Riwoo: It's really muggy outside, isn't it?
Sungho: If I look outside the window and there are mugs on the lawn, I will murder you.
Riwoo: *sips coffee from a bowl*
۶ৎ SYNOPSIS : you have done a lot of embarrassing things as a fan, but accidentally posting your own face on myung jaehyun's account might just top the list...
۶ৎ pairing : jaehyun x illit's 6th member!reader ۶ৎ genre(s) : smau, fluff ۶ৎ warning(s) : profanities, random timestamps ૮₍ ´ ꒳ `₎ა reader is jungkook's little sister, both lowk down bad for each other
۶ৎ A/N : hihi guys! this is my first ever smau oneshot! I honestly think it's pretty bad so I might delete this in a few days 😭 but I'll see how well it does first... 🥹I hope you still enjoy this nonetheless! (especially since I haven't posted in almost two whole months....)
SYNOPSIS : She lost everything to an injury that ended her tennis career before it began. He has everything she ever wanted—every trophy, every win, every dream she'll never live. For years, she hated him for it. But somewhere between resentment and admiration, between coaching from the shadows and watching him shine, the lines blurred. Now he's one match away from going pro, and she has to decide : can she watch him win and leave? Or will she finally admit that losing him hurts more than losing tennis ever did?
GENRES : Drama, Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining WARNINGS : chronic pain, career-ending injury, heavy angst, emotional breakdowns, grief/loss of identity, self-deprecating thoughts WORD COUNT : 17.3k words
DIRECTOR'S NOTE : First film to Lights, Camera, Action! LET'S GOOOOO!!! I'm so excited (and nervous...) for you all to read this🥹 Fun fact : I was partly inspired by 2521 for this story! Also, Sungho is SOOOO fine in these concept pics, he's my wife bro😝
MORE WORKS : navigation | bnd!masterlist
“You would've beaten me, wouldn't you?”
Two years too late for this question. It hangs in the air above the practice court while the sun bleeds into the chain-link fence, turning everything the colour of a wound that refuses to heal. You don't look at Sungho when you answer. You can't bear to see whatever expression he wears now, whether it's pity or curiosity or that careful gentleness he's adopted since you finally tore open the infected parts of yourself and showed him the rot underneath.
"Every single time."
Your voice doesn't waver. This, at least, remains certain in a world where certainty died the day your shoulder did. The girl you were at thirteen, before the injury, before the surgery that promised recovery but delivered chronic pain instead, before you learned that some doors close and lock and the hinges rust and no amount of wanting will ever pry them open again. She would have destroyed him. She would have loved every second of it too, the way you love things when you're young and unbroken and don't yet know that your body can betray you.
"I'm glad," he says.
You turn to stare at him, at this boy who has become your grief and your salvation in equal measure.
"You're glad?"
"That you still could." His knuckles have gone white against the racket handle, bloodless and stark. "Even if it's just in theory. Even if it only exists in the space between what was and what might have been."
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
The trophy case spans the entire wall of Lincoln Park High School's main corridor, and you notice it immediately because grief has taught you to seek out your own torture with the dedication of a penitent searching for splinters of the cross. Gold plaques catch the fluorescent lighting, each one engraved with achievements that should have been yours in another life, in the reality where your shoulder didn't explode at thirteen and leave you hollow. You stand there on the first day of high school, uniform still smelling like plastic packaging and new beginnings that feel like lies, and see his name repeated like a mantra, like a curse.
Park Sungho - Men's Singles Champion
Park Sungho - Regional Tournament Gold Medal
Park Sungho - Undefeated Season Record
On and on and on, an endless litany of everything you'll never be. Every trophy from the previous year belongs to him, this boy you've never met but already hate with an intensity that frightens you when you examine it in the dark hours before dawn. Your reflection in the glass shows a girl with hollow eyes and a chip on her shoulder the size of a tennis court, the size of all your dead dreams crystallized and mounted behind glass where you can't touch them, can't reclaim them, can only stare and remember and bleed internally.
"Impressive, right?"
The voice materializes beside you. A girl with a bright smile and a field hockey stick slung over her shoulder, oblivious to the violence of your silence. She follows your gaze to the trophy case with the easy admiration of someone who has never lost anything that mattered. "Park Sungho's a legend here. Apparently, scouts were already watching him in middle school. Can you imagine? He's probably going pro straight out of high school. My sister says he's the best player the school's ever produced."
Your throat closes. You manage a noncommittal hum and walk away before she can see your expression crumble into its component parts—rage, grief and envy so sharp it could draw blood. The old injury in your shoulder throbs. It always does when you're stressed, when you remember, when you see people achieving what you can't, a constant reminder of everything you lost at thirteen. You roll your shoulder absently, trying to ease the ache that no amount of physical therapy has ever truly fixed, that several different doctors have told you will never truly fix, that you'll carry until you die.
By lunchtime, you've heard his name fifteen times. By the end of the day, you've seen his face on four different posters congratulating him on last year's victories, his smile bright and uncomplicated in a manner yours hasn't been since before the injury. When you finally see him in person, surrounded by teammates in the cafeteria, laughing at someone's joke with an easy confidence that makes your chest constrict until you can't breathe, you understand this is going to be your life for the next four years.
Watching Park Sungho be everything you were supposed to be. Watching him breathe air that should have been yours.
ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅
You avoid him religiously, with the fervor of someone avoiding the scene of their own death. It's not difficult at first, he's a year ahead, your schedules don't overlap except in the spaces between classes where you've learned to make yourself invisible, a ghost haunting the periphery of a life you should have lived. But Lincoln Park's campus is only so large, and he's everywhere. Walking to class, you pass posters advertising the tennis team's next match, his name at the top in bold letters. In the library, people whisper about his latest victory, their voices carrying across the silence, each word a small cut. Even your PE teacher mentions him once, talking about his dedication and athletic excellence while you sit on the sidelines, injury excuse note clutched in your fist until the paper goes damp with sweat and the ink starts to blur.
The worst part, the part that makes you want to claw at your own skin until you bleed : he's nice. He's genuinely and infuriatingly nice. He holds doors open for strangers who will never know his name. He helps underclassmen with their locker combinations, patient when they forget the numbers, never condescending. He volunteers to clean up after school events, stays late picking up trash when everyone else has gone home. You watch him from across rooms and hallways, this portrait of perfection rendered in flesh and bone, and the hatred festers like an infected wound, spreading poison through your veins until you can taste it.
It's not his fault. Logic tells you this during the long nights when sleep won't come and you lie in bed counting all the futures you'll never have. He didn't cause your injury, didn't steal your future directly from your hands. But logic has no place in grief this profound, in loss this totalizing, and every time you see him—laughing with his friends, effortlessly perfect, unbroken and whole—you're reminded of the girl you used to be. Confident, talented, destined for greatness. That girl died on a practice court at thirteen when she landed wrong after a serve, felt her shoulder pop, heard her coach scream her name, and spent the next year learning that some damage carves itself into bone and stays there, a permanent tenant in the house of your body.
Two months into your first year, he approaches you directly, and you feel your entire body go rigid with panic.
You're at your locker, shoving textbooks into your bag with more force than necessary, each movement sharp with barely contained rage at nothing and everything. His voice arrives from behind, friendly and uncertain. "Hey, you're in my calculus class, right?"
You freeze and turn slowly around, dread pooling in your stomach like cold water. Up close, Park Sungho stands taller than he looks from a distance, with kind eyes that haven't yet learned cruelty and an uncertain smile that makes you want to scream. He holds a textbook against his chest, and there's a small bandaid on his thumb—probably from tennis practice, from the sport that should have been yours, from blisters earned doing what you can't.
"No," you lie, and your voice emerges flat, affectless.
"Oh." He blinks innocently, confused that it makes your chest ache with misplaced guilt. "I could've sworn... you sit by the window, third row? You always take notes in blue ink."
He's noticed you. He's been paying attention, cataloging details about you while you've been nursing your hatred from across the room. The realization makes your skin crawl.
"You're mistaken."
"I'm pretty sure—"
"You're wrong." Your voice emerges harsh, sharp enough that he actually flinches, and you watch his expression shift from friendly to hurt. "I don't know you. Leave me alone."
You slam your locker shut, the metallic clang echoes down the hallway, and walk away, heart pounding violently against your ribs, each beat painful. Behind you, you hear his friend laugh nervously and say, "Well, that was brutal, man. What did you even do?" You don't hear Sungho's response, but you imagine it's confused, hurt, bewildered by your hostility.
Good.
Let him feel a fraction of the pain you carry every single day, the weight of it crushing your spine, making it hard to stand upright.
That night, you lie in bed staring at your ceiling where you used to have posters of your tennis idols, now bare and blank, and hate yourself for being cruel to someone who was only trying to be friendly. The guilt sits heavy on your chest, making it hard to breathe. However, you remember the trophy case, remember his name engraved on every award you once dreamed of winning, remember that he gets to play and you don't, and the guilt evaporates like water on summer concrete, leaving only the bitter residue of your resentment. He gets everything—the sport, the glory, the unbroken body, the future bright and certain. He doesn't get your kindness too. He doesn't get to collect you like another trophy.
SOPHOMORE YEAR - THE FIRST SET
The tennis courts are empty at 11pm on a Friday, which is exactly why you're here, why you've been coming here in the dead hours when no one else is around to witness your grief.
You've avoided this place for over a year, taking long detours between classes to keep from even glimpsing the green courts through the fence, the sight of them enough to make your chest constrict with phantom loss. But tonight, after a particularly brutal day, after watching Sungho accept another trophy at a school assembly, everyone applauding until your ears rang, the principal shaking his hand with paternal pride, your PE teacher beaming as if he'd created him himself, you found yourself walking here without conscious decision. Muscle memory leading you back to the scene of your death, the way trauma survivors return to the sites of their destruction, seeking closure that never comes.
Now you stand at the fence, fingers hooked through the chain-link until the metal bites into your skin, staring at the painted lines of the court that used to be your second home. Your old tennis ball sits heavy in your jacket pocket, worn smooth from years of anxious fidgeting, the felt matted and discoloured, a talisman of your dead dreams that you carry everywhere because letting it go would mean accepting that it's over, and you're not ready for that. You'll never be ready.
The court looks the same as it did that last day, before everything shattered. Same net bisecting the space, same service boxes with their clean white lines, same baseline where you used to practice your serves for hours until your shoulder ached in a good and productive way. The ache meaning that you were improving, getting stronger, becoming the player you were meant to be. Not like now, when your shoulder aches from simply existing, from the crime of waking up and having a body that betrayed you at such a young age and has been betraying you every day since.
"I thought you hated tennis."
You spin around, heart leaping into your throat, pulse suddenly frantic. Sungho stands a few feet away, tennis bag slung over his shoulder and racket in hand, still in practice clothes, slightly sweaty, regarding you with an expression you can't quite read, curious, concerned, cautious.
"I do," you say automatically, the lie smooth and practiced.
"Then why are you here?" He takes a step closer, and you resist the urge to back away, to run, to maintain the distance you've worked so hard to build. "It's eleven at night. The courts are locked. You're just... standing here."
"None of your business."
He takes another step closer, and you can see his face more clearly now in the dim glow of the parking lot lights bleeding through the fence. His eyes search your face like you're a complicated equation, one where all the variables keep changing and the solution remains frustratingly out of reach. "You've been avoiding me for over a year. You take different hallways when you see me coming. You sit in different sections of the library. You left a study group once when I showed up." He pauses, and there's hurt in his voice now, raw and unguarded. "Did I do something to you? Because if I did, I'm sorry, but I don't know what it was. I don't understand what I did wrong."
"You didn't do anything." The words taste bitter, like medicine you're forced to swallow, acrid on your tongue.
"Then why—"
"Because I hate that I can't play tennis!" The confession rips out of you before you can stop it, loud and raw in the quiet night, echoing across the empty courts. Your voice cracks, splinters. "I hate that you can and I can't. I hate that you're good at it. I hate watching you win. I hate your name on every trophy, in every conversation. I hate that everyone talks about you like you're some kind of god, like you invented the sport. I hate—"
Your voice breaks completely. Tears stream down your face now, hot and unstoppable, years of grief and rage spilling out like a wound finally opened after being left to fester. All the pain you've been carrying, compressing into a dense ball of misery in your chest, erupts with volcanic force, and Sungho stares at you with wide, shocked eyes that reflect the distant lights.
"I had a career-ending injury when I was thirteen," you continue, and now that you've started, the words won't stop coming, a hemorrhage of truth. "Middle school regional championships. I was the favourite to win. Everyone said so. My coach, the other players, even my opponents' parents. My serve was perfect that day, my footwork was flawless, and I was up in the first set. And then I landed wrong after a baseline return, and my shoulder just—it tore. Complete rotator cuff tear, plus nerve damage, plus complications they didn't find until months later. They did surgery, told my parents I'd recover, that I'd be back on the court within a year. But I never did. There's permanent damage. Chronic pain. Nerve impingement that flares up randomly. I can't play anymore. I can't serve, can't do overhead hits, I can barely lift my arm above my head on bad days. Some mornings I wake up and my shoulder is screaming and I haven't even moved yet."
You're gasping now, barely breathing between sobs that tear through your chest. "I was supposed to be you. Everyone said I'd go pro, that I had a real shot at being one of the best, that colleges were already watching me at thirteen. My coach called me a prodigy. My parents had started planning my future. Training schedules, tournament circuits, sponsorship deals. And then in one second, one wrong movement, it was all gone. Everything I worked for since I was six years old, everything I was, everything I thought I'd become—gone. Just... erased."
Sungho hasn't moved. His face has gone pale in the moonlight, his grip on his tennis bag slack. He looks stricken, gutted.
"So no, you didn't do anything wrong," you say, voice dropping to a whisper that carries more weight than a scream. "But you have everything I wanted. Everything I was supposed to have. You're living the life that was meant to be mine. And I know it's not your fault. I know that logically, rationally, but I can't look at you without feeling like I'm dying inside. It's like I'm watching someone wear my skin, live in my body, breathe my air. It's like I'm a ghost watching someone live my life."
Silence falls between you, broken only by your uneven breathing and the distant sound of traffic. The tennis ball in your pocket feels like a lead weight, an anchor dragging you down. You pull it out with shaking hands and stare at it. This artifact from another lifetime, physical evidence that you once existed as someone else.
"I'm sorry," Sungho finally says, and his voice sounds thick with emotion, wet. "I didn't know. I—God, I'm so sorry. That's—I can't even imagine—"
"Don't be." You wipe your face roughly with the back of your hand, but the tears keep coming. "Like I said, it's not your fault. You didn't injure me. You didn't steal my future. You're just... living yours. And I hate you for it even though I know I shouldn't. Even though it's irrational and unfair and you don't deserve my hatred. But it's there anyway, this poison I can't purge."
He sets his tennis bag down carefully, and moves closer until he stands right beside you at the fence, close enough that you can feel the warmth radiating from his body in the cool night air. "That's—I genuinely can't imagine losing tennis. If I couldn't play anymore, if someone told me tomorrow that I'd never hold a racket again, I don't know what I'd do. I don't know who I'd be."
"You'd survive," you say flatly, the truth stark and unadorned. "Because you'd have to. There's no other option. You either survive or you don't, and somehow your body keeps going even when you wish it wouldn't."
He looks at you, and you see understanding dawning in his eyes—not pity, thank god not pity, but genuine comprehension of the magnitude of your loss. Recognition that you've survived a death of sorts, that you're walking around with a corpse inside you. "Is that why you were so angry all those times I tried to talk to you, all those times you looked at me like you wanted me to disappear?"
"I wasn't angry." The distinction matters, needs to be understood. "I was grieving. I am grieving. Grief that looks like anger because anger is easier to hold than sorrow. Anger has teeth. Sorrow just hollows you out."
"I thought you just hated me. That I'd done something to offend you without realizing it."
"I did hate you. I do hate you." You pause, examining the truth, finding it more complicated than it was a year ago. "I don't know. It's all tangled up—the hate and the grief and the envy. I can't separate them anymore."
He's quiet for a long moment, both of you staring at the empty court bathed in moonlight, at the space where dreams go to die. "What position did you play?"
You turn to stare at him, surprised by the question, by the genuine curiosity in his voice. "Why does it matter?"
"Because I want to know," he says simply, meeting your eyes. "Tell me about your tennis. Not the injury, the end, the surgery or the pain. Tell me about when you loved it. Tell me about who you were before."
You're hesitant at first, but out of instinct, you tell him about your first racket—bright pink, too big for your six year old hands, a birthday present you'd begged for after watching a Grand Slam on television. You tell him about learning to hit forehands in your backyard while your father fed you balls until sunset turned the sky orange, your mother calling you inside for dinner while you begged for just five more minutes, just one more shot. You tell him about your middle school coach who saw potential in you when you were just a clumsy eleven year old with decent hand-eye coordination and an obsessive need to improve. You tell him about the feeling of a perfect serve, that crystalline moment when the ball leaves your racket at exactly the right angle with exactly the right spin, when you know before it even crosses the net that it's going to be an ace, untouchable, yours.
You tell him about the competition nerves that made you throw up before matches, about the championship games where your hands shook so badly you could barely hold your racket, about the specific joy of winning a point off a shot you've practiced a thousand times, muscle memory transforming into art. You tell him about rivalries with girls whose names you've forgotten but whose playing styles you remember in vivid detail, about learning to read your opponents' body language, about the chess match that tennis becomes at higher levels.
He listens to every word, asks questions that show he understands the nuances, nods in recognition of feelings he's experienced himself. And for the first time in two years, talking about tennis doesn't feel like pressing on a bruise, doesn't feel like self-harm disguised as nostalgia. It feels like remembering someone you loved who died, honoring their memory instead of trying to forget they existed, speaking their name aloud instead of choking on the silence.
By the time you finish, it's past midnight. Sungho sits on the ground now, back against the fence, and you've somehow ended up beside him, close enough that your shoulders almost touch. Your face is probably a mess from crying, eyes swollen, nose red, cheeks splotchy, but he doesn't mention it, he doesn't look at you with pity or discomfort, just sits with you in your grief, bearing witness to it.
"You would've been incredible," he says quietly into the darkness.
"I was incredible." It's not arrogance, just a fact, a truth that deserves to be spoken. "For a thirteen years old, I was one of the best in the region. People knew my name. Coaches from prestigious academies had started calling my parents. I had a future."
"I wish I could've seen you play. I wish I could've competed against you."
"Yeah." You pull your knees to your chest, wrapping your arms around them, making yourself small. "Me too. I think about it sometimes. What would've happened if we'd met on opposite sides of a net instead of in a high school hallway. If you'd known me as a player instead of as... whatever I am now."
He doesn't try to offer comfort or false hope. He doesn't say it'll get better or that you'll find other passions or that everything happens for a reason, all the empty platitudes people have been feeding you for years that do nothing except make you want to scream. He just sits with you in your grief, letting it exist without trying to fix it, and somehow that's exactly what you need. To have your loss acknowledged without being minimized. To have someone say "that's terrible" instead of "but you're young, you have time to find something else."
When you finally stand to leave, joints stiff from sitting on cold concrete, he stands too. "Can I walk you home?"
You should say no. You should rebuild the walls you've just torn down, go back to hating him from a distance where it's safe, where he can't hurt you more than he already has by existing. But you're exhausted from crying, wrung out from confession, emptied of the rage that's been keeping you upright, and the thought of walking alone through dark streets while your shoulder throbs sounds unbearable.
"Okay."
The walk unfolds in comfortable quiet, the kind of silence that doesn't demand to be filled. When you reach your street, he stops at the corner, maintaining the boundary you haven't explicitly set but he seems to understand instinctively.
"Thanks for telling me," he says, hands shoved in his pockets, looking younger than usual.
"Don't thank me. I basically unloaded two years of trauma on you without warning. I ambushed you with my grief."
"Still. I'm glad I know now. I'm glad I understand." He shifts his weight, nervous energy radiating off him. "I really am sorry that you lost it. That you have to watch other people play. That every match must be a reminder of what you can't have. That must be—I can't even imagine how you get through each day."
You nod, throat tight again with unshed tears that seem endless tonight, an inexhaustible supply. "Goodnight, Sungho."
"Goodnight."
You're halfway to your door when he calls out, voice carrying through the quiet suburban street. "Hey!"
You turn, finding him still standing under the streetlight, backlit and haloed.
"Your footwork." He's grinning slightly, nervous energy transmuting into tentative excitement. "You said your footwork was flawless. Mine isn't. Coach keeps telling me I'm sloppy when I move backwards, that I'm giving up too many easy points because my positioning is off. If you ever—I mean, you don't have to, obviously, but if you wanted to tell me how to fix it, I'd listen."
Your heart does a complicated flip in your chest, arrhythmic and painful, hope and terror tangled together until you can't distinguish one from the other. "You want tennis advice from me?"
"I want tennis advice from someone who was apparently one of the best at thirteen. Someone who understands the sport that it transcends just playing it." His smile is hopeful, genuine, unguarded that it makes your chest ache with feelings you don't want to examine. "So yeah. From you. If you're willing."
Again, you should say no. You should keep your distance, protect yourself from further pain, maintain the walls that have kept you safe. But there's a small, persistent part of you that misses talking about tennis more than it hates watching others play. A part that's been dormant for two years, smothered and suppressed, that's now stirring back to life with tentative, terrified hope. A part that remembers loving this sport before it broke you.
"Your footwork is sloppy when you're moving backwards because you're not pivoting on your outside foot," you say, and your voice is steadier than you expected. "You're trying to backpedal, which throws you off-balance and makes your return weaker. You need to turn your body, pivot, then move. Watch Federer's baseline defense if you don't believe me. Study how he never moves straight back. He's always turning, always maintaining his stance."
His grin widens into pure joy, unfiltered and bright enough to hurt. "So you have been watching my matches. I knew it."
"Shut up."
"You have! You know about my footwork, which means you've been paying attention to the specific mechanics of how I play, which means—"
"I said shut up, Park Sungho."
But you're smiling, just a little, the muscles in your face unfamiliar with the expression. And when you go inside, the grief feels less suffocating than it has in years. Not gone, it will never be gone, you understand that now, but bearable. For the first time in two years, the weight of it feels bearable, like perhaps you can carry it without being crushed. Like perhaps you can learn to live with this loss instead of just surviving it.
LATE SOPHOMORE YEAR - THE SECOND SET
It starts small, a comment after practice about his grip, offered when you happen to walk past the courts, not deliberately of course, you tell yourself, though you both know it's a lie. A suggestion about his serve toss, mentioned in passing in the hallway between classes, delivered quickly before you can second-guess yourself. He seeks you out in the library one afternoon, sliding into the seat across from you with his physics homework as a pretense, and asks about strategy for an upcoming match. You end up talking for forty minutes about court positioning and shot selection, about reading an opponent's patterns, about the mental game that separates good players from great ones, and when the librarian finally kicks you both out at closing, you realize you forgot to be miserable for almost an hour.
You don't mean for it to become a pattern, don't plan for these interactions to accumulate into regularity, but they do. Once a week becomes twice, then suddenly you're showing up to practices, standing at the fence, watching him play with a critical eye you haven't used since your own playing days, your analytical mind awakening from hibernation. At first, it hurts with the white-hot intensity of touching an open flame. Every swing he takes is a reminder of swings you can no longer make, every perfect serve is a ghost of serves you used to hit, every victorious point is a death you relive. But gradually, with the patience of ice melting in spring, the hurt transforms into engagement. Your brain, dormant for so long, awakens to the puzzle of tennis strategy again, finds satisfaction in problem-solving that doesn't require your broken body to cooperate.
You start to notice things others miss : his tendency to favor his forehand even when his backhand would be more effective, wasting energy with extra footwork instead of taking the simpler shot. His rushed serves when nervous, the toss getting faster and less consistent when the pressure mounts. How his concentration slips in the third set when fatigue sets in, when his body is tired and his mind starts wandering, leaving openings his opponent can exploit. You point these out with the clinical detachment of a doctor diagnosing symptoms, and he listens, he implements your suggestions with a dedication that surprises you, that makes you feel seen in a way you haven't since before the injury. His game improves noticeably, and you feel an unfamiliar pride that has nowhere to go, no outlet except the small smile you hide when he executes a shot exactly as you suggested.
"Your coach must love me," you tell him one afternoon, watching him practice serves that finally have consistent toss height.
"Probably." He bounces the ball, prepares his stance with the ritualistic precision of a player who's done this ten thousand times. "Or he's confused about why I'm suddenly better at things he's been trying to teach me for months. I think he suspects I have a secret weapon."
"You weren't listening to him. You listen to me."
"I listen to you," he agrees, and there's weight to the words that has nothing to do with tennis.
You ignore the flutter in your chest at those words, the dangerous warmth that spreads through your ribcage like water seeping through cracks. You can't afford to acknowledge what's building between you, can't afford to name it. "Again. Your toss is still too far forward. You're leaning into it instead of letting the toss work for you."
He adjusts, serves, and this time the ball hits exactly where he intended with satisfying precision, the sound of a clean ace distinct and clear. He turns to you with a triumphant smile that makes him look younger, less burdened, and you roll your eyes to hide your own satisfaction, fighting your own smile.
This is dangerous territory, and you know it. You're getting close to him, starting to see beyond the trophy winner you resented for so long, beyond the symbol he represented. He's funny, you discover—quick-witted that it catches you off guard, makes you laugh when you least expect it and thought you'd forgotten how. He does impressions of their physics teacher that are devastatingly accurate, makes puns that are terrible but still make you snort with laughter, finds absurdity in mundane situations. He's dedicated, spending hours on the court perfecting shots even after official practice ends, after everyone else has gone home, chasing perfection with an intensity you recognize in yourself, in who you used to be. He's thoughtful, remembering details about your life that you mention in passing.
And he's becoming your friend, which terrifies you more than anything else you've survived.
"Why are you helping me?" he asks one evening when you're walking home, another pattern that's developed without either of you acknowledging it, without agreeing it's something you do now. The question emerges out of nowhere, cutting through your comfortable conversation about his upcoming match against a notoriously defensive player.
"What do you mean?"
"You hated me for a year. You hated tennis, hated watching people play, hated everything about the sport. Now you're here almost every day, coaching me, spending hours analyzing my game." He glances at you sideways, vulnerability flickering across his features in the orange glow of streetlights. "Not that I'm complaining. I'm not. But... why? What changed?"
You're quiet for a long moment, trying to articulate feelings you don't fully understand yourself, emotions too complex to fit into easy explanations. "I missed it," you finally say, each word chosen carefully. “I missed talking about tennis and about the strategy. I missed being close to the sport, even if I can't play. I missed using my brain for what it was trained to do."
"Does it hurt watching me play?"
"Yes." You don't lie to him, have never lied to him about this. "Every single time."
He flinches like you've struck him, his steps faltering. "Then why—"
"But it also feels like I'm breathing again," you interrupt, needing him to understand this, to hear the whole truth. "I spent two years trying to cut tennis out of my life completely. I thought if I could just avoid it, stop caring about it, stop letting it define me, the grief would fade. I thought that I could starve it out through absence, but it didn't. The grief stayed just as sharp and constant, but I felt empty on top of it." You flex your shoulder absently, feeling the perpetual ache that never quite fades, your constant companion. "At least this way, I'm part of it again. Even if it's not how I planned. Even if it's through you instead of through me. At least I'm not completely cut off from something I love."
He's quiet, processing this, his footsteps slowing until you're both barely moving forward. "I mean this sincerely, but you're the best coach I've ever had, and I've had some good ones—people who played professionally, who trained other pros. But none of them see the game like you do."
"I'm not your coach."
"Whatever you want to call it, then. You're the best at it. You understand tennis in a way that goes beyond mechanics or strategy. You see the art in it."
You bump his shoulder with yours gently, always mindful of your injury, always conscious of your body's limitations. "Your actual coach might disagree. He's been doing this for twenty years."
"He can fight me. I'll defend your honor."
You laugh, surprised by how natural it feels, how easy, how the sound emerges without the weight of grief crushing it. When did this happen? When did Park Sungho become someone who makes you laugh instead of someone who makes you want to scream, to claw at your own skin, to rage at the universe for its unfairness?
The shift is gradual but undeniable, tectonic plates moving beneath the surface until the landscape is unrecognizable. You start sitting with his friends at lunch, people who've accepted your presence without question, who make space for you at their table, who include you in their jokes and their plans. You wear his team jacket once when it's cold and he offers it without thinking, and you don't miss how his eyes linger on you, how his gaze traces the lines of his jacket on your frame, or how his teammate elbows him with a knowing grin that makes his ears turn red. You attend matches officially now, not hiding in the back where you can slip away unnoticed, but sitting where he can see you, and you coach him through games with subtle hand signals you've developed together. A touch to your heart, a point to your temple, a specific gesture that means adjust your positioning. A language only the two of you speak, private and intimate in its specificity.
He plays better when you're there. Everyone notices. His coach mentions it, pulling you aside once to thank you for whatever you're doing because Sungho's game has improved dramatically. His teammates joke about it, calling you his lucky charm, his secret weapon, saying they should start a petition to make you official team staff. Sungho doesn't deny it, doesn't brush it off or laugh it away. He just looks at you with an expression that makes your stomach flip, that makes you understand you're in dangerous territory, that you're both walking towards a cliff edge neither of you can see clearly.
"You're my good luck charm," he tells you after a particularly close victory, still breathing hard from the match, sweat dampening his hair and making it stick to his forehead.
"That's superstitious nonsense."
"Maybe. But I play better when you're watching."
"That's psychological, not magical. Your brain associates my presence with positive reinforcement, so you perform better. Basic behavioural psychology."
"Does it matter? Either way, you're the reason." He grins, boyish and unguarded, and your heart does that complicated flip again where it forgets how to beat properly.
These moments pile up, building into tension neither of you acknowledges directly, a structure constructed from unspoken words and avoided eye contact. His hand brushing yours when he demonstrates a grip, his fingers lingering against your palm longer than necessary, warmth seeping between your skin. How he finds you in every crowd, eyes seeking yours before anyone else's, before his coach or his parents or his teammates. You're the first person he looks for, always. How he texts you late at night, conversations that start about tennis and drift into movies that made you cry, music that reminds you of childhood summers, dreams you've abandoned, fears you've never spoken aloud because giving them voice makes them more real.
You learn that he's terrified of disappointing his parents, who've sacrificed so much for his tennis career, his mother's part-time job to pay for coaching, his father's weekend drives to tournaments hours away. That he wonders if tennis is what he wants or just what he's good at, whether he's chosen this path or if it's chosen him. That he thinks about quitting more often than anyone knows, that some mornings he wakes up and the thought of another practice makes him want to stay in bed, to pull the covers over his head and disappear. That the pressure of being "the best" feels like drowning slowly, water rising incrementally until he can barely breathe.
"You can't quit," you tell him firmly one evening, sitting on the bleachers after everyone else has left, the court lights casting long shadows. "You're too talented. You have too much potential."
"So were you."
"I didn't quit. I was forced to stop. There's a difference." The distinction matters, needs to be understood. "Quitting is a choice. Having your body fail you isn't."
"Is there though?" He's lying on the court now, staring up at the sky turning purple and gold with sunset, his racket beside him. "Either way, you're not playing anymore. The end result is the same—you're gone from the sport."
"But I would if I could." You sit beside him, close enough to feel the residual heat from his body, hugging your knees to your chest. "In a heartbeat without hesitation. If someone could fix my shoulder, make the pain stop, give me back what I lost—I'd be on a court tomorrow. You can play. You have this incredible gift, this opportunity that most people never get, that I'd give anything to have again. Don't waste it because you're tired or scared or unsure. Don't throw away what I'd kill to have back."
"Even if I'm miserable?"
"Are you miserable?"
He turns his head to look at you, and his expression is complicated, layered with emotions you can't quite parse, exhaustion, frustration and affection all tangled together. "Not when you're here. When you're watching, when we talk about tennis, when I execute a shot you suggested, I remember why I loved this. Before the pressure, before the expectations, before everyone started watching. You make it feel like mine again."
Your breath catches in your throat, stutters and stops. This is dangerous. This is crossing a line you've been carefully avoiding, staying on the safe side of feelings that could destroy you both. "Sungho—"
"I know." He sits up quickly, too quickly, motion sharp with panic. "Sorry. Forget I said that. I shouldn't have—"
"No, I—" You don't know how to finish the sentence. You don't know how to articulate the complicated tangle of feelings in your chest, gratitude, terror and affection that's growing into something larger, something you can't control. So you just sit there in the fading light, both of you carefully not looking at each other, carefully not acknowledging what's building between you, both pretending you don't notice how everything is shifting into territory neither of you knows how to navigate.
But you can't unknow what you've just learned. You can't unhear his confession, and you're both pretending you don't notice how everything between you is changing, crystallizing into something that demands to be named, but neither of you has the courage to speak it aloud.
JUNIOR YEAR - THE THIRD SET
The unspoken thing between you grows teeth, grows claws, becomes something living and dangerous that prowls between you both.
It's in every touch that lasts a heartbeat too long. His hand on your lower back as he guides you through a crowd after a match, warm, possessive and careful. Your fingers adjusting his grip on the racket handle and lingering there, tracing the calluses on his palm that mirror the ones you used to have, the ones that have softened in the years since you stopped playing. The brush of his shoulder against yours when you sit too close in the library, studying at the same table, your physics homework forgotten as you both pretend to focus on anything except the electricity crackling in the air between you.
He watches you when he thinks you're not looking, you catch him sometimes in your peripheral vision, his gaze intense and unguarded, studying your profile like he's trying to memorize it, to commit every detail to memory. And you watch him right back, cataloging the details of his face when his attention is elsewhere : the concentration between his eyebrows when he's thinking through a problem, the curve of his mouth when he's trying not to smile, the way his hair falls into his eyes when he's been running his hands through it in frustration.
The late-night texts that make your heart race, messages that have nothing to do with tennis and everything to do with knowing someone, knowing them down to the vulnerable parts they don't show anyone else, the soft underbelly they keep hidden from the world.
“I can't sleep.” He texts at 2am on a random Tuesday, and your phone lights up your dark room like a beacon.
“I keep thinking about regionals next month. What if I choke? What if I've peaked and this is as good as I get?”
“You'll do fine.” you respond, already awake because sleep has been elusive lately, your mind too full of thoughts you can't quiet. “You're more than ready.”
“Will you be there?”
“Where else would I be?”
There's a long pause. You watch the typing indicator appear and disappear three times, each appearance making your pulse spike, before his message finally arrives : “Sometimes I worry you'll realize you don't need to do this anymore. That watching me play just hurts and doesn't help. That you're better off cutting tennis out of your life completely, including me.”
You type “It helps”, then delete it. Type “It hurts”, then delete that too. Finally, you type : “I'll be there. I promise. You're not getting rid of me that easily.”
His response is immediate : “Okay, good. I need you there. I need you.”
You stare at those words—I need you—and your chest feels too small for your heart, like your ribcage might crack open from the pressure, like your sternum might split down the middle and expose all the vulnerable parts you've been protecting. You don't know how to respond, don't know what to say that won't reveal too much, so you just send back a simple “I know”, and hope he understands everything you can't say.
At school, people have stopped asking what you are to each other. They've created their own narratives without needing your input : you're dating, you're "complicated," you're childhood friends (false, but whatever version of your story they've invented seems to satisfy their curiosity). His teammates have accepted you as a fixture, automatic and unquestioned, saving you a seat at team dinners, including you in group chats about weekend plans, texting you directly when Sungho is being stubborn about something and they need backup to convince him. Your friends are less subtle about their observations.
“So, you and Sungho,” your best friend says, giving you a look over her sandwich. Across the cafeteria, he’s laughing with his teammates, his eyes crinkling that it makes your chest tighten.
“We’re friends,” you say quickly.
“Friends,” she echoes, raising a brow. “Friends who look at each other like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re both trying to breathe underwater and the other person’s the only air you’ve got,” she says, leaning back. “Honestly, the rest of us could vanish and you wouldn’t even notice.”
You have no response to that, because she's right. She's devastatingly, terrifyingly right. You are drowning, in feelings you never meant to develop, in the impossibility of your situation, in the knowledge that caring about Sungho means caring about his tennis, which means watching him succeed at the sport you'll never play again, which means watching him achieve everything you wanted while you stand on the sidelines forever. A ghost haunting her own unlived life, bearing witness to someone else's dreams manifesting while yours rot underground.
The physical proximity increases with the recklessness of people who know they're playing with fire but can't seem to stop. You demonstrate footwork despite your injury, showing him how to pivot properly during a particularly stubborn coaching session, and he watches your feet with intense concentration. Your shoulder aches from the movement but worse now, pain radiating down your arm in hot waves, and you try to hide your wince, biting the inside of your cheek until you taste iron, until the pain in your mouth distracts from the pain in your shoulder. Unfortunately, he notices. Of course he notices. He's been learning to read you for months, cataloging your tells.
"Stop," he says immediately, hand coming to your bad shoulder with infinite gentleness, his palm warm through your shirt. "Don't hurt yourself for me. It's not worth it."
"I'm fine."
"You're not. You're in pain. I can see it in your face and how you're holding yourself."
"I'm always in pain." The admission slips out before you can stop it, raw and honest, a truth you've always tried to keep carefully hidden. "This is just how it is now. Constant ache, worse when I'm stressed or when the weather changes or when I do too much, which is pathetic, considering 'too much' is apparently demonstrating basic footwork for thirty seconds."
His hand is still on your shoulder, thumb rubbing small circles that somehow ease the tension coiled beneath your skin, that make the pain recede slightly. "I hate that. I hate that you hurt all the time and there's nothing I can do to fix it."
"Join the club. I've hated it for four years."
"No, I mean—" He stops, frustrated with his inability to articulate what he means, words failing him. "You shouldn't have to hurt just to help me. You shouldn't have to sacrifice your body's comfort for my improvement. It's not fair to you."
"This is the only way I get to play anymore," you say quietly, echoing words from months ago that feel even more true now, that have settled into your bones as truth. "Through you. Through coaching you, watching you, helping you improve. So yeah, it hurts, but it's worth it. It's the only way I get to stay connected to tennis, to the sport I loved before it broke me. You're my access point."
His eyes search yours, and there's a charged moment where neither of you breathes, where the air between you feels electric with possibility, heavy with all the things you're not saying. His hand slides from your shoulder to your neck, fingers curling against your skin with possession that should frighten you but doesn't, and you lean into the touch without thinking, without permission from your rational brain, your body betraying you by seeking comfort you shouldn't want, shouldn't need. His gaze drops to your mouth. You could close the distance so easily, just tilt forward slightly, eliminate the inches between you and finally, finally—
"Sungho! Coach wants you!" A teammate's shout shatters the moment like glass hitting concrete, sharp and irreversible.
You step back quickly, breaking contact, cold air rushing in where his warmth was. Sungho drops his hand, looking dazed, pupils blown wide, breathing uneven. "I should—"
"Yeah. Go."
He doesn't move immediately, just stands there staring at you like he's trying to memorize your face, like he's afraid you'll disappear if he looks away. "Later?"
"Later," you confirm, voice steadier than you feel, and he finally jogs away, glancing back twice, three times, four times, until you turn away first because you can't bear to keep looking, can't bear the weight of wanting him.
These almost-moments become your new pattern, your new normal, accumulating like snow building towards an avalanche. After a victory, he lifts you in a hug that lasts too long, face buried in your neck, breathing you in like you're oxygen and he's been suffocating. Walking home, your hands brush and he catches your pinky with his, the smallest form of holding hands, so subtle no one else would notice but it burns through you like wildfire, heat spreading up your arm and into your chest. Studying together in the library, he falls asleep on your shoulder and you let him stay there for an hour, barely breathing, savoring the weight of him and the trust implicit in the gesture, the vulnerability of sleep.
But neither of you crosses the final line. Neither says the words building in your throats, pressing against your teeth every time you're together, demanding to be spoken. Because saying them would make this real, would force you both to confront the impossibility of your situation, to acknowledge what you're both desperately trying to ignore.
He's going places. Scouts from universities are already contacting him, leaving voicemails for his parents, sending glossy brochures in the mail. Professional coaches expressing interest in taking him on after high school, people who've trained Grand Slam champions, who see in him the potential for greatness. His future is bright, certain and filled with tennis courts around the world, filled with championships, trophies and everything you once wanted for yourself. And you're—
You're the girl who lost tennis. You, who can barely lift her arm above her head without pain shooting down to your fingertips like lightning. Whose future is uncertain and small in comparison, bounded by the limitations of your injury, by the reality that you'll never be more than you are right now, that your body has imposed a ceiling on your potential that you'll never break through.
What could you possibly offer him except holding him back? Except being dead weight he has to carry?
So you continue to stay silent, and so does he. The unspoken thing between you grows and grows until it takes up all the air in every room you share, until you're both suffocating on words you can't say, drowning in feelings you can't acknowledge, dying slowly from the pressure of not speaking.
SENIOR YEAR - THE FOURTH SET
The beginning of senior year brings college scouts to every match, and the tension around Sungho ratchets up to unbearable levels, pressure so intense you can see it crushing him.
He's on every recruiter's list, courted by multiple Division I schools competing for his commitment, coaches calling his house during dinner, his email inbox flooded with recruitment messages. Professional coaches attend his matches with clipboards and serious expressions, evaluating his potential for the tour, discussing him like he's a commodity, an investment, a product to be developed and marketed. The pressure is immense, a weight you can see crushing him physically, in the tightness around his eyes that never quite fades even when he smiles, in how he obsesses over every small mistake until you want to shake him, in how he practices until his hands bleed and you have to literally force him to stop before he injures himself, before he ruins his future through overtraining.
You're there for all of it. Every match, every practice, every moment of doubt that crashes over him like a wave trying to drag him under. The signals between you have evolved into a complete language now, sophisticated and subtle enough that even his coach doesn't catch them all : a touch to your heart means breathe, center yourself, you've got this. Hand on your temple means think, don't just react, use your brain not just your body. A pointed look at the court means focus, stop looking at me and play, this is your moment.
After he wins a crucial match that has four scouts in attendance, all taking notes, all watching him with calculating eyes, he finds you in the crowd and mouths something. It looks like I love you. Or maybe I need you. Or maybe I can't do this without you. Or maybe you're just seeing what you want to see, projecting your own feelings onto his lips, constructing meaning where there is none.
You can't be certain. You don't let yourself be certain. Because if he said it, even silently, even in the heat of victory when adrenaline makes people say things they don't mean, then you have to acknowledge what's been building between you for two years. And acknowledging it means confronting the inevitable end, means looking directly at the cliff you're both walking towards.
"We need to talk about next year," his teammate corners you one afternoon while Sungho is doing an interview with a sports reporter from the local paper, answering questions about his future with practiced diplomatic non-answers.
"What about it?"
"He's going to Stanford. Full ride, basically guaranteed. Their tennis program is one of the best in the country." He says this like you don't already know, like you haven't been tracking Sungho's opportunities with the same intensity you once tracked your own tournament rankings, monitoring his future with the attention of someone watching a train approach.
"I know."
"Stanford's in California. It's on the other side of the country."
"I'm aware of basic geography, thanks." Your voice comes out sharper than intended, defensive.
"I'm just saying—" The teammate looks at you meaningfully, with an expression that's half concern and half warning, his eyes too knowing. "Long distance is hard. Especially when one person is at a top athletic program with constant travel and the other is... wherever you'll be. Whatever you'll be doing, and he's going to have opportunities—other people, other options, a whole new life."
"We're not dating," you say automatically, the lie familiar on your tongue now, smooth and practiced from repetition.
"Right… and I'm the Pope." He shakes his head, clearly not buying it, his skepticism obvious. "Look, I like you. We all do. You're good for him, you make him better. But Sungho's got a real shot at going pro. He needs to focus, stay committed, keep his head in the game. A complicated relationship situation isn't going to help. Divided attention could ruin him."
"Then it's good we're not in a relationship."
"You're in something," he insists, and there's frustration in his voice now, urgency. "And when he has to choose between tennis and you, it's going to destroy him. So maybe... figure out what you're doing before it gets to that point. Before he has to make a choice that breaks him either way."
He walks away, leaving you with a gnawing anxiety that doesn't fade for days, that settles in your stomach like stones, weighing you down. You hate that he's right. You and Sungho exist in this undefined space that can't last forever, this liminal zone between friendship and more. Eventually, you'll have to name it or end it, and neither option feels survivable. Naming it means admitting you're in love with him, which means admitting you'll lose him. Ending it means cutting him out of your life, which means losing tennis again, losing the only connection you have to the sport you loved.
Either way, you lose. You've been losing since you were thirteen, and apparently, you haven't hit bottom yet.
ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅
The week before Nationals is brutal that it transcends physical exhaustion, that moves into psychological territory where the mind starts cannibalizing itself.
Sungho is practicing constantly, barely sleeping. You know because he texts you at 3am or 4am, messages that are just streams of consciousness about his fears and doubts. He's running himself into the ground trying to be perfect, chasing an impossible standard that retreats further with every step he takes towards it. You're there as much as possible, but the tension between you is excruciating, a taut wire ready to snap at any moment, humming with dangerous frequency. Every moment feels borrowed, stolen from the inevitable future where he's gone and you're here, separated by distance, dreams and all the things you want but can't have.
Two days before the match, he misses five serves in a row and throws his racket across the court in frustration, the clatter of metal against concrete sharp and violent. You've never seen him do that before. He's always so controlled, so composed, keeping his emotions carefully contained even in defeat.
"What's wrong with you today?" you call from the fence, trying to keep your voice steady, trying to sound like a coach instead of someone who's terrified for him.
"Nothing. I just—" He stops, looks at you with exhausted eyes, dark circles prominent beneath them like bruises, like someone's beaten him. "I can't focus. My brain won't stop spinning."
"Then take a break. Your body needs rest."
"I can't. Nationals are in two days and I'm playing like garbage. It’s like I've never held a racket before."
You climb over the fence, not gracefully, your shoulder protests the movement with a sharp spike of pain that makes you gasp, and walk onto the court, each step deliberate. "You're playing like garbage because you're exhausted, stressed and you've been practicing for eight hours a day. Your body needs rest before it breaks down completely."
"I need to practice. I need to be perfect."
"You need to stop." You take the racket from his hands despite his weak protest, setting it down on the bench with finality. "Sungho, you're more than prepared. You're beyond prepared. You've been training for this your entire life. Two more days of obsessive practice won't make you better. It'll just burn you out before the match even starts. It'll destroy you before you step on the court."
He slumps onto the bench, head in his hands, shoulders hunched in defeat, his entire body curving inwards. "I keep thinking about everything that could go wrong. Every possible way I could fail."
You sit beside him, sharing warmth in the cooling evening air, the sun setting somewhere behind the trees. "What are you afraid of? Tell me."
"I’m afraid of choking in front of the scouts, losing and disappointing everyone who's believed in me, of proving I'm not as good as everyone thinks. I’m—" His voice trembles, almost lost to the air, so quiet you have to lean in to hear. "I’m afraid of winning and having to leave. I’m afraid of achieving everything I've worked for and losing you in the process. The victory would just taste like ash because you're not there to share it."
Your throat tightens, constricts until breathing becomes difficult, until each breath is a conscious effort. "You're not going to choke. You're too good for that, too prepared."
"How do you know? How can you possibly know that?"
"Because I've watched you play for three years. I've seen you under pressure that would break other players, seen you come back from impossible deficits when everyone else had written you off, seen you win matches you should have lost through sheer determination." You bump his shoulder gently with yours. "And I saw a lot of talented players before my injury, back when I was competing in regional circuits, back when I was studying the competition. You're one of the most talented players I've ever seen. You have something most players never develop, the ability to think strategically under pressure, to adapt in real-time, to see the game several shots ahead."
He turns to look at you, and the vulnerability in his expression makes your chest ache with the need to hold him, to promise him everything will be okay even though you know it won't, even though you both know nothing about this is okay. "I don't want to leave you. The thought of being in California while you're here makes me feel sick."
"I know."
"Every time I think about Stanford, about going pro, about any of it… all I can think is that you won't be there. That I'll be achieving my dreams alone. What's the point? What's the point of any of it if I can't share it with you?"
"The point is tennis," you say firmly, grabbing his hand and squeezing hard enough that it must hurt but he doesn't pull away. "The point is becoming the best player you can be. The point is living the dream that most people never get close to achieving, that I'll never achieve. The point is honoring the gift you've been given."
"But you—"
"I'll be fine." The lie tastes bitter, acrid on your tongue, corrosive, but you say it anyway because he needs to hear it, because he needs permission to leave. "We'll figure it out. We could do video calls, whatever we need to do. We'll make it work somehow."
"You really think we can make it work?" There's desperate hope in his voice, childlike in its naked need for reassurance.
You want to say yes. You want to promise him that distance won't matter, that your feelings are strong enough to survive the separation, time zones and the inevitable growing apart that happens when two people live completely different lives in completely different worlds. But you've never lied to him about tennis, never sugarcoated the truth when it comes to the sport, and you won't start lying about this either. You won't give him false hope that will make leaving harder.
"I think we have to try," you say instead, each word carefully chosen, honest in its uncertainty. "Because the alternative—you giving up tennis, you resenting me for the rest of your life—isn't an option. That path leads to you hating me, and I couldn't survive that."
He leans his head on your shoulder, and you rest your cheek against his hair, breathing in the familiar scent of his shampoo mixed with sweat. You sit like that for a long time, watching the sun set over the empty court, the sky turning shades of orange, purple and deep blue, painting the world in temporary beauty. Both of you trying to memorize this moment before everything changes forever, before the future arrives and splits you apart.
ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅
You're at his house, ostensibly helping him do final preparations. Except he's not preparing, he's staring at you while you organize his tournament bag, watching you with an intensity that makes your skin prickle with awareness, checking that he has enough grips, water bottles and the specific brand of energy bars he likes, the ones that don't upset his stomach during long matches.
"You're not even paying attention," you say without looking up, feeling his gaze on you.
"I'm paying attention."
"To me, not to what I'm saying about your pre-match routine or the checklist we made."
"Same thing. You are my pre-match routine."
You finally look at him, exasperated, fond and terrified all at once. "Sungho—"
"Come with me tomorrow." The words tumble out in a rush, desperate and unplanned, breaking the careful script you've both been following. "Not just to watch. Come with me to Stanford. You could apply there. We could figure it out together. Or apply anywhere in California. Just... come with me. Please."
"Stop." You set down the tennis bag, heart breaking into sharp pieces that cut you from the inside, that pierce your lungs and make breathing agony. "You know I can't do that."
"Why not? Give me one good reason."
"Because I need to figure out my own life. My own future. My own identity separate from tennis." The words come out steadier than you feel. "I can't just follow you around the country, living vicariously through your tennis career. I'd lose myself completely. I'd become nothing but an appendage to you, defined entirely by your success."
"That's not what I meant—"
"Really?" You're not angry, just tired, so incredibly tired of this circular conversation you've been having in your head for months. "Sungho, I love—" You stop, the words catching in your throat like broken glass, like shards that will cut you if you speak them. You were about to say I love you, but you can't. Saying it would make leaving impossible, would make the future unbearable. "I care about you, so much it terrifies me. But I have to build a life that isn't defined by tennis or by what I lost. And if I follow you, if I spend every day watching you play, watching you achieve everything I wanted, I'll never heal. I'll just be that girl who lost her dream, desperately clinging to someone else's, living through you like a parasite."
His face crumples, and you watch the realization crash over him like a wave, cold and clarifying. "I didn't think about it like that. I was being selfish."
"I know you didn't. You're not trying to hurt me. You're trying to keep me and hold on to what we have." You move closer, take his hands in yours, feeling them tremble slightly. "But keeping me means letting me go. You need to let me build something that's mine."
"That doesn't make sense."
"It doesn't have to make sense." You squeeze his hands, trying to transfer strength you don't feel. "If you hold too tight, you'll crush what you're trying to protect. You have to open your hands and trust I'll stay."
He pulls you into a hug, crushing you against his chest hard enough that your ribs ache, hard enough that you can feel every rapid beat of his heart. "I don't know how to do this without you. I don't know how to be on a court without looking for you in the stands."
"Yes, you do. You were winning matches before me."
"But I wasn't happy. Tennis was just pressure, expectations and trying to meet everyone else's standards. It wasn't mine."
The confession breaks you, shatters whatever defenses you've been maintaining. You pull back to look at him, and his eyes are red-rimmed, shining with unshed tears that threaten to spill over. "Sungho—"
"These past few years, coaching with you, watching you fall back in love with tennis, spending every day with you, I've never been happier. Tennis doesn't mean anything without you there. The victories are hollow. The improvement is pointless. Without you watching, without you caring, what's the point?"
"That's not true—"
"It is for me." He cups your face with both hands, holding you like you might shatter if he lets go. "You made me fall in love with tennis again. Before you, it was just a checklist of achievements, just a path I was following because everyone expected it. But you reminded me why it's beautiful. Why it's worth the work. You gave me back the joy of it."
You're crying now, tears streaming down your face in hot tracks that you can't stop. "Then take that with you tomorrow. Take that love and play the best match of your life. And when you win—because you will win, I know you will—remember that you did it, not me. You. Your talent, your hard work, your dedication."
"We did it," he insists, stubborn even now, even when you're trying to give him permission to leave. "Everything I've become, you helped build too."
He leans forward, and for one heart-stopping moment, you think he's going to kiss you. His lips hover over yours that you can feel his breath on your skin, warm and unsteady, and you could close the gap so easily, just tilt forward a fraction of an inch. But you don't, and neither does he. Because kissing would be a promise you can't keep, a beginning that's actually an ending disguised, a moment of happiness that would make the separation unbearable.
Instead, he presses his forehead to yours, and you stand there breathing each other in, as close as you've ever been while remaining impossibly far apart, separated by futures that don't align, by dreams that pull in opposite directions, by the fundamental incompatibility of what you both need.
"I should go," you finally say, voice barely audible, scraped raw. "You need to rest before tomorrow. You need sleep."
"Stay." The word is soft, pleading.
"Sungho—"
"Just a little longer. Please. Just give me a little more time."
You let out a quiet sigh but stay where you are. You lie on his bed, fully clothed, while he curls around you like he's trying to memorize the shape of you, to imprint the feeling of your body against his into permanent memory. His hand finds yours, fingers intertwining, and you hold on like he's the only solid thing in a world that's crumbling beneath your feet, like he's an anchor in a storm that's about to sweep you away.
"I'm scared," he admits quietly into the darkness, his breath warm against your neck.
"Of the match?"
"Of losing you. Of winning and having to choose. Of everything changing tomorrow and never being able to go back." His voice cracks, breaks. "Of waking up in California in a few months and realizing this was all a dream, that you were never really mine."
"Change is terrifying," you agree, squeezing his hand tighter, until your fingers ache. "But you're going to be incredible. You're going to do things I only dreamed of. Things that will take you so far beyond this moment, beyond this town, beyond me. And I'm going to—" Your voice cracks. "I'm going to be so proud of you. So, so proud I won't have words for it."
"Will you be there tomorrow?"
Here it is. The question you've been dreading, the one that's been sitting heavy in your chest for weeks, pressing on your lungs until breathing hurts. Because you don't know if you can do it—sit in those stands and watch him win the match that will take him away from you. You don't know if you can survive watching him achieve everything you wanted while knowing you'll lose him in the process, watch the future arrive and destroy what you have.
"I don't know," you whisper into the darkness, honesty the only gift you can give him. "I want to be. I want to be strong enough. But I don't know if I can watch you leave."
He doesn't argue or try to convince you. He just holds you tighter, and you fall asleep in his arms, stealing a few more hours before everything falls apart, before the future crashes down and buries you both.
When you wake up at dawn, gray light filtering through the curtains like watercolour, you slip out quietly. He's still sleeping, face finally peaceful after weeks, the worry lines smoothed from his forehead, looking young and untroubled. You write a note—Good luck. You've got this. You're ready.—and leave it on his nightstand where he'll see it first thing, where it will be the first words he reads.
By the time you reach home, the weight settles in. You don’t know how to do this—how to watch him win, how to let him go, how to keep breathing through it all.
NATIONALS DAY - THE FIFTH SET
You don't go to the match. You can't. Instead, you're at the old tennis court where he found you two years ago, sitting on the ground with your back against the fence, phone clutched in your hand like a lifeline, like it's the only thing keeping you tethered to reality.
The match is being livestreamed. You told yourself you wouldn't watch, swore you'd stay away from your phone entirely, that you'd spend the day anywhere but here thinking about anything but tennis. But you can't help checking the score every few minutes, refreshing the page compulsively, watching the numbers change.
Sungho is losing badly. He's down two sets to none, his play is sloppy and unfocused, and according to the commentary you can't stop yourself from reading, he looks completely lost out there. Your phone buzzes with texts from his teammates :
Where are you?
He's falling apart.
He keeps looking for you in the stands.
Please come. He needs you.
Each message is a knife to your heart, sharp and precise, cutting deeper with each notification. You did this. Your absence is costing him the most important match of his life. Your cowardice is destroying his future. You're the reason he's losing, the reason his dream is slipping away.
But going would cost you everything. Watching him win means watching him leave, it means sitting there while he achieves his dream and simultaneously destroys yours by leaving you behind. You've spent four years trying to survive losing tennis. You don't know if you can survive losing him too. You don't know if there's enough of you left to lose.
Your phone rings, shattering the quiet. It's his best friend from the team.
"Where the hell are you?" he demands without preamble, voice sharp with panic and anger.
"I can't—"
"He's dying out there. I've never seen him play this badly. He's giving up. He keeps searching the crowd, and when he doesn't find you, he just—he's giving up. We're watching his future die."
"I can't watch him leave," you say, and your voice is wrecked, barely recognizable, scraped raw. "Don't you understand? If he wins, he's gone. He's going to Stanford, going pro, going everywhere I can't follow. And I'll be here, still broken, still unable to play, watching him live my dream from thousands of miles away while I rot in this town."
"So you're going to let him lose?" His voice is sharp, cutting through your defenses like a scalpel. "Let him throw away his future because you're too scared to show up? Let him fail because you can't handle watching him succeed?"
"That's not fair—"
"You told him once what it felt like to lose tennis,” he says, voice cutting through your silence. “It gutted you and left you empty, you didn’t know who you were without it.” His voice is relentless, refusing to let you hide. "And now you're going to let it destroy him too? Because that's what will happen if he loses this match. He'll blame himself, hate himself, and he'll never get this opportunity again. This is it. This is his one shot. And you're letting him blow it because you're too afraid of being hurt."
You're sobbing now, gripping the phone so hard your knuckles have gone white, bloodless. "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to survive this."
"Yes, you do." His voice softens slightly, just enough to let kindness in. "You love him. I know you do, even if you won't say it. And if you love him, you let him have this. You let him win. You let him achieve his dream even if it costs you yours all over again. Whatever happens after, you’ll figure it out later. But right now, right this second, he needs you. So get to this stadium, or live with the fact that you're the reason he lost everything."
He hangs up. You sit there, phone pressed to your chest, crying so hard you can barely breathe, your whole body shaking with the force of it. The old tennis ball is in your pocket, and you pull it out, stare at it through blurred vision.
This ball represents everything you lost. Your dream, your future, your identity as a tennis player, the life you were supposed to live. For four years, you've carried it as a reminder of what was taken from you, a talisman of grief you couldn't let go of, physical proof that you once had something worth losing.
But Sungho gave you something back. Not your dream of course, that's gone forever, buried in the past where it belongs, dead and unmournable. But he gave you a connection to tennis again, a way back to the sport that doesn't require your body to cooperate. He made you remember why you loved it in the first place, before the injury, before the pain, before the loss carved a hole in your chest. Let you be part of it again, even if the role isn't what you planned, even if you're watching from the sidelines instead of playing.
Now you have to do the same for him. You have to let him have his dream, even if it means losing yours all over again. You have to let him achieve everything you wanted while you watch from the sidelines. You have to be strong enough to survive it.
You stand up, legs shaking, shoulder screaming from sitting on the cold ground for too long. The stadium is forty minutes away, but you run despite the pain that shoots through your shoulder with every jarring step, despite your body protesting this abuse, despite everything. You catch a bus, then another, pushing through crowds and ignoring the stares at your tear-stained face, pushing through the pain and the fear and the grief that threatens to swallow you whole.
ᡣ𐭩 •｡ꪆৎ ˚⋅
By the time you reach the stadium, it's the fourth set, and Sungho is about to lose the match. You push through crowds, heart hammering, ignoring protests and angry shouts, and finally find a spot in the stands, breathless and sweating despite the cold, your shoulder a constant scream of agony.
The court is far below, and he looks small from this distance, diminished that it breaks your heart. He's at changeover, sitting on the bench with his head in his hands, shoulders slumped in defeat, the picture of someone who's already given up. You've never seen him look so broken, so utterly defeated, and it's your fault. Your absence did this. Your cowardice destroyed him.
He looks up, scanning the crowd one more time with the desperate hope of someone who knows they're looking for a ghost, and his eyes find yours.
The change is instantaneous, electric. His entire body straightens, eyes widening in shock, relief and salvation. Even from this distance, you can see the transformation wash over him—defeat transmuting into determination, despair into hope. He stands up, never breaking eye contact, and you see him mouth your name.
You touch your chest, the signal that means I'm here, breathe, you've got this. He nods, jaw setting with new determination, his entire posture changing. The referee calls him back to the court, and he picks up his racket with renewed purpose, with the conviction of someone who's been drowning and finally found air.
The fourth set is brutal. He claws his way back from the edge of defeat, fighting for every point with desperate intensity. Your shoulder is aching from tension, your hands are gripping the railing so hard you're leaving marks in the metal, and you're coaching him with every signal you know, your entire body involved in the match, every muscle tense.
Point to your temple : Think, don't just react, use your strategic mind.
Flat palm pressed down : Stay calm, control the pace, dictate the rhythm.
Fist over your heart : You can do this, I believe in you, I've always believed in you.
He wins the fourth set, and the crowd erupts, but you barely hear them. All you can see is Sungho, the way he looks at you like you're the only person in the stadium, like you're the only thing that matters.
The fifth set is the most intense tennis you've ever witnessed. Every point is a battle, every game is agony that stretches your nerves to breaking. You're living and dying with each shot, your heart stopping with every close call, your breath catching with every rally. This is your coaching, your strategy, your understanding of tennis made manifest in his movements. Every perfect shot, every brilliant get, every impossible return, you can see your influence in all of it, can see the countless hours you've spent teaching him crystallized in each moment.
You should feel proud. You should feel vindicated, satisfied, fulfilled by this evidence of your impact.
Instead, you feel like you're dying. Because every brilliant shot, every impossible get, every point he wins brings him closer to victory. And victory means leaving. Victory means he’s leaving to Stanford, the professional tour and a future that doesn't include you except as a voice on the phone, a text message, a memory that fades with distance.
Match point. The entire stadium holds its breath, thousands of people silent and tense, suspended in this moment. Sungho bounces the ball at the baseline, preparing to serve, and he looks at you one last time.
You press your hand to your heart just once, and point at him. It’s a silent promise, a goodbye, a confession all at once.
I love you, Now go. Win. Be everything you were meant to be. Be extraordinary.
He tosses the ball high, the world narrowing to the sound of his heartbeat and the weight of the moment. His arm arcs, the racket slicing through the air—a clean, sharp sound that cuts through the stadium’s silence.
The serve is fast, precise, devastatingly perfect. The ball rockets across the court, kisses the line, and skids out of reach before his opponent can even react.
A beat of silence, then the umpire’s call rings out, firm and final. “Game, set, match.”
The crowd explodes into chaos, a wave of sound that crashes over everything. His teammates rush the court, his coach is shouting in triumph, and media are already swarming with cameras and microphones, capturing this moment for posterity. But Sungho is searching for you, pushing through the chaos with single-minded determination, eyes wild and searching.
You're already moving, trying to slip away before he reaches you, feet carrying you towards the exit on autopilot.
You can't do this.
You can't congratulate him while feeling like your heart is being ripped out, can't smile and pretend you're okay when everything is falling apart, can't watch him celebrate achieving your dream while you die inside.
However, he's faster. He catches you at the edge of the stands, still holding his racket, breathing hard from the match and the sprint to reach you, sweat dampening his hair and his shirt clinging to his body.
"You came," he gasps, and there's wonder in his voice, disbelief and joy tangled together.
"You won." Your smile feels like it's cracking your face, like your skin might split from the effort, like you might shatter into pieces if you stop holding yourself together. "You were incredible. You're going to be extraordinary. You're going to achieve things I can only dream of."
"I need to tell you—"
"Sungho, you should go. Everyone's waiting, the press wants interviews, the scouts want to talk to you about your future—"
"I've been in love with you since sophomore year." The words explode out of him, raw and desperate.
The world stops. You stare at him—Sungho, your Sungho, your person—and he’s crying, tears cutting through the sweat on his cheeks. He’s still clutching his racket like a lifeline, like he doesn’t know what to do with his hands now that he’s finally said it out loud.
You’d known, of course. You’d both known, but neither of you ever said it until now.
"That night at the tennis court, when you told me why you hated me?" His voice shakes, thick with everything he’s tried not to say. "I fell in love with you right there. With your pain, your passion, the way you loved tennis so much you couldn't stand to be near it. I fell in love with your anger, your grief, your refusal to give up even though you lost everything. I fell in love with how broken you were and how you kept surviving anyway."
"Don't—" You're crying too now, tears blurring your vision.
"Every match I won, I only wanted you to see it. Every trophy meant nothing if you weren't there to understand what it cost, to see the work behind it. I've been yours for two years, and you never let me tell you. You kept pushing me away, keeping me at arm's length, protecting yourself." He takes a shaking breath, tears streaming down his face unchecked. "So I need to tell you now. I love you. I'm in love with you. I have been for so long I don't remember what it felt like before. You're the reason I play. You're the reason any of this matters."
You're crying too now, and people are definitely staring, cameras are probably recording this, but you don't care anymore. "Why are you telling me this now? You're leaving—you're going to Stanford, going pro, going everywhere—"
"So come with me."
"What?"
"Whatever happens next—college, pro circuit, wherever tennis takes me—come with me, as mine. Come with me as the person I love, as my partner, as the person I want to share all of this with." His hands frame your face, thumbs brushing away tears. "I don't want any of this without you. The victories are meaningless if you're not there. Come with me."
You want to say yes so badly you can taste it, bitter and sweet on your tongue. You want to promise him forever, want to follow him anywhere, want to throw caution away and leap into this terrifying unknown. But reality crashes back in, cold and unforgiving and final.
“I can't follow you around the world watching you play tennis," you say, and each word is glass in your throat, cutting you as you speak, drawing blood with every syllable. "It'll kill me. I'll be happy for you, but I'll be dying inside. Watching you live my dream while I'm just... there. I'll just be watching and existing as an appendage to your success, hollowing out piece by piece until there's nothing left of me."
"Then I won't go."
"WHAT?" You almost shout it, drawing more stares, more attention. "No. Absolutely not. Sungho, you are not giving this up—"
"If it means losing you—"
"You can't choose me over tennis!" You grab his shirt with both hands, desperate for him to understand this one crucial thing, this truth that's more important than love or desire or any of the feelings tearing you apart. "Have I not said it enough? I know what it's like to lose tennis. It destroys you from the inside out, carves you hollow until you're not a person anymore, just a shell walking around pretending to be alive. You become a ghost, haunting your own life. And I won't—I will not be responsible for that. I won't be the reason you give up your dream. I won't be the thing you resent in five years when you're working some miserable job and wondering what could have been if you'd just chosen differently."
"You're my dream too—"
"Your dream is tennis. It always has been." You're sobbing now, words barely intelligible through the tears, your whole body shaking. "And that's okay. That's good. That's how it should be. Someone should get to live it. Someone should get to have the future I lost, the life I was meant to have. And I want it to be you. I want you to have everything."
"Not without you." His hands come up to frame your face, holding you like you might disappear. "I don't want any of it if you're not there. None of it means anything without you."
"You have to want it," you insist, holding his wrists to keep his hands on your face, needing this contact even as you push him away. "You have to want tennis for yourself, not for me. Because I can't be your reason. I can't be the thing you resent later when the pressure gets too much and you wish you'd made different choices. I can't be your excuse for why you didn't achieve everything you could have."
"I could never resent you."
"You don't know that." You take a shaking breath, trying to gather courage for what you need to say. "Go to Stanford. Go play tennis at the highest level. Chase every opportunity, win every match you can, become everything you're capable of becoming. And I'll... I'll be here. I'll be building something that's mine."
"That's not—"
"I'll watch your matches when I can," you continue quickly, before you lose your nerve entirely, before you change your mind. "I'll text you advice when you want it. I'll be so proud of you from wherever I am, so proud I could burst with it. We can try long distance, if you want. If you think we can survive it."
He's searching your face desperately, looking for something you're not sure you can give him. "Can we? Really? Can we survive you here and me there?"
"I've watched you grow into the player you are today," you say softly, every word chosen with care, honest in its uncertainty. "I've seen you at your worst and your best. I've been in love with you—" The admission finally breaks free, and it feels like bleeding out, like opening a vein. "I've been in love with you for longer than I want to admit. Probably since that night at the courts when you listened to me talk about my tennis, when you didn't try to fix me or offer platitudes. If long distance is how we stay together, then we'll try. We'll try as hard as we can."
"You love me?" His voice cracks on the words, breaks completely, and fresh tears spill down his face.
"Of course I love you, you idiot. How could I not? You're brilliant, dedicated and kind, you made me remember how to love tennis again when I thought that part of me was dead forever. You gave me back something I thought I'd lost permanently. You made me whole that I didn't think was ever possible again."
He just looks at you for a long moment, eyes searching, glistening. The noise of the crowd feels far away now, muffled, like the world has shrunk down to the space between you.
He steps closer, hesitating, like he’s giving you the chance to pull away. His hand lifts slowly, cupping your face with the lightest touch, thumbs brushing along your cheekbones. You’re trembling from adrenaline, from exhaustion, from the weight of everything between you, and you can’t pull back.
“Don’t do this to me, love,” he whispers, voice breaking, gaze locked on yours.
All that comes out is a quiet, broken sound, half a sob, half a laugh.
The space between you disappears. His hand finds the back of your neck, your breath catches, and before you can think, his mouth is on yours finally, desperate, messy and perfect, two years of wanting collapsing into one breathless, aching moment. His lips taste like salt from his tears, from the relief, from everything you’ve both held back. The kiss is fierce, tender and shattering all at once.
When you pull apart, you're both crying and smiling, and his teammates are definitely whooping in the background, cameras probably capturing all of it for posterity, but neither of you cares.
"I'll call you every day," he promises, breathless, foreheads pressed together. "I'll come home every break. I'll—"
"You'll focus on tennis," you interrupt gently, needing him to hear this, to understand. "You'll work hard and make the most of every opportunity. And yes, you'll call me. But Sungho—" You cup his face, making sure he hears this, that he truly understands. "Tennis comes first. It has to. Because if you sacrifice your future for me, you'll hate me eventually. Maybe not now or next year, but someday. And I can't live with that. I can't survive you hating me."
"I could never hate you."
"Just promise me you'll choose tennis when you have to. Promise me you won't let me hold you back."
He hesitates, and you see the war in his eyes, love versus ambition, staying versus going, you versus everything else. "I promise, but you have to promise me too."
"Promise what?"
"Promise me that you'll build your own life, your own dreams. Don't just wait around for me and exist in the spaces between my matches." His thumb traces your cheekbone with infinite tenderness. "You're not just my coach or my girlfriend or any role that's defined by me. You're you. You deserve a future that's yours, that you choose, that makes you happy."
The words hit you like a revelation, a truth you've been avoiding for two years. For two years, you've built your identity around coaching him, around being close to tennis through him, around existing in his orbit. But that's not sustainable. That's not healing. That's just replacing one form of grief with another, one form of loss with a different kind.
"I promise," you whisper, and mean it. "I'll figure out what I want, who I am without tennis, who I am separate from you."
"Good." He kisses you again, softer this time, sweet and lingering. "Because I'm in love with you, not tennis-coach-you or angry-at-the-world-you. Just you. Whoever you decide to be."
"Sungho!" His coach's voice cuts through the moment like a blade, sharp and insistent. "We need you for interviews! The media's waiting!"
He groans but doesn't let go of you immediately, holding on for a few more precious seconds. "I have to—"
"Go. This is your moment. You earned it."
"Our moment," he corrects, stubborn even now.
"Okay," you concede, smiling through tears that won't stop falling, that seem endless. "Our moment."
He kisses your forehead, your nose, your lips one more time, each kiss a promise and a prayer, then he's being pulled away by teammates and coaches, swept up in the chaos of victory, but he keeps looking back at you, grinning like he's won more than just a tennis match, like he's won something far more valuable.
You watch him go, and it hurts—God, it hurts with the intensity of a physical wound, but it's different now. It's not the aching grief of watching a stranger live your dream, but the bittersweet pain of loving someone enough to let them fly, even when it means losing them. Even when it means watching them soar while you stay grounded.
TWO YEARS LATER
The stadium is massive, cavernous that it makes you feel small, filled with thousands of people all chanting for their favourite players, the noise a physical force. You're in the stands, wearing Sungho's number on a shirt he sent you, a press credential hanging around your neck that grants you access most people would kill for.
You're not just his girlfriend anymore. You're a junior correspondent for a major sports network, covering tennis tournaments around the world, turning your knowledge into a career you built yourself. It turns out you have a gift for analyzing play, for explaining strategy to audiences who don't understand the intricacies of the sport, for breaking down matches that it makes tennis accessible without dumbing it down. Your injury gives you perspective that former players don't have. You understand loss that it makes your commentary richer, more empathetic. Your coaching experience gives you insight into the mental game, the psychological warfare that happens between points. And your love for tennis, which you've finally, finally reclaimed as your own instead of something stolen from you, gives you passion that translates through the screen, that makes viewers feel what you feel.
It's not the future you planned at thirteen. But it's built from the ashes of your broken dream into something entirely your own. You're not living vicariously through anyone. You're building your own legacy, making your own mark on the sport that broke you.
Sungho is on the court below, playing in a major professional tournament, his movements fluid and confident. He went pro after two years at Stanford, couldn't resist the pull of the tour any longer, and now he's ranked in the top fifty in the world and climbing. You've watched him rise, watched him struggle through injuries, losses and moments of doubt, watched him grow into the player you always knew he could be. You watched him become extraordinary.
The long distance has been brutal in ways neither of you anticipated. Months apart, different time zones that make phone calls a complicated negotiation, the constant pressure of his career weighing on both of you. You've had fights over crackling phone connections and tearful video calls and moments where you both wondered if loving each other from opposite sides of the world was sustainable, if you were just prolonging the inevitable breakup, if it would be kinder to just end it.
But somehow, you've made it work. Because he keeps his promises. He calls every day even when he's exhausted, visits when he can even when the travel destroys him, chooses tennis when he has to but always comes back to you. And you've kept yours. You built a career you love that exists independently of him, created an identity separate from his success, learned to watch tennis without it destroying you piece by piece. You learned to love the sport again on your own terms.
The match is close, intense that it has your heart pounding. The fifth set, tied at five games each. You're not coaching him anymore, he has a professional coach for that, someone with credentials and experience you don't have, but you're still watching with a critical eye, still mentally noting his footwork and shot selection, old habits impossible to break even after all this time.
He wins a brilliant point, a drop shot that catches his opponent completely off guard, perfectly executed with the kind of touch that can't be taught. When he looks up at the stands, his eyes find yours immediately, unerringly. Even in a crowd of thousands, he finds you, like you're the only fixed point in his universe, like you're magnetic north and he's a compass.
You touch your chest—the old signal, the one that means I love you, breathe, you've got this, and he grins, bright, beautiful and still capable of making your heart stutter after all this time.
He wins the match. Of course he does. When he's done with the mandatory interviews and handshakes and all the performative aspects of professional tennis, when he's finally free, he runs straight to you, ignoring protocol, ignoring his team's exasperated shouts.
You meet him at the edge of the court, and he lifts you in a crushing hug, spinning you around while you laugh into his neck, breathing him in, still the same shampoo after all this time.
"You were incredible," you say when he sets you down, slightly dizzy from the spinning and from him, from the intoxication of his presence after weeks apart.
"You always say that."
"Hey! It's true! That backhand down the line in the fourth set was perfection."
He kisses you, right there in front of cameras, fans and everyone, claiming you publicly like how he's claimed you privately for years, unashamed and unafraid. When he pulls back, his eyes are soft with love and exhaustion, dark circles under them from the travel and training.
"Come on," you say, taking his hand and lacing your fingers through his, the gesture automatic after years of practice. "You have more press to do. The post-match conference is in twenty minutes."
"Skip it. Come back to the hotel with me. I haven't seen you in three weeks."
"Sungho, you can't skip mandatory press. Your agent will murder you, and then murder me for enabling you."
"I'll risk it for five minutes alone with you. Just five minutes."
"Your definition of five minutes is highly suspect." You laugh, tugging him towards the press tent despite his protests, despite the way he drags his feet. "Besides, I'll be there tonight. We have the whole night."
"Promise?"
"Promise. Now go charm the reporters before they decide you're difficult."
He groans but goes, and you watch him transform into his public persona—charismatic, humble, gracious in victory. You've watched this transformation dozens of times, the way he puts on this mask for the media, and you're one of the few people who gets to see him without it, who knows the person beneath the performance.
Later that night, in a hotel room in a city you'll leave tomorrow, he pulls you close and whispers, "You would've beaten me, wouldn't you?"
It's become a ritual, this question. He asks it after every important match, and you always give the same answer, this truth that you've both made peace with.
"Every single time."
"I'm glad." He kisses your temple, gentle and reverent, full of affection that hasn't dimmed despite the distance and time. "That you still could. Even if it's just in theory."
For the first time in years, the words don't hurt. They're just a truth you can live with, one that acknowledges your past without letting it define your present or dictate your future. The ghost of the girl you were at thirteen finally rests in peace, her dream honored but no longer a source of grief. You've built a new dream, one that's entirely yours, one that exists independently of him even though you choose to share it with him.
"I love you," you tell him, and mean it with everything you are, with every broken and healed part of yourself, with all the pieces you've put back together in a different configuration.
"I love you too." He pulls you closer, and you fall asleep in his arms, not dreaming of tennis courts anymore but of futures you never planned but wouldn't trade for anything. Futures you chose. Futures that are yours.
Your shoulder still aches. It always will. Some losses are permanent, some doors stay closed forever, some dreams die and stay dead. You've made peace with that. But standing here, existing in this life you've built from ruins, you realize you've found something better than your original dream.
You've found a way to love tennis again on your own terms. You've built a career that's yours, that you earned through your own merit. And more importantly, you've found someone who loves you, not despite your brokenness, but with it, as part of the whole complicated person you are. Someone who sees your scars and stays. Someone who's willing to fight for you across any distance, who chooses you even when choosing you is hard.
........... so i'm a crying mess :] & now my head hurts (exactly how i was after watching the last ep of 2521 btw)
i love this so much you dont understand, this story will now be etched in my heart & mind forever
also it does not help that i actually relate to the m/c by mindset and choices and everything she do i'd do fr ...... so this was like ...... IDK an awakening 🤩
riwoo as the gamer friend you secretly have a crush on (and he secretly likes you back)
𖦹 pairing: gamer!riwoo x fem!reader (mutual crush)
𖦹 genre: fake texts, gamer au, fluff, crack
𖦹 a/n: this is part of my “boynextdoor as the gamer friend you secretly have a crush on (and he secretly likes you back)” fake texts series! i’ve made one for each member — reply or send an ask for the member you want next. majority wins ♡
jaehyun as the gamer friend you secretly have a crush on (and he secretly likes you back)
𖦹 pairing: gamer!jaehyun x fem!reader (mutual crush)
𖦹 genre: fake texts, gamer au, fluff, crack
𖦹 a/n: this is part of my “boynextdoor as the gamer friend you secretly have a crush on (and he secretly likes you back)” fake texts series! i’ve made one for each member — reply or send an ask for the member you want next. majority wins ♡
sungho as the gamer friend you secretly have a crush on (and he secretly likes you back)
𖦹 pairing: gamer!sungho x fem!reader (mutual crush)
𖦹 genre: fake texts, gamer au, fluff, crack
𖦹 warnings: suggestive jokes and lines, swearing
𖦹 a/n: this is part of my “boynextdoor as the gamer friend you secretly have a crush on (and he secretly likes you back)” fake texts series! i’ve made one for each member — reply or send an ask for the member you want next. majority wins ♡
portal: sungho | jaehyun
—
—
written with love by @yeppishappy .
please don’t repost or steal! ♡
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