✸ SYNOPSIS ! : in which you have your fair share of embarrassing moments. one of it being punching a guy's nose for a plushie (which you did not get at the end). but what will you do when he ended up going to the same class as you? wait, oh no! he recognised you. now you're in for one hell of a ride.
PAIRING 𐙚 park gunwook x fem!reader
GENRE ⊹ socmed + written chapters, uni! au, strangers to enemies to lovers, fluff, humour, maybe angst, reader is unhinged sometimes
౨ৎ it's hard pretending to be good at video games when it's so obvious you have no skills. too bad the guy you're trying to impress is the only one who tells you you're trash at the game.
starring gamer! taesan x f! reader
genre smau, romcom, enemies 2 lovers, she fell first he fell harder, esports au, that one reverse trope where he's nice to everyone but you, suggestive in later chapters
contains profanities, ignore timestamps, some gaming terminology, the jokes in here are not nice..
status coming out soon! (updates whenever)
playlist | taglist is open !
from rianca, Hey chat just to let u know himewonu copied me and this was MY original idea 😑😑😑 anyways hbd @ihankaji ik u already read this for a diff group but i still wanted to make a taesjuku comeback for u ♡ this is also for u @riumori cause ik how much u Loooovvee poser and taesan 🫰
note this is in the same universe as the original poser ! the timeline for this is around 2 years after the ending of og poser, where the og rogue roses retires and the current cast is their successors ^_^ so there will be a lot of references in here (however because i can’t predict new fortnite maps, i will be using old fortnite maps)
please do not spam like ! please support by reblogging <3
SYN. | you always remembered him as the sweet weird kid from your childhood. now he's hot, confident, and asking for your number with a smile that could ruin you.
PAIR. ノkim leehan x fem!reader | TAGS. ノnon-idol au, small town/university au, flirting, some cursing | FEAT. ノ bnd, ive rei and liz | WC.2.0k
( 연서 ) ノ this is very self-indulgent lmao i've been listening to sabrina's album nonstop since release and the idea of this song with leehan had me on my knees!! cough this is a sfw blog cough also r.f. kuang references because i'm reading katabasis rn and im loving it so far! anw, enjoy! reblogs are appreciated! ♡
YOU LOWERED YOUR BOOK back on the table, eyes never leaving the page as you reached blindly for another colored highlighter. Once you undid the cap with one hand, you ran the pink pastel over a passage before switching to a pen and scribbling a few exclamation marks. You weren't the best at annotating (if your messy handwriting had been any indication of it) but after reading the first few pages of Katabasis, with its multiple literature references, you figured it was the best place to practice.
In the middle of drawing an oddly-shaped circle, your phone screen lit up with a message preview from Rei: "otw! n i'm bringing liz w me!"
You smiled, already anticipating the disruption of your afternoon reading. Not even five minutes after reading the text, the cafe doors swung open. Loud voices erupted behind you.
"There you are! We've been looking everywhere for you!" Liz exclaimed as she pulled a chair. "Why aren't you in class?"
You shrugged. "The prof checked my schedule then shooed me away. Went back to the dorm to get some things—" you lifted your book for your friend to see, "—and then I went here."
Rei raised an eyebrow. "How long have you been here?"
"Two hours, I think."
"You should've texted earlier!" Liz lamented.
"I was reading!"
"When are you ever not?" Liz grumbled before directing her next sentence to Rei. "Hey, hey, now that we found her, can I continue my story?"
"Even if I'll say no, you'd still continue so knock yourself out."
"Right okay, where was I?" She tapped a finger on her chin before snapping. "Oh right, her sense of style is so tacky. I mean, I own a lot of thrift-store stuff but I always pick what looks expensive. She, on the other hand, looks like she just shoves her hands in a rack of cloth and pulls out whatever! And don't get me started on the curtains."
"Curtains, wow. How mortifying," drawled Rei before shooting you a can-you-believe-this-girl look.
Knowing fully well that Liz was complaining about someone again, you sat up. "So, who are we talking about this time?"
"Liz's new roommate," Rei answered, dropping her bag on the empty chair beside her. She folded her legs and propped her elbow against her thigh, resting her chin on her palm. "Apparently, they're complete opposites."
"Do I know this person?"
"You don't even know our own blockmates so that's highly unlikely."
Liz frowned. "You know, I expected a better reaction than this."
"She's an art major. Her building is on the opposite side of the campus. It's not like you'll be seeing and acknowledging each other outside the dorm."
"It's what she did to the dorm room that's riling me up! I can take living with someone who walks around looking like color vomit but I cannot accept someone who defiles my living space! I mean come on! Wine curtains?!" She threw her hands upwards in frustration. "My dorm room looks like a brothel for goodness' sake!"
Ignoring Liz as she went on with her rant about her new roommate, Rei picked up the novel you ultimately closed and rested on the table. With a light scoff, she waved the paperback, as if demanding an explanation for its existence in your hands. "You're read R.F. Kuang now? Didn't expect that from you. I thought you liked cheesy teenage romances."
"Rude!" You snatched back your book, laughing. "I like academia novels!"
Rei raised her hands in mock surrender. "Whatever. Your English is better than mine anyway." You notice the way she glanced at Liz, knowingly preparing for a jab. "At least, it's better than this one's."
You laughed again, anticipating Liz's reaction...
...which didn't come as expected. Instead, her attention was caught by something else. You didn't hear the familiar chime of the cafe doors opening but you did witness Liz's sudden gasp. Next thing you know, she had an iron-like grasp on your shoulder. "You two better shut your asses and look over there because hot damn."
At that, you and Rei exchanged brief glances before you spun around on your seat.
You followed her gaze toward the entrance. A group of guys had just walked in—laughing loudly at each other, commanding attention without even trying. They were the type you’d expect to see at a concert or on some glossy magazine cover. Each of them was striking in their own way. You vaguely recognized them, all having attended your school and are attending your university. All except that one guy at the very back of the group who caught your eye almost immediately.
He wasn’t just attractive. He was… magnetic.
And then recognition hit you like a punch to the chest.
Kim Donghyun.
Your jaw dropped instantly. Because this wasn’t the Donghyun you remembered back in grade school.
Kim Donghyun was the lanky boy with mussed-up hair and a backpack covered in fish keychains who used to follow you around. Kim Donghyun was the precious boy who always sat with you during lunch, and at some point, declared you two as best friends. Kim Donghyun was the one who had to transfer schools after his parents got a new job and promised he'd keep in touch.
To be fair, he did his best and was consistent with his letters as much as a 12-year-old boy could be. But they stopped after a while, even after you continued sending yours without getting a response in return. You figured life got in the way and just... stopped all together.
You weren't that attached to him (or at least, that's what you told yourself when you tried holding back tears during particularly lonely moments). You carried on with your life, stayed in this city you called your home with the same people from your childhood sans Donghyun, eventually filling that void in your heart.
But still, there were days when you missed that cute little boy, and wondered where he had gone.
Turns out, life had a fascinating way of messing with you in the form of bringing back said cute boy. Only this time, cute little Kim Donghyun is not so little anymore.
No, this Donghyun was effortlessly handsome, like he’d walked out of a daydream, but still carried that unbothered aura you remembered. He was laughing at something one of his friends said, shoulders shaking, before his gaze swept across the cafe. He didn’t seem fazed by the stares. In fact, he looked like he barely noticed them.
Until his eyes landed on you.
Everything about him changed in an instant. What was once a disinterested look at his surroundings morphed into something soft. His grin widened, eyes curving into crescents, and for a split second you pictured him again as his 12-year-old self, raising a fish bowl with his new pet Corydoras excitedly to your face, saying you're its parents now. You blinked, and the familiar scene disappeared, only to be replaced by the sight of his stride faltering a bit.
Then, with zero hesitation, he started walking straight to your table.
"Wait..." Liz started, her eyes, wide in surprise, darting between you and him. "Wait.. you know him?!"
You only chuckled weakly.
"Is that...?" Rei started, but was interrupted when the pieces finally clicked in Liz's brain.
"Don't tell me that's Donghyun? Fish-boy Donghyun who followed you around in grade school like a lost puppy? That Donghyun?!"
You hushed them frantically, but your face was already warm.
Meanwhile, back at the counter, his friends were watching with interest. One of them—a tall guy with broad shoulders, whom you recognized as Sungho—nudged his shoulder, smirking. “Ohhh, that’s [Y/N], right?”
The tallest of the group, Woonhak, leaned in with a playful grin. “Yup. Looks like Hyung found his reason for coming back.”
Donghyun didn’t answer, but the flush creeping up his neck gave him away.
By the time he reached you, you were practically glued to your seat.
“[Y/N]?” His voice was familiar and warm, like it belonged to every memory you had of him.
Your lips parted. “Donghyun?”
He smiled, and the years between you melted away in an instant. “Yeah. I go by Leehan now, but yeah. Wow. You look… the same. Better, even.”
"Leehan." You tested his new name, the syllables unfamiliar but it oddly suited him. At the sound, his smile broadened into a grin once more, the dimple on his cheek deepening.
You ignored Liz's sudden intake of breath, as well as her fingers pinching your arm under the table.
"It's good to see you." You mirrored his smile and tried your best to keep your voice from wobbling. "You look... different."
His grin turned playful. “Different good, or different bad?”
You swallowed hard. “Good. Definitely good.”
Behind you, your friends were whispering furiously. Liz, for the love of God, muttered, ‘When did he get so hot?!’ loud enough that you wanted to sink into the floor.
Donghyun—wait, no, Leehan chuckled softly, clearly hearing it too, but his eyes never left yours.
His grin turned teasing. “Different enough to make you stare like that?”
You sputtered, face burning, and he chuckled softly before leaning against your table. “I didn’t expect to run into you here. I’m… back in town for a while. Might be staying longer.”
“Really? For good?”
“Possibly.” He tilted his head, eyes locked on yours. “I’m in talks about continuing university here. Guess this place pulled me back in.” Then, more softly, “Guess you did too.”
You could hear Rei muttering "oh my God" despite the surge of blood rushing into your ears at his words.
Then, without warning, he leaned closer, lowering his voice so only you could hear. “Can I get your number?”
Your breath hitched. You fumbled with your phone like an idiot but eventually managed to type it in. He accepted it, still with that impossibly gorgeous smile on his face.
“Perfect,” he said, locking your number into his phone. He glanced up at you. “I’ll call you.” Then he straightened and, to your surprise, turned to your friends with a polite bow of his head. “Good to see you guys again," he said.
Liz audibly swooned. Rei kicked her under the table. "Good to see you too, err, Leehan. It's been.. a while."
Leehan just smirked knowingly before heading back to his group at the counter. Your friends then erupted the second he was out of earshot.
“WHAT just happened?”
“Since when did Donghyun become—”
“No, seriously, when did he get hot?!”
But all you could do was sit there, heart racing, staring at your phone screen where his name was now saved, still stuck on the same thought.
TIME PASSED BY. Your next class was still two hours away. The hubbub around your interaction with your childhood friend faded away. Liz went back to ranting about her roommate, Rei started picking apart at your ugly annotations, and you're just... there.
Leehan and his friends had settled on a table at the far end of the cafe, still loud and animated as ever. You tried to focus back on your friends’ conversation, but your attention kept slipping.
Your gaze drifted over to Leehan’s table more than once, only to find him sneaking glances at you too. The first time, you looked away quickly, heart thundering in your chest. The second time, you weren’t fast enough. Your eyes met his across the cafe, and he gave you that same amused smile. You ducked your head, pretending to focus on your drink.
Eventually, you and your friends decided to leave for the dorms. As you grabbed your bag and made your way to the door, laughter from the opposite side of the cafe carried over.
“Bye, [Y/N]!” one of Leehan’s friends—Jaehyun, who's in your Econ class—called teasingly.
You froze, turning instinctively. Leehan was watching you, one elbow propped casually on the table. He lifted his hand in a wave, then mimicked holding a phone to his ear, eyebrows raised.
Your lips curved despite yourself. You nodded, waved back, and pushed out the door with your friends.
The second you stepped outside, Liz immediately pounced. “Oh my god, [Y/N], you lucky girl! If I had known Fish Boy would come back looking like that, I'd be on my—”
Rei smacked a hand on Liz's mouth before she could continue. "Didn't he say he's continuing university here?"
You hummed, still very much overwhelmed by everything. "He said he's 'in talks' whatever that means."
"Well." Rei nodded, finally releasing Liz, who glared and started muttered about being manhandled by her friends. “This will be one interesting year then.”
All you could do was bite back a smile. And when your phone buzzed in your pocket, and you fished it out to read the message from a certain someone ("hi its leehan :) 🐠"), you couldn't help but feel giddy.
🏀 a kim woonhak sports romance comedy (aka Unagi no Basuke)
❦ pairing: hs basketball player woonhak x team manager f! reader
❦ synopsis: ⤿ in which woonhak keeps trying to confess his ardent love for you and each time he fails hilariously. ~ loosely inspired by the manga Namaikizakari
❦ wc: 11k (but v easy to read, trust) ❦ genre: fluff, comedy, slice of life, hurt/comf, sports romance
❦ warnings: injury, fistfights, light swearing, uncomfortable remarks (not from mcs), bad flirting. ❦ divider cr: @asiatic-apple ❦ song rec: 1 , 2
❦ notes: *insert mark lee meme* this one's for you ninipie @lovehakie ♡ ~ sorry for ragebaiting you earlier, ily (and ofc special thnx to my other two lovelies @pupillary and @ilysungho who keeps me sane in these trying times T-T) ~ p.s. recommended to be read on desktop/web browser.
IMP NOTE!! : y/n and woonhak are around the same age (a detail about this is mentioned in the fic) - they are max 1 year or lesser apart even if they're in diff grades
It’s a crisp spring morning when Woonhak falls in love for the first time.
The first week of high school meant noisy students in brand new uniforms, all neatly ironed, busy teachers flitting about after trouble-makers, banners swaying and snapping in the cool breeze, displaying in bold letters things like: “Join the wrestling club now! (no membership fee)” or “Drama club auditions now open!!!”.
Somewhere in the midst of all the commotion, two boys tussle, their voices carrying through like a boombox.
“Jaehyun hyung, stop whining,” Woonhak groans, attempting to rip the older boy off of him. “There's no way I'm joining the basketball team, I’m loyal to baseball.”
Upperclassmen wave people over to their respective booths, thrusting handmade flyers into hesitant hands with no shame. There’s a booth for free caricatures, free cookies handed out in exchange for signing up for the cooking club, promises of pizza and company from the board-game club; Woonhak chews on a bite of his cookie, which he most definitely did not trade for a fake name, as his eyes search for the sports club recruitments.
Jaehyun refuses to give way. He clings even harder, locking Woonhak in a bear hug turned gorilla grip.
“Unagi~~” He juts out his bottom lip and widens his eyes for effect, not a shred of embarrassment behind those big brown orbs of his. “Are you gonna let hyung try out all on his own?”
“Taesan hyung and Leehan hyung will be there too!” Woonhak tries to break free so he can eat in peace. “Ah! I have to sign up before all the spots get taken.”
He ends up having to drag a petulant Jaehyun, practically on his back at this point, over to the grounds where posters advertised a variety of school sport, boxes of team merchandise and complementary stationary placed over the makeshift tables.
Woonhak’s eyes light up at the picture of a baseball bat and ball on top of one of the stalls, where a group of burly looking guys leaned over either to convince passersby to try out for their team, or to flirt with giggling girls.
He’s halfway to the booth when suddenly a voice calls from behind—”Catch fast!”
Woonhak barely registers the words as he’s turning his head past Jaehyun, when something orange knocks right into his skull—fast and hard.
The world tilts, his vision blurring before it goes completely black, voices bleeding around his ears like a muffled drone. If this was a cartoon, there would be a string of teeny birds chirping and flying around his head. At the back of his barely conscious mind, he wonders if he’s finally met his end—all sixteen years of his futile life coming to a finish so unceremoniously.
He can already imagine his obituary, probably courtesy of Jaehyun: Kim Woonhak, high school freshman, dies tragically by a rogue basketball before he's even had his first kiss.
It’s the sheer embarrassment of the very real possibility of that happening that has him bolting back to life, eyes snapping open violently, not dissimilar to a reanimated corpse.
He opens his mouth with the conviction of a man that needs to complain, only to go tongue-tied when he’s met with the sight of a…an angel.
Woonhak gapes.
A girl, presumably around the same age as him, in a navy tracksuit and a loose ponytail, a whistle hanging around her neck—face only inches away from his. He loses his breath at the sight.
Your lips are a straight line, face devoid of any emotion other than a mix of apathy and clinical precision. You’re kneeling next to him, hands behind his hair, and somewhere in the distance beneath the ringing of his ears, he can hear Jaehyun and Taesan saying his name several times.
Belatedly it occurs to him that you’re holding an ice pack to his head, nursing the dull throb that rings inside.
“Woonhak-ah!” Taesan flicks his forehead, snapping him out of his reverie, “Stop staring at y/n.”
He flushes as bright as a tomato, mouth going slack like a ventriloquist dummy’s; when he tries to speak, he lets out a string of incoherent sounds akin to a flubbering fish.
Jaehyun guffaws, “Sorry about him, he’s still learning to talk.”
You don’t dignify his teasing with a response, simply continuing to administer first-aid to the slowly growing bump on Woonhak’s head.
“What part of ‘catch fast’ did you not understand?” Taesan chides, rolling the basketball between his hands like he hadn’t just knocked a person unconscious with it a second ago. “Our Woonhak is kind of slow, don’t mind him, y/n.”
Woonhak's ears burn crimson.
It’s mortifying, to be in the presence of a pretty girl—no, the prettiest girl he’s ever laid eyes on—while his friends ruined any reputation that might have preceded him. He wishes he could crawl into a cave and turn to asceticism for the unforeseen future, become a hermit under a vow of abstinence so he’ll never have to look you in the eyes ever again.
“Hold this,” you say, handing him the ice to pick up your clipboard from the ground and get up. Before Woonhak can think, he reaches out and stops you by the wrist.
You stare at the spot where his hands meet yours, quirking your head in scrutiny.
“Uh-” He begins to flail for words, “I-I…I’m Woonhak. Kim Woonhak."
Your response doesn’t come quickly; instead, you seem to analyse his tone and intention before deeming him harmless.
“y/n, manager of the KOZ basketball team,” you say flatly, without even a hint of a smile.
Somehow, Woonhak finds your aloofness gorgeous.
It’s the way you purse your lips tightly, moving cautiously as though you’re always ten steps ahead of everyone else, the gentle slope of your nose, the sunlight hitting your cheeks at the perfect angle. Church bells ring in the world of his imagination, a choir of cherubic angels harmonizing as he waits at the altar for you—dressed in a veil as sheer as a waterfall, strolling towards him in a picture of perfection.
It’s love at first sight.
“I’d like to sign up for tryouts!” he blurts out, still holding onto your wrist.
You blink twice. Jaehyun and Taesan exchange sly glances, tucking this moment away for future blackmail.
Woonhak shamelessly barrels on, “For the basketball team…I want to try out.”
“Okay,” You simply say, retracting your hands with a wiggle. “Kim Woonhak.” You jot it down quickly onto your clipboard, all the while Woonhak dreamily sighs at the way you say his name.
“Didn’t you want to sign up for the baseball team?” Jaehyun chooses that instant to speak up.
Woonhak shoots him a furious glare. He then tries to school it into a terrible act of nonchalance as he turns to you. “He’s kidding, haha, basketball is my one true love.”
You don’t seem to believe him, and if you do, you definitely do not care.
“Cool,” you say before sauntering back to your booth, not glancing back at him even once.
He feels dizzy, and not from the potential concussion. His chest feels warm and toasty, butterflies sprouting awake in his stomach, making him giddy with joy. Woonhak grips the ice pack like a lifeline, wondering if he really did get sent up to heaven and met an angel in the flesh.
One sideways look at the demon-spawns that were his friends is all it takes to throw away that idea.
“So…basketball huh?” Taesan smirks, raising a brow.
“Oh fuck off,” Woonhak groans, but its useless when he’s already being hauled up to his feet so the other two can pinch his ears and scold him for talking back to his elders and whatnot. Surprisingly, he doesn’t even register the sharp pain to his earlobes when his brain is preoccupied with the image of you, and your lips moulding his name around it.
The breeze picks up, carding through the strands of his mop of brown hair, bringing tinges of scarlet to the tips of his nose and his cheeks.
Kim Woonhak falls head-over-heels in love for the first time on a cool spring morning—and like all things associated with him, ridiculous and far-fetched, it comes in the shape of a basketball to the back of his head.
Tryouts go as well as anyone could hope for.
The indoor court echoes with the squeak of trainers on polished hardwood, the smell of aerosol spray and high-school-boy-sweat mixing unpleasantly around them. The group isn’t too big: some freshmen, others already part of the team, and a few who’d either dropped by to dawdle around before heading back home, or to show off for the girls watching them from the stands—no better than peacocks during mating season.
Woonhak’s first instinct on arrival is to look around for you.
He's been jittery all day, tapping his feet under the table, accidentally drawing hearts on his notebooks when he should have been taking notes; every time someone passed by his classroom, his head would turn, hoping that it's you.
He sighs dejectedly when you’re nowhere to be found, already putting a damper on his mood without having you to grace him from the heavens above.
“She won’t turn up just because you pout.” Taesan ruffles his hair, pressing a basketball into his stomach, which he accepts without verbal complaint. Leehan materialises out of thin air at his other side, nodding along like some sage warrior, making Woonhak roll his eyes until it hurts.
Of course, his business had been aired out in the span of a couple days—if Jaehyun knew, then Sungho knew; if Taesan knew, then Leehan knew, and eventually so did Riwoo.
Taesan and Leehan were already part of the school team, having joined a year before. In spite of them goofing off half the time during school hours, they were quite popular for their positions on the team—the small and power forwards respectively, a chaotic but somehow contained duo, known for their speed and in-game chemistry.
Outside of the court though, Woonhak would just call them demons in disguise.
Part of the reason he wasn’t too eager to join the basketball team in the start (other than his complete and utter devotion to the Lotte Giants) was because he knew his friends would torture the living daylights out of him if they had access to his extracurriculars, on top of what he had to endure during lunch breaks and walks back home—his hyungs cooing at him like he was a five year old and not a grown teenage boy towering at six feet, teasing and taunting him until he was stomping the ground in a fit of frustration.
All in good fun of course, but it didn’t mean that he was willing to let them embarrass him in front of the rest of the student population. And abso-fucking-lutely not in front of you.
A whistle blows from the front, bringing him back to the task at hand.
There’s a shorter blond boy in a matching blue jersey, with a yellow 20 emblazoned on it, rounding up the hopeful wannabes into a semicircular formation with an easy motion of his finger.
“Good evening, men.” He flashes a confident smile, only a tad sinister. “I’m the captain of the boys basketball team, Chenle. But you will call me captain and nothing else on this court, got it?”
This receives several alarmed nods in unison. A chill spirals down Woonhak’s spine at his menacing cadence; it only subsides once the group is told to start with their warm-ups and prepare for some basic drills.
“Where’s Jaehyun hyung?” Woonhak asks Leehan, watching him scribble down a messy dump of player stats on observation alone. He doubts any of it will be legible later, which he assumes is also the reason why Leehan adds onto it with funny and mildly offensive doodles of the applicants.
“Late.” Leehan replies with a lazy drawl. “He’s running for council VP too this year.”
Give it to Jaehyun to abandon him after practically begging him to join for tryouts together. Woonhak would facepalm himself but Chenle is already beckoning him over for a layup demonstration.
Woonhak takes a quick breath, braces for a smooth run, dribbling the ball easily under his left hand, entering the key from the other side before doing a textbook perfect layup. He even makes the basket without any hassle. When he looks back, the captain wears an amused smile.
“A lefty?” He raises a brow.
Woonhak shakes his head with a toothy grin, “Ambidextrous.”
Chenle notes this with a tilt of his chin, ticking something off his clipboard as he curves around to meet the next player in line.
The rest of the evening is spent doing a series of skill tests—passing, dribbling, a couple free throws and then vertical jumps to check for hang time. Woonhak does exceptionally well in everything, his height only presenting even more of an advantage over the shorter, less quick players.
They decide to wrap up with a test match—full court, going shirts versus scrimmage vests, and unfortunately, Woonhak gets the short end of the stick when he’s forced to pull on the highlighter-yellow mesh top that suspiciously smells like rotten fish. He winces, ignoring all urges to throw up on spot, obediently lining up for the jump ball.
A wayward thought crosses his mind—had this been baseball, he wouldn't be suffering through the stench of used clothing. He'd be basking in the warm sun, frolicking through the field in his clean uniform and precious new gloves.
But alas! The things he will do to see your beautiful face once more.
If anything, the possibility of meeting you every day henceforth only gives him more determination to nail this.
Woonhak naturally takes the role of the shooting guard, keeping his knees bent, ready for the ball the second the whistle blows and it taps into his hold. He takes easy control of it, using both his hands without the need to think twice, effortlessly faking directions past two defenders, then passing it overhead to the teammate closest to the opponent’s basket.
A dribble, pivot, one swift shot, and the ball rattles in the hoop with a satisfying spin.
A grin breaks onto Woonhak’s face, and he’s already shuffling over to high-five his partner in crime—a lanky redhead with the name Ricky branded in cursive on his fancy looking shorts.
The first quarter ends with 9-2, thanks to a last minute three pointer by Woonhak that lands in the first shot with no rebounds needed. Over the course of an hour, he’s learnt several names and their matching faces—there’s Shen Ricky, obviously, the tallest amongst everyone, standing out far too much with his bright hair and expensive clothes; then there’s the blond, scary captain, the vice captain Nicholas who Woonhak vaguely remembers from school festival dance practices, and a couple other upperclassmen who pat him on the back whenever he makes a trick shot.
It’s the final few minutes, and Woonhak prepares to receive a long pass, arms at the ready for the ball.
All is going swimmingly well until…until your voice, quiet and airy, breaks through the game and right into his well-attuned ears. And with it, the goddamned imaginary wedding-bells.
His neck jerks at the sound, and while he’s busy trying to decipher your location, the basketball flies, jamming right into the side of his head. Again.
Taesan groans. Nicholas gasps.
Woonhak’s brain spins as he slips and lands on his back, the shame of it hurting more than the floor does.
“Stay down a second, son—don’t move until you know you’re steady.” A man’s voice.
When Woonhak dares to crack open a single eye, he’s standing over him with a water bottle in hand, dressed in the ugliest yellow tracksuit known to mankind. And beside him, carrying a cardboard box, is you—looking entirely unsurprised.
“Coach, he’s fine.” Taesan rolls his eyes. “He just got distracted because he was too busy gawking at y/n.”
Woonhak yearns to be hit in the head once more so that he doesn’t have to stay conscious for this moment. He’s actually considering banging his head against something hard when he feels something warm trickle down his nostril.
“Blood ...Ack,” He yelps, bringing a finger to the liquid, coming away stained, “I’m bleeding!”
“I think I’m gonna faint,” Jaehyun’s voice leaks out from somewhere behind him, and Woonhak has no idea when he got there. Frankly, he has no memory of anything that’s happened between being knocked out blank and waking up to a horde of people looking down at him as though he was on his deathbed.
“y/n, first aid.” says the coach, but you’ve already magically pulled the kit out of thin air; now that Woonhak thinks about it, you’re less of an angel, and more of a fairy. Never mind that he’s bleeding out onto his hands and chin, the dizziness just amplifies the effect you have on him. When you lightly dab at his face with a soft cloth, he gazes at the downturn of your lashes, the way you don’t say a single word and yet, hold an impossible sort of allure. He could kiss the ball that put a dent in his head and led him right into your soft hands.
“Shouldn’t he go to the nurse’s office, Coach Woo?” Leehan pipes up, shattering all of Woonhak’s fantasies with a single, stupid question.
He ends up being hauled up and away, supported by Leehan on one side, and Jaehyun on the other. And as the distance between you and him widens with every step, he sighs wistfully, the sigh then eventually turning into a full-blown, dramatic groan.
“WHY DO YOU RUIN EVERYTHING, HYUNG?” He explodes at Leehan once they’re outside on the pavement. “I was this close to talking to y/n. And YOU-” he swivels around to a startled Jaehyun, “You went on and on about wanting company for tryouts and you go ahead and ditch me!? Hyung, I’m never trusting you again, the next time you ask me to get your melon bun, I’m spitting on it.”
Silence. Then-
“Woonhak-ah.” says Leehan, too calm that it just riles up Woonhak even more.
“WHAT?” He fumes.
“...you’re bleeding onto your vest, it’s a rental…”
Woonhak considers a double-homiscide then and there.
//
So it turns out that everyone except for Woonhak just happens to know you.
He’s laying flat on one of the starchy white clinic beds, staring at the bright tubelight above. “You guys are…classmates?” Woonhak questions in a daze.
Jaehyun, who has his arms propped up on the back of his chair, pops a piece of candy into his mouth and lets out a muffled, “yesh.”
“And so are Sungho hyung and Riwoo hyung?”
“Yep.” Jaehyun pops the ‘p’.
“And,...you were helping her with the boxes because…?”
“Team managers and Student Council work together, duh.” Jaehyun smirks, “We’ve been buddies for like ages now.”
“And you,” Woonhak turns to a bored Leehan picking on the dirt under his fingernails, “You’ve known her for two whole years now?”
Leehan nods, “She is our team manager.”
If Woonhak had been standing up, he’d be throwing his signature tantrum at this moment. Laying supine doesn’t give him that much freedom of motion, so he has to settle for writhing around like a boneless worm, whining into his palm until Jaehyun stuffs a gummy into his mouth to shut him up.
Miraculously, it works.
Woonhak is only pouting now, “Why didn’t you ever introduce me to her?”
Leehan and Jaehyun exchange a careful look that means they know something he doesn’t.
Jaehyun begins slowly, “y/n is,...well,...how do I say this-”
“She doesn’t do romance.” Leehan goes in for the kill, not bothering to soften the blow. “Lots of guys and girls have asked her out,...most of the team actually.”
Woonhak raises a brow.
“Not me. Just the older guys. She’s like my sister, dude.” Leehan clarifies. “y/n turned them all down though,...and she wasn’t even mean about it. Just…unemotional..?”
Jaehyun nods in agreement. “I’ve seen her return a Gucci bag, dude! Do you know how much those cost?? But she was all like ‘sorry, I don’t have time to date. Please return this to the store if they do refunds.’....excuse me? If that was me, I’d take the bag and dip.”
“We know you’re shameless, hyung.” Leehan replies, but Jaehyun barrels on.
“Anyways, It’s best to get over her now. Nip it in the bud before it blooms. You’ll only get hurt otherwise.”
Woonhak sucks in a breath and swallows his food. “...what if I told you it’s already bloomed?”
Jaehyun blinks. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not!” Woonhak cries, “I really like her, maybe even love her.”
“YOU DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HER UNTIL A WEEK AGO!”
“Love has no time stamp, hyung!” The youngest grips Jaehyun’s hands, his eyes looking like they were about to pop out pink hearts. “She had me at first sight.”
“The first faint, you mean.” Leehan corrects, earning himself a pointed glare.
“I’m serious. She’s so…perfect.” Woonhak is sighing again, melting onto the pillow with thoughts of you clouding his judgement.
And then the idea pops into his head.
Wait…maybe this was actually a good thing—if all of his friends knew you well enough, that meant he could extract information on how exactly to, for lack of a better term, court you. A foolproof method to weasel his way right into your cold, beautiful heart.
It’s not the most romantic imagery, but he will do with what he gets.
“Jaehyun hyung,” Woonhak purses his lips seriously, and finally demands with the will of ten lions, “I need a favour.”
He gets down to business right away—as soon as his feet hits the fuzzy carpet of his bedroom, he’s pulling out his chemistry notebook (which wasn’t being used anyways, so…), smoothens down a wrinkled page with a fist, and slides his marker across the lines:
“THE COURTSHIP MANUAL: a guaranteed guide on winning y/n’s heart”. He adds a cute heart beside it for good luck.
He'd spent almost an hour pestering Jaehyun for all your likes and dislikes, and then some.
Did it cost him his already dwindling pride and two weeks of running errands for his hyungs? Yes.
Was it worth having an insider on all matters y/n-related? Yes, a million times, yes!
Despite his embarrassing showcase back at the court, Chenle had insisted they sign him for the team—something about having a left-handed player being favourable for the semi-s and something else about overlooking the nosebleed shenanigan for Woonhak’s overenthusiastic playstyle.
So Woonhak doesn’t take too long to brainstorm a list of ideas, giggling under his breath like a lovesick girl as he jots down each one-
♡ 1. Device a method to naturally spend more time with y/n.
Leehan had said that you biked to school every morning, just in time to unlock the school gym and prepare it before practice. It’s the perfect ploy—all he has to do is the same thing—plant himself and his bike somewhere coincidental enough to run into you, pretend none of it was masterminded by him, and strike up a conversation. It’s infallible.
♡ 2. Impress her with my epic bball skills (AND my ripped body, duh)
No explanations needed there. You’re a basketball team’s manager—which means you like basketball—which also means you likely like basketball players. Which he is.
And it doesn’t hurt that he’s been working out (and flexing in front of the mirror for the better part of it); there is no way you’ll be able to resist his level 3 biceps.
♡ 3. Write a love letter.
You’re not one for small talk, and definitely wouldn’t entertain huge, public declarations of love. Jaehyun had mentioned that you’ve previously walked out on cafeteria confessions and embarrassed those poor suitors even further. A letter is considerate, it’s thoughful—and he will be all of those things for you.
♡ 4. Confess.
In-person. Look you in the eye and tell you that he’s in love—that he’s been in love since the very first moment. He won’t force you to return his feelings, of course not.
But he also knows this might be the last chance he’ll get to tell you his genuine feelings. You’ll graduate this year, along with Jaehyun and the others. And you’ll go off to some prestigious university, because you’re not just pretty, you’re smart. Apparently, you’ve skipped grades before since you were so hardworking and brilliant, and Woonhak belatedly wonders why he’s so late to know about you.
But he won’t waste the time he has left. If one last try is what it takes for his affections to reach you, then he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take it.
Woonhak tears out the page with a newfound determination. Soon, he’ll be one step closer to you noticing him—and maybe even winning your heart somewhere along the journey.
The thing about step 1 is that despite it giving the illusion of ease, there’s a slight miscalculation on his part—human error, if you will—Woonhak, for all intents and purposes, does not know how to ride a bicycle.
The baby blue bike in his hold is not his, it’s Taesan’s, and he had to beg on his knees and hands for him to finally let Woonhak borrow it. After a hurried few minutes of practice, he had trotted off merrily, ready to meet you at the crossroads on the way to school the next morning.
“y/n!” he manages to yell out with the brightest grin he’s allowed to flash you, tires teetering as he pulls up parallel to you. “Good morning!”
You don’t respond. There’s a pair of earphones, one side dangling over your shoulder, and a heavy bookbag at the back of your bicycle. You do however acknowledge him with a tilt of your chin, an action so small that had Woonhak not been smitten with you, he might not have picked it up.
He barrels on, “It’s really early, huh? The sun’s not even up.”
“...I guess.” You respond softly. “Isn’t it a normal time to be awake?”
Woonhak stutters, not having expected that, “Uh-...haha,” He laughs awkwardly. “I mean, yeah! I always wake up this early, actually. I meant early for you.”
He doesn’t think you’ll entertain his talking, but there you go again, dismantling his expectations- “Are you sure about that?”
He nods eagerly, “Oh yeah! I’m such a morning person—early bird gets the worm, amiright!? You see, I’m always telling the hyungs that they should learn from m-” He doesn’t foresee the yawn that escapes his mouth right after, unable to stifle it with no free hands. You turn your head to give him a judgemental look.
He burns with shame—he really shouldn’t have stayed up all night doodling your name on his notebook and imagining how this day was going to be perfect.
“Umm…so anyways,” Woonhak attempts to change the topic, “It’s your final year, right.”
You nod.
“Have you decided on what you’ll be doing afterwards?” he asks with a newfound energy at your responsiveness.
“...Whatever offers me a scholarship.”
Oh. Not what he expected, but an answer nonetheless.
“That’s great! You’re super smart anyways,...I mean-” He flounders again, “I’ve heard you’re smart. In passing. I don’t go around asking about you, haha, what…”
“Okay.”
If Woonhak could facepalm himself right now, he would.
“So,” He tries again, “I’m Woonhak by the way, I never introduced myself to you…I wanted to, duh, but then…”
“You got hit with a basketball.” You finish for him, in the same monotone voice he can never decipher.
“...yeah.”
"I know your name."
Woonhak's heart leaps, "You do?"
"It's on the list...and I have the list."
"Right." It doesn't matter how you know his name, just that you do. His body warms pleasantly at the thought.
“We should speed up, it’s already six.” You push down on the pedals, sweeping past him in one swift motion.
Woonhak tries to keep up, mimicking your action, but one downward force and his foot misses the pedal, skidding the bike and him right into the bushes on the roadside. He yelps, scrambling as the grass and twigs prickles at his arms, dusting his freshly washed hair in dirt.
You hear the sound of his voice and stop in your tracks, looking back over your shoulder.
Woonhak dies internally for the third time in front of you. One look at the now blackened bike and he knows Taesan is going to kill him cold.
He starts praying that Taesan goes through with his promise this time, that way he won’t have to look you in the eyes ever again.
//
So step 1 doesn’t go exactly as planned, but Woonhak will still deem it half successful. You know his name—that’s a win in his book.
The second step isn’t that hard. He’s already been making it to every morning and evening practice since, knowing he’ll find you on the sidelines, crossing out things on your trusty clipboard, or making trips to the storage room for towels and balls. Or you’re standing prepared with the first aid kit, ready for any potential accident or injury.
Your discipline, how responsible you are all the time—...Woonhak finds it insanely attractive.
To the point it starts affecting the way he plays.
Chenle is running shooting drills after school, having the team take turns for three pointers and free throws. On any other day, Woonhak wouldn’t be fazed. And he happens to be doing perfectly well until he spots you in his peripheral vision.
“-got the tournament draw. We’ll be against Belift Academy-” You’re reading out to Coach Woo, flipping through pages as he nods in thought.
Woonhak doesn’t hear the whistle blow once, then twice, and by the third time, Chenle bounces a ball into the small of his back—not hard enough to injure, yet enough to wound his pride.
“Ow-” Woonhak pouts, but one stern look from the captain is all it takes for him to swallow the whine and get back to practice. Ricky elbows him in the stomach to question his sudden lack of attention, but he only shrugs in response.
The rest of practice moves in a blur, with an occasional mess up or two but nothing damaging enough to earn Woonhak another scolding. But every time he does make a successful basket, or does a cool crossover, his eyes instinctively search for your reaction. If you happen to be watching, it earns his heart a loud thump, and keeps him going without needing to break a sweat.
By the time they’re done, all the boys are either panting, heading for their waterbottles, or flopping onto the floor on their backs. At least until the coach comes in to swat them away.
“y/n, can you fill our bottles?” asks another freshman Woonhak knows by the name of Yujin. You accept without second thought, already gathering up as many bottles as you can between your arms.
Woonhak lunges for one when it’s about to topple off, “I’ll help.”
“It’s okay, I can manage.” You purse your lips—not unkindly, just drily.
Woonhak doesn’t budge. He offers a toothy smile in the face of your apathy. “You’ll drop all of it if you don’t take up my offer.”
You seem to consider the consequences for a couple beats, then grant him a nod—the same one you reserve for most of his statements.
He joins you, splitting the load between the two of you, several bottles now hanging by their handles from Woonhak’s hand off of his shoulder. The refill station is out by the football field, near the grassy patch that glows under the evening sun. It’s quiet, and Woonhak would usually have the need to fill it with mindless chatter, but somehow with you, it feels strangely pleasant.
He takes the opportunity to sneak a glance at your profile, tracing the outline of shadows dancing over your skin.
Sadly, his study is interrupted by rowdy shouts from the football field-
“y/n!” One of the boys jeers, catching your attention. “Hey there pretty, did you come to watch me?”
Another adds on, “Nah, she’s here for me, obviously. Aw, c’mon y/n-ie, don’t be shy now.”
Several others join in with obnoxious laughs, hooting and whistling with not a care in the world.
You don’t respond. But Woonhak feels the tension brewing beneath, the slight twitch of your brows, the way you try to tune them out on purpose. He reaches to stomp over to them, wanting to shove their remarks right back into their mouth, but he feels a tug at the hem of his loose shirt.
You shake your head discreetly, pulling him away with you.
It isn’t until you’ve reached the station that you let go.
“It’s just teasing.” You say it like it's a fact. “No need to fuss.”
You end the conversation just like that, not giving space for a reply or a correction. Woonhak doesn’t know what to make of it, but he comes away with the speculation that maybe, you aren’t all that you pretend to be.
Neither of you speak during the walk back.
//
He doesn’t quit at step one or two, not just yet.
Prelims catches up to them in the tide of a couple months, their days now stacked up with friendly inter-school scrimmages, intense workout sessions, and running laps if they weren’t doing all sorts of drills, on top of the usual daily practices and school work.
In between his days of team-building and sometimes wishing death upon himself, never seriously, he finds solace in getting those small, tucked-away moments with you.
He now accompanies you to fill the bottles every time you need to, partly because he’s afraid of a recurrence of the previous incident, and partly because he likes your company. Woonhak has managed to learn a lot about you from your quiet, and supposedly throwaway comments—you’re polite, but you’re also snarky when someone acts up; you don’t look agitated when you flip through the record books, but the tension in your shoulders say otherwise; you hum under your breath when you count the bottles after refilling, a sweet melody Woonhak can’t place.
Things are good, safe, but also stuck in place without any forward motion—until the tournament season kicks off.
Chenle distributes their official jerseys during one morning practice, checking off names and corresponding numbers.
“Hah! 21.” Leehan grins, puffing out his cheeks.
Taesan is sprawled out next to him on the floor. “22, of course.” He smiles too. “Woonhak-ah, show yours.”
Woonhak flashes his scarlet jersey with a brilliant zero painted on it, his name right underneath. Chenle comes to ruffle his hair and says, “Better be on your best game, our shooting guard needs to come through for prelims.”
He nods enthusiastically, with a salute and a "Yes, Cap'n!", eyes easily drifting to your faint smile towards him from the stands. You do that now—smile at him. And talk more. Even though it's mostly about club activities, and how he should really learn how to tie his shoes up properly before he trips mid-game…again. But that's an improvement!
Morning of the first official match, they’re piled into a rental bus, ushered in by a sleepy Coach Woo, and counted for by a not-at-all sleepy you. Woonhak should be exhausted as well, but today, he’s here with a purpose—and no, he isn’t talking about winning the match.
Today, he will sit next to you on the bus!
The strategy is simple: you won’t enter until everyone else has, which means all he needs to do is loiter for a while, wait for you to take your seat, and sidle up next to you and pretend it was all an accident.
Unfortunately, his amazing strategy doesn’t account for the wildcard with the name of Kim Leehan.
Woonhak is standing at the foot of the bus with his hands buried deep in his jacket, the scarf around his neck barely doing its job. He watches as each of his teammates get inside, one by one, waiting for you to be done with rechecking everything.
And then, Leehan trods over with a pout and pokes your arm. “y/n, did you see where I left my shoes, I can’t find them anymore.”
You immediately switch to that level-headed tone of yours, “It should be near the lockers. I’ll help you look, come with me.”
Woonhak panics, “-Wait, no, I’ll go-”
But Coach Woo interrupts him with a yawn and a hand around his shoulder, “Son, better get in now if you want to get some sleep in before we reach.”
The coach doesn't seem to notice, nor care for the disappointed frown that crosses Woonhak’s face. He’d be throwing a tantrum if this was anyone else. But he’s already being ushered in, watching you and Leehan speed-walk over to the locker room in search of his godforsaken shoes.
By the time you return, Woonhak has ended up squished next to Coach Woo, who at first goes on and on about everything from motivational tips to his own personal stories, and at some point he’s just ranting nonsensically as Woonhak tries his hardest to quell the bubbling jealousy he feels when he spots you and Leehan sitting together in the seats diagonal to him.
Once Coach starts dozing off, head bobbing onto Woonhak’s shoulder every now and then, he finds it himself to take a deep breath and decide that he is not ready to give up this easily.
Woonhak wins them the match.
The Gymnasium lights blare down at their skins, glistening with sweat, the widest smiles etched onto their faces. Even Chenle is grinning when he holds up the trophy.
The opposing team congratulates them amicably, thanking them for a satisfying game and parting after wishing them good luck for quarterfinals.
“That’s our Unagi.” Taesan comes to muss up Woonhak’s hair, slowly joined in by the rest of his older teammates. Leehan pinches his cheeks, and Woonhak’s anger has already melted away (he won’t mention the fact that he’d been previously picturing Leehan’s face on the backboard to get his targets right).
“Good job.” You say with a tiny smile when he springs free of the team huddle.
Woonhak bites down a grin, cheeks already reddened from running around, suddenly shy under your praise.
Under Chenle’s insistence they celebrate, and after Coach disgruntledly agrees to pay, they decide to get a congratulatory dinner at a nearby 24 hour diner. It smells like syrup and fried food, and a collective grumble of stomachs signals their cue to order almost everything on the menu. Conversation naturally drifts from the match and then to random anecdotes.
Woonhak is in the middle of stuffing his face with pancakes when Taesan pipes up from somewhere in the booth. “Unagi used to be such a brat back in the day, he would stomp around like godzilla if he didn’t get what he wanted.”
His only reply is a muffled grumble through a mouthful of food.
“He’s still kind of like that.” Ricky supplies, cutting into his stack of pancakes like it was a gourmet meal.
“I like Woonhak’s tantrums,” grins Nicholas and Chenle nods along, “Keeps things interesting during practice.”
“And lightens the mood.”
Everyone collectively agrees to that.
Leehan chimes in, “Trust me, it wasn’t as pretty back when he was in middle school. Oh, y/n, you should hear this.” Woonhak furrows his brows, scared of what’s to come. Kim Leehan was bad news. He sees you turn your attention from your food to Leehan. “He refused to talk to us for a week because Taesan tricked him into trading his melon bread for crackers. There was snot everywhere.”
“And that time when he swore he was moving countries after we refused to tell him an inside joke.” Taesan snickers at the memory.
Woonhak can only pout. But there’s a small smile on your face, and he finds heat creep up his neck, both in embarrassment and in response to how pretty you looked when you were happy.
The night bleeds into darkness and they shuffle back into the bus, bellies full and heart content. Woonhak doesn’t think much when he takes the seat in the farthest row from the front, but a gentle push against his knees has him turning his head.
“Can I?” You ask, cold breath ghosting over your scarf, bunched up over your neck and chin and making you look soft.
He barely has the common sense to nod, letting you take the empty spot next to him.
The moon hangs low out through the fogged up window, making everything feel dreamier than it should be. Most of his teammates have slipped into slumber, heads pressed against bags or flopping onto neighbouring shoulders.
It’s quiet, but not unwelcome. Woonhak’s bones are weary enough to drag him down to silence.
“You really did play well.” Your voice is barely a breath, but he hears it all the same.
“You were watching?” He asks dumbly, before realising that of course you’d be watching. It’s part of your job as the manager.
But you still nod without correcting him. “And I don’t think your tantrums are that bad.”
“Oh.”
“I used to do it too, throw fits until I got what I wanted.”
It’s disarming—how you offer something about yourself without needing to be prompted. Maybe you’re just as tired as him, too worn out to put on a front, to hold back.
“Yeah?” Woonhak asks in a whisper, smiling.
You return it. “Yep. My mom had a hard time with me. She’d put me on time out and I had to go stand in the corner until I was done pouting.”
“I can’t imagine you pouting.” He giggles, letting you lean against him. “You’re always so…put-together.”
You shake your head with a light huff, “Nah. I was a monster back then. Not anymore, though.”
“Yeah? How come?” He teases, feeling your walls drop inch by inch.
You hum as you think, “Hmmm, growing up, maybe?...and then my mom had my siblings, and I guess I had to toughen up.”
“You have siblings!?” He brightens, “I’ve got a younger sister!”
“I’ve got four—two sisters and two brothers.” The smile on your lips is fond, and your voice sounds excited to talk about them. “They’re menaces, but also too cute to get mad at.”
“I get what you mean. My sister’s always ratting me out, but I love her too much to be annoyed.”
The two of you chat in surprising ease, letting the night blanket over you comfortably, huddled up in the back of the bus like it was a makeshift pillow fort.
Sometime later, he says, unable to look away from your pleased smile, “You don’t need to be serious all the time, y’know. You can be like this more often.”
You blink, caught off guard, “...I…yeah.”
“I mean it.”
“...It’s just.” You worry your bottom lip between your teeth, an action so small and unlike you. “There’s the responsibility you know,...being the oldest kid and all,”
Woonhak nods, relating to the sentiment.
“I have to get into a good university, and I can’t worry my parents about the tuition and the expenses that come with it.” You sigh, leaning back against the headrest. “...then there’s me wanting to pay for my siblings too one day,...can’t be distracted right now, It’ll ruin everything.”
Woonhak sees it, the slow shift beneath your eyes from carefree chatter to the creeping anxiety about the future. He’d be lying if he said he’s felt the same before, but he’s always been in tune with your feelings from the very start—too observant of your quirks, too concerned.
So he says, “You can be distracted while you’re with me. I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”
You turn at his words, letting the weight of it settle into your bones. It means nothing, and at the same time, everything.
“Okay.” You reply. And then, you give him the brightest grin he’s ever had from you.
Woonhak doesn’t think it was possible to fall deeper, but like always, you’re catching him off guard and throwing him headfirst into uncharted waters.
He knows for sure now, he loves you.
He loves you, he loves you, he-
He really loves you.
Not in the shallow way he did when he fell speechless the first time you locked eyes. In an all-encompassing, unadulterated way where he’d spent every day listening to your worries and making it his life’s goal to put a smile on your face.
The problem is,..you don’t see him the same way.
“I’m going to die.” Woonhak whines as he stretches over his desk, picking at the pinched up petals in his hand. “She’s graduating soon and I’m never going to see her again.”
He’s tried everything to beg the universe to give him a sign—counted petals and tried the old ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ trick, asked his question to a magic 8 ball until all the answers came out with a resolute ‘NO’, and even dragged Jaehyun to a shoddy-looking fortune teller with no avail.
So now he’s slumped over in his classroom, bottom lip jutted out in despair as his hyungs look over him with both pity, and exhaustion. They’d crowded around his table during lunch break, in worries that Woonhak might not make it through the day if they didn’t check up on the poor kid.
“I don’t think crying about it helps,” offers Sungho unhelpfully, flipping through a textbook, barely giving Woonhak the attention he needs.
Riwoo jumps in before Woonhak can strangle him. “Have you tried…you know, asking her?”
“Are you crazy, hyung!?” Woonhak springs up, his voice high-pitched. “Do you know y/n? She’ll never say yes.”
“Have you tried seduction?” Jaehyun pipes up, rolling a piece of gum around in his mouth.
“Se-seduction?” Woonhak’s brain fries then and there.
“Nothing PG-18 obviously, just like,...i don’t know, sending signals?”
Woonhak had considered this—it was step number 2 actually, but in all honesty, he’d forgotten the details once he started paying more attention to you and not the list.
But maybe Jaehyun had a point.
“Hypothetically,” Woonhaks begins carefully, feigning nonchalance, “How would someone…send signals?”
Riwoo and Jaehyun exchange menacing smirks.
“Ohoho, are we glad you asked young Padawan.” Jaehyun wiggles his fingers dramatically. “First things first, you’re a good looking guy—so use that.”
“Umm..thanks?” Woonhak tilts his head.
“He means,” Riwoo adds. “Girls like it when you’re clear about your intentions. But also subtle…don’t overdo it.”
Jaehyun continues, “Compliment her, be heroic,...be cool.”
“Give her a wink,” says Riwoo, demonstrating, “Like this.”
Woonhak tries, but he’s pretty sure it comes out as an ugly twitch rather than a sensual wink.
Riwoo frowns. “...We’ll work on that.”
“Don’t be embarrassed to flex a little too, girls are all over me when I roll up my sleeves during council meetings.” Jaehyun smirks, and then comes an eye-roll from Sungho.
“Be bold,” says Riwoo.
“Be swift,” says Jaehyun.
“Be yourself.” Sungho finally claps his book closed, an exasperated sigh leaving his lips. “She’ll like you for you.”
“Hyung, that’s,” Woonhak looks up at him, "...absolutely ridiculous.”
Sungho doesn’t prod anymore; he just shakes his head in disapproval and heads back to his own classroom with a wave.
“Our baby’s all grown up.” Jaehyun wipes a non-existent tear off his cheek, “Go forth and make us proud, Unagi."
//
Woonhak finds himself hoping a little now, another wave of determination after being in a slump for so long.
When he reaches home, he gets right back to the drawing board, pasting his aforementioned sheet of “THE COURTSHIP MANUAL” onto the wall facing his bed—finding its home next to the messy array of band posters and practice schedules.
And so starts the seduction attempts-
First, he tries to throw out compliments at you on occasion—but they don’t quite come out the way he intends for them to.
“y/n,” He jogs over, wiping sweat off his forehead after a particularly gruelling practice. “-ah, I was wondering what that smell was.”
You shoot him a perplexed look.
He grins. “It’s you!...you smell really nice, like flowers.”
Your frown deepens, as though he was making fun of you. “I smell like gym.” You supply.
Woonhak flubbers, “NO! What I meant is,..uh…your hair—your hair looks soft! Like a sheep!”
You wrinkle your face in confusion, “umm,... okay,” and then walk away to pick up the balls before he can save himself.
It doesn’t get better after that.
“y/n, watch this!” He turns around at the free-throw line, trying to make a basket over his shoulder without looking. Unfortunately, it does not go in—instead, it rebounds off the board and right onto the back of his head.
It hits him immediately—the pain, and also the Déjà vu.
You help him ice his head without laughing, and Woonhak hangs his head in shame for the rest of the day.
Once he gets over that incident, he pulls out other tactics.
He tries winking like Riwoo taught him, but you end up asking if he’s got something in his eye, and then pull out eye-drops from somewhere, leaving him with the burn of another failed attempt.
Any time he points at you with a, “y/n-ie, this one’s for you.”, he never actually makes the shot. Taesan couldn’t stop guffawing the last time he failed at it, and it left Woonhak with the unbridled rage to stab him.
When he tries to flirt with you, somehow he gets interrupted by the blow of a whistle or the barrage of annoying teammates that suddenly need his assistance with something.
As the last resort, he even puts aside his dignity and tries flashing his abs for you.
The two of you are at the refill station again, lining up bottles on the ledge. He does a purposeful stretch, letting his shirt ride up a few inches, perfectly angled so you’ll have a good look at him. He’s watching you from the corner of his eyes, waiting for any reaction at all—but you’re too busy counting water bottles.
Then Woonhak leans in towards the bubbler, carefully lifting the hem of his jersey to his cheeks, wiping away non-existent sweat. He feels your eyes on him as he takes a sip of water—but the sudden attention has the liquid go down the wrong pipe, and he ends up choking ungracefully until you’re thumping on his back to help.
He concludes that seduction is not his strong suit.
//
Woonhak decided he should just skip to step 3: write you a letter—something from the heart. As the quarterfinals end with their win and the semi-s edge towards them day by day—he can’t help but feel like he’s running out of time.
So he puts it all down onto a white sheet of paper, in the neatest handwriting he can manage—one not even reserved for his school work, and slips it into your bag pocket on the morning of the match, hoping you’ll find it in time afterwards.
He doesn’t need you to ask you to sit next to him—you do it as second nature now, gravitating towards his presence despite all his awkward blunders.
“Hi.” He greets you as you meet him with a matching smile.
“Nervous for today?” You ask, settling into the seat.
“Yeah.” He won’t say there are more reasons than one for that. “But I’ve got my good luck charm with me.”
“Hm?” You quirk your head.
He didn’t think he’d need to clarify. “...You,” He says, rubbing the back of his neck shyly.
“Oh.”
He swears he sees a red tinge on your cheeks, but it could just be the early morning cold. You bury your face deeper into your scarf, sighing pleasantly.
Sunlight streams through the glass window, bathing him in the same kind of warmth he feels inside his chest.
You don’t remember when it started—maybe sometime between Woonhak starting his routine of joining you for the regular water runs, and the time when you let yourself soften under the ease of the diner food and starlight, the first time you really talked about yourself.
It was easy with him. Even if he had the habit of stumbling whenever you got too close. You’ve stopped counting the number of times he’s been almost knocked unconscious because you accidentally caught his eye by moving around, or speaking a little less quietly than you usually did.
For whatever reason, Kim Woonhak got under your skin and not in an unpleasant way.
You weren’t a stranger to attention—frankly, it was getting exhausting to turn down advances from strangers who had caught sight of you from far away, or classmates who found you pretty enough to pique their curiosity. Maybe it was that they saw courting you as a challenge—a shrew to be tamed. Honestly, none of it mattered because you were leaving this place behind soon and looking ahead to your future.
The only thing that might possibly make you miss it is the team—and particularly, one hyperactive freshman who can’t seem to leave your side.
“y/n, get the score sheet from my bag.” Coach Woo addresses you as the players get ready for warm-ups.
Semifinals take place in a larger stadium, with twice the seating space as a normal away game. The lights are harsher, the crowd rowdier. Ricky and Yujin help each other with sit-ups, Chenle is off somewhere to the side hyping up nervous first-timers, as Nicholas keeps an eye on making sure nobody was left behind out of the court.
Woonhak shuffles over to you in the middle of doing his tricep stretches. “Wish me good luck?” He grins, that same lopsided one he slips into every time you seem to look his way. It’s…distracting.
You cough lightly, keeping your composure, “You don’t need it.”
He doesn’t budge. “Say it anyways?”
“...Fine,” You look him in the eyes, sparkly with the readiness of a game to be won. “Good luck.”
Woonhak grins like he’d already found victory. The whistle blows, alerting both teams to line up, cheers erupting from the crowd as both schools attempt to outmatch each others’ volume.
The game kicks off with Woonhak at the center for the jump ball, his brand new jersey flashing his name as he launches upwards for the ball—his fingertips just graze higher than his opponent’s. He slaps it back to Chenle, who snatches it clean and bolts down the court.
The stadium buzzes with the skid of sneakers against polished wood, shouts bouncing from wall to wall. It’s fast and tense, with no room to breathe.
Your eyes map the ball as it zips between hands: guard to forward, forward to the wing. Woonhak runs the lane, feinting left as the defense tightens, past the much broader, taller opponents. He shakes free at the arc, palms up to signal that he’s open.
The ball spins into his grip. With the defender in his face, arms spread wide, he dips low, pulls up at the elbow, body lifting smoothly—hangs for a heartbeat in the air, then releases.
The ball rotates swiftly, silence hanging as everyone watches with bated breaths.
Swish! The net snaps. First basket down. 2 to 0.
The bench erupts. You scribble at the sheet as the scoreboard blinks. Coach Woo just folds his arms, lips twitching proudly. You wear a matching smile—just softer and much better hidden.
The opposing team wastes no time. They tighten their offense, heading straight for their basket. It’s a tense game, and by the time the buzzer cuts through the gym for the end of the first quarter, the scoreboard reads 16–12 in KOZ’s favour.
As Woonhak wipes his face with his jersey, panting, you notice the grin tugging at his lips. And for a second, you forget to keep a record of the current score—until Woonhak turns away to prepare for the next quarter.
He’s so…distracting, you think again with a huff.
The other team seems to get more frustrated as the game moves forward, with intentional bumps, shoves, and foul plays creeping into their strategy as time advances. Chenle guides his team with enough conviction to stand their moral ground while still playing well—but it only agitates the opponents.
It’s neck to neck; a constant push and pull—but Woonhak is never cocky, just confident. Nicholas takes up most of the defense, shutting down passes and giving his teammates just enough breathing room to shoot.
The scoreboard flickers—both teams refusing to back down. The clock winds down, the crowd buzzing louder with every second. Woonhak receives the ball at the top of the key, his jersey clinging to him with sweat.
Two steps, a leap; Woonhak rises higher than he thought he could, his hand slams the ball through the hoop. The backboard rattles, sneakers squeal against the floor, and for a heartbeat the world stands still.
The whistle shrieks as the final buzzer sounds. His teammates rush him, shouting, clapping his back, their voices carrying above the roar of the crowd.
They’ve won.
Woonhak barrels forward, ignoring the excited calls of his team, and heads straight for you—enveloping you in a hug without thinking.
Your heart stutters. It takes a moment before you relax and pat his back softly. When he pulls back, he’s grinning, unable to hold back his happiness in the midst of victory.
//
You pack up after everyone else has left for the bus, longing to fall asleep after the tiresome match. Woonhak had said he’d be waiting for you outside the locker room, so you gather up your duffle bag and head over to meet him.
Except, your path is intercepted by a small group in bright blue—and it occurs to you that it’s the team that your school had just played against.
“Oh, look who we have here…the cute manager from KOZ.” A stocky, tall guy circles you.
You grip the strap of your bag, not giving them the reaction they’re hoping for.
Another joins in. “Aw cmon’, at least give us a smile.”
You try to swerve out of the way, but he grips you by your upper arm, not tight enough to hurt but close enough that your heart plummets. It didn’t matter that you were calm—there was no way you could physically match up against them.
“I’ve asked you out before you know,” He continues, flashing an eerie smile. “But little miss proud over here wouldn’t even give me a look. What? You think you’re too good for us?”
“Let me go.” You try to wiggle out of his hold, but he doesn’t let you.
His grin widens, like a cat having it’s fun with a mouse. “I bet you play around with every guy who thinks you’re cute, bet you’ve toyed around with most of your team too.”
When he inches closer, you ready yourself to kick him in the stomach, anywhere you can reach. But you don’t need to when a voice reaches you from behind-
“y/n?” Woonhak stops in his stride, worry etched onto his features, “what-”
You see the exact moment his eyes see red, its usual brightness gone. What you don’t see coming is how quickly his legs seem to move and the fist that comes flying past you and right into the guy’s jaw, letting you free.
“What the fuck!?” One of his teammates yells, and before you know it, a full-blown fight has broken out. You didn’t think Woonhak would have it in him to straight up grab the guy by his hair, digging his knuckles into his stomach.
You turn to call for Coach, anyone who can make sure Woonhak doesn’t get hurt, but the loud sounds must’ve already alerted them because most of your team rushes in to pull him backwards. Taesan has an arm around his torso, but he still tries to claw his way out, aiming another punch at the now bleeding boy.
It’s mayhem: there’s staff rushing in at the commotion, both coaches prying the boys apart, and between all of this, Woonhak still has his vice grip on the poor guy’s hair, glaring daggers into his bruised face.
“STOP THIS ABSOLUTE MADNESS!” yells Coach Woo, finally managing to throw Woonhak off into Leehan’s trusty arms. “Both of you!”
“He was hurting y/n.” Woonhak’s voice is cold as ice as he twists around to get another punch in.
“Go back to the bus. Chenle, take him,” the coach instructs and the captain does as told, grabbing Woonhak by the scruffs like he was a stray cat, non-verbally asking Nicholas to block his sight of the boy that was sliding onto the ground in a bloody mess.
Woonhak is seething all the way there, pushed up against the front row where someone can keep an eye on him at all times. What had started off as a pleasant day is now marred by uncomfortable gloom.
“y/n, are you okay?” Coach asks you as you process the shock of the events. You nod, letting him guide you back in a gentle voice.
You end up next to Leehan, who offers you a gummy as his own strange way of consolation—you refuse but not without a thankful smile. The ride back home is unnervingly quiet, not a soul daring to bring up the incident.
To calm yourself down, you reach into your bag to pull out a textbook to read, but your hand brushes against a folded note.
A letter?
It's addressed to you, with a ‘from your Woonhak’ sprawled in small letters beneath it.
Your breath hitches.
You don’t count many times you reread his words, just that you don’t even realise that the bus is pulling up into the parking lot of your school. Coach Woo is talking over the phone, arguing with someone in hushed tones as the rest of you exit one after the other, heading for the locker room or back home.
Woonhak is gone before you can grab hold of him.
You suppose it’s a good thing that the boy is so predictable—you know exactly where to find him: spread-eagle on the floor of the empty, dark gymnasium, staring up at the lowered basketball net. The only light is from the sliver of space between the almost closed door.
He doesn’t spot you approaching on light feet, quietly breathing out a “Hak,” until he turns to see you.
“y/n?” Woonhak’s body reacts before his mouth does, already leaning to stand up. But you motion him to sit back down, taking a seat opposite to him, crossing your legs and pulling out the familiar first aid bag.
He might not have mentioned it but you had noticed the wound on his face—a clean cut across the middle of his lower lip, splitting the skin there in two. “Don’t get used to this, I’ll feel like you keep getting hurt just so I’ll tend to you.” You whisper, a hint of mirth there.
Woonhak doesn’t seem to realise. “What are you doing here?”
You give him an obvious glance, wondering why he’d even ask that question. “Coach isn’t mad at you, by the way.” You say instead.
“Ha!” Woonhak flops back onto the ground, his arms spread above his head. “He said they might revoke our trophy,..and the qualification for the finals. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.” You roll your eyes. “Plus, I can explain to them it wasn’t your fault...I mean,..I’m the one who-”
“Don’t even think of finishing that sentence.” He glances sideways with narrowed eyes, voice clipped. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Those guys were the ones who…”
Silence dawns on the space between you, words unsaid but understood anyways.
You speak after a beat, looking down at your lap. “I got your letter.”
“...Oh.”
“You said you wanted to say something to me if you won today.”
His mouth is parted, breath suspended in the moment of not knowing what he should say. Eventually, he settles for, “We don’t really win if we lose our spot.”
You can’t hold back the small huff of laughter that escapes you, shaking your head at his petulant response. “You’re impossible.”
He pouts. “You already know what I wanted to say to you, don’t you?”
You shrug, taking out your trusty ice pack and ointment, “Come here.”
He obeys, getting up to scoot closer, somehow ending up framing your knees with his legs. You kneel to hold his hands in yours, assessing the reddened scrapes on his knuckles, carefully squeezing out a bit of ointment for the broken skin there. He hisses in pain, but one gentle look from you is enough for him to quieten down.
You hand him the ice pack for his lips so he can take care of it himself.
“Can I answer now?” You ask as he’s preoccupied, startling him.
He waits a breath, then nods.
Woonhak doesn’t expect you to take his hand in yours, bringing it closer to your lips and pressing a gentle kiss to his palm.
He gulps, a shiver running down his spine.
You meet his eyes, and see something flicker beneath it, and before you know it, you’re gravitating to meet halfway in the middle—you kneeling with your hands on his shoulders for support, and his hands coming up to hold your waist. He hisses sharply as your mouth tastes metal, right over his split lip—but before you can move away, he’s diving back in desperately.
When you do part eventually, the little shit has the audacity to say, smirking, “So was it my biceps?”
You scoff without any real bite, leaning in to peck the corner of his smile, not managing to kiss it away, “No one's ever taken a hit to the head for me—that has to count for something right?”
Woonhak thanks whichever deity wrote his fate to have Taesan throw a basketball at him on that destined day.
“Coach told me to say you did the right thing.” You add, brushing away a non-existent blemish on his cheek with your thumb, holding him in place. “And that they won’t take away the trophy from us...,those guys are getting blacklisted off of championships.”
He lets out a sigh of relief, letting his forehead come to rest at your neck. “Thank god.”
You giggle, “And here I thought you weren't afraid.”
“Hey-” His breath ghosts over your neck. “What is this?...” There’s a pinch of nervousness in his voice, as though he’s scared of your answer. “...What are we?”
You hold him closer, letting him nuzzle into your skin, your hands coming up behind his spine. “Anything you want us to be.”
Woonhak sighs again, and even though you can’t see him, you feel him grin against you. In the middle of the empty basketball court, the two of you sit intertwined—two bodies that might as well just be one.
“y/n, I love you.” Woonhak whispers, mentally ticking off the fourth step off of his guide.
You smile softly, “I know.” And then a moment, to make sure he knows your words aren’t just an impulse. Then- “I love you too,..Unagi.”
He presses closer to you, never wanting to be apart again—and even if he doesn’t need to repeat himself, he whispers those three words over and over again, until you’re both a mess of shared breath and pressed skin.
It’s a golden summer evening when Woonhak falls in love for the second time—and he has no doubt there will come a third time, and then a fourth, and countless others—and that every single time, it will be with you.
some extra notes on this fic!
𓂃۶ৎ𓂃 masterlist𓂃۶ৎ 𓂃upcoming works 𓂃۶ৎ𓂃navigation𓂃۶ৎ𓂃
⤷ “lost your stuff or found items around school? leave it to the student council to find the original owner!” but the moment you, the school president, get a jacket a little too cute to give back, finding the owner is barely a thought in your head. finders keepers, losers weepers, right? sport that jacket around campus! nobody’ll blink an eye …unless the owner of the jacket is the resident trouble maker.
ⓘ TROUBLE MAKER!MYUNG JAEHYUN X STU.PRESIDENT!READER
🏀 a kim woonhak sports romance comedy (aka Unagi no Basuke)
❦ pairing: hs basketball player woonhak x team manager f! reader
❦ synopsis: ⤿ in which woonhak keeps trying to confess his ardent love for you and each time he fails hilariously. ~ loosely inspired by the manga Namaikizakari
❦ wc: 11k (but v easy to read, trust) ❦ genre: fluff, comedy, slice of life, hurt/comf, sports romance
❦ warnings: injury, fistfights, light swearing, uncomfortable remarks (not from mcs), bad flirting. ❦ divider cr: @asiatic-apple ❦ song rec: 1 , 2
❦ notes: *insert mark lee meme* this one's for you ninipie @lovehakie ♡ ~ sorry for ragebaiting you earlier, ily (and ofc special thnx to my other two lovelies @pupillary and @ilysungho who keeps me sane in these trying times T-T) ~ p.s. recommended to be read on desktop/web browser.
IMP NOTE!! : y/n and woonhak are around the same age (a detail about this is mentioned in the fic) - they are max 1 year or lesser apart even if they're in diff grades
It’s a crisp spring morning when Woonhak falls in love for the first time.
The first week of high school meant noisy students in brand new uniforms, all neatly ironed, busy teachers flitting about after trouble-makers, banners swaying and snapping in the cool breeze, displaying in bold letters things like: “Join the wrestling club now! (no membership fee)” or “Drama club auditions now open!!!”.
Somewhere in the midst of all the commotion, two boys tussle, their voices carrying through like a boombox.
“Jaehyun hyung, stop whining,” Woonhak groans, attempting to rip the older boy off of him. “There's no way I'm joining the basketball team, I’m loyal to baseball.”
Upperclassmen wave people over to their respective booths, thrusting handmade flyers into hesitant hands with no shame. There’s a booth for free caricatures, free cookies handed out in exchange for signing up for the cooking club, promises of pizza and company from the board-game club; Woonhak chews on a bite of his cookie, which he most definitely did not trade for a fake name, as his eyes search for the sports club recruitments.
Jaehyun refuses to give way. He clings even harder, locking Woonhak in a bear hug turned gorilla grip.
“Unagi~~” He juts out his bottom lip and widens his eyes for effect, not a shred of embarrassment behind those big brown orbs of his. “Are you gonna let hyung try out all on his own?”
“Taesan hyung and Leehan hyung will be there too!” Woonhak tries to break free so he can eat in peace. “Ah! I have to sign up before all the spots get taken.”
He ends up having to drag a petulant Jaehyun, practically on his back at this point, over to the grounds where posters advertised a variety of school sport, boxes of team merchandise and complementary stationary placed over the makeshift tables.
Woonhak’s eyes light up at the picture of a baseball bat and ball on top of one of the stalls, where a group of burly looking guys leaned over either to convince passersby to try out for their team, or to flirt with giggling girls.
He’s halfway to the booth when suddenly a voice calls from behind—”Catch fast!”
Woonhak barely registers the words as he’s turning his head past Jaehyun, when something orange knocks right into his skull—fast and hard.
The world tilts, his vision blurring before it goes completely black, voices bleeding around his ears like a muffled drone. If this was a cartoon, there would be a string of teeny birds chirping and flying around his head. At the back of his barely conscious mind, he wonders if he’s finally met his end—all sixteen years of his futile life coming to a finish so unceremoniously.
He can already imagine his obituary, probably courtesy of Jaehyun: Kim Woonhak, high school freshman, dies tragically by a rogue basketball before he's even had his first kiss.
It’s the sheer embarrassment of the very real possibility of that happening that has him bolting back to life, eyes snapping open violently, not dissimilar to a reanimated corpse.
He opens his mouth with the conviction of a man that needs to complain, only to go tongue-tied when he’s met with the sight of a…an angel.
Woonhak gapes.
A girl, presumably around the same age as him, in a navy tracksuit and a loose ponytail, a whistle hanging around her neck—face only inches away from his. He loses his breath at the sight.
Your lips are a straight line, face devoid of any emotion other than a mix of apathy and clinical precision. You’re kneeling next to him, hands behind his hair, and somewhere in the distance beneath the ringing of his ears, he can hear Jaehyun and Taesan saying his name several times.
Belatedly it occurs to him that you’re holding an ice pack to his head, nursing the dull throb that rings inside.
“Woonhak-ah!” Taesan flicks his forehead, snapping him out of his reverie, “Stop staring at y/n.”
He flushes as bright as a tomato, mouth going slack like a ventriloquist dummy’s; when he tries to speak, he lets out a string of incoherent sounds akin to a flubbering fish.
Jaehyun guffaws, “Sorry about him, he’s still learning to talk.”
You don’t dignify his teasing with a response, simply continuing to administer first-aid to the slowly growing bump on Woonhak’s head.
“What part of ‘catch fast’ did you not understand?” Taesan chides, rolling the basketball between his hands like he hadn’t just knocked a person unconscious with it a second ago. “Our Woonhak is kind of slow, don’t mind him, y/n.”
Woonhak's ears burn crimson.
It’s mortifying, to be in the presence of a pretty girl—no, the prettiest girl he’s ever laid eyes on—while his friends ruined any reputation that might have preceded him. He wishes he could crawl into a cave and turn to asceticism for the unforeseen future, become a hermit under a vow of abstinence so he’ll never have to look you in the eyes ever again.
“Hold this,” you say, handing him the ice to pick up your clipboard from the ground and get up. Before Woonhak can think, he reaches out and stops you by the wrist.
You stare at the spot where his hands meet yours, quirking your head in scrutiny.
“Uh-” He begins to flail for words, “I-I…I’m Woonhak. Kim Woonhak."
Your response doesn’t come quickly; instead, you seem to analyse his tone and intention before deeming him harmless.
“y/n, manager of the KOZ basketball team,” you say flatly, without even a hint of a smile.
Somehow, Woonhak finds your aloofness gorgeous.
It’s the way you purse your lips tightly, moving cautiously as though you’re always ten steps ahead of everyone else, the gentle slope of your nose, the sunlight hitting your cheeks at the perfect angle. Church bells ring in the world of his imagination, a choir of cherubic angels harmonizing as he waits at the altar for you—dressed in a veil as sheer as a waterfall, strolling towards him in a picture of perfection.
It’s love at first sight.
“I’d like to sign up for tryouts!” he blurts out, still holding onto your wrist.
You blink twice. Jaehyun and Taesan exchange sly glances, tucking this moment away for future blackmail.
Woonhak shamelessly barrels on, “For the basketball team…I want to try out.”
“Okay,” You simply say, retracting your hands with a wiggle. “Kim Woonhak.” You jot it down quickly onto your clipboard, all the while Woonhak dreamily sighs at the way you say his name.
“Didn’t you want to sign up for the baseball team?” Jaehyun chooses that instant to speak up.
Woonhak shoots him a furious glare. He then tries to school it into a terrible act of nonchalance as he turns to you. “He’s kidding, haha, basketball is my one true love.”
You don’t seem to believe him, and if you do, you definitely do not care.
“Cool,” you say before sauntering back to your booth, not glancing back at him even once.
He feels dizzy, and not from the potential concussion. His chest feels warm and toasty, butterflies sprouting awake in his stomach, making him giddy with joy. Woonhak grips the ice pack like a lifeline, wondering if he really did get sent up to heaven and met an angel in the flesh.
One sideways look at the demon-spawns that were his friends is all it takes to throw away that idea.
“So…basketball huh?” Taesan smirks, raising a brow.
“Oh fuck off,” Woonhak groans, but its useless when he’s already being hauled up to his feet so the other two can pinch his ears and scold him for talking back to his elders and whatnot. Surprisingly, he doesn’t even register the sharp pain to his earlobes when his brain is preoccupied with the image of you, and your lips moulding his name around it.
The breeze picks up, carding through the strands of his mop of brown hair, bringing tinges of scarlet to the tips of his nose and his cheeks.
Kim Woonhak falls head-over-heels in love for the first time on a cool spring morning—and like all things associated with him, ridiculous and far-fetched, it comes in the shape of a basketball to the back of his head.
Tryouts go as well as anyone could hope for.
The indoor court echoes with the squeak of trainers on polished hardwood, the smell of aerosol spray and high-school-boy-sweat mixing unpleasantly around them. The group isn’t too big: some freshmen, others already part of the team, and a few who’d either dropped by to dawdle around before heading back home, or to show off for the girls watching them from the stands—no better than peacocks during mating season.
Woonhak’s first instinct on arrival is to look around for you.
He's been jittery all day, tapping his feet under the table, accidentally drawing hearts on his notebooks when he should have been taking notes; every time someone passed by his classroom, his head would turn, hoping that it's you.
He sighs dejectedly when you’re nowhere to be found, already putting a damper on his mood without having you to grace him from the heavens above.
“She won’t turn up just because you pout.” Taesan ruffles his hair, pressing a basketball into his stomach, which he accepts without verbal complaint. Leehan materialises out of thin air at his other side, nodding along like some sage warrior, making Woonhak roll his eyes until it hurts.
Of course, his business had been aired out in the span of a couple days—if Jaehyun knew, then Sungho knew; if Taesan knew, then Leehan knew, and eventually so did Riwoo.
Taesan and Leehan were already part of the school team, having joined a year before. In spite of them goofing off half the time during school hours, they were quite popular for their positions on the team—the small and power forwards respectively, a chaotic but somehow contained duo, known for their speed and in-game chemistry.
Outside of the court though, Woonhak would just call them demons in disguise.
Part of the reason he wasn’t too eager to join the basketball team in the start (other than his complete and utter devotion to the Lotte Giants) was because he knew his friends would torture the living daylights out of him if they had access to his extracurriculars, on top of what he had to endure during lunch breaks and walks back home—his hyungs cooing at him like he was a five year old and not a grown teenage boy towering at six feet, teasing and taunting him until he was stomping the ground in a fit of frustration.
All in good fun of course, but it didn’t mean that he was willing to let them embarrass him in front of the rest of the student population. And abso-fucking-lutely not in front of you.
A whistle blows from the front, bringing him back to the task at hand.
There’s a shorter blond boy in a matching blue jersey, with a yellow 20 emblazoned on it, rounding up the hopeful wannabes into a semicircular formation with an easy motion of his finger.
“Good evening, men.” He flashes a confident smile, only a tad sinister. “I’m the captain of the boys basketball team, Chenle. But you will call me captain and nothing else on this court, got it?”
This receives several alarmed nods in unison. A chill spirals down Woonhak’s spine at his menacing cadence; it only subsides once the group is told to start with their warm-ups and prepare for some basic drills.
“Where’s Jaehyun hyung?” Woonhak asks Leehan, watching him scribble down a messy dump of player stats on observation alone. He doubts any of it will be legible later, which he assumes is also the reason why Leehan adds onto it with funny and mildly offensive doodles of the applicants.
“Late.” Leehan replies with a lazy drawl. “He’s running for council VP too this year.”
Give it to Jaehyun to abandon him after practically begging him to join for tryouts together. Woonhak would facepalm himself but Chenle is already beckoning him over for a layup demonstration.
Woonhak takes a quick breath, braces for a smooth run, dribbling the ball easily under his left hand, entering the key from the other side before doing a textbook perfect layup. He even makes the basket without any hassle. When he looks back, the captain wears an amused smile.
“A lefty?” He raises a brow.
Woonhak shakes his head with a toothy grin, “Ambidextrous.”
Chenle notes this with a tilt of his chin, ticking something off his clipboard as he curves around to meet the next player in line.
The rest of the evening is spent doing a series of skill tests—passing, dribbling, a couple free throws and then vertical jumps to check for hang time. Woonhak does exceptionally well in everything, his height only presenting even more of an advantage over the shorter, less quick players.
They decide to wrap up with a test match—full court, going shirts versus scrimmage vests, and unfortunately, Woonhak gets the short end of the stick when he’s forced to pull on the highlighter-yellow mesh top that suspiciously smells like rotten fish. He winces, ignoring all urges to throw up on spot, obediently lining up for the jump ball.
A wayward thought crosses his mind—had this been baseball, he wouldn't be suffering through the stench of used clothing. He'd be basking in the warm sun, frolicking through the field in his clean uniform and precious new gloves.
But alas! The things he will do to see your beautiful face once more.
If anything, the possibility of meeting you every day henceforth only gives him more determination to nail this.
Woonhak naturally takes the role of the shooting guard, keeping his knees bent, ready for the ball the second the whistle blows and it taps into his hold. He takes easy control of it, using both his hands without the need to think twice, effortlessly faking directions past two defenders, then passing it overhead to the teammate closest to the opponent’s basket.
A dribble, pivot, one swift shot, and the ball rattles in the hoop with a satisfying spin.
A grin breaks onto Woonhak’s face, and he’s already shuffling over to high-five his partner in crime—a lanky redhead with the name Ricky branded in cursive on his fancy looking shorts.
The first quarter ends with 9-2, thanks to a last minute three pointer by Woonhak that lands in the first shot with no rebounds needed. Over the course of an hour, he’s learnt several names and their matching faces—there’s Shen Ricky, obviously, the tallest amongst everyone, standing out far too much with his bright hair and expensive clothes; then there’s the blond, scary captain, the vice captain Nicholas who Woonhak vaguely remembers from school festival dance practices, and a couple other upperclassmen who pat him on the back whenever he makes a trick shot.
It’s the final few minutes, and Woonhak prepares to receive a long pass, arms at the ready for the ball.
All is going swimmingly well until…until your voice, quiet and airy, breaks through the game and right into his well-attuned ears. And with it, the goddamned imaginary wedding-bells.
His neck jerks at the sound, and while he’s busy trying to decipher your location, the basketball flies, jamming right into the side of his head. Again.
Taesan groans. Nicholas gasps.
Woonhak’s brain spins as he slips and lands on his back, the shame of it hurting more than the floor does.
“Stay down a second, son—don’t move until you know you’re steady.” A man’s voice.
When Woonhak dares to crack open a single eye, he’s standing over him with a water bottle in hand, dressed in the ugliest yellow tracksuit known to mankind. And beside him, carrying a cardboard box, is you—looking entirely unsurprised.
“Coach, he’s fine.” Taesan rolls his eyes. “He just got distracted because he was too busy gawking at y/n.”
Woonhak yearns to be hit in the head once more so that he doesn’t have to stay conscious for this moment. He’s actually considering banging his head against something hard when he feels something warm trickle down his nostril.
“Blood ...Ack,” He yelps, bringing a finger to the liquid, coming away stained, “I’m bleeding!”
“I think I’m gonna faint,” Jaehyun’s voice leaks out from somewhere behind him, and Woonhak has no idea when he got there. Frankly, he has no memory of anything that’s happened between being knocked out blank and waking up to a horde of people looking down at him as though he was on his deathbed.
“y/n, first aid.” says the coach, but you’ve already magically pulled the kit out of thin air; now that Woonhak thinks about it, you’re less of an angel, and more of a fairy. Never mind that he’s bleeding out onto his hands and chin, the dizziness just amplifies the effect you have on him. When you lightly dab at his face with a soft cloth, he gazes at the downturn of your lashes, the way you don’t say a single word and yet, hold an impossible sort of allure. He could kiss the ball that put a dent in his head and led him right into your soft hands.
“Shouldn’t he go to the nurse’s office, Coach Woo?” Leehan pipes up, shattering all of Woonhak’s fantasies with a single, stupid question.
He ends up being hauled up and away, supported by Leehan on one side, and Jaehyun on the other. And as the distance between you and him widens with every step, he sighs wistfully, the sigh then eventually turning into a full-blown, dramatic groan.
“WHY DO YOU RUIN EVERYTHING, HYUNG?” He explodes at Leehan once they’re outside on the pavement. “I was this close to talking to y/n. And YOU-” he swivels around to a startled Jaehyun, “You went on and on about wanting company for tryouts and you go ahead and ditch me!? Hyung, I’m never trusting you again, the next time you ask me to get your melon bun, I’m spitting on it.”
Silence. Then-
“Woonhak-ah.” says Leehan, too calm that it just riles up Woonhak even more.
“WHAT?” He fumes.
“...you’re bleeding onto your vest, it’s a rental…”
Woonhak considers a double-homiscide then and there.
//
So it turns out that everyone except for Woonhak just happens to know you.
He’s laying flat on one of the starchy white clinic beds, staring at the bright tubelight above. “You guys are…classmates?” Woonhak questions in a daze.
Jaehyun, who has his arms propped up on the back of his chair, pops a piece of candy into his mouth and lets out a muffled, “yesh.”
“And so are Sungho hyung and Riwoo hyung?”
“Yep.” Jaehyun pops the ‘p’.
“And,...you were helping her with the boxes because…?”
“Team managers and Student Council work together, duh.” Jaehyun smirks, “We’ve been buddies for like ages now.”
“And you,” Woonhak turns to a bored Leehan picking on the dirt under his fingernails, “You’ve known her for two whole years now?”
Leehan nods, “She is our team manager.”
If Woonhak had been standing up, he’d be throwing his signature tantrum at this moment. Laying supine doesn’t give him that much freedom of motion, so he has to settle for writhing around like a boneless worm, whining into his palm until Jaehyun stuffs a gummy into his mouth to shut him up.
Miraculously, it works.
Woonhak is only pouting now, “Why didn’t you ever introduce me to her?”
Leehan and Jaehyun exchange a careful look that means they know something he doesn’t.
Jaehyun begins slowly, “y/n is,...well,...how do I say this-”
“She doesn’t do romance.” Leehan goes in for the kill, not bothering to soften the blow. “Lots of guys and girls have asked her out,...most of the team actually.”
Woonhak raises a brow.
“Not me. Just the older guys. She’s like my sister, dude.” Leehan clarifies. “y/n turned them all down though,...and she wasn’t even mean about it. Just…unemotional..?”
Jaehyun nods in agreement. “I’ve seen her return a Gucci bag, dude! Do you know how much those cost?? But she was all like ‘sorry, I don’t have time to date. Please return this to the store if they do refunds.’....excuse me? If that was me, I’d take the bag and dip.”
“We know you’re shameless, hyung.” Leehan replies, but Jaehyun barrels on.
“Anyways, It’s best to get over her now. Nip it in the bud before it blooms. You’ll only get hurt otherwise.”
Woonhak sucks in a breath and swallows his food. “...what if I told you it’s already bloomed?”
Jaehyun blinks. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not!” Woonhak cries, “I really like her, maybe even love her.”
“YOU DIDN’T EVEN KNOW HER UNTIL A WEEK AGO!”
“Love has no time stamp, hyung!” The youngest grips Jaehyun’s hands, his eyes looking like they were about to pop out pink hearts. “She had me at first sight.”
“The first faint, you mean.” Leehan corrects, earning himself a pointed glare.
“I’m serious. She’s so…perfect.” Woonhak is sighing again, melting onto the pillow with thoughts of you clouding his judgement.
And then the idea pops into his head.
Wait…maybe this was actually a good thing—if all of his friends knew you well enough, that meant he could extract information on how exactly to, for lack of a better term, court you. A foolproof method to weasel his way right into your cold, beautiful heart.
It’s not the most romantic imagery, but he will do with what he gets.
“Jaehyun hyung,” Woonhak purses his lips seriously, and finally demands with the will of ten lions, “I need a favour.”
He gets down to business right away—as soon as his feet hits the fuzzy carpet of his bedroom, he’s pulling out his chemistry notebook (which wasn’t being used anyways, so…), smoothens down a wrinkled page with a fist, and slides his marker across the lines:
“THE COURTSHIP MANUAL: a guaranteed guide on winning y/n’s heart”. He adds a cute heart beside it for good luck.
He'd spent almost an hour pestering Jaehyun for all your likes and dislikes, and then some.
Did it cost him his already dwindling pride and two weeks of running errands for his hyungs? Yes.
Was it worth having an insider on all matters y/n-related? Yes, a million times, yes!
Despite his embarrassing showcase back at the court, Chenle had insisted they sign him for the team—something about having a left-handed player being favourable for the semi-s and something else about overlooking the nosebleed shenanigan for Woonhak’s overenthusiastic playstyle.
So Woonhak doesn’t take too long to brainstorm a list of ideas, giggling under his breath like a lovesick girl as he jots down each one-
♡ 1. Device a method to naturally spend more time with y/n.
Leehan had said that you biked to school every morning, just in time to unlock the school gym and prepare it before practice. It’s the perfect ploy—all he has to do is the same thing—plant himself and his bike somewhere coincidental enough to run into you, pretend none of it was masterminded by him, and strike up a conversation. It’s infallible.
♡ 2. Impress her with my epic bball skills (AND my ripped body, duh)
No explanations needed there. You’re a basketball team’s manager—which means you like basketball—which also means you likely like basketball players. Which he is.
And it doesn’t hurt that he’s been working out (and flexing in front of the mirror for the better part of it); there is no way you’ll be able to resist his level 3 biceps.
♡ 3. Write a love letter.
You’re not one for small talk, and definitely wouldn’t entertain huge, public declarations of love. Jaehyun had mentioned that you’ve previously walked out on cafeteria confessions and embarrassed those poor suitors even further. A letter is considerate, it’s thoughful—and he will be all of those things for you.
♡ 4. Confess.
In-person. Look you in the eye and tell you that he’s in love—that he’s been in love since the very first moment. He won’t force you to return his feelings, of course not.
But he also knows this might be the last chance he’ll get to tell you his genuine feelings. You’ll graduate this year, along with Jaehyun and the others. And you’ll go off to some prestigious university, because you’re not just pretty, you’re smart. Apparently, you’ve skipped grades before since you were so hardworking and brilliant, and Woonhak belatedly wonders why he’s so late to know about you.
But he won’t waste the time he has left. If one last try is what it takes for his affections to reach you, then he’ll be damned if he doesn’t take it.
Woonhak tears out the page with a newfound determination. Soon, he’ll be one step closer to you noticing him—and maybe even winning your heart somewhere along the journey.
The thing about step 1 is that despite it giving the illusion of ease, there’s a slight miscalculation on his part—human error, if you will—Woonhak, for all intents and purposes, does not know how to ride a bicycle.
The baby blue bike in his hold is not his, it’s Taesan’s, and he had to beg on his knees and hands for him to finally let Woonhak borrow it. After a hurried few minutes of practice, he had trotted off merrily, ready to meet you at the crossroads on the way to school the next morning.
“y/n!” he manages to yell out with the brightest grin he’s allowed to flash you, tires teetering as he pulls up parallel to you. “Good morning!”
You don’t respond. There’s a pair of earphones, one side dangling over your shoulder, and a heavy bookbag at the back of your bicycle. You do however acknowledge him with a tilt of your chin, an action so small that had Woonhak not been smitten with you, he might not have picked it up.
He barrels on, “It’s really early, huh? The sun’s not even up.”
“...I guess.” You respond softly. “Isn’t it a normal time to be awake?”
Woonhak stutters, not having expected that, “Uh-...haha,” He laughs awkwardly. “I mean, yeah! I always wake up this early, actually. I meant early for you.”
He doesn’t think you’ll entertain his talking, but there you go again, dismantling his expectations- “Are you sure about that?”
He nods eagerly, “Oh yeah! I’m such a morning person—early bird gets the worm, amiright!? You see, I’m always telling the hyungs that they should learn from m-” He doesn’t foresee the yawn that escapes his mouth right after, unable to stifle it with no free hands. You turn your head to give him a judgemental look.
He burns with shame—he really shouldn’t have stayed up all night doodling your name on his notebook and imagining how this day was going to be perfect.
“Umm…so anyways,” Woonhak attempts to change the topic, “It’s your final year, right.”
You nod.
“Have you decided on what you’ll be doing afterwards?” he asks with a newfound energy at your responsiveness.
“...Whatever offers me a scholarship.”
Oh. Not what he expected, but an answer nonetheless.
“That’s great! You’re super smart anyways,...I mean-” He flounders again, “I’ve heard you’re smart. In passing. I don’t go around asking about you, haha, what…”
“Okay.”
If Woonhak could facepalm himself right now, he would.
“So,” He tries again, “I’m Woonhak by the way, I never introduced myself to you…I wanted to, duh, but then…”
“You got hit with a basketball.” You finish for him, in the same monotone voice he can never decipher.
“...yeah.”
"I know your name."
Woonhak's heart leaps, "You do?"
"It's on the list...and I have the list."
"Right." It doesn't matter how you know his name, just that you do. His body warms pleasantly at the thought.
“We should speed up, it’s already six.” You push down on the pedals, sweeping past him in one swift motion.
Woonhak tries to keep up, mimicking your action, but one downward force and his foot misses the pedal, skidding the bike and him right into the bushes on the roadside. He yelps, scrambling as the grass and twigs prickles at his arms, dusting his freshly washed hair in dirt.
You hear the sound of his voice and stop in your tracks, looking back over your shoulder.
Woonhak dies internally for the third time in front of you. One look at the now blackened bike and he knows Taesan is going to kill him cold.
He starts praying that Taesan goes through with his promise this time, that way he won’t have to look you in the eyes ever again.
//
So step 1 doesn’t go exactly as planned, but Woonhak will still deem it half successful. You know his name—that’s a win in his book.
The second step isn’t that hard. He’s already been making it to every morning and evening practice since, knowing he’ll find you on the sidelines, crossing out things on your trusty clipboard, or making trips to the storage room for towels and balls. Or you’re standing prepared with the first aid kit, ready for any potential accident or injury.
Your discipline, how responsible you are all the time—...Woonhak finds it insanely attractive.
To the point it starts affecting the way he plays.
Chenle is running shooting drills after school, having the team take turns for three pointers and free throws. On any other day, Woonhak wouldn’t be fazed. And he happens to be doing perfectly well until he spots you in his peripheral vision.
“-got the tournament draw. We’ll be against Belift Academy-” You’re reading out to Coach Woo, flipping through pages as he nods in thought.
Woonhak doesn’t hear the whistle blow once, then twice, and by the third time, Chenle bounces a ball into the small of his back—not hard enough to injure, yet enough to wound his pride.
“Ow-” Woonhak pouts, but one stern look from the captain is all it takes for him to swallow the whine and get back to practice. Ricky elbows him in the stomach to question his sudden lack of attention, but he only shrugs in response.
The rest of practice moves in a blur, with an occasional mess up or two but nothing damaging enough to earn Woonhak another scolding. But every time he does make a successful basket, or does a cool crossover, his eyes instinctively search for your reaction. If you happen to be watching, it earns his heart a loud thump, and keeps him going without needing to break a sweat.
By the time they’re done, all the boys are either panting, heading for their waterbottles, or flopping onto the floor on their backs. At least until the coach comes in to swat them away.
“y/n, can you fill our bottles?” asks another freshman Woonhak knows by the name of Yujin. You accept without second thought, already gathering up as many bottles as you can between your arms.
Woonhak lunges for one when it’s about to topple off, “I’ll help.”
“It’s okay, I can manage.” You purse your lips—not unkindly, just drily.
Woonhak doesn’t budge. He offers a toothy smile in the face of your apathy. “You’ll drop all of it if you don’t take up my offer.”
You seem to consider the consequences for a couple beats, then grant him a nod—the same one you reserve for most of his statements.
He joins you, splitting the load between the two of you, several bottles now hanging by their handles from Woonhak’s hand off of his shoulder. The refill station is out by the football field, near the grassy patch that glows under the evening sun. It’s quiet, and Woonhak would usually have the need to fill it with mindless chatter, but somehow with you, it feels strangely pleasant.
He takes the opportunity to sneak a glance at your profile, tracing the outline of shadows dancing over your skin.
Sadly, his study is interrupted by rowdy shouts from the football field-
“y/n!” One of the boys jeers, catching your attention. “Hey there pretty, did you come to watch me?”
Another adds on, “Nah, she’s here for me, obviously. Aw, c’mon y/n-ie, don’t be shy now.”
Several others join in with obnoxious laughs, hooting and whistling with not a care in the world.
You don’t respond. But Woonhak feels the tension brewing beneath, the slight twitch of your brows, the way you try to tune them out on purpose. He reaches to stomp over to them, wanting to shove their remarks right back into their mouth, but he feels a tug at the hem of his loose shirt.
You shake your head discreetly, pulling him away with you.
It isn’t until you’ve reached the station that you let go.
“It’s just teasing.” You say it like it's a fact. “No need to fuss.”
You end the conversation just like that, not giving space for a reply or a correction. Woonhak doesn’t know what to make of it, but he comes away with the speculation that maybe, you aren’t all that you pretend to be.
Neither of you speak during the walk back.
//
He doesn’t quit at step one or two, not just yet.
Prelims catches up to them in the tide of a couple months, their days now stacked up with friendly inter-school scrimmages, intense workout sessions, and running laps if they weren’t doing all sorts of drills, on top of the usual daily practices and school work.
In between his days of team-building and sometimes wishing death upon himself, never seriously, he finds solace in getting those small, tucked-away moments with you.
He now accompanies you to fill the bottles every time you need to, partly because he’s afraid of a recurrence of the previous incident, and partly because he likes your company. Woonhak has managed to learn a lot about you from your quiet, and supposedly throwaway comments—you’re polite, but you’re also snarky when someone acts up; you don’t look agitated when you flip through the record books, but the tension in your shoulders say otherwise; you hum under your breath when you count the bottles after refilling, a sweet melody Woonhak can’t place.
Things are good, safe, but also stuck in place without any forward motion—until the tournament season kicks off.
Chenle distributes their official jerseys during one morning practice, checking off names and corresponding numbers.
“Hah! 21.” Leehan grins, puffing out his cheeks.
Taesan is sprawled out next to him on the floor. “22, of course.” He smiles too. “Woonhak-ah, show yours.”
Woonhak flashes his scarlet jersey with a brilliant zero painted on it, his name right underneath. Chenle comes to ruffle his hair and says, “Better be on your best game, our shooting guard needs to come through for prelims.”
He nods enthusiastically, with a salute and a "Yes, Cap'n!", eyes easily drifting to your faint smile towards him from the stands. You do that now—smile at him. And talk more. Even though it's mostly about club activities, and how he should really learn how to tie his shoes up properly before he trips mid-game…again. But that's an improvement!
Morning of the first official match, they’re piled into a rental bus, ushered in by a sleepy Coach Woo, and counted for by a not-at-all sleepy you. Woonhak should be exhausted as well, but today, he’s here with a purpose—and no, he isn’t talking about winning the match.
Today, he will sit next to you on the bus!
The strategy is simple: you won’t enter until everyone else has, which means all he needs to do is loiter for a while, wait for you to take your seat, and sidle up next to you and pretend it was all an accident.
Unfortunately, his amazing strategy doesn’t account for the wildcard with the name of Kim Leehan.
Woonhak is standing at the foot of the bus with his hands buried deep in his jacket, the scarf around his neck barely doing its job. He watches as each of his teammates get inside, one by one, waiting for you to be done with rechecking everything.
And then, Leehan trods over with a pout and pokes your arm. “y/n, did you see where I left my shoes, I can’t find them anymore.”
You immediately switch to that level-headed tone of yours, “It should be near the lockers. I’ll help you look, come with me.”
Woonhak panics, “-Wait, no, I’ll go-”
But Coach Woo interrupts him with a yawn and a hand around his shoulder, “Son, better get in now if you want to get some sleep in before we reach.”
The coach doesn't seem to notice, nor care for the disappointed frown that crosses Woonhak’s face. He’d be throwing a tantrum if this was anyone else. But he’s already being ushered in, watching you and Leehan speed-walk over to the locker room in search of his godforsaken shoes.
By the time you return, Woonhak has ended up squished next to Coach Woo, who at first goes on and on about everything from motivational tips to his own personal stories, and at some point he’s just ranting nonsensically as Woonhak tries his hardest to quell the bubbling jealousy he feels when he spots you and Leehan sitting together in the seats diagonal to him.
Once Coach starts dozing off, head bobbing onto Woonhak’s shoulder every now and then, he finds it himself to take a deep breath and decide that he is not ready to give up this easily.
Woonhak wins them the match.
The Gymnasium lights blare down at their skins, glistening with sweat, the widest smiles etched onto their faces. Even Chenle is grinning when he holds up the trophy.
The opposing team congratulates them amicably, thanking them for a satisfying game and parting after wishing them good luck for quarterfinals.
“That’s our Unagi.” Taesan comes to muss up Woonhak’s hair, slowly joined in by the rest of his older teammates. Leehan pinches his cheeks, and Woonhak’s anger has already melted away (he won’t mention the fact that he’d been previously picturing Leehan’s face on the backboard to get his targets right).
“Good job.” You say with a tiny smile when he springs free of the team huddle.
Woonhak bites down a grin, cheeks already reddened from running around, suddenly shy under your praise.
Under Chenle’s insistence they celebrate, and after Coach disgruntledly agrees to pay, they decide to get a congratulatory dinner at a nearby 24 hour diner. It smells like syrup and fried food, and a collective grumble of stomachs signals their cue to order almost everything on the menu. Conversation naturally drifts from the match and then to random anecdotes.
Woonhak is in the middle of stuffing his face with pancakes when Taesan pipes up from somewhere in the booth. “Unagi used to be such a brat back in the day, he would stomp around like godzilla if he didn’t get what he wanted.”
His only reply is a muffled grumble through a mouthful of food.
“He’s still kind of like that.” Ricky supplies, cutting into his stack of pancakes like it was a gourmet meal.
“I like Woonhak’s tantrums,” grins Nicholas and Chenle nods along, “Keeps things interesting during practice.”
“And lightens the mood.”
Everyone collectively agrees to that.
Leehan chimes in, “Trust me, it wasn’t as pretty back when he was in middle school. Oh, y/n, you should hear this.” Woonhak furrows his brows, scared of what’s to come. Kim Leehan was bad news. He sees you turn your attention from your food to Leehan. “He refused to talk to us for a week because Taesan tricked him into trading his melon bread for crackers. There was snot everywhere.”
“And that time when he swore he was moving countries after we refused to tell him an inside joke.” Taesan snickers at the memory.
Woonhak can only pout. But there’s a small smile on your face, and he finds heat creep up his neck, both in embarrassment and in response to how pretty you looked when you were happy.
The night bleeds into darkness and they shuffle back into the bus, bellies full and heart content. Woonhak doesn’t think much when he takes the seat in the farthest row from the front, but a gentle push against his knees has him turning his head.
“Can I?” You ask, cold breath ghosting over your scarf, bunched up over your neck and chin and making you look soft.
He barely has the common sense to nod, letting you take the empty spot next to him.
The moon hangs low out through the fogged up window, making everything feel dreamier than it should be. Most of his teammates have slipped into slumber, heads pressed against bags or flopping onto neighbouring shoulders.
It’s quiet, but not unwelcome. Woonhak’s bones are weary enough to drag him down to silence.
“You really did play well.” Your voice is barely a breath, but he hears it all the same.
“You were watching?” He asks dumbly, before realising that of course you’d be watching. It’s part of your job as the manager.
But you still nod without correcting him. “And I don’t think your tantrums are that bad.”
“Oh.”
“I used to do it too, throw fits until I got what I wanted.”
It’s disarming—how you offer something about yourself without needing to be prompted. Maybe you’re just as tired as him, too worn out to put on a front, to hold back.
“Yeah?” Woonhak asks in a whisper, smiling.
You return it. “Yep. My mom had a hard time with me. She’d put me on time out and I had to go stand in the corner until I was done pouting.”
“I can’t imagine you pouting.” He giggles, letting you lean against him. “You’re always so…put-together.”
You shake your head with a light huff, “Nah. I was a monster back then. Not anymore, though.”
“Yeah? How come?” He teases, feeling your walls drop inch by inch.
You hum as you think, “Hmmm, growing up, maybe?...and then my mom had my siblings, and I guess I had to toughen up.”
“You have siblings!?” He brightens, “I’ve got a younger sister!”
“I’ve got four—two sisters and two brothers.” The smile on your lips is fond, and your voice sounds excited to talk about them. “They’re menaces, but also too cute to get mad at.”
“I get what you mean. My sister’s always ratting me out, but I love her too much to be annoyed.”
The two of you chat in surprising ease, letting the night blanket over you comfortably, huddled up in the back of the bus like it was a makeshift pillow fort.
Sometime later, he says, unable to look away from your pleased smile, “You don’t need to be serious all the time, y’know. You can be like this more often.”
You blink, caught off guard, “...I…yeah.”
“I mean it.”
“...It’s just.” You worry your bottom lip between your teeth, an action so small and unlike you. “There’s the responsibility you know,...being the oldest kid and all,”
Woonhak nods, relating to the sentiment.
“I have to get into a good university, and I can’t worry my parents about the tuition and the expenses that come with it.” You sigh, leaning back against the headrest. “...then there’s me wanting to pay for my siblings too one day,...can’t be distracted right now, It’ll ruin everything.”
Woonhak sees it, the slow shift beneath your eyes from carefree chatter to the creeping anxiety about the future. He’d be lying if he said he’s felt the same before, but he’s always been in tune with your feelings from the very start—too observant of your quirks, too concerned.
So he says, “You can be distracted while you’re with me. I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”
You turn at his words, letting the weight of it settle into your bones. It means nothing, and at the same time, everything.
“Okay.” You reply. And then, you give him the brightest grin he’s ever had from you.
Woonhak doesn’t think it was possible to fall deeper, but like always, you’re catching him off guard and throwing him headfirst into uncharted waters.
He knows for sure now, he loves you.
He loves you, he loves you, he-
He really loves you.
Not in the shallow way he did when he fell speechless the first time you locked eyes. In an all-encompassing, unadulterated way where he’d spent every day listening to your worries and making it his life’s goal to put a smile on your face.
The problem is,..you don’t see him the same way.
“I’m going to die.” Woonhak whines as he stretches over his desk, picking at the pinched up petals in his hand. “She’s graduating soon and I’m never going to see her again.”
He’s tried everything to beg the universe to give him a sign—counted petals and tried the old ‘she loves me, she loves me not’ trick, asked his question to a magic 8 ball until all the answers came out with a resolute ‘NO’, and even dragged Jaehyun to a shoddy-looking fortune teller with no avail.
So now he’s slumped over in his classroom, bottom lip jutted out in despair as his hyungs look over him with both pity, and exhaustion. They’d crowded around his table during lunch break, in worries that Woonhak might not make it through the day if they didn’t check up on the poor kid.
“I don’t think crying about it helps,” offers Sungho unhelpfully, flipping through a textbook, barely giving Woonhak the attention he needs.
Riwoo jumps in before Woonhak can strangle him. “Have you tried…you know, asking her?”
“Are you crazy, hyung!?” Woonhak springs up, his voice high-pitched. “Do you know y/n? She’ll never say yes.”
“Have you tried seduction?” Jaehyun pipes up, rolling a piece of gum around in his mouth.
“Se-seduction?” Woonhak’s brain fries then and there.
“Nothing PG-18 obviously, just like,...i don’t know, sending signals?”
Woonhak had considered this—it was step number 2 actually, but in all honesty, he’d forgotten the details once he started paying more attention to you and not the list.
But maybe Jaehyun had a point.
“Hypothetically,” Woonhaks begins carefully, feigning nonchalance, “How would someone…send signals?”
Riwoo and Jaehyun exchange menacing smirks.
“Ohoho, are we glad you asked young Padawan.” Jaehyun wiggles his fingers dramatically. “First things first, you’re a good looking guy—so use that.”
“Umm..thanks?” Woonhak tilts his head.
“He means,” Riwoo adds. “Girls like it when you’re clear about your intentions. But also subtle…don’t overdo it.”
Jaehyun continues, “Compliment her, be heroic,...be cool.”
“Give her a wink,” says Riwoo, demonstrating, “Like this.”
Woonhak tries, but he’s pretty sure it comes out as an ugly twitch rather than a sensual wink.
Riwoo frowns. “...We’ll work on that.”
“Don’t be embarrassed to flex a little too, girls are all over me when I roll up my sleeves during council meetings.” Jaehyun smirks, and then comes an eye-roll from Sungho.
“Be bold,” says Riwoo.
“Be swift,” says Jaehyun.
“Be yourself.” Sungho finally claps his book closed, an exasperated sigh leaving his lips. “She’ll like you for you.”
“Hyung, that’s,” Woonhak looks up at him, "...absolutely ridiculous.”
Sungho doesn’t prod anymore; he just shakes his head in disapproval and heads back to his own classroom with a wave.
“Our baby’s all grown up.” Jaehyun wipes a non-existent tear off his cheek, “Go forth and make us proud, Unagi."
//
Woonhak finds himself hoping a little now, another wave of determination after being in a slump for so long.
When he reaches home, he gets right back to the drawing board, pasting his aforementioned sheet of “THE COURTSHIP MANUAL” onto the wall facing his bed—finding its home next to the messy array of band posters and practice schedules.
And so starts the seduction attempts-
First, he tries to throw out compliments at you on occasion—but they don’t quite come out the way he intends for them to.
“y/n,” He jogs over, wiping sweat off his forehead after a particularly gruelling practice. “-ah, I was wondering what that smell was.”
You shoot him a perplexed look.
He grins. “It’s you!...you smell really nice, like flowers.”
Your frown deepens, as though he was making fun of you. “I smell like gym.” You supply.
Woonhak flubbers, “NO! What I meant is,..uh…your hair—your hair looks soft! Like a sheep!”
You wrinkle your face in confusion, “umm,... okay,” and then walk away to pick up the balls before he can save himself.
It doesn’t get better after that.
“y/n, watch this!” He turns around at the free-throw line, trying to make a basket over his shoulder without looking. Unfortunately, it does not go in—instead, it rebounds off the board and right onto the back of his head.
It hits him immediately—the pain, and also the Déjà vu.
You help him ice his head without laughing, and Woonhak hangs his head in shame for the rest of the day.
Once he gets over that incident, he pulls out other tactics.
He tries winking like Riwoo taught him, but you end up asking if he’s got something in his eye, and then pull out eye-drops from somewhere, leaving him with the burn of another failed attempt.
Any time he points at you with a, “y/n-ie, this one’s for you.”, he never actually makes the shot. Taesan couldn’t stop guffawing the last time he failed at it, and it left Woonhak with the unbridled rage to stab him.
When he tries to flirt with you, somehow he gets interrupted by the blow of a whistle or the barrage of annoying teammates that suddenly need his assistance with something.
As the last resort, he even puts aside his dignity and tries flashing his abs for you.
The two of you are at the refill station again, lining up bottles on the ledge. He does a purposeful stretch, letting his shirt ride up a few inches, perfectly angled so you’ll have a good look at him. He’s watching you from the corner of his eyes, waiting for any reaction at all—but you’re too busy counting water bottles.
Then Woonhak leans in towards the bubbler, carefully lifting the hem of his jersey to his cheeks, wiping away non-existent sweat. He feels your eyes on him as he takes a sip of water—but the sudden attention has the liquid go down the wrong pipe, and he ends up choking ungracefully until you’re thumping on his back to help.
He concludes that seduction is not his strong suit.
//
Woonhak decided he should just skip to step 3: write you a letter—something from the heart. As the quarterfinals end with their win and the semi-s edge towards them day by day—he can’t help but feel like he’s running out of time.
So he puts it all down onto a white sheet of paper, in the neatest handwriting he can manage—one not even reserved for his school work, and slips it into your bag pocket on the morning of the match, hoping you’ll find it in time afterwards.
He doesn’t need you to ask you to sit next to him—you do it as second nature now, gravitating towards his presence despite all his awkward blunders.
“Hi.” He greets you as you meet him with a matching smile.
“Nervous for today?” You ask, settling into the seat.
“Yeah.” He won’t say there are more reasons than one for that. “But I’ve got my good luck charm with me.”
“Hm?” You quirk your head.
He didn’t think he’d need to clarify. “...You,” He says, rubbing the back of his neck shyly.
“Oh.”
He swears he sees a red tinge on your cheeks, but it could just be the early morning cold. You bury your face deeper into your scarf, sighing pleasantly.
Sunlight streams through the glass window, bathing him in the same kind of warmth he feels inside his chest.
You don’t remember when it started—maybe sometime between Woonhak starting his routine of joining you for the regular water runs, and the time when you let yourself soften under the ease of the diner food and starlight, the first time you really talked about yourself.
It was easy with him. Even if he had the habit of stumbling whenever you got too close. You’ve stopped counting the number of times he’s been almost knocked unconscious because you accidentally caught his eye by moving around, or speaking a little less quietly than you usually did.
For whatever reason, Kim Woonhak got under your skin and not in an unpleasant way.
You weren’t a stranger to attention—frankly, it was getting exhausting to turn down advances from strangers who had caught sight of you from far away, or classmates who found you pretty enough to pique their curiosity. Maybe it was that they saw courting you as a challenge—a shrew to be tamed. Honestly, none of it mattered because you were leaving this place behind soon and looking ahead to your future.
The only thing that might possibly make you miss it is the team—and particularly, one hyperactive freshman who can’t seem to leave your side.
“y/n, get the score sheet from my bag.” Coach Woo addresses you as the players get ready for warm-ups.
Semifinals take place in a larger stadium, with twice the seating space as a normal away game. The lights are harsher, the crowd rowdier. Ricky and Yujin help each other with sit-ups, Chenle is off somewhere to the side hyping up nervous first-timers, as Nicholas keeps an eye on making sure nobody was left behind out of the court.
Woonhak shuffles over to you in the middle of doing his tricep stretches. “Wish me good luck?” He grins, that same lopsided one he slips into every time you seem to look his way. It’s…distracting.
You cough lightly, keeping your composure, “You don’t need it.”
He doesn’t budge. “Say it anyways?”
“...Fine,” You look him in the eyes, sparkly with the readiness of a game to be won. “Good luck.”
Woonhak grins like he’d already found victory. The whistle blows, alerting both teams to line up, cheers erupting from the crowd as both schools attempt to outmatch each others’ volume.
The game kicks off with Woonhak at the center for the jump ball, his brand new jersey flashing his name as he launches upwards for the ball—his fingertips just graze higher than his opponent’s. He slaps it back to Chenle, who snatches it clean and bolts down the court.
The stadium buzzes with the skid of sneakers against polished wood, shouts bouncing from wall to wall. It’s fast and tense, with no room to breathe.
Your eyes map the ball as it zips between hands: guard to forward, forward to the wing. Woonhak runs the lane, feinting left as the defense tightens, past the much broader, taller opponents. He shakes free at the arc, palms up to signal that he’s open.
The ball spins into his grip. With the defender in his face, arms spread wide, he dips low, pulls up at the elbow, body lifting smoothly—hangs for a heartbeat in the air, then releases.
The ball rotates swiftly, silence hanging as everyone watches with bated breaths.
Swish! The net snaps. First basket down. 2 to 0.
The bench erupts. You scribble at the sheet as the scoreboard blinks. Coach Woo just folds his arms, lips twitching proudly. You wear a matching smile—just softer and much better hidden.
The opposing team wastes no time. They tighten their offense, heading straight for their basket. It’s a tense game, and by the time the buzzer cuts through the gym for the end of the first quarter, the scoreboard reads 16–12 in KOZ’s favour.
As Woonhak wipes his face with his jersey, panting, you notice the grin tugging at his lips. And for a second, you forget to keep a record of the current score—until Woonhak turns away to prepare for the next quarter.
He’s so…distracting, you think again with a huff.
The other team seems to get more frustrated as the game moves forward, with intentional bumps, shoves, and foul plays creeping into their strategy as time advances. Chenle guides his team with enough conviction to stand their moral ground while still playing well—but it only agitates the opponents.
It’s neck to neck; a constant push and pull—but Woonhak is never cocky, just confident. Nicholas takes up most of the defense, shutting down passes and giving his teammates just enough breathing room to shoot.
The scoreboard flickers—both teams refusing to back down. The clock winds down, the crowd buzzing louder with every second. Woonhak receives the ball at the top of the key, his jersey clinging to him with sweat.
Two steps, a leap; Woonhak rises higher than he thought he could, his hand slams the ball through the hoop. The backboard rattles, sneakers squeal against the floor, and for a heartbeat the world stands still.
The whistle shrieks as the final buzzer sounds. His teammates rush him, shouting, clapping his back, their voices carrying above the roar of the crowd.
They’ve won.
Woonhak barrels forward, ignoring the excited calls of his team, and heads straight for you—enveloping you in a hug without thinking.
Your heart stutters. It takes a moment before you relax and pat his back softly. When he pulls back, he’s grinning, unable to hold back his happiness in the midst of victory.
//
You pack up after everyone else has left for the bus, longing to fall asleep after the tiresome match. Woonhak had said he’d be waiting for you outside the locker room, so you gather up your duffle bag and head over to meet him.
Except, your path is intercepted by a small group in bright blue—and it occurs to you that it’s the team that your school had just played against.
“Oh, look who we have here…the cute manager from KOZ.” A stocky, tall guy circles you.
You grip the strap of your bag, not giving them the reaction they’re hoping for.
Another joins in. “Aw cmon’, at least give us a smile.”
You try to swerve out of the way, but he grips you by your upper arm, not tight enough to hurt but close enough that your heart plummets. It didn’t matter that you were calm—there was no way you could physically match up against them.
“I’ve asked you out before you know,” He continues, flashing an eerie smile. “But little miss proud over here wouldn’t even give me a look. What? You think you’re too good for us?”
“Let me go.” You try to wiggle out of his hold, but he doesn’t let you.
His grin widens, like a cat having it’s fun with a mouse. “I bet you play around with every guy who thinks you’re cute, bet you’ve toyed around with most of your team too.”
When he inches closer, you ready yourself to kick him in the stomach, anywhere you can reach. But you don’t need to when a voice reaches you from behind-
“y/n?” Woonhak stops in his stride, worry etched onto his features, “what-”
You see the exact moment his eyes see red, its usual brightness gone. What you don’t see coming is how quickly his legs seem to move and the fist that comes flying past you and right into the guy’s jaw, letting you free.
“What the fuck!?” One of his teammates yells, and before you know it, a full-blown fight has broken out. You didn’t think Woonhak would have it in him to straight up grab the guy by his hair, digging his knuckles into his stomach.
You turn to call for Coach, anyone who can make sure Woonhak doesn’t get hurt, but the loud sounds must’ve already alerted them because most of your team rushes in to pull him backwards. Taesan has an arm around his torso, but he still tries to claw his way out, aiming another punch at the now bleeding boy.
It’s mayhem: there’s staff rushing in at the commotion, both coaches prying the boys apart, and between all of this, Woonhak still has his vice grip on the poor guy’s hair, glaring daggers into his bruised face.
“STOP THIS ABSOLUTE MADNESS!” yells Coach Woo, finally managing to throw Woonhak off into Leehan’s trusty arms. “Both of you!”
“He was hurting y/n.” Woonhak’s voice is cold as ice as he twists around to get another punch in.
“Go back to the bus. Chenle, take him,” the coach instructs and the captain does as told, grabbing Woonhak by the scruffs like he was a stray cat, non-verbally asking Nicholas to block his sight of the boy that was sliding onto the ground in a bloody mess.
Woonhak is seething all the way there, pushed up against the front row where someone can keep an eye on him at all times. What had started off as a pleasant day is now marred by uncomfortable gloom.
“y/n, are you okay?” Coach asks you as you process the shock of the events. You nod, letting him guide you back in a gentle voice.
You end up next to Leehan, who offers you a gummy as his own strange way of consolation—you refuse but not without a thankful smile. The ride back home is unnervingly quiet, not a soul daring to bring up the incident.
To calm yourself down, you reach into your bag to pull out a textbook to read, but your hand brushes against a folded note.
A letter?
It's addressed to you, with a ‘from your Woonhak’ sprawled in small letters beneath it.
Your breath hitches.
You don’t count many times you reread his words, just that you don’t even realise that the bus is pulling up into the parking lot of your school. Coach Woo is talking over the phone, arguing with someone in hushed tones as the rest of you exit one after the other, heading for the locker room or back home.
Woonhak is gone before you can grab hold of him.
You suppose it’s a good thing that the boy is so predictable—you know exactly where to find him: spread-eagle on the floor of the empty, dark gymnasium, staring up at the lowered basketball net. The only light is from the sliver of space between the almost closed door.
He doesn’t spot you approaching on light feet, quietly breathing out a “Hak,” until he turns to see you.
“y/n?” Woonhak’s body reacts before his mouth does, already leaning to stand up. But you motion him to sit back down, taking a seat opposite to him, crossing your legs and pulling out the familiar first aid bag.
He might not have mentioned it but you had noticed the wound on his face—a clean cut across the middle of his lower lip, splitting the skin there in two. “Don’t get used to this, I’ll feel like you keep getting hurt just so I’ll tend to you.” You whisper, a hint of mirth there.
Woonhak doesn’t seem to realise. “What are you doing here?”
You give him an obvious glance, wondering why he’d even ask that question. “Coach isn’t mad at you, by the way.” You say instead.
“Ha!” Woonhak flops back onto the ground, his arms spread above his head. “He said they might revoke our trophy,..and the qualification for the finals. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you.” You roll your eyes. “Plus, I can explain to them it wasn’t your fault...I mean,..I’m the one who-”
“Don’t even think of finishing that sentence.” He glances sideways with narrowed eyes, voice clipped. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Those guys were the ones who…”
Silence dawns on the space between you, words unsaid but understood anyways.
You speak after a beat, looking down at your lap. “I got your letter.”
“...Oh.”
“You said you wanted to say something to me if you won today.”
His mouth is parted, breath suspended in the moment of not knowing what he should say. Eventually, he settles for, “We don’t really win if we lose our spot.”
You can’t hold back the small huff of laughter that escapes you, shaking your head at his petulant response. “You’re impossible.”
He pouts. “You already know what I wanted to say to you, don’t you?”
You shrug, taking out your trusty ice pack and ointment, “Come here.”
He obeys, getting up to scoot closer, somehow ending up framing your knees with his legs. You kneel to hold his hands in yours, assessing the reddened scrapes on his knuckles, carefully squeezing out a bit of ointment for the broken skin there. He hisses in pain, but one gentle look from you is enough for him to quieten down.
You hand him the ice pack for his lips so he can take care of it himself.
“Can I answer now?” You ask as he’s preoccupied, startling him.
He waits a breath, then nods.
Woonhak doesn’t expect you to take his hand in yours, bringing it closer to your lips and pressing a gentle kiss to his palm.
He gulps, a shiver running down his spine.
You meet his eyes, and see something flicker beneath it, and before you know it, you’re gravitating to meet halfway in the middle—you kneeling with your hands on his shoulders for support, and his hands coming up to hold your waist. He hisses sharply as your mouth tastes metal, right over his split lip—but before you can move away, he’s diving back in desperately.
When you do part eventually, the little shit has the audacity to say, smirking, “So was it my biceps?”
You scoff without any real bite, leaning in to peck the corner of his smile, not managing to kiss it away, “No one's ever taken a hit to the head for me—that has to count for something right?”
Woonhak thanks whichever deity wrote his fate to have Taesan throw a basketball at him on that destined day.
“Coach told me to say you did the right thing.” You add, brushing away a non-existent blemish on his cheek with your thumb, holding him in place. “And that they won’t take away the trophy from us...,those guys are getting blacklisted off of championships.”
He lets out a sigh of relief, letting his forehead come to rest at your neck. “Thank god.”
You giggle, “And here I thought you weren't afraid.”
“Hey-” His breath ghosts over your neck. “What is this?...” There’s a pinch of nervousness in his voice, as though he’s scared of your answer. “...What are we?”
You hold him closer, letting him nuzzle into your skin, your hands coming up behind his spine. “Anything you want us to be.”
Woonhak sighs again, and even though you can’t see him, you feel him grin against you. In the middle of the empty basketball court, the two of you sit intertwined—two bodies that might as well just be one.
“y/n, I love you.” Woonhak whispers, mentally ticking off the fourth step off of his guide.
You smile softly, “I know.” And then a moment, to make sure he knows your words aren’t just an impulse. Then- “I love you too,..Unagi.”
He presses closer to you, never wanting to be apart again—and even if he doesn’t need to repeat himself, he whispers those three words over and over again, until you’re both a mess of shared breath and pressed skin.
It’s a golden summer evening when Woonhak falls in love for the second time—and he has no doubt there will come a third time, and then a fourth, and countless others—and that every single time, it will be with you.
some extra notes on this fic!
𓂃۶ৎ𓂃 masterlist𓂃۶ৎ 𓂃upcoming works 𓂃۶ৎ𓂃navigation𓂃۶ৎ𓂃
NEW MATCH FOUND . . . You’ve always had a huge thing for emo boys—so much that your friends made it their mission to set you up with every single one they could find. But no matter how many blind setups or awkward hangouts, none of them ever sparked anything real. At least, not until he came along. The only problem? He just so happened to be your brother Sungho’s best friend. and before you even realized, Sungho and your friends were already scheming behind your back to push you two together.
OR IN WHICH! In which every failed setup finally leads to the right boy—taesan, the emo best friend you weren’t supposed to fall for. And while you’re too busy denying the obvious, everyone else is one step ahead, planning ways to make sure you don’t miss your chance.
MATCH MADE IN HEAVEN! brother’s bestfriend!taesan x fem!reader (ft. boynextdoor , yunah from illit , rei from ive , jihoon from tws , anton from riize , zhang hao from zb1 + tba )
THIS CONTAINS › smau romcom crack love at first sight strangers to lovers some written chapters high school au profanity bad humor mentions of death jokes (lower case intended)
STATUS -> currently ongoing! [sep 2 — ??]
🗒️ AUTHOR’S NOTE! › just yesterday my ideas were all bad in my mind until @ihankaji came 🩶 spent at least a week to think of an interesting plot lmaoo 😭 hope this will be a fun smau! updates will start in a week :)
˗ˏˋ 𝝡𝝪ꓴ𝖭𝗚ᒍ𝖠𝗘'𝗦 ᒍ𝝤ꓴ𝙍𝖭𝖠𝗟 (𝗇𝗼t 𝖺 𝖽𝗂𝖺𝙧𝘆!!!) ✏️ a myung jaehyun serie
prólogo Jungkook didn't know what to do; he tried everything to tone down his son's energetic behavior after countless teacher's notes, but when he saw how his son loved to write him appreciation letters ever since he learned how to write (and how calm he stayed for more than five minutes), the idea of a diary came to his mind. But he didn't know that his son would love that journal (his son's words) so much to even write about his first enemy, because why would you not write about that girl with pigtails and a beautiful smile who didn't share some of her crayons with him?
elenco myung jaehyun × fem!reader
géneros childhood enemies to soulmates, slight slowburn, teeth-rooting fluff, attempts of humor, comfort
antes de leer appearance of: BOYNEXTDOOR members, AESPA Winter, BAEMON Rora, NJZ Hanni (this story was before the MHJ scandal), ZB1's Hanbin, ILLIT Iroha, and IVE Wonyoung as babies, an INFINITE amount of grammatical errors for obvious reasons, ENHYPEN Sunghoon as Taesan's older brother, and BTS Jungkook as Myungjae's dad.
# palabras tba
author's post it! THIS SMAU (I'm not sure if you can consider it that way due to how I implemented it) IS BACK. I wanted to make a series out of this idea that I've had in my head for over a year now, bringing it back with updates that came to me after leaving the platform in the past, and with that, this story. The OGs may remember it, and for those who are new here, this story was published last year and remained unfinished, but I decided to actually finish it.
𝗖𝗔𝗦𝗧! 𝙠𝗼𝘻 𝖼𝘩𝗂𝗹𝖽𝖼𝖺𝙧𝗲 ▹ 𝙧𝗲𝗹𝖺t𝗂𝘃𝗲𝙨!
𝗦𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝟬: 𝗦𝗰𝗿𝗶𝗯𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀
0.0: expand your creativity, son
0.1: dear journal, i don't like her!
0.2: BETRAYED!!!!
0.3: i h8 sharing!
0.4: touch & dance!
0.5: she looks normal (written chapter)
0.6: pink plants r dum
0.7: leave.me.alone!
0.8: not y/n BUT...
0.9: bday boy (written chapter)
10: new year, same journal
11: WE WILL BE FIVE + ANNOUNCEMENT
Yknow what I dont’t understand is how some people write about minors on this app.
I’m not naming names but ya’ll know who im tslling about.
They’re literally minors. I don’t care if it’s fluff, crack, or “innocent romance” it’s still crossing a line.
Real underage idols are not your fictional characters to project on. Turning them into ships or scenarios, no matter how “harmless” it looks, is still exploitation.
If you want to write fanfic, there are countless groups with adult members or endless fictional universes you can use.
Stop normalizing the sexualization and romanticization of kids
enemies to lovers w seonghyeon x reader ??? 🫢🫢🫢 just an idea lolliiii YOU GOT GREATTTTT WORK FRR LOVE U AND UR STORIES LOTSSS
@ROASTMENOT! ┈─ SEONGHYEON
❪ 싫어하다 ❫ fluff - drabble (trailer or an experiment?) - seonghyeon x f!reader ノ social media!au, not proofread 〃 ★ you, being the very closed-off person you are, spend most of your time alone—or scrolling through social media. that is, until someone appears who absolutely does not match your vibe. (🗨️) 0.7k words
riri’s note , I love you too non & tysm!! i actually twisted this a bit so that I could dump this an experiment.
EVERYTHING POSTED IN THE BROWN/GOLDEN LAYOUT WOULD BE EXPERIMENTS AND A SILENT QUESTION : SHOULD THIS BE TURNED INTO AN LONG FIC?
You can’t help but type in fury as a new comment pops up: “nah he’s mid.” On the very post you had uploaded about your favorite Idol. How dare this stranger think it’s okay to diss your ultimate bias? YOUR. BIAS. OF. ALL! Normally, you’d just delete the comment, like you always do, but this time your eyes freeze on the username. This same user. This freaking same username ‘@songforseongz’. Has been bothering you from the last week. From every post since.
Be it a photo of your favorite group, a song snippet, or even just something mundane you ate—you name it, he shows up. And you’re not the type to back down. Heck, your friend Iroha has countless times begged you to block him, but you’re petty. Very petty. Instead of blocking him like a normal person would, you double down, giving as good as you get.
Sometimes you even turn on post notifications just to be the first to comment once he uploads something. Not that anyone else bothers—maybe one or two likes here and there, and often one of those is from you. You tell yourself it’s a kind act, doing God’s work. Or at least you make yourself believe it is.
/the sunset looks pretty today /
And you had typed first, smirking. And as expected, the little digital war had begun. He posts, you reply: “It always looks pretty, but how would you know? You’re always inside like a roach.” Like two dancers trading barbs, you’ve somehow switched roles since that day. He stops commenting for a bit after that, but the game continues for you. You poke fun at him, snickering to yourself, even as it irks you that you’re turning into the very thing that annoyed you in the first place.
And then, sitting inside the classrom—a notification.
/ standing outside the new classroom I’ll be going to… kinda nervous. /
You hesitate for a second, suspecting it’s just for him, like a posting diary and yet still, you sneakily pull out your phone, noting the distinct red band on his wrist in the post. Fingers hover over the keyboard, ready to fire a snarky reply about it, when—snap—your phone is gone. Heart lurching, you close your eyes, brace for the inevitable, and slowly peek up to see her.
“Do you not know the rules? This is the second time this week,” Mrs. Choi’s voice cuts through the room, sharp and cold, echoing across the classroom. You slump further into your chair, eyes buried on your lap, counting down the seconds until she moves away. Relief is fleeting, though, because a voice from outside follows quickly: “Excuse me…?”
Your phone remains in Mrs. Choi’s hands as she lays it on her desk. You sigh, silently begging that this doesn’t reach your parents. That you would get your phone back without a call at home.
“Ah, the transfer student?” Mrs. Choi mutters, her tone cruel yet oddly soft, as if she just enjoys pointing out your incompetence while being sweet to everyone else in the classroom. The guy standing outside nods, polite, but you barely spare him a glance. Whoever he is, he already needs to stay away. That’s the rule for everyone—boy or girl, doesn't matter.
Until your gaze drifts to your phone on the teacher’s desk, then the wristband, just slightly to the right. The veins in his arm—no, no, not just veins—the same red band. The same one the user who has been your unspoken online nemesis wears. AND HE WAS ALSO STANDING RIGHT OUTSIDE YOUR CLASSROOM? Heart skipping a beat, your mind races: Could this really be…?
“Hi, I’m Eom Seonghyeon. Hope we get along,” he says, bowing politely. Your face turns pale, instantly burying itself in your book. A coincidence? Maybe. But his name matches the username you’ve been clashing with online—@songforseongz = Seongz = Seongs = Seonghyeon. It has to be him.
You peek cautiously over the top of your book, muttering a silent curse. And then—your phone rings. Shit. You forgot to silence it. Mrs. Choi shoots you a sharp look, cold and accusing, and you sink further, wishing the floor could swallow you whole.
“Go give her the phone so she can silence it,” Mrs. Choi instructs. He complies as he walks up to you, you wait reluctantly, reaching for it—but Seonghyeon’s hand is already there.
He stands there, neutral smile in place, clearly confused, while you scramble to maintain the illusion of composure. Inside, your brain is screaming. If he knows it’s you—the one he’s been beefing off with online—your carefully curated reputation at school & this class will be vanished. Every sarcastic, petty comment you’ve made, every time you’ve pushed him back, all of it could explode in a single glance.
This guy is a no-no. You need to avoid him at all costs. NO MATTER WHAT.
❪ 귀여운 ❫ fluff - scenarios - cortis x f!reader ノ boyfriend!au, not proofread 〃 ★ the boys as boyfriends getting jealous. (🗯️)
ZHAO JAMES
“James has smaller tho,” your male friend added, a harmless comment as he flexed his muscles. You couldn’t help but let out an awkward laugh, though for James, that laugh was all the implication he needed to assume you agreed. His eyes instantly narrowed, glaring at the two of you—throwing daggers with his gaze while you remained too invested in the conversation to notice the storm you had stirred up.
He wasn’t the type to make a scene or call it out in public, but his silence spoke louder than words. The longer he stayed quiet, the more obvious it became—his jealousy practically flashing across his face like subtitles translating unspoken emotions. With that classic jealous expression, he forced a half-smile at the guy, before slipping an arm around your waist. A small, smug smirk followed, as if to silently remind him that no matter how big his biceps were, you were still James’.
But the moment the guy disappeared from sight, James’s hand dropped from your waist, his strides carrying him ahead of you like a prince who’d just been betrayed by his princess. “Hey?! You’re supposed to be the guy in this relationship, not me,” you called out, half-laughing, half-stunned at his sulking.
“Oh, my sweet angel, come back. I’m so sorry,” you baby-talked dramatically, not caring that you were on the street. Luckily, it was empty—because a second later, you burst out laughing hard at yourself, while James walked on, slightly embarrassed but unable to hide the way your silly voice cracked through his pout.
MARTIN EDWARDS
Martin couldn’t help but roll his eyes as he watched your friend lean in a little too close—ESPECIALLY WHEN MARTIN WAS RIGHT THERE!!! And even though it was just because you were showing something on your phone, Martin absolutely hated the way your friend rested his chin on your shoulder. That was his thing. Something only Martin got to do. You had even “signed” that agreement before you started dating, alongside twenty other rules you barely skimmed through—thinking it was just him being cute. But Martin? He took it very, very seriously.
“Isn’t this cute?” your friend asked, and you simply smiled, nodding. Martin was basically fuming at this point, heat simmering as he watched the two of you. And of course, being the one who couldn’t keep quiet, he cut in with an annoyed tone: “Baby, it’s getting late… why don’t we go home already?” The way he dropped that baby was less affection and more of a warning shot toward your friend, his grip firm as he tugged you by the hand without so much as a glance back.
But the second you both got home? He collapsed dramatically on the bed, turning away like a sulking child. You sighed, hands on your hips as you watched his broad back before climbing onto the mattress and smothering his face with kisses until his jealousy melted away. Honestly, you sometimes wondered why Martin—towering at 6ft—always needed the baby treatment in your relationship. But you couldn’t stop yourself. Not when you knew he did the exact same thing to you whenever you were the one grumpy and jealous.
KIM JUHOON
“Omg!! Look at him, Juhoon!!!” you gushed, patting his shoulder, trying to get him to rewatch Niki’s part in the MV for the tenth time. He rolled his eyes, biting back the urge to tell you to just go marry the guy if you were going to fangirl this hard. Instead, the words stayed trapped in his throat—replaced by the sudden press of his lips against yours. The kiss stole the breath right out of you, his hand firm on your shoulder, keeping you pinned against the back of the couch while your hands flew to his chest, desperately trying to push him off from how dizzy he was making you feel.
When he finally pulled away, he acted far too nonchalant, scrolling through Pinterest and swiping at pictures of pretty girls. But his eyes flickered to you in the corner of his vision, waiting to see if you’d get just as jealous. Instead, you sat there on the bed, stunned into silence, lips still tingling from the out-of-nowhere kiss. This wasn’t like Juhoon at all.
You kept poking at him, asking why he did that, completely oblivious to the fact he’d been jealous and was trying to cover it up. The next day, though? All your Riki photocards were mysteriously missing, every saved aesthetic picture of him wiped from your phone. The culprit? None other than the guy who always pretends to be chill.
EOM SEONGHYEON
Seonghyeon is the type to only get jealous when you give your attention away for too long—because that’s when it finally clicks for him. You staring at your phone and smiling? No problem, that’s normal and he does the same. But laughing at your screen, blushing at whatever’s on it, all while he’s sitting right next to you? Yeah, something’s definitely up, and he can sense it.
His ears would burn red, embarrassed by his own thoughts, as he starts poking your cheek harder than usual. “You’ll dig a hole in my cheek if you keep pressing like that,” you mutter in annoyance, shifting onto your side until your eyes meet his. But instead of looking away like he normally would, he holds that eye contact—fifteen seconds, maybe more—almost like it’s some kind of challenge, leaving you wondering why he’s acting so strange.
He’d never outright admit that he’s jealous, but his actions would tell on him anyway: an arm slipping around your waist, pulling you close to fall asleep; a sudden kiss pressed into your hair; clinging even tighter to you in his sleep. Sometimes he’d even hide your phone behind him so you couldn’t reach it. It was painfully obvious what was going on, but you’d just brush it off as one of his clingy episodes.
AHN KEONHO
You came home without the hoodie you left in, and Keonho noticed instantly. You’d gone out with friends wearing it, but now you were back in just the plain white t-shirt you’d layered underneath. His brow shot up immediately—because if you’d actually given someone else that hoodie, the same one you wouldn’t even let him touch, let alone try on, then something was seriously off.
“My friend took it, his shirt was all sweaty and looked weird—” you explained quickly, but Keonho’s ears perked at one single word. “He??” he repeated in disbelief. You gave a sheepish nod, and without another word he turned his back to you, lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling like you’d just committed the ultimate betrayal.
“I’ll go and get my hoodie back if that’s what you want,” you offered, trying to ease his sulk, but that only made him whip his head around, glaring at you with the intensity of a puppy scorned. “You’re not taking that hoodie back,” he declared firmly, voice burning hotter than his expression. “We’ll buy a new one. A better one.”
Later on, he’d make an extra effort to pull you into matching hoodies, dragging you in front of a mirror for a selfie. The caption, before he posted it, said it all: proof she’s still mine, even if you manage to steal her hoodie, boo!! 😝❤️
— ✿ . one unexpected meeting in a fish shop turns disbelief in love at first sight into undeniable truth.
🍊 ノ leehan x fem! reader / use of foul language (plz they swear a lot, ok..?) , reader is downbad for leehan, use of pet names — baby , random time stamps omg. ( thats all i think , please do dm or comment if i should add more warnings! )
🗒️ AUTHOR’ S NOTE -> why is yhis gen so cute heh… i hope u guys will enjoy!! i wanted to make a lil something cus i was bored ^_^ , got the cat header from someone but i forgot huhuuu… pls do tell me if its urs 💔💔😞
🌻 ꒰ “ I swore that he smiled and I felt my heart drop. “
not everyone is good at playing obby’s on roblox, and you’re no exception to this rule: after a particularly nasty encounter with another player on roblox’s altitorture, you log into twitter only to find out that the very same player who publicly dunked on your gaming skills turns out to be anton lee, a well-known streamer who also happens to be a friend of a friend. fed up with his fans bombarding your dms with teasing remarks or jealous musings, you decide to end it once and for all by appearing on his next stream with a promise to get through an obby successfully. however, you realize that the only thing you’ll be successful at is falling for anton lee instead.
PAIRING. streamer!anton + fem!reader
GENRES + WARNINGS. non-idol au, streamer!anton au, crack, strangers to friends to lovers, rivals to lovers(?) | profanity, violent jokes, sexual jokes, y/n is horribly bad at games so that deserves a warning of its own, mentions of GOJO 🤢
STATUS. completed
PLAYLIST. electronic lover by breathe electric; there is a light that never goes out by the smiths; she won't go away by faye webster; she's got you high by mumm-ra; accidentally in love by counting crows; 青のすみか by tatsuya kitani
OMG dad!Jay having regular daddy-daughter dates??? she’ll never settle for the bare minimum or touch a struggle in the confidence department. Her standards are sky high! 💕🫶💗✨🌈💖💞🌈
(just a thought, not a request)
YES fs 😭 his daughter would never settle for less than she deserves, because Jay would grow her with so much love and respect. She’d be the type to instantly walk away if someone disrespected her even once (as she should!!!) 💗 A confident princess with sky-high standards 🤭
HOOKED, LIKE, AND SINKER ! — kim leehan x fem!reader SMAU
BLURB: the plan was simple: confess through cheesy fish puns until he figured it out. but nothing about loving leehan had ever gone according to plan, especially when he mistakes someone else for his "betta half."
CHAPTER 2:
— let's burn the bridge when we get there
(more under the cut!)
Leehan slung his bag over his shoulder, strolling down the hall to his locker. His afternoon class ran late, with their teacher taking up a few extra minutes to remind them of an upcoming project. His phone beeped a few times, the preview messages from his group chat filling up his lockscreen, urging him to hurry up so they can finally go to the PC cafe. All he needed was to grab a notebook from his locker and head out, but when the metal door swung open, something fluttered to the floor.
A folded piece of paper.
He bent down to pick it up, then opened it.
Dear Kim Leehan,
Love is an ocean and you’re my favorite fish.
From your betta half.
P.S. I like you.
He knew a love letter when he saw one. The words weren't even that good, but the corners of his lips tugged upward anyway. A small smile escaped before he could stop it. It had to be that fish pun. So cheesy, yet so right up his alley.
He leaned back against his locker, staring down at the note. He’d gotten his fair share of admirers in the past: a bunch of crumpled confessions slipped into his textbooks, chocolates on Valentine’s, packed lunches, and even a straightforward “I like you” after gym class, you name it.
But this? Nobody had ever tried to win him over with fish puns, which had been surprising since he had mentioned liking them a lot since freshman year.
And maybe that was exactly why it stood out.
Before he could tuck the letter safely into his pocket, two familiar voices cut through the hallway.
“Hyung!” Woonhak bounded over, with Taesan trailing behind him in at a casual pace. Woonhak was about to say something, most likely another variation "hurry up!" as if he hadn't spammed that in the group chat already. But then Woonhak caught sight of the paper in Leehan's hands and, most importantly, the blooming blush on his cheeks.
“Ohhh.” Woonhak's eyes sparkling with mischief. “Is that a loooove letter?”
Leehan clicked his tongue, trying and failing to hide the note behind his back. “It’s nothing.” His still-pink cheeks did not help his case.
“Nothing?” Taesan raised a brow, snatching the paper out of Leehan’s hand before he could react. He scanned it quickly, a grin already spreading on his lips. “With the corniest fish pun? Of course you’d be into that.”
Leehan reached out, grabbing the note back.
Woonhak leaned over his shoulder. “So… do you know who it’s from?”
“Nope," Leehan said as he folded the note carefully.
“Then how are they getting a reply?” Taesan asked, clearly amused by the situation. “That is… do you plan on replying?”
Leehan hesitated, slipping the paper into his pocket. His heart was still beating a little too fast, and the blush hadn’t left his cheeks.
“I don’t know yet,” he said at last, shutting his locker with a soft clang. “I’ll think about it.”
He walked away, ignoring the snickers from his friends behind his back as he tried to contain his giddy smile.
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a/n: updates will be twice a week for now! (bc my ideas and will to write arent in sync hngg)
