?”
“Mhm,” you hummed, not looking up. “He offered. Said he could help restock and handle the counter till you’re better. You should hurry up and recover soon—the flowers are starting to sulk without you.”
He huffed a quiet laugh, shaking his head. “The flowers are fine.”
“No, they’re not,” you countered softly, still writing. “They miss you.”
There was a pause — long enough for him to think that was the end of it, and his mind started to wander to unpleasant territory after hearing beomgyu’s name. Before he could think of what to say, your pen stopped moving, your eyes still fixed on the page.
“I miss you.”
Soobin’s gaze stilled despite the storm that began to brew behind his eyes. Beomgyu’s words resurfaced in his mind— you think she doesn’t notice the way you look at her? — and for a fleeting second, Soobin thought maybe you did know. Maybe you had known all along.
Because the things you said to him, the way you treated him, they lifted him to the heavens and gave him hope. Hope that he feared might betray him if it was misplaced. However, the question still hung unspoken in his mind — about Beomgyu, about what he’d said, about whether he’s going too ahead of himself and reading your intentions wrong and if your words just now were only friendly. Because Soobin couldn’t really tell.
Thinking about the devil brings him to your doorstep — Soobin should’ve believed that phrase by now.
“Yo, boss,” Beomgyu drawled from the doorway, grin wide and infuriating. He was leaning one shoulder against the frame. “Still alive, I see.”
You turned, delighted. “Beomgyu! You’re here early.”
He flashed you a smile too clean to be sincere. “Jisoo needed help with the new shipment, didn’t he? Why don’t you go lend him a hand? I’ll keep Soobin company.” His tone was harmlessly casual.
Soobin only gave a mild nod when you glanced his way, though the faint crease between his brows betrayed his suspicion. Beomgyu’s grin dwindled into a smirk the moment you left. He even had the audacity to wink at Soobin.
Soobin exhaled through his nose, setting his book aside. “If you’re here to bother me, just say so.”
“Not bother,” Beomgyu said, moving toward the windows and flicking open the latch to let in a stream of morning air. “Motivate!” He plucked an apple from the fruit bowl on the cabinet, turning it over in his hand as though appraising its worth. “So, did you miss me?”
Soobin wanted to get to the point. “Did you succeed then?” He regarded him dryly.
Beomgyu sank into the couch across from him, taking a bite of the apple. “In taking her out? Yeah.” He let out an exaggerated sigh, placing a hand over his heart. “But the entire time—” he waved the apple vaguely in the air, “—she talked about you.”
Soobin blinked, the words slipping past him at first — until they didn’t. “What do you mean ‘talked about me’?”
“I meant exactly what I said,” Beomgyu spoke around another bite, before standing up and pacing slowly around the room. “Couldn’t get two sentences in without your name popping up. I knew right away I didn’t stand a chance. Gotta say, though, it bruised my ego a little.” He pointed the apple at Soobin. “So maybe, y’know, man up and take your chance already. You’d do everyone—and their mothers—a favour.”
Soobin could only stare off in space. His thoughts ran in frantic circles, every word Beomgyu said setting off sparks behind his eyes. You talked about him? That much? He tried to picture what you might’ve said, what parts of him you thought worth mentioning — and found the idea too delicate for his overjoyed heart.
Beomgyu snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Hey. Earth to Soobin.” He squinted, then pointed the apple again. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re daydreaming right now. Look at you — you’re totally fantasizing about her. Ewwwww~”
“What— no!” Soobin spluttered, grabbing the nearest pillow and hurling it across the room.
Beomgyu ducked, laughing so hard his shoulders shook. “You totally are! Look at you, all flushed. You’re hopelessly in love.” he managed between breaths.
Soobin groaned into his hand. “Did you ever like her?” The question slipped out. He looked up again, cautious but curious. “You said you did.”
Beomgyu’s laughter died down to a few huffs as he sank into the couch again, still grinning. “Alright, fine. Serious talk.”
Soobin frowned, getting up from bed. “Did you?” he repeated as he fetched a glass of water from the kitchen.
“Oh. Uh, not like that.” Beomgyu chewed on his lip, then shrugged. “I like her, sure — she’s a good person. But romantically? Nah.” He gestured loosely toward Soobin, eyes glinting with mischief again. “You were giving me such a look that day, so I figured I’d rile you up a little. Didn’t think it’d work that well.”
Soobin frowned, recalling the unease he’d felt that Thursday when Beomgyu had mentioned asking you out. The irritation resurfaced, though now mingled with reluctant embarrassment. “That’s not what you said last Thursday.”
Beomgyu smirked, tossing the apple core into the bin. “What, you thought I was serious?”
Soobin stared at him, words slipping through his grasp. Nothing about him moved except the faint twitch in his jaw.
Beomgyu hesitated. “Hey, don’t look at me like that,” he said, laughter bubbling up again. “You can’t tell me it wasn’t funny.”
It wasn’t. For days, he had been haunted by that single conversation, replaying it in the back of his mind. He could still feel the echo of every unnecessary thought he’d had since. Soobin came to a conclusion right then and there that if there’s anyone who could test his patience to an excruciating extent, it’s Choi Beomgyu. How ridiculous, he thought. How utterly, painfully ridiculous to have spent nights overthinking when Beomgyu had only wanted a laugh.
Soobin gently put the glass down on the table before taking a deep breath. The next thing Beomgyu knew, he was caught in a headlock.
“HEY—WAIT—SOOBIN—!”
Their shouts and laughter resonated through the apartment; Beomgyu shrieking for his life while Soobin held him in place, spewing half-hearted curses until it felt less like a sickroom and more like the friendship that was bound to take root.
SATURDAY made Soobin ricochet between certainties and doubts until you gently cradled his heart in your palms and kissed it.
Jisoo had dragged everyone out on the excuse of celebrating Soobin’s recovery, but the moment the bill arrived, all eyes turned to him with suspicious coordination. Beomgyu was the first to pat his shoulder and declare that the boy who lived should at least buy lunch. Jisoo nearly choked on his drink from laughing, and you—of all people—hid your grin behind the rim of your glass as if your loyalty could be bought with a smile. Soobin had sighed, pulled out his wallet, and decided that maybe feeding his friends was still preferable to the silence of his empty apartment.
When the meal ended, Jisoo announced that he’ll return to the shop, encouraging Soobin to ‘enjoy the rest of the day’. Beomgyu stayed behind for a moment, leaning closer to Soobin under the pretense of fixing his shirt. “If you don’t say something today, I swear I’ll do it for you,” he threatened with a smile. “You’ve had two years, Soobin. Make your move.” Then he gave Soobin a shove that nearly made him stumble into you, and left before Soobin could even retort.
That left you and him standing under the awning. He, too, wanted to make the most of the time and was unwilling to let the day end. “Do you want to do anything else before heading home?” he asked, trying to sound casual but praying you wouldn’t say no.
You tilted your head slightly and smiled as if you were already one step ahead of him. “Actually, yes,” you said, unlocking your phone and holding it out for him to see. On the screen was a poster for a lantern festival not far from the riverside. “It says it starts at sunset. We could go check it out?”
“Of course. I’ll take you there.”
The venue was a mosaic of color and sound. Children ran around with paper lanterns shaped like stars and rabbits; vendors shouted over each other selling skewers, candied fruit, roasted chestnuts. You reached for his sleeve more than once, tugging him toward stalls that caught your eyes — an old man folding paper cranes, a painter who would draw quick portraits in ink. Soobin bought you skewered fishcakes and handed one over before you even asked, his lips tugging up when you took it with an exaggerated hum of approval. At one point, you dragged him toward a photo booth tucked between two food stalls. The flash caught the softest smile he’d worn in weeks.
By the time the sun began to fall, the crowd had thickened. Soobin had his height advantage but he was worried about you since you didn't do well in crowds. While he was thinking of taking you to a much less crowded place, his entire mind came to a static stop when he felt your hand slipping into his. You looked up at him, eyes reflecting the orange of a hundred paper lanterns. Your fingers slowly intertwined with his. You didn’t say anything, but the small curve of your smile was enough to make him forget every other noise around him.
When the call came for everyone to light their lanterns, Soobin took one and handed it to you. Together, you crouched near the edge of the riverbank, the paper glowing faintly between your palms. Around you, the first wave of lanterns began to rise, painting the twilight sky with gold.
“Make a wish,” you giggled, your eyes falling shut.
Soobin looked at you instead. The wind lifted a strand of your hair; the light touched your face in a way that made every thought blur. He could have wished for many things but all that came to him was you.
When you opened your eyes again, you smiled and released the lantern. It drifted upward, joining the others until it became just another glowing dot among others.
“Hey, Soobin?” You kept watching the sky. “Do you worry too much about expressing yourself all the time? specially with me?”
He turned to you, brows drawing together. “What makes you say that?”
You chuckled softly, the sound easing into the evening air. “Because I like every side of you. Even when you’re quiet. Some silences feel empty, but ours never does. You know how people say certain silences are so comfortable that you could sit in them forever? I feel that with you.”
Soobin suddenly thought of the bouquet Beomgyu made him make, the one he never gave you. “Can I take you somewhere before you go home?” he asked suddenly. It had to be now.
“Sure,” you said, curious. “Where?”
“My shop.”
Jisoo’s shift ended earlier so the shop was empty.
Soobin gave you a dimpled smile as you perched yourself on the stool near the counter. Witht the same devotion and love, his hands put together a bouquet of you rfavourite flowers. You watched him fondly, it was that intensity of your gaze that made it hard for him to keep his hands steady. He felt like he put extra care into making this one, tracing every micro expression on your face when he held the bouquet in front of you.
“What’s all this?” you asked, laughing softly as you took it.
“My way of saying thank you,” he said, pushing his glasses up. “And my way of saying I’m sorry. For making you worry when I was sick… and for everything else. For everything you’ve done for me.”
You held the bouquet close, nose brushing against the petals. “They’re beautiful,” you said sincerely. “Thank you, Soobin.”
He smiled but what he wanted was to close the space between you, to hold you instead of the air. The thought stayed caged behind his ribs, fluttering restlessly as you smiled at him over the flowers.
He walked you back home that night. It was truly a miracle he hadn’t fallen apart already when everytime your knuckles brushed against his. As stupid as that sounded because, matter of fact, he’d held your hand before, more times than he could count, and yet here he was again, reduced to a mess by a passing touch. There were flowers that withered slower than the way he fell apart in your presence.
When you stepped inside to put the bouquet away, he stayed by the door, listening to the faint sounds of your movement within. The hallway was hushed and in that quietness, Soobin tried to steady his thoughts. He didn’t know what to say to you anymore. What could he possibly say that wouldn’t ruin this? Loving you in silence was torture, but maybe it was safer than the ache of losing you. He leaned his head back against the wall, exhaling slowly, watching your shadow spill through the doorway.
Maybe this was enough, he told himself. Maybe loving you in silence was safer.
After you returned, the sight of you made that illusion crumble all over again. He could tell you were tired. He wanted to reach out, to brush his thumb under your eye and tell you to rest, to promise you the whole world if it meant keeping that light in your face. Instead, he said, “It’s been a long day. Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”
He shifted his weight when you only stared at him. He couldn’t read what you were thinking, and that scared him more than he wanted to admit. So, true to habit, he did what he always did when he got too close to the edge — he started to walk away. It was easier to retreat before the ground gave way beneath him. Easier to run from what his heart kept whispering.
“Can I tell you something?”
Your voice cut through the silence, a little hesitant. Soobin froze mid-step, the air catching in his throat. He turned around slowly, afraid of what you might say yet hoping it would be everything he’d been wishing for.
“Since meeting you,” you began, then paused for a brief moment to collect your thoughts, “I actually began wishing for more time. I want more time with you. Every time I’m with you, you make me feel so happy, just by being you.”
Soobin’s lips parted slowly. His mind went blank, completely overtaken by the rush in his chest. Were you saying what he thought you were? Confirming everything he had buried under restraint and fear? His pulse thundered, and he could feel it in his throat, in his fingertips, in the space between you.
You were nervous. He could tell the way you pressed your palms together and averted his eyes. “Gosh, I must sound insane right now,” you murmured, your voice dipping into a hesitant chuckle, “but I can’t think of a single thing I’d rather do right now. I just want to be close to you.” You glanced down, then lifted your eyes back to him, a tiny, resigned smile finding your lips. “Are you going to make me wait much longer?”
All he could think was — were you asking him not to run anymore? Were you telling him it was safe to fall?
Soobin couldn't take it anymore. All this time he’d known you, he wanted nothing more than to freely love you. He wanted more than just yearning gazes and fleeting brushes of touch. He wanted to let himself have you, to allow the current of love rush through him.
In two strides he closed the distance, his hands cupping your face before he dipped his head. When his mouth met yours, the force of it stole the breath from both of you — lips colliding with a hunger that had been building up for months.
The poets were so damn wrong because kissing you didn’t feel like setting off fireworks; it felt like returning to his rightful home.
A sigh passed from you to him at the first contact, followed by a broken sound from the back of your throat when he slid his hand into your hair to pull you closer, closer, closer to him. The noise was so small yet ruinous that it made him want to fall to his knees.
Soobin had to hold onto the doorframe above your head when you arched into him, when your hand had to scramble for the same doorframe behind you while the other clutched at the front of his shirt, knuckles white, as holding him was the only thing keeping you upright. He could feel the rapid flutter of your pulse beneath his thumbs as they brushed along your jaw. And gods, he’d been right — your lips were soft, impossibly so. Now that he got a taste of your lips, Soobin had to figure out later how not to get addicted to them.
Every thought in his head dissolved into the warmth of you. All those nights he had spent trying to reason with himself, all those what-ifs and not-yets, burned away in the press of your mouth against his. He’d never known what it was to want something so wholly, so ruinously, until you. He knew already that he could never go back from this, that he didn’t want to.
You broke the kiss first, your breath brushing against his as you whispered, “Stay the night. Please?”
Holy fuck. You really had no idea what you did to him, did you? Soobin dazedly stared at you and thought, if this woman tacked on the words please onto any request, he would find a way to fulfill it.
He muttered a curse under his breath and went back to devouring you. His pulse roared in his ears as he pushed you inside, the door clicking shut behind him with his heel. He hadn’t broken the kiss once as you stumbled backward, your shoes slipping off in your scramble to match his pace, both of you breathing hard as if you had run a mile to get here. His hands were everywhere; holding your face, slipping into your hair, grabbing the back of your neck, running down your sides, back, hips — they couldn’t decide on a destination because every road led to you.
He still couldn’t believe this was happening as he kissed you even deeply, he still couldn't believe you were kissing him back with equal amount of passion. He licked into you, but not too much or too fast, just enough to ask permission and you opened your mouth. The heat of your tongue gliding over his made him whimper, feeling high already from so little.
It was a good thing the sofa was near because any more minute and he’d collapse into a puddle. When the back of your knees hit the sofa, he caught you, guiding you down gently. You sank into the cushions, looking up at him as he towered above you. Your cheeks were flushed, your lips swollen, and your gaze pulled him in until he felt dizzy with it. For a suspended moment, the room was filled with nothing but the sound of your laboured breathings.
His gaze moved over you in a haze of disbelief, the rise and fall of his chest uneven as if his body was struggling to keep up with his heart. He had imagined this too many times but imagination had nothing on the way to finally feel you like this, to have your scent clinging to his skin, to taste your lips. It felt surreal, intoxicating, overwhelming in every sense.
“Two years,” he roughly said as he leaned down, his words trembling against your skin. “I tried—God, I really tried not to want you like this.”
His hand found the back of the sofa beside your head for support, his other resting against your cheek. He slid one knee in between your thighs as it dug into the cushion. He did an experimental press up against your heat, watching the way you jerked up with a hitched breath, your eyes falling shut once before opening again as one of your hands came to rest on that knee.
“You’re all I’ve been thinking about,” he confessed, his voice breaking between each word. “Every damn day.”
He pressed a kiss to your forehead, then the curve of your cheek, before finding your mouth again. The way your fingers slipped into his hair tugging slightly made him shudder, and he groaned against your lips at the sensation, his breath catching in the space between one heartbeat and the next. But he kissed you with a slowness that contradicted the rush inside him; he kissed you as if he were learning the world all over again, as though every touch of yours rewrote what he thought he knew about longing.
“I’m so tired of pretending I’m fine around you,” he murmured against your skin, pulling back just enough to look at you. His hand found your cheek again, his thumb tracing beneath your eye. “Every time you smiled at me, it hurt. Every time you said my name, I thought I was going to lose it. And I kept telling myself it was better this way—that I could handle it—but I can’t. I can’t anymore.”
You laughed softly. You looked beautiful. It made him smile too.
“I know, Soobin,” you said, biting your lip to suppress the growing grin. Your hand traced the line of his jaw, gentle and familiar. “You’re not really good at pretending. I’ve always known, more or less. But I didn’t want to act on my gut feeling alone. I had to be sure.”
His expression faltered. He felt and probably looked like he might actually cry, he couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. “I’m sorry,” he whispered earnestly. “I should’ve said it sooner—should’ve done something—but I was so damn scared of ruining us. And now I don’t care anymore. I don’t want to waste the time we have. Not one more second.”
Your smile softened, eyes shining as you nodded. “Me neither.”
His heart was full as he shared a tender smile with you. Then he held your hand and pulled you up with him before changing the position, pulling you back down again. He hauled you easily onto his lap — running his hands along your sides before gliding them over your back, then down to the small of your back before pressing you against him. If he could he’d hold you closer until no one could tell apart where you began and he ended.
He’s trailing kisses down the torrid skin of your jaw, your neck, your collarbones before biting down on the supple flesh, eliciting a strained moan from you. You tilted your head back and gave him full access, which he took without hesitation. His glasses bumped into your skin, which made him irritated and swiftly took it off with a ‘tsk’ before putting it aside somewhere on the sofa.
“Let me love you,” he whispered. He felt your throat bobbed against his mouth when you swallowed and nodded, letting out another soft sound that had his mind reeling, and he felt his cock twitch at the thought of just how much louder he could make you. “Let me take care of you, please.”
His name fell from your lips as you screwed your eyes shut when he held you by the hips and made you grind against him. He looked up at you from this angle and he thought this is probably what heaven looked like. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more, more than just feeling you rub against his growing bulge through all these damn layers of clothes.
In one quick motion he set you down on the sofa, cracking a smile at your dazed yet confused look. Soobin exhaled before sinking to his knees in front of you.
You gave him a shy smile as you got into a more comfortable position, letting his hands rest on your thighs. This sight — he gazed up at you from where he’s kneeling — he’s willing to worship for the rest of his life. He kissed each of your thighs, then his hands trailed over to the waistband of your jeans.
“Tell me to stop if you don’t want this,” he was begging you. He didn’t think he could ever stop though. “I’ll stop if you say it. I swear.” “Dont stop.” You reached down to unbutton your jeans. “Please, Soobin. Don’t stop.”
He reached back up to clash his mouth to yours again as his hands yanked your jeans all the way down with a little bit of your help. By now Soobin was already heady, and when he sat back on his heels to come face to face with the sight of your dampened panties, translucent from the slick pooling in between your thighs, he nearly ruined his own pants. Soobin hadn't even touched you directly and you were already a mess.
“Oh, God,” he groaned, thumb circling your clit over the fabric as he drank up all your twitches and gasps. A sense of pride filled him at the fact that this was him who drew you over to this crest. It was all him — the reason behind this sopping pleasure of yours.
“Soobin—oh fuck, ah,” you arched, throwing your head back when he ran his tongue up the length of the wet spot you made.
The first taste through this barrier filled his senses to the brim, shockwave travelling to his fingertips before returning and plummeting his sanity somewhere down to his dick. Soobin couldn’t fight the moan that got muffled against your heat, following that line with the flat of his tongue, then again with the point. He gripped your thighs and hips desperately, urging you to grind on his face as he ravished you through the flimsy cloth.
The sound of your pleasure, the taste of you, and your, fuck — there was your hand gripping his hair. He was huffing and taking short breaths, impatience getting the best of him before he almost ripped your panties off of you and threw it somewhere behind him.
There was a ringing in his ear as he looked up at you through his lashes, eyes wide and obedient because in this moment, he felt like he was made to kneel at your feet. You were flushed and breathing heavily but looked extremely beautiful like this. He grabbed your hips and tugged you closer to the edge making you yelp softly.
“I promise I’ll be good for you.” He guided your trembling thighs over his shoulders as he lowered his face to your pussy, never taking his searing eyes off of yours. “So promise me you won’t stop looking at me. Please?”
You nodded quickly, a shaky hand taking purchase in his hair again. “I promise.”
The moment those words left you, he dived into you, his tongue licking a long stripe along your folds, lapping up your arousal — fuck. Fucking hell this is what you tasted like? You tasted so divine, so intoxicating that Soobin had to gather himself after the first lick. It felt like a sin that he only tasted you through a barrier earlier. It felt like a heinous sin that he’d been deprived of this pussy for so long. You were all arounf him. His name coming out of your lips in between gasps and cries, and —
“Oh, God. Fuck, Soobin, you’re so good—yes, yes, just like that—”
— oh.
You were praising him. His vision blurred through the eye contact — the one you promised to not break and true to your words you’ve never once did — and he felt like a flower blooming and meeting the light for the first time. Soobin buried himself deeper into your heat, nose bumping against your sensitive bundle of nerves while he tongued your entrance and drank up every drop of your essence. He was drunk, so high on you as he watched you let out a high pitched gasp when he eased in two fingers, feeling your folds stretching then clamping around his thickness.
He promised you he was going to be obedient so he picked up every micro reaction you gave at every thrust of his fingers, every tremble of your body when he sucked on your clit before swriling the tip of his tongue over it until he figured out what was going to take him to guide you over the edge. But looking at you, it didn’t seem like he was going to need to do much work anyway.
He could feel you spasming around his fingers, your moans falling faster and needier as your thighs closed around his head. He was suffocating but it felt excruciatingly good that his eyes rolled back but no — no, he had to hold your gaze, needed to watch you fall apart and amidst that all Soobin palmed himself, groaning into you. With one final stroke up your sweet spot, he brought you over a mind shattering orgasm — for you, and him.
It was the scrape of your fingers in his scalp that made him cum, his release lifting off an invisible burden from his shoulders as he felt himself slipping into a state of pure bliss. Soobin came to his senses belatedly when you said his name. He was unmoving, mouth still attached to your quivering pussy when he swallowed, feeling you dripping down his throat.
You looked utterwly wrecked. Skin glistening with sweat as your chest heaved. It brought a shy smile to face as he sat back up on his heels. “Was it alright?” he meekly asked, wiping his chin.
You breathlessly laughed, pushing yourself up on one hand. “It was everything I've ever dreamed of.”
Soobin’s eyes darkened slowly when you touched his jaw and pushed your thumb on the plump of his bottom lip. You smeared your release over his lip before pushing your thumb inside his mouth. He moaned around your finger before sucking, letting you thumb down his tongue as saliva pooled around it. He felt his dick twitch again, shamelessly getting hard once more.
“Kiss me,” you said, and who even was he to deny your request?
He pushed his tongue past your lips, letting you taste yourself and the sensation was so overwhelming that it drew out a groan from you. It was messy and hot, it was downright filthy but Soobin would give up on anything to experience this for the first time ever again.
“Soobin,” you softly whined against his lips, pulling back to look at him with a hunger that mirrored his, “I don’t want to stop yet. I need more. I need you.”
He was as desperate as you were, maybe even more. “I could spend the rest of my life making you feel good.” and then his hand was slipping under your shirt, gliding over the hot skin and tracing every dip, every curve before he hoisted you up easily. “Let’s get comfortable first, yeah?” he spoke against your mouth as your legs wrapped around his waist and arms around his neck, never once separating from your lips.
Once he reached your bedroom, he placed you down gently on the bed before settling himself in between your legs. The rest of your clothes messily came off, neither of you wanting to waste another second and only wanting to feel each others’ naked skin. Soobin had to pause and sit back on his heels as he admired you, unable to fathom that he was truly seeing you in the way he had only ever dreamed of.
He grabbed a moundful of one of your breasts, your perky nipple peeking in between his long fingers while he dipped his head down and took the other one in his mouth. How come you tasted so good everywhere? Soobin was going to become gluttonous because of you. Not that he minded. He loved hearing your little gasps. You were so sensitive from just moments ago but you were already gushing again.
“Soobin, please, please,” you cried out when he stroked you slowly betwen your folds. Despite how wet you were, he was worried his size was going to be too much for you. He had to make you pliant as much as possible.
“Tell me if it gets uncomfortable. Tell me if I hurt you, okay?” He panted as he pumped himself slowly. It wasn’t like Sooobin had his calm either. He was flushed and sweaty, trembling in every movement he made. He’s been thrumming with the electricity of want himself. He didn’t know how long he could keep going before his brain turned mushy too. He watched the way your glazed over eyes took in his size; it filled him with equal amounts of pride and worry. “Tell me what you want, alright? I’ll do anything.”
His cockhead slid in between your folds as the tip bumped your clit, restinf over your abdomen. A guttural groan escaped his chest when he realized he was almost touching the underneath of your navel. Shit, will you be alright? He had no time to overthink when you reached out to wrap your hand around him, making his entire body twitch in pleasure. He was hot and hard in your hand as you guided his tip back to your wet entrance.
“I trust you.” You laid back and smiled at him. Soobin, again, felt like he was falling in love with you all over again.
He held your thighs more apart, large hands massaging the supple flesh of them. Soobin used his thumbs to spread open your pussy before directly letting a glob of spit fall onto your hole. You squealed, clearly surprised, but seeing how you clenched around air desperately made him learn that you could be into it. He made a mental note to explore this more some other time.
He lathered his saliva with your slick as he nudged his leaking tip along your slit, making you whimper and jerk up your hips to get more friction, but Soobin placed a large hand over your abdomen and held you down in place.
“Come closer. I want to hold you,” you mumbled, making him comply easily.
He kissed you, so deeply, so fiercely, that the gasp you let out when he slowly sheathed himself inside you was entirely devoured by his mouth. Soobin’s mouth hung open, puffing against the hot skin of your neck as he couldn’t decide where to focus; the sheer euphoric wave of pleasure as your warmth enveloped him or on the fingers clawing his back. Even with the thick slick of your combined orgasms, he could tell you needed time to accommodate the stretch.
“I’m sorry—ah, I'm so sorry, love,” he kept apologizing softly, giving you time to adjust as he slowly sank into your aching core. He gritted his teeth, jaw clenching as he had to fight the urge to cum from just feeling your tight walls clench around him. You were a gasping mess, writhing beneath him as you dug your nail across his back. “T—Take all the time you need.”
He bottomed out fully as he held himself up on his arms around your head, face resting in the crook of your neck where he peppered soft kisses to help you relax. You were fluttering madly around him. After a moment Soobin felt you squeeze his bicep as he looked at you, and when you nodded at him through the haze of pleasure, he began to set a careful languid rhythm.
“Fuck,” he groaned, and finally started to loose his already fraying composure. If he planned to fuck you slowly, it was going to take a lot of willpower to do that. Your moans rang sweetly beside his ear as you clung to him tighter with every thrust. Soobin tried to hold on to sanity when he felt your hand trail up to the hair on his nape, curling and tugging on a fistful. He whimpered, pathetically so, picking up the pace of his thrusts.
Soobin’s head reeled when he stared at where his cock slid wetly in and out of your sopping pussy. It wasn’t just that sight that set his mind and every part ablaze. It was the visible outline of a bulge growing in your abdomen at a specific angle every time he thrusted up into you.
Your hands travelled from the back of his neck to cup his face as you made him look at you instead. The smile you wore, so fucked out and dazed, sent his already racing heart thudding painfully in his chest. “You feel so good, Soobin,” you breathed out through choked pants. “I’ve never wanted anyone like this before.”
He shuddered at your praises, one hand sliding down your thigh before pushing it up to your chest. This angle made you feel more open and made him hit even deeper. And yet, Soobin was holding himself back in fear of hurting you and he could tell you knew that too. You felt that too.
So when you kissed him and mumbled against his lips, “You don’t have to hold back—it’s okay.” — he let himself fall into your plea.
Your faces were near, passing breaths between that small space before claiming it again, and again, and again. The depraved sound of skin against skin along with your mingling groans and gasps resonated off the walls of the room. He could feel you clenching around him, your moans getting louder and needier.
“Soobin—’m close,” is all you managed before crying out, back arching and pressing onto him flushed.
You gripped him like a vice, your body quivering when you finished, his name spilling from you so sinfully that it drove him over the edge. It caused him to become the louder one then — groans and grunts as his thrusts became sloppier, helping you ride out your orgasm before he buried himself to the sheath in one last deep thrust and spilled inside you.
There was a beat of silence as you both chased for air. Soobin panted through his mouth, eyes blown wide as he relived the entire situation in his mind again. He brushed your hair out of your sweaty forehead, fingers threading to your scalp as he pulled out of you. The feeling made you whimper as you buried your face into his arm, eyes screwed shut. You were seriously going to be the death of him. He saw the way his cum leaked out of you in bulk waves, feeling his dick twitch at the sight. Shit, shit, shit was this okay?
“I’m safe if you’re worried about it,” you gently assured him, then patted the space beside you. “Lie down beside me.”
“I will,” he promised before linking your fingers with his and kissing your knuckles. “I need to clean you up first. Give me a moment, love. I’ll be back.”
True to his words he returned with a damp towel. He pressed it softly against your skin, wiping away the sheen of sweat, cleaning you thoroughly before helping you go to the bathroom.
His eyes, dark yet brimming with adoration, never once strayed from yours. In their depths lived every confession he had ever swallowed and every longing he had buried that had bloomed in the spaces between your shared glances. Soobin took in the gentleness of your gaze, the way it mirrored his own, and let himself smile. He reached out, his hand brushing against your wrist before tugging you gently down beside him on the bed. The bed dipped beneath your combined weight, and he gathered you against him, drawing the covers over your bodies until only your breaths filled the air, warm and uneven.
For one fragile second he still wondered if this could be a dream, some mercy granted to a man who had spent too long convincing himself he didn’t need what he did. But then you looked up at him, eyes shimmering like dawn breaking through, and whispered the words that undid every doubt. “I love you.”
He tilted his forehead against yours, eyes closing, before capturing your lips in a kiss that trembled with everything he could not say fast enough. He sealed the words against your mouth before murmuring them back to you.
“I love you. Until the end of time.”
The roses you’d placed on the shelf of your room — the bouquet he made for you — bore witness to this undying love. They would fade with time, but he knew this night, this joining of breaths and words and souls, would not.
Time flew in a strange way on SUNDAYS.
There had been a time in Soobin’s life when he felt that way because you were there under the same roof, guiding the old couple around the flower shop and still, you felt impossibly far from his grasp. He used to fill that distance with his longing in silence. Back then, the hours spent beside you seemed to stretch endlessly and vanish all at once. Sundays used to hurt in their beauty.
Soobin bowed to a customer leaving with a bouquet wrapped in paper the shade of cream roses, he straightened and glanced toward the nursery. Beyond the windowpane, warmth spilled in from the morning sun. You stood there with Mrs. Park, tracing your fingers over the petals of the sunflowers, saying something that made her laugh.
It was still Sunday, still the same hour, but the time passed differently now. Because when you turned, when your eyes met his and you smiled that unguarded smile that reached him like light through a break in clouds, he no longer had to hoard his love in silence. There was a space now for his love to rest, a place for his yearning to call home. Every emotion now spelled your name; every heartbeat found its answer.
You, you, you.
The seconds no longer slipped away; they held still in their sweetness, suspended in their fullness. It felt different — so achingly different — because Soobin finally knew he had all the time in the world with you. Love was no longer something he waited for; it was the air he breathed, the sunlight that kept finding him every new day. He could finally call this forever.
There are loves that blossom silently, and there are loves that consume. Love chose him as its sole vessel the moment you stepped into his still life and made it breathe. Because you were not merely the person he loved.
You were the garden and the grave where Soobin would bury himself. Willingly, ardently, and without return.
THE END.
Taglist; @fancypeacepersona @seungminnieinthebuilding @soobinieswife @yystarz @whoisgami @xylatox @sami-dear @bamgeutori @nanilis @xodidarks @buttersoob @kooland7 @candyflossgum @swangyu @saccharinezennie @younbeanz @tteokbunni @smellofbrownies @beckeey @ice-bread4 @angelhyuka @vanillakirstein @gigitastic @leehannextdoorr @itspalaly @hanscanine @one-chance-pls @r1hanna123 @soobintopfan @chbq2
꒰ ꒱ SORRY IS NEVER ENOUGH— (C. Soobin)
Pathetic! C. Soobin x mean! fem reader
Soobin is a pathetic mess for you, and honestly? You love it. He’s late, he’s crying, and he’s begging for your forgiveness for things that aren't even his fault. But in this house, the only way to get you to look at him is by being your favorite toy.
ⓘ Cw!! smut, toxic behavior, angst, objectification, crying, degradation/humiliation, submissive soobin, cunnilingus, edging, body worship, p in v, power imbalance, nipple play, cum eating, solo play, fingering, hair pulling.
Wc: 2,8k
A/N: I’m not going to lie, I feel bad for Soobin after writing this 😭 but the dynamic was just too tempting.
Soobin closed the apartment door with practiced care, the click of the lock almost silent, but you already knew he was there. He was late. Only twenty minutes—hardly a crime for most—but you had been simmering in a dark mood all day, and tonight, even the sound of his breathing felt like an invitation to lash out.
“I’m so sorry,” he breathed out the moment he stepped inside. He kicked off his shoes and dropped his backpack, the thud echoing in the quiet room. “The boss caught me at the door with a last-minute document, and I… I lost track of time. I brought dinner, though. From that place you love? The spicy noodles.”
He hurried to set the bag on the table, his movements frantic and eager. You didn’t even offer him a glance. You stayed curled on the couch, thumbing through your phone and pointedly turning up the volume on your video.
Soobin stood frozen for a beat. He looked so tall yet so incredibly awkward in his damp, oversized hoodie, his hair slightly plastered to his forehead from the drizzle outside. That handsome, soft face of his—all big, puppy-dog eyes and plush lips—seemed to crumble the second he registered your icy silence.
“Babe… are you upset?”
No answer. He crossed the room, his footsteps heavy with anxiety, and knelt beside the couch. He lowered himself until he was at eye level, tentatively resting one of his large, warm hands on your knee. It trembled slightly.
“It was just a document, I swear. I left the second I could. Look, I can heat the noodles up right now, and maybe we could—”
“Forget it, Soobin,” you cut him off, your voice flat and sharp. You didn’t bother looking away from your screen. “It’s always ‘just’ something with you. You’re nothing but a walking excuse.”
He flinched as if you’d slapped him. He blinked rapidly, his voice cracking on the next word.
“It’s not an excuse, it’s the truth… but if I upset you, I’m sorry. Please. Just tell me what you want. I can go back out and get dessert, or I’ll scrub the kitchen again, or—”
You finally turned your head, meeting his frantic gaze with eyes like chips of ice.
“You know what? You look so pathetic when you beg like that. It’s embarrassing. Just shut up already.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Soobin’s mouth snapped shut, but his eyes flooded with tears almost instantly. He tried to fight them, biting his lower lip so hard it turned white, but two heavy droplets escaped anyway, tracking down his flushed cheeks. He wiped them away quickly with his sleeve, a hitched, embarrassed breath escaping him. He looked like a giant, broken child—a man with broad shoulders and a sharp jawline who could have been intimidating if he had an ounce of self-respect, yet here he was, weeping on the floor because you’d been mean to him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice a jagged wreck. “I didn’t mean to ruin your night. I’m such a fucking idiot.”
He scrambled to his feet and retreated to the kitchen. You heard the frantic sounds of him trying to fix things—opening drawers, plating the food with trembling hands, even the rhythmic *thump-thump* of him slicing cucumbers because he remembered exactly how you liked them. He brought the tray over and set it on the coffee table with a neatly folded napkin and a glass of ice water.
You didn't touch a single bite. Soobin sank into the armchair across from you, watching you with the heartbreaking devotion of a stray dog waiting for a scrap of attention. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. You kept your eyes on your phone, ignoring his existence entirely. He began to shift, his breathing becoming shallow and ragged with anxiety.
“Do you want me to run you a bath?” he choked out. “I can use the lavender salts… warm the towels? Or… or I can massage your feet? I know they’re sore.”
Nothing.
He stood up again, cleared the untouched plate, and washed it by hand. He wiped the counters until they shone, took out the trash, and meticulously lined up your shoes by the door. Finally, he came back and stood in front of you, his large hands hanging uselessly at his sides, his chest heaving.
“Please… please just say something. Anything. Yell at me if you have to. I can’t—I can’t breathe when you ignore me like this.”
You remained a statue. Soobin swallowed hard, the desperation in his eyes turning into something darker, something carnal. He knew the only currency he had left to buy your forgiveness was his own body.
He knelt between your legs again, his palms sliding carefully onto your thighs, his touch a silent prayer for permission.
“Let me make it up to you,” he murmured, his voice now low and roughened by the remnants of his crying. “Please. I just want to make you feel good. Let me do this for you.”
You didn’t say a word, but you didn't push him away. For a boy like Soobin, that was as good as a "yes."
He slowly worked his hands under your shorts, his touch a dizzying mix of reverence and frantic need. He stripped you with shaking fingers, pausing to press soft, lingering kisses to the sensitive skin of your inner knees. Once you were bare, he just stayed there for a moment, staring at your pussy—already beginning to glisten—as if it were the only holy thing left in his world.
“So beautiful…” he whispered, a fresh tear catching on his lash.
He lowered his head and dragged his tongue in a slow, flat stroke from the very bottom to the top, lapping up your nectar with a low, vibrating groan. He started slow, almost worshipful, licking the outer lips and sucking gently on the sensitive skin. Then, he used his thumbs to spread you wide, burying his tongue inside you with lazy, rhythmic sweeps while his nose rubbed circles against your clit.
“Mmm… I’m so sorry I was late,” he mumbled against your wetness, his voice muffled and thick with heat. “I’m going to make it up to you… I want you to come all over my tongue until you’re shaking.”
You brought your hand down, tangling your fingers in his soft hair and pulling hard to set the pace. Soobin moaned against you, obeying instantly. He increased the pressure, his tongue brushing against your clit with frantic precision while sliding two long, thick fingers deep inside you. He began to fuck you slowly, his knuckles grazing your opening while his mouth worked to worship every inch of you.
“Fuck… you’re so wet,” he rasped, the words vibrating against your sensitive flesh without him pulling away. “I love the way you taste… I could stay here all night.”
You yanked his hair, forcing his head back just enough to see his desperate eyes.
“Shut up and eat me properly. You’re not down there to talk.”
Soobin shivered, a small, broken sound escaping his throat, but he didn't dare argue. He buried his face against you again, his tongue lashing out faster, his fingers diving deeper into your heat. The sounds filling the room were filthy—the wet slap of his tongue, the rhythmic slide of his fingers, and his muffled, needy moans pressed into your soaked skin. You began to roll your hips against his mouth, using his face as a toy. He let out a louder groan, clearly electrified by the fact that you were finally using him.
As he felt your muscles start to twitch, he sucked on your clit with a bruising pressure, his fingers relentless inside you. You came hard, your thighs clamping around his head like a vice. You tugged at his hair, a long, ragged moan leaving your lips. Soobin didn’t pull back for a second; he kept licking gently, savoring every drop of your release, dragging out the peak until your legs were nothing but jelly.
He lifted his face just enough to catch his breath, his lips and chin glistening with the evidence of your orgasm.
“Did you like that? Do you want me to do more? I’ll do anything, baby… just tell me—”
You didn’t let him finish the sentence. You grabbed a fistful of his hair and shoved his face back into your crotch.
“Who told you that you could talk? You’re so fucking useless… you can’t even eat pussy without begging like a dog. Keep going.”
Soobin’s body tensed. His eyes welled up again—not with anger, but with a crushing sense of guilt. He truly believed you; he thought he was failing you, that he wasn't even good enough at this one simple task. He whispered a pathetic, almost silent “sorry” against your skin and went back to work.
This time, he was frantic. He licked broader, messier, dragging his tongue down to circle your other hole, sucking lightly while his fingers continued to fuck your dripping entrance. He moaned softly into you, completely lost in the worship of your body.
You moaned louder, pressing his head into you until you were practically fucking his face. Soobin was rock hard, his cock throbbing painfully against the denim of his jeans, but he didn't even dream of touching himself. To him, nothing existed but your pleasure.
“Faster,” you commanded, your voice cutting through his haze.
He obeyed instantly. His tongue and fingers worked with a desperate intensity. You came again, even more violently this time, soaking his mouth and chin as you cried out. Soobin didn’t stop until your trembling ceased. Then, he slowly began to kiss his way up your body with a devotion that felt almost sickening.
He worshipped your stomach, your ribs, the dip between your breasts. He took one nipple into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it before sucking hard, his large hand kneading the other breast. Finally, he reached your neck, burying his face there, licking and nipping at the skin.
“I love you so much…” he whimpered, his voice cracked and fragile. “You’re the most beautiful thing I have. I’d do anything for you. Even if you hate me, even if you scream… I’m just happy I can touch you.”
You didn't answer with words. You just ran your nails down his broad back, scratching lightly through his hoodie. When he bit your neck a little harder, you let out a low, dark moan. Soobin shuddered. His erection was trapped between your bodies, leaking and painful, but he didn't complain. He only tilted his hips slightly, seeking a ghost of friction against your thigh without daring to ask for more.
“Tell me if you want me to fuck you… or if you’d rather I keep going with my mouth,” he murmured against your ear. “I’ll get back on my knees. I’ll stay here until you're tired of me.”
You smiled, a cruel, satisfied curve of your lips. You grabbed his jaw, forcing him to look at you.
“You’re pathetic, Soobin. Look at you… so hard it hurts, and you still don’t have the balls to ask for it.”
His face flushed a deep, shamed red, but his eyes shone with a mix of agony and arousal.
“I know… I’m pathetic. It’s because I love you. I just want to make you feel good. If you don’t want to touch me, that’s fine. Just let me keep going.”
You watched him, your breath still heavy. Soobin remained kneeling between your legs—hair a mess, face flushed, lips shiny and wet. He slowly pushed his pants down to his thighs. His cock sprang free, twitching against his stomach, a thin string of precum clinging to the skin.
You stared at it for a moment before saying, almost annoyed:
“Then fuck me. But do it my way. Don’t you dare go slow.”
Soobin nodded, his eyes wide. He straightened up, his large hands gripping your hips to pull you to the edge of the couch. He pushed inside you in one deep, unceremonious thrust, a long, guttural groan breaking from his chest. He stayed still for a second, eyes squeezed shut, trying desperately to keep his composure.
“Fuck…” he choked out.
He started to move. At first, he was still too careful, too gentle. You dug your nails into his bicep.
“Harder. Don’t make me say it again.”
The rhythm changed instantly. His thrusts became rough, borderline frantic, the sound of skin-on-skin slapping through the quiet apartment. Soobin was big and powerful, and when he stopped holding back, it showed. Every stroke was deep, hitting your cervix with a force that made you gasp. He moaned with every lunge—those raw, slightly high-pitched sounds he always made, as if the pleasure was a punishment he was grateful for.
“Like this? Is this good?” he panted through gritted teeth.
“Shut up,” you snapped, wrapping your legs around his waist to pull him even deeper. “Just fuck me.”
He clenched his jaw and obeyed. The couch groaned under his weight. Sweat dripped from his chin, his hair sticking to his forehead in messy clumps. Every time your walls tightened around him, he let out a strangled cry. You could see the struggle in his trembling arms, but he was so loud. So beautifully, painfully noisy.
You grabbed his face, forcing him to look at you.
“Don’t you dare cum yet.”
“I won’t… I won’t,” he panted, his eyes glassy. “I want you to go first. Please.”
You scratched his back, and he buried his face in your shoulder with a whimper. His hips never faltered, slamming into that perfect spot until you came hard around him, squeezing his thick length. Your nails drew blood on his shoulders as you peaked.
Soobin tensed, his entire body vibrating as he fought his own release.
“God… you feel so fucking good,” he whispered, his voice barely a breath.
The second your trembling stopped, you shoved his chest.
“Pull out.”
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, a flicker of pure frustration crossing his face, but he obeyed. He slid out with a low, pained groan. His cock was red and glistening, throbbing in the air. He stayed on his knees before you, chest heaving, looking at you with that familiar, desperate need.
“What… what do you want me to do?” he asked, his voice a hoarse wreck.
You watched him, enjoying the way his cock twitched rhythmically on its own.
“Finish yourself off. With your hand. Right here where I can watch.”
Soobin’s face burned, but he didn't hesitate. He sat back on his heels and wrapped his large hand around himself. He started to stroke, slow at first, almost shyly, never breaking eye contact. His breathing grew ragged.
“Sorry for coming home late…” he murmured, the words sounding like a prayer. “I know I mess everything up. I just want you to love me again.”
He sped up. His hips began to buck into his fist, desperate and messy. He looked so huge and yet so small kneeling there—that strong, athletic body shaking as he chased a release he didn't even feel he deserved.
“I’m close…” he whimpered, his voice breaking. “Can I…?”
“Not yet.”
He let out a sound that was half-moan, half-sob, but he kept going. His hand moved faster, the sound of it loud and wet. Tears were pricking his eyes again.
“Please… it hurts,” he whined, his head tossing back. “Just let me… I want to be good for you.”
You let him suffer for another minute, watching his thighs tremble and his jaw lock in agony. Finally, you spoke:
“Now.”
Soobin let out a long, shattered cry. He came hard, thick ropes of white splattering over his hand and the floor. He kept stroking until he was completely spent, his head hanging low, his breathing coming in jagged gasps.
When the shaking finally stopped, he didn't wait for a command. He leaned down, his tongue darting out to clean his own mess off the floor, silently and meticulously. He didn't look sad; he looked relieved. To him, this was the price of your forgiveness.
Afterward, he crawled back up and rested his head in your lap, his large arms wrapping around your legs. He was hot and damp with sweat. He pressed a soft, grateful kiss to your thigh.
“Thank you for letting me,” he whispered against your skin. “I love you so much.”
You didn’t say a word. You just ran your fingers through his hair. Soobin closed his eyes and drifted, perfectly content with the scraps you threw him.
He knew that tomorrow he’d probably fail you again. He knew he’d end up right back here—on his knees, begging, doing too much. But for now, he was at peace, even if it was a peace bought with his own humiliation.
And you knew it too. You didn't love Soobin for his heart; you loved how easy he was to break. As you stroked his hair, you weren't comforting a boyfriend—you were simply admiring how well you owned your favorite toy.
Thank you so much for reading! ♡(ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)♡
dirty as can be, have your way with me
× small suggestive older!txt scenarios for each member
w: older!txt, dom!txt, f!reader, age gap, size differences, dirty talk, big dicks, belly bulge, choking, fingering, 3some (tyunning)
SOOBIN
Soobin sighed deeply, putting a hand on your stomach to feel the rise and fall of your belly. He was fucking you against the table in his kitchen in a very slow rhythm, rolling your clit with his middle finger at the same pace. You were clenching the table with your hands and often gasping for breath. He always started slowly and carefully, taking his time to get you nice and wet, he cared about that.
It wasn't the first time his daily questions to make sure you were eating well, or that his great cooking was an invitation to sex. At the counter or at the table, he has always fucked you in the best way possible.
As your cheeks touched for a second, you tried to open your eyes. He was slowly expanding your walls and withdrawing.
Forward and back, forward and back... Your clit was hard from being poked between his fingers.
“Is that good?” His warm breath hit the hollow of your neck and his soft lips brushed against your skin for a second. You sighed, moving your hips a little more towards him, unable to keep your eyes open. Without waiting, you nodded at his question, Soobin's lips touched your temple, then kissed the corner of your eye.
When he pull his hand away from your lips, you realized that he had almost numbed your pussy from stroking it. With his hands on your sides, on the table, he pushed deeper than before and stood in that perfect position with his crotch pressed against your hips.
One of his hands left the table and crept up to your neck and his long warm fingers gently wrapped around your throat. “Watch it.”
He whispered and looked down at your belly with you. As he pulled his hips back and rolled them back to you, he was proud of the way he stirred your insides and made your belly swell slightly.
“Oh...”
“You feel it, don't you?” his thumb stroked your throat slowly, making you feel like he was controlling himself not to squeeze.
You loved how he took care of you.
Now he closed his eyes as his open mouth rested on your shoulder and his movements reached a more pronounced speed.
“You are the most beautiful thing I've ever tasted.”
YEONJUN
Yeonjun's eyes close heavily, his hand in your hair, presses you against his chest and gently rests his chin on the top of your head. “That's it... That's my girl.” murmurs quietly. Listening to your gasps after orgasm is his favorite thing.
He knows how much you love bouncing on his lap. Even more so when you can't wait to get home and ride him in his car. From day one he lets you do whatever you want on his lap.
It makes you tremble to feel his pulse and to know that it's because of you. Your arms around his neck tighten and you nuzzle your face more into his neck.
“Hey, don't hide from me...” he smiles without opening his eyes. “You were so wild just a minute ago.”
It's a phrase that can make you hide even more in his neck and he knows it as he traces a soft path down your spine with his thumb. He likes to feel your smile against the warm skin of his neck. Knowing how to make you smile.
When you can think again, you realize that the car is now hot and muggy. Your arms loosen around his neck, slide down to his shoulders and Yeonjun puts his hands on your legs.
“Let me take it off for you.”
It's like he always knows what you need. As you pull away and let him, the idea that the reason for all this heat could be just him and his damn good attention makes more sense than anything else.
“You're so beautiful.”
He whispers just after he slowly takes off of your shirt. He lays it neatly on the passenger seat for you to put it on later and his hands immediately find your waist.
Your foreheads press softly together, his palms move up and down on your back making you sigh.
“I want to take this off too.” he speaks as two fingers slip under your bra, the depth of his voice warming your stomach. You whisper: “Please.”
He always loves it when you approve like that.
It's exciting to undress you, of course, but the gentleness of his fingertips never changes, slowly reaching for the clasp.
Your eyes closed, breathing heavily. His fingers sliding slowly down your shoulder, removing your bra completely.
He pulls back as far as he can just look at your body and, without taking his eyes off your chest, he drops the bra on your shirt on the passenger seat . His warm hands first just touch your skin, then move up from your waist to your stomach and from there to your breasts, cupping them.
You want to hear the words playing indecisively between his lips, but he bites his lower lip with all those dirty words.
Your eyes meet as his thumbs brush against your nipples for a second, making you shiver.
“Shall we continue?”
BEOMGYU
Beomgyu's warm breath is on your face, his thumb caressing your parted lips as he watches them. “Do you want to try again?” he whispers, so that you can feel his breath on the inside of your lips. It's a crazy feeling that can make you beg to kiss him.
“I...” you start, but when he looks at the honey-soaked stars in your eyes, your breath catches. You know he can kill so many things with his eyes.
The slight smile on his lips tells you he has his answer. He slowly removes his hand from your face and brings it to your waist. “Hold on to my shoulders.”
You listen to him, wrap your arms around his shoulders and one of his hands is holding his cock. The image crushes your stomach, you even feel like you could drip.
“Take it slowly,” After positioning himself at your entrance, he squeezes your hip and watches you take a deep breath. “Slowly...” you rub your wetness on the tip of his cock, squeezing his shoulders. Your thighs tremble a little under his gaze.
He never forces you for anything, he can work wonders with his fingers or his mouth. But when you tell him you want him inside you, how can he resist?
“Just like that...” The way you eagerly want to take him completely and the way your pussy swallows him inch by inch, just like now, can drive him crazy. You are too small in his arms, too small for his cock... “Oh,” your hands slide to the nape of his neck as you sit nicely on his lap. Your hole starts to squeeze him deliciously and you gasp into each other's mouths. “Oh, so good... You feel so good.”
The feeling of fullness disrupts the steadiness of your breathing, but it doesn't prevent a messy kiss.
Beomgyu leans his head against the headboard as he closes his eyes and lets your tongue enter his mouth. One hand grips your thigh tightly, and the other hand is in your hair, giving the kiss the attention it needs.
“Tell me when you want me to move.” a little later his voice sounds deeper as he murmurs against your lips.
“I want to.” you answer him breathlessly.
“Right now? Are you sure?” his hand slides from your soft hair to your cheek.
“I want you to fuck me however you want.”
Your voice can't stop trembling despite the cheekiness of your words, just like your hands. You make him open his mouth slightly and the last of the gentleman in his eyes disappears.
But it feels like he's been waiting for you to say it, as his hand soon grabs your throat and pulls you into a more passionate kiss.
TAEHYUN & KAI
Kai's slender fingers gently slide down over your white socks and rest on your calf. “Have you thought about it?” he asks. There is a tenderness in his eyes that is always there when he looks at you. “Safe word.” he adds. You can feel his calm curiosity. Something sparkles in his eyes, making you squirm in Taehyun's lap. An even more intense feeling makes your stomach ache when he tilts his head and looks at you.
“I,” you begin. Of course you have thought about it. “I trust you.”
They are the very definition of trust for you. They are the safest place in the world and they will always make sure that it is always like that for you.
Kai's lips part an inch or so as he continues to look into your eyes, either waiting for you to continue or not yet knowing what to say.
They probably weren't expecting to hear hear such an answer.
Taehyun's quiet giggle is right next to your ear. He kisses your temple. “Of course.” he murmurs. “But it would be good to have a word, darling.” His palms slide down your shoulders. “Sometimes to stop and sometimes to change things.” His fingertips brush lightly against your neck as he gently gathers your hair and lets it fall down your back. “We should have one, even if you don't think you'll use it.”
His fingers take their time in the locks of your hair. He strokes and combs them. As he does some nights to help you sleep. You are not yet over the period in your relationship when you are timid about things and sometimes of them directly, and this is because there are so many positive emotions. So many emotions that make you sometimes shy and sometimes brave. Probably not being able to fully explain this love is what caused the safe word issue, but it's okay, you just saw both of their eyes when you told them you trusted them.
You're looking there when Kai's hands touch your knees. There is a small smile on his lips. “So you haven't decided on a word?” His thumbs trace circles on your skin. “You trust us that much?” His voice gets a little lower as he leans into your face and you both smile. While yours is more shy, he has a different one. Taehyun's hands settle on your waist, and he smiles as he watches you both.
“So cute.” Kai whispers. "I'm glad." Even as he leans down and presses his lips to yours, he is still smiling a little. It only lasts a few seconds, but it's enough to send a tingle through your body. And it definitely works in tandem with the other warm kiss Taehyun places on your neck.
“So let's decide on one together?” Kai suggests, the tips of your noses still touching. You don't want to keep your eyes open, maybe you want to be kissed some more, but above all you make sure you nod to Kai.
Taehyun places his hands on your thighs, places the next kiss near the nape of your neck. “You can think about the things you love.” He murmurs against your skin. “Your favorites.” He kisses you once more. You can feel him close his eyes. “Your favorite color, your favorite flower, your favorite fruit...”
Kai tucks a lock of hair behind your ear and stares intensely into your half-lidded eyes. If you're going to choose the word from your favorite things, it's best to suggest their names.
You slowly turn your head towards Taehyun. Your noses brush against each other as Kai's hands touch your thighs. One of Taehyun's hands takes its place on your thigh, he always loves the lazy desire in your eyes. His other hand slowly moves up to your throat and wraps gently around it. He pulls you into a slow but very warm kiss.
One of Kai's hands gives a ghostly touch to the thin fabric of your underwear. His other hand moves away from between your legs and touches your stomach, pressing gently. He makes you lean fully against Taehyun's chest. He doesn't take his eyes off the two of you in your messy kiss, index finger runs up and down the fabric.
Taehyun's hand moves to your cheek and continues to dominate the kiss. He makes you tilt your head back a little more and presses his tongue against your mouth. You tremble in Taehyun's lap as Kai presses his finger against your clit at the same time, swallowing a moan.
Now Kai's shadow is closer, you can feel it. His fingers slowly pull your underwear aside. His hot breath hits your cheek, his thumb starts to roll your clit. It takes your breath away, you can't focus on the kiss and it makes Taehyun smile slightly.
“Is that good?” Kai asks as he increases the speed of his fingers a little more. You blink heavily, turning to him for an answer, but there are only ragged breaths. You try to nod your head vaguely, interrupted by Kai pressing your foreheads together. You put your hands on his shoulders. You feel a finger slowly slipping into your slit. It sharpens the sensation, your body losing control more and more. Taehyun grips your trembling thighs and spreads your legs wider.
When you are about to forget all the words on the lap where you sit to think of a safe word, a sweet light comes on in your mind
“Dandelion.”
You say suddenly. It stops Taehyun's lips working on your neck and Kai's on your chin. And then the fingers. The sudden cessation of pleasure creates a strange tingling in your body. The word hangs in the air for a few seconds because they were too engrossed in taking care of you just now.
"Oh." Kai pulls back slightly to look at your face. "I stop then?" he says, raising his eyebrows. "No, no!" you say quickly, your hands squeezing his shoulders. "I just found the word."
Kai's smile shines, grasping your elbows and caressing your skin. He is addicted to the look on your face when he messes with you.
Taehyun's arms wrap around your waist, he tilts his head to look at you. He seems to like the word. “So sweet.”
When his old-fashioned language sometimes shows itself, he puts you and flowers in the same class. He murmurs the flower as he kisses your cheek: “Dandelion.”
thanks for reading✨
please show lots of love and support for yeonjun. let's be there for him before and after he comes back. ♥️
dr-solomon 2025
────⠀· ❛ 𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗗 𝐈𝐈
໑ 𐬹 ۫ ۪ 𝗚𝗲̂𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗼: Smut.
໑ 𐬹 ۫ ۪ 𝗔𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗼𝘀: MDNI, sexo explícito, breve spit kink, dirty talk, vocabulário bem chulo, tudo consentido.
໑ 𐬹 ۫ ۪ 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗮𝘀: No Spirit, algumas pessoas me pediram um bônus dessa safadeza deveras insalubre aqui. Não é do meu feitio escrever capítulos bônus, mas isso se escreveu sozinho, que que eu vou fazer
Você já está ficando irritada, não sabe mais o que fazer. Porra, os showzinhos exibicionistas que anda fazendo todas as noites ainda não são suficientes pra ele vir até você? Será que a atuação de garota ingênua se masturbando sem saber que o vizinho pervertido está a espiando não colou com ele? Talvez deva optar pelo modo tradicional, quem sabe o chamar pra beber alguma coisa, demonstrar que tá interessada e ver no que dá, talvez assim ele finalmente pegue a deixa e, com sorte, te leve pra cama. Tsc, o modo tradicional é tão careta... as coisas são tão mais divertidas com um pouquinho de emoção e adrenalina. Quem sabe você só precise se esforçar mais nesse papel de vizinha sacana burrinha.
Com um plano determinado em mente, você está decidida a fazer Soobin finalmente te foder como tanto sonha. Desce pela escadaria do prédio, repassando para si mesma qual é o esquema a seguir, tão avoada na própria imaginação que não nota a figura alta vindo em sua direção. O choque contra o corpo maior é inevitável, mas antes mesmo que você caia de bunda nos degraus, mãos grandes e firmes te seguram a tempo. Quando o sustinho passa, escuta seu vizinho gatinho se desculpando repetidamente e perguntando se você tá bem. Pouco pode conter o sorriso, o bonitinho caiu direto no seu colo.
— Soobin! Que bom encontrar você aqui, eu estava indo agora mesmo procurar por você. — Se recompõe da quase queda. Diz com aquele tom de voz docinho, inclinando a cabeça para cima pra conseguir olhar nos olhos dele.
— Eu? Tava me procurando...? — Soobin parece mais confuso do que você imaginava. Ele tenta esconder o sorrisinho que cresce nos lábios, arruma os óculos sobre o rosto e enfia as mãos no bolso da calça. Nem parece o mesmo tarado que bate umazinha pra você toda noite. — E o que você quer comigo?
Ah, na verdade você quer tantas coisas com o garoto Soobin, uma mais sujinha que a outra, mas por hora vai seguir o dito plano.
— O wi-fi do meu apartamento tá com problema, tentei falar com a assistência técnica mas eles só conseguem mandar alguém pra dar uma olhada amanhã... e eu preciso terminar um trabalho da facul pra entregar ainda hoje. Pode ver se consegue me ajudar? Por favor, eu prometo te recompensar. — Pede tão manhosa, cada palavrinha saindo da sua boca e atiçando o pau de Soobin dentro da calça. Porra, é claro que o pervertidinho ia te ajudar de qualquer maneira, mas agora que ouviu de você que será recompensado, vai dar uma mãozinha até com mais ânimo.
Assim que ele aceita te ajudar, você sorri largo e o puxa pela mão, o fazendo te acompanhar até sua residência. Quando chegam, você abre passagem pra que ele entre e logo o guia até onde está o problema. Soobin corre os olhos rapidamente por sua casa, a cozinha conjugada com a sala, assim como a dele, também vê a porta do seu quarto meio aberta, e na sala, algumas roupas no sofá que você parece estar arrumando chamam a atenção dele: muitas calcinhas rendadinhas e minúsculas ali fazem o pau dele fisgar outra vez. ele com certeza vai esperar você se distrair para roubar uma ou duas.
— Olha só, o wi-fi aparece conectado em todos os aparelhos, mas não tem sinal. A assistência me falou que lá consta que tá tudo certo. O que você acha que pode ser, Binnie? — O apelido recém inventado o pega em cheio. Ele resolveria isso agora nem que tivesse que fazer 6 anos de cursinho de TI no SENAI.
Soobin tenta focar, analisa a situação, e como esperado, já nota o erro de cara. Ele comenta que está faltando um certo cabo importante para a transferência de internet. Com certeza é aquele mesmo cabo que você tirou sem sequer saber se podia e o escondeu no vão atrás do rack da sua TV. Mas você se faz de sonsa, comenta que nunca nem reparou demais nessas coisas, que pode até ter confundido com qualquer outro conector de seus aparelhos enquanto os organizava ali perto.
— Bom, mas... se esse dito cabo é tão essencial pro funcionamento assim e tal, ele só deve tá perdido por aqui, né? Não é como se fosse sumir do nada. — Você dá uma risadinha sem graça. — Pode me ajudar a procurar então? Eu realmente não faço ideia de onde poderia estar. — Aproxima um passo dele, perto o suficiente para sussurrar o último pedido a Soobin. Ele balança a cabecinha positivamente, murmura em concordância, é preciso todo o autocontrole do mundo para não te agarrar no mesmo segundo e enfiar a língua dentro da sua boca.
Então Soobin começa a verificar as prateleiras enquanto você finge procurar nas gavetas. Quando revistam tudo por pelo menos algumas vezes seguidas, você sugere que talvez o cabo esteja perdido embaixo dos móveis... como se, por um "descuido" pudesse ter caído ali, embora você mesma diga não se lembrar de nadinha.
E sua próxima parte do plano entra em jogo. Soobin, que ainda está olhando entre as prateleiras e prestes a procurar pelo rack, ouve sua sugestão de averiguar por baixo dos móveis, quando se vira em sua direção, te vê de quatro no chão “procurando” por entre o vão do sofá. A cabeça do garoto tilta na hora, o vestidinho veranil que você tá usando já é normalmente curtinho, mas nessa posição deixa seu rabo todo à mostra, a calcinha tão fininha que some entre as bandas rechonchudas, só cobrindo de verdade os lábios da bucetinha, aqueles que, espremidinhos ali naquela posição, se moldam tão bem no tecido clarinho e delicado.
— En-encontrou algo aí? — Te pergunta um tanto nervoso. Não é como se a máscara de bom moço fosse durar por muito mais tempo... não quando a maior tentação dele tá toda empinadinha ali só pra ele. Devagar, Soobin se ajoelha no chão, você resmunga algo meio incompreensível e tudo que ele faz é alertar que também vai procurar por ali.
Soobin se aproxima, sua bunda tão gostosa o faz querer tirar o pau pra fora sem mais nem menos e socar na sua buceta, com a calcinha só puxada pro ladinho. Mas no momento, ele se contenta em só olhar, desde que olhe bem de pertinho. Você pergunta algo a ele de novo, mas Soobin sequer escuta, tá inclinado com o rostinho tão perto da sua intimidade que já consegue até sentir seu cheirinho delicioso emanando. Ele ajeita os óculos que deslizam pela ponte do nariz, fecha os olhinhos e puxa o ar entre as narinas. Abruptamente, Soobin dá um solavanco quando sente sua mão se arrastar entre os fios de cabelo dele e terminar de enterrar aquele rostinho lindo na sua bucetinha coberta. O garoto geme realizado quando se dá por si, finalmente espalma as mãos em cada lado da sua bunda e põe a língua para fora, babando inteirinho o pequeno tecido.
Você geme fraquinha, não consegue nem formular frases coerentes, finalmente ter o contato dele sobre você te inebria demais.A boquinha desesperada de Soobin é gostosa, mas não mais do que ter o pau dele socando sua entradinha sem dó.
Deitada bem na beiradinha do sofá, com as perninhas arreganhadas deixando a bucetinha tão bem exposta... Talvez seja todo o tesão acumulado falando mais alto, mas o pau de Soobin te mói como nunca nenhum outro antes. Ele soca tão gostoso, a piroca veiuda alcançando os lugares certos para te fazer revirar os olhinhos.
— Porra, delícia de buceta. Eu nunca mais quero sair daqui... — Soobin pende a cabeça pra trás, uma mão segura sua cintura com força enquanto a outra ajuda a manter ao menos uma de suas perninhas bem espaçadas. — Deixando o vizinho usar sua bucetinha linda, hein… que putinha do caralho que cê é, princesa. — Ele te provoca, tenta segurar o gemido manhosinho quando sente suas paredes macias se apertarem ao redor dele.
— Hmm... eu sou, é? Sou uma putinha, Binnie?A-ah, mais forte... isso, assim! — Observa o fio grosso de saliva escorrer da boca dele até seu grelinho, sente o fluido baboso cair no seu pontinho e choraminga manhosa. Você agarra a coxa de Soobin quando ele leva uma das mãos a esfregar seu clitóris durinho. Tá tão encharcada... o cacete entra e sai de você com tamanha facilidade que os sons molhadinhos de “plaft plaft” ecoam alto pela sala.
Com toda certeza, os dois pervertidinhos vão ter outra noite longa, mas dessa vez de um jeitinho bem melhor.
Gostou? Dá uma forcinha aí! Uma curtida, um reblog ou um comentário são mais do que suficientes para eu saber que você se agradou com meu conteúdo :)
Até a próxima, bjsss <3
˙⋆✮ Homeroom Hearts Masterlist ˙⋆✮
You make it, you make it, you make it feel like Heaven, 잠들었던 별빛이 awaken ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆
✴︎Summary
✴︎1: A Gift Made With Love
✴︎2:Did You Make Those?
✴︎3:A Little Something From Home(room)
✴︎4:Fateful Grocery Run
✴︎5:Fridays
✴︎6:God’s Favorite Soldier
✴︎7:Kind People Bring Soup
✴︎8:A Special Visitor
✴︎9:Rain Check
✴︎10:Worlds Collided
✴︎11:Please Get Us Home
ᥫ᭡.ִֶ misguided | choi soobin | part II
synopsis:the girl soobin has wanted since forever is dating the campus resident playboy. desperate, hopeless, and out of ideas, he comes to you—a shaman who supposedly specialises in love rituals and spiritual compatibility. only problem? you’re a total fraud.
you talk to the walls when the party gets bored of you. but i don't get bored, i just see it through
▶︎ •၊၊||၊|။|||| norman fucking rockwell — lana del rey
ᥫ᭡ pairing: yearner!choi soobin x scammer shaman!reader
ᥫ᭡ genre/warnings: college au, romcom, coming of age, crack, e2l, spin-off, explicit language, sexual humour & crude jokes, drug use, alcohol use, manipulation/deception, emotional distress, bit of angst, pining, slow burn, jealousy, plotting against your fav freaky couple, 18+ mdni, second-hand embarrassment, so unhinged turn your brain off
ᥫ᭡ status: completed
ᥫ᭡ wc: 14k
ᥫ᭡ playlist | series masterlist | main masterlist | prequel | banner
part two | the quack ᥫ᭡
Choi Soobin always thought he was patient.
The kind of patience that gets praised by teachers and aunties and strangers at bus stops. The kind that makes people say, He’s such a good boy, as if being good is a personality and not a coping mechanism.
He doesn’t swear. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t slam doors. He doesn’t make scenes.
Yet, right now, he is one more breath away from committing a crime.
He paces your living room with his hands clenched so tight his knuckles ache. Your carpet is cheap and thin and the pattern has been worn down in patches, and he’s pretty sure he’s about to wear a new path into it. He keeps walking back and forth, forth and back—jaw clenched, tongue pressing hard against his teeth—trying to hold the anger in his body where it belongs.
You’re on the sofa with Taehyun—yes, the bartender. That’s the part that keeps making his rage spike.
You’re not tied up or trembling in fear. You’re not even pretending to be sorry properly. You’re sat there in your hoodie, head down and your hands in your lap. You hiccup every few seconds, eyes shiny and cheeks flushed. Taehyun’s next to you with a bottle of water; one hand on your shoulder like he’s managing a crisis, the other rubbing his own neck like he’s trying to figure out how the fuck you both ended up here.
The air smells faintly of fried food, and alcohol, and your incense. The scene is so normal it’s obscene.
Soobin stops pacing and turns to face you. His voice goes thin. “Truth—I want the full truth.”
A hiccup punches out of you.
He closes his eyes for half a second. “Don’t.”
You hiccup again, then glare at him through watery eyes, offended by his tone as if you aren’t the one who convinced him a virgin ghost eats fallen grapes off café floors.
Taehyun shifts beside you. His expression isn’t smug now—it’s tight with guilt and nerves. He’s still trying to look calm, but the remorse sits on him in the way his shoulders hold themselves. Taehyun is good at pretending he doesn’t care—he’s worse when he actually does.
Soobin points at both of you. “Not the ghost version,” he says again.
You try to speak. Your body betrays you again. You clamp a hand over your mouth, furious at your own body.
Taehyun gives you the water. “Drink,” he murmurs, then looks at Soobin and sighs. “Alright. Fine.”
Soobin’s eyes narrow. “Fine.”
Taehyun nods once, jaw flexing. “We scammed you.”
Soobin’s chest tightens. It lands heavy even though he already knew. Hearing it out loud makes it real in a way he hates.
You hiccup again, then choke out, “I—” and nothing else comes out.
Taehyun keeps going, voice low, careful. “I told her about you. I sent you to her and got commission out of it.”
Soobin’s gaze snaps to him. “Commission.”
Taehyun winces. “Yeah.”
Soobin’s hands ball into fists again. “So I sat at your bar and spilled my guts and you were calculating commission in your head.”
Taehyun flinches and looks down. “I wasn’t calculating. I—”
“You were,” Soobin snaps, then immediately catches his own volume and swallows it down. “You did.”
You make a small sound in the back of your throat and you squeeze your eyes shut, mortified.
Taehyun’s hand tightens on your shoulder. He looks at Soobin again. “She didn’t think you’d keep coming back.”
Soobin turns to you, voice sharpening. “You didn’t mind when I kept coming back. You—you took my money.”
You try to lift your head. Your eyes meet his for half a second. Your fingers worry the cuff of your sleeve until it twists. You look guilty—proper guilty. The kind that makes his stomach twist.
You hiccup and whisper, “I’m sorry.”
Soobin laughs once, bitter. “Sorry.”
Taehyun rubs his face with his free hand. “Mate, I swear, it wasn’t meant to go this far.”
“It went as far as grapes under tables,” Soobin says, voice flat with disbelief. “That’s pretty far.”
You press the heel of your palm into your forehead, breathing through your nose, as if your body has decided that this is how you’ll be punished—humiliation with sound effects.
Taehyun speaks over it. “There’s no real ghost—she made it up on the spot.”
Soobin’s eyes flick to you. “On the spot?”
You nod weakly, then hiccup. You hate yourself.
Taehyun continues, voice getting faster now. “The virgin ghost thing was supposed to scare you a bit, make you take it seriously, then you’d stop coming, and that would be the end. People come once, realise it’s bullshit, never come back. You—” he gestures at Soobin, “—kept showing up.”
“Because I wanted it to work.” The words come out rawer than he intends. He hates that you both hear it. He hates that Taehyun’s expression shifts, shame deepening, and you hiccup again like your body’s reacting to the honesty.
You whisper, hoarse, “I didn’t think you would—you’d believe it.”
Soobin stares at you. “You didn’t think I’d believe a ghost was attached to me?”
Taehyun’s voice drops. “You were desperate, mate.”
Soobin’s throat tightens at that. “So you both thought I was—what? A joke?”
You flinch. Your eyes drop.
Taehyun doesn’t defend himself this time. He just nods once, small. “We took the piss.”
Soobin’s stomach turns. He drags a hand down his face. He wants to be angry—he is angry. But under the anger there’s something else—humiliation, hurt, the sharp sting of realising he begged for help from two people who made fun of him after.
He points at you, voice tight. “You laughed about it.”
“I—I didn’t—not at first. I didn’t mean—” A hiccup cuts you off. You slam your palm against your thigh, furious. “Stop,” you hiss at your own body.
Taehyun steps in again, voice steadier. “She did laugh, yeah. We both did. We shouldn’t have.”
Soobin’s eyes flicker between you. Your face is flushed. Your eyes are wet. Your mouth keeps twitching as you fight the hiccups. Taehyun looks guilty in a way Soobin has never seen on anyone before—quiet, real, no performance.
It makes the anger wobble. It doesn’t disappear—but it wobbles.
Soobin inhales. “I don’t care about your life stories. I don’t care why you scam. I care that I was sat there with you—” he points at Taehyun, “—talking about her, and you were already planning how to profit off it.”
Taehyun’s shoulders drop. “I know.”
“And you,” Soobin turns back to you, “you took it and ran with it.”
You nod, voice small. “I know.”
The guilt in your face is real. It angers him off even more, because it means you knew it was wrong and did it anyway.
You wipe at your cheek quickly, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” you manage again.
Soobin’s voice sharpens. “Stop saying sorry.”
Your eyes widen, hurt flashing.
Taehyun looks between you both, jaw tight. “Mate—”
Soobin lifts a hand. “No. Stop butting in. I want to hear from her.”
You nod quickly, desperate, then another stupid hiccup jumps you. You squeeze your eyes shut, inhale, and try to speak. “It started when I was nine—”
Soobin stares. “You started scamming people when you were nine years old.”
You shake your head hard. “No— I—”
Taehyun sighs and fills in, because he can see you drowning in your own body. “Her dad’s business went bankrupt when she was nine. She’s been broke since she could spell broke.”
You glare at Taehyun through tears. “Why are you telling him that?”
Taehyun keeps his voice low. “Because you’re hiccuping yourself into silence.”
Soobin’s throat works. He doesn’t know what to do with that information. It doesn’t absolve you. It just makes everything messier—he hates messy.
You sniff, angry now, and the hiccups get worse. “Why the fuck am I crying?” you choke out, failing at life.
Taehyun’s mouth twitches once, then he sobers. “Because this is humiliating.”
Soobin’s chest twists. He rubs his face, fighting the urge to bolt.
“We’re sorry,” Taehyun says, and it sounds real this time. “We didn’t mean to take it this far.”
Soobin laughs again, bitter. “You took it as far as you could and it still wasn’t enough. You kept adding steps.”
Your shoulders curl in. You whisper, “You kept coming.”
Soobin’s eyes flash. “Because I wanted her back.”
Silence lands heavy in the room.
Taehyun is the one to break it, voice cautious. “Normally, people come once, realise it’s not real, then they disappear.”
Soobin’s head snaps up. “What?”
Taehyun freezes, realising he’s stepped on something.
Soobin points at him. “You said people come once. You said they disappear.”
Taehyun swallows. His gaze flicks to you with warning. You’re still hiccuping, still flushed, still caught.
Soobin leans forward slightly. “There are other clients?”
Taehyun exhales, defeated. “Yeah.”
Hope blooms in Soobin’s chest in the most pathetic way possible. He hates it—he also clings to it anyway. “What happens,” he asks, slow and careful, “when your scam accidentally… works?”
You stare at him. Taehyun stares at him.
Taehyun speaks first, reluctant. “There was a couple. They came for compatibility stuff. Horoscope.”
Soobin’s eyes sharpen. “And?”
Taehyun keeps going. “She asked questions. He answered and lied—but not well enough.”
Soobin’s voice tightens. “He cheated?”
You flinch. Taehyun flinches. Your guilt spikes and you look down.
Taehyun nods. “Yeah.”
Soobin steps closer, intensity building. “So you can break people up?”
“No,” you choke out, voice sharp. “We don’t do that.”
Taehyun shakes his head. “It was an accident.”
Soobin’s laugh is ugly. “An accident.”
You lean forward, hands clenched. “We don’t get involved with couples who are happily together.”
Soobin points at you. “You told me a virgin ghost is attached to me and eats fallen grapes.”
You wince. “That’s different.”
“How,” he snaps, then catches his tone and tries again through gritted teeth, “is that different?”
You swallow hard. “Because you were single and miserable.”
“So only couples deserve happy endings.”
“That’s not—” you start, then hiccup, then get louder out of frustration. “That’s not what I’m saying.”
“So help me,” Soobin says, and the politeness finally cracks. “For real this time.”
You shake your head immediately. “We can’t.”
Soobin’s eyes go cold. “Then I’ll report you.”
Taehyun stiffens.
Soobin continues, voice low and deadly. “A full refund, and I’ll also report you. Authorities, university—everyone.”
Your stomach drops. Your hands go clammy. Taehyun goes pale, and you see it—the flash of fear that he tries to swallow.
Soobin looks sick saying it. Shame creeps across his face. He hates that he’s doing this. He does it anyway. “I don’t want to but I will if I have to,” he says, quieter. “I just—I don’t know what else to do.”
Taehyun’s voice is careful. “Mate.”
Soobin shakes his head once. “I can’t let her go.”
Your throat tightens. Your chest hurts. Your guilt sits heavy now, because you can see how cornered he feels. You look at Taehyun. Taehyun shakes his head, sharp. Don’t. Please don’t.
You ignore him. “Okay,” you say.
Taehyun’s head snaps toward you. “What?”
You glare at him. “I decided.”
Taehyun looks at you like you’ve lost your mind. “No, you didn’t.”
“Yes,” you say, voice firm. “We’ll help you.”
Soobin’s face changes—relief hitting so hard it looks painful. He swallows, trying not to show it, then fails. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” you snap, eyes stinging. “If you thank me, I’ll change my mind.”
Taehyun drags a hand down his face. “We are so fucked.”
Soobin stands there in your living room, hope back in his eyes, and you sit on your own sofa feeling your remorse settle into something heavier.
You got caught—and instead of running, you just agreed to make it worse.
Soobin leaves with the kind of slammed door he’s never been the type to give.
It rattles the cheap picture frame in the hallway. It makes the washing machine behind the curtain thump once, offended at the noise. It even makes Mangy lift his head from the windowsill and blink toward the door, then blink at you, then put his head back down with the expression of a creature thinking, pathetic, all of you.
The second the lock clicks, Taehyun explodes.
“What’s wrong with you?” he spits, standing in the middle of your studio with his hands out, palms up, as if he’s about to present you to the jury. “How could you agree to that?”
You don’t answer immediately. You just stand there for a beat, staring at the place where Soobin was. The cushion still has the shape of him. Your rice bowl sits on the table like it’s witnessed war crimes. Your notebook is open to a page of doodles and fake symbols and now it feels less funny, more… real—which is disgusting.
Then your body remembers it’s tired.
Tired in the bones. Tired in the teeth. Tired in the little space behind your eyes where you keep your last scraps of patience. You turn away from Taehyun mid-rant and walk into your bedroom with the slow, heavy steps of someone dragging a corpse of a day behind them.
Taehyun follows, still going. “He’s going to report us,” he says. “He’s going to ruin us. He’s going to—”
You flop onto your bed face-first, coat still on, hoodie still on, one leg hanging off the side like you’ve been shot. The mattress squeaks. The pillow smells faintly of your shampoo and stale smoke. You lie there and let the ceiling exist.
Taehyun stands by your doorframe, fuming. “Say something.”
You roll your face to the side, cheek squashed into the pillow, voice muffled. “I am saying something. I’m saying I’m dead.”
“That’s not helpful,” he snaps.
You lift your head, hair sticking up, eyes dry and angry. “What did you want me to do,” you ask, “tell him no and get us both kicked out of uni? That kid wasn’t messing about.”
Taehyun’s jaw tightens. He paces once, then twice, then stops and plants himself at the foot of your bed—arms crossed so hard his shoulders rise. “He wouldn’t actually report you,” he says, like he needs to believe that.
“He absolutely would,” you reply. “He looked me in the eyes and threatened the authorities. The man is a fucking hall monitor with heartbreak.”
Taehyun rubs his face. “We shouldn’t have picked him.”
You scoff. “We didn’t pick him. You picked him.”
His gaze snaps up. “Don’t.”
“Oh, don’t,” you echo, sitting up and pushing your hair out of your face. “You want to act like you’re not complicit now? You sent him to me. You took your cut. You listened to him cry in your bar and thought, delicious, let’s monetise that.”
Taehyun flinches, then looks away, guilt flashing across his face fast enough that you almost miss it. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, biting his cheek in that thinking way he does when he’s trying not to spiral. “I feel bad,” he says, quieter now. “I shouldn’t have— I shouldn’t have used him. He was genuinely… fucked up.”
You stare at him. “Welcome to our business model.”
He shakes his head. “No, you don’t get to say that and make it a joke.”
“I’m not making it a joke,” you reply. “I’m making it survivable.”
Taehyun’s mouth tightens. He looks tired too, just in a different way. He looks like someone who built a life in the city by being sharp and unbothered, and now the unbothered part is slipping.
You exhale and rub your eyes hard enough to sting. “What’s done is done,” you say. “We just need to figure this shit out.”
Taehyun stares at you. “Figure what out?”
“How to keep him from reporting us,” you say, deadpan. “How to keep him from coming back with a warrant and his polite little sorry face while we get escorted out of uni.”
Taehyun lets out a short laugh that has no humour in it. “You agreed to help him break up a couple.”
You lift a finger. “I agreed to help him. He thinks it's a break-up. We can steer it.”
Taehyun’s brows knit. “Steer it into what?”
You open your mouth—nothing comes out. Your brain offers a blank screen. Your stomach twists. You hate that. You hate that Soobin has backed you into a corner where you actually have to think instead of just perform.
Taehyun watches your face and scoffs. “You don’t even have a plan.”
“I’m brainstorming,” you say.
“You’re lying,” he shoots back.
You glare. “Lying is my skill set.”
Taehyun turns, drags a hand through his hair, then turns back again, voice sharper. “I want nothing to do with this anymore.”
You sit up straighter. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me,” he says. “This is on you. You agreed to it.”
“Oh, fuck off,” you say immediately. “You’re not walking away now.”
“I am,” he says, and he sounds angry, but there’s fear under it. “I can’t get kicked out. I can’t have my sister finding out I got expelled because I was running a scam with my best friend and a heartbreak case.”
You blink. “So you’re leaving me to take the fall.”
Taehyun’s eyes flash. “Don’t turn it into that.”
“It is that,” you reply. “You’re saying it’s on me.”
He opens his mouth, then shuts it, then exhales and looks down at the floor like the carpet might give him a better answer than you can.
You feel something hot crawl up your throat—rage, panic, whatever the fuck it is when you realise you’re alone in the mess you both made. “Taehyun,” you say, voice low. “We built this together.”
He looks up, jaw clenched. “I know.”
“So don’t abandon me,” you snap.
His mouth twitches, pained. “I’m not abandoning you. I’m setting a boundary.”
“Your boundary is convenient,” you shoot back.
He flinches again, then turns away, shoulders tight. He walks toward your door, grabs his coat from the back of your chair, and yanks it on.
You watch him do it and it makes your chest ache. Not because he’s leaving—because you hate that he’s right to be scared.
He pauses in your doorway. For a second he doesn’t look like a bartender. He doesn’t look like a plug. He looks like the boy you grew up with—the one who used to share his snacks with you at lunch breaks, the one who used to talk about the city as if it was salvation.
He turns back slowly. “You did this for me, didn’t you?” he asks.
It’s quiet and sharp—it hits you right in the gut.
You stare at him.
Your mouth opens. You could tell him the truth. You could say yes, because if he got kicked out you’d never be able to face his sister again. She'd look at you with disappointment instead of affection, she’d say you ruined him—because you’ve always ruined good things.
But honesty is not your talent. Not with feelings, not when it makes you look soft.
So you swallow it. You lift your chin and let your voice go rude. “Fuck off,” you say.
Taehyun’s eyes narrow. He holds your gaze for a beat longer than you want him to. Then his mouth twitches, like he understands you anyway. “Yeah,” he mutters. “Thought so.”
He leaves.
The door clicks shut.
You sit on your bed in your coat and stare at the cracks in the ceiling, feeling burnt out and drained and run over and then reversed over again for good measure. Mangy jumps up beside you, circles twice, and sits with his back to you, tail flicking.
Choi Soobin turns up the next day with a folder in his hands.
You open the door and just stare at him for a second—taking in the crisp shirt, the neat hair, the clean coat, the calm eyes. He looks pressed and prepared, like he’s about to tell a teacher you forgot the homework.
You look down at yourself—hoodie, leggings, socks that don’t match, hair shoved up, under-eyes living their own life—and you feel that familiar, ugly pinch in your chest. Not jealousy or admiration. Just the knowledge that he’s never had to walk around with your kind of exhaustion in his bones.
He clears his throat. “Hi.”
“Don’t come into my house looking like a tax accountant,” you reply. “It makes me violent.”
He blinks. “I’m dressed normally.”
“Normal for you,” you mutter, stepping aside. “Shoes off.”
He does it neatly—of course he does—and the neatness makes your eye twitch. Then he follows you, folder tucked under his arm, into the studio where your incense is still burning and your rice bowl is still on the table.
He sits straight away, posture perfect, knees tucked in slightly. The cushion doesn’t deserve this kind of respect.
You sit down behind the table and tap your pen once against your notebook. The pen makes you feel like you have authority and not just audacity. “So,” you say. “What’s the plan, Mr Stationery.”
“It’s not stationery,” he says, already annoyed. “It’s notes.”
“Notes,” you repeat. “You’re writing notes about breaking up a couple.”
His tongue presses to his teeth. “I’m writing notes about stopping someone from being hurt.”
You laugh once, sharp. “That’s adorable. You think you’re a hero.”
He stiffens. “I think I’m right.”
“Even cuter,” you say, leaning back. “You’ve got the confidence of a man who’s never been wrong in public.”
His eyes narrow. “Can we not do this?”
“We can,” you reply, “but I won’t. Tell me the plan.”
He opens the folder and slides a page toward you. It has bullet points and headings, his handwriting looks neat enough to be framed.
You stare at it. “You made a timetable.”
“It’s organised,” he says, defensive.
“It’s psychotic,” you correct.
His mouth tightens. “I’m trying.”
“You’re trying in a way that makes me want to pour rice on my own head,” you say. “Talk.”
He points at the first bullet point. “We get Choi Yeonjun to come here for a consultation.”
You blink. “We.”
“So you can feel included,” he says, then immediately regrets the sentence.
You lean forward. “Don’t try and patronise me—it makes me itch.”
“I’m not patronising you,” he says, voice even, like he’s speaking to a difficult customer.
You scoff. “You’re doing that thing where you say words gently so you can pretend you’re not being a cunt.”
His ears go red. “I’m not being a—”
“A cunt,” you finish, smiling. “There. See. You can say it.”
His jaw works. “Can you please not swear every other sentence?”
You stare at him. “No.”
He blinks. “No?”
“No,” you repeat, slow. “This is my mouth. If you don’t like it, you can go home and write a complaint in your little folder.”
His nostrils flare. He looks down at the page again, determined not to rise to it. “You lure him in.”
You snort. “Lure.”
“Yes,” he insists. “You say you sensed something. You say there’s spiritual—whatever.”
“Spiritual whatever,” you repeat. “Brilliant. You’re really across my field.”
His eyes flick up. “I’m not here to learn your… craft.”
You laugh. “Craft—fucking hell. You sound like I’m crocheting ghosts.”
He presses his lips together, then says, too calm, “You do lie for money.”
There it is. The moral superiority, delivered with a polite voice and clean hands. It hits you right behind the ribs. You stare at him. “Say that again.”
His eyes hold yours. “You lie for money.”
You smile. It’s not a nice smile. “And you threaten people for love. We all have hobbies.”
“That’s not the same,” he says immediately.
“Of course you’d say that,” you reply, leaning forward, elbows on the table. “You don’t know what the same is. You think money stress is when your card machine takes too long.”
His brows knit. “That’s not fair.”
You bark out a laugh. “Fair? That’s rich coming from a man who has never had to choose between rent and food.”
His fingers tighten on the edge of the folder. “I’m not rich.”
You glance at his coat, his watch, his haircut, the general aura of I grew up with options. “Yeah, alright.”
He swallows something down and tries to keep his voice steady. “I worked hard.”
You laugh again, softer and meaner. “So did I. Mine just didn’t come with a safety net.”
His eyes flicker, uncomfortable. Then he straightens, clinging to his argument. “None of this excuses what you did.”
You lean back. “You’re in my studio asking me to do more of it.”
“I’m asking you to do it to help someone,” he says, as if that makes it clean.
You stare at him. “You want me to scam a man into confessing he’s cheating.”
You pause. “And you’ve decided he’s cheating based on what, exactly?”
His face tightens. “His reputation.”
“Ah,” you say. “The vibes-based legal system.”
He flinches. “I’m not doing this for fun.”
“No,” you reply. “You’re doing it because you can’t handle losing.”
His eyes flash. “I can handle losing.”
“You can’t even handle silence,” you shoot back. “You survived forty-eight hours and acted like you’d been tortured.”
“That’s different.”
“It’s always different for you,” you say. “That’s the privilege part.”
His jaw clenches. “Stop calling me privileged.”
“Stop acting like you’re morally superior,” you fire back. “You don’t get to sit there with your tidy little handwriting and judge me when you came here begging for a ghost to fix your feelings.”
He opens his mouth, shuts it, then opens it again—frustration slipping through. “I didn’t beg.”
“You begged,” you say. “You were one apology away from crying in my rice bowl.”
His face goes fully red. “I was desperate.”
“And you think desperate people don’t do desperate things,” you reply. “Welcome to the club.”
He stares at you for a long second, then he exhales through his nose and tries to pull it back to the plan, because that’s what he does when emotions get too big—he turns them into tasks. “Fine,” he says, clipped. “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to be you.”
“No shit,” you mutter.
He ignores that. “So tell me what will work.”
You blink. “Excuse me?”
“What will work,” he repeats, eyes sharp. “Since you’re the one who lies professionally.”
The wording makes your stomach twist again. He said it like it’s dirty, like it’s beneath him, like it isn’t the only reason you’re still alive. You lean forward, voice low. “First, you don’t get to talk to me like I’m your tool.”
He frowns. “I’m not—”
“You are,” you cut in. “You came here with a folder and a
plan and assumed I’d just do it. You don’t get to treat me like a service. Pay your therapist for that.”
His mouth tightens. “Then what do you want?”
You laugh once. “I want you to stop acting like you’re doing this for her.”
His eyes narrow. “I am.”
“You’re doing it for you,” you say. “You want proof so you can feel righteous. You want a reason to hate him so you don’t have to sit with the fact that she chose him.”
Soobin’s throat works. His gaze drops to the paper, then back up. His voice comes out tight. “You don’t know her.”
“I don’t need to,” you reply. “I know you.”
His jaw clenches at that. He looks offended, then something else flickers—panic, maybe, at being seen too cleanly.
You tap your pen once. “Now. If you still want to do this, you listen.”
He sits straighter, as if posture will help.
“You cannot be in the room,” you say.
He immediately protests. “Why not?”
“Because you’ll ruin it,” you reply. “You’ll breathe too loud. You’ll twitch. You’ll glare. You’ll make him perform. He won’t say shit.”
“I won’t,” he says.
“You will,” you repeat, dead calm. “Your entire body is a tell. You’re basically a lie detector with legs.”
He looks like he wants to argue, then clamps his mouth shut instead.
“Second,” you continue, “you need to accept a possibility.”
His brows knit. “What possibility?”
“That he isn’t cheating,” you say.
Soobin goes still. “He is.”
“You don’t know that,” you reply. “You know rumours. Rumours are bored people with mouths.”
He stares at you. “He’s a fuckboy.”
“You keep saying that,” you say. “It’s not evidence. It’s a coping mechanism.”
“I know what men like him do.”
“And I know what men like you do,” you shoot back. “You mistake being good for being owed.”
His eyes widen. “I don’t—”
“You do,” you cut in. “You just package it nicely.”
Silence drops. Your chest rises and falls hard. His hands grip his knees.
Both of you look annoyed. Both of you look tired.
Soobin speaks first, voice quieter and stubborn. “So what am I supposed to do?”
You stare at him. You want to say, let her go. You want to say, stop trying to control everything. You want to say, go to therapy and stop outsourcing your feelings to scammers.
You don’t. You’re not that generous—not for free. You lean back. “I’m supposed to come up with a plan that doesn’t get me arrested.”
“So come up with one,” he says, and the entitlement slips out again before he can catch it.
You blink. “There it is.”
His brows pull together. “What?”
“You,” you say. “You think you can just—order me.”
“I’m not ordering—”
“You are,” you snap. “You threatened to report me. You’re here because you think you can force me. That’s not asking. That’s coercion with a clean shirt.”
Soobin’s face tightens. Shame flickers across it fast, then gets shoved down. “I don’t want to force you.”
“But you are,” you reply. “Because you’re desperate.”
He stares at you, jaw clenched, then nods once, stiff. “Yes.” The admission hangs there, ugly and honest.
You exhale. “Alright. Give me time. Let me think.”
“You’ve had time,” he argues.
“I’ve had panic,” you correct. “Thinking costs extra.”
He looks like he wants to fight. He stands instead, stiff, controlled, and angry in a quiet way that makes you want to poke him just to see if he’ll crack.
At the door, he pauses, hand on the handle. “You’re still going to help me, right?”
You lift your brows. “You’re still threatening me, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t deny it, he just says, quieter, “Please.”
It’s the first time he’s said it without packaging it into a demand. It annoys you—it also hits you somewhere soft. You hate that. You hate him.
You wave him off. “Get out of my flat, Choi Soobin.”
He leaves.
You lock the door, turn around, and whisper into the empty room, “I’m going to kill Taehyun.”
Mangy blinks slowly from the windowsill, tail flicking once, as if he agrees.
By day two of planning, you realise Choi Soobin’s definition of a plan is you doing all the thinking while he stands there with his moral superiority and a folder.
By day three, his definition of a plan is stalking.
You find out in the worst way possible—texts at 07:42am that makes your stomach clench.
fucking moron: be ready in ten fucking moron: wear something normal fucking moron: no swearing today please
You stare at the messages. You stare at them some more. Then you type back with the fury of a woman who is not a passenger in her own life.
you: who the fuck are you talking to you: “no swearing” you: i will swear on purpose
Three dots appear. Disappear. Then appear again, as if he’s struggling.
fucking moron: can you just fucking moron: please fucking moron: we need to observe him
Observe. Observe what, exactly? His hands? His phone? Who he disappears with when he thinks no one’s looking?
You sigh. Soobin thinks he’s in a nature documentary. Next he’ll be whispering into the bushes about mating calls.
You throw your hoodie on, pull your hair into a knot, and shove your feet into trainers. Mangy watches from the windowsill with a look that says you’re doing it again, you loser. Your cat has never supported a single one of your decisions.
Soobin’s car is parked outside your building when you step out. It’s a clean, black BMW. The kind of car that doesn’t make a noise when you shut the door and makes you feel like you should apologise for existing near it.
Soobin is leaning against it, hands in his coat pockets, jaw tight, eyes scanning the street—like he expects Choi Yeonjun to appear behind a bin and start shagging someone in public.
He sees you and straightens immediately, then his gaze flicks to your hoodie and your trainers and your messy hair.
His mouth tightens. “Is that what you’re wearing?”
You stop walking. “Is that a problem?”
“It’s—fine,” he says, voice clipped, then he adds, “Just—try to look less like you’re here to rob someone.”
You snort. “We’re stalking someone.”
He opens his mouth, shuts it, then walks around and opens the passenger door for you.
You pause. “Are you opening my door?”
He looks irritated. “Get in.”
You slide in. The interior smells expensive. Clean leather and subtle cologne. Your whole body stiffens out of habit. You don’t like sitting in things you can’t afford—it makes you feel loud.
Soobin gets in and starts the engine. He checks his mirrors like he’s about to commit a crime—which, to be fair, he is.
You look at him. “So. What’s the plan?”
He grips the steering wheel. “We follow him.”
“We,” you repeat. “Like a couple of creeps.”
He glances at you. “Don’t start.”
“I’m starting,” you say. “You’ve dragged me out of bed before nine. This is a hostage situation.”
Soobin pulls out smoothly and drives with the calm focus of someone who’s never had to drive a car held together by hope. He doesn’t speed or swerve. He doesn’t even look slightly anxious behind the wheel, which is unfair.
Ten minutes later, you’re at his campus.
It’s all glass buildings and clean pavements and students who look like they’re living in an advert—carrying matcha lattes and tote bags, laughing as if their biggest problem is choosing which society to join.
Your whole body wants to recoil on principle.
Soobin parks far enough away that nobody will see his car and connect it to anything embarrassing. He looks over at you, serious. “You can’t talk,” he says.
You stare. “Excuse me?”
“We’re blending in,” he says. “We need to blend.”
“Blend,” you repeat. “As what? A couple of fucking losers?”
“Please. Just—keep it minimal. No swearing. No… you.”
You smile, slow. “You’re obsessed with controlling things, aren’t you?”
He doesn’t answer. He just gets out and closes the door a little too hard, then walks around to your side and opens your door again.
You step out, squinting at him. “Stop doing that.”
He glances up, frowning. “Doing what?”
“Opening my door,” you snap. “You’re not my dad.”
His ears go slightly red. “It’s just—polite.”
“It’s weird,” you mutter, then you follow him anyway.
Soobin walks like he belongs here. He nods at people and moves with purpose. His shoulders are tense, but he hides it behind posture. You trail beside him with your hands shoved in your hoodie pocket, trying not to look like you’re casing the place for a robbery.
He turns to you as you approach the main building. “Stay close.”
You raise a brow. “Why?”
“So you don’t stand out.”
“Too late,” you say. “My aura is screaming debt.”
He ignores that and pushes through the doors.
Inside is worse. Warm and bright and too clean. It smells of coffee and money and posh twats. Students are everywhere—sitting on benches, clustered in groups, laughing, typing, living. You feel instantly out of place, like you’ve walked into a world that assumes everyone is fine.
Soobin’s eyes scan the hall. “There,” he murmurs.
You follow his gaze.
Choi Yeonjun is walking through the lobby with a group of friends, easy posture, hands in his pockets, hair messy in an intentional way, laughter loud enough to make people turn. He looks exactly like his reputation—too comfortable, too confident, too unbothered by the fact he takes up space in a room.
And he’s surrounded.
The universe would never hand you an easy target. Yeonjun walks with three people flanking him, two behind him, one girl hanging off his shoulder as if she lives there. They look like a moving wall of noise.
Soobin’s jaw tightens. You can see the anger in the way he holds himself, the way his shoulders square.
“He’s always with someone,” Soobin mutters.
You glance at him. “Maybe he has friends. You should try it sometime.”
Soobin shoots you a look. “Do you have to start?”
“I’m just saying,” you reply. “You can’t be mad at a man for having mates.”
“I’m mad at him for existing,” Soobin says, then immediately looks horrified that he said that out loud.
You blink. “Oh. There it is.”
He glares at you. “Shut up.”
You both follow Yeonjun at a distance that makes you feel like an undercover cop in a really shit TV show. Soobin keeps stopping behind pillars. You keep stopping behind him, trying not to bump into him. It’s awkward and pathetic. It’s the least sexy thing you’ve ever done.
Yeonjun heads to a lecture hall.
Soobin leans toward you. “We wait.”
You both stand there in the corridor pretending you’re on your phones, except you’re not on your phone because Soobin will have an aneurysm if you look suspicious. You stare at a poster advertising a society for law students and try not to laugh.
Soobin watches the lecture hall doors like he’s guarding a bank vault.
“Do you see how insane this is?” you whisper.
Soobin doesn’t look away. “Be quiet.”
“I’m literally your accomplice,” you hiss. “You can’t talk to me like I’m your child.”
He finally glances at you, eyes sharp. “I’m trying not to get caught.”
“Caught doing what,” you ask. “Standing. Menacingly. With your good posture.”
His jaw clenches. He looks away again.
The lecture ends and students pour out. Yeonjun steps out with his group. Still surrounded.
Soobin’s face tightens again. You almost feel bad for him. Almost.
Yeonjun walks across the courtyard and stops to talk to someone else. His group expands.
Soobin mutters, “This is fucking mad.”
You look at him. “You swore.”
He freezes. “I didn’t.”
“You did,” you say, delighted. “You’re evolving.”
He looks furious. “Don’t talk to me.”
You follow Yeonjun for hours—lecture halls, coffee runs, the student union, some damp little smoking spot where everyone somehow already knows his name. He’s never alone. Not once.
You move through campus like you’re about to be asked for your student ID and escorted out.
Soobin keeps checking his watch. You keep checking your feet—they hurt. Your back hurts. Your patience has left your body and moved to a different postcode.
At one point, Soobin pulls you behind a vending machine because Yeonjun turns his head too suddenly. You end up crushed into Soobin’s chest in a space that smells of crisps and dust. Soobin’s hand lands on your shoulder, steadying you, and his fingers are warm through your hoodie. Annoyingly steady.
You stiffen—because you’re annoyed and your body is not allowed to have feelings right now. “Soobin,” you hiss, pushing his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I’m not—” he starts.
“You are,” you snap. “Hands to yourself. We’re not in a romcom.”
He glares at you. “Then stop making noise.”
“I’m not making noise,” you whisper.
“You breathe loudly,” he replies, dead serious.
You stare at him. “You’re insane.”
He ignores you and peeks around the vending machine again. Yeonjun is gone.
Soobin straightens, scanning the corridor. “Where did he go?”
“Maybe he vanished,” you say. “Maybe the virgin ghost ate him.”
Soobin shoots you a murderous look.
Then you see it. Yeonjun turns a corner down the hall, heading toward the toilets.
Soobin’s whole body goes tense, hope sparking. “He’s alone.”
You squint. “He’s going to the men’s toilets.”
Soobin nods. “Yes.”
You stare at him. “Absolutely fucking not.”
Soobin’s expression hardens. “We don’t have a choice.”
“I have a choice,” you snap. “The choice is not following a man into the men’s toilets.”
Soobin looks at you, offended. “We’re not going in.”
“Then what are we doing?” you ask. “Waiting outside the men’s toilets like creeps?”
Soobin doesn’t answer. He just starts walking.
You grab his sleeve and yank him back. “Soobin. Listen to me. I will not be batshit crazy with you. I have standards.”
He turns, eyes sharp. “You scam people for a living.”
“And you drink iced americano in winter,” you fire back. “We both make questionable choices. This is where I draw the line.”
Soobin looks like he wants to argue, then he forces himself to swallow it down. He stops. He watches the toilet door like he’s waiting for Yeonjun to come out and confess to cheating on the spot.
Five minutes pass. Ten. A student walks past and looks at you both suspiciously.
You adjust your hoodie and mutter, “I’m never coming here again.”
Soobin doesn’t even blink. “We need one moment. One.”
“You’ve been saying one moment for six hours,” you reply.
Soobin’s jaw tightens.
Then the toilet door opens. Yeonjun steps out. And he’s not alone.
Two of his mates appear behind him, laughing, one of them slapping his shoulder—the three of them walking away together as if solitude doesn’t exist in his life.
Soobin’s face drops.
You stare at Yeonjun disappearing into the crowd, then back at Soobin. “Told you.”
Soobin doesn’t speak for a long second. Then he says, very quietly, “We’re not leaving.”
You blink. “Excuse me.”
He looks at you with that stubborn, awful determination again. “We’re not leaving until we get something.”
You laugh once, tired and disbelieving. “You’re actually insane.”
Soobin turns away and starts walking after Yeonjun again. You follow, because somehow, despite everything, you’re in this now.
By the time the sky starts darkening, you’ve walked enough steps to qualify for a half marathon and a mental breakdown.
Soobin’s still on campus, still scanning crowds, still watching Yeonjun’s orbit of friends. You’re standing beside him with your hands shoved in your hoodie pockets, ankles aching, patience evaporated, and the very specific rage that comes from spending a whole day stalking a man who refuses to be alone for even thirty seconds.
Yeonjun disappears into another group.
You exhale through your nose. “That guy’s social life is fucking mad.”
Soobin doesn’t look away. “I know.”
“I totally see why you think he’s a red flag,” you add, since you’re already here, already committing crimes. “No one should have that many friends—it’s suspicious.”
Soobin finally glances at you, eyes sharp. “That’s not why he’s a red flag.”
“Then why?” you ask, bored. “Tell me. I’ve been following him for eight hours. I deserve context.”
Soobin’s mouth tightens. He looks like he wants to argue, then he realises his argument will sound insane. He looks away again. “Because he’s—”
“The campus fuckboy?” you supply.
He flinches. “Stop saying that.”
“You said fuckboy first,” you remind him.
He glares, then checks his watch. He’s been doing that all day—checking the time, checking the crowd, checking the direction Yeonjun’s walking, checking his own misery. It’s exhausting to witness. It’s also weirdly… consistent. Soobin is nothing if not committed to suffering.
Your stomach growls loud enough to count as an announcement.
Soobin’s eyes flick to you. “You haven’t eaten?”
You blink. “No.”
“Why?” he asks, frowning.
“Because I’m stalking a man with you,” you reply. “I’ve been too busy committing crimes to have lunch.”
He looks like he wants to say sorry, then catches himself and clamps his mouth shut. “We can get food.”
“We?” you repeat, suspicious.
He exhales. “Yes. We. Unless you want to faint dramatically in the middle of campus.”
“Tempting,” you mutter.
Soobin leads you off campus and into town—still tense, still scanning crowds. You end up at one of those vintage burger spots that’s been open longer than you’ve been alive, all dim lights and laminated menus and the smell of fried oil soaked into the walls as a permanent personality.
You slide into a booth with cracked vinyl. Soobin sits opposite you and pulls his phone out immediately, then puts it down again as if he’s remembered he’s meant to be present.
“Two burgers with fries,” you tell the server without looking at Soobin. “And a Coke.”
Soobin clears his throat. “Diet Coke, please.”
You turn your head slowly. “You drink Diet Coke?”
He looks offended. “Yes.”
“That explains a lot,” you say.
He glares at you. “What does that mean?”
“It means you’re the type of man who thinks suffering should be calorie-controlled,” you reply, leaning back. “Don’t worry. I won’t judge you. I’ll just tell everyone.”
He mutters something under his breath that sounds dangerously close to swearing, then he presses his lips together hard enough to turn them pale.
When the food arrives, you eat like you’ve been starved—fries first, then burger, grease on your fingers, ketchup on your thumb, dignity gone. Soobin eats slower. He cuts his burger in half with a knife and fork at first, then seems to realise how insane that looks in a burger place and puts the cutlery down with a stiff little cough.
“You’re doing it again,” you say.
He pauses mid-bite. “Doing what?”
“Trying to behave,” you reply. “This is a burger. It’s allowed to be messy.”
His ears go faintly red. He takes a bite with his hands and looks annoyed that he’s grateful for the permission.
A few minutes pass in silence. You can hear the fryer and the music and the couple in the corner arguing quietly, and realise Soobin looks quieter than usual. Less angry and controlled. Just… annoyed at life.
You wipe your hands on a napkin and nudge his foot under the table with yours. “So,” you say. “I didn’t see your dream girl today. Are you ever going to introduce us?”
Soobin’s head snaps up. “Hell no.”
You snort. “Why? You think I’m going to hex her?”
“Yes,” he replies instantly.
You blink. “Wow. Rude.”
He frowns. “You lied to me about a virgin ghost.”
“That’s not an answer,” you say. “Why won’t you introduce me?”
He looks away, jaw tight. “She’s visiting her hometown.”
“You know you can just say where,” you reply. “You’re acting like she’ll appear behind you if you say her postcode.”
Soobin rubs his thumb along the edge of his napkin, a small restless movement. “It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?” you push.
He exhales, annoyed. “I don’t want you talking about her.”
“Is it because I’m rude?” you ask, deadpan.
“Yes,” he says, deadpan back.
You laugh, then point at him with a fry. “Okay. Fine. Rude question—if you’ve liked her for years, why did you wait until now?”
Soobin’s face closes instantly. “I didn’t wait.”
“You did,” you reply. “Years is waiting. That’s literally what years are.”
He stares at you. “I was in a relationship.”
You lift your brows. “You had a girlfriend?”
He looks irritated. “Yes.”
“And it wasn’t her?” you ask.
“No.”
You tap the table with your fingertips. “Tell me more.”
He takes a breath and speaks through his annoyance, words clipped. “She asked me out in high school. My girlfriend—ex-girlfriend. She liked me. I thought it would—maybe work.”
You tilt your head. “Did it?”
He gives you a look that says obviously not. “No.”
“Because,” you say slowly, watching his face, “it was always her.”
Soobin goes still for a beat. Then he looks away, staring at the ketchup bottle like it’s the safest thing in the room. “Yes,” he says quietly.
Your stomach does a weird little twist—that uncomfortable feeling of witnessing something honest when you’re used to jokes.
He continues, voice tighter. “And I thought she was out of my league.”
You snort. “You?”
He glares. “What?”
“You think she’s out of your league,” you repeat, disbelief creeping in. “You, Mr Fancy Car, Mr Switzerland, Mr Clean Shirt.”
His face hardens. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“It does,” you say. “That’s literally how leagues work.”
He shakes his head once. “Not when you actually—” he stops, frustration flashing, then forces the words out. “Not when you actually like someone. It makes you—stupid.”
You blink at him. “You’re already stupid.”
He shoots you a look that could kill. “Shut up.”
You grin. “No.”
He takes another bite of his burger, then speaks again, quieter now—as if the words are heavier than he wants them to be. “When I got to uni, I still thought I had no chance. Then I did the exchange semester and—I-I don’t know. Switzerland made me braver—or lonelier… or both.”
You chew on that for a second, then ask the question you’ve been thinking all day. “Why don’t you just move on?”
Soobin’s head snaps up. His eyes sharpen. “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because it’s an option,” you reply. “Normal people do that.”
He laughs once, harsh. “Normal people.”
You shrug. “Yeah. There are other girls. There are other—”
He cuts you off, voice sharp. “No.”
You blink. “No?”
“No,” he repeats. His hands grip his burger harder than necessary. “There are other girls. There isn’t another her.”
You open your mouth with some rude comeback ready, and it dies in your throat.
Soobin keeps going, voice lower, angry and raw at once. “I’ve tried. I’ve dated. I’ve been the good boyfriend. I’ve done everything you’re meant to do. I still wake up and think about her. I still see her in stupid places. I still—“ He stops, jaw clenched, then exhales through his nose. “I still feel like I’m living the wrong life when she isn’t in it.”
The words hit you harder than you expect—not because they’re poetic. Because they’re honest in a way that doesn’t try to be pretty.
Your eyes sting. You blink. Hard.
It doesn’t help. Your tear glands decide to betray you in the middle of a burger place over a rich boy’s tragic love life. It’s embarrassing—criminal, even.
Soobin turns his head and catches you wiping at your face. His expression changes instantly—panic flashing across it, then confusion, then something softer he doesn’t know what to do with. “Why—why the—” he starts, then stops himself, flustered. “Are you crying?”
You glare at him, offended at your own moisture. “Shut the fuck up,” you say, voice thick. “I’m not crying.”
A tear drops. You wipe it away aggressively.
Soobin stares. “You are crying.”
“I’m not crying,” you insist, even as more tears pool. “My eyes are—reacting.”
“To what?” he asks, still flustered.
“To the fact you’re a fucking idiot,” you snap, then your voice cracks and you hate yourself for it. “Why the fuck would I get emotional over your failed love life?”
Soobin’s face heats. He looks genuinely at a loss. He reaches for his napkin, then stops halfway, unsure if offering it would make it worse or better. “I didn’t mean—”
“Don’t,” you cut in, wiping your cheeks with your sleeve. “Don’t be nice. It’ll make me worse.”
His mouth twitches, helpless. “I’m not trying to be nice.”
“You’re literally panicking,” you say, pointing at his face. “Your whole face is panicking.”
He mutters, “I don’t know what to do,” then immediately looks annoyed that he said it.
You laugh once, watery. “Welcome.”
For a second, you just sit there. Two idiots in a booth. Grease on your fingers. Drinks sweating on the table. Soobin watching you as if you’re more confusing than the ghost story.
You wipe your eyes again and take a breath.
Fine. Fine. Fine.
You hate that his earnestness has touched you. You hate that you feel bad for him. You hate that your body reacted before your pride could stop it.
You point at him with a fry, voice firm. “Don’t get excited. I’m only helping you because you’re blackmailing me.”
Soobin blinks. “Right.”
“And also,” you add, quieter, annoyed at yourself, “because you clearly actually care—which is inconvenient.”
His gaze holds yours. His voice comes out soft and careful. “I do care.”
You roll your eyes and shove the fry in your mouth before your face does something embarrassing again. “Eat your burger, Choi Soobin.”
He does.
And somewhere under all your swearing and irritation, your brain makes a decision you don’t say out loud. You’ll help him. Not because he deserves it. Because you can’t stand watching someone try that hard and still lose.
The next day you’re back on campus again.
Not because you woke up and thought, God, I can’t wait to stalk a stranger with a man who threatens people for sport. You’re here because you said you’d help, and yesterday’s talk over burger and fries did something irritating to your insides.
Soobin stopped being a pure nuisance for a second. He became a person. A stubborn, exhausting person, but still.
You hate that you noticed. You hate that it softened you.
You’re walking beside him with a coffee you didn’t want and a headache you want even less. Soobin’s jaw is tight, eyes scanning the place, shoulders squared. He looks like he’s trying to hold himself together through posture alone. It’s familiar now—less annoying, but still annoying.
“You’re tense,” you say, not even teasing as hard.
“I’m focused,” he replies, clipped.
“That’s the same thing with better branding,” you mutter.
He glances at you. “Can you stop narrating me?”
“Can you stop walking like you’re about to arrest someone?” you shoot back, then your tone shifts before you can stop it. “You’re going to give yourself a migraine.”
He blinks at that, as if he didn’t expect care from your mouth. His ears go a shade pink. He looks away quickly, pretending he didn’t hear it.
You pretend you didn’t say it.
You spot Choi Yeonjun by accident—or by the universe still being petty. He’s crossing the courtyard with a book in his hand—which is already weird, since yesterday he moved through campus surrounded by mates and noise and confidence.
Today he’s alone, hood up, walking fast as if he’s late.
Soobin freezes. You freeze too, then you feel that little spark of opportunity in your chest, the one that makes you think, Finally. A moment. A gap.
Soobin grabs your sleeve and pulls you toward the side of the building. “There,” he mutters.
“Yeah,” you whisper. “I’m not blind.”
He doesn’t snap at you this time. He just nods once and keeps moving, like he’s learnt that you’re going to talk no matter what he asks.
Yeonjun heads inside.
So do you, since you’re in too deep now.
The building is quieter than the rest of campus. It smells of paper and dust and coffee that’s been abused. A sign near the entrance reads LIBRARY — QUIET ZONE.
Soobin pauses under it and looks at you. “No swearing,” he says.
You roll your eyes. “I’m not swearing.”
He narrows his eyes. “You’re thinking it.”
You open your mouth to deny it and a swear tries to climb out anyway. You clamp it down. Soobin looks smug for half a second—it’s unbearable.
You follow him past the desk, past the security gates, past students hunched over laptops with dead eyes.
Yeonjun weaves between shelves.
Soobin follows. You stick close, hood up, trying to look like you’re here to study and not here to ruin someone’s relationship.
Yeonjun turns down an aisle.
Soobin turns down the same aisle.
You trail behind him, stepping carefully, the carpet thick enough to swallow sound. The vents above hiss constantly, a soft white-noise that makes you bolder than you should be.
Yeonjun reaches the end of the aisle and disappears around the corner.
Soobin quickens his pace. “Now,” he murmurs.
“Now what?” you whisper.
He ignores you and peeks around the corner. His whole body goes rigid.
You step up beside him and look.
There’s a cluster of people sitting at a table tucked into the corner of the library, sprawled with drinks and notebooks and the irritating ease of people who treat campus like a playground. Yeonjun is right there with them, dropping his book onto the table and leaning in to say something. They laugh. He laughs. His social life has respawned.
Soobin’s jaw tightens so hard you can see it. He looks like he wants to combust. He doesn’t. He just stands there, breathing through his nose, hands flexing at his sides.
You lean in, quieter than you’ve been all day. “Told you he’s never alone.”
Soobin shoots you a look. “Not helping.”
Your mouth twitches. “It’s factual.”
He turns back toward the aisle, then freezes again, eyes flicking past you.
Yeonjun turns his head—a small glance, a little scan, like his instincts have clocked something off. His gaze moves across the aisle.
Towards you.
Your stomach drops. Soobin’s hand shoots out and grabs your wrist.
Your heart jumps into your throat. “What are you—” you start.
He yanks you sideways with enough force that you nearly trip, and you stumble into a door you didn’t even notice tucked between shelves—a cleaning supplies room. A tiny sign reads STAFF ONLY in peeling tape. He pushes it open and pulls you inside fast, then slips in after you and shuts it.
The click of the latch lands in your brain.
The room is tiny—really tiny. Mop bucket. Brooms. Shelf of cleaning sprays. A stack of paper towels. It smells of bleach, lemon, damp cloth.
And it smells of Soobin—clean, warm, a scent that makes you think of fresh laundry and stable lives.
You’re pressed against the wall. Soobin is pressed against you. There is no space. No air. His chest rises and falls against yours. Your breath catches and your brain immediately starts panicking about things that are not helpful.
You can feel the heat of him through your hoodie. Your boobs brush against him every time you shift. He freezes when he realises it too.
“What the—” you whisper, then you swallow hard. “Soobin.”
He brings a finger to his lips, eyes wide. He’s listening.
You try to step back. There’s nowhere to go. Your shoulder bumps the shelf and a bottle of disinfectant wobbles. You catch it before it falls, heart pounding, then realise your hand is shaking.
Soobin’s gaze flicks down, then up, then down again, and his jaw tightens.
“What?” you mouth.
He shakes his head once, tight, then murmurs, barely a breath, “Don’t move.”
You stare. You try not to move. Your body betrays you anyway—your knee shifts a fraction, your hoodie rustles, and your boobs brush his chest again.
And he shifts too—now away, but closer.
It’s subtle, but you feel it immediately—his hips pressing tighter, his thigh nudging your thigh, the full line of him pinning you in place. Body heat and panic and the fact you’re both shoved into a cupboard like idiots.
And a hard press against your thigh.
Your eyes widen slowly, dragging down to his waist, then snapping back up to his face.
Soobin looks horrified—like he wants to die on the spot and would apologise to the grim reaper on the way out. His swallow is loud in the tiny space, he hates that you can hear it. He tries to shift his hips back and only succeeds in pinning you worse.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” you whisper, voice shaking with disbelief. “Is that—”
His face goes red in a rush. “Stop,” he hisses.
“A boner,” you whisper, stunned. “A fucking boner.”
“It’s not—” he starts, then he clamps his jaw shut because there is no alternative explanation.
There is only the fact his body has decided now is the time to betray him in the least convenient place possible.
Outside, the library goes dead quiet.
Then you hear voices again. Yeonjun’s voice, lazy and amused, drifting closer down the aisle. His mates with him, footsteps soft on carpet.
Soobin’s whole body goes rigid. He leans toward you slightly, mouth near your ear. He whispers, “Don’t breathe loud.”
You feel his breath and your brain short-circuits for the dumbest reason. You jerk your head, panicking, and press your palm to his cheek to push him back on instinct—pure get away from my ear before my mind does something stupid.
Soobin freezes. His eyes go wide.
You freeze too, hand still on his cheek, your palm pressed against his mouth. You pull it back quickly, cheeks burning. “Sorry,” you mouth.
His stare turns sharp. “What are you doing?” he whispers, annoyed now. “Knock it out.”
“Knock what out?” you whisper back.
“That,” he hisses, gesturing vaguely at your hand and his face and the fact you’re both losing your minds in a cupboard.
You scoff, too loud.
Soobin’s eyes go even wider. “Shh—”
Outside, the voices pause. “Did you hear that?” one of Yeonjun’s mates says, and the laughter drops a notch.
Your blood turns cold. Soobin’s hand shoots out and clamps over your mouth. He holds you still against the wall, eyes locked on yours, breathing shallow. Your eyes go wide. You stare at him, offended and terrified all at once. He looks back at you with a single clear message: If you make a sound, we’re dead.
Footsteps shift outside. Closer now.
Someone stops right by the cupboard door. You can feel it in the air—the presence, the shadow.
Soobin’s body presses tighter against yours, not on purpose, hiding you behind him even though there is nowhere to hide. Your thigh is still pinned. His hand is still over your mouth. Your heart is pounding so hard you think they’ll hear it through the wood.
The cupboard handle rattles. Not locked—just jammed, and old.
Soobin’s eyes flick down to it, then back to you. His pupils are huge. His face is flushed. His jaw is set hard.
The footsteps pause.
You hold your breath.
Then the footsteps recede, moving away down the aisle. The voices pick up again. Laughter returns. The danger drifts off.
Soobin’s hand stays on your mouth for a beat too long.
Then he releases you. You inhale sharply, lungs burning, and glare at him.
He whispers, “Are you trying to get us caught?”
You whisper back, furious, “Are you trying to cum on my leg?”
His eyes flash with mortified anger. “I can’t control it.”
“Control it,” you hiss.
“Control your mouth,” he snaps back.
You open your mouth to argue again and Soobin immediately lifts his hand, pointing at you in warning. You clamp it shut.
You both stand there—sweating, breathing hard, furious, and trapped in a cupboard that smells of lemon bleach and poor decisions.
You think you’re clear. You think the danger has passed. You even let your shoulders drop a fraction, finally.
Then the cupboard door swings wide open. You both freeze at the same time—finally, blessedly silent.
Choi Soobin wants to die. He wishes the ground would open up, swallow him, then politely close again so nobody has to deal with the mess. Because standing in the doorway, framed by fluorescent library lighting and the stink of lemon disinfectant, is Choi Yeonjun.
And Yeonjun is looking at Soobin—then at you—then back at Soobin with the slow, delighted expression of someone who thinks he’s just walked in on a live porno demonstration.
Soobin’s brain does that horrible buffering thing it does under pressure. His mouth goes dry. His spine goes cold. His body is still pressed too close to yours in the cleaning cupboard, and if the universe had any mercy at all, it would’ve erased the last sixty seconds from existence.
Yeonjun’s eyebrows lift. A grin starts forming—it’s smug before it’s even fully there. “Choi Soobin?” Yeonjun asks, voice low, incredulous, like he’s just spotted a rare animal in the wrong habitat. “What are you doing here, man?”
Soobin’s throat works. Nothing comes out.
He can’t even do his normal polite response. He can’t even say hello or pretend he’s in control. He’s just standing there with his cheeks burning and his dignity in pieces, and Yeonjun’s eyes are flickering between him and you. It makes Soobin want to launch himself headfirst into a bookshelf.
You’re beside him, wide-eyed, frozen, still half caught in the cupboard’s doorway. Your mouth is slightly open. Your hoodie is rumpled. Your hair looks like you’ve been fighting for your life in cleaning chemicals.
Soobin’s brain supplies, very unhelpfully, You have been fighting for your life in cleaning chemicals.
Yeonjun leans on the doorframe with the ease of a man who’s never once been humbled in public. His gaze drops—one second, quick—and Soobin feels his soul leave his body.
Oh God.
He knows what Yeonjun’s seen. He knows Yeonjun’s clocked the closeness, the weird tension, the fact Soobin’s breathing a little too fast, the fact you’re still pink in the face—
—and the fact Soobin is absolutely, undeniably, mortifyingly hard.
He wants to pass away on the spot.
Yeonjun’s smirk turns sharper. “I was worried about you,” he says, in a tone that suggests he was never worried about Soobin a day in his life. “But look at you.”
Soobin’s hands curl into fists at his sides. He forces his jaw to unclench. He forces himself to breathe through his nose. He tells himself, Don’t punch him. Don’t punch him. Don’t punch him. This is a library.
Yeonjun’s eyes slide to you again. His chin tips. “Who’s this?”
Soobin’s brain scrambles. He cannot tell the truth.
He cannot look Yeonjun in the eyes and say: This is the broke, foul-mouthed scammer who invented a virgin ghost and stole my money. I blackmailed her into helping me sabotage you, since you’re dating the girl I’m in love with.
That sentence would get him institutionalised.
He also cannot say: This is my friend.
Friends don’t end up wedged in a cupboard together, bodies pressed chest-to-chest, with Soobin’s dignity and erection both fully out of control. Friends do not have their breath caught in each other’s throats. Friends do not stand there with their eyes wide and their mouths shut, praying for death.
Yeonjun lifts a brow, waiting.
Soobin’s pulse bangs against his ribs. His ears are hot. His stomach churns. His pride tries to climb out of his throat and die.
He has two choices. Admit he’s been stalking Yeonjun around campus for two days like a deranged Victorian widow. Or lie.
Soobin is very honest. He’s always been honest. He’s been raised on honesty. He’s the kind of person who returns lost wallets, the kind of person who feels guilty if he takes two napkins instead of one.
Today, he is also the kind of person cornered in a cleaning cupboard with a smug bastard in the doorway and his own hormones actively committing crimes.
Soobin chooses lie.
He smiles. It’s the worst smile of his entire life. It feels stretched, wrong, too wide. His face does not know how to do it. “Yes,” he says, too bright. “Hi.”
Yeonjun’s expression turns even more entertained. “Hi,” he echoes, eyes still on you.
Soobin’s lungs forget how to work. Say something normal—say something that ends this. He nods again, eager and manic. “This is my girlfriend.”
The cupboard goes silent.
Soobin hears the words leave his mouth and he wants to bite his tongue clean off. Your head snaps toward him so fast your hair moves. Your face is pure horror. Soobin keeps smiling. He keeps smiling harder. He keeps smiling in a way that says please, for the love of God, just go with it.
You don’t go with it—not immediately. You just stare at him, lips parted, eyes wide, as if you’re about to say something that will ruin every single one of you.
Soobin, still smiling, brings his hand down and pinches your side. Hard. Not enough to bruise. Enough to make you react, drag you out of shock and into violence.
You yelp—an actual sound, loud enough that a few heads on the other side of the aisle might’ve turned if the classical music of the library wasn’t swallowing everything.
Yeonjun’s eyebrows shoot up. He looks delighted. “Oh?”
You glare at Soobin with the fury of a woman who has just been dragged into a lie against her will. Then you plaster on an expression that’s… something. It’s not sweet, nor convincing. It’s more I’m going to kill him later and bury him behind the science building.
“Yeah,” you manage, voice tight. “Hi.”
Yeonjun’s grin widens. He looks between you again. “Girlfriend,” he repeats slowly, tasting it. “Right.”
Soobin nods far too quickly. “Yes.”
Yeonjun hums, eyes sparkling with evil. “Didn’t know you had it in you, Soobin.”
Soobin’s eyelid twitches. “I—”
Yeonjun cuts him off with a lazy little laugh. “Honestly? Good for you. Character development.”
Soobin wants to set himself on fire.
He tries to step forward out of the cupboard. His shoulder bumps the shelf, something rattles and a bottle clinks. He catches it on instinct, then freezes again, remembering he’s in a cleaning cupboard in the library, pretending you’re his girlfriend, while his actual enemy stands in the doorway smiling.
Yeonjun’s gaze flicks past them, down the aisle, then back. “So,” he says, all casual. “What are you two doing in here?”
Soobin’s brain sprints. He gestures vaguely at the shelf. “Cleaning.”
You make a sound that’s half cough, half laugh. Soobin shoots you a warning look.
Yeonjun’s smile gets even nastier. “Cleaning,” he repeats, amused. He leans a fraction closer, lowering his voice. “In the middle of the day—in a cupboard.”
Soobin feels the heat climb up his neck. He can’t stop it. He can’t hide it. He’s losing at being a person.
Yeonjun’s eyes land on you again. “You don’t look like a cleaner.”
You glare. “You don’t look like you read books.”
Yeonjun’s laugh bursts out. It’s loud enough that someone shushes him from two aisles over. He lifts a hand in apology, still smiling.
Soobin’s stomach twists—of course Yeonjun finds it funny, of course Yeonjun can laugh. Yeonjun has never once been humiliated in a way that sticks. He just glides through life with his perfect teeth and his too-easy charm and his friends and his attention.
Yeonjun’s gaze flicks back to Soobin. “Anyway,” he drawls. “I’ll leave you two to it.”
He starts to close the cupboard door slowly, the way someone closes a curtain at the end of a show.
Soobin’s panic spikes. If that door closes, they’re stuck again. If that door closes, the cupboard becomes a trap. If that door closes, Soobin is stuck with you pressed to him and his body will keep betraying him and—
Yeonjun pauses with the door half shut, as if he can feel Soobin’s internal screaming.
Then he leans in again, voice conspiratorial. “I do recommend you find a better spot, though.”
Soobin’s stomach drops.
Yeonjun smiles wider, eyes gleaming. “Gym storage room’s much better. You can lock it from the inside.”
He winks. Soobin goes cold. That wink lands in his body like a punch. It’s not a joke. It is a loaded piece of information from a man who has absolutely, definitely used that storage room for something filthy.
Soobin’s mind flashes a mental image before he can stop it—your hands, your mouth, that storage room, the lock—
He nearly gags.
Yeonjun finishes closing the door with a soft click, and the cupboard becomes a sealed little hell again.
Soobin stands there in the dark-ish, surrounded by mops and cleaning fluid, feeling the humiliation sink in layer by layer. He stares at the door, eyes wide. “Did he… did he just—”
You, still pressed near him, whisper, “He just recommended a shag spot.”
Soobin makes a sound that’s half strangled breath, half disgust. “Why would there be a lock? Why would a storage room have a lock? That’s—”
“That’s not your business,” you hiss.
“It is my business,” he snaps back quietly, then immediately regrets snapping, because you turn your head and glare at him with the kind of look that says you’re one word away from being murdered with bleach.
“Don’t even start,” you snap, shifting slightly.
The moment you shift, Soobin’s entire body reacts. His breath catches. His thigh presses. His shame floods in all over again.
You freeze. “Oh my God,” you whisper, appalled. “Still?”
Soobin squeezes his eyes shut. “Stop moving.”
“I moved one centimetre.”
“Then stop moving that centimetre,” he hisses.
You stare at him in the dim. Your expression is furious. Your cheeks are hot. Your voice drops lower, almost venomous. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Soobin opens his eyes, mortified rage flashing. “Nothing is wrong with me.”
“You’re hard in a cupboard.”
“I’m under stress,” he snaps.
“Your penis isn’t,” you whisper, disgusted. “Your penis is thriving.”
He swallows. “I need a second,” he mutters.
The fight drains out of your face a fraction, replaced by something awkward and uncomfortable and human. “Oh,” you say, suddenly quieter. “Right.”
Soobin stares at the cupboard door, breathing through his nose, trying to force his body to behave. He tries thinking of anything else. His dad’s face. His professor’s voice. His own humiliation. Death. Taxes. The smell of bleach.
Nothing works. His brain keeps circling back to Yeonjun’s wink, the storage room, the lock, and you standing there with your mouth sharp and your eyes bright.
He hates his own hormones. He hates Choi Yeonjun. He hates the fact this is happening while he’s meant to be saving Dream Girl from a fuckboy. He hates that he even thought saving.
Soobin swallows again, jaw clenched. “Don’t say anything,” he whispers.
You let out a slow breath. “Trust me,” you whisper back. “I’m trying not to exist right now.”
Outside the cupboard, the library sound drifts back in—soft footsteps, pages turning, someone coughing into their sleeve. Inside, it’s just the two of you, pressed into a corner of lemon-scented humiliation, waiting for Soobin’s body to stop betraying him.
He shifts his weight carefully, trying to create an inch of space. Your breath catches. Soobin hears it.
This is how people end up pregnant and angry. Not you. Not here. Not with bleach in the air.
Your voice comes out tight, annoyed, and slightly shaken. “If you so much as breathe on my neck again, I’m going to elbow you in the throat.”
Soobin glares at the cupboard door, voice flat. “Let’s be mature about this.”
“Your dick is not being mature,” you mutter.
You don’t catch Choi Yeonjun cheating or alone or doing anything except existing with his mates and smirking at you from across corridors in a way that makes your skin crawl.
By the time you finally leave campus, it’s dark enough that the streetlights are doing most of the work. The air is cold and damp. Your hoodie smells faintly of cleaning spray from the cupboard incident. Your pride feels bruised in places you didn’t know pride could bruise.
Soobin walks beside you with his hands shoved into his coat pockets, jaw clenched, shoulders tight. He hasn’t said much since the library. He’s been doing that thing where he goes quiet and tries to act like he’s not boiling from the inside. It’s not working.
It makes you want to poke him just to see if he’ll crack. You don’t initially, since you’ve learnt that cracked Soobin isn’t funny cracked—it’s sharp cracked, the kind that cuts.
You try anyway, because you can’t help yourself. “Well,” you say, stretching the word out. “Today was productive.”
Soobin doesn’t look at you. “Be quiet.”
“What?” you say, innocent. “We got to smell lemon bleach. We got sexually harassed by a storage room. We—”
Soobin stops walking. He turns his head slowly. His eyes are dark with irritation. “Stop.”
You blink. “Alright, sorry, Mister Panties Twisted.”
His nostrils flare. “This isn’t funny.”
“It’s a bit funny,” you argue, trying to keep your tone light. “It’s humiliating but—”
“I’m not laughing,” he says, voice flat.
“You never laugh,” you shoot back.
His jaw tightens. “Can you stop making jokes for one minute?”
You frown. “I’m literally trying to stop you from having a stroke.”
“I’m fine,” he snaps.
“Yeah,” you say. “You look fine.”
He keeps walking, faster now. You have to speed up to match him, trainers slapping wet pavement.
“So what’s your plan?” you ask, not joking this time. “We just follow him forever. We grow old on campus. We start paying tuition again. We become furniture.”
“So you admit you’ve done fuck all?” he says, and it lands cold.
You stop walking. He keeps going for two steps, then stops too, like he realises you’re not following and that makes him angry all over again. He turns back.
Your chest tightens. “What did you just say?” you ask.
Soobin’s expression is sharp now. “You heard me.”
“I heard you,” you say, voice rising. “I just want to know if you’re actually stupid enough to say it twice.”
His jaw jumps. “You’re a scammer.”
You know that you’re a scammer—you’ve been proud of it at times. For some reason, coming out of Soobin’s lips right now, the word hits you like a slap. You blink once. “Oh. We’re doing this.”
“You’re a crook,” he says, louder, and now you can hear the rage shaking under his politeness. “You lie to people for money. You take advantage of them when they’re desperate. You—”
“Oh, you don’t,” you cut in, stepping closer. “Do not stand there and talk to me like you’re better when you blackmailed me into helping you sabotage someone’s relationship.”
Soobin’s eyes flash. “I wouldn’t have had to if you didn’t scam me in the first place.”
“And you wouldn’t have gotten scammed if you had a single ounce of critical thinking,” you snap back. “You came to a random girl’s flat and believed a virgin ghost was latched onto your back.”
His face goes red. “That is not—”
“It is,” you say. “That is exactly what it is. You were desperate, and you were stupid, and I was broke.”
He flinches at broke, like the word tastes bad. It’s the first time you’ve seen him hesitate like he’s just realised the game has different rules for you. You clock it and it makes something ugly surge in your chest.
“So you’re admitting you did it,” he says, voice tight. “Because you’re broke.”
“Yes,” you say, stepping even closer now. “Yes, I did it. What do you want, a confession? A certificate? A fucking trophy? I scammed you. I scam people. Not because it’s fun.”
Soobin scoffs. “You seemed like you were having fun.”
“That’s my coping mechanism,” you bite out. “Sorry I don’t cry prettily in public and wear a clean shirt and sit upright.”
He stares at you, breathing hard now, anger fully out.
“You don’t get it,” you continue, and your voice is shaking now, not with fear—with fury. “You don’t get to come in here acting like you’re some noble victim when your biggest problem is some girl didn’t pick you.”
Soobin’s lips part. “It’s not—”
“It is,” you cut in. “It is. That’s your tragedy. That’s your heartbreak. And yeah, I get it, it hurts, but you have no idea what it’s like to wake up with your stomach in your throat because rent is due and your bank balance is a joke.”
Soobin’s expression shifts, uncomfortable. “I—”
“Don’t try,” you snap, pointing at him. “Don’t try and act like you understand. You drive a fancy car around. You don’t worry about tuition fees. You don’t worry about whether your landlord is going to evict you and pretend it’s renovations. You don’t worry about whether you’ll have to drop out because you can’t fucking pay.”
Soobin’s jaw tightens. “You don’t know what I worry about.”
You laugh, sharp and humourless. “Oh yeah? Tell me. Tell me your worries.”
He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.
You keep going, voice cracking now because the anger is too big and you can feel it pushing tears up even though you hate it. “Fuck, you never had to fall like this,” you say, the words spilling out faster now. “You never had to claw your way up while everything keeps trying to pull you back down. You never had to scam people to survive. You never had to sit there and decide between groceries and your phone bill. You never had to—”
Your throat tightens hard. You swallow and it doesn’t help.
“So don’t you dare look at me like I’m disgusting,” you say, and your voice breaks on the last word. “Don’t you dare.”
Soobin’s face changes. The anger flickers. Something else shows through for half a second—shock, maybe, or guilt, or the realisation that he stepped on a live wire.
“You’re not—” he starts.
You wipe at your cheek harshly with the sleeve of your hoodie. “Stop.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did,” you snap, and more tears spill anyway, hot and humiliating. “You meant every word. Scammer. Like you’ve never benefited from anyone’s kindness and still called it earned.”
Soobin’s hands lift slightly, then drop again. He looks lost for a moment. He looks like he wants to say something that isn’t angry. “You don’t have to—” he starts again.
“You don’t get to comfort me,” you cut in immediately, voice thick, furious at yourself for crying in front of him. “You don’t get to call me disgusting and then try to be nice. Pick a lane.”
His jaw tightens. “I didn’t call you disgusting.”
“You didn’t have to,” you spit. “Your face did.”
Soobin flinches. He takes a small step forward. “I’m sorry.”
You laugh, wet and mean. “There you go. You can say it.”
He stops. His hands curl into fists again, not aggressive, helpless. “I didn’t know.”
“Exactly,” you say, voice shaking. “You didn’t know. So stop acting like you’re above me.”
Silence hangs between you, heavy and damp. Cars pass. A couple walks by on the other side of the street, laughing, normal, living their little normal lives, and it makes you want to scream.
Soobin’s voice comes out quieter. “I didn’t have a choice.”
You stare at him, eyes burning. “Neither did I.”
He looks at you for a long beat. His face is tight. He looks like he wants to say something—he doesn’t. His pride is still there, clinging.
And you’re done. You turn away from him sharply, wiping at your face again, and start walking—not walking, actually. Storming.
Soobin calls after you. “Wait—”
You don’t turn around.
“Wait,” he says again, louder.
You keep going. Your breath comes fast. Your chest hurts. Your eyes sting. Your whole body feels hot with anger and humiliation, and you tell yourself you’re crying because you’re pissed off, not because he managed to make you feel small in the same way the world always does.
You hear his footsteps behind you for a second.
Then they stop.
You don’t look back. You just keep walking, then speeding up, then practically jogging, as if you can outrun the feeling in your chest.
You get to the corner and you don’t even wipe your face anymore.
Let people see. Let them judge. You’ve been judged your whole life. Another stranger’s opinion won’t pay your rent.
You turn the corner and you’re gone.
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a/n: guys i would love to do a long an but i'm so exhausted hahah!! i hope this was worth the wait, lmk. pls remember that your comments, reblogs and asks fuel my fingers!! much love <3
target: you know the drill!! next part dropping at either 350 notes or 03/03. want faster updates? spam me in the comments, reblogs and asks.
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