Faux Colors
Chapter 5
Synopsis; one lives in a world under the weight of shadows the other lives in a world that screams.
"The sky is blue like Sacrifice by Elton John"
warnings; swearing, heavy themes
pairing;jeongguk x female reader
genre; angst, slowburn, smut, fwb word count; 5.6k
a/n: double update because exams will soon take me by my collar and beat my ass in an alley with military issued boots. also, remember, if you're still fuzzy on some details that's how it's intended. enjoy!
The basement archives of the university library didn't care about the sun. Down here, time was measured in the settling of dust and the rhythmic, distant hum of the HVAC system. It was a swamp of silence, thick and pressurized, preserved by rows of decaying paper and the heavy scent of old ink.
You heard him before you saw him.
The stairs groaned under a heavy, erratic rhythm—not the steady, clinical stride of the man who had cornered you yesterday. This was the sound of someone whose internal clock had been short-circuited. He moved through the narrow aisles, his leather jacket whispering against the stacks, until the air in your corner of the library shifted, displaced by his heat.
"I'm here," he said.
His voice was a wreck. It was lower than yesterday, jagged at the edges, sounding like a recording played too many times. You didn't look up immediately. You kept your eyes on the manuscript in front of you, listening to the way his breathing failed to find a steady tempo.
"You're late," you murmured. "And you're loud."
"I don't have time for the 'mysterious archive girl' routine today," Jeongguk snapped. He stepped closer, his shadow falling over your desk, smelling of cold morning air and a lingering, expensive floral scent.
You finally lifted your head, your gaze traveling up the wrinkled fabric of his shirt. Your eyes stalled at his neck.
He was pale—almost translucent in the harsh, fluorescent light of the archives. You found yourself focused on the sharp line of his jaw, watching the way his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. The texture of his skin was fascinating, it looked like fine-grained paper, taut and pulsing with a frantic energy. You traced the corded muscle of his throat with your eyes, noting the slight sheen of sweat despite the chill.
Then, your focus caught on a blemish.
Just below the hinge of his jaw, there was a stain. It wasn't uniform, the edges were blurred, a dark, mottled bloom against the perfection of his skin. Your stomach did a weird, cold flip. It wasn't a bruise from a fight. It was a mark of possession.
You almost scoffed, the sound catching in your throat.
"Oh my god," you breathed, a sharp, mocking smile tugging at your lips as you leaned back. "Is that a hickey?"
Jeongguk stiffened. He didn't reach up to cover it—he was too arrogant for that—but his eyes darkened, a flash of defensive heat crossing his face.
"People have sex, Void," he rasped, his voice dropping into a defensive, jagged low. "What? Are you Virgin Mary?"
"People have sex and don't flaunt it," you countered, your eyes fixated back on that ugly, blurred mark. It felt like a smudge on a clean master track.
That's so highschool. So frivolous, so unsophisticated.
You've never been marked like that by Minho.
"You're one to talk, multilingual. Aren't you supposed to be good with tongues? Bet Minho enjoys that."
The air in the archives didn't just feel heavy, it felt electric, like the static before a storm. The mention of Minho hadn't just struck a chord—it had snapped a string.
You didn't flinch, but the heat in your chest flared. He was deflecting, trying to claw back some ground because he knew you'd caught him looking messy and marked.
"Minho is civilized," you said, your voice a cool, steady contrast to the jagged edge of his. "He doesn't feel the need to leave a trail of breadcrumbs just to prove he was there. He's about the quality of the connection."
Jeongguk stepped even closer, crowding your space until the scent of him—cold air and that lingering, feminine perfume—was all you could breathe. He loomed over the desk, his presence a dark, physical weight.
"Civilized is just a nice word for boring," he countered, his eyes dropping to your lips with a predatory slowness before snapping back to yours. "Is that what you like? Someone who stays within the lines? Someone who doesn't make you lose your breath?"
"I like someone who knows when to be quiet," you shot back, sliding the paper toward the very edge of the desk, teasing him with it. "Something you're clearly struggling with."
"Why would anyone be quiet during sex. It should be noisy, it's not a church." He retorted while sliding his hands on the desk, anchoring himself so he can get closer.
Everything in your brain signaled him as danger, danger, back down.
You didn't back down, even as he anchored himself to the desk, invading your personal space with that infuriating, pure confidence distilled into 5'10 man.
"Noise is just compensation for a lack of technique," you countered, crossing your arms over your chest. "Minho is sophisticated. He doesn't need to perform for the neighbors like he's trying to win an award. It's consistent. It's balanced."
Jeongguk let out a dry, incredulous huff, his head tilting as he scanned your face. "Consistent? Balanced? You're talking about sex like it's a budget spreadsheet. That sounds miserable."
Tongue went over lip piercing, wetting it, playing with it.
You noticed.
"It's called maturity, Jeongguk. You should try it sometime," you snapped, though your pulse was betraying you, thumping a frantic rhythm against your ribs. "Not everyone wants to sound like a construction site just to feel something."
"A construction site?" He let out a sharp, genuine laugh, his eyes flashing with a sudden, boyish mischief that felt more dangerous than his brooding. "If that's what you think intensity is, then Minho really has you brainwashed. Sex shouldn't be 'balanced,' Void. It should be a mess. It should be loud enough that you forget your own name, let alone your 'sophistication.'"
He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a low, mocking whisper that grazed your ear.
"But I guess if you're happy with 'civilized' and quiet, then you're getting exactly what you deserve. A gold star for being a good girl and a boring night's sleep."
He's taunting you.
"I am not boring," you hissed, the words feeling childish the moment they left your lips.
"You're standing here arguing about acoustics with a guy who has a hickey on his neck and hasn't slept in twenty-four hours," he pointed out, a smug, lopsided grin growing on his face as he finally swiped the paper from under your fingers. "You're at least a little bit curious about the 'noise,' otherwise you wouldn't be blushing."
"I'm not blushing, it's the lighting in this basement," you lied, reaching out to push him back, but your hand landed right on the warm, solid center of his chest.
Warm. He's so warm.
Heat was literally radiating off his chest, almost burning your hand. It came up and down with his breathing.
His stupid fucking chest. You could feel his muscles through the thin cotton. Why are you focused on his muscles right now?
Jeongguk didn't move. He stood ten toes down, looking down at your hand on his shirt and then back at your eyes, his gaze heavy and challenging.
"Sure," he murmured, his thumb brushing the edge of the paper he now held. "The lighting. Keep telling yourself that while you go back to your 'sophisticated' silence. I'm going to go actually use this data."
He turned on his heel, tossing a casual wave over his shoulder without looking back. "Have fun at 'church' tonight, Void."
"Wait. What about my colors lesson?"
Shit. You just did what you said you'll end.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Jeongguk stopped mid-turn, his eyebrows arching toward his messy hairline. "Your what?"
"You said you'd show me the true colors in sounds," you reminded him, trying to keep the annoyance out of your voice. You were irritated by his arrogance, by that mottled mark on his neck that screamed 'I got laid last night' , yet you were too intrigued to let him walk away.
You wanted to see if he actually had the depth he claimed, or if he was just all high-end distortion.
He turned back fully, a slow, knowing smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. "A bit eager for a 'sophisticated' girl, aren't you?"
"I'm interested in the theory. Don't flatter yourself."
"Fine," he murmured, his gaze dropping to the hand you still had resting on the desk, then back to your eyes. "You want to see the colors? Then put away the manuscripts. If we're doing this, I'm not teaching you in a basement that sounds like a padded room in a looney bin."
"Where, then?" you asked, your voice echoing slightly against the stacks. "If this tomb isn't good enough for the great Jeongguk's 'theory,' where exactly are we going?"
He didn't answer immediately. Instead, he looked toward the small, high window near the ceiling where the morning sun was fighting to bleed through the grime. "In the wild," he said, the words sounding almost poetic coming from someone who looked like they'd just crawled out of a rave. "You can't understand texture by looking at a waveform in a vacuum. You need the mettle. The wind. The way sound bounces off something that isn't sound-proofed to hell and back."
You checked your watch, a small frown deepening. "I have a seminar in twenty minutes."
"Skip it."
You blinked, certain you'd misheard him. "Excuse me? I have CAT"
"What's that?"
He fake yawns. Typical.
"Critical Archival Theory"
"Skip. It. ," he repeated, punctuating each word with a tap of the paper scrap against his palm. "The sun is out, the humidity is low, and I actually have energy. The linguistics of dead poets will still be there tomorrow. This light won't."
"I don't skip classes, Jeongguk," you said, your tone shifting into that civilized register he seemed to hate. "My transcript is—"
"Hah! Wow," he interrupted, a sharp, delighted laugh breaking his brooding mask. He leaned back against the bookshelf, shaking his head. "So you are Virgin Mary after all. No marks on the neck, no missed lectures. You're like a perfectly oiled machine, aren't you?"
The mockery stung, mostly because he wasn't entirely wrong. You were the girl who arrived five minutes early and never colored outside the lines.
"I'm responsible," you corrected, though it sounded weak even to your own ears.
"You're boring," he countered, stepping back toward the stairs. "Stay here then. Rot with the manuscripts. I'll go find the colors by myself."
He didn't wait for a response. He just started climbing the stairs, his boots thudding with a finality that made your chest tighten. You looked at the heavy, dusty book on your desk—the one you were supposed to be analyzing for your 11:00 AM—and then at his retreating back.
The intrigue won.
"Jeongguk!" you called out, slamming the book shut. The sound was loud—unrefined and messy—and it felt surprisingly good.
He stopped at the top of the landing, looking down at you with a slow, victorious grin.
"Change of heart, Mary?"
"I'm coming," you muttered, grabbing your bag and ignoring the tiny voice of your conscience screaming about your attendance record. "But if I fail this semester because I was out 'hunting textures' with a guy who smells like a garden of honey dipped flowers vomited on him, I'm killing you."
"Fair enough," he said, his eyes bright. "Now hurry up. We're losing the frequency."
Walking out of the library felt like stepping from a muted, monochrome film into a world where the saturation had been dialed up to a dizzying level. The swamp of students was in full effect, a humid, buzzing mass of bodies moving across the quad.
As you followed Jeongguk, you realized he didn't just move through the crowd, he sliced through it. And people noticed.
"Yo, Amaranth! That snare hit on the track last night was mental!" a guy in a thrifted oversized sweater shouted as he skated past.
Jeongguk didn't stop, but you saw his shoulders tense for a split second, a micro-reaction he couldn't quite mask.
"Check the mix on the low-end, Andy," Jeongguk called back, his voice steady but lacking its usual biting edge. "It's bleeding too much purple. Tighten it up."
You hurried to keep pace with him, your mind snagging on the name. "Amaranth? That's your tag or something?"
"It's just a name," he muttered, his pace quickening as you left the crowded quad and headed toward the overgrown trails of the park.
"It's a flower," you countered, a small smirk playing on your lips. "I figured you'd go for something like 'Subwoofer' or 'Glitch.' But a flower? That's almost... like you have a soul. Deep even."
"Don't start," he rasped, avoiding your gaze. "It's not about the flower. It's about the frequency of the word. The way the 'A' vibrates."
"Liar," you whispered, sensing a shift in the air. "There's more to that."
" If there was you wouldn't know about it now would you?"
You scoffed. Of course.
You turned the word over in your mind as you walked, trying to reconcile the sleep-deprived man in front of you with the image of a plant.
Amaranth.
You knew the name from your old botanical sketches and elective history credits. It wasn't a rose, it wasn't delicate or traditionally "pretty." In fact, it was a bit of a contradiction—much like him. It was a hardy, stubborn thing, often resembling a dense, weeping plume of deep crimson that looked more like a velvet wound than a bloom. It was a grain as much as a flower, something ancient and unyielding that could grow in the harshest soils.
It was an odd choice for a producer who dealt in high-tech distortion and cold architecture. It felt too organic, too rooted.
Too 'human with feelings'.
"Amaranth," you repeated under your breath, a small frown tugging at your lips. "It's a weed in some parts of the world, you know. Persistent. Almost impossible to kill once it takes root."
Jeongguk's stride stuttered for a fraction of a second, his boots scuffing against the pavement. He didn't look back, but you saw the way his jaw tightened.
"It's also called 'love-lies-bleeding,'" you added, your voice trailing him like a ghost. "Not exactly the most optimistic branding for an underground producer. Why that one? Why not something... cleaner?"
"Because." he muttered, cutting the conversation short.
Why is he so cagey all of a sudden?
"Hey, Gguk! You coming to the warehouse set later?" a girl in funny shaped glasses called out, her eyes lingering on him—and then flicking to you with a look of pure confusion.
"Maybe," he tossed back, his voice effortless.
It was strange. He was known in this weird, intangible way—not like a campus celebrity, but like a localized urban legend. Everyone seemed to have a piece of him, or at least a fragment of his work.
"Do you have a fan club I should be aware of?" you muttered, sidestepping a group of freshmen. "Or do you just hand out your business card with every drink you buy?"
"It's a small scene," he said, dodging a frisbee without looking. "People listen. I just provide the signal. Besides, I thought you liked 'civilized' anonymity, Mary. Does the spotlight sting?"
"It's just noisy," you countered, repeating your earlier critique. "And stop calling me that. I'm literally committing academic suicide for a 'color lesson' I'm starting to think is just a scam to get me to carry your equipment."
"I don't have equipment," he said, patting his pockets. "I have my ears and a phone. That's all the tech I need to dismantle your entire worldview."
You reached the edge of the campus, where the manicured lawns gave way to a rugged, overgrown park that overlooked the river. It was a pocket of the wild that felt detached from the university's frantic pace. The wind here had a different texture—sharper, carrying the scent of damp earth and distant traffic.
He led you to a concrete amphitheater that had been reclaimed by moss and graffiti. It was a brutalist structure, cold and echoing.
It was weirdly very him.
"Sit," he commanded, gesturing to a stone bench.
He pulled out his phone and flipped through a playlist that looked more like a sequence of encrypted files than a song list. He didn't hand you headphones. Instead, he set the phone on the concrete, the volume low, and sat beside you—close enough that you could feel the heat radiating from his shoulder.
"Close your eyes," he whispered, his voice losing its bratty edge and shifting into a focused frown line that landed right between his eyebrows.
"Jeongguk—"
"Eyes shut, Void. Don't think about the lyrics. Don't think about the melody. Just listen to the weight of the sound."
A track began to play. It wasn't music in the traditional sense, it was a deep, pulsing bassline overlaid with what sounded like glass shattering in slow motion.
"What color is that?" he asked, his breath ghosting over your temple.
"It's... green," you murmured, surprised by how quickly the image formed. "But not like the leaves of trees. Like a forest in a thunderstorm. Heavy."
"Exactly," he rasped, and you could hear the smirk in his voice. "Now listen to the friction in the high-end. That's the yellow bleeding in. That's the 'noise' you hate so much, but without it, the green is just a void. You see it now?"
You just nod.
This is a different side of him, he's passionate.
The silence in the amphitheater was different now—less like a vacuum and more like a shared breath. You looked up, squinting against the brilliance of the midday light, and for a moment, you didn't see the sky as just clear.
"What color is it to you?" you asked, tilting your head back.
Jeongguk didn't even hesitate. He stared upward, his eyes tracking a frequency only he could perceive in the vast expanse above.
"The sky is blue like Sacrifice by Elton John," he murmured, his voice dropping into that low, resonant register.
You paused, your head snapping toward him. "You listen to Elton John?"
He didn't look away from the sapphire expanse, though a small, defensive twitch pulled at his mouth. "Music is music, Void. Don't act like I can't appreciate a well-engineered ballad. It's a clean blue. No static."
The comparison caught you off guard—it was specific, melancholic, and strangely beautiful. It was a deep, sapphire blue that felt expensive and heavy, a color that didn't just sit there but pulsed with a certain rhythmic weight. That was your thing, you realized. He didn't use hex codes, he used the weight of a song.
"That track," you said, shifting your attention back to the phone on the concrete. "It's not just noise. It's... textured."
Jeongguk leaned back on his elbows, the aggressive persona softening as he watched the Sacrifice blue. "Most people hear a mess. They don't realize that every frequency has a weight. Taehyung is the only one who gets it without me having to explain. He's my lifeline, honestly. Since we were kids, he's been the one person who doesn't try to 'fix' my mix. He just lets me be."
The way he talks about him just highlights how it's not just a friendship. You're seeing cracks of a soul underneath all that arrogance.
He looked at you, his eyes scanning your face with a newfound curiosity. "He thinks you're interesting, you know. And he's usually right about people."
Heat climbs to your cheeks.
"He's a charmer," you replied. "But I'm just an archivist. I deal with dust and dead paper. Not exactly a rockstar vibe."
"Why the archives?" he asked, his voice losing its mocking edge.
"Because history has skeletons," you admitted. "Sound is fleeting, but an archive... you can trace where a thought came from. It's like mapping a soul through what it leaves behind."
Jeongguk was quiet for a moment, his gaze dropping to your bag. The silver tines of a kitchen fork peeked out from a side pocket. He let out a sharp, surprised laugh.
"Is that a fork?"
"It's a defensive weapon," you snapped, tucking it back in. "I walk home late from the library. A fork is effective and technically not a concealed blade."
He shook his head, a genuine, lopsided smile breaking through his exhaustion.
His smile was almost cute. Like a bunny.
He looked like a hard candy with a marshmallow center—all jagged edges until you hit the soft, introspective core. "You're a weird one, Void. A civilized archivist with a dinner utensil for a shiv."
"You're maybe not giving yourself enough credit," he added softly. "I just realized, I think you're actually not dumb. One would argue smart, perhaps."
The "perhaps" was a classic Jeongguk move—holding onto a sliver of arrogance even while handing you a peace offering. But as you sat there under that sky, you realized he was finally letting you see the blueprints.
You shifted on the mossy stone of the amphitheater, the fabric of your blouse rustling—a sound that, in this silence, felt like a spotlight.
Jeongguk's eyes traveled over you, not with the predatory heat from earlier, but with that clinical, obsessive focus of a man trying to solve a puzzle. He reached out, his fingers hovering just an inch from your sleeve.
"That shirt," he muttered, his head tilting as if he could hear the threads. "The color. It's not just maroon."
"It's silk, Jeongguk. It's just a blouse," you said, though you were hyper-aware of the space between his skin and yours. "I don't even know how maroon looks. This is grey"
"No, it's a powerful car revving," he countered, his voice low and certain. "Like a vintage engine catching at three in the morning. It's an electric maroon. It's got this... ridged, high-frequency energy that doesn't match your 'quiet archivist' persona at all."
You looked down at yourself, then back at him. "You're a freak, you know that?"
"I'm an expert," he corrected, leaning back again, the arrogance returning like a comfortable coat. "Most people see a color and think 'pretty.' I see your blouse and I hear the friction. I hear the potential for a crash. It's the same way I look at Taehyung. He isn't just a person, he's a warm, distorted synth pad. He's the safety net in a mix that's too sharp."
"And what about you?" you asked, emboldened by the sapphire sky. "What color are you today, Amaranth?"
He went still. The nickname—the one you don't know the story about, hung in the air between you like a sustained note.
"I'm gray," he said finally. "Like the static on a dead channel. Just a lot of information going nowhere."
"I don't think so," you disagreed, surprising yourself. "I think you're more like the sound of those archives. Heavy, pressurized, and full of things people are too lazy to dig for. You're not static. You're a record that's been played so many times the grooves are starting to burn."
Jeongguk looked at you, really looked at you, and for the first time, the he nearly looked vulnerable. He didn't have a witty comeback or a sharp deflection. He just sat there in the Sacrifice blue light, his shadow stretching toward yours.
"You're a lot more observant than you let on," he whispered, his hand trying close the distance to brush against your wrist, but failing.
"Maybe that's why you carry the fork. You see the world coming for you before anyone else does."
"I carry the fork because I'm practical," you joked, though your voice lacked its usual bite. "And because it makes guys like you realize I'm not a 'balanced' spreadsheet."
"Trust me," he rasped, his thumb grazing your pulse point, "I realized that the second you slammed that book shut. That was the first honest sound I've heard all week."
The wind picked up, swirling the scent of damp earth around the amphitheater. Jeongguk's hand was braced on the stone near your wrist, but he didn't close the gap. He remained a few inches away, a deliberate boundary of tension that felt more stifling than actual touch.
"So, the archivist and the fork," he mused, his voice vibrating in the quiet. "Tell me. Why the archives? Is it just about the skeletons, or is it because you like being the only one who knows where the secrets are buried?"
"It's about control," you admitted, staring at the space between your skin and his. "In the archives, everything has a place. Every letter, every ledger—it's preserved. It doesn't change. Out here, everything is... loud. People leave marks on each other, they make noise, they disappear. In there, I can hold a piece of 18th-century paper and it's exactly what it was three hundred years ago."
"Static and predictable," he whispered, a smirk ghosting his lips. "You're looking for a signal that never decays. That's why you're so annoyed by me, isn't it? I'm the entropy in your perfect system."
"You're a smudge on the glass," you corrected, tightening your grip on your own knees. "But I suppose even a smudge tells you something about the person who left it."
You looked at his phone, still resting on the mossy stone between you. "Play another one. Not a 'mess' this time. Show me something that isn't grey."
Jeongguk let out a soft hum, his fingers scrolling through his library with a practiced flick. "Fine. If you want a break from the distortion."
He tapped a file. A new sound filled the space—it was clean, a melodic piano sequence that felt like water droplets hitting a still pond, but underneath it, there was a faint, rhythmic thrumming, like a heartbeat or a distant train.
"That," he said, nodding toward the sky which was still that bruised, Sacrifice blue, though a couple clouds entered the scene. "That's the sound of a Sunday afternoon when you're ten years old and the house is finally quiet. It's a pale gold. Like honey thinning out in warm water."
"It's lonely," you whispered, leaning closer to the speaker, careful not to graze his arm.
"It's honest," he countered. "Most people try to fill that silence with lyrics or big choruses because they're scared of the gold. They're scared of what they'll hear if the noise stops."
He looked at you, his eyes dark and searching. "You're not scared of it, though. You've spent so much time in those silent basements, you've started to sound like the gold yourself."
The compliment—if that's what it was—felt heavier than any of his insults. You looked away, your eyes catching on the contrast of your electric maroon sleeve—that "revving engine" color—against the indifferent grey stone of the amphitheater.
"Is that why you brought me out here?" you asked. "To see if I'd crack in the light?"
"I brought you out here because I wanted to see if you were just a shadow or if you were live," he rasped. He leaned in, but only until his shadow merged with yours, his forehead still a breath away from touching yours. The scent of him was now a mix of cold wind and that lingering, feminine perfume. "And for the record? I think you're very much live, Void."
"Is that the 'smart' part of me you finally noticed?" you teased, your breath hitching as you stayed perfectly still.
"That," he murmured, his gaze dropping to your lips and staying there, "and the fact that you're the only person I've met who can talk about Elton John and tactical forks in the same breath without sounding like a total lunatic."
It felt almost surreal. It's the first time you two talked like normal people. No snarky comments, no arrogance.
It's nice. Maybe.
The atmosphere in the amphitheater was thick with a heavy, magnetic stillness. Jeongguk had just leaned in, his shadow merging with yours, his gaze anchored on your lips as he murmured about you being "live." The air felt charged, a delicate frequency held at a breaking point—until a sharp, familiar voice cut through the blue silence.
"Oh, thank god. I've been looking everywhere for you!"
The bubble didn't just pop, it evaporated. You both jerked back, the sudden distance between you feeling like a physical ache. Standing at the top of the concrete tiers was Sora. She looked perfectly polished, her presence a stark contrast to the mossy, brutalist stone and Jeongguk's disheveled, storm and ice energy.
This was her spot. The place she retreated to when she wanted to be "indie" for an hour or make out with whoever was currently topping her crush hierarchy.
It was always mostly girls from the engineering bulding.
Girl's got a type.
Seeing you there—the quiet, predictable bubble of softness—with a guy who looked like a walking midnight prayer, was clearly not on her bingo card.
Sora hurried down the steps, her eyes moving from your electric maroon blouse to the stranger sitting far too close to you. Sora loved you—she was the one person who saw past the "Archivist" label and knew the girl who was actually brilliant and a little bit weird—but that love came with a sharp, protective edge.
"I called you three times," Sora said, reaching you and immediately scanning your face for any sign of distress. Then, her eyes snapped to Jeongguk. She didn't see just a student, she saw a guy with a mottled mark on his neck who looked like trouble wrapped in high-end distortion. "And who is this?"
Jeongguk didn't stand. He didn't even try to be charming. The soft, introspective man who had been talking about sounds and the color of the sky vanished instantly. He leaned back on his elbows, a bored, entitled smirk sliding over his face.
The Amaranth flower grew thorns instantly.
"I'm the person whose lesson you're interrupting," he said, his voice flat and incredibly rude.
Sora's eyebrows shot up. She had zero patience for entitled asses, no matter how good their bone structure was. "A lesson? Is that what we're calling it?" She turned back to you, her hand resting protectively on your shoulder. "Babe, you missed the seminar. Minho was asking where you were. You know how he gets—he's already planned that lunch for later to celebrate your grade."
She wasn't being cruel, she was marking territory. She didn't know Jeongguk, and she certainly didn't trust the way he was looking at you. Mentioning Minho was her way of throwing up a "No Trespassing" sign.
Jeongguk's jaw tightened at the name. He looked at the hand on your shoulder, then up at Sora with a cold, dismissive glare. "Minho sounds like a predictable schedule. Maybe she wanted something with a bit more... amplitude today."
"Maybe she just forgot her watch," Sora countered, her voice hardening. She looked at the phone on the stone, still playing the golden piano track.
Jeongguk didn't wait for a formal goodbye. He stood up in one fluid, restless motion, the moss-covered concrete of the amphitheater seemingly unable to hold his weight anymore. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled, yellowed scrap of paper—the one with the metadata timestamp.
The end of his searching.
"I'm going," he said, his voice returning to that sharp, clipped cadence. He flicked the paper toward you, though he didn't let go, just letting you see the jagged handwriting one last time. "I have to find where this signal actually leads. Clearly, some of us have actual work to do, while others have... lunch dates."
He shot Sora a look that was pure, concentrated ice. Without another word, he turned and began to climb the stone tiers, his silhouette cutting a dark, discordant shape against the sky.
Sora waited until the sound of his footsteps had completely faded before she let out a breath that was half-hiss, half-sigh.
"God, I cannot stand his ass," she muttered, her hand still protective on your shoulder. "He is so incredibly entitled. Who does he think he is? 'Interrupting the frequency'? He sounds like a broken radio."
"He's just... different, Sora," you said softly, your eyes still fixed on the empty space where he'd been sitting.
"He's a nightmare," she corrected, turning you toward the park exit. "He looks like the kind of guy who would ruin your life just to see what the 'sound' of it breaking was like. And that mark on his neck? Please. He's trouble, babe."
You let her lead you away, the electric maroon of your blouse feeling duller now that the "Sacrifice" blue sky was beginning to fade.
"He called me 'live,'" you whispered, almost to yourself.
Sora stopped, looking at you with genuine concern. "What?"
"Nothing," you lied, clutching your bag—the silver fork inside clinking against your notebook. "Let's go. I don't want to keep the 'predictable schedule' waiting."
But as you walked back toward the campus, you couldn't shake the feeling that the archives were going to feel a lot quieter—and a lot emptier—without the smudge on the glass.
A smudge on the glass and a flower who shouldn't land with so much weight in your mind. It's just a flower.
You looked up one last time at the Sacrifice blue sky, wondering if Jeongguk was right—that some colors only matter when they're bleeding into the noise.
