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When you first met Beomgyu, you remembered thinking he resembled a song with an exuberant melody and lyrics that carried a subdued ache beneath their brightness.

It happened in a flower shop. Its glass windows misted faintly from the contrast between the afternoon heat and the cool air inside. You had stepped in without a particular occasion to justify the purchase. There had been no birthday, no anniversary, no social obligation demanding a bouquet tied with satin ribbon.

You simply desired flowers for yourself which you coined as a small, extravagant indulgence. It was a transient arrangement that would open generously for a few days before surrendering petal by petal. The yearning for something beautiful and ephemeral, yet entirely necessary.

He had come for his mother — information you would gather later, piece by careful piece, petal by careful petal.

At the time, he was merely a stranger positioned beneath a cascade of hanging ivy, framed by buckets of chrysanthemums and roses. Despite the riot of color surrounding him — fuchsia peonies, ivory lilies, the saturated gold of marigolds — your eyes had found him first. 

The discovery startled you. You had meant to look at the plethora of blooms, yet your attention abandoned them in favor of a boy brushing his fingertips across the lip of a tulip.

He stood near a display of yellow tulips, their stems gathered in a wide ceramic vase. His fingers grazed the petals in absent circles while he spoke to the florist, who was trimming the ends of a bouquet with silver shears that snapped softly through green stalks. You could not catch the entirety of his voice as it traversed lightly through the hum of the shop’s air conditioner.

It was his mere existence that had completely enamoured you on spot; the scene held a buoyancy that felt almost infectious.

How so? — the question may arise.

The sensation that followed reminded you of idle afternoons when you allowed your playlist to wander freely. You would drift from task to task — folding laundry, watering plants, reorganizing shelves — without granting full attention to any one endeavor. Then an unknown song would slip in which you hadn’t heard before. Its melody would easily grant a type of brightness, coaxing movement from your shoulders and persuading your feet to tap against the floor.

You would let it play once, then again, and only upon the third repetition would you attend to the lyrics. There, beneath the lively instrumentation, lived a softer confession.

A line about departure, sometimes about yearning, or maybe about devotion given without promise of return.

The benign ache weaved in them was always more pensive than the melody ever suggested.

There is something gently disarming in that contrast, isn’t it? In the way the music keeps smiling while the story it tells is a little rueful, as if joy and longing have agreed to share the same breath.

Choi Beomgyu embodied that same duality.

His movements carried an effervescent charm. His laughter tasted like sunlight filtered through the windowpane. Yet in glimpses of moments between those gestures, there flickered a depth that felt far older than all the lightness he projected.

“You’re taking your time,” he said, glancing over without fully turning his body. He pointed at the bouquets before you. “They’re going to think you’re judging them.”

You looked up, startled by the sudden conversation. “Oh, um—that’s the whole point. I can’t just commit to the first pretty face I see.” You punctuated your sentences with a short laugh. “If I’m bringing them home, they should justify the space they’ll occupy, no?”

He grinned. “Fair. What statement are you hoping for?”

“Statement?”

“Flowers rarely exist without intention. Apology, gratitude, admiration, consolation. What are you trying to feel when you look at them?” he elaborated this time. “What do you want yours to say?”

“That’s a strangely serious question for flowers,” you muttered, reaching for a cluster of yellow tulips that mirrored his choice. “Flowers can talk now?”

“Only to those willing to listen,” he replied, smiling warmly as he spoke.

You studied him more closely now, the brightness of his earlier laughter softened by an introspective cast to his gaze. In his eyes — deep brown warmed by the afternoon light — you perceived a contemplative sorrow that did not contradict his buoyancy but coexisted with it.

A moment where the melody and its pensive lyrics intertwined.

“You make it sound personal.” You hoped you weren’t trespassing any boundaries, keeping your voice soft. “Are you picking for someone you admire?”

“For my mother,” he said immediately. “She likes having them in the house. Says it makes mornings better.” A quick glance at you before he continued in a gentler tone, “I don’t get to bring her things very often.”

Your chest tightened at the simplicity of that confession. “You want them to say that you notice,” you deduced.  

“That I pay attention, that I’m grateful.” He looked up then, expression bright again, although the earlier gravity had not vanished entirely. “Though I should make it clear that I always feel grateful, not just today.”

You waved your hand with a smile. “I understand it perfectly, don’t worry.” — then, with a tilt of your head — “But do you mind me asking what are you feeling today? Figured I should ask an expert before I chose mine.” 

“Today?” He thought about it for a second, then shrugged. His smile told you everything. “I guess I’m going with hopeful but trying not to make it obvious.”

Mirthful laughter bubbled through you, easily swaying him to join as well. He spoke like he held pieces of himself within each word. You listened, caught in the strange contradiction of him.

A song that made you want to dance, but left your heart aching by the time it ended. Yet somehow, you feel almost compelled to memorize every word.

That was your first impression of Beomgyu.

Beomgyu was happiness rendered in yellow and sorrow steeped in blue, two vivid saturations of feeling that rarely appeared in isolation. 

Within him, brightness carried depth, and depth carried desire; both hues dissolved into longing that stretched beyond articulation. You already knew he possessed radiance that illuminated entire rooms, and that underneath lived a current of introspection which altered its temperature.

To know him required attention not only to what he offered outwardly, but to what gathered beneath the surface and colored every gesture.

Your friendship had settled into your life as smoothly as water flowing downstream, unobstructed and ridiculously, unsettlingly easy. Days that had once moved in orderly sequence began to orbit his presence. You discovered, gradually, that you had begun orienting your hours around the possibility of encountering, touching that brightness again. What began as companionship deepened into anticipation, and anticipation soon turned into attachment. Attachment (blossomed) to desire.

The blue revealed itself in more secluded, quieter hours.

You’ve only ever caught glimpses of it in fragments. One night, when he was playing the piano, you traced the blue in the frayed concentration that momentarily overtook his features as his fingers hovered above the keys. You traced it again in the softened cadence of melodies he coaxed into being, in the distant focus that entered his gaze when his attention drifted skyward.

“Why does it always feel heavier at night?” Beomgyu asked, so quietly that you thought you misheard him.

You closed the book you were reading before pulling the bench slightly closer and sat beside him. “I think it’s because there is no one to entertain," you replied. “You stop performing and start to live only for yourself.”

He glanced at you, then reached up to run a hand through his hair, leaving it slightly disheveled. “You think I perform?”

“I think you shine,” you answered, nudging his shoulder with yours. “But sometimes it gets exhausting, doesn’t it? Even for you.”

He let out a short laugh, though it carried less brightness than usual. He turned back to the piano and played a softer chord, letting it fade before closing the lid. “You notice too much,” he said, sliding off the bench and walking toward the window. He pressed his forehead to the cool glass and looked at the horizon beyond the buildings. “It would be easier if you didn’t.”

You followed him and stood beside him, folding your arms against the chill from the windowpane. “Easier for whom?” you asked.

Without answering, he reached for your sleeve and tugged you closer until your sides touched. In the quiet that followed, the blue began to feel comforting. 

“For me,” he admitted at last.

Perhaps that was why loving him felt inseparable from knowing him; the two unfolded together, mutually sustaining. 

He was both the sunlight and the shadow it cast, and you wanted to know every shade of him. You sought the depths that accompanied the light, compelled to understand the source of that contemplative hue that surfaced in rare intervals. You wanted to hold every variation of him within your understanding.

In attending to both yellow and blue, the longing for him had widened the interior landscape of your own heart, rendering it more capacious. He became your muse before you even knew it — weaving himself into your words, your art, the very fabric of your days. 

Beomgyu felt like autumn at its peak.

In his presence, the world assumed warmer pigments. Maple crowns burned crimson overhead and ochre foliage fractured beneath your steps with a brittle hush. He was the crisp air that traced your jaw and slipped beneath woolen collars. He was the benign warmth that gathered between your palms around paper cups of cinnamon-laced tea. He was the sunray filtered through thinning branches that cast everything in molten gold, and the scent of earth after a night’s rain.

They began to take shape one afternoon while walking beside him along a narrow path strewn with amber and rust. The wind disordered his hair until it fell across his forehead in uneven strands. He ducked his head, then kicked at a mound of leaves, sending them spiraling upward before they descended in fractured arcs around your boots. 

He glanced at you to gauge your reaction, walking backward now. His grin widening with boyish triumph. You shook your head, though your smile refused suppression. The wind pressed against your back, urging you forward, and you stepped closer to him to shield yourself from its bite.

“Autumn suits you,” you murmured, adjusting the scarf at his throat where it had loosened. You let your hand rest against his cheek.

He stilled, surprised. Withdrawing one hand from his pocket he caught your wrist gently, kissing your palm. “How so?” 

You swore you had never seen anything more beautiful.

“Falling doesn't feel as painful or haunting as I always imagined.” You brushed your thumb on his skin, smiling softly. “You helped me realize that what I've been fighting all along was actually what I needed the most.”

“I’m responsible for your revised opinion on gravity?” he asked. 

“You’re responsible for many, many revisions.” 

He watched you in contemplative silence, then brushed his knuckles across your cheek where the cold had begun to settle. “You’re giving me far too much credit,” he murmured, though his smile deepened at the edges. “But I’ll accept it.”

Seasons change, and autumn never stays.

You learned to love him when fall was receding, when the trees were stripped bare, their branches skeletal canopies against a slate-gray sky. When the wind left your fingertips numb. When the last of the leaves clung desperately to thinning branches before surrendering to the earth. You learned to love him within that austerity.

Even when winter kissed the ground and the north wind carved itself into your bones, you found yourself loving him still.

You cherished him when his golden glow faded, when silence accompanied your walks, when his laughter surfaced less frequently and pauses lengthened between words. You cherished him in those muted months with the same devotion you had offered during his brilliance. 

Beneath barren trees, he would stand with his gaze lifted toward a sky drained of color in anticipation of the first snowfall. In your eyes, he was radiant nonetheless. 

Because Beomgyu encompassed more than autumn in its splendor. He was also the branches left exposed. The final leaf relinquishing its hold. Loving him meant remaining through abundance and austerity alike. It meant recognizing that every season he carried within himself deserved witness and devotion.

Through gold and through frost, through ascent and descent, your devotion remained. You loved him across every change. You loved him entirely, all of him.

Your first kiss with Beomgyu wasn't all ‘fireworks’ like the authors of novels promised. Gentle was the feeling that gathered slowly and consumed you from within. Love began to pool in the smallest places — at the base of your throat, in the hollow beneath your ribs, in the shallow drag of breath you could no longer regulate; occupied space until there was no corner left untouched.

It resembled the swell of waves meeting the shore — tender and lulling. There was a pull, then a yielding, then another approach. Each return carried greater depth than the last until retreat no longer signified distance.

You remembered how the distant hum of the cicadas dissolved into the soft disturbance of leaves brushing against one another. Moonlight overhead bathed the surrounding in silver and everything looked a little out of this world.

All of it receded until there was only him before you. It was a gradual surrender when his mouth met yours; a descent that carried no fear and no ache.

Each passing second imprinted sensation into muscle and memory. Beneath the layers of cloth you felt the solid line of him and read the restrained strength in the way he held himself still for you.

Your lips parted; he followed, learning the contours of your mouth with patient devotion. You tasted warmth. Your breathing grew uneven, shared across the small distance that no longer existed. When your fingers slipped behind his nape, a faint tremor answered beneath your touch, revealing hunger bridled by care. The night air could only cool the exposed skin at your forehead while the rest of you burned where he left his touch.

The separation tore more than it soothed when he finally pulled back. The love-filled imprint of his hands persisted across your face and waist, phantom warmth refusing to fade away. The sight of him smiling dazedly at you afterwards only amplified the continued fervent insistence of your pulse.

You reached for him again before reason could intervene.

The sea always returns to the shore drawn by forces older than intention. Much like the sea, you knew you would always find your way back to him.

His hugs carried the solace of scented candles and the softened glow of warmlight filling a room. On days that have stretched too long, returning to your shared apartment meant returning to his arms. 

On such a particular evening, you found Beomgyu seated on the couch with his guitar resting against his thigh. He was playing a tune you recognized as one of his many unfinished compositions, the ones he revised endlessly and entrusted only to you. You leaned against the wall near the hallway, your bag still hanging from your shoulder, and fondly watched him. The aching knots behind your temples began to loosen at the melody.

It was stupefying how his presence alone could make you forget about all the chaos in your mind. 

The moment he glanced up and saw you, he set the guitar aside and rose from the couch. He stopped in front of you and opened his arms. No words were ever needed. One look at you and without a single question he always knew what to do.

Resisting the pull for him and the safety he provided you is like the tide resisting the moon. Futile.

You let your bag slide to the floor and stepped forward, giving in to the inevitability of it. His embrace enclosed you at once, one arm circling your waist, the other came up to cradle the back of your head, guiding you forward until your forehead rested against his chest. He lowered his chin to the crown of your hair, palms flattening against your back, pressing you fully into his warmth.

“Let’s get comfortable,” he said, bending to press his mouth against your temple. “Hm?”

Nodding was all you could manage. He guided you down onto the couch without breaking contact. Your cheek found the hollow beneath his collarbone. His hand moved in slow passes along your spine. The fatigue in your limbs began to unravel under the repetition of his touch.

You exhaled, letting the ugliness of the world wash out that was buried deep in your heart, followed by a long inhale of his scent which instead made its home there. Him, the rightful owner of your heart.

“Rest, my love,” he murmured, adjusting his hold so that one arm supported your shoulders while the other draped across your waist. His fingers traced absent patterns against your side before smoothing upward again along your back. “You have done enough.”

Your fingers slipped beneath the hem of his shirt, spreading across his chest, feeling the rise and fall beneath your palm. “Can you hold me a little longer?” you whispered.

“I am not letting go,” he replied. His arms closed more securely around you, drawing you flush against him as he reclined further into the cushions.

Your eyes drifted shut. In that enclosure, the day lost its claim on you. Being near him, surrounded by him, it was like the calm after a storm.

It felt like returning home.

Beomgyu stood in your mind as a solitary figure against a raging sky. As beautiful in the way survival can be beautiful, as brave in the way endurance reshapes a person from the inside out.

Such a storm didn't howl with wind and rain, but one that raged within and remained unseen by the world. He had stood against it for as long as he could remember, braided into his becoming, saturating his spirit with cold and force. Its gales tore through his thoughts. Its downpour soaked through bone and marrow. Yet it never carried him off. He absorbed its violence and remained standing, year after year, season after season.

You had watched him for long, marveled at the resilience that shaped his every step. There was something breathtaking about the way he braved the chaos and faced the tempest — daring it to break harder, daring it to test the limits of his capacity.

But you had also seen beyond the defiance. You saw the moments when the gale stole warmth from his skin. You saw the salt gather at the edges of his lashes. The sea crashed higher and darkness pressed from every side. Still he stood tall like a lighthouse against the cacophony of chaos.

Knowing he possessed the strength to endure it all did not stop your instinct to move toward him. Strength does not erase solitude. Endurance does not silence the ache of carrying too much alone.

You reached for his hand and threaded your fingers through his, sealing your touch around him. You cradled his empty heart in your warm palms.

He was as fearless and bewitching as the sea at its wildest, as the sky moments before rupture, as the earth that endures the storm's fury and still stands tall. And though he had spent his life believing he had to weather it alone, you vowed — within yourself and for him — that you would remain beside him when the horizon darkened again. You would remain beside him as someone who would walk through the rain with him, hand in hand, never letting go.

Because even the strongest souls deserve a hand to hold in the tempest. Even the bravest hearts deserve to feel another pulse answering their own beneath the roar of the sky.

Beomgyu was a gentle soul.

Therefore, fights with him were never wildfire reducing everything to ruin. Arguments came, as inevitable as tides, pulling and pushing against the walls of closeness you shared — and when it did, god, did it kill you.

It felt as if the ocean had claimed your footing, dragging you farther from him with every passing second. Even in the same room, there would be a sense of submersion. It would leave you gasping, grasping, searching for something to hold onto.

He carried it too, and it showed. Bright eyes would be stripped off their illumination, and with it, the light would eventually leave his entire being. 

The bed you shared would turn austere during those nights. The sheets turned to an abyss of loneliness, suffocating you instead of providing you comfort.

Reconciliation, however, never delayed its arrival for long. He always found you first. The distance never survived him for more than a few hours before it drove him restless, before it pulled him back to you.

Arms would close around you and draw you into his chest; his apologies would press into your skin in broken breaths, damp with tears he never tried to hide. There was no pride left in him by then, only the need to be close again.

And you would give in just as surely, collapsing into him and exhaling all that you had been holding in. The anvil in your chest would lift, making you reacquainted with what it meant to breathe again.

In his embrace, life resumed its course. 

Beomgyu was the wind that kept the fire of life alive within you. To be held by him was to be encircled by something vast yet tender, which coaxed sparks into flames, flames into embers, embers into an inferno that would never consume but only ever warm.

When you gave yourself to him, it was from trust in its rawest form. Offering the most fragile parts of yourself into his keeping and watching him receive them with care — you bared your soul in the same way he laid his before you.

You had never felt intoxicated before, but Beomgyu was headier than any elixir. He clouded the edges of reality and drew you into a space where only he existed. 

“This stops the moment you say so,” he murmured against your lips, fingers entwining with yours and pressing them into the mattress above your head.

His gaze would not waver as he spoke; it demanded your comfort above all else.

And you could have stopped, could have let the moment dissolve into nothingness, but how could you? When his calloused and gentle hands sought yours with reverence? When the space between you was meant to be bridged, not broken?

You shook your head, lips parting to whisper the only truth that mattered.

“Stay.”

At that, he would exhale, relief passing over his features before he captured your mouth once more. Two hearts beating together to leaen a single song — he never once rushed, but always moving with care, watching your face for every flicker of reaction, adjusting at the slightest change, his lips trailing from your mouth to your jaw and down the line of your throat.

He would bury his face against your shoulder when the intensity crested, breath hot against your skin, his name falling from your lips in a fractured whisper. His heart would pound against yours until the lines between where he ended and where you began blurred into eternity.

If you were ever to be consumed by fire, let it be his — the blaze that never burned, only ever left you glowing long after the flames had settled.

Beomgyu is home.

Beomgyu is the embodiment of love in its purest, most livable form.

He wasn't a man of many words but believed in the power of a gesture. His affection resided in the unnoticed and mundane things, in gestures so small they might be overlooked by anyone who is not paying attention.

You never liked oranges.

But they tasted sweet when he peeled them for you. You would watch pretending indifference, while your chest tightened at the sight of him doing something so small with such devotion. He would press a slice to your lips without a word, waiting for you to take it, his gaze warm with an affection too vast to be contained in something as simple as language.

Maybe that was why you took it, why you chewed past the tang and the bitterness — because when love was given so gently, so earnestly, how could you not accept it?

Much like the love that had brewed in the home you built together. Ordinary days took on a glow simply because he inhabited them with you. You found yourself enjoying things you never had before because they were wrapped in him. The mundane had never felt so tender. Love had never tasted so sweet.

With him it did, it always does, and you knew — it always will.

THE END.