sunwoo knows better than to think about eunjung in a particular light. but he can’t help himself - her hair smells like pomegranate and the scent of her skin has laid a nest in his head like a parasite burrowing a home. he groans into his pillow, freely, since his roommate left the room for god-knows-what.
he hasn’t been sleeping well, and he blames her for it. he’s been dreaming about her, thinking about the things she said. he never really gave a damn about what other people thought about him - that’s what everybody says, right? don’t let other people change who you are.
unfortunately, eunjung isn’t ‘other people’, and sunwoo cannot quantify the frustration that’s building in his chest that he’s admitted it to himself.
who gave her the authority to have such a hold over him? if she was softer, gentler, less of an asshole, sunwoo wouldn’t mind.
why would he?
but eunjung is not any of those. she is unafraid to knee him in the balls and openly simps for another man before him. this was a game he chose to start, and yet he’s losing.
“fuck-”
bzzzzzzt. bzzzzzzt.
sunwoo jumps a little in his bed, looking up to see his phone screen lit up. he reaches over and squints at the screen.
LEE EUNJUNG
he sits up abruptly, heart pounding and all the blood rushing up to his head from the sudden adrenaline. his stomach begins to flutter, which he frowns at, because it’s not a usual reaction he gets. usually girls are the ones who stutter and stammer in his presence, not the other way round, and especially when she’s the one who pissed him off?
sunwoo clears his throat and takes a deep breath, making an ‘o’ with his lips as he exhales with his palm on his chest. he picks up the call.
“what?”
“hey. look... i just wanted to apologise for whatever i said the other day.”
“what other day?”
a pause.
“tuesday. i’m sorry i said all those things.”
sunwoo leans back against the wall and crosses his free arm under his armpit. “and what horrid things did you say? or do... actually?” he can almost see her roll her eyes.
which she does - eunjung has her lips pursed and her patience on the tip of her tongue, ready to come out in a string of vulgarities.
no, she’s better than that.
“i’m sorry for saying that you’re attention seeking and i’m sorry for kneeing you in the balls,” she pauses. “i just... don’t like it that you’re getting in the way. i... my feelings for eric are my problem and you being in the equation because of that night just messed everything up. it might’ve been my fault for not being able to draw the line, and i apologise, but i don’t wish to have you involved in my love life.”
she stops, only now realising she’s said too much.
sunwoo, on the other end of the phone, is speechless. for the first time in weeks, he doesn’t know what to say to her.
eunjung notices the silence. she frowns to herself, pulling her phone away to make sure the call was still running.
“hello?”
“forget about the night we slept together. that was... on me too. and about eric, you’re right, that is your problem, and rest assured i won’t interfere. but i do need to admit that... i like you... and that’s my problem. so until you confess to eric and until he reciprocates... i will do my best to win you over.”
“...what?” she blurts. “i didn’t call you to encourage you.”
“i know. it was an apology, a good one, and thank you for telling me how you feel. clears up both our consciences.”
“i don’t know if that’s a word.”
“you know what i mean.”
“kim sunwoo-”
“anyway, gotta go. i have things to do. ta.”
sunwoo quickly hangs up. his palm flies to his chest. his heart is about to hop out through his ribcage.
eunjung huffs, pulling the phone away from her ear and frowning at the screen with the words ‘call ended’ on it. she pouts to herself, sighing as she bites her lips and tosses her phone on the bed.
eunjung stares at the ceiling.
win her over?
she rolls onto her side and shoves her face into her pillow, letting out a muffled scream that does absolutely nothing to relieve the balloon of frustration expanding in her chest.
he likes her.
that’s not new information, she tells herself. he’s flirted. he’s hovered. he’s inserted himself into conversations that had nothing to do with him.
why did he even care? why did he treat her like she was a puzzle he needed to solve out of spite?
but hearing him say it so plainly, so matter-of-factly-
i like you.
no teasing lilt. no smirk she could physically wipe off his face. just brutal honesty.
she groans and grabs her phone again, rolling up eric’s contact.
her stomach flips.
she hugs the phone on her chest.
sunwoo throws his phone onto his bed next to him like it personally offended him.
“what the hell was that?” he mutters to the empty room.
he runs both hands through his hair. he hadn’t meant to say that. he definitely hadn’t meant to end the call like that.
win her over? who the hell even says that?
he presses his palms to his face and groans. this was supposed to be a game. some stupid, ego-driven aftermath of a one-night fling. sunwoo wanted to play with her - nothing crazy. just wanted to see how she would respond to his flirtations and little quirks, then if they snogged or fucked another once or twice and nothing worked out, he would let it fade.
what he didn’t expect was this drive. this need. to win her over. he didn’t hate eric. why did it bother him that the girl he slept with didn’t like him? if it wasn’t eric, would he be responding like this?
sunwoo deeply hopes he would, but that would mean that the problem was not within eric - it was the fact that sunwoo had fallen into the problem that the grey area in a one-night stand births, and that’s actually falling for the person involved.
it was supposed to be funny. it was supposed to be a laughable one-night stand where he could bro-fist her or ignore her like some other regular person but somewhere between her knee slamming into his groin and her voice shaking just now on the phone, it stopped being funny.
he sits on the edge of his bed, staring at nothing.
“hey. hey!”
snapped out of his brainless zoning-out, sunwoo looks to the door. eric frowns, carefully closing the door behind him.
“damn, where did you go?”
sunwoo laughs it off. “to a world where i didn’t have to study to get good grades and a bright future.”
“fuck off,” eric hurls a shirt at him. “by the way, can i ask you something?”
“if it’s the answers to cultures and society, i don’t have them.”
eric scoffs, taking out his chair as sunwoo lies back down in his bed, arm under his neck.
“oh, please, i’d do that if i wanted to fail.”
“what did you want to ask? you’re scaring me. you never ask about asking something. you just... ask away.”
“okay, i’ll ask away,” eric clears his throat. he sits in the reversed chair, arms resting over the backrest. “what’s up with you and eunjung?”
sunwoo sharply turns his head to look at eric. there’s a heavy stare in his eyes that tells him that eric has seen it - the awkward and tensed air that hangs between him and eunjung.
the years of friendship with sunwoo have taught eric many things. that he was a scaredy cat who hated jumpscares, that he was a brilliant all-rounder when it came to doing the things he loved, and that he was a good friend despite his mischievous nature.
but it is also the years of friendship that told eric one thing - if sunwoo couldn’t conjure up a lie about it, then it meant something.
lia and yeji know instantly that something is wrong when they spot eunjung’s lifeless corpse gliding across the concourse. the dark eye circles, the hair that she didn’t bother to curl or tie up, not to mention the remnants on her neck that could now pass off as recovering mosquito bites.
“what happened?” lia crosses her arms. yeji flicks eunjung’s collar the right way.
eunjung takes a deep breath and sighs, looking around first like she were afraid to say what she wanted to say.
“what is it?” yeji frowns, taking a step back and scanning her face. “this is taking a toll on you. did you confess to him? did he reject you? did the other one confess to you? did you sleep with him again?”
“you got one of those right,” eunjung mutters, just loud enough for them to hear.
“no.”
“yeah. sunwoo... he-” eunjung groans, tilting her head so her face was against the ceiling. “i don’t know what to do.”
“well, not to be cliche as hell, but what does your heart tell you?” lia stands by eunjung, hooking one of her arms while yeji follows on the other side. they walk toward class.
“i don’t know, i don’t like being in such a sticky situation. i don’t like it that they are best friends and roomies! i can’t talk to one without worrying that the other one’s gonna spot me and think otherwise or interrupt and something goes awry.”
“does eric know?” lia questions in a hushed tone.
“i don’t... think he does but... he’s brought it up that he can see that something’s going on between us.”
“and how does that make you feel?”
“wow, way to be a therapist,” yeji snickers.
“inappropriate!” lia shushes disapprovingly. “so?”
“so? i don’t fuckin’ know. like i don’t want eric to know we fucked in that bed in that room, but on the other hand it’s killing me like a- a fucking chestburster! i wish he knew so i don’t have to hide the fact, but if he knew then how could he ever believe that he’s the one i like?”
“is he?”
eunjung gulps, knowing that the question isn’t accidental.
“you know this. you know this thing you’re in. your heart’s telling you one thing and your head’s telling you the other, isn’t it?”
“i don’t know about head-”
yeji laughs.
“stop it!” eunjung swats her on the arm.
“ow!” she chuckles again. “look, i don’t know much about this shit but when hyunjin comes home in a fucking bad mood, i just know it’s about a girl and you’re acting like him right now, and to be frank with you, i don’t think it’s about eric.”
“but you guys know i’ve been into him for awhile now, right? how can it go away so fast? just because of a one-night stand?”
“hey, a good fuck makes a difference.”
lia and eunjung turn and give her a deadpan look.
“i’d say ‘tell me i’m wrong’ but clearly, i’m not.”
“maybe you should tell eric.”
“are you crazy?”
“hear me out. confess to him, then see what he says. if he likes you back and if you fall into a million pieces and still ogle at him, that means you truly are into him. but if you feel like something’s off, then maybe he’s not the right one for you. and if he doesn’t like you back, then move on. i see it as a win-win.”
a win-win?
the words are muffled and mean nothing when the professor reads off his slides. eunjung doesn’t process much of it, if at all any. yeji and lia take turns nudging each other to check on eunjung, but it’s clear that her head and her heart were elsewhere.
bzzzt. bzzzt.
eunjung doesn’t usually check her phone during class, but since nothing was going into her head, she slides it out just enough to see who it’s from.
eric: hey, up for noodles later? sunwoo couldn’t make it.
the eatery was slightly emptied by the time class ended. she looked into the seating area through the large glass panels, spotting eric at a four-seater scrolling on his phone.
eunjung sucks in a deep breath and exhales through an ‘o’ shape of her lips, casually turning into the eatery and greeting the staff that was stationed by the order-yourself kiosk.
“hello,” she quietly greets, smiling at him as she sets her bag down.
“hey! just came from class?”
“yeah,” eunjung tucks her hair behind her ear and pushes the majority of her let-down hair behind her shoulder. she sits, and notices eric looking straight at her.
for a split moment, she thinks if eric will notice this and think that she’s flirting.
was it too obvious?
“still have to complete my readings and tutorials for tomorrow’s class, ugh.”
eric laughs politely, conscious that he doesn’t know how to respond.
“anyway, you really didn’t have to buy me lunch. sunwoo’s paywave had a problem so i just paid on the whim. it really didn’t cost a whole lot.”
“no, but you also helped watch out for me when we were at donghyuck’s birthday party, so if anything, i still owe you.”
though the small talk irks eunjung, she couldn’t complain. having a one-on-one lunch appointment (or date?) with eric was more than what she could’ve asked for, especially on such short notice, on such sudden notice.
it all seemed to work out.
after ordering their meals on the kiosk, they stood near the front counter, butts resting against a cushion backrest with their receipts in between their fingers. eric must have brainstormed a bunch of things to ask because everytime it fell silent, he thought of something new.
what was she majoring in? what was her favourite module? was she involved in any co-curricular? did she have any siblings? why didn’t she have a roommate? (usually students choose to have one. guess eric didn’t take her to be the lonely type.)
however grateful eunjung was that he seemed so pre-occupied at keeping the conversation going, she couldn’t help but feel some kind of desperation. desperation for what, she wasn’t sure.
“how’d you meet him, by the way?”
eunjung looks up from her soup noodles. “huh?”
“dong hyuck.”
“oh.”
“someone mentioned that you’d been friends for a long time.”
“yeah. dong hyuck and i were kindergarten friends. or schoolmates. we went to the same high school afterwards and got into the same class and we just always wound up in the same circle of friends. i guess after such a long time, a close proximity helps with maintaining a friendship.”
“i see,” eric slurps a spoon of soup.
“you? how’d you meet dong hyuck?”
“actually, i met him through sunwoo. they met at a pc gaming centre.”
“ah,” the name stumps her for a moment. “of course, of all ways to meet.”
eric notices the awkward smile that flits across her lips.
“speaking of sunwoo, did you guys know each other before the party?”
“um,” eunjung looks down at her bowl. suddenly, she’s lost her appetite, stomach churning and toes wiggling in her socks uncomfortably. “no. i mean, i guess i’ve seen him around in school, or maybe on donghyuck’s instagram stories or something. i guess we just know of each other’s existence. the party was the first time we spoke properly.”
“i see. did... anything happen after i left? i heard you two were the last to leave the party.”
eunjung scratches the skin under her eye. “uh. no. after we put you in the cab, we helped donghyuck pack up, he made us finish the remaining alcohol, but i went home. in my own cab.”
“and sunwoo?”
“uh. not sure.”
“interesting... because he told me that he sent you back home before going home himself.”
fuck.
“i must’ve been too drunk to remember,” eunjung raises both hands in defeat, laughing it off. it’s smarter to stop sharing her ‘story’ when he has heard sunwoo’s lie.
“you know most of the time we go home on fridays? like we did after the party because it was on a friday night?”
eric drags his chopsticks across the base of the bowl, picking up any stray strands of noodles into his spoon.
“yeah.”
“for sunwoo and i, we usually leave together on fridays. most of the time, we’d play a match of basketball or two with some seniors before going home and we’ll only return on sunday or monday. but because i have class on monday mornings, i’m usually back in school by sunday night. but sunwoo doesn’t. his first class is tuesday mornings, and if he goes home over the weekend, he comes back monday nights.”
eunjung’s fingers go cold.
“but when i got back to the room on sunday night, he was already there.”
eric slurps up his final spoon of noodles. then he leans back in the seat and looks at her.
“so, what really happened?”
she feels like a deer caught in headlights; a child when something horrifying has emerged from the wardrobe opposite her bed. the appetite has completely gone - in fact, she feels like puking everything back into the bowl.
“look,” eric breaks the tension with a relaxed chuckle. “eunjung... i don’t mean to scare you. i just... sunwoo is my friend, and you are a great person. and i just... there’s something telling me that something happened after that party. i’m really wishing it’s not something bad, i just feel like he’s hiding something from me and when that happens, it bothers me. he’s usually an open book so when he’s all grumpy about something i don’t know about, i can’t help and i don’t know what to do.”
suddenly, the perspective shifted. she obviously upset his friend, and now he’s trying to get to the bottom of it. would he even care about the fact that he’s the one she’s interested in?
if it were lia or yeji, eunjung knew she’d pick a fight with the involved man too, even before she knew the full story.
eric tries to read her face, then frowns.
“wait- he didn’t like- touch you inappropriately or-”
“no!” eunjung nearly shouts, which catches the attention of other students around her. she nods as a sign of apology, then turns back to eric and aggressively shakes her head. “nothing of that sorts. i- i don’t have anything against him.”
she huffs, heart pounding in her chest and noodles gurgling in her stomach acids. she places the chopsticks on the rim of the bowl, clasping her hands in her lap as she thinks about what exactly to say.
but as eric waits patiently for the first word to come out, his attention is diverted elsewhere and a smile creeps up on his face.
“thought i’d find you here.”
the familiar voice feels like a haunting harmony, a broken record that’s always finding her no matter where eunjung goes. she watches as sunwoo comes around her, shoving eric across the bench so that he was sitting opposite her instead.
“talking about me, eh? my ears were itching the entire way here!” sunwoo whines childishly, brushing his hair back. he sticks his pinky into his ear and jiggles it, flicking whatever remnants on his finger onto eric.
“what the fuck!” he cackles, shoving sunwoo. “you said you couldn’t make it!”
“well, turns out i could. what was that ‘no!’ i heard form a billion miles away? did you ask her to do your homework?”
“’da hell?” eric looks wrongfully accused, at a loss for words to defend himself. “i was just asking her what went down after donghyuck’s birthday party. you’re telling different fucking stories so i thought you attacked her or something?”
“who do you take me for? damn! we’ve known each other for years and you could think that of me?”
“asshole, you were drunk, weren’t you? i was just making sure she was fine! plus, with you looking gloomy the past few weeks, especially after the party? you couldn’t tell me ‘nothing’s wrong’ and i’d believe it. i may not be very smart but i’m not oblivious.”
“i already told you last night that i sent her home first then i went home, didn’t i?”
“explain why she told me that she put you in a cab and she went home alone then?”
sunwoo glances at eunjung.
“and what about the fact that you were back in the room before i was on sunday night? that meant you stayed over the entire weekend!”
“god dammit, shut your yapping hole,” sunwoo swings an arm over eric’s shoulders and covers his mouth with his free hand. “you ask too many questions for such a non-issue. we were both drunk and bestie here clearly doesn’t fucking remember anything except the cab ride, so she thinks she got me into the cab first when it was i, her. and please, i came back to the room because i didn’t want my family seeing me so drunk! they’d kill me if they saw me getting drunk on friday the night before school reopens! i’m not a degen.”
eric squints, prying sunwoo’s hand off his face.
“i don’t believe you.”
“of course you don’t, when do you ever?”
“i would if you weren’t fucking lying all the time.”
the back-and-forth banter may have been entertaining to watch, eunjung remembers that she was the topic of the conversation. she has registered that they spoke about it, and sunwoo made up a lie. at the end of the day, he was keeping the secret for her.
“sorry if we made you uncomfortable,” eric reaches across the table with an open palm, tilting his head to read her face.
“no, you just wanted to make sure i’m fine apart from his mood swings, that’s all.”
eunjung manages a smile, waving it off.
“then what are you being so moody about?” eric finally turns to sunwoo, frown on his face.
just when she thought she was in the clear.
sunwoo clears his throat, blinking profusely at eric while he tried his best to think of an excuse. a reason. another believable lie.
“don’t you think we’d be better off having this conversation in private?” he hisses through his teeth, suddenly quieter, like the secret really was private. if it wasn’t about eunjung, she would’ve been impressed at how hard he was trying to keep this secret in the bag. but for now, she was grateful.
“i did try to ask you in private last night but you gave me that whole story that didn’t line up with what she said. plus, you never told me why you were being so glum.”
if yeji and lia were here, eunjung knew for a fact that they would groan in utter disbelief. he had basically summed up the question and answer in a sentence, but because eric didn’t have plausible belief that it actually happened, it was never a hypothesis. it hits eunjung that maybe sunwoo wasn’t all that of a playboy and a flirt, because if he were, eric would’ve already guessed it and probably left it alone.
but eunjung can see from sunwoo’s face that he was running out of gas. maybe because it was to his best friend, lying was harder, especially when it’s not something he’d usually joke about.
and suddenly, eunjung feels horrible that she’s the reason why there seemed to be a seed of distrust between them. how far will this go? would eric feel betrayed, knowing that sunwoo wasn’t telling him the truth? would they lie awake at night, thinking about confronting each other, but choosing not to, in fear of losing the friendship?
hell, no. she didn’t want to be responsible for breaking up a bromance.
but if she told eric the truth, wouldn’t it make things even more awkward?
“eric.”
the two stop bickering and turn to her.
“i will tell you, but you have to stay calm and don’t freak out. and above all else, keep it to yourself.”
“what are you doing?” sunwoo seethes through his teeth, glaring at her.
“do you want me to help you or not?” eunjung retorts, crossing her arms.
“it depends on what you’re going to say-”
“we had a one-night stand.”
if the conversation were happening in a library, the silence would’ve been even more deafening than ‘deafening silence’. you could probably hear the wind from outside, beyond the three-inch-thick glass panel.
but they were in an eatery where people’s lives and conversations still carried on without the knowledge of theirs. everything else was still moving.
everything but eric and sunwoo.
“that’s why he stayed over the weekend. i went home the next morning. obviously, it’s taking a toll on him, which is why he’s so glum, isn’t that right?”
eric slowly turns to look at sunwoo, who returns the look but is visibly more shocked that she told him that part of the story.
“but you-”
“but i like you, eric.”
eunjung looks straight at him, watching his teasing shock turn into genuine surprise.
“and sunwoo knew, so he’s troubled by it. and frankly, so am i. because how could i ever stand a chance with you when it happened? what if you knew? what would you think of me?” eunjung sighs. “that night meant nothing to me, but i believe it didn’t for sunwoo either until afterwards.”
eric’s lips are parted, searching for the words to say, but fails. he leans back in the seat, fingers combing the hair on the back of his head.
sunwoo looks at him, then looks at eunjung, and looks back at him. “wish you didn’t ask so much now, huh?”
“will you shut the fuck up?” eunjung snaps at him. “eric, i’m sorry that this happened. you’re not a part of this, and all this complex shit is just between sunwoo and i. i’m telling you this only because i don’t want the two of you to fall out because of me. not to be a pick me.”
they sit in silence for what felt like minutes, unsure what to say.
“eric, are you mad?”
he looks up, eyes tired and lips pursed. “mad? no. shocked? yeah. that was alot of shit to take in at once.”
sunwoo’s shoulders slack, like his facade has given up and faded. he rests and elbow on the table, his mouth and chin in his palm.
“first of all, i wouldn’t really care that you- it happened. but you’re right, it does make things stickier because it was with sunwoo, and he’s my best friend. like you girls, you have a girl code, don’t you? we have a bro code too. it’s the same thing. and second of all,” a smile slowly creeps onto eric’s lips. his eyes finally soften as he finishes processing his next words. “eunjung, you barely know me. i feel like... your feelings for me are infatuation, or just a simple crush. i’m really flattered, don’t get me wrong. it’s just that i wasn’t really looking for anything now because i came out of a relationship myself.”
“wait, what?”
“what?” eric frowns again.
“you told me that you’d only try when eric rejects me.” a heavy weight sinks in her stomach. she turns to sunwoo. “you knew that he wasn’t looking for anything. why didn’t you just tell me that he wasn’t looking for anything?”
“i wasn’t going to tell you that he just came out of a relationship, was i?” sunwoo’s sharp tone stuns both eric and eunjung. he sensed her hostility, and he will be hostile back. “if he rejects you, that’s his decision. i’m not him, am i? and- and if i did, you would’ve just given up, wouldn’t you? that would mean you didn’t have to choose. you would’ve moved on. but i- i wanted you to choose.”
“i don’t understand where the fuck all this came from,” eunjung throws her hands up in defeat for the second time this lunch. “you’re being so fucking dramatic.”
“i’m being dramatic? what about you? if your feelings are clear, why are you avoiding me? you just said you were troubled too. what does that mean?”
“okay, now, we can have this conversation in private,” eric hurriedly stands, walking over to eunjung and helping her with her bowl.
“it means you’re fucking confusing me! you think you can boss me around and tell me what to do just because that night happened?”
“whoa! i didn’t once threaten you with the fact that you liked eric, just in case you didn’t fucking notice! and just in case you really didn’t notice, i just spent lunch cooking up dumb excuses so you didn’t have to say anything!”
“can the two of you cool it off?!” eric hisses. finally, they have caught the attention of other students. “unless you two want the entire fucking world to know what happened, you can continue talking here.”
18th fic for my anniversary event | requested by anon
wc: 1.4k, fwb, smut (mdni), a lil angst, hurt/comfort, y/n is emotionally constipated, sunwoo is in love, fingering, piv, aftercare
a/n: it's been so long since these were requested & i'm so sorry for the wait >_< i'll be slowly picking up the remaining requests for this event!
event masterlist | tbz masterlist
You don’t care about him. Sunwoo knows, he knows it so well. And yet he’s waiting for you again, sitting on the off-white bedsheets at that stupid motel. The neon signs are flickering outside the window, harsh colors blending into the bright lights of the city. And he waits, because you called. After three weeks of silence, you finally called. This isn’t healthy, not for him because he’s too far gone in all the wrong ways, and not for you because you’re using him as a distraction from problems you don’t want to face. Sunwoo can’t fix them for you, but he would. He’d do a lot of things for you, if you just say the word, and that’s the whole problem. You’re never kind when you call him up. By now he knows the names he can expect from you all too well. Idiot. Asshole. Dumbass. Loser. Maybe he is too lenient with you, maybe he shouldn’t just accept whatever you’re giving. But he knows this isn’t about him, he knows you just need a place to vent your anger and Sunwoo is willing to be whatever place you need. He doesn’t make plans on weekends anymore, because there is always that chance of you calling and he knows he would prioritize you over anything else. He’d cancel it all just to spend three nights at this godforsaken motel with you. If he takes a moment to be honest with himself, he’ll have to admit that there’s nothing good coming out of these meetings, and his own unmet expectations have long started to take a toll on his life. Maybe he should draw a line. Maybe he should let you go.
But then there’s knocking on the door, taptap tap, and he jumps to his feet so quickly it makes the mattress squeak.
He has barely opened the door when he already feels your lips on his in a messy and desperate kiss. It makes him stumble backwards and he just so manages not to lose his footing. You throw the door shut behind you and discard your jacket on the floor and then you’re right back with him again, your hands tangling in the hair at the back of his neck as you devour his lips.
“What’s up, loser?” you say when you finally pull away and you try so hard to sound cool and aloof, but Sunwoo can hear the voice crack waiting to happen and he can see the red beneath your eyes.
“I have a name, you know,” he replies but he knows you won’t take the comment seriously. He never says it like he means it, so of course you’re not compelled to react accordingly.
“You think I remember that?”
“Right.” Sunwoo huffs a laugh. You’re obviously just saying that, but he thinks it’d be nice to hear you call his name sometimes. He’s too scared to make demands though, too scared one wrong move will make you delete his number and look for a different source of entertainment. Maybe you wouldn’t. Maybe you’d surprise him and stay. But he can’t take that risk. So he goes back to kissing you, his hands on your waist pulling you into his body and sneaking underneath the fabric of your top.
“Hurry,” you complain, when he’s taking his sweet time kissing down your neck, “you don’t have to treat me like some virgin.”
He’s not. He’s treating you like a person, but it’s no use arguing with you, so he lets you push him onto the mattress. You shimmy out of your shoes and pants and pull your top over your head and then you straddling his hips in nothing but your underwear that embraces your body in all the right ways.
“You’re so pretty,” he says, his hands naturally finding their way to your hips again.
“Shut up,” you reply as you unbutton his shirt and toss it aside. For a brief moment your fingers are roaming his upper body, cold fingertips that leave goosebumps on his warm skin, but then your impatience wins and you start to fumble with his jeans. You don’t make him take it off, you’re not wasting your time on that. Instead you push it down just enough to get your hands on him. Sunwoo lets out a moan when you touch him, moving in a way you know will get him hard, and the proud little smile on your lips makes him think he should stop trying to hold back his little sighs and noises. In a matter of minutes if not seconds, you have him all hot and bothered, but of course you wouldn’t let him cum like that. You crawl back to the edge of the bed, fishing out a condom from the pocket of your jeans that are lying on the floor, and then make quick work of opening the wrapper and rolling it on.
“Wait,” Sunwoo holds onto your hips as you hover above him, your panties already pushed to the side, ready to take him, “let me prep you first.”
You roll your eyes, grab his wrist and shove his hand between your legs, your juices soaking his fingers. “I’m wet enough, it’s fine,” you insist, but he still lets his digits run through your folds before slowly pushing them into you. He marvels at the small little noises you let out for him, crumbling so easily under his touch despite your insistence that it isn’t necessary.
“Enough already,” you press out between choked moans when he curls his fingers in a way he knows you love, and this time he relents, his own impatience to feel you making it easy to give in.
When you finally sink down on him, he thinks he's in heaven. You let out a whimper as he bottoms out, giving yourself a moment to adjust to him before you start moving. His fingertips dig into your flesh, the pleasure building up in him again with the roll of your hips. He’s close again way too quickly with you moving on top of him. He can’t cum yet though, not if you haven’t reached your high yet, so he moves one of his hands down to where you’re connected, rubbing circles on your clit that have you clenching around him.
“Close,” you sigh, your movements growing more and more sloppy. He bucks his hips into you to help you out as your legs start to lose strength, never stopping his ministrations on your clit. When you finally reach your orgasm, you clench so hard around him that it pushes him over the edge too. You ride your highs out together, your head falling onto his shoulder as you try to catch your breath.
“Fuck,” you mumble into his skin and then you slowly move off him, letting yourself fall onto the mattress. He takes another second to compose himself before he disappears into the bathroom and returns a moment later, a wet washcloth in hand.
“You don’t have to do that,” you say as he wipes down your body, but he can tell you secretly like it by the way you close your eyes and relax into his touch. It grows quiet and peaceful between the two of you and Sunwoo thinks you fell asleep, but then you speak up once more.
“I missed you, Sunwoo.” He almost doesn’t trust his own ears, but when he looks into your hooded eyes they are already looking right back at him. He’s at a loss for words, stopping all movements and staring at you.
“Didn’t you miss me?” you ask when he stays silent, “At least a little bit?” You’ve never been this vulnerable with him before.
“I missed you,” he finally replies, setting aside the washcloth and cupping your cheeks, “I missed you so much.” He gently kisses your temple and your eyes flutter shut, “So don’t make me wait so long anymore. Let's do things properly.”
But your eyes stay closed and you don’t reply. Sunwoo knows you’re not asleep. He knows you’re just running away from a moment that felt a bit too intimate for comfort. And he lets you. He’ll wait again; he can wait some more.
♡ pls consider reblogging if you enjoyed this ♡ event masterlist | tbz masterlist
3rd fic for my anniversary event | requested by anon
wc: 1.1k, exes to lovers, angst, hurt/comfort, warnings: alcohol consumption
a/n: first time writing two fics for the same song - but i love heaven so it's okay hehe~
event masterlist | tbz masterlist
This party sucks. It sucks because it doubles as a date with some guy you don’t even care about and it sucks because even though you're with your date, all you do is look at him.
Of course you’re being a hypocrite, but the fact that Sunwoo is all over some girl is driving you insane. It’s been like, what, two weeks since you’ve broken up, a break-up you never thought would be permanent in the first place, but here he is whispering sweet nothings into her ear. The worst part is how he glances over to you from across the room as he leans in, well aware that you’re watching him instead of listening to whatever nonsense your date is trying to tell you.
When Sunwoo stands up to get himself a new drink from the kitchen, you down your own cup, finding an excuse to follow behind. He doesn’t even spare you a glance when you step into the room, focused on the drink he is pouring instead.
It's headless, all of this. You're not his girlfriend anymore, you have no right to tell him what to do. But you can't help yourself.
"Don't take her home with you."
He finally looks up, and you think you see a small grin tugging at his lips, "Why not?"
It's frustrating, because it's clear that you're playing right into his hands. After all the time spent together and apart, you should know him better, should know how he acts by now. He never had the intention to take her home, he just doesn’t want to lose. The only reason he even started flirting with her was because you brought a date first and he needs to prove to you that you're not over him. He's right.
"You know why," you respond.
"Hm," he hums, slowly stepping around the kitchen island to close the distance between the two of you, "what about him then? Weren't you planning to take him back home, too?"
You’re well aware he already knows the answer to that. But he wants to hear you say it, wants you to admit that it was all just a means to get under his skin and make him jealous. You don’t want to give him that satisfaction. Just this once you wish he’d cave in first, so you’d know that he is as hung up on the two of you as you are.
“Stop being such a dick,” you frown.
“I’m not,” Sunwoo takes another step closer, his feet stopping only inches from your own. “Do I need to remind you that you are the one who started this little game by asking him to come to the party with you? I’m just playing to win.”
“He asked me,” you correct but Sunwoo just rolls his eyes, “Same difference. Fact is, you brought him here with you.”
“Because I wanted you to say something.” You regret the words the moment they leave your lips, hating how vulnerable you’re making yourself in front of someone who doesn’t show you the same openness. There are tears welling up in your eyes and you know you’re going to start crying if you stay any longer. So, you turn to leave, disappearing into the closest bathroom before he could say anything else. You lock the door and then you just crumble in on yourself, a picture of misery sitting on the cold bathroom floor. In a way all of this is your fault anyway, because you were the one who blurted out the sentence ‘let’s break up’ over a silly argument. But before you could’ve tried to take things back, he'd already said sure. As if it wasn’t a hard decision to make at all. You wonder if he regrets it the way you do. If you could redo it all, you would have never said it. But if he could redo it, would his answer still be the same?
You take a deep breath before you stand up, legs shaking as you walk to the sink to splash some water in your face. When you look up at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, you feel strangely detached from the person you see. As miserable as you feel, you look fine. Your eyes are a little red, but it could easily be blamed on the alcohol and that’s good, it’s good that no one will notice you cried but at the same time it doesn’t feel quite right.
Another deep breath and a few splashes of water to your face later, you decide to step back outside. You can’t hide in the bathroom all night, both because it’s only a matter of time until your date would start looking for you, and because you don’t want Sunwoo to know just how heartbroken you are about all of this.
Except, the moment you open the door Sunwoo is right there, pushing himself off the wall he’s been leaning against, and it becomes clear that he’s been waiting for you. It takes him one look at you before he says “You cried.”
You want to tell him off, but all the hurt and anger about the situation makes new tears well up in your eyes. “And whose fault is that?”
“‘m sorry.” He gives you a dorky smile that you want to hate but can’t bring yourself to. “I didn’t want to make you cry. I didn’t think you would.”
“Well, you thought wrong,” you press out, not even trying to stop the fresh tears from running down your cheeks now.
“Sorry,” he says again, stepping closer to cup your face.
“Is it that hard to be nice to me? You already know I don’t care about him so why can’t you just—”
“You broke up with me, though,” he interrupts but his voice isn’t accusatory at all.
“And you said sure! You agreed so easily! And now you’re so hung up on winning this stupid break up, while I just wanna run it all back, I—” you swallow around the lump in your throat, “I just wanna make you love me, too.”
He huffs a fond little laugh, his thumb brushing away the tears on your cheek, “Well, guess what, I’ve been loving you this whole time.”
“Then why did you agree to the break up? And why are you with that girl?”
He shrugs sheepishly, “Maybe I wanted you to say something, too.”
“Well I’m saying something now. I hate it, I hate all of this.”
“Me too,” he leans his forehead against yours, “I hate it.”
“Let’s take it back then, let’s take it all back.”
His nose brushes against yours and you feel his words on your skin as he replies, “Yes, let’s take it back.” And then he closes the distance to kiss you, his lips on yours feeling warm and familiar and just like heaven.
Warnings/Genre: situationship to lovers, they make out even tho they’re ‘enemies’, Sunwoo is a football player (pls don’t make me say soccer. I will never say that) while the reader is a cheerleader, it is said that he is toxic but he didn’t really show it, reader very much day dreams about Sunwoo, fluff, mentions of alcohol, they make out in the night sky, angst (a bit), hurt comfort
Word count: 2,407
Sana: hellooooo, back with a Sunwoo fic because it’s my besties birthday. Wasn’t able to write much because of lack of motivation but got some energy on Friday and was able to finish it till Saturday so yay me lol. A huge thanks to @deobienthusiast @sohnric and @jinnieboosworld for beta reading (and thanks to bar for helping me with the grammar and stuff). Sincerely sorry to @from-izzy for not letting her beta 😂 but here it is <3
It’s not like you hated Sunwoo (you did)–it’s just that most of the time that guy was just so full of himself, when in reality no one really cares about what he was saying (it was mostly him trying to flirt).
Sunwoo just had his own way of getting on your damn nerves just by a single smirk which makes its way to his face whenever he sees you in the hallways, in the class or even on the turf.
Typically, you wouldn’t mind his presence or anything. It wasn’t like you would be able to avoid him even if you wanted to.
Being the captain of the cheerleading team meant that you’d be practising on the ground while Sunwoo would be playing football (I mean, it’s not like you would steal secret yet frequent glances at him just to take a small look at him while he was busy playing. Of course not!).
I mean…of course, it’s kind of embarrassing (for you) if someone got to take a look inside your brain and all they would see are the fantasies you have about Sunwoo.
You find the fact that you’d like someone who’s just sooo cocky for their own sake that he just thinks that anyone who stares at him would go down on their knees, begging for attention or at least a glance from him, hilarious and hard to believe yourself.
But no, you were not like that. You were none of that, you were anything but that. You knew just how twisted Sunwoo was—I mean, of course you would… you were the one who was in the backseat of his car, making out with him when everyone was inside the house partying.
No matter how much you deny yourself, you cannot help but blush at the fact that you had made out with Sunwoo on numerous occasions.
Despite all of that you know that Sunwoo isn’t the one. Like the amount of times he had picked someone else over you made it clear that he is not someone who would be committed in a relationship (it’s not even like you were looking for a serious relationship yourself, but the thing is, deep down, you knew that whenever he would not prioritise you, you were of course hurt).
It's not even like you want to settle for the bare minimum, no! That is not who you are, but the times Sunwoo had taken care of you while you were drunk, the times he was there while you were at your lowest, really proved to you that he could be the one.
Only if you both were mature enough (and less egoistic) to realise your feelings for each other sooner, than maybe, maybe, you wouldn’t have been in this situation of push and pull anymore.
-x-
Heaving out a long sigh, you take your heels off as you sit on the footpath with regret and embarrassment.
Regret because you let some dumb fool take you out on a date a day before your birthday, and embarrassment for getting stood up like that.
If you would have known it would turn out like this, you wouldn’t have even agreed to this pathetic date. You knew he was just gonna use you like any other guy. That’s what guys do! But then again, you only agreed to this because your friends were forcing you to ‘live your life’ and to also move on from Sunwoo.
Their exact words would be: ‘Just get over Sunwoo.’ Like, when were you even under him to even get over him was the first thing to come to your mind; but then again…you did make out with him… maybe once? Or like twice (it was more than that for sure) but that’s not the case!
You were never even in love with Sunwoo to get over him or move on from him– they were just being ridiculous as always, was what you said to yourself.
But you knew better. You knew better than that, because of course, you always found yourself going back to him, no matter what the situation or state you were in.
And he was always there to cheer you up, or even just to make you laugh– even if it was just for a little while, that smile lasted you for a whole day.
That’s how Sunwoo was to you. Yes, he was an annoying jerk who was always full of himself and very much selfish, yet, he was also the one who was there for you when you needed him, no? I mean, yeah, he might have ditched you a couple of times, but what’s that gonna do when the amount of times he showed his support to you weighed more than the times he was being ignorant?
As a human, of course you would rather look at the bright side and the times where it was better than the ones in which you felt heartbroken or just…unwanted.
Now, that was also the exact reason why your fingers were automatically dialling Sunwoo’s number. Were you scared that he wouldn't pick up? Yes, but you knew he would. Because it was a rare occurrence for you to call him at this time of the day so he always made sure to pick up the call no matter what– that’s what you observed from him.
It was like an unspoken rule he had for you and only you. Maybe in that way you felt like you were special to him, because you both knew that he wouldn’t come running like that in the middle of the night for anyone but you.
“Can you come and pick me up? I will send you my location,” was all you said as you hung up on the call and sent him your current location.
You did not have to listen to his answer to know that he’s gonna come and get you, because you were more than sure that he will. That’s just how he is.
You stop looking down when you feel a presence standing in front of you. Slowly lifting your head up, you sniffle when your eyes make contact with the one who was standing in front of you, almost breathless.
“What’s wrong, hmm?” He asks gently while kneeling down, taking out a handkerchief from his back pocket and gently wiping the tears which were unknowingly flowing down your cheeks.
The tears were not there because of being stood up, but because of the fact that only now did you realise that you love him.
“Why are you so nice to me but you’re the same person whom I hate from the bottom of my heart?” You mumble quietly as you get up from the floor and hand your heels and purse over to Sunwoo, who held them without asking any questions.
Leaving him behind, you walk towards his car which was parked hastily, maybe because he was bad at parking (that’s a lie and even you knew that.). Entering the passenger seat, you look ahead with no certain thoughts circling your mind.
You just waited for Sunwoo to come in and drive away from here– and that’s exactly what he did, no questions asked. He knew better than to ask you anything about what happened.
With silence engulfing the two of you, you stare outside the window with some soft music playing in the background.
You could see Sunwoo’s reflection through the window– the way the night sky was shining its bright light on him andhis oh so fluffy hair which was a bit messy giving you the slightest urge to fix it for him, but you stopped yourself from doing so.
You stay quiet when Sunwoo stops the car by a small convenience store and leaves you by yourself to get something from there. You didn’t havethe slightest bit of energy in your body to even ask him what he was doing, so you just waited for him to come back.
The only thing which was on your mind right now was to go back to the comforts of your house with your favourite tub of ice cream (and a warm cup of coffee), laying in your bed as you watch your comfort film to ease your mind.
You snap out of your thoughts when you hear the door opening and see Sunwoo getting back into his seat with a plastic bag in his hand. You don’t pay much attention to him and just continue spacing out when you hear his soft, honey like voice again.
“Here.” That was when you realised Sunwoo was handing you chocolate ice cream.
Unknowingly, a small smile creeps up your face as you happily accept it with no further questions asked.
Just like that, Sunwoo started the car again as he drove off from there.
“You’re not in a hurry to go back home, are you?” He asks with his eyes solely focused on the road (with the occasional glances he was stealing at you, but we don’t talk about that).
“Why? You wanna take me out?” You ask teasingly as you take a bite out of your ice cream happily.
“Something like that… I wanna show you something.” You just stare at him when he says that and slowly nod your head. You trusted Sunwoo enough to know that he won’t do anything wrong, especially if you were there with him.
“Lead the way then, I guess.” You reply softly while finishing the rest of your ice cream.
“We’re already there, actually. Come out,” he says excitedly as he gets out of the car and goes to the front., Standing there, he waits for you to join him as he stares up at the night sky.
“The night sky is beautiful…” you say with amusement lacing your voice as you look up in awe.
“Right?” He replies back with a small laugh as he steals a small glance at you, “Do you… want to sit on the hood of the car? I can help you,” he questions softly while turning back to look at you.
Giving him a small nod, you yelp in surprise when Sunwoo lifts you up effortlessly and places you on top of the car.
After a moment of silence, you open your mouth to speak only to close it again, not knowing how to form the right words.
“Say what you want to say. I am all ears,” was all you hear from him as he keeps on contently staring up at the sky.
“Why are you doing all this?” You finally find the courage to ask him as you look down at your fingers, too afraid to look at the expressions he had on his face.
“Doing what? Being nice to you and only you?” He questions you back. There was no hint of teasing or mockery in his tone, yet, you kept on shyly playing with your fingers.
You stop playing with your fingers when Sunwoo gently grabs a hold of them. Looking up at him, you could feel your heart taking a small leap at the way he was so close, yet so far away from you.
He immediately turns around and points up at the sky, “You notice that one star over there? The most still and the clear one?” He asks before looking back at you. When you slowly shake your head, he looks back up again and continues. “That’s a North Pole star. It’s called Polaris and it’s known to be the constant star. It was used in navigation in old times,” he tells you before he hops on top of the car and sits beside you.
“What do you wanna say?” You ask softly as you stare at him in confusion. You did not know why he was talking in riddles like that, but it slightly amused you .
“I don’t want to be someone who is only there when you need me I want to be there when you’re happy, sad, or just… there. I want to be as constant as that star, Y/N. I might be ready to commit again,” he says softly as he takes your hand in his and kisses the back of your hand.
“What if you leave me?” You question him back. You were afraid that he might get bored of you and leave you– maybe that was one of the reasons which was stopping you from expressing yourself fully to him.
“What if I don't? I have been there for you even when we were sworn enemies… but then what if I am there for you not as your enemy, but as your boyfriend?” He explains himself before slowly inching closer towards you. “I want to be there for you Y/N, as your boyfriend and not just some guy you call when you’re in need.”
He says that as he slowly grabs a hold of your jawline,caressing it gently with his fingers while staring into your eyes. “Can I be your boyfriend?” He asks softly while stealing a small glance at your lips before quickly locking his eyes with yours.
When he sees the small glimpse of you nodding your head, he wastes no time and pulls you closer towards him, one hand still caressing your jaw while the other slowly creeps its way up your cheek.
You smile in the kiss when you sense the way he was being soft and gentle– unlike the times when you both had kissed before. This was different.
This kiss held everything which the others lacked– the soft, yet slow movements of his lips against yours as you slowly bring your hand up to his hair to entangle your fingers with the strands.
Pulling away from you, Sunwoo looks at you with a huge smile creeping up to his cheekbones. He goes back to his original position, licking his lips.
“You know what, Sunwoo?” You ask softly while your hands find his bigger ones to hold onto them.
Moving closer towards him, you place your head on his shoulder as you both look up at the sky, “I somehow always seem to find my way back to you,” you tell him with a gentle sigh escaping your lips.
You could hear a soft chuckle escaping his lips, which made you smile in return. “We are both on the same boat, then,” he whispers while placing his own head on top of yours.
Too @o-onikix : happiest birthday to my ride or die, my Monica to my Rachel, my everything 🥺. I love you so so much and even tho I was not able to write for Wonwoo or Seungcheol I hope you like this little something I wrote for Sunwoo (which is totally not based on your character. Nope 👎). Again thank you for always being there for, you were literally there through it all (the days I was down, the time I was balling my eyes out and also when I was the happiest girl. It was truly only possible to be that happy because you were there by my side and it means a lot to me). I love how you’re always so protective of me and taking care of me through out all that has been happening nowadays:( I will always love you and cherish you. Thank you for always listening to me rant on and on about Chanhee and the detective from Revenant. I am definitely NOT gonna stop doing that anytime soon haha. Again a happiest birthday babes <3
The crowd that littered the streets of Hak’s Garage was starting to disperse yet the smell of burnt rubber mixed with gasoline still clung to the air.
Sunwoo inhaled it deeply, finding comfort in the familiar scent of home.
“You know your cars.” He nodded behind you. “Honda S2000?”
You turned to follow his line of sight. Left in the hands of Haknyeon and Kevin’s over enthusiastic smile was the car you came with tonight—the same car you finished to a draw with the boy in front of you. Not too far from them was Juyeon, another boy you went up against, curiously taking a peek at your engine build.
“Mhm,” absentmindedly nodding, “not my baby, though. Just a side project of mine.”
Sunwoo let out a low whistle. “An S2000 for a side project? You must be loaded!”
You laughed.
“Not really. I won it in a pink slip race from back home. Just started modding it for drag.”
“How many races have you been in?”
“Too many to count. Though I must admit,” you turned back towards him, “This is the first time I’ve ever ended one with a draw.”
Sunwoo gave you a small laugh. “I can say the same.”
Not too far away from where you both were, you heard Eric animatedly calling for your attention. Beside him, your good friend stood with a grimace on her face, assumingly over the boy’s unwavering amount of energy. You’ve only known Eric for a couple of months since they started dating but it seems like he just never runs out of it. You gave Sunwoo one last smile before walking towards them.
“It was nice meeting you, Sunwoo. Next time, you won’t be so lucky.”
Sunwoo only chuckled at your light-hearted taunt. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m definitely winning against you next time.”
You turned your back towards him before he could see the smile that was starting to curve your face.
Next time, you thought, I’m definitely looking forward to our next time.
Red is for love, black is for anger, pink is for happiness, yellow is for okayish, white is for satisfaction, and many like that.
The world in which Sunwoo is born is where people are born with rings around their left ring finger which depicts the mood that their soulmate is experiencing. It’s a special kind of feeling knowing what a person who’s exclusively yours is feeling right now.
It’s a special kind of feeling knowing if your soulmate is the angry kind or a bubbly kind or something else.
Sunwoo, with a mostly pink ring around his finger, is always a bit skeptical.
How can a person always be happy? If he hadn’t seen it happening with people around him, he wouldn’t even have believed in it. And so, he waits. For the day he gets to know the name of his soulmate or sees her or meets her as the ring around their finger turns dual color. What he is feeling and what his sweet soulmate is feeling.
He waits for the day they will meet and find out if she really is that kind of person or if it’s just his connection to her that’s broken
But then one day, out of nowhere his ring turns transparent.
Sunwoo is in the middle of watching a movie and he hates the fact that he didn’t even notice the ring on his finger losing its color, dimming until it finally turns transparent so that people no one would even see a band on his finger.
Sunwoo is hurt and he mourns for a person he never met.
He mourns for the girl and hates that he might never know what happened to her.
Years later, Sunwoo is finally able to move on, with a girl he met in his office. They mesh well as he gets to know that her soulmate cheated on her again and again.
“At least you got to know how he was, I didn’t even meet her once” Sunwoo comments as their date comes to an end.
They keep meeting again and again, and one day, Sunwoo proposes, knowing she might not be his soulmate but they do have a connection of a kind.
The wedding preparations start and although it’s a small affair, (marriage to a non-soulmate is still frowned upon by many) it takes time.
By the time the wedding is done, Sunwoo can feel a deep pain in his heart, part of his soul weeping for his soulmate.
The girl’s parents come to congratulate him.
“Thank you for making our Minah so happy. It was hard and at one point, we never thought we would be able to see her recover.” Sunwoo listened to his now father-in-law speak but in the middle of it, his ring finger tingled.
“Yes, our poor girls. One lost her life and another is forever gonna live in the guilt that she might be the reason her sister…” but Sunwoo is only half listening because the ring on his finger finally turns to purple.
Purple for confusion and the color deepens as hard as he looks at the ring.
“That girl, my Soyi, gave her all to save Minah” Sunwoo turned the ring. It was still transparent.
“She died while trying to save Minah from her abusive boyfriend”
Cheon Soyi.
Born 14th October 2003.
Loving daughter, brave sister.
Sunwoo cries as he sees her tombstone. It’s not clean, and it's not new, having been in this place for the past 7 years.
The tombstone of his wife’s sister who died trying to save her.
The tombstone of his soulmate.
“Soyi, I have taken a lot of things from you in this life” Sunwoo hears Minah speaking “First your clothes, then your makeup, your life, and now your soulmate. In the next life, please take everything you want from me. Or else I will forever be indebted to my little sister. I have been trying my best to take care of Mom and Dad as I promised. I will take care of Sunwoo too.”
Sunwoo wipes his tears.
“We have never met Soyi ssi. But I think I have known a part of you, of who you were. And I am so glad we are soulmates. In our next lives, let’s definitely meet.”
Sunwoo takes Minah’s hands as they get up, both comforting each other and walk away with promise of living a life of pink.
you tell yourself that this is for the best, that you’re only doing what needs to be done. even if it hurts now, even if it never stops hurting, maybe this is truth you’ve been running from this whole time. maybe this is just acceptance.
— or: you break up with sunwoo because you love him, because you refuse to let him fall back down to earth with you; everything that follows after is an inescapable gravity.
idolverse!sunwoo x non-celeb!reader, exes!au, mostly reader-centric // 13.6k // angst with a teeny bit of fluff in between // told in alternating past and present timeskips, vaguely canon timeline but don’t look too close // 🪐fic playlist (for full experience)
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prologue. (love is…)
it occurs to you on a sunday night, the second-hand of the clock only a few ticks away from midnight, that this was never meant to be.
you try to not hear echoes of sunwoo’s voice in your head, admonishments scolding you gently to go to sleep, but it plays in your head regardless. truthfully, it had always sat on the edge of nagging, but you supposed that when it was him, it ended up more endearing than anything else: the pout in his lips, the scrunch in his brow, the worry in his eyes as he'd brush a strand of loose hair out of your face.
there was always something else in his gaze, something you could never quite pinpoint—like he saw something you couldn't, like his gaze had stripped you bare of everything you'd put up to protect yourself. you try not to chase the rabbit's trail thinking about it, shoving the ghost of the memory beneath a quick, heated blink of the eyes.
it doesn't matter anymore. you've lost the chance to figure out what it had meant.
you almost laugh at the reminder; it seems you haven’t changed, even now. greed had always been your deadliest sin, despite everything. you want, and want, and want.
you want what you can’t have, you tell yourself, but you stop at the thought. that's not it.
pause, rewind, play.
because the truth of the matter is, you just want what you don't deserve. you don’t deserve this—the sun-soaked kitchens, the teasing glances, the rhythmic sway in each others' arms as you wait for the rice cooker to beep, your timer set for the oven to ring, the world to finish turning from gold to dark blue to midnight. it's softness that makes your lungs collapse in on themselves, tenderness that burns your skin from even the gentlest brush.
you've been selfish for long enough, you think, indulging in pleasures that should have never been yours. and no matter how tightly you want to continue clinging onto sunwoo's sweet words and empty promises, the little voice in your head drowns it all out in the end.
it's not supposed to be painless; it's rational, practical, inevitable, but so is snipping off the dead leaves off your plant after they've died, tying a tourniquet to a limb before cutting it off to prevent the infection from spreading.
(it's for his own good. you should have done this a long time ago.)
so you pick up your phone, send a single text message to sunwoo, and wait; your knuckles turn white with the knife in your hands, like the first press of the blade to your skin. tie the knot tight, grit your teeth, you can never go back to what once was.
it's 12:03AM when your phone lights up again, eyes burning in the brightness. you can only watch as you bleed.
after. (love is sacrifice.)
chanhee calls you monday, the morning after.
it’s not so much that you weren’t expecting it, moreso that you were hoping that you’d be proven wrong, that maybe chanhee could have let it go, let it all play out without any extra fuss, but thinking back on it now, you suppose the mere thought of that was already a hopeless endeavor. phone vibrating on the counter, the caller id blares ‘choi chanhee’ in big white letters, predictably incessant.
you can practically feel the pensiveness in the buzzing. the bated breath, the knit brows, his finger tapping on the table as chanhee waits for your voice to replace the dialing tone over the speaker. you have half a mind to just let it ring.
after all, what more could he really say? it was all over and done with, and he’d just be wasting his breath trying to convince you otherwise. but still, your phone continues to ring, and despite your better judgment, your finger slides to accept.
(if you were going to start it, you might as well go until the very end of the aftermath.)
“hello?”
chanhee lets out a sharp breath, his voice falling to a hush. “are you serious?”
not even a ‘hello’ back, you lament silently. your bottom lip catches between your teeth, nail picking at the loose skin on your thumb as you try to form a reply on your tongue. “about what?”
he calls out your name in response, exasperated. you can practically see the wrinkles knit tight in his forehead, each word stressed more than the last as he continues to scold you. “don’t play dumb with me,” chanhee retorts. “did you seriously break up with sunwoo?”
ah. straight to the point, as expected. you shift your gaze to the clock on the wall, focusing on the rhythmic ticking as it works its way through a new hour. your breathing slows to match, heart steeling, your voice thinning out into something you know you can control. “he told you?”
he scoffs, harsh breath crackling over the speaker. “he didn’t need to. he’s locked himself in his room since last night and won’t talk to anyone else. it isn’t hard to figure out when you were the last person he called.”
the influx of questions almost come pouring out before you bite your tongue—doesn’t he have schedules today? do you know if he slept last night? did he even eat at all since then— “oh,” you manage to breathe out.
“what are you doing?” he asks plainly. it’s a simple question, and it’s one you don’t know how to answer.
“i…” you chew your bottom lip, eyes picking out a small scuff on the side of your coffee table. funny, you don’t remember it being there before you had moved. “i’m not sure what you mean.”
“don’t do that, you know exactly what i mean,” chanhee counters back. “why did you break up with him? and don’t give me some bullshit excuse, because we’d both know you’d be lying.”
the clock continues to tick on the wall, and you drag your eyes over to it once more, its needle in a constant state of motion. three minutes. you could unravel the truth to chanhee in three minutes, at least the parts that really matter. choi chanhee is many things—nosy, opinionated, a gossip, but he isn’t tactless. no matter who he ends up spilling his complaints to about you and sunwoo and this entire situation, you know not a single word from his lips will ever reach sunwoo’s ears. no matter how close you and chanhee are, you would have ended the call then and there if you weren’t certain of it.
“it’s for the best,” you say softly, and it sounds so simple when you put it like that. like the nights toiling over sending that final text were all for nothing because this was just how it was meant to be, like you were just fighting the inevitable.
“you can’t actually believe that.”
something in your chest sparks, a flicker of a flame that lends itself to “we both know—” before you cut yourself off, catching the growing volume and thickness in your voice before chanhee can pick it out and lay it bare. “we both know it was never going to work out like how we wanted.”
you tense, waiting for chanhee’s incoming rebuke, but he goes quiet for a few moments before trying to speak again, slowly and carefully. “what happened?”
“nothing happened,” you stress, shaking your head, and you smear over the memory that flashes by, the hurt and loneliness that fades into nothing more than streaks of color and silence. “i just did what i should have done a long time ago.”
“you—”
“i have to go, chanhee.” choke it back. hold it in. “take care of him, okay?”
chanhee makes a noise of protest, but you hang up before he gets the chance to say anything more. you try not to look at the clock on the wall again—you already know those three minutes had passed a long time ago.
(heat surges to the bridge of your nose, pressure builds at the back of your eyes. those three minutes had passed, so it was okay now, right? it was okay to let go?)
on monday morning, six minutes past ten, you sit tourniquet-tied in a pool of dried blood of your own making, and you cry.
before. (love is youth—)
it all starts out as whispers at first.
rumors of a new transfer student spread quickly through the halls, jokes about new competition within the school said just as easily and nonchalantly as discussing the new main course added onto the lunch menu, or the latest news about which celebrity they think would make it onto dispatch headlines within the next year. it’s routine, at this point, their gossip becoming just another common occurrence during the school year. all of it is just too familiar, too predictable, your classmates’ voices droning on in your head as their gossip goes through one ear and out the other.
the new kid gets introduced during homeroom first period, and the whispers grow to a murmur. the clacking of the drumsticks from a couple kids in the back of the class stop, and the boys playing guitar in the corner of the room go silent, eyes bright and watching.
he introduces himself as kim sunwoo, an applied music major, and you wonder if he’s just another kid wanting to fulfill their idol dream—a trainee? a trainee-wannabe? there certainly weren’t a lack of those in the applied music department, and at a school like hanlim, most transfer students ended up being one of the two. repressing a sigh, you bury your head inside the crook of your arm, slumping against your desk. as if there weren’t enough empty desks scattered around the classroom belonging to students skating by their classes in favor of trainee and idol life.
you’ve heard too many whispering aspirations from other trainees about gaining fame and popularity, thousands of adoring fans loving them through their music, but you know it never really is about the music—it’s always just a means to an end, not that you could really fault them for it. everyone was working hard in different ways for their dreams, but after months of being paired with and surrounded by people who were barely around and hard to reach with a noticeable lack of passion for the same music you came to hanlim for, you’ve grown a little tired of it all.
even the class president, park jihoon, couldn’t be excluded from that nasty habit. with more absences than attendances on his record, you had to wonder if all that struggle as a trainee at such a major entertainment company was worth it. but still, at least he tried his best at his job whenever he was here: leading the class, keeping everyone under control whenever they inevitably got frisky, and—(your eyes catch him walking over to the sunwoo’s desk and introducing himself)—making small talk with the new kids.
“where are you from?” jihoon asks, head tilted curiously. “seoul?”
sunwoo nods, and from the bits of conversation you overhear from a few desks away, it’s just as you guessed. the transfer to hanlim was only to get him one step closer to becoming an idol. you can see it all so clearly, another empty desk, another dream of wanting fame.
“are you in a company, then?”
“no, i…” sunwoo rubs the back of his neck, shaking his head half in a stupor. you can practically hear his thoughts in his poorly-veiled expression, the culture shock of the applied music department in a school like hanlim striking him swiftly. “not yet, i’m looking for one now.”
“ah, i see,” jihoon nods faintly, a spitting image of a cool class representative, and you stifle a snort beneath a hidden smile. as if jihoon didn’t only just get accepted into yg entertainment two months ago. he’s lame as always.
the boy sitting behind sunwoo chirps in after, asking him questions and starting up conversation along with another kid in their column. chin rested on your hand, you turn your head towards the window again, tuning out your classmates in favor of watching the clouds outside drift slowly along with the wind.
(he was planning on being a trainee, after all; there wasn’t really a point in becoming invested in someone you knew you were never going to see much of again.)
except, a couple of weeks later, your teacher announces a month-long songwriting project, and sunwoo’s name gets called out next to yours as random pairs are chosen as partners. he meets your eyes from across the room, giving you a small nod of acknowledgement, and you try not to let the apprehension show on your face when you give him a polite smile in response.
you don’t even know if he knew how to write lyrics.
“so we’re writing lyrics given our assigned theme, right?” sunwoo asks after class, chair pulled up to your desk as you brainstorm for ideas.
you nod, peering over at his sheet cautiously. “do you have any ideas on how to start?”
“well,” sunwoo starts, lips pursed as he taps his pencil on his paper. “the theme is ‘love,’ right? so we could do anything about that, but…”
“it’s too broad of a topic,” you finish, frowning.
“yeah,” his eyes flicker to yours, mouth gaping open slightly, his eyes a little wide. “exactly.”
you hum in thought, a few seconds passing in silence before you pull your wired earphones out of your pocket, offering him an earbud after. you figured if you were partners, you might as well work hard together. “let’s start with this, then,” you try. “what do you think when you listen to it?”
songs were stories, after all, even without the lyrics. like putting together parts of a puzzle and assembling it piece by piece, it was your job to find what part of the story was untold and fill in the missing words.
sunwoo furrows his brows, leaning closer. the earbud wire dangles precariously over the desk, headphone jack connected to your phone in the middle. breath held, you try to ignore the close proximity in favor of focusing on the chords, the bass, the melody. even with just the guide melody, each note sounds like a confession, like a secret waiting to be unveiled, wanting to be stripped and laid in the open.
“it’s a sad song,” you comment, breaking the silence, “but it’s like…it sounds like there’s more to it than that?” you let the question hang in the air, looking at him half-expectant.
“it almost sounds…” sunwoo begins, trailing off as he mulls over his words.
“bittersweet?”
sunwoo nods as he hurries to scribble down a few words onto the sheet of paper. the puzzle piece clicks into place. “that’s what i was thinking too. like there’s still something left to remember even if it’s all over, like…”
“like even in the hurt, it’s still—“
“—love.”
before. (love is lonely.)
party streamers littered on the floor throughout the living room, the metallic gold strips of paper and plastic scattered amongst silver glint in the darkness, catching in the lowlight. balloons of all different types of assortments were sprinkled throughout your apartment as well, regular colorful latex balloons floating above your couch and set atop your coffee table and fallen beneath your stools, while the fancier balloons had been pinned on an empty wall of your kitchen, ‘happy birthday’ with an extra exclamation mark and heart balloon spelled out in big bubble letters.
sat at the kitchen table, you watch in silence as a small candle flickers in front of you, placed in a single cupcake that your friends had insisted on saving for you after the party.
(for when he calls, they had said gently, pushing the cupcake and the unopened candle towards you. you can blow it out with him, make your birthday wish together.)
it paints you orange, the soft glow just warm enough for you to barely feel it as shadows dance on the table. ten minutes away from midnight, you hold your breath, something in your chest deflating as you close your eyes, readying yourself to blow out the candle.
your phone lights up, ringing; you scramble to salvage what lingering traces of hope you have left.
you try not to think too much of it when the incoming call shows up as a voice call rather than video like it usually is, but your greeting slips out a little too quickly, too obvious to tell that you were waiting for him to call. “hi, sunwoo.”
“hey,” sunwoo greets back, words spoken slowly, his voice tracing the edge of a drowsy rasp. any trace of bringing up the voice call goes out the window. if this had been any normal circumstance, you would have teased him for mistapping his screen, playfully badger him to switch over to video call so you could see him in all his bare-faced glory. (but then again, a small voice in the back of your mind interrupts, if this were any normal circumstance, he would have just been here instead of across the world.) you push the thought away; a small drop of wax begins to melt down the candle.
“we just got back to our hotel,” he tells you, and you can see it clearly almost as if you were there. the contents of their luggage messily splayed about the carpeted hotel floor, outfits for tomorrow draped on the chairs, and dirty clothes piled in a hamper in the corner. you can faintly hear a shower being turned on in the background, and sunwoo comments on it before you can ask. “can you believe this? changmin-hyung kicked me out of the bathroom as soon as we came into our room,” he complains, and you know that his lip is jutted out in a pout of indignation at the injustice of it all. “he said that i’d take too long and use up all the hot water if i went first.”
“well…” you chide softly, a smile faint on your lips. “he’s not exactly wrong, sunwoo.”
sunwoo whines, and you can hear him kick the sheet on the mattress. “you’re siding with him?”
“sorry,” and you don’t sound apologetic in the slightest. “you know i can’t lie.”
he grumbles something unintelligible as you breathe out something resembling a laugh. silence lulls for a few seconds, your shadow long on the tabletop, and you try to harden the twist in your gut, gathering the courage.
“i—”
“today—”
you stop, and so does he.
“oh, you go first,” sunwoo offers, but you hesitate, offering back.
“no, it’s okay, you go.”
sunwoo insists again, but you can sense his fight against his heavy eyelids growing closer by the second, the yawn that he stifles every time he pauses, so you force down the confession, keep your wish tucked away within the flickering candlelight. he would know, right?
“no, i mean it—what were you going to say? how was your day? how was the flight?”
there’s a moment of uncertainty where sunwoo tries to decide whether or not to continue the exchange, but he gives in eventually. “the flight was good,” he begins, albeit still reluctant. “the plane food was better than usual, surprisingly.”
you hum in acknowledgement, encouraging him to continue.
“and i fell asleep an hour in and—chanhee-hyung,” he interrupts himself, suddenly remembering. “i fell asleep and chanhee took these photos of me and—”
“were you drooling?” you guess, sympathetic.
“how did you—i mean no! i was not drooling!”
“chanhee’s newshots will never lie, you know.”
“ugh,” sunwoo groans. “remind me why you’re friends with him again?”
you contemplate, humming. “birds of a feather?”
(chanhee had actually sent you the photos earlier this morning, along with the text “happy birthday, here’s a loser as your gift.” he followed it up with an additional message of “your loser…i guess.”)
“oh, speaking of birds,” sunwoo adds, “that reminds me. i saw two ducks swimming in the river today. mandarin ducks, i think.”
“oh?”
“yeah.” his voice grows quieter, almost embarrassed as he mumbles, “they reminded me of you.”
you go still. you try to fight the hardened knot in your stomach from softening and twisting further. he’s just a hopeless romantic, you tell yourself, but the knot wrings tighter, creeping up into your chest the more you try to not think about it. mandarin ducks, the symbol of love.
(“they mate for life, you know?”)
sunwoo tries to change the subject, ears surely burning red as he stammers his way to the next topic while half-muffled into a pillow. “anyway, i didn’t call you too late, did i? it’s three a.m. over here, and i wasn’t sure. i didn’t wake you up, or anything?”
your ears ring as you swallow hard, eyes burning as you look at the clock on the wall. it ticks, once. “no, it just turned midnight here.”
(you suddenly remember that chanhee had sent you another message afterwards, one that you never opened properly to read. “he’s said happy birthday to you already, right?” you had wanted to open it when you could respond with a “yes.”)
“oh, okay,” sunwoo smiles over the phone, love and affection still tangible even through the tiredness in his voice, the drowsiness that permeates through the speaker. “that’s good to hear. you should probably sleep soon, though, i don’t want to keep you up too late.”
“yeah,” you say, barely audible. were you expecting too much? “changmin should probably be done by now, too.”
“hey,” he frowns. “you okay?”
“yeah, i’m okay. just tired,” you tell him, tight-lipped as you smile.
“we never got to talk about your day,” sunwoo mentions, a reminder with gentle insistence. even on the verge of sleep, he was still trying. “i’m free after dry rehearsal, so we can call again tomorrow night? i wanna hear about it first thing.”
you draw in a breath to agree, but something else slips out instead, the one thing you had tried to keep contained since the beginning. maybe you had brought this upon yourself, holding out for it until midnight slipped between your fingers, the hope in your chest slowly unfurling. you wonder if it was obvious, the remnants scattered at your feet.
"sunwoo," you call softly. the line goes quiet. you almost regret it, the words catching in the back of your throat when you try to speak them, but you imagine what it would be like if you forced your tongue to form them anyway, awkward and wooden and hurt. “i…” it was my birthday, today. did you know? did you forget?
by the kitchen, the big trash bag tied to the outside of your trash can is filled to the brim with plastic cups and paper plates. there’s still wrapping paper you need to throw away left on the counters, leftovers that need to be transferred and stored and put in the fridge. you wonder if you would have felt better about the hassle if sunwoo was there with you—to toss an empty cup into the open bag from across the room, to listen to you talk about your favorite memories from the celebration, to turn off the final light with you at the end of it all. like the old times.
even on call, he could have done most of those things, maybe even save you time from giving him a chiding look when he’d inevitably miss throwing the cup into the trash bag by half a foot. he never really had to be here, he had just always been with you, in one way or another.
but it wasn’t not really your sunwoo anymore, was it? not really. not since he became more than that kid in the practice room with a pen between his teeth and a metronome in his hand, not since he became synonymous with the brand his name was attached to. and it was unfair of you to expect those kinds of trivial things from someone so far out of your reach now, right?
so the question remains a lump as you swallow it down—close your eyes, blink back the tears, it's your fault in the end, anyway—and smile. "no, nevermind. you must be tired, you should sleep soon."
“are you sure—“
“bye, sunwoo.”
you watch as the reflection of the flame trembles in the small pool in the center of the cupcake; the wax has long since melted onto the frosting. you blow it out, and the candle leaves only a trace of smoke curling in the air in its wake—silent, alone.
it wasn’t so much that sunwoo had forgotten your birthday, but it was everything that it encapsulated, everything it makes you realize. how he was so much bigger than this, than you, how you shouldn’t have expected him to remember every little thing when he already has so much on his plate and a hundred more important matters to worry about. didn’t you hear the rasp in his voice? the exhaustion that coated each word? how he still took the time to call you at three a.m even after a full day of work and schedules?
you place the melted candle into the trash, carving out the tainted top with an extra knife lying on the counter. don’t be a bother. don’t hinder him with needless things.
the next morning, sunwoo calls in a panic, hurried apologies blurring all his words together in a flurry as he frantically promises to make it up to you when he comes home. you tell him it’s fine, you knew he was tired and busy and you didn’t want him to worry about it, but the soft assurance can’t hide the underlying hurt that splinters between him and you.
and he does keep his promise when he returns. the day after the plane arrives home, sunwoo’s first order of business is to insist on a full day spent together, making it his mission to be at your beck and call the entire time. he showers you with countless presents from his trip overseas and twice as much affection for each day that he was gone, but even underneath all the cheery smiles and excited banter, you can’t shake the feeling from that night. the mess on the floor, the shadows distorted in orange light.
it never really is quite the same, after that.
after. (love is a martyr.)
life goes on; it always does.
not much changes, at least nothing that isn’t glaringly obvious. you throw yourself into your work like you always have, going to countless songwriting camps and workshops, sending in drafts of songs to a&r teams of various companies only to be rejected then revised and then offered again for other songs and artists by other companies, a continuous cycle that seems to blur all the following days together. the only difference is that your phone stays eerily quiet—no scheduled ding at lunchtime reminding you to eat, no pictures shared throughout the day, no good night phone call to lull you to sleep.
though, you still talk to chanhee from time to time, if only because of his persistent insistence on the matter.
“we’re recording tomorrow,” he mentions, voice crackling over the speaker. you pause for a split second over a half-open cardboard box, hand faltering over the frayed edge of the flap. you’d only recently gotten around to unpacking the rest of your boxes from your move months ago; it wasn’t as if you were too busy to get around to it, but you suppose a part of you wanted to prolong the finality of it all, whether consciously or not. and on this wednesday afternoon on a day off, you figured it was better to do it now than never at all.
you let out an “oh” in response, grabbing a few things from the box and placing it on the floor to reorganize later. “another comeback?”
chanhee’s chair squeaks as he hums, leaning back. he was in his practice room at the company—you can tell by the way he doesn’t whisper his words to you like they were a secret kept and hidden away. not like whenever he calls you at the dorm, careful of what wounds may open up again if someone were to overhear. “the teasers should be released soon.”
“you seem busy, lately,” you comment distantly, placing the phone on the table and setting it to speaker as you collect as many mini decorative plates and bowls in your hands before you stand up, ready to place them in various places around the living room and kitchen. remnants of the afternoon’s rain slips down the window glass, clouds casting the sky and your apartment a wash of dull gray. “first the tour, then a japanese album, now a comeback—are you sure you’re okay? you’re still taking care of yourself, right?”
“i mean, i’m fine,” chanhee says, a hint of ‘of course i take care of myself, who do you think i am?’ in the retort, “but.” he pauses, taking a breath, and you can tell he tests the words on his tongue before he speaks them. “are you sure it’s me you’re worried about?”
you place a bowl down on the windowsill a little harsher than you mean to. “chanhee.”
“sorry.”
chanhee at least sounds apologetic when he says it, but he interrupts the silence that falls soon after slowly, tentatively asking. “you’re going to listen to it though, right?”
you swallow hard, breathing out a long sigh as you pick up the phone again, holding it to your ear as you speak. “of course i am. did you even need to ask?”
“no,” he replies, a second’s pause where you think he shakes his head. “i just wanted to hear it from you for certain. to hear that you were still listening to us.”
‘to sunwoo.’ the words go unspoken, lying heavy in the air. it’s almost cruel, the way chanhee picks and pulls at the confession you have hidden like a wound just finished scabbing over, especially when he knows your answer just as well as you do. of course you would still be listening to sunwoo—that’s what you had promised him, way back when.
(the memory flashes by in an instant. the chill of a cool spring night, the squeak of the swing, the dim golden light of the street lamp above. you can still feel it, sometimes, the condensation slick on your fingertips, the bite of cold metal through your palm—the warmth, in spite of that.)
a small part of you whispers, what were promises really worth, in the end? you aren’t the same person you used to be, and neither is he. sixteen is a far cry from where you are in your twenties, the weight of the years lived through making you let go of the things a teenage-you wouldn’t have ever dreamed of—and that was normal, letting bits and pieces of your past selves be carried away by the passage of time. you know the same holds true for him, too.
but still. even if everything else had changed, you feel like it’s your duty, almost. to always be listening to him till the end.
“i have to go, chanhee,” you tell him, quiet. he makes a small noise over the phone, and before he can apologize, you interrupt with a small, “you’re fine. i just need to finish unpacking my stuff, and i promised myself i’d finish it all today.”
“you still haven’t unpacked?” he asks, baffled. “it’s been months?”
“i know,” you sigh, giving a little shrug. “i’ve just never gotten around to it. that’s why i have to finish it today or else i know i’ll never get back to it again.”
chanhee tells you to take care of yourself, to which you dryly remark to focus on following your own advice first and you say your farewells goodnaturedly, pressing to end the call.
it’s like a switch flips, silence falling almost immediately throughout the apartment, the heaviness in your chest weighted down even further in your solitude. you run a finger along the textured edge of the cardboard flap again, staring blankly at the items still wrapped tight in the box. a breath—in, then out, and then you blink it away, getting to work.
the box of posters and prints gets emptied out first, a roll of tape by your side as you hang up any remaining decorations that you’d left to a later affair when you’d first moved into the apartment. afterwards comes the books that you shelve carefully in alphabetical order in the small slot beneath the tv, then the living room curtains, the pack of postcards and holiday wishes kept in a tin case for safekeeping, the old journals you wrote in years ago and never looked back on since. you sometimes wonder if you should just throw them away, but you could never bring yourself to do it; you try to chalk it up to being too attached to the idea of the memories, even if you could never truly look at them again.
you heave the final box into your bedroom, hours later, huffing as you set it down in front of the drawers. sliding the bottom drawer open, the crumpled pile of clothes stuffed inside stares back at you. outside the window, golden hour peaks through your blinds, the sunset shedding just enough light for you to see in the dimness of your room. you crouch down onto the floor, knees knocking against the wood as you slowly take each article of clothing out, one by one to refold.
it was all clothes that you could afford to spare a second glance at, old shirts and pants that you never truly wore on a daily basis, clothes that were kept as another ‘just in case.’ and like the postcards and the journals and everything else in those boxes, the clothes crammed in that small space just seemed like something you kept choosing to not look at, to refuse to address in any way but in brief memory. you had told yourself that you’d always come back to it whenever you’d unpack the rest of the box of clothes, but looking back on it, maybe that was just a way of comforting yourself amidst the avoidance.
still, in the faint darkness of the room, you take each shirt out carefully, smoothing out the wrinkles and folding each crease to be in its proper shape. you had forgotten some of them existed, drawing out a small smile when you see the old mickey mouse shirt your mom had gotten you on her trip to disneyland, the student-made shirts from your high school graduating class, the club shirts you had joined in college. each refolded shirt gets stacked onto a pile beside the box, a reminder to go back and put the clothes from the box back in the drawer as well, but when you pull out the last shirt jammed in the far end of the drawer, you stop.
it’s nothing special, really, just a faded pink t-shirt with what seems like some semblance of a barely legible logo printed onto the front, but you clutch the fabric between your fingers, a memory from long ago surging back.
(“sunwoo…”
“yeah?” sunwoo pokes his head around the corner, morning sun dyeing his black hair a shade of light brown. he has a towel half-folded in his hands, corners lined up unevenly with one another. “what’s up?”
you frown, partially because you see a very near future of refolding all of the laundry he didn’t pay enough attention to, and partially because of the thing in your hands. “...you didn’t happen to put that one vintage white shirt you had in the latest pile, right?”
he frowns, eyebrows scrunching as he thinks. “i don’t know, maybe? why?”
slowly, as if to make him bear witness, you present to him his formerly treasured white shirt, freshly washed and dried, now dyed a clean shade of pale pink. “you put them in with my reds.”
sunwoo’s mouth gapes open just slightly, a small ‘ah’ escaping his lips. “i’m guessing we can’t do takebacksies on that?”
you groan, smothering your face into the shirt as you let out a long, exasperated “kim sunwoo…”
he tosses the towel in his hands onto the edge of the hamper as he steps into the laundry room, taking a closer look at it. “hey, it’s not even a big deal!” sunwoo reasons, trying to gently pry the shirt from your hands, but you wave it around accusingly before he gets a chance to get a firm grip on it.
“what do you mean,” you stress, waving the shirt that much more vigorously. “it was vintage! who knows how much you spent on this damn thing! and now it’s…” your eyes fall to it, defeated. “pink…”
“you know what, though?” he begins, taking your hands in his, and you meet his gaze, doubtful. “this is good. i’ve been wanting to give you one of my shirts anyway.”
“wha—”
sunwoo’s eyes light up, holding your hands excitedly. “it’s like, symbolic, you know? your shirt with my shirt dyed all together, it’s like…” he pauses, giving you a cheeky smile. “it’s like it’s you and me together forever.”
you can’t control the giggle that escapes after he says it, letting go of the shirt as you smack him lightly with bubbling laughter between your lips. as infectious as his smile is, dust floating in the streams of sunlight between, you call him lame for the cheesy comment because he is—he is lame for coming over to your place on his rare weekend off and of all the things he could do, he offers to fold your laundry together while simultaneously ruining one of his pieces of clothing in the process of trying to help, and then spins it in a way where none of it really matters because at the end of the day he knows it’s always just going to be him and you.
“and also, i just really want to see you in another one of my shirts.”
you throw the abandoned towel from the hamper into his face and tell him to go fold it instead, affection ever-present in your eyes. lame.)
that morning seems so far away when you think of it now. you bring the shirt to your face again—maybe for nostalgia’s sake, maybe to get some trace of what once was. wrinkles littered throughout the fabric, the smell of old wood from being stuffed in a drawer for months permeates through the shirt; darkness falls in the room as the sun fully sets, leaving only a sliver of dark orange lining the horizon.
you remember it, still. the scent of freshly washed fabric softener and the soft morning light and the heap of other clothes you and sunwoo had painstakingly gone over twice to make sure nothing else had leaked through and been dyed other colors, playful and teasing. you wonder what he would say to you if he saw you now, sitting on the floor with piles of clothes folded even with the wrinkles still tight. what he would say to you, if you listened.
and when you hold the shirt still for a second longer, breathing it in again, you realize that even the small traces of his old cologne were gone, too, all washed out with time.
you remember it all, and none of it is there anymore.
before. (love is like clouds, like fog.)
it’s a bit floaty, how the night comes to an end.
(sunwoo had arrived at your place around one a.m., hands shoved in his jacket pockets as he rocked back slightly on his feet, giving you a half-cheeky half-abashed grin. “i don’t suppose you’d be in the mood for a midnight snack, would you?”
already clad in warm pajamas and almost all finished washing up, you had stared at sunwoo for a long moment, slowly blinking, before creaking your door open wider and stepping to the side. “it’s cold. do you want ramyun?”)
he’d come immediately after practice, the sessions where they’d spent the entire day at the studio and only managed to come home at the insistence of their managers. it was for something they were preparing for, you know that for sure, so you hold your tongue from chiding him for not calling you ahead of time and instead shuffle to your kitchen, pot clanging onto the stove.
he was under enough stress as of late; you tried to support him in the ways you could, no matter how little they were.
when you both finish the two packs of ramyun and he offers to wash the pot, you shoo him away with a threatening slap of the pink rubber gloves by the sink, telling him to go wash up instead under the pretense of his post-practice sweat stinking up your entire apartment. sunwoo gasps, retorting that he smelled perfectly fine, but you give him a single look and he trudges away into the hallway, a weak indignant kick to the floor as he mumbles under his breath.
it never really comes up directly, the topic of disbandment, from you or from him. you talk of the preparation of road to kingdom, the exhaustion and stress that comes along with it, the weight its potential success carries unspoken between it all. you’re not entirely sure if the avoidance of the topic is deliberate on his part or not, but you try not to push for it too much. you know just as well as he does, and neither of you try to make it anything more than that.
“you know what,” he starts, later in the night when both of you are washed up and curled up in bed. “i’ve been thinking about it recently; it wouldn’t be so bad.”
you raise a curious brow, propping your head up as you turn to get a better look at him. “what wouldn’t?”
“you know, becoming a house husband.”
“sunwoo,” you blink. “what.” it was way too late for him to just be saying shit like this.
“i am just saying!” sunwoo gestulates dramatically with a hand, trying to prove his point. “if it doesn’t work out, i can definitely do the cooking and cleaning around this place while you go to work.”
“you can’t even clean up after yourself.”
“i can, i just don’t want to!”
you cast him a doubtful look, one filled with the knowledge that eric still complains daily about the pile of clothes tossed in the living room that are definitely sunwoo’s no matter how hard he tries to deny it, and that changmin loses half a year of his life every time he discovers another face mask sunwoo had slapped onto the wall or ceiling of their dorm room, and that the electricity bill at their dorm would run them to mere pennies if younghoon was never there to turn off the lights that sunwoo was supposed to. “is there a difference…”
“yes!” sunwoo insists, a strangely adamant look on his face. “i could totally do it. you would come home from a long and busy day of work and i’d have your entire dinner hot on the stove with a warm bath ready for you—you wouldn’t even have to lift a finger if i was there.”
you place a hand slowly on his, a placating gesture. “baby…” you coo, appeasing, and sunwoo tries to control his expression to keep up the indignancy. poorly, with the way he almost fumbles his entire stance at the mere mention of the petname, but at least you can tell he’s trying his hardest. “i think you’d burn my entire apartment down. or flood it, depending on which one goes horribly wrong first.”
“how could you!” he exclaims, pulling his hand away. “ye of little faith…” sunwoo’s voice goes grave and solemn. “don’t you want to see me in a sexy apron.”
“if i wanted to see you in a sexy apron, i would just give one to you.”
and even though sunwoo sulks and pulls a face at you, his insistence turns a bit softer when he repeats, “really, though.”
he goes quiet, picking at a loose thread on your comforter. “it wouldn’t be so bad, if…if it doesn’t work out.” ‘it’ being road to kingdom, ‘it’ being their next album, ‘it’ being the boyz as a whole; your heart sinks. “i think the rest of us would just go back home, you know? maybe we’d pretend that these past years never happened, maybe all these memories would just turn bitter, but…” sunwoo gives you a lopsided smile, soft. “i would still come back home to you.”
the sentiment aches a little, your breath hitching as you try to rifle through the layers of emotions that sink to the bottom of your stomach, like picking at skin still raw underneath and not yet ready to peel. you wonder if he means it, if he truly sees you as a home to come back to or if you’re just something familiar, something safe; it’s not much of a distinction, but the details make all the difference—whether you’re somewhere he belongs, or if you’re simply kept sepia-tinted as a place to keep his preserved youth. the words escape from you before you can stop them.
“you don’t have to, you know.”
sunwoo pauses, and there’s a silence that falls soon after that makes you shrink into yourself, regretting words that can’t be taken back. “what do you mean?”
“if it doesn’t…” you don’t want to speak it into existence—they’ll do well, they have to. you try to form your words carefully, deliberately, so that they’ll be spoken correctly and convey exactly what it is you mean, but it all comes poorly anyway, clumsy and messy as you trip over your own tongue. “you don’t have to…you know.” your mouth goes dry. “stay.”
sunwoo tries to not look offended at the suggestion, even if his furrowed brows say it all. but despite his own feelings on the matter, he tries his best to reign in his instinctive reaction, instead going to slowly coax you away from the ledge you’ve driven yourself to.
“i mean, i know i don’t have to,” he purses his lips, frowning. “it’s not like i feel obligated or anything, but i want to.” i love you, he means. i want to love you, i choose to love you.
there are a lot of things about sunwoo that you don’t quite understand—how he can internalize his envy to fuel his ambition, or how he still remains soft-hearted even after all these years, but you can’t begin to understand why sunwoo still holds onto you when you’ve long since stopped being something that he needs, nothing but a safe reminder of what once was. does he know? can he sense the way the two of you have started constantly tiptoeing around each other while trying to keep up an easy sense of normalcy, the memory of youth neither of you can return to?
you’ve been holding back from each other—not just him, but you too. it’s easy, to slip into old banter and avoid the things bothering you, to play the part of your teenage selves full of passion and hopeful, unattained dreams, and maybe sunwoo knows this too. maybe he knows and he doesn’t want to admit it, allowing his world to be rose-colored to cling onto a past that leaves him loveblind to what he really needs, to keep him from acknowledging the fact that you’re nothing but a fragment of the past, something kept to fester.
sunwoo is a star, you think—no, you know. you’ve known for quite some time now, how he was bright and shining and meant for things lightyears away from anything you could ever see, and yet here he was instead: inside your apartment late at night in your bed, talking about how he was ready to fall back down to earth to be with you. like you were tying him down to somewhere he was never meant to stay, he was never meant to be.
and an hour later, when time sits between the precipice of twilight and dawn, you whisper an apology to him so faint it lingers in the air, floating between you and sunwoo’s still form. you’re sure he doesn’t hear it, that he’s been sound asleep for the past couple of minutes and it remains a secret between you and the not-yet-risen sun, but sunwoo shifts slightly, blinking at you in the dark, and ah. he wasn’t asleep after all.
turning to fully face you, he sits up to match your posture and takes a breath, a hand coming to rest on the back of your head as he bumps his forehead gently into yours. his eyes flicker over your features, concern etched clear even in the blinking drowsiness. “what?” what are you talking about, are you okay? “what for?”
you shake your head, leaning into his touch as if to have the memory of him last just a little longer on your skin. it’s too much to say, too much of a weight to have sunwoo shoulder alongside you. so you tamp it down, swallowing back the lump in your throat as you blink away the heat behind your eyes. i’m just sorry. for everything.
sunwoo’s brows furrow, sheets rustling as he shifts again to sit up straighter, but you find his hand gently, threading your fingers through his as you smile—something soft and tender and so full of burdens it slips through and becomes fragile instead.
“it’s okay. nevermind.”
after. (love is a dream, lingering.)
you’re not sure if you can feel your face by the time you come stumbling back into your apartment.
fresh from a work dinner, the alcohol still buzzes in your system even through the barbeque you’d eaten along with the soju, even after the taxi ride home. too many seniors had offered to pour your drinks, all attributing them to the success of the most recently released song you’d worked on, and of course, you had to take it all with two hands, a polite smile, and the burn of the liquid on its way down. even if the taxi ride home had sobered you up slightly, your head still remains fuzzy and unfocused by the time you find the right key to your apartment and fumble with it before opening up the door.
you kick off your shoes by the front and drop your bag somewhere by the kitchen before making your way to the living room, coat thrown on the ground as you crumple yourself in the space between your coffee table and the foot of the couch. slipping your phone out of your pocket, you wince at the sudden brightness of the screen as it lights up. the apartment always seemed loneliest, like this.
it’s late, almost two in the morning from what you can make out from the glare of the screen, but you only look at it for a second before you swipe up, squinting as you enter your passcode. everything after this, you know, has morphed its way into being muscle memory more than anything else.
you ignore the warning that pops in the corner of your phone in a red-laced ‘20% remaining’ and you let the practiced motions take over, tapping phone, then voicemail, and before you know it you’re back where you always are, staring at the only recording in your inbox before you press play.
a few seconds of silence fill the air, static crackling over the speaker, and then a voice speaks.
“hey.” it comes out shaky, just barely enough for you to tell. you want to say you probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it if you hadn’t listened to it so many times by now, but truthfully, you’d heard the slight tremble in the voice since the very first time.
(it was sunwoo, after all. how could you not know?)
sunwoo takes in a sharp breath, the beginning of an apology readying to end the call caught in his throat; you sometimes try to imagine a world where the apology goes through, where he instead tells you sorry, i shouldn’t have called and hangs up before the point of no return, but you’re glad this is the world you live in instead. the one where sunwoo swallows past the regret and starts to speak again, too light and full of faux casualness for his easy demeanor to be sincere, the one where you have the chance to hear his voice again. “strange hearing from me, right? shit, i don’t even know if this is still your number—i guess i could have asked chanhee-hyung to make sure but i’m not sure he would have been too happy to hear me ask about you.”
he pauses, and from the amount of times you’ve listened to it you’ve made into something resembling a little game, filling in the gaps of what he could have done in the pockets of silence—like he’d squeezed his eyes shut at the thought, or he’d pressed into the spot between his eyes to fight away the image of chanhee’s disapproving stare. “he always did that, you know. for a long time after…” sunwoo bites his tongue. “i think it was pity, like he felt bad. not that he needed to, or anything, but you know how he is.”
he pauses again, as if scrambling for what to say next, what direction to take the one-sided conversation. “i, um, i don’t know if you heard, but we recently moved to a new dorm. we split into three separate ones, so we all got our own room, and you think that’d be great and everything after sharing a room with kevin-hyung for the past few years but we played rock, paper, scissors for our room picks and—” indignancy sneaks its way into his cadence, and you smile at this part always “—i really think i got the smallest room. i’m pretty sure it’s smaller than the bathroom. and jacob-hyung got the biggest room!” sunwoo continues, grumbling. “i’m not mad about it or anything, it’s fine… it just seems a little unfair, don’t you think? and, and…”
your eyes flicker, watching the seconds on the timestamp tick by as sunwoo continues to ramble about the most miniscule of things: more dorm shenanigans that sunwoo insists he was completely innocent in, how he’d run into jihoon backstage during a music show after not seeing him for a while, the pictures his members had posted for his birthday that he claims could have potentially ruined his ‘sexy and charismatic’ image with the fans forever. it all feels like he’s scraping the surface, the real reason he called still buried deep beneath all the frivolous hedging; it’s become almost obvious, given the amount of times you’ve listened to it, how each word is just another second stalled trying to build up enough courage.
and finally, when all of sunwoo’s pretense dies, when the lull at the other end of the line comes again, whatever he was planning on saying next deflates as he goes quiet, finally gathering enough courage for the whole truth. you mouth the words, ears buzzing, the timing and cadence seared into your memory.
“you were in my dream last night.”
you remember the morning you’d woken up to this voicemail, remember your thumb hovering over play but not finding it in yourself to press it. you know—you’ve known since the beginning that the recording would only add to your troubles, but on a night like tonight where the noise of the work party still echoes in your head and the apartment feels lonelier than ever after a tipsy ride home, the bruise feels too tender for you to do anything but press into it, over and over and over again.
“i’m not even sure why i called you just to tell you that—i didn’t even get to say it to you.” sunwoo lets out a wry laugh. “i mean, of course you wouldn’t pick up, it’s five in the morning, i don’t really know what i was expecting, but i…no.” the confession tumbles from his lips, shaky and vulnerable and no matter how many countless times you’ve heard it, it still feels like slicing open an old wound. “i think i just wanted to hear your voice.”
sometimes, you let this section play out fully, his words like tiny shards of glass forming cuts on your skin without stopping; other times, you press pause just to replay it, just to hear him say it again, just to feel the sting and ache as you try to recreate the rawness you’d felt the very first time you heard it. salt in a wound is still salt no matter what name it tries to go by, but you suppose that’s why you’ve trapped yourself in this routine in the first place—to make sure the bruise still hurts, to pick at the scab just to see it bleed.
“i guess it just didn’t work out though, did it? your voicemail’s still the same automated message it’s been since high school, so all i’m really doing here is embarrassing myself.” everything laid down and exposed with no walls left to hide behind, sunwoo’s words come quiet and fragile. “i think a part of me expected it to still be the same, but—maybe the other part of me hoped things had changed. isn’t that ironic?” he breathes out a small resigned laugh. “change is what got us here in the first place, and now here i am, talking to myself and leaving a voicemail to a number that i’m not even sure is yours. pretty stupid of me, right?”
sunwoo swallows hard and so do you, the memory of the words ringing in your ears before he speaks them. “i miss you,” he says eventually. “i’m sorry.”
the faint static on the other end of the line tapers on for one, two, three seconds more before the recording finally ends, stretching into true silence. the first few times you had listened to it, you’d kept your ear pressed to the speaker, replaying those last few seconds desperate for anything else you could have missed, anything you could make out after his final words. now, you simply stare at the screen, still burning bright in the dark.
it’s almost funny, the way this has formed itself into something resembling a bad habit. every time, you go through the motions like they’re old and used and worn because they are, no matter how much you refuse to admit it; and each time, you take the shame and the guilt that curls in your stomach and ball it up inside of you, letting it seep into your bones, so that the next morning when you wake up, you can look at yourself with your newly polished and clean exterior and pretend that it’s merely something left in the past.
but for now, you hit play on the recording again, watching the seconds tick by once more.
(the next morning, you wake up to your phone still in your hands, battery completely dead, the previous night nothing but a pounding headache and a blur of what might have been. a new day, and yet it all feels like the same motions all over again.
you ignore the calcified shame within you, play ignorant to the cycle that will inevitably repeat itself the next time a night like that comes again, and you pretend that this is the one thing you won’t let go of, even if it turns into all you have left.)
before. (—you were my youth.)
it’s a tuesday night when you see sunwoo again.
dressed only in sweats and a jacket for extra warmth, you had just finished your regularly scheduled convenience store snack run, plastic bag in hand, when you turn the corner and see a glimpse of him: backpack slung over his shoulder, trudging steps, wearing single gray hoodie that was no doubt too thin for him to not catch a cold on an early spring night. blinking, you register the familiar face for a split second before you call out after him, half-jogging to catch up.
“hey! hey, sunwoo!”
for a moment, it’s almost as if he doesn’t hear you; and then, his foot stops in front of the other, hand moving to take out an earbud. sunwoo turns around, gaze wandering until he meets your gaze. his eyes light up in recognition as he makes out your face in the residual light from the convenience store windows, the glow of the street lamp a few feet away.
he holds up a hand for a polite wave. “oh, hey.”
“heading home?” you ask, peering at him. you hadn’t really seen much of him these past few months, other than the increasingly sparse times you’d spot him in class.
“yeah,” sunwoo nods, a slight smile to go along with it. “just got back from training.”
“ah, i see.” it’s a little strange, looking at him now. even if you hadn’t taken a good look at him recently, you could still tell something was a little off about him; maybe in the way he was carrying himself, the heaviness of his step, the half-hearted way his smile didn’t look quite like the one you were used to.
then again, what did you know? it wasn’t as if you were best friends or anything—after you’d partnered with him for that one project months ago, you’d only talked to him a handful of times, either in passing or when you saw each other around. calling him a close friend would be far from the truth, but calling him just a classmate wouldn’t exactly be accurate either. you suppose he stood in a strange middle ground, one you didn’t seem to mind.
but even so, maybe even just the implication of friendship was enough for the concern to fully settle itself into your mind, the reason why you can’t bring yourself to just brush off his exhaustion as a result of the late hour, and why you impulsively jab your thumb towards the neighborhood playground a block away, the plastic bag in your hands rustling from the motion. “you wanna make a small pitstop before you go?”
and surprisingly, despite a moment’s hesitation, sunwoo takes you up on the offer.
it’s how you find yourself sitting together on the swingset, the subtle squeak of metal on metal almost serving as a familiar comfort as you rock back and forth, heels digging into the bark beneath. “i heard you got into loen, right?” you try, peeling your awkward stare from the chipped paint on the side of the swing over to the boy next to you. “how is that going? i never really got the chance to congratulate you on it.”
“it’s good,” sunwoo replies, almost on instinct, but before he can continue, he closes his mouth instead. the rest of the sentence tapers off into an awkward silence, leaving you to fill in the gaps.
“tough?” you ask, more of a rhetorical than anything else. maybe you were overstepping your bounds by prying, but the least you could do is offer a lending ear, especially now that you were both here anyway. “i might not be a trainee,” you offer, “but i know it can’t be easy.”
sunwoo presses his lips into a line, swallowing in contemplation, before nodding.
“i don’t know,” he confesses, the toe of his shoe digging a hole into the woodchips. “it’s definitely hard, but it’s not just that… i like that it’s hard, you know? it means i’m challenging myself and it means i’m learning, it’s just—they said they’re selecting the debut lineup soon.” the swing chain squeaks between the rustling of the bark. “what if i don’t make it?”
(what if i never make it?)
you get it—the uncertainty that haunts every step of this path. you’ve seen enough of your friends and classmates drop everything to pursue their dreams, only to have it thrown back in their face, failures either resulting in a renewed perseverance or the battering of their soul. and even if you weren’t taking part in the same rigorous and merciless training process that plagues them, the crumbling foothold follows you too, at times, all for a dream you can’t ensure will spare you even pennies in return.
but you do it because you want to, because you have to, because you love it too much for there to be any other option you’d be willing to fathom. and in spite of the short time you’ve gotten to know him, you’re sure the same holds true for sunwoo, too.
“then you try again.” his head shoots up, and you meet his eyes with a smile. “and you keep trying and trying until you can’t anymore—because you love it, right? dancing, singing, performing? you wouldn’t be doing this if you didn’t.”
you watch his expression carefully as your words land, waiting for the smallest sign to back off, but instead, sunwoo gives you a resolute nod, taking each word to heart.
“you can do it,” you tell him, every word sincere. “i know you can.”
there’s a certain weight in his gaze afterwards that almost makes you regret having said it, almost like you’ve overstepped in your own direction instead. what were you even doing?
the sudden intimacy of the moment settles into your stomach all at once, and you try to grasp at anything to bring back the lighthearted mood of a few minutes ago—for your own sake. clearing your throat, you try to dispel the sudden heaviness in the air.
“in any case,” you start, rifling through your bag. fishing out a container of strawberry milk, you stand up and walk over to sunwoo, pressing it against his cheek; he jumps from the sudden cold against his skin. “you know we have exams coming up, right?”
sunwoo groans, raising a hand to take the milk. “what if i just dropped out like jihoon?”
before he can grab it, you press the container harder into his face, frowning. “don’t even think about it!”
“but…” sunwoo looks up at you with sad, shining eyes, panhandling for a single ounce of pity. “that means no more exams…”
“and then what,” you reply dryly.
he finally takes the milk from your hands, pressing it to his forehead with his eyebrows furrowed, the beads of condensation threatening to slip down his palm. “okay, you have a good point.”
you roll your eyes, but sunwoo snaps his head up after a second of thinking longer, milk sloshing in the container at the sudden motion. “you wouldn’t leave me out to die all on my own, would you?”
“huh—”
sunwoo pleads your name in a dramatic fashion, hesitating a little before grabbing your hands to continue his spiel. you have a brief yet vivid image of his resemblance to a raccoon digging through your trashcan in your front yard. begging for scraps… “you have to remember me when you’re famous, okay…”
“sunwoo,” you exasperate, trying to pry your hands away from his, freezing and wet from the cold milk. “you aren’t dropping out and you are not becoming homeless.”
he nods enthusiastically. “right, because i’d have you!”
“don’t you have any other friends?”
sunwoo looks you dead in the eye, his grip tightening. “i have friends, but you would have the songwriting royalties.”
“for the last time,” you groan, finally slipping your hand away from his grasp. “you’re not gonna drop out, and you’re not going to become homeless! and you’re going to make it!” you rub your hand gingerly on the side of your jacket to wipe off the excess condensation. “enjoy the strawberry milk, i’m gonna head home.”
you turn and take a few steps, only for sunwoo to call out to you again. “hey, wait.”
pausing, you look back curiously. “yeah?”
“if…” he starts slowly, staring at the milk in his hands. “when i debut,” he rescinds, meeting your eyes. “will you listen? to me, i mean—even if you’re the only one?”
“i definitely won’t be the only one,” you chide, stuffing your hands in your pockets. the night air was growing colder by the second, remnants of winter lingering in the beginnings of spring. funnily enough, you don’t really seem to mind the chill. “we’ll make it, okay? we’ll make it together.”
you attempt to leave it at that, but the way he looks back at you, sunwoo holds the question between the two of you, still waiting for your answer—like he would have waited forever for it, if he needed to. and despite your previous unfamiliarity with sunwoo in this sort of setting, you figured it would be cruel to deny him of at least an earnest answer.
“to answer your question, though.” you try to look away to break the weight of his gaze, but you find yourself pulled back to it anyway. finding the resolve to match his, you step forward again. he needed to hear this; and maybe, you needed to say it, too.
“of course i will.” tonight’s moon waxes, its light peeking through the clouds. “i’ll always be rooting for you, kim sunwoo.”
after. (yet. love is always, always, a choice.)
the first few times you see the video on your recommended page, you try to ignore it.
you shove it to the back of your mind and you tell yourself it can wait just a little longer, that there’s no difference from watching it a few days from now. except the days stretch on into weeks, and it still remains untouched, lingering forever in an endless present. the video itself isn’t anything big, objectively speaking, but the heaviness of it weighs on you every time you see the title, knowing what it consists of: special release from kim sunwoo of the boyz, self-composed track.
it’s not exactly breaking the promise you had made to him all those years ago, more like putting it on hold. and maybe it’s for the best, the waiting period, but the longer you wait, the more things just keep piling on and shoved into the shelf to collect dust over the past few months—their last single, the mini-album that followed after, and now this. you had tried, that first time chanhee had asked you about it. you couldn’t make it far before you had to turn it off.
you tell yourself you’ll get around to it when it stops hurting, a soft assurance to still keep your promise, but you know it’s hypocritical to give yourself that easing comfort when in the same breath you’ve been pressing into the bruise again and again, never giving it the time and space to heal. the pain has never stopped you before, rather, you’ve grown close with the ache, the faint memory of the wound, but there’s something distinctly different about listening to his music that hurts too much for you to continue.
maybe it’s the way it brings you back to that classroom and that swingset and everything you know you can never go back to; or maybe, despite the voicemail that you still come back to on the loneliest of nights and the wrinkled shirt that remains crumpled in the corner of your room, a part of you knows that the salt in the wound would be nothing compared to digging an even deeper, uglier wound in a cut scabbed over. that’s only what it could feel like, if you listened to him before you were ready.
you want the memories as a lingering taste alone, but you’re scared that if you go back to that promise with two feet planted and an open heart, if you delve into the memories completely, you won’t be able to come back out.
tonight is different, though.
you want to blame it on the hour that hosts the beginning of dawn, or the way you can’t go back to sleep, or the dream you’d had before you had woken up, the details fading more each second. but when the video appears once again, thumbnail ingrained into your mind, you don’t even need to look at the title before you finally click on it.
(you had dreamt of him, that night.
it was a good dream, you think, at least in the moment—more of an old memory than anything else. sunwoo had come over the night before his birthday for an early celebration, insisting on being congratulated by you first thing once the clock struck twelve. you remember it being a small celebration, just the two of you in your apartment together with cheesy decorations and balloons blown up spelling out his name and a golden ‘hbd’ strung along the walls.
the rest of it comes in and blurs together in flashes: the strawberry cake you’d bought to share together, the way you’d wiped the frosting on his nose only for him to smear a bigger chunk onto your cheek, the shoddy match that came with the cake that sunwoo couldn’t light, no matter how hard he tried to save himself from the embarrassment.
and usually when you wake up from a good dream, you fall asleep again soon after, just to catch the traces of the dream before it’s gone forever. but you’re trying, slowly in your own way, to not do things like that anymore. after all, eventually the shirt needs to become just another shirt, and your voicemail will one day go back to having no more recordings saved.
you want to think you have it in you—to let the wound finish scabbing over and heal, to finally let it fade into almost nothing but a brief mark of time in your skin.)
the music starts the second the video starts to play, and you feel a pull at your gut, an inner voice whispering. you can still back out, it says, soothing. you haven’t hit the point of no return yet. it’s okay if you’re still not ready.
but then sunwoo’s voice cuts through the noise, each word sung with his heart on his sleeve, and that part of you grasping for any form of protection left instantly goes quiet. if it were about anything else, maybe you could have rationalized it to yourself and clicked out of the video, convince yourself to go back to sleep and that it was okay to wait. another time, another day, another world.
when he sings, he sings of you, he sings to you, and you remember that you had never truly listened to the words he’d wanted to say to you since you’d sent that text that ended everything that night—not really. didn’t you owe him, then, at least this?
so you swallow hard, and you blink until lights dot the inside of your eyelids, and you listen.
(sunwoo’s lyrics talk of love, how he had wanted to be yours. he had wanted to be yours forever, and yet he ended up losing you and maybe that was his fault; maybe if he had shown you his love better then you wouldn’t have let him go, then you would still be by his side instead of appearing only when he closes his eyes, unsure to call you a dream or a nightmare. not that it mattered, you were still his universe, no matter what. even in the hurt, it was still love)
it’s all wrapped up in pretty lyricism and intricate metaphors to keep the listener guessing for the true meaning, but you’ve always understood him best when it was through song. you think you had forgotten that, after so many years together and knowing him through everything else, but with the music playing through your headphones and the screen of your computer flashing the images in the silence of your apartment, it was like coming back to your roots. like you were in that classroom with a pen and paper and that playground with the chill of spring still warm on your beating hearts and how you’ve known him intimately before you even knew you could.
it all felt so simple, back then. like budding love was all you would ever need, before everything else got in the way, but—no. you stop at the thought. that’s not quite it.
(pause, rewind, play.)
it was always simple to sunwoo. he was a star burning bright and blind to you, growing farther from your reach each passing day, but to him, you were never anything less than the universe itself. was it truly so horrible—bearing attachment to his youth? you were still growing beside him, right? you were the home he wanted to return to, weren’t you?
and yet you were the one who had smeared the paint before it could finish drying, the one who had felt so alone in watching the wear of a bridge you had deemed impossible to save. and at the end of the day, maybe the fault fell partly on both of you, stepping onto that unsteady footing together with the rope of the bridge fraying with the weight of time, but you were the one who had taken that last step to the other end without him even knowing.
lit match in your hands, you had burned that bridge for what you’d perceived to be the greater good, to destroy it before it could collapse and take both of you with it. an act of cowardice disguised as selflessness, you’re left to stare at nothing but the ashes and cinders you had set aflame. but in the wreckage, only after everything do you finally understand what that indiscernible emotion was in his eyes when he looked at you, what he had meant that night by choosing to love you.
in the silence, daylight breaks, your once dark apartment beginning to tinge a soft yellow glow.
(the ground beneath your feet steady, you look to the other end of what once was, carrying the pieces of wood in your hands. if you tried to build that bridge towards sunwoo again, panel by panel, could you rebuild something stronger from the ashes? would sunwoo help if he knew, repairing each step together with you?
you’re not afraid of finding out the answer—not anymore.)
epilogue. (love is gravity.)
the sun rises fully soon after, the sky turning into a brighter, deeper shade of blue as the hour passes. still lingering along the edge of dawn, you know if you looked outside you would see the frost beginning to melt on the blades of grass, the slow trickle of cars onto the road as people were starting to head to work. it’s subtle, the difference between five a.m. and six a.m., but it’s enough for you to feel the shift in the air.
gnawing at your lip, you reach for the phone lying on the table. it’s an aching sense of déjà vu as you unlock your phone and scroll through your contacts, searching for a single name. you can only imagine if this is what sunwoo felt like, the night he’d called you, half-hopeless as you press the phone to your ear, the first dial tone ringing.
(you want to let yourself not hurt anymore—to allow the wound to heal, to finally let go of all the shame inside of you. it’s your first step in trying to repair that bridge you had once burnt down, your first choice where you try to move forward. but sometimes, to move forward is really to move back to where you want to be, back where you belong.)
each additional ring that repeats comes with decreasing expectation, and you brace yourself for the voicemail message that will inevitably come. of course he wouldn’t pick up this early in the morning, you tell yourself, another ring echoing. you wonder if this will become a new pattern, one voicemail to another, always barely missing each other in efforts to reconcile, always a little too late. trading in one bad habit for another, maybe this was just how it was meant to be.
but you suppose it’s always been like this, ever since the night you broke up with him—how sunwoo has been choosing to love you still, even after, and how you’ve been choosing to still love him too by refusing to truly let him go, orbiting around each other like how gravity is both the reason why a planet circles a star and why they can never ever fall into one another (again). perhaps this is just where the frayed edges of fate have left you, coming together only once before your ends are split away forever.
but when the sixth ring sounds and you prepare to hear the automated message, drawing in a breath to scramble together a message to leave at the beep, you hear a single voice instead. your breath hitches.
“hello?”
your lip trembles as you press the phone harder to your ear, heat surging to the bridge of your nose, the back of your eyes. you try to keep your voice steady but it comes out watery instead, words spilling over before you know it. “hi. it’s me.”
and despite everything, gravity fails, just for an instant, and you and sunwoo collide into each other once again.
gravity (is the distance between you and me) (teaser)
kim sunwoo x gn!reader
you tell yourself that this is for the best, that you’re only doing what needs to be done. even if it hurts now, even if it never stops hurting, maybe this is truth you’ve been running from this whole time. maybe this is just acceptance.
— or: you break up with sunwoo because you love him, because you refuse to let him fall back down to earth with you; everything that follows after is an inescapable gravity.
idolverse!sunwoo x non-celeb!reader, exes!au, mostly reader-centric // teaser length: 500 of ~13k // angst with a teeny bit of fluff in between // told in alternating past and present timeskips, vaguely canon timeline but don’t look too close
full version here
it occurs to you on a sunday night, the second-hand of the clock only a few ticks away from midnight, that this was never meant to be.
you try to not hear echoes of sunwoo’s voice in your head, admonishments scolding you gently to go to sleep, but it plays in your head regardless. truthfully, it had always sat on the edge of nagging, but you supposed that when it was him, it ended up more endearing than anything else: the pout in his lips, the scrunch in his brow, the worry in his eyes as he'd brush a strand of loose hair out of your face.
there was always something else in his gaze, something you could never quite pinpoint—like he saw something you couldn't, like his gaze had stripped you bare of everything you'd put up to protect yourself. you try not to chase the rabbit's trail thinking about it, shoving the ghost of the memory beneath a quick, heated blink of the eyes.
it doesn't matter anymore. you've lost the chance to figure out what it had meant.
you almost laugh at the reminder; it seems you haven’t changed, even now. greed had always been your deadliest sin, despite everything. you want, and want, and want.
you want what you can’t have, you tell yourself, but you stop at the thought. that's not it.
pause, rewind, play.
because the truth of the matter is, you just want what you don't deserve. you don’t deserve this—the sun-soaked kitchens, the teasing glances, the rhythmic sway in each others' arms as you wait for the rice cooker to beep, your timer set for the oven to ring, the world to finish turning from gold to dark blue to midnight. it's softness that makes your lungs collapse in on themselves, tenderness that burns your skin from even the gentlest brush.
you've been selfish for long enough, you think, indulging in pleasures that should have never been yours. and no matter how tightly you want to continue clinging onto sunwoo's sweet words and empty promises, the little voice in your head drowns it all out in the end.
it's not supposed to be painless; it's rational, practical, inevitable, but so is snipping off the dead leaves off your plant after they've died, tying a tourniquet to a limb before cutting it off to prevent the infection from spreading.
(it's for his own good. you should have done this a long time ago.)
so you pick up your phone, send a single text message to sunwoo, and wait; your knuckles turn white with the knife in your hands, like the first press of the blade to your skin. tie the knot tight, grit your teeth, you can never go back to what once was.
it's 12:03AM when your phone lights up again, eyes burning in the brightness. you can only watch as you bleed.
