bf!James who secretly laughed every time you called Damon Albarn “that pretentious british man” because technically you weren’t wrong, but the same could arguably be said for Liam and Noel.

bf!James who eventually moved the arguments to private messages after his friends kept screenshotting your fights and reposting them with captions like “enemies to lovers speedrun.”

bf!James who made you a playlist titled “for people with terrible opinions” and filled it with Blur songs he swore would fix your taste.

bf!James who dragged you into tiny record shops because “you need a proper Blur education,” then acted betrayed when you wandered off to the Oasis section instead.

bf!James who stared at you in genuine horror after catching you replace one of his Blur songs in a shared playlist with Wonderwall.

bf!James who claimed your music taste was hopeless but still memorised your favorite Oasis songs anyway, just so he could sing them obnoxiously off-key to make you laugh.

bf!James who nearly passed out when months later you casually showed up wearing one of his old Blur tees at his door and said, “don’t get excited. i still think Oasis clears.”

bf!James who kissed you mid-argument once because you were ranting about the battle of britpop with so much fake passion he couldn’t even take you seriously anymore.

bf!James who started noticing that every single one of your arguments somehow circled back to defending Oasis like it was your full-time job. “do you even like them that much,” he asked once. you stared at him for a second before admitting, “not really. i just like annoying you.”

bf!James who looked genuinely offended the first time you called Blur “elevator music for art students.” he spent the next hour trying to prove you wrong with a level of passion that honestly concerned you.

bf!James who would randomly send you screenshots of people online praising Blur with captions like “SEE??? PUBLIC OPINION.” as if he was gathering evidence for a legal case.

bf!James who acted smug for weeks after catching you adding Girls & Boys to one of your playlists. you tried claiming it was ironic listening. he never believed you.

bf!James who loved putting on Beetlebum during car rides specifically because he knew you’d start complaining dramatically within the first thirty seconds, even though you always ended up singing along anyway.

bf!James who once pulled out an entire timeline of the battle of britpop just to win an argument with you, only for you to say, “this is the nerdiest thing you’ve ever done,” while trying not to laugh.

bf!James who got ridiculously soft the first time you admitted one of his favourite songs actually reminded you of him whenever it came on. he pretended to stay calm about it, but later he added the song to three separate playlists he’d made for you so you could always be reminded of him.

bf!James who threatened to revoke your aux privileges forever after you interrupted his Blur marathon by blasting Don’t Look Back in Anger through the speakers.

bf!James who would hold your face in both hands after particularly stupid arguments and go, “you know we could be having normal couple conversations instead of debating 90s british men right now.”

bf!James who secretly adored that your relationship started because you failed at ragebaiting him initially. according to him, the fact that you kept coming back to argue meant you liked him from the beginning—even if neither of you admitted it yet.

bf!James who still has screenshots of your very first arguments saved somewhere in his camera roll because he thinks it’s funny how hard you tried to sound like the number one Oasis defender alive while clearly googling half your points.

bf!James who once got so competitive during a debate that he made you both sit down and listen to entire albums back-to-back “for objective analysis,” only for the night to end with you both yelling lyrics across the room at each other.

bf!James who loves wrapping an arm around your waist and whispering “be honest, Blur changed your life a little bit” whenever he catches you enjoying one of their songs too much.

bf!James who acted devastated when you told him Tender was actually beautiful because according to him, “bullying you about britpop was more fun when you were committed to the bit.”

bf!James who keeps trying to get you to watch old Blur interviews with him, then spends half the time pausing to explain band lore while you stare at him like he’s become a middle-aged man trapped in a young person’s body.

bf!James who nearly started a real argument after you said Blur only won because they had “better unemployed person music.” he didn’t even know what that meant, but it sounded insulting.

bf!James who once caught you defending Blur to somebody else online and went completely silent. when you noticed him staring, he just went, “oh my god. i converted you.”

bf!James who still argues with you for fun even after you both admitted the whole Oasis vs Blur thing stopped being serious months ago. now it’s basically flirting with extra steps.

You planned everything. You had spreadsheets. colour-coded calendars. Alarms set on your phone for things that were still three weeks away. You knew where you needed to be and when and what you needed to wear and who you needed to impress and exactly how many minutes late you could arrive before it went from fashionable to disrespectful.

Keonho just… existed.

And apparently, for him, that was enough.

"We'll figure it out," he'd say, whenever you tried to pin down a date, a time, a commitment. "It'll be fine," he'd say, when you asked him what he was wearing to something important. "Don't worry so much," he'd say, when you were clearly, obviously, rightfully spiraling.

You wanted to strangle him.

You wanted to kiss him.

Usually both at the same time.

Tonight's fight had been brewing for weeks, simmering under the surface of every text he left on read, every plan he showed up late for, every time he looked at you with those stupid, calm eyes and said "we'll figure it out" like it was the easiest thing in the world.

The dinner was important. People who mattered would be there. People whose opinions could make or break things you'd been working toward for years. A single wrong move could, and would, unravel everything.

You'd told him about it three times. Texted him the address twice. Sent him a reminder the morning of, complete with a photo of the venue and a highlighted map. Told him, specifically, explicitly, begged him to wear something nice.

He showed up forty-five minutes late in a wrinkled band tee and ripped jeans.

You spotted him the second he walked through the door: that stupid beanie, that lazy slouch, the skateboard he'd somehow snuck past coat check. Your blood went cold. Then hot. Then cold again.

You excused yourself from a conversation and crossed the room in what felt like slow motion. Your heels clicked against the marble floor. Your perfectly applied lipstick felt like warpaint.

You grabbed his wrist and pulled him into the hallway before he could say a word.

"What is wrong with you?"

"Traffic," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets. He looked completely unbothered and completely unaware that he'd just detonated a bomb in the middle of your perfectly constructed evening.

"You don't have a car."

"Pedestrian traffic."

"Keonho."

He shrugged. That infuriating, shoulders-up, I don't see the problem shrug. His beanie was crooked. His hair was a mess. There was a small rip in the knee of his jeans that you were pretty sure hadn't been there yesterday.

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"You're late." Your voice came out sharp, each word a knife. "You're dressed like that. I told you—I specifically told you—"

"You told me a lot of things, princess."

"Don't call me that."

He tilted his head, beanie slipping further over one eye. There was something in his expression, not quite a smirk yet not quite a challenge, that made your stomach twist. "Then stop acting like one."

You wanted to hit him. You wanted to scream. You wanted to grab him by that wrinkled band tee and shake him until he understood.

"Do you have any idea how this looks?" You hissed, glancing over your shoulder at the crowd inside. Laughter spilled through the doorway. Glasses clinked. The world you were supposed to be performing in continued on without you. "I've been talking you up for weeks. Telling people you're coming. Telling them you're—"

"What? Worthy of being seen with the great and mighty you?"

"That's not—"

"Is that what this is about?" He stepped closer, and suddenly the hallway felt smaller. His voice was quiet now, but no less sharp. "How it looks?"

"It's about respect, Keonho. It's about showing up when you say you will. It's about not making me—" Your voice caught and you closed your eyes to recollect yourself. " —not making me look stupid for defending you to everyone who said I was making a mistake."

He went quiet.

"Who said that?"

"It doesn't matter."

"It matters to me."

"It should matter to you that you were late. That you're wearing that. That you can't seem to—" You stopped and pressed your fingers to your temples, the beginnings of a headache pulsed behind your eyes. "I had a plan. I had everything planned. I knew exactly how this night was supposed to go, and you just— you just—"

"We'll figure it out."

"We'll figure it out?"

You laughed. It came out sharp and bitter, nothing funny about it. The sound echoed off the hallway walls.

"That's your answer to everything." You were pacing now, heels clicking against the marble, back and forth, back and forth. "'We'll figure it out.' 'It'll be fine.' 'Don't worry so much.' You don't plan. You don't think. You just show up whenever you feel like it and expect everyone to be grateful that you bothered to exist in their direction."

"Maybe because I trust that things will work out without me having to control every single detail."

"Not everyone has that luxury."

He crossed his arms, leaned against the wall and watched you pace. "What's that supposed to mean?"

You stopped and faced him, your chest heaving. 

"It means some of us don't have the option to just exist and hope for the best. Some of us have to earn our place. Some of us have to fight for every single thing we have, and one wrong move, or late appearance, or bad outfit can take all of it away."

He was quiet for a long moment.

"Do you understand how embarrassing this is for me?" You asked, and your voice was more tired now. "How it feels to stand there and watch people's faces when they see you? To know they're thinking that's who she chose?"

He pushed off the wall.

"Embarrassing."

"Yes."

"I'm embarrassing to you?"

"That's not—" You stopped. Swallowed. The lump in your throat was hard to get past. "You're not trying, Keonho. You're not showing up. Not really. You're just—here. Floating. Existing. And that's not enough. Not for this. Not for—"

You didn't finish the sentence.

He stared at you. His face was unreadable—that careful blankness he wore when he was actually hurt, when he was trying not to show it. His jaw was tight. His hands were in his pockets, but you could see the tension in his shoulders.

"Why does embarrassment matter so much to you?"

The question landed like a slap.

"What?"

"Embarrassing." He said the word slowly, like he was tasting it, turning it over in his mouth. "Why does it matter so much? Why do you care what they think?" He gestured toward the doorway, toward the laughter and the clinking glasses. "They don't know you. They don't know us. They don't know anything. They're just people with opinions that don't actually mean anything."

"Opinions mean everything."

"To who?"

"To me."

He nodded slowly. Something flickered across his face: disappointment, maybe. Or understanding. It was hard to tell.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "I know."

The silence between them was heavy. Wrong. Stretching like taffy, thin and about to snap.

You could hear your own heartbeat atop his breathing, the distant murmur of the party you were supposed to be charming slicing through the quiet.

"Look," he said, running a hand through his hair, knocking his beanie completely off. It landed on the floor with a soft thump. "I'm sorry I was late. I'm sorry I wore this. I'm sorry I'm not—whatever you need me to be for this to work."

"Keonho—"

"I'm trying, princess." He bent down and picked up his beanie, dusted it off against his thigh. His voice was quiet, as though he was choosing every word carefully. "I'm just not trying the way you want me to. And I don't know if I can."

He turned toward the door and something in your chest cracked.

"Don't."

He stopped. His back was to you still and his shoulders were tense.

"Don't walk away," you said. "Not from me."

"I'm not walking away." His voice was soft, almost gentle. That made it worse. "I'm giving you space to go back in there and do your thing, make it the perfect evening." He glanced back at you over his shoulder. "I know you need that. I know you planned for that. So go. I'll see you tomorrow."

"And what about us?"

He was quiet for a long moment. The kind of quiet that felt like a held breath.

"We'll figure it out."

"Stop saying that."

"It's all I've got."

There was a momentary lull until you crossed the room before your brain could catch up with your body.

You grabbed the front of his wrinkled band tee, pulled him down and you kissed him.

Your fingers twisted in his shirt, knuckles white, pulling him closer like you were afraid he'd disappear. His free hand caught your waist and the other dropped his beanie again, completely forgotten, his fingers threading into your hair, loosening pins, ruining your perfect updo.

He kissed you back like he'd been waiting for it. Like the fight had been building toward this all along: every argument, every slammed door, every "we'll figure it out" and this was the only possible conclusion.

His mouth was warm. He tasted like the energy drink he'd been nursing on the way over, sweet and sharp, and his lips were slightly chapped, and you didn't care. You didn't care about any of it.

The party behind you faded away, the carefully constructed walls you'd spent years building came crashing down. All that existed was his hand on your waist, his fingers in your hair, his mouth moving against yours like he was trying to tell you something he didn't have words for.

When you finally broke apart, both of you breathing hard, your chests heaving, your foreheads pressed together, he let out a shaky breath.

"What was that?" he whispered.

"I don't know."

"You kissed me."

"I know."

"Why?"

You opened your eyes. He was so close that you could see the flecks of gold in his brown eyes and the way his lips were slightly swollen.

"Because—" You swallowed. Your voice was shaking. You couldn't remember the last time your voice had shaken in front of anyone. "Because I didn't want you to leave. Because I don't care about the dinner. Because you're right, embarrassing doesn't matter. It never mattered. I just—"

"Just what?"

"I don't know how to be anything other than this." You gestured vaguely at the party behind you, at your perfect dress, at the life you'd built out of sheer will and terror. Your hand was trembling. "I don't know how to let go. I don't know how to trust that things will just work out. I don't know how to be like you: how to just exist and believe that's enough."

He was quiet for a moment. His thumb was tracing small circles on your hip, through the fabric of your dress. His other hand was still in your hair, loose strands falling around your face.

"I'm not asking you to be like me," he said finally. His voice was soft and gentle in a way that made your chest ache. "I'm just asking you to let me in."

You stared at him. His eyes were dark and steady and warm. There was no judgment or frustration there. Just... him. Just the boy who showed up late in wrinkled band tees and said "we'll figure it out" like it was a prayer.

"I don't know how to do that either," you whispered, and watched as his eyes scanned your face.

"Then we'll figure it out," he said. "Together."

He said it like a promise. Like a vow. Like he meant it.

You kissed him again and this time it felt less like a fight and more like a surrender. Your hands slid up from his chest to his shoulders, your fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt. His hand pressed flat against your lower back, pulling you closer, and you let him. You let yourself be pulled.

When you finally pulled back his band tee was even more wrinkled than before, your perfect lipstick was definitely smeared across both your mouths, and your updo was a lost cause.

"You're still late," you said.

"I know."

"You're still dressed like that."

"I know."

"And I still want to kill you."

"I know." He grinned that stupid, lopsided, infuriating grin that had made you want to scream the first time you saw it. "But you still kissed me."

"Shut up."

"Make me, princess."

And that sums up pretty much the entirety of your… whatever you are. You’ll be at each other’s throats constantly, and yet you can’t seem to stay away from one another.

Another aspect of you two being together was that you had the emotional expressiveness of a rock and would close in on yourself whenever something upset you, driving Keonho absolutely mad.

The first time you stopped going to the skate park, he didn't say anything.

He noticed, though. Of course he noticed. Keonho noticed everything about you: when you were tired, when you were faking, when you were one wrong word away from shattering.

And most of all he noticed when you started pulling away, though he let you be by yourself for a few days to mellow until he finally had enough.

You were half-asleep when you heard it: the soft scrape of a shoe against the trellis, the creak of the window frame, the quiet thud of a body dropping onto the roof that sat just below your window with a few too many scuff marks. Your heart lurched and you sat up, pink blanket pooling around your waist, hair a wild mess from tossing and turning.

And there he was.

Keonho, in the flesh, backlit by the dim glow of the streetlights outside, pulling your already slightly open window wider. You immediately rose, moving towards him and shoving your curtains aside, already knowing what this was about.

"Talk to me," he said, already swinging his leg through the frame. "Or I'm climbing in."

"You're already climbing in."

"So talk to me faster."

"You can't just show up at my window at two in the morning," you said, your voice still thick with sleep and something a bit too close to relief, moving back to sit on the edge of your bed.

"I can't? Because I just did."

"It's breaking and entering."

"My feet were already in the room before you said you didn’t want me here." He dropped his skateboard against your wall, kicked off his shoes, and stood at the foot of your bed with his arms crossed. "That's not forceful. That's just... hovering without opposition."

"That's not a thing."

"It's a thing I just came up with." He tilted his head, beanie askew, hair falling into his eyes. "Now. Talk."

"I don't have anything to say."

"That's a lie." He took a step closer. "Your left eye is twitching."

"My left eye is not—" It was, you could feel it. You hated him. "I'm fine."

"Stop saying that."

"Stop meddling."

"No."

You glared at him and he glared back. The air between you crackled. This was your love language: two people who cared too much and didn't know how to say it any other way.

"I heard your friends," you said finally.

He went still. Completely, utterly still. Like someone had frozen him in place.

"They said I was using you." Your voice came out flat, practiced, like you'd rehearsed it in the mirror a hundred times. "That I'd get bored. That I'd throw you away." You swallowed but your throat was dry. "And I thought maybe they're right. Maybe that's what I do. Maybe that's all I know how to do."

Keonho didn't say anything for a long moment. He just stood there, looking at you with an expression you couldn't read: something between frustration and tenderness and a third thing you were too scared to name.

Then he walked around the bed, sat down next to you, and knocked his shoulder against yours. Hard.

"Ow," you said.

"That's for ignoring me for six days."

"I wasn't ignoring you, I was—"

"Busy." He knocked his shoulder against yours again, softer this time. "Yeah, I know. You're always busy when you're scared."

"I'm not scared."

"You're terrified." He turned to face you, close enough that you could see the dark circles under his eyes from staying up toolate. "You're so scared you can't even say it without your voice going up at the end like a question."

Your breath caught.

"My friends are idiots," he said. "They don't know you."

"Neither do you."

"I know you leave your shoes in the middle of the floor even though you yell at me for the same thing—"

"Because I live here. You're a guest."

"—I know you pretend not to like my music but you added three of my songs to your playlist—"

"I added them so I could identify them and properly hate them."

"—I know you're mean because you're scared, not because you're cruel."

You opened your mouth. Closed it.

He was looking at you with something far too soft for his sharp face that made your chest ache and your eyes burn and your heart beat too fast. "I know you haven't thrown me away yet. And I've given you plenty of reasons."

"You are annoying," you whispered.

"Yeah." He almost smiled. "But you keep me around anyway."

"I'm reconsidering."

"No you're not."

"Get off my bed."

"It's my bed now." He leaned back on his hands, looking up at your ceiling like he owned the place. "I call dibs."

"You can't call dibs on someone else's bed."

"I just did."

You sat there for a couple of seconds, weighing up your options, then you grabbed your pillow and hit him square in the face with it.

He grabbed it and hit you back.

What followed was a full-scale pillow war, leaving feathers floating in the air and both of you breathless and laughing, his beanie somehow on your head and your silk scrunchie around his wrist.

You eventually ended up tangled together in the pink blanket, his chest against your side, your leg thrown over his, both of you gasping for air.

"See?" he said, grinning. "This is why you keep me around."

"I'm going to push you out the window."

"You'd miss me."

"I'd watch you fall."

"Kinky."

"Keonho!”

A week later, he crashed.

The call came from his friend, one of the ones who still looked at you like you were a bomb waiting to go off. "He's at your place. He said you'd know what to do."

You did.

You were already climbing out of bed, already pulling on the nearest hoodie (his, you realised later), already running down the stairs before your brain caught up with your body.

You found him on your front steps.

It was worse than you'd imagined. Worse than any of the scenarios that had played out in your head while you were running. He was sitting on the cold concrete, one leg stretched out in front of him, the other bent at an awkward angle. His jeans were torn at the knee and there was far too much blood. His palm was scraped raw, little flecks of gravel embedded in the skin, and his board was lying in the bushes where he'd apparently thrown it in frustration.

"Keonho."

"Hey princess." He looked up, and smiled like nothing was wrong and he wasn't bleeding on your mother's precious front steps. "Nice pajamas."

"You're bleeding on my steps."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine, get inside."

"I can't feel my left hand."

"Keonho."

He let you pull him up, though winced at the sudden weight on his injured leg. He let you drag him inside, through the foyer, up the stairs, down the hall to your bathroom. He let you push him onto the marble counter, that he had always commented was way too expensive, and he let you kneel in front of him to push his ripped jeans up his legs.

"It's fine," he said again.

"You keep saying that like it's going to become true."

"Optimism."

"It's delusion."

He watched you dab antiseptic on his knee—watched your face, specifically, the furrow between your brows, the set of your jaw, the way your lips pressed together like you were holding back a flood of words you didn't know how to say.

"You look like you're about to fight someone," he said.

"I'm about to fight you if you don't stop crashing into concrete."

"Skateboarding involves concrete. It's kind of the whole thing."

"Then stop skateboarding."

"Now that's delusion."

You pressed the antiseptic harder than necessary. He hissed through his teeth.

"Serves you right."

"You're so mean."

"You love it."

He went quiet, his gaze following your every move as you attempted to patch him up as well as you could. "You're really worried about me."

"I'm worried about your knees." You dabbed at a particularly nasty scrape, your touch gentler now. "They're going to be nothing but scar tissue by twenty-five."

"That's not what I meant."

You looked up at him and his face was soft in the bathroom light: no smirk, or teasing, or armour. Just Keonho. Just the boy who somehow, against all odds, makes you feel safe and loved and more yourself than ever before.

"Of course I'm worried about you," you said quietly. "You're an idiot who throws himself at the ground for fun."

"That's not why you're worried."

"You're very annoying today."

"You're avoiding the question."

"I'm cleaning your wounds. Show some gratitude."

He caught your wrist before you could pull away. His thumb pressed against your pulse point that was racing, betraying you, telling him everything you were trying to hide.

"You're scared," he said.

"I'm annoyed."

"You're scared and you're pretending to be annoyed because that's easier."

"You're scared and you're pretending to be fine because that's easier."

He blinked. You'd surprised him. Good.

"See?" You said, pulling your wrist free. "We both have things we don't want to talk about. Now let me finish cleaning you up so I can go back to hating you in peace."

"You don't hate me."

"I'm working on it."

He laughed, or at least attempted to, his breath hitching because moving his ribs hurt. You flicked his forehead.

"Ow."

"Stop making me worry."

"I can't promise that."

"Then stop crashing."

"I can't promise that either."

You sighed, long and dramatic, and went back to work on his other knee. 

"You're gonna give me gray hair," you muttered more so to yourself.

"You'd look good with gray hair."

"Keonho."

"What? You would."

You pressed a kiss to his kneecap before you could think better of it—a quick, impulsive thing, your lips brushing against his scraped skin.

He went very still, then very red. The flush crept up his neck, spread across his cheekbones, turned the tips of his ears pink.

"Don't," you said.

"I wasn't gonna—"

"You were gonna smirk."

"...Maybe."

You flicked his forehead again. This time, he caught your hand and kissed your knuckles instead of complaining, one slow and deliberate kiss to each finger, his lips warm against your skin.

"That's cheating," you said.

"Is it working?"

"No."

"Your face says yes."

"My face says I'm going to smother you in your sleep."

"I'd love that."

"Get off my counter."

After that, he started coming over just to be there, sprawling across your pink blanket like he pays rent, watching you exist with an intensity that should have been illegal.

"Can I help you?" You said, for the fifth time, as you stood at your vanity.

"Nope."

"Then why are you staring?"

"Because you're doing something interesting."

"I'm doing my skincare routine."

"Exactly. Interesting."

You stared at him in the mirror. He stared back from your bed, chin propped on his hands, looking like a cat who'd found the warmest spot in the house. His scraped knee was bent, his bandaged hand resting on the blanket, and he looked so comfortable that it made your chest ache.

"What's that one do?" He asked, pointing at your toner.

"It balances my pH."

"Your... what?"

"pH. The acidity of my skin."

A pause. "That's a thing?"

"Yes, Keonho. That's a thing. Some of us care about our skin."

"I care about my skin."

"You use bar soap on your face."

"It works!"

"It works against you. Your pores are screaming for help."

He snorted. "You're so dramatic."

You ignored him, choosing to move through the steps—cleanser, toner, serum, moisturiser—explaining each one as you went. He asked questions just to annoy you. You answered them just to prove you knew more than him. It was a dance you'd perfected over three months, a back-and-forth that felt like second nature.

"So this one," he said, pointing at your serum, "is basically magic water?"

"No, it's… actually, yes. Kind of. But expensive magic water."

"So you're putting magic water on your face."

"Antioxidant-rich magic water."

"That's not a real thing."

"It's a real thing that costs eighty dollars."

He sat up so fast his hair became disshevelled in a scruffy mess that made him look almost… adorable. "Eighty dollars? For water?"

"It's not just water, I literally just explained the ingredients to you—"

"You said 'fermented something' and I stopped listening!"

"That's on you!"

"I could buy three decks for eighty dollars!"

"You don't need three decks!"

"You don't need eighty-dollar water!"

You threw a cotton pad at his face and it ended up stuck to his forehead. He left it there, too focused on your current bickering.

"This is why I don't explain things to you," you said.

"This is why you should explain things to me. I'm learning."

"You're judging."

"Learning and judging. They're the same thing."

"Get out of my room."

“No.” He grinned, cotton pad still stuck to his forehead, looking like the stupidest person you'd ever been in love with. "You'd be sad if I left."

"I'd throw a party."

"You'd cry."

"I'd celebrate."

"You'd cry while celebrating."

"Keonho."

"What's that one?" He pointed at the smallest bottle on your vanity.

You picked it up. "That's eye cream."

"What's it do?"

"It... moisturises my eyes."

"Your eyes?"

"The skin around my eyes."

He stared at you and you stared back. The cotton pad was still on his forehead because he still hadn't removed it.

"So," he said slowly, a grin spreading across his face, "most of these are just... different kinds of water?"

"I'm going to kill you."

"You put water on your face. Then more water. Then different water."

"I'm going to kill you and hide your body in my closet."

"You'd miss me too much."

"I'd miss nothing."

He tilted his head, the cotton pad finally falling onto the blanket, his smile so wide it made your chest hurt. "Say that again but look me in the eyes this time."

You threw the eye cream at him.

He caught it one-handed like some kind of action hero, and immediately shoved it into his hoodie pocket.

"I'm keeping this," he said.

"That's forty dollars."

"Then I'm keeping forty dollars."

"Keonho. You're not keeping the eye cream," you said, crossing your arms and turning to face him fully.

He patted his pocket. "Already in there. It's warm now. It's bonding with me."

"Take it out."

"No."

"Keonho."

"That's my name, don't wear it out."

You glared at him and he only looked back utterly unbothered and the absolute picture of smug satisfaction. 

"You're actually going to steal from me?"

"I'm not stealing. I'm... relocating."

"To your pocket."

"Temporary relocation."

"You're not going to give it back."

"Temporary can mean a lot of things princess." He shrugged, utterly shameless.

You lunged for him.

You grabbed his hoodie sleeve and tried to shove your hand into his pocket. He twisted away, laughing that stupid, warm laugh that made your stomach flip, and you ended up half on top of him, both of you grappling like children fighting over the TV remote. The pink blanket bunched beneath you and your hair came loose from its clip.

"Give it," you hissed, your face inches from his.

"Make me."

"I will actually hurt you."

"You've been saying that for three months and I'm still standing."

"Barely."

He snorted. You used his distraction to jam your hand into his pocket. Your fingers closed around the tiny bottle—yes—but his hand closed around your wrist at the same time.

"Nice try," he said, breath warm on your face.

"Let go."

"Say please."

"I'd rather die."

"Dramatic."

"Keonho."

He grinned, and for a moment, neither of you moved. You were tangled together on your bed, his back against the headboard, you half-sprawled across his lap, your hand in his pocket and his hand on your wrist and his face entirely too close to yours. 

"You're ridiculous," you said quietly.

"You love it."

"I love nothing."

"You love me."

The words landed differently than they had before. He'd said them casually—joking, teasing, the way he always did. But something about the way he was looking at you now, something about the way his thumb was tracing slow circles on your wrist, something about the way his voice had dropped an octave made it feel less like a joke and more like a test.

You pulled your empty hand out of his pocket, though you didn’t care about the cream anymore.

"I'm serious," you said, sitting back slightly, though you didn't move off his lap. "Give me the cream."

"I'm serious too." He didn't let go of your wrist. Didn't stop tracing those circles. "Say it."

"Say what?"

"You know what."

"I really don't."

"You're a terrible liar."

"I'm an excellent liar. I've built my entire social reputation on it."

"Then be honest." His voice went quiet. "For once. With me. Just say it."

Your heart was doing something stupid in your chest. Something loud and panicked and entirely out of your control. It was hammering against your ribs like a caged animal, and you were sure he could feel it through your wrist, through the thin skin where his thumb was pressed against your pulse.

"I don't know what you want me to say," you whispered.

"You do."

"Keonho—"

"Three months." He shifted, sitting up straighter, bringing his face closer to yours. "Three months of fighting and stealing my hoodies and pretending you don't care. Three months of you letting me climb through your window at 2 AM. Three months of this." He gestured between you with his free hand. "And you're still going to sit there and tell me you feel nothing?"

"Yes."

"Stop lying to me."

You looked at him. His eyes were dark and steady and completely, terrifyingly sincere. There was no escape route. No exit strategy. Justhim, waiting and patiently choosing you.

"Why do you do this?" You asked, and your voice was smaller now. Smaller than you wanted it to be, than you'd ever let yourself sound in front of anyone else.

"Do what?"

"Stay." Your throat was tight. Your eyes were burning. "Even when I'm like this. Even when I push. Even when I say things I don't—" You stopped. Swallowed. "Why do you stay?"

"Because I know you don't mean it."

"What if I do?"

"You don't."

"You don't know that."

"I know you." He reached up with his free hand and brushed some hair off your forehead and tucked it behind your ear, the way he always did when he was being gentle. "I know you're scared. I know you've been hurt. I know you push people away before they can leave so you don't have to feel it when they go." His thumb traced your cheekbone. "And I know—" He paused. Took a breath. "I know that underneath all of that, there's someone who just wants to be chosen. For real. Not for the crown. Not for the reputation. Just... chosen."

You couldn't breathe.

"I'm choosing you," he said. "Right now. Every day. I'm choosing you. And I'll keep choosing you. Even when you're mean. Even when you push. Even when you throw things at my head." A small smile tugged at his lips. "Especially then, actually. You have crazy good aim princess."

"Keonho—"

"I love you."

There it was. Not a joke. Not a test. Not a weapon. Just... the truth. Dropped into the space between you like a stone into still water, sending ripples through everything.

"I love you," he said again, softer this time, like he was telling you a secret. "And you don't have to say it back. You don't have to do anything. I just needed you to know. Because someone should choose you. For real. And I'm done pretending that's not what I'm doing."

The room was too quiet and your heart was entirely too loud. You could feel tears prickling at the corners of your eyes and you blinked them back furiously.

"You're an idiot," you said.

"I know."

"You're the biggest idiot I've ever met."

"I know."

"You steal my skincare products and you put your shoes on my rug and you never shut up and you—" You ran at of steam for a brief moment, breathing heavily. "You climb through my window at 2 AM and you see me and you stay and I don't—I don't know how to—"

You stopped, pressing your palms against your eyes. "I don't know how to be loved," you whispered. "I don't know how to receive it. I only know how to perform and defend and attack and—"

"Then let me teach you."

You looked up. His face was so open. So vulnerable. So completely unlike the lazy, smirking boy who'd nearly murdered you with his skateboard when you first met. His eyes were bright, almost wet, and his lips were parted slightly, and he looked at you like you were the only thing in the world that mattered.

"Let me teach you," he said again. "Slowly. Badly. While we fight about the thermostat and the last slice of pizza and whether or not hot dogs are sandwiches—"

"They're not."

"—they're absolutely sandwiches—"

"They're not—"

"Stop doing that."

"Doing what?"

"Avoiding."

You closed your mouth and he waited.

Then, finally, quietly, like you were admitting something you'd been hiding your whole life:

"I love you too."

His whole face changed. Like the sun coming out from behind clouds. Like you'd handed him something precious and fragile and entirely unexpected, and he was holding it with both hands, afraid to drop it.

"Say it again," he said.

"You heard me."

"Say it again anyway."

"No."

"Say it and I'll give back the eye cream."

"Liar."

"Okay, I won't give it back." He was grinning now, wide and real and bright. "But I'll actually shut up.”

"You won't."

"No." He laughed. "I won't. But I'll try."

You laughed surprised and almost giddy. It bubbled up from somewhere deep in your chest, and you couldn't stop it, and you didn't want to.

"I love you," you said. "I love you and you're the most annoying person I've ever met and if you ever tell anyone I said this first—"

"You didn't say it first. I did."

"Semantics."

"I'm telling everyone."

"I'll kill you."

"Worth it."

He kissed you as soon as the words left his mouth.

His hand came up to cup your jaw, fingers splaying across your cheek, tilting your face exactly where he wanted it. His lips moved against yours with a confidence that made your head spin—slow at first, then deeper, then hungry, like he'd been waiting for this, and he'd been starving for it.

You kissed him back with everything you had. Your fingers tangled in his hair: soft, slightly messy, smelling like his cheap shampoo and the skate park. His other hand slid around your waist, pressing you against him until there was no space left between your bodies.

His mouth was warm. Addictive, even. He kissed you until your lungs burned and your lips tingled and the world outside your bedroom had ceased to exist entirely.

When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard. His forehead rested against yours. His thumb traced your cheekbone. His eyes were dark and soft all at once.

"Hey," he whispered.

"Hey."

"I love you."

"You said that already."

"I'm going to keep saying it."

"I know."

He kissed you again—softer this time, just a brush of lips, a promise. Then again, a little longer. Then again, like he couldn't help himself from memorising the shape of your mouth against his own.

You smiled against his lips. "You're going to give me permanent lip damage."

"Worth it."

"Keonho."

"What? You're kissable."

"That's not a word."

"It is now. I invented it."

"You can't just invent words."

"I just did. Kissable. It means deserving of many kisses." He demonstrated. Twice. "See?"

You shoved his chest weakly. He caught your hand and kissed each of your knuckles, slow and deliberate, the way he'd done in the bathroom.

"You're ridiculous," you said.

"You love it."

"I love you. There's a difference."

"Is there?"

"Yes."

He grinned, and you kissed him again just to wipe that stupid thing off his face.

It didn't work. You could feel him smiling the whole time.

When you finally settled: both of you tangled in the pink blanket with your head on his chest and his arms wrapped around you, he pressed a kiss to the top of your head.

"The eye cream is still mine," he said.

"Over my dead body."

"We can arrange that."

You shoved him. He fell back against the headboard, laughing, and you let yourself fall on top of him, face buried in his hoodie, heart so full it hurt.

"I love you," you mumbled into his chest.

"I know."

"Don't get cocky."

"Too late."

You could feel him smiling against your hair. His arms tightened around you, one hand tracing lazy shapes on your back—circles, spirals, a heart. The other hand was definitely still clutching the eye cream in his pocket. You could feel the little bottle pressing against your hip.

"Hey," he said again.

"Mm?"

"You're my favourite person to fight with."

"You're my least favourite person to exist near."

"Same thing."

"It's really not."

"Shut up and let me hold you."

"You shut up."

He laughed a warm, rumbling sound that traveled through his chest and into yours. You smiled into his hoodie. And somewhere in his pocket, your forty-dollar eye cream sat warm between your bodies, a tiny hostage in the middle of a war neither of you wanted to win.

Because winning meant stopping.

And stopping meant no more fights.

And no more fights meant no more this.

The first time you'd really noticed him, he almost hit you with his skateboard.

It was the second week of junior year. The leaves were turning, and you were walking across the courtyard with Hana, mid-sentence about someone's ugly backpack—"I'm just saying, if you're going to spend four hundred dollars on a bag, at least make it look like four hundred dollars"—when a blur of motion came flying around the corner.

Shhk shhk shhk. Wheels on pavement. Then a body slammed into your side.

Not hard enough to knock you over. Hard enough to send your phone flying out of your hand and skidding across the concrete, face-down, the sickening crack of impact echoing off the fountain your family had donated.

"Shit—sorry—"

You stumbled, caught yourself on Hana's arm, and whipped around.

A boy you'd never seen before was already crouched down, scooping up your phone. His skateboard had rolled several feet away, still wobbling on its side. He was wearing the school uniform, but barely. The tie was missing and the top button of his shirt was undone. His dark hair was a mess under a gray beanie, and there was a small scrape on his palm where he'd caught himself.

He stood up and held out your phone.

The screen was cracked. A spiderweb of fractures spreading from the top left corner, right through your home screen. Your perfect, carefully curated home screen.

"You broke my phone," you said. Your voice was flat and cold. 

He looked at the screen. Then at you. Most people would have started apologising immediately, groveled, turned red, stammered, promised to pay for it, even got down on their knees if that's what it took.

He just shrugged. "It's just a screen. You can get it fixed."

Just a screen.

As if you hadn't spent hours picking out the perfect case. As if the crack didn't ruin the entire aesthetic of the phone you'd only had for three weeks. As if he hadn't just barreled into you like a human wrecking ball and then had the audacity to act like it was nothing.

"Do you have any idea who I am?" you asked.

He tilted his head, studying you with an expression that wasn't quite recognition. More like mild curiosity. The kind you'd give a mildly interesting bug on the sidewalk.

"No," he said. "Should I?"

Hana snorted behind you. You could feel her phone already out, probably recording or texting the group chat. 

You snatched the phone from his hand, holding it up so he could see the full extent of the damage. "This is a thousand-dollar phone."

"It was a thousand dollars," he corrected. "Now it's a thousand-dollar phone with a cracked screen. Still works, probably."

"Probably."

"Did you check?"

"No, I was too busy being hit by a skateboard."

He didn't apologise and didn't even look sorry. He just walked over to his board, kicked it up into his hand with a smooth, annoyingly practiced motion, and slung it under his arm.

"You should watch where you're going," he said. "You walked straight into my path. I had the right of way."

"Right of way?" Your voice came out half an octave higher than usual. "This isn't a road. It's a courtyard. For walking. There's no such thing as right of way."

"There's always right of way. It's basic physics. Object in motion stays in motion. You were an object. I was in motion."

"You're not a physicist. You're a guy on a toy."

His jaw tightened, just a fraction. "It's not a toy."

"It's a board with wheels."

"It's transportation."

"It's a mere hobby."

"At least I have a hobby." His eyes swept over you, slow and deliberate. "What's yours? Judging people? Making lists? Seeing how many compliments you can fish for in one outfit?"

Your mouth dropped open. Actually dropped. Nobody talked to you like that. Nobody. Not the teachers, not your parents, not the other kids who whispered behind your back but smiled to your face. Nobody had the nerve.

"I don't fish for compliments," you said.

"Sure you don't." He nodded at your outfit: designer boots, perfectly pressed skirt, blazer that cost more than most people's rent. "You just dress like you're going to a brunch meeting with your publicist because it's comfortable."

"I like fashion."

"You like attention, that’s obvious."

Hana made a small, strangled sound that was either a laugh or a gasp. You couldn't tell. You couldn't think. Your face was hot, your hands were shaking, and this absolute nobody was looking at you like you were a puzzle he'd already solved.

"My family donated that fountain," you said, pointing to the marble monstrosity in the center of the courtyard. "My name is on a plaque in the main hall. I could make one phone call and you'd never eat in this courtyard again."

He looked genuinely unimpressed. "Cool. Doesn't make you immune to the walkway."

And then he just walked away with his skateboard under his arm and his beanie pulled low. His shoulders were loose, like he didn't have a care in the world, like he hadn't just committed social suicide in front of half the junior class.

You stood there, frozen, watching him disappear around the corner.

"Who the hell was that?" Hana whispered.

"I don't know." You were gripping your cracked phone so hard your knuckles went white. "But he just declared war."

The next day, you found him in the cafeteria.

He was sitting alone at the end of a table, eating what looked like a convenience store sandwich. The same gray beanie. The same frayed hoodie under his uniform blazer. His skateboard was propped against the table leg, and he was scrolling through his phone with his free hand, completely oblivious to the fact that everyone in the room was stealing glances at him.

Or maybe he wasn't oblivious and he just didn't care.

That made you angrier than anything else.

You walked straight up to him, dropped your bag on the table with a loud thump, and planted both hands on the surface before leaning in, making sure he couldn't ignore you.

"You owe me three hundred dollars for the screen repair."

He looked up slowly, still chewing on his sandwich before he eventually swallowed. 

"No, I don't."

"Yes, you do. You broke it."

"You dropped it." He leaned back in his chair, completely at ease. Arms crossed. One eyebrow raised. "I bumped you. You dropped it. That's on you. Physics."

"Don't start with the physics again."

"Why not? It's a solid argument. Cause and effect. Your hand let go of the phone. My skateboard didn't even touch you. I touched you. With my body. Which is flesh and blood, not a weapon."

He shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich, chewing with his mouth open just to annoy you. You could tell but you didn’t say anything, too shell shocked from someone actually biting back.

"You've been thinking about me all night, haven't you?" He said, gesturing at you with the sandwich. "Couldn't sleep. Just lying there, replaying it, getting mad all over again."

Your face heated. Because he was right. You had been up half the night, tossing around, furious at the memory of his stupid face and his stupid skateboard and the way he'd looked at you like you were nothing. Like you were just another person, instead of the person.

"I don't think about you," you lied.

"Sure you don't." He picked up his sandwich again. "That's why you tracked me down in a cafeteria with like two hundred people in it. Because you don't think about me."

"I didn't track you down. I'm eating lunch."

"You don't eat in the cafeteria. Everyone knows that. You eat in the courtyard with your friends." He nodded toward the window. "The courtyard you apparently own. The one with the fountain. Your fountain. The one your family donated."

Your nails dug into the table. "How do you know where I eat?"

He shrugged. "I notice things."

Something about the way he said it so casually made your stomach flip. A tiny, traitorous flip that you refused to acknowledge.

"Three hundred dollars," you repeated.

"Zero dollars."

"Two hundred, then."

"Still zero."

"One hundred and fifty. Final offer."

He set down his sandwich and looked at you properly for the first time. His eyes were dark and warm, with little gold flecks you hadn't noticed before, not that you cared anyways.

"You're not gonna let this go, are you?"

"Never."

He sighed theatrically and reached into his pocket. Pulled out a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. Worn soft, the edges frayed. He slid it across the table toward you.

"That's all I have. Take it or leave it."

You stared at the twenty. Then at him. Then back at the twenty.

"You're serious."

"I'm a skateboarder, not a trust fund kid. Sorry I don't have a fountain donation in my back pocket."

The jab hit exactly where he meant it to. You snatched the twenty off the table and stuffed it into your blazer pocket.

"This isn't over," you said.

"I know." He picked up his sandwich again. "See you tomorrow, fountain girl."

"It's Y/N."

"I know that too."

He smiled. Just a little. Just enough to make you want to throw something at his head.

You turned on your heel and walked away, Hana falling into step beside you, already asking a million questions you didn't have answers to.

After that, the arguments became routine.

Every day, you found a reason to cross paths with him. Every day, he had a lazy comeback that made your blood boil. Every day, you walked away angrier than before, promising yourself that tomorrow you'd ignore him completely.

And every day, you never did.

"You're obsessed with him," Hana said one afternoon, watching you scan the courtyard for the familiar gray beanie.

"I'm not obsessed, I'm just dedicated like I always am."

"No, this is something else."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You've been looking for him for ten minutes. We haven't even sat down yet."

"I'm not looking. I'm observing my environment."

Hana gave you a long, flat look. "Your environment is a courtyard full of people eating lunch. What exactly are you observing?"

You spotted him near the bike racks where he’d moved to eat lunch after your canteen run in, the same as every other day, lacing up his skate shoes, and your feet were already moving before your brain could catch up.

"Keonho!"

He looked up, and that small smile appeared. The one that made you want to scream.

"Fountain girl. Right on time."

"Don't call me that."

"Okay… princess." He said it under his breath, just loud enough for you to catch. Your jaw dropped.

"Princess? Did you just call me princess?"

"You heard me." He didn't even look guilty. Just went back to tying his laces, all casual, like he hadn't just committed a felony against your entire brand. "You prefer 'your highness'? Because that feels like a mouthful. Lots of syllables. I might get tired halfway through."

"I prefer my name."

"Right. Y/N." He drew out the syllables like he was tasting them. "Y/N, who crossed the entire courtyard just to yell at me about a twenty-dollar bill I already gave you. A transaction which we both agreed was final."

"That twenty dollars didn't even cover the tax on the repair."

"Not my problem."

"Everything is your problem. You're the one who hit me with your skateboard."

"You walked into me."

"I was walking. On my feet. Like a normal person."

"So was I. On my skateboard. Which is a form of transportation, last time I checked. Legally recognised. Some cities have lanes."

"Skateboards don't belong in lanes. Skateboards don't belong anywhere near people."

"They belong everywhere. That's the beauty of it. I can go anywhere. No rules or restrictions. Just me and the board and the open road."

"You sound like some lame commercial."

"You sound like you've never had fun a day in your life."

The words landed. You felt them land. Your face went hot, then cold, then hot again.

"I have plenty of fun."

"Name one fun thing you've done in the past month."

"I—that's—that's none of your business."

"That's what I thought." He stood up, grabbing his board. "No fun. Just school and social obligations and making sure everyone knows you're the most important person in the room."

"I don't have to make sure. Everyone already knows."

"Sure they do." He spun the board in his hand, a lazy, practiced motion. "That's why you're here. Talking to me. Because everyone already knows how important you are, and you're bored of it."

"I'm not bored."

"You're definitely bored. You're the most bored person I've ever met. You have everything, and you're still bored. That's kind of sad, actually."

Your heart was pounding and your hands were shaking. How on earth could he read you so easily?

"You don't know anything about me," you said quietly.

"I know you're still standing here." He tilted his head, those dark eyes boring into yours. "I know you could have walked away five minutes ago. I know you didn't. I know you won't."

"Maybe I will."

"Maybe." He shrugged. "But probably not."

He started walking, and you fell into step beside him without thinking. He noticed. Of course he noticed.

"I've been eating lunch by the bike racks for two months since you banished me from the canteen," he said. "You'd never been here once before that. Not once. Now suddenly you're here every day?"

"Maybe I wanted a change of scenery."

"Maybe you wanted a change of someone."

You stopped walking. He stopped too, a few steps ahead, looking back at you with that insufferable half-smile.

"What is that supposed to mean?" you asked.

He turned to face you fully. The courtyard was mostly empty, everyone else already inside. It was just you and him and the sound of wind through the bike racks.

"It means," he said, taking a step closer, "that you're not as complicated as you think you are. You've got your perfect life and your perfect friends and your perfect little routines, and you're bored. And I'm the only thing in this school that doesn't bore you."

"That's not—"

"It means," he continued, like you hadn't spoken, "that you don't actually hate me. You just don't know what else to do with me."

Your heart was pounding so hard you could feel it in your throat. "And what do you want to do with me?"

The question hung between you, heavier than you'd intended. His smile faded, just slightly, and for a second he looked almost... serious. Almost vulnerable.

"I don't know yet," he said. "Guess we’ll have to figure it out."

He turned and kept walking toward the side door of the science building.

"Hey, Keonho?" you called out.

He looked back.

"You still owe me a hundred and thirty dollars."

His laugh echoed across the empty courtyard. "Keep dreaming, fountain girl."

"Stop calling me that!"

"In your dreams!"

You grabbed a pebble from the ground and threw it at him. He dodged it easily, grinning, and disappeared through the door.

You stood there for a long moment, alone in the cold, your left eyebrow doing something you couldn't control.

You don't actually hate me. You just don't know what else to do with me.

The worst part was, you were starting to think he was right.

Weeks continued like that. The arguments became the best part of your day.

It was strange, admitting it to yourself. You'd spent years building a life that was supposed to make you happy: the right friends, the right clothes, the right words at the right times. You were good at it. Everyone said so. You had everything anyone could want.

But nothing had ever made your heart race like stepping into the courtyard and spotting that gray beanie.

Some days you found him at the bike racks. Some days near the vending machines. Some days you'd round a corner and there he'd be, like he'd been waiting, like he knew you were coming before you did.

"You're late, princess,” he said one Tuesday, not looking up from his phone.

"I'm not late. Class ran over."

"Excuses."

"It's not an excuse. It's an explanation."

"Same thing."

"It's really not."

He looked up then, and that small smile was there. The one that made your stomach flip.

"You always have to have the last word, don't you?"

"Obviously."

"So do I."

"Then we have a problem."

"We've always had a problem." He pocketed his phone and leaned back against the bike rack, arms crossed. "That's kind of our whole thing."

You hated how easily he said it. Our whole thing. Like there was an us to have a thing.

"There is no our," you said.

"Sure there isn't." He tilted his head, eyes glinting. "That's why you're here. Every day. Like clockwork."

"I'm here because the courtyard is crowded."

"The courtyard is always crowded. You've been eating there for two years. You never left before."

Your jaw tightened. "Maybe I wanted a change."

"Maybe you wanted me."

Your heart stopped. Then restarted at double speed. "That's—you're—no."

He laughed. Actually laughed, his whole face lighting up in a way you'd never seen before. It was annoyingly beautiful. His nose crinkled and his eyes disappeared into crescents. He looked like a completely different person.

"Your face is so red right now," he said.

"It is not."

"It's the color of your bag."

You looked down at your pink designer handbag. You wanted to throw it at him.

"I hate you," you said.

"No you don't."

"Yes I do."

"Then why are you still here?"

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

Nothing came out.

He seemed to be the only person able to leave you speechless

The turning point was February. Valentine's Day, actually, which made it worse.

You'd been crying in the greenhouse behind the science wing. Not because you were sad, exactly. Because your mother had called and she'd reminded you, in that sweet, sharp voice she used when she was disappointed, that your "little art hobby"— the one thing you actually cared about, that made you feel like a real person instead of a performance—was "lovely but impractical." That you should probably focus on something that would "actually matter" in college applications. That there were expectations.

You'd thought you were alone.

You hadn't been.

Keonho was sitting in the corner, behind a rack of potted ferns, eating a granola bar. He had his beanie pulled low and his knees drawn up. He'd clearly been there first. Maybe he'd been there for a while.

"Go away," you said, your voice thick.

He didn't move. "No."

"I said go away, Keonho."

"And I said no." He took another bite of his granola bar, chewing slowly. "You're not gonna throw things at me, are you? Because you have scary good aim and I'm not trying to catch a rock with my face."

You stared at him, tears still wet on your cheeks, too exhausted to even be properly angry. "Why are you like this?"

"Like what?"

"Like you don't care about anything."

He was quiet for a moment. Then: "I care about stuff. I just don't care about the stuff you're supposed to care about."

Something about that, the simplicity of it, the way he said it like it was obvious, made something crack inside you.

You sat down on the dirty greenhouse floor. Right across from him. And you cried for real. Not pretty tears. The ugly ones that left your face blotchy and your nose running and every single wall you'd ever built crumbling into dust.

He didn't say anything. Didn't try to comfort you with empty words. He just handed you a crumpled napkin from his pocket and waited.

When you'd finally stopped, you looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and said, "If you tell anyone about this, I will end you."

"I know," he said. And then, so quietly you almost missed it: "I won't."

You sat there for a long time in silence. The greenhouse was warm and smelled like dirt and flowers, the ferns cast dancing shadows on the floor. Eventually you pushed yourself up, walking away without looking back.

After that, the hatred started to feel different.

Like a game neither of you were really playing anymore, but neither of you knew how to stop. The insults got softer. The fights got shorter. You found yourself seeking him out in crowds, just to see what he was doing, just to make sure he was still there.

"I think he likes you," Hana said one afternoon, and you laughed so hard you choked.

"He doesn't like me. He's messing with me."

"That’s the same thing sometimes."

It wasn't the same thing. It couldn't be. Because you didn't do boys like Keonho. You did boys with trust funds and family names and futures already planned out. Boys who understood the rules and played by them. Boys who would never dream of sitting on a dirty greenhouse floor or eating convenience store sandwiches or looking at you like they could see every single crack in your armour.

You didn't do boys who made you feel seen.

But maybe that was exactly the problem.

"Judging me again, princess?"

He was sat under the bleachers, back against the chain-link fence, knees drawn up with his skateboard across his lap. The afternoon light filtered through the metal slats, casting stripes of gold and shadow across his face. His beanie was crooked, his uniform shirt untucked, and he was looking up at you like you were exactly who he'd been waiting for.

You stood in front of him with your arms crossed, heels sinking slightly into the dirt. "I'm not judging. I'm wondering how you haven't been expelled yet."

"Charming."

"I'm serious. You don't do the work. You don't follow the rules. You show up late every single day. What's the point of even being here?"

He set his skateboard aside and leaned back on his hands, tilting his face up toward you. "Free wifi. Heated building. Sometimes they hand out granola bars in the front office."

"That's not funny."

"Wasn't trying to be funny. Was trying to be honest." He shrugged. "You should try it sometime."

"I'm always honest."

"No you're not." His voice was flat. Certain. "You've never had an honest conversation in your life. You just say whatever keeps you on top."

Your jaw tightened. "You don't know anything about me."

"I know you fake-laugh when your friends make jokes that aren't funny, which is all the time. I know you wait until everyone's looking before you do anything nice. I know you've never apologised to anyone for anything, ever, because that would mean admitting you were wrong." He tilted his head. "Should I keep going?"

"You don't know me."

"I know you better than your friends do."

"Stop."

"Why? Because I'm right?"

"Because you're insufferable." Your voice was rising now. You could feel the heat climbing up your neck, the tightness in your chest. "You think you're so smart. You think you've got everyone figured out. But you're just a guy with a skateboard and a chip on his shoulder who can't even afford—"

You stopped yourself. The words hung in the air, half-finished.

He stood up slowly. Brushed the dirt off his pants. His face had gone very still.

"Can't even afford what?" His voice was quiet. Too quiet.

"Nothing."

"No, go ahead. You were saying something. Don't stop now."

"Keonho—"

"Can't even afford what, Y/N?" He stepped closer. "New shoes? A car that isn't fifteen years old? Lunch that didn't come from a gas station? What was it? What were you about to say?"

You took a step back. Your heel caught on a rock. You stumbled, caught yourself, and hated him for making you stumble.

"I wasn't going to say anything."

"You were. You always are. That's your whole thing." He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "You walk around this school like everyone beneath you is a bug you might step on. You think I don't notice? You think I don't see the way you look at me?"

"How do I look at you?"

"Like I'm dirt." He jabbed a finger toward his own chest. "Like I'm something you stepped in and can't scrape off your shoe. And you know what? Fine. I don't care. I've been looked at like that my whole life. By people richer than you. By people meaner than you. By people who actually had a reason."

"I have a reason."

"What reason? Because I bumped into you one time? Because I didn't fall on my knees and beg for forgiveness when your precious phone cracked?"

"You called me fountain girl."

"And you’ve called me poor."

You flinched. He saw it. His eyes narrowed.

"I didn't mean—"

"You’ve meant every word. That's what kills me. You're not even pretending to be sorry. You just stand there with your arms crossed and your perfect hair and your perfect shoes and you look at me like I'm the problem."

"You are the problem!"

"How? How am I the problem, Y/N? Because I don't bow down to you? Because I don't laugh at your jokes? Because I won't pretend you're something you're not?"

"Because you won't just leave me alone!"

The words tore out of you. Loud and raw, echoing off the metal bleachers above.

He stopped. Blinked.

"You heard me," you said, your voice shaking now. "You won't leave me alone. You're everywhere. The bike racks. The vending machines. The greenhouse. Every time I turn around, there you are, with your stupid beanie and your stupid skateboard and your stupid eyes."

"So now I'm the problem because I exist?"

"Yes! No! I don't—" You pressed your hands to your face, breathed in, breathed out. "I don't know what I'm saying."

"Yes you do. You're saying you can't stop thinking about me."

Your hands dropped. "That is not what I'm saying."

"That's exactly what you're saying. You're just too proud to admit it."

"I am not—"

"You are. You're standing under a set of bleachers with me instead of eating lunch with your friends. You're shouting at me instead of ignoring me like you ignore everyone else. You're here, Y/N. You've always been here. You just don't want to admit why."

"Don't tell me what I want."

"Then tell me yourself. What do you want?"

You opened your mouth. Closed it. Your heart was pounding so hard you could feel it in your temples.

"Nothing," you said.

"Liar."

"I want you to stop."

"Stop what?"

"Stop making me feel like—like—" Your voice cracked. You hated that it cracked. You hated him for making it crack. "Like I'm not allowed to just dislike you. Like I have to have a reason. Like I have to justify it."

"You don't have to justify anything. You just have to admit it's not dislike."

"It is dislike."

"It's not." He stepped closer. "You don't seek out people you dislike. You avoid them. You destroy them. You don't show up to them every single day with your arms crossed and your face flushed like—"

"My face is not flushed."

"Your face is so flushed right now." He laughed. Not the mean laugh from before. Something almost... fond.

You stood there, frozen, your arms still crossed, your heart still pounding, your face definitely still flushed. He was too close. He'd been too close for months. Too close in the hallways, too close in the greenhouse, too close in every argument that had somehow become the best part of your day.

"I hate you," you said.

"No you don't."

"Yes I do."

"Then why are you still here?"

The question hung between you. Heavy. Electric. Inevitable.

"Because—" You stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "Because I don't know what to do when I'm not here."

His expression shifted. The teasing faded. Something else took its place: something softer, something almost tender.

"Y/N—"

"Don't." You held up a hand. "Don't look at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you care."

"Maybe I do."

"Well, stop. People don't care about me. They're afraid of me. That’s how it’s supposed to be."

"Maybe," he agreed quietly. "But I'm not afraid of you."

"You should be."

"I'm not."

"Then you're stupid."

"Maybe." He shrugged. "Or maybe I just see something everyone else is too scared to look at."

Your throat was tight. Your eyes were burning. You weren't going to cry. You weren't. You'd cried in front of him once and you'd sworn you'd never do it again.

"What do you see?" The words came out smaller than you wanted. Quieter.

He stepped close enough to the point that you could smell him: cold air and soap and something warm underneath.

"I see someone who's exhausted," he said. "Someone who's been performing for so long she forgot there was a person underneath. Someone who's smart and talented and so terrified of being ordinary that she'd rather be hated than ignored."

"You're wrong."

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me what I'm missing. Tell me what I'm saying wrong. Tell me you don't lie awake at night wondering what it would be like to just stop."

"Stop what?"

"Stop performing. Stop pretending. Stop being the person everyone expects you to be." His voice dropped. "Tell me you've never looked at me and thought about being free."

Your breath caught.

"I've seen you," he continued, quieter now. "In the art room. When you think no one's watching. You make things; real things, messy things, things that aren't for anyone but you. That's who you are. That's who you could be all the time if you weren't so busy being who everyone else wants you to be."

"You don't know anything about my art."

"I know you're good at it. I know you care about it more than anything else in your life. I know you'd rather be in that room than anywhere else in the world."

"Stop."

"And I know," he said, stepping even closer, "that you feel more alive arguing with me than you do with anyone else."

"Stop."

"Why? Because I'm right?"

"Because you're—because you can't just—because—" Your voice was rising again, cracking again, falling apart in your hands. "Because you don't get to stand there and see me like that. Because no one sees me like that. Because if you see me like that, then I have to be real, and I don't know how to be real, I only know how to be her—"

"Then stop being her."

"I can't—"

"Yes you can." He grabbed your arms, not hard, just firm enough to stop you from pacing, from running, from falling apart completely. "You can. You just don't want to."

"I don't know how."

"Then let me help you."

"You can't help me. You're just a guy with a skateboard. You don't have a plan. You don't have a future. You don't have anything."

The words landed like stones. Heavy and unforgivable.

His hands dropped from your arms. His face went blank.

"Wow," he said quietly. "Okay."

"Keonho—"

"No, you're right. I don't have anything. I don't have a trust fund. I don't have a fountain with my name on it. I don't have a future planned out for me by people who care more about appearances than they care about me."

"That's not what I meant—"

"It's exactly what you meant." He stepped back. "It's what you always mean. You just said it out loud this time."

"I didn't—I was angry—"

"You're always angry. That's not an excuse."

"I know, I just—"

"You just what? You just wanted to hurt me? Congratulations. You did." He ran a hand over his beanie, hair poking out at the ends. "You always do. And I always let you. Because some part of me thought maybe underneath all the armour there was someone worth waiting for."

Your heart stopped.

"But maybe I was wrong," he said. "Maybe there's no one underneath at all. Maybe you're just the armour."

"That's not—"

"Then prove it." His voice cracked on the last word. "Prove me wrong. Show me there's someone in there. Just once. Just for a second. Please."

That broke something in you.

You didn't think. You just moved.

You grabbed the front of his stupid, frayed, too-big shirt,and yanked him down. The fabric bunched in your fists, pulling him off balance, forcing him to stumble forward into your space as you twisted awkwardly. His hands shot out instinctively, bracing against the chain-link fence on either side of you, caging you in without meaning to.

And then your mouth was on his.

It wasn't gentle or soft. It was months of frustration and confusion and the unbearable weight of being seen finally cracking open. You kissed him like you were trying to win an argument. Like you were trying to prove a point. Like you were trying to shove every word you'd never said directly into his lungs and make him breathe them.

Your lips crashed against his, off-center at first, your nose bumping his jaw before you corrected course. You didn't care. You couldn't care. Your fingers were still twisted in his shirt, knuckles pressed against his collarbone, and you were pulling him closer even as you were kissing him harder.

His lips were warm and softer than you expected for a boy who spent his afternoons falling off skateboards. The contrast sent something sharp and electric down your spine.

For a single, suspended second, he was frozen. Completely, utterly frozen. His body went rigid against yours, his hands still pressed flat to the fence, his lips parted but unresponsive beneath yours. You could feel his breath: caught somewhere between an inhale and an exhale, trapped in his throat like he'd forgotten how to let it out.

Then something shifted.

His hands uncurled from the fence. His fingers found your waist, the touch light at first, almost questioning, as if he was waiting for you to shove him away.

You didn't.

You kissed him harder. 

His lips finallymoved against yours. Slowly at first, like he was waking up from a long sleep. He tilted his head, adjusting the angle, and suddenly the kiss fit differently: better, deeper. 

Your fingers loosened in his shirt, then tightened again, pulling him closer until there was no space left between you. His chest pressed against yours, firm and solid. His heart was pounding—you could feel it, or maybe that was your own heart, maybe they'd synced up somewhere in the chaos of the kiss. You couldn't tell anymore.

His hand slid from your waist to the small of your back, fingers splaying wide, pressing you into him. The other hand came up to your jaw, his thumb brushing along your cheekbone, tilting your face up to meet his more fully. He kissed you deeper now, with more confidence, like he'd finally caught up to what was happening and was making up for lost time.

Your head was spinning. Your lungs were burning. You couldn't remember how to breathe through your nose, and you didn't care, because pulling away meant stopping, and stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant admitting what you'd just done.

So you didn't stop.

You kissed him until your lips were numb. You kissed him until his thumb was tracing patterns on your jaw and his other hand was pressed flat against your spine and the chain-link fence was digging into his knuckles and neither of you cared. You kissed him like you were trying to crawl inside his skin, like you were trying to prove that you were more than armour, like you were trying to make him understand something you didn't have words for.

And then, finally, you pulled back.

Your hands uncurled from his shirt. The fabric was wrinkled now, permanently creased where your fists had been. You sideways, one step, then two, putting distance between you. Your heels sank into the dirt. Your chest was heaving. Your lips were swollen and wet and tingling.

You crossed your arms. Locked your knees. Lifted your chin.

And you looked at him with the most neutral expression you could muster.

"You talk too much."

Keonho was still standing before the fence. His hands were braced where you had left them, fingers curled around the chain-link like he needed it to stay upright. His beanie had slipped sideways, and a strand of dark hair had fallen across his forehead, and his lips were parted, pinker than before, slightly swollen.

He looked like someone had reached into his chest, rearranged his organs, and forgotten to put them back in the right order.

"You—" His voice came out rough. Cracked. He stopped, swallowed, and tried again, turning to face you fully. "You just—"

"I just what?"

"You kissed me."

"Did I?" You tilted your head, fighting the smile threatening to break across your face. 

He blinked. Once, then twice. His hands dropped from the fence, and he ran one of them over his mouth, fingers pressing against his lower lip like he was checking to make sure it was still there.

"I'm—you can't just—" He stopped. Ran his hand through his hair, dislodging his beanie entirely. It fell to the ground. He didn't pick it up. "You can't just kiss someone and then act like—like that—"

"Like what?"

"Like you didn't just short-circuit my entire brain."

You shrugged. One shoulder. Casual. Like your whole world hadn't just flipped upside down, and your lips weren't still buzzing, and your heart wasn't threatening to beat its way out of your ribcage.

"Maybe you should stop talking so much," you said. "I warned you."

"You didn't warn me about anything—"

"I've been warning you for months."

He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

And then something shifted in his expression, the shock faded, the confusion cleared,  something else took its place.

"You think you're funny," he said slowly.

"I think I'm hilarious."

He was at a loss for words and you watched him struggle, try to reach for words that weren't there, his hands flexing at his sides as if he was trying to physically grasp a sentence and failing. His chest was still rising and falling too fast. His lips were still parted. His eyes kept darting from your eyes to your mouth and back again, like he couldn't decide which one to focus on.

"You're staring," you said.

"I'm not staring. I'm... processing."

"Process faster. You're making it weird."

"I'm making it weird?" He let out a short, incredulous laugh. "You just—you just kissed me. Out of nowhere. In the middle of an argument. While I was begging you to be real with me for one second. And now you're standing there like you didn't just—like you didn't—" He gestured vaguely at the space between you, at his mouth, at the air itself. "Like you didn't just do that."

"What do you want me to do? Apologise?"

"I want you to acknowledge it!"

"I acknowledged it. I kissed you. You were there. You felt it."

"That's not—that's not acknowledging it, that's just doing it—"

"Same thing."

"It's really not!"

"It really is."

There was a beat of silence. He stared at you and you stared back. The afternoon light shifted, stripes of gold sliding across his face, catching the flush on his cheekbones.

The wind picked up, rattling the chain-link fence beside him. Somewhere in the distance, a door slammed. The world was still moving, still spinning, still completely unaware that yours had just cracked open and rearranged itself into something you didn't recognise.

Keonho bent down and picked up his beanie. He didn't put it back on. Just held it in his hands, twisting the fabric, avoiding your eyes.

"Why did you do it?" he asked quietly.

"Do what?"

"Kiss me."

"You asked me to prove you wrong."

"That's not—" He let out a breath, slow and shaky. "That's not a reason."

"Sure it is."

"No, it's not. It's an impulse. It's a reaction. It's not a reason." He looked up at you then, and his eyes were different: softer, almost vulnerable, stripped of the emotionless facade he usually wore. "I've been asking you for months. Months. To just be honest with me for five seconds. And you finally do something real, and I just... I need to know why. It wasn’t just because you were trying to win an argument or to shut me up, you know that. Just tell me why."

Your throat tightened.

You could lie. You were good at lying. You'd been lying your whole life, to everyone, about everything. You could tell him it meant nothing, and you were just frustrated. You could tell him a hundred different things that would make this easier, simpler, less terrifying.

But he was looking at you like he could see every crack and he'd been waiting inside one of them for months just hoping you'd eventually climb down to meet him.

"Because I couldn't not," you said.

His brow furrowed. "What?"

"I couldn't not do it." Your voice was quieter now, stripped of its usual sharpness. "You were standing there, and you were saying all those things, and you were looking at me like… like you actually wanted to see me." You paused, swallowed, forced yourself to continue. "And I thought about walking away. I thought about saying something mean. I thought about every single thing I usually do to keep people at a distance. And then I thought—what if I just... didn't. For once. What if I just did what I actually wanted to do instead of what I was supposed to do."

"And what did you actually want to do?"

You met his eyes. Held his gaze. Let him see.

"I wanted to kiss you," you said. "I've wanted to kiss you for weeks. Maybe longer. I don't know. I wasn’t keeping track."

The confession hung in the air between you, fragile and enormous.

Keonho didn't move. Didn't speak. His hands had stopped twisting his beanie. His eyes were locked on yours, wide and dark and unreadable.

"You're not joking," he said finally.

"No."

"You're not trying to mess with me."

"No."

"You actually—" He stopped, swallowed, then started again. "You actually want—"

"Don't make me say it again."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm not good at this. I'm not good at being real. You know that. I’ve never known how to be anything other than what I’ve always been at this stupid school."

"And now?"

You looked down at your hands. They were shaking. You curled them into fists, then uncurled them, then curled them again.

"Now I don't know what I am," you admitted. "But I know I'm still standing here with you and I'm not running away."

He took a step closer and his beanie dropped to the ground again, forgotten.

"You're really bad at this," he said softly.

"I know."

"The whole vulnerability thing. You're terrible at it."

"I know."

"It's kind of endearing, actually."

"Keonho."

"Y/N." He stopped in front of you, close enough that you could see the individual lashes framing his eyes, the small scar on his chin, the way his lips were still slightly swollen from your mouth. "You kissed me."

"I'm aware."

"You said you've wanted to for weeks."

"I'm aware of that too."

"And now you're standing here, shaking, looking at me like you're about to either kiss me again or throw up."

"I’m not throwing up—"

"So kiss me again."

Your heart stopped.

"What?"

"You heard me." His voice was low, steady, certain. "You kissed me to prove a point. Now kiss me because you want to. No argument. Just you and me."

You looked at him and saw it all: the mess of his hair from his hand running through it too much, the frayed shirt collar, the dark eyes that had been seeing you for months when no one else bothered to look.

"You're annoying," you finally whispered.

"I know."

"You're insufferable."

"I know."

"You're—"

He kissed you to shut you up and it was nothing like the first kiss.

His fingers slid into your hair at the nape of your neck, not pulling, just there, a warm weight against your scalp. His other hand found your waist again, palm spanned the curve of your side like he was memorising the shape of it. His thumbs pressed lightly into the fabric of your shirt, and you could feel each individual fingertip through the thin material.

He kissed you like he had all the time in the world.

Where your mouth had been frantic and desperate against his, his was deliberate. Measured. His lips moved over yours slowly, like he was learning you from the start, like he was tracing the outline of something he'd been waiting to touch for months. He started at the center, pressing his mouth to the seam of your lips, then tilted his head and tried again from a different angle. And again. And again. Each kiss was a question. Each press of his lips was a sentence he didn't need words for.

Your hands, which had been hanging uselessly at your sides, found their way to his chest. Not pushing him away, nor pulling him closer. Just resting there, palms flat against the worn cotton of his shirt, feeling his heartbeat under your fingers. It was fast, much faster than his movements suggested. The contrast made something in your chest tighten.

He pulled back just far enough to breathe, his forehead still pressed to yours. His eyes were still closed. His lips were parted, slightly swollen, and you could feel his breath warm against your mouth.

You stayed like that for a moment, his thumb still tracing small circles on your waist and his fingers still tangled in your hair. The world under the bleachers had gone completely silent, like even the wind was holding its breath.

Then he kissed you again.

This time, his mouth was softer. He brushed his lips over yours once, feather-light, then again, then a third time, each touch gentler than the last. It was as though he was asking permission for something he'd already been given and he couldn't quite believe you were still there.

When he finally pulled back, after many more minutes, his eyes were open and he was watching you like you were something precious and breakable and he was terrified of dropping you.

His thumb came up to brush across your lower lip, where his had just been. The touch was so light it was almost not there.

"Say something," he whispered.

You couldn't. Your voice was gone, lost somewhere in your throat, buried under the weight of everything you'd just felt.

So instead, you pulled him down by his shirt again. And you kissed him.

Slower and far more certain this time.

His mouth met yours halfway. His hand cradled the back of your head. His body pressed against yours from chest to hip, and you could feel the warmth of him through both your shirts, solid and real and there.

You kissed him until your lips were numb and your lungs were burning and you couldn't tell where you ended and he began.

And that was the start of whatever was going on between the two of you.

Neither of you named it. Not that day under the bleachers, not in the weeks that followed, not even when you found yourself seeking him out between classes or staying late after school just to walk with him. There was no conversation about what you were, no labels, no promises. Just the quiet, unspoken understanding that something had shifted, and neither of you knew what to do with it.

The arguments didn't stop. If anything, they got worse.

Because you were still you: sharp-tongued and quick to deflect, armoured in expensive clothes and sharper smiles. And he was still him: infuriating and observant, unwilling to let you hide behind your walls now that he'd seen what was underneath. You'd crack open for him once and now he expected cracks all the time. Expected you to be soft. Expected you to be real.

And you couldn't. Not when the hallways were full of eyes and the courtyard was full of whispers and your whole life was a performance you'd been rehearsing since birth.

So you fought. Loudly and publicly. You called him a burnout to his face in front of the vending machines. He called you a robot in front of the bike racks. You told him he had no future ahead. He told you your designer bag cost more than his mom's rent and what did that say about you, really?

People stared. People whispered. People placed bets on when one of you would finally snap.

What they didn't see was what happened after.

The way you'd find him behind the gym twenty minutes later, breathless from running, your hands shaking as you grabbed his shirt. The way he'd already be waiting, like he knew you'd come, like he'd been counting on it. The way he'd pull you into the shadow of the building and kiss you like the argument had never happened—or like it had, and this was the only way to finish it.

"You're late," he'd murmur against your mouth.

"I hate you," you'd breathe back.

"Sure you do."

And then you'd kiss properly, desperate and hungry, your fingers twisting in his frayed collar, his hands pressing into your waist. You'd stay there until the bell rang, until the world demanded you return to your separate lives, until you could compose your face into something that didn't look like a girl who'd just been kissed within an inch of her sanity.

Then you'd walk back to class. Straighten your skirt. Lift your chin. And pretend nothing had happened.

People noticed, though. How could they not?

You'd always been careful; meticulous, even. You knew where every camera was, where every teacher stood during passing periods, which stairwells stayed empty and which bathrooms had broken locks. You'd spent years cultivating your image, protecting your reputation, making sure no one ever saw anything you didn't want them to see.

But Keonho made you sloppy.

It started small. A hallway glance that lasted a second too long. A pause by the bike racks when you should have kept walking. The way your eyes shone when they tracked him across the courtyard, following the gray beanie like a compass pointing north.

Hana noticed first, because Hana noticed everything.

"You keep looking at him weird," she said one day at lunch, not even bothering to phrase it as a question.

"I'm not looking at him weird."

"Y/n, you literally look at him like he’s the answer to everything."

"I’m looking at him the same as I’ve always done."

Hana stared at you. You stared at your salad.

"You're seeing him, aren't you?" she said quietly. "Like, seeing him seeing him."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Y/N."

"Hana."

She leaned closer, dropping her voice. "I saw you. Last week. Behind the science building."

Your heart stopped and your face went cold. "You saw what?"

"Nothing. I didn't see anything. That's the point." She paused. "But I saw you go behind the science building. And I saw him go behind the science building. And then you both came out five minutes later looking like—" She gestured at your face. "Like that."

"Like what?"

"Like someone who just got kissed and is trying really hard to pretend she didn't."

You set down your fork very carefully.

"You didn't see anything," you said.

"I know."

"Because there's nothing to see."

"I know."

"And if you tell anyone—"

"I won't." Hana held up her hands. "I'm not an idiot. I'm just... surprised."

"At what?"

"That you picked him." She glanced across the courtyard, where Keonho was sitting alone by the bike racks, eating his usual gas station sandwich. "I mean, he's cute. In a scruffy way. But he's not exactly... you know."

"Not exactly what?"

"Your type."

You looked down at your salad. At your perfectly manicured nails. At the designer bag hanging off the back of your chair.

"Maybe I don't have a type," you said.

Hana didn't respond. She didn't have to. Her silence said everything.

After that, you tried to be more careful.

You stopped seeking him out between classes, started taking different routes to the vending machines, sat with your back to the bike racks so you wouldn't be tempted to look.

It lasted three days.

On the fourth day, you found yourself behind the art building at 3:15, your back against the brick wall, his body pressed against yours, his mouth locked on yours.

"We have to stop," you whispered, even as your fingers tightened in his hair.

"I know," he murmured against your lips.

"We're being stupid."

"The stupidest."

"Someone's going to see."

He pulled back just enough to look at you with slightly swollen lips.

"Then stop me," he said.

You didn't.

You kissed him instead. Harder than before. As though you were trying to memorise the shape of his mouth, the taste of his breath, the way his hands felt on your waist.

And you were terrified of how much you didn't want to stop.

The first time anyone properly saw you alone together was behind the bleachers.

Someone's little brother was looking for a lost phone and he found you instead.

You were sitting with your back against the fence. Keonho was lying with his head in your lap, eyes closed, your fingers absently running through his hair. Neither of you was talking. Neither of you was fighting. You just... existed.

His hair was softer than you expected. His breathing had evened out until you weren't sure if he was awake or asleep. The late afternoon sun made everything gold and warm and stupidly cinematic.

You should have moved. The moment you heard footsteps crunching on the gravel, you should have shoved him off and stood up and smoothed down your skirt and pretended this never happened. The old you would have sensed someone coming from a hundred yards away. The old you was always watching, always calculating, always performing.

But the old you hadn't spent the last hour with her fingers in Keonho's hair, watching the clouds drift past, feeling something in her chest unfurl like a flower she'd forgotten she'd planted.

You looked up. The kid was standing at the edge of the bleachers, frozen mid-step. His mouth was open. His phone was in his hand, must have found it, and you realised with a sinking feeling that he'd been taking pictures. Or filming. Or both.

You didn't say anything. Neither did he. For one long, suspended second, the three of you existed in perfect, terrible stillness: you with your hands still in Keonho's hair, Keonho still half-asleep and oblivious, the kid staring like he'd just witnessed a unicorn.

Then the kid turned and ran.

His footsteps echoed off the floor, fast and frantic, disappearing around the corner. 

Keonho stirred. His eyes fluttered open, squinting against the light. "What was that?"

"Nothing."

"Sounded like someone running."

"It was nothing." You pulled your hand out of his hair and your fingers felt cold without him. "We should go."

He sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes, his hair sticking up in a dozen different directions. He looked at your face and something in his expression shifted.

"Someone saw us," he said. Not a question.

"Someone's little brother."

"Did he—"

"He had a phone."

Keonho was quiet for a moment. Then he leaned back on his hands and tilted his face toward the sky.

"Well," he said. "That's that, then."

"What do you mean, that's that?"

"I mean people are going to talk. Your friends are going to freak out. The whole school's going to know by tomorrow morning." He looked at you sideways. "You okay with that?"

You should have said no. You should have stood up and walked away and never looked back. You should have spent the rest of the week damage-controlling, spin-doctoring, finding ways to convince everyone that what they'd seen wasn't what they thought.

Instead you said, "I don't know."

Keonho nodded and didn't push any further.

"Come on," he said, standing up and offering you his hand. "I'll walk you to your car."

You took his hand and let him pull you to your feet, your fingers lingering in his for a moment longer than necessary.

"Your hair's a mess," you said.

"You're the one who did it."

"You shouldn't have fallen asleep on me."

"You shouldn't have been playing with my hair."

You took a good look at him: his crooked smile and his tired eyes and his stupid, beautiful, infuriating face.

“Your hair was too soft for me to stop," you said quietly.

His smile softened and he squeezed your hand once before letting go.

"Come on, fountain girl. Let's go cause some rumors."

The school lost its collective mind.

The photos spread like wildfire, your friends asked countless questions on if you were really dating him of all people.

Hana seemed to be the only one capable of at least showing a bit of support, in her own way of course.

"Okay, I don't understand it and I think you're making a mistake and I think you're going to get hurt." She reached to take your hand. "But you're my best friend. And if this is what you want then I'm not going to stand in your way."

"He's not—I don't—" You stopped. Took a breath. "I don't know what I want. I just know I'm tired of pretending I have it all figured out."

Hana squeezed your hand. "Then stop pretending."

You looked down at your joined hands and saw her perfectly manicured nails next to yours. 

"I don't know how," you admitted.

"Figure it out." She let go of your hand. Leaned back in her chair. "But do me a favor?"

"What?

"Next time you're going to make out with the skateboard boy behind the bleachers, maybe pick a spot without a line of sight to the school."

Your face went hot. "We weren't making out—"

"Your lips in those photos say otherwise."

"The photos weren’t taken after we—he was sleeping—"

"Sure he was."

“He was! His head was in my lap and he fell asleep and he I was just playing—”

“Uh huh.”

"Hana."

"Y/N." She smiled a real smile, the first one you'd seen from her all day. "I'm teasing. Mostly. But seriously. If you're going to be with him, be with him. Don't sneak around, or lie, or pretend he's something you're ashamed of."

"I'm not ashamed of him."

"Then don't act like you are."

And from then on, you didn’t hide. You stopped crossing to the other side of the hallway when you saw him coming. Stopped pretending not to know where he ate lunch. Stopped taking the long way to class just to avoid being seen walking next to him.

Everyone now knew that you two were a thing of some sorts, and maybe it was better that they all knew. The secrecy had been exhausting. The sneaking around, the lying by omission, the constant fear of being caught; it had been eating at you, wearing you down, making you someone you didn't want to be.

Now there was nothing to hide.

You no longer had to explain why you’d stopped driving to school just to be able to walk with him, his skateboard rolling beside you, his hand occasionally brushing yours and your shoulders bumping as you talked. Or the new scratches on your knees, the scuffs on your formerly pristine shoes, the tiny bruise on your palm from catching yourself when you fell from Keonho attempting to teach you to ride his skateboard.

"You're doing it wrong," he said one afternoon, watching you wobble across the parking lot after school.

"I'm doing it exactly the way you showed me."

"You're doing it exactly the way I told you not to."

"You told me to not lean back, so I'm leaning forward."

"Don't do that either." He ran his free hand through his hair, the other reaching up to grab your arm, steadying you before you could tip over. His fingers wrapped around your bicep firmly, keeping you upright. "Leaning forward is just as bad as leaning back. Actually, it's worse. When you lean forward, the board shoots out from under you and you land on your face."

"I'd rather land on my face than on my back because I’ll catch myself before I hit the ground."

"That's the stupidest thing you've ever said."

"I've said stupider things."

"Name one."

"I told Mina her new haircut looked good."

He stared at you. "That's not stupid. That's just mean."

"It was stupid and mean. Her haircut was terrible."

He adjusted his grip on your arm, his thumb pressing into the inside of your elbow. "Okay. Listen. Actually listen this time."

"I always listen."

"You listen to argue, not learn."

"I don't know what that means."

"Yes you do."

"Stop talking."

"Stop proving me right." He stepped around to face you, both hands on your arms now, looking down at you with that exasperated expression you'd grown weirdly fond of. "Keep your weight centered. Right over the board. Imagine there's a string pulling you up from the top of your head."

"That's the worst visualisation I've ever heard."

"It works."

"It works for you because you're weird."

"I'm not weird. I'm effective."

"You're weird and ineffective."

"I taught myself to skateboard when I was twelve. I think I know what I'm talking about."

"You taught yourself. That explains why you're such a bad teacher."

"I'm not a bad teacher. You're a bad student."

"I'm an excellent student. I get straight A's."

"In history. This isn't history. This is physics."

"It's a board with wheels, Keonho. It's not that deep."

"It's literally that deep. Center of gravity, momentum, weight distribution—"

"You're using big words to sound smart."

"I'm using big words because they're the right words."

"The right words are 'stand still and don't fall.'"

"The right words are 'engage your core and relax your shoulders.'"

"My core is engaged. My shoulders are relaxed."

"Your shoulders are up by your ears."

"No they aren’t."

"Princess, they're literally trying to escape through your neck right now."

You glanced down at your shoulders. They were, in fact, up by your ears. You forced them down. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic."

"Don't be sarcastic."

"I'm not being sarcastic. I'm genuinely ecstatic that your shoulders are no longer trying to flee your body."

"You're so annoying."

"You're so tense."

"I'm not tense. I'm focused."

"You're so focused that you're forgetting to breathe."

"I'm breathing fine."

"You're holding your breath."

"I'm not holding my breath."

"You just turned purple."

"I did not turn purple."

"You turned a very lovely shade of lavender."

You exhaled. Hard. Right in his face.

He didn't flinch. Just raised an eyebrow.

"Feel better?" he asked.

"No."

"Then take a real breath. In through your nose. Out through your mouth."

"I know how to breathe."

"Then prove it."

You took a breath. In through your nose. Out through your mouth straight onto his face again. He blinked.

"Did you just exhale onto me again?"

"Maybe."

He just sighed, already realising he was losing this battle, and let go of your arms, stepping back. "Okay. Try again. Keep your weight centered. Shoulders down. Breathe. And for the love of God, stop leaning."

"I'm not leaning."

"You're leaning."

"I'm standing perfectly upright."

"You're leaning so far forward you're practically bowing."

You wobbled as you adjusted but managed to catch yourself.

"Look," he said, smiling at you softly. "You're doing it."

"I'm doing it."

"Don't sound so surprised."

"I'm not surprised. I'm impressed with myself—"

Before you could even finish your gloating, your weight shifted. One moment you were upright, almost steady, almost balanced, almost doing it. The next, the board slipped out from underneath you like the ground had turned to ice. Your arms windmilled. Your center of gravity betrayed you completely. And then your knees hit the asphalt hard: a sharp, jarring impact that sent shockwaves up your thighs before Keonho could even properly react and grab you.

His hands reached for you a second too late, fingers closing on empty air where your arm had been.

You stayed there for a moment, on your hands and knees, breathing hard. The asphalt was rough and warm beneath your palms, little bits of gravel digging into your skin. Your knees throbbed. Your pride throbbed harder.

"Y/N." His voice was closer now. His hand landed on your back, warm and steady. "You okay?"

"Fine."

"You're not fine. You're on the ground."

"I'm resting."

"You're bleeding."

"I'm bleeding and resting. Multitasking."

"Y/N."

"Keonho."

He crouched down beside you, his face level with yours and his eyes wide, scanning your face, your knees, your hands. "You went down hard."

"I've gone down harder."

"That's not—" He stopped. Pinched the bridge of his nose. "That's not the flex you think it is."

He reached for your arm, gently pulling you up from the ground. His hands were more careful than usual, and you let him guide you to your feet, wincing as your weight settled onto your scraped knees.

"Can you walk?" he asked.

"I can walk."

"You're limping."

"I'm not limping. I'm just… taking my time."

He shook his head, but he was smiling. "Come on. Let's get you cleaned up."

He led you to the concrete steps outside the gymnasium, and you sat down heavily, stretching your legs out in front of you. The damage was worse than you thought: both knees scraped raw through what used to be your favorite pair of tights, thin lines of blood beading up through the torn fabric.

Keonho sat down next to you, close enough that his shoulder pressed against yours. He pulled a crumpled gas station napkin from his pocket and held it out to you.

"That's not going to be enough," you said.

"It's all I have."

"Then get more."

"Where am I supposed to get more?"

"I don't know. The bathroom. The nurse's office."

He ignored you and dabbed at your knee with the napkin anyway, gentle and inefficient, the cheap paper sticking to your skin. You hissed through your teeth.

"Sorry," he murmured.

"You should be. This is your fault."

"How is this my fault?"

"You're the one who put me on the board."

"You're the one who wanted to learn."

"I wanted to learn from a competent teacher."

"I am competent."

"You let me fall."

"You fell before I could catch you."

"You were literally right in front of me."

"You went down way too fast for me to react."

“Well maybe next time I’ll get an actual competent teacher to teach me how to skate.”

“Oh really? And would that competent teacher still be here tending to your wounds?” He looked at you and something in your chest tightened. You looked away, down at your scraped knees, at his hand still holding the crumpled napkin against your skin.

"You're bleeding too," you said.

He looked down at his own hand. There was a small scrape on his palm, must have happened when he reached for you and caught the asphalt instead.

"That's nothing," he said.

"It's bleeding."

"It's a scratch."

"It's bleeding and you're not even complaining."

"Why would I complain?"

"Because that's what people do when they're hurt. They complain."

"I'm not hurt. I'm fine."

"You're not fine. You're bleeding."

"It's a scratch, Y/N."

"It's a bleeding scratch."

He stared at you. Then he started laughing, bright and surprised, his whole face lighting up.

"What?" you demanded.

"Nothing." He shook his head, still laughing. "You're just—you're sitting there with two knees that look like ground beef, telling me my paper cut is a medical emergency."

"It's not a paper cut. It's a gash."

"It's literally smaller than my fingernail."

"Size isn't everything."

"That's not—" He stopped, his smile wide whilst he rubbed his hand over his face. "You're looking way worse than me."

You wanted to be annoyed at the fact that he was still laughing, his shoulder shaking against yours. You wanted to push him away and tell him this wasn't funny, that your knees were ruined and your tights were ruined and your pride was in shambles on the asphalt.

But instead, you started laughing too.

It bubbled up from somewhere unexpected, somewhere you'd forgotten existed. You laughed until your stomach hurt and your scraped knees throbbed and tears pricked at the corners of your eyes. You laughed because you'd just fallen off a skateboard in front of half the school and Keonho was sitting next to you with a napkin stuck to his palm, his eyes full of light, watching you finally, finally, be yourself.

When the laughter finally faded, you were both breathing hard. His shoulder was still pressed against yours. His hand had somehow found yours, fingers laced together, resting on the concrete step between you.

You eventually leaned your head against his shoulder. Just rested it there, your temple pressing into the worn fabric of his hoodie. He didn't move. Didn't pull away. Just sat there with you in the warm afternoon sun while the rest of the world went on around you.

At some point he turned his head and his lips brushed against your hair so softly you almost missed it, but you felt it. You felt everything.

People walked past, some gawked at the sight of you, others turned and whispered amongst each other, but neither of you seemed to care.

That seemed to become a recurring thing. The stares and the whispers. People still took photos when they thought you weren't looking. The speculation never ended: were you dating? Were you enemies? Were you friends? Were you something in between that no one had a word for?

But you stopped noticing. Or maybe you just stopped caring.

They couldn't understand what was going on between you two. How you'd go from wanting to strangle each other to cuddling up just a second later. How you'd be screaming in each other's faces one moment and then sitting in comfortable silence the next, your head on his shoulder, his hand in yours. How you'd call him every name in the book and then defend him viciously when someone else tried to do the same.

It didn't make sense. Not to them. Not to your friends, who still looked at you like you'd grown a second head every time you walked past the bike racks without stopping to sneer. Not to his friends—the few he had that you had only learnt about recently—who raised their eyebrows every time you appeared and said nothing.

And, to be honest, neither of you understood it either.

But none of that mattered. 

Not when he'd sit there and let you ramble for hours about whatever new person who annoyed you had done. How a girl had worn the same dress as you to a party and actually looked good in it: "She had no right, Keonho. No right. I specifically told her I was wearing the green one with the flowers, and she showed up in the exact same dress like it was nothing." Or how Hana had started talking to her ex again, the one from the football team, the one who'd cheated on her at summer camp two years ago: "I don't understand it. I don't understand her. He literally lied to her face for a whole weekend and she's just going to pretend that didn't happen?"

He never interrupted. Never told you to calm down or change the subject or stop caring so much about things that didn't matter. He just listened with his eyes half-closed, his head tilted back, and his fingers absently tracing patterns on his knee. Sometimes he'd nod. Sometimes he'd make comments like "that's messed up" or "she sounds exhausting" or "you're right to be annoyed." Sometimes he’d just watch you, a look in his eyes that made you feel giddy.

Not when he laid on your bed, still watching you pace back and forth whilst on a call that felt never ending. 

He should have been paying attention and following the conversation, tracking the drama, even offering the occasional grunt of acknowledgment. But his eyelids were heavy, his body was warm, and the sound of your voice, even when it was sharp, annoyed, and mid-takedown, was somehow the most soothing thing he'd ever heard.

”Okay, call me later once she replies.” 

Keonho perked up as he heard you wrapping up the call, his chin lifting from his arm. His eyes tracked you still walking back and forth, back and forth, like you couldn't quite remember how to stop.

"You're gonna wear a hole in that ridiculously expensive rug," he commented, his voice thick with sleep.

You ignored him. Kept pacing. Kept muttering under your breath, something about ‘can't believe she said that’ and ‘who does she think she is’ and ‘wait until I get my hands on her’.

"Y/N."

Nothing.

"Y/N."

"I'm thinking."

"You've been thinking for like ten minutes. Think quicker.”

“I’d be able to if you shut up.”

He just blinked at you, slow and unbothered. “I’m not the one who’s been pacing around for an hour.”

”It was literally twenty minutes, and last I checked you were asleep.”

”That was before you left me all by myself.” He pouted, his bottom lip jutting out, his eyes wide and faux-tragic, and you scrunched your face in disgust, though you'd never admit it secretly made your heart swell. The stupid, infuriating, adorable pout. The way his hair was all messed up from the pillow. The way the pink blanket was pulled up to his shoulders like a child who didn't want to get out of bed.

He mumbled something you were only just able to catch, his voice thick and sleepy: "Twenty minutes too long."

"I was on the phone."

"You were on the phone without me."

"You were asleep."

"So? You could have woken me up."

You sighed, rubbing a hand over your face before stepping forward. He twisted to lay on his side, the pink blanket pooling around his waist, and lifted the blanket up at your approach.

You climbed under the blanket with him, the sheets cool against your legs, the duvet soft beneath your head. His free arm enveloped you immediately, your face pressing into his neck, your nose brushing his collarbone, and your breath warm against his skin.

”You’re so clingy.” You grumbled.

"You love it."

"I hate it."

"You love hating it."

You elbowed him and he didn't even flinch, just tightened his arm around you, pulling you even closer until there was no space left between you.

"I was in the middle of something," you said.

"You were in the middle of pacing."

"I was strategising."

"You were spiraling and I needed to stop it."

His hand found your hair. His fingers threaded through it, slow and steady, the way he knew you liked. His thumb brushed against your scalp, gentle circles that made your eyes flutter closed.

"I'm still thinking about it," you murmured.

"I know."

"I'm going to keep thinking about it."

"I know."

"I'm going to talk about it. A lot. For a long time."

"I know."

"And you're going to listen?"

"I'm going to try. No promises. I'm very tired."

"You're always tired."

"You're always thinking too much."

You wanted to argue. Wanted to fire back something sharp and cutting that would wipe that sleepy smile off his face. But his hand was in your hair and his heartbeat was steady under your ear and the world outside your bedroom door had stopped mattering.

"She's going to reply later," you said. "And when she does—"

"You're going to do nothing."

"I'm going to do something."

"You're going to do nothing," he repeated. "Because it's late. And you're tired. And whatever she said, it'll still be there tomorrow."

"But—"

"Tomorrow," he said. "You can destroy her tomorrow. Right now, you're going to sleep."

"You can't tell me what to do."

"I just did."

"And I'm not doing it."

"You're literally in my arms with your eyes closed."

"That doesn't matter." Despite your words, you snuggled into him tighter, your fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt, your face pressing deeper into the hollow of his throat. He was warm, so, so warm, and his heartbeat was slow and steady beneath your palm, a rhythm your own heart had started to match without your permission.

You felt him press a kiss onto your hair, it seemed to be a thing he did subconsciously now.

"Mhm." He just about managed to say, the sound rumbling through his chest, vibrating against your cheek. His arms were loosening around you, his grip going slack, his body sinking deeper into the mattress. He was drifting off, you could feel it in the way his breathing had slowed, in the way his hand had stopped moving in your hair, in the way his heartbeat had dropped to a deep, steady thrum.

You lifted your head just enough to look at him as you felt him settle.

His face was soft in the dim light. The sharp lines of his jaw had blurred, his lips were slightly parted, his dark lashes fanned out against his cheeks. His hair was a mess across his forehead and he looked younger like this. Softer. Less like the boy who argued with you in parking lots and more like the boy who pressed kisses to your hair when he thought you weren't paying attention.

You should have woken him up. Should have told him to go home, to sleep in his own bed, to stop taking up space in yours.

But you didn't.

Instead, you reached up and brushed the hair off his forehead. Your fingers lingered there for a moment, tracing the line of his brow, the curve of his temple, the soft skin just above his cheekbone.

He didn't stir. Didn't wake. Just sighed in his sleep and pulled you closer, his arm tightening around your waist even as he dreamed.

You smiled, just a little, placing a featherlight kiss onto his jaw.

"You're impossible," you whispered, so quietly that not even the fairy lights that hung above your bed could hear.

Then you settled back against his chest, closed your eyes, and let yourself drift.

Tomorrow, you'd argue. Tomorrow, you'd pace and mutter and plot revenge. Tomorrow, you'd be sharp and cutting and impossible in all the ways you knew how to be.

But tonight, you let him have the last word.

The irony was that your families could barely tolerate one another.

They played polite well enough during pureblood gatherings, all sharp smiles and expensive robes and poisoned compliments hidden beneath crystal glasses. But beneath the carefully maintained civility lay years of rivalry neither side ever bothered to truly conceal.

Still, neither family could exactly complain.

After years of relentless pestering about finding a “suitable” partner, the two of you had solved the problem yourselves.

No unbearable introductions arranged by your parents. No carefully selected heirs from respectable houses being paraded in front of you at dinners. And, most importantly, no risk of either of you ending up with what your mother so delicately referred to as ‘one of those horrid half-bloods polluting wizarding society’.

The arrangement had happened late one evening in the library.

You still remembered the way Juhoon had slid into the seat across from you without invitation, expression unreadable as always. The Slytherin prefect pin gleamed faintly against the dim candlelight.

“You’ve been avoiding your mother’s letters,” he had said plainly.

You glanced up from your book. “And you know this because?”

“She complained to mine.”

Of course she had.

You let out a quiet sigh, shutting your book with more force than necessary. “If this is another conversation about suitable suitors, I might actually throw myself into the Black Lake.”

To your surprise, the corner of his mouth twitched slightly. Then, after a brief pause, he said, “Date me.”

You could only stare at him, the gears shifting as your brain tried to process his words. “What?”

“Pretend to,” Juhoon corrected smoothly, leaning back in his chair. “People already think we’re together. It would solve the problem.”

You narrowed your eyes immediately, suspicious. “And what exactly do you gain from this?”

“My parents stop introducing me to insufferable pureblood daughters every holiday.”

“That bad?”

“One of them cried because I didn’t compliment her dress.”

You snorted before you could stop yourself.

Juhoon continued, calm and composed as though he were discussing homework rather than proposing an entirely fabricated relationship. “We keep appearances up around our families. Attend events together. Act convincing enough that they stop interfering in our lives.” His gaze flickered toward you then, steady and sharp. “In return, they leave us alone.”

It was practical and honestly far less miserable than enduring another year of your parents’ endless matchmaking.

So you agreed, and perhaps that had been your first mistake because the lie came far too easily.

The news spread through Hogwarts within days. Apparently, you were officially off-limits now—though neither of you had exactly struggled with unwanted attention before, both considered far too intimidating for most students to approach in the first place. Still, people looked at the two of you differently afterward, as though the confirmation merely solidified something everyone had believed from the start.

Because in everyone else’s eyes, you and Juhoon fit together effortlessly enough that some couldn’t tell if your relationship was truly for the mere essence of maintaining pureblood expectations or something far more genuine.

Most assumed the latter because how could they not?

You and Juhoon moved around one another with a familiarity too natural to appear rehearsed, too instinctive to feel manufactured. None of how you interacted looked forced enough to be an arrangement crafted purely for convenience.

To many students, it looked painfully obvious: love disguised poorly beneath Slytherin composure and aristocratic restraint.

Even among the more cynical pureblood circles, whispers followed the two of you with something almost resembling admiration. A perfect match between two influential families, yes, but also something strangely sincere beneath all the politics and reputation.

Others found it romantic in an insufferable sort of way. The terrifyingly composed Slytherin heir who looked at no one the way he looked at you and the equally intimidating pureblood witch somehow capable of softening the sharpest edges of Juhoon’s cold demeanor simply by standing beside him.

Though there remained a smaller, far more rational group of students who viewed the situation differently.

They observed the timing too carefully. The convenience of the sudden announcement arriving perfectly alongside increasing pressure from both your families.

To them, it looked less like a love story and more like an agreement between two ambitious pureblood heirs intelligent enough to understand exactly what was expected of them.

And truthfully, they would have been correct, it was a strategic alliance meant for nothing more than for you both to finally get some peace in your life.

Still, no one dared voice such theories aloud.

Not when Juhoon’s gaze alone could silence most people where they stood. And certainly not when the two of you looked altogether too convincing beside one another for anyone to comfortably question it for long.

The two of you had established a set of simple, but necessary rules that night in the library as well.

No real feelings.

Public affection only when required.

Family events would be attended together, appearances maintained carefully enough to keep suspicion away. If either of you wished to end the arrangement, it ended immediately—no questions asked.

It was practical and controlled. Exactly the sort of agreement expected between two pureblood heirs raised on reputation before emotion.

At least, that was what you had told yourself.

The problem was that Juhoon had always been unfairly easy to exist beside even before the arrangement had been established

You had spent years at his side during endless pureblood functions and insufferable dinners, years exchanging sharp remarks across Slytherin tables and quiet conversations in hidden corners of the library. Being around him had never required effort and silence with him had never felt uncomfortable.

Pretending, it turned out, felt alarmingly natural, to the point where almost none of it felt staged anymore.

Not when he would pull a chair out for you before you even reached the table, or when his eyes would find yours across the Great Hall with quiet, terrifying ease. Nor when he looked at you like you were something worth protecting, and certainly not when you began forgetting there had ever been rules to begin with.

The reaction from Hogwarts had been almost insulting.

You had expected surprise, perhaps even outrage considering the nature of your families. At the very least, some degree of shock.

Instead, the majority of the school responded with an almost unbearable sense of satisfaction as though they had all collectively won a bet neither you nor Juhoon had known existed.

“Finally,” Jaehyun had drawled the morning after the rumors spread, looking entirely too pleased with himself as he slid into the seat across from the two of you at breakfast.

Mina looked equally smug. “You were honestly fooling no one.”

You nearly choked on your tea. Beside you, Juhoon remained perfectly composed, lazily stirring his coffee as though the attention surrounding your table did not exist. Which somehow only made the rumors worse.

The professors were no better. Slughorn, in particular, looked positively delighted by the arrangement.

In his eyes, the two of you were practically the embodiment of everything he adored: prestigious pureblood heirs, academically gifted Slytherins, socially influential students with families woven so deeply into wizarding society it existed beyond the ancient historical texts.

You suspected he had been waiting for this development longer than the rest of Hogwarts combined.

“Well, well,” Slughorn beamed during Potions one afternoon, eyes flickering between the two of you knowingly. “Young love among noble houses. How very classic.”

The silence that followed was immediate.

You stared at him in horror. To your right, Juhoon looked mildly appalled for perhaps half a second before his usual composure settled back into place.

Unfortunately, several students had witnessed it and that resulted in the teasing afterward being relentless. Not that either of you reacted strongly enough to discourage it.

That was the problem.

At first, maintaining the act required actual effort, though you had expected that much. The first few days were painfully awkward in ways neither of you anticipated. Every movement felt overly deliberate, every touch carefully calculated beneath the watchful eyes of Hogwarts.

Juhoon offering you his arm before entering the Great Hall, your hand resting lightly against his sleeve during pureblood gatherings, sitting together during meals, quiet conversations close enough to appear intimate.

It felt staged at first, like two people attempting to imitate a relationship they did not fully understand.

And then, somehow, it stopped feeling unnatural altogether. The shift happened so gradually neither of you noticed it immediately.

One day Juhoon was offering you his arm because people were watching and the next, he was doing it automatically without glancing around first.

You stopped choosing the seat beside him consciously. Your body simply carried you there out of habit now, settling comfortably into his presence before your mind caught up.

He began fixing your collar absentmindedly whenever it sat crooked, his fingers just grazing your throat as you maintained a straight face, though the goosebumps littering your skin almost gave you away.

You started stealing pieces of fruit from his plate during breakfast without asking.

Shared notes became shared textbooks, whispered conversations stretching late into the night within the Slytherin common room while green candlelight flickered against the dungeon walls.

And then there was the touching. Subtle enough to escape notice if one wasn’t looking carefully, yet somehow constant all the same.

Juhoon’s hand began to rest against the small of your back in crowded hallways and your knee started brushing his beneath library tables. 

None of it should have felt significant yet each touch lingered far longer in your mind than it ought to have. Perhaps because Juhoon was not naturally affectionate, especially with everyone else.

He tolerated very few people willingly, less so physical contact. Most students avoided standing too close to him altogether, intimidated by the sharp calmness he carried so effortlessly.

But with you, the distance between your bodies seemed to disappear more and more each day.

And the truly dangerous part was that neither of you seemed to notice anymore when you were pretending and when you were simply… being yourselves.

The realisation came slowly.

So slowly, in fact, that you hardly noticed it at all.

It settled quietly into the spaces between lingering glances and absentminded touches, weaving itself into your routine before either of you had the chance to stop it. Somewhere along the way, Juhoon had ceased to feel like a performance and instead become something constant, expected even.

You found him beside you in every corner of Hogwarts without needing to ask.

In the mornings at the Slytherin table, already pouring tea into your cup before you had even sat down, the steam curling softly between the two of you as though he had done it his entire life. During lessons, where his chair always seemed to end up angled subtly toward yours no matter where the professors placed you. Across from you in the library during late-night study sessions, silver rings tapping idly against the wooden table while he skimmed over your essays with quiet criticism.

“Your conclusion is weak,” he remarked one evening without looking up.

You narrowed your eyes. “You’ve said that for the past three of my essays.”

“Because it continues to be true.”

And then, not five minutes later, he slid a fresh piece of parchment toward you with several rewritten sentences already scrawled neatly across it.

Even outside of lessons, Juhoon simply… appeared.

Waiting outside classrooms between periods, one hand tucked into the pocket of his robes while groups of students parted around him instinctively. Falling into step beside you through the corridors without greeting, as though your company had long since become assumed. Occupying the seat beside yours in the common room before anyone else could take it.

There was no discussion or hesitation, only certainty.

And perhaps the most dangerous part was that he noticed things no one else ever bothered paying attention to.

He knew when you were irritated before you spoke, recognising the slight tightening in your expression long before anyone else caught on. Knew exactly which desserts you avoided in the Great Hall and quietly traded them off your plate whenever they appeared. Knew the difference between your genuine smile and the polite, practiced one reserved for pureblood gatherings.

Sometimes it felt as though Juhoon observed you too carefully. As though he had spent years memorising every version of you long before either of you called this a relationship.

It seemed almost instinctive, the sort built through diving to see more than what appeared at the surface.

You began noticing it everywhere once you allowed yourself to look.

He’d automatically shifted closer whenever conversations in the common room became too loud, subtle enough that no one else would recognise the gesture for what it was. His eyes searched for you first whenever he entered a room, immediately locating you within seconds as though it were unconscious now.

And Merlin, the staring.

You did not know when that had begun.

Perhaps he had always looked at you that way and you had simply never paid enough attention before.

Juhoon’s gaze had always been intense by nature—sharp, assessing, difficult for most people to hold comfortably. He looked at people as though dissecting them quietly in his mind, cool and unreadable in a way that made even older students nervous.

But with you, it was different. Softer, somehow. Not openly affectionate. Juhoon was not the sort for obvious displays of emotion.

Still, there were moments when you caught him looking at you from across the Great Hall or over the top of a book in the library, expression unreadable yet strangely focused, as though he had momentarily forgotten anyone else existed.

And every single time, your stomach betrayed you because Juhoon was composed by nature. Controlled down to the very way he spoke. Nothing about him was careless.

And yet, around you, cracks had begun appearing in that perfect restraint. Small, nearly invisible ones.

The subtle tightening of his jaw whenever another student lingered too close to you. The way his gaze darkened almost imperceptibly whenever someone flirted too openly. The instinctive way he would place a hand against your waist while guiding you through corridors that were not even vastly populated, fingers lingering just a second too long against the fabric of your robes.

Protective.

Possessive, perhaps.

Though you weren’t entirely sure you minded, and that alone should have terrified you. Instead, it settled warm beneath your ribs like a secret you were too afraid to name. And it only became worse after Potions.

Slughorn’s classroom smelled overwhelmingly sweet that morning, thick curls of shimmering steam spiraling upward from the cauldron positioned at the center of the room. Students leaned forward curiously as the potion glimmered beneath the candlelight, its surface shifting in pearlescent swirls.

“Amortentia,” Slughorn announced proudly, gesturing dramatically toward the cauldron. “The most powerful love potion in the world. Quite distinctive, of course. It smells different to each person according to what attracts them most.”

A chorus of amused reactions spread throughout the room almost immediately. Several students laughed whilst others leaned forward eagerly, excited to reveal their own.

You had barely paid attention until the scent reached you.

Rain against stone.

Cedarwood.

Mint.

Old parchment.

Your stomach dropped instantly because it smelled exactly like Juhoon.

Not vaguely similar or close enough to dismiss. It smelled undeniably, unmistakably like him—like the lingering scent left behind whenever he shrugged his robes over your shoulders after Quidditch practice, and sitting beside him in the library beneath flickering candlelight while rain battered softly against the dungeon windows.

Heat crawled painfully up your neck but you forced your expression to remain neutral, staring firmly ahead while panic curled violently in your chest.

Surely no one else noticed.

Slowly, carefully, you shifted your gaze downward toward your notes, pretending sudden fascination with your parchment.

Then silence settled beside you, the atmosphere surrounding the two of you growing far too heavy for you to ignore. Against your better judgment, you glanced sideways to find him already looking at you. And for the first time in as long as you had known him, Juhoon looked unsettled.

Only slightly.

A nearly invisible tension lingered in his expression before disappearing just as quickly, gone so fast you might have imagined it entirely had you not spent months learning the smallest shifts in his composure.

But you knew him too well now to miss it.

He had smelled something too.

Someone.

And judging by the way his gaze lingered on you afterward: thoughtful, quiet, almost unbearably intent, you had a terrible feeling you already knew who.

Neither of you spoke about it afterward, both far too emotionally inept to even consider attempting such a conversation. Instead, the two of you did what Slytherins did best: you avoided it completely. Painfully so.

The moment class ended, you gathered your things far too quickly before standing abruptly from your seat, your robe nearly getting caught on the table. Around the classroom, students continued laughing and teasing one another over the potion while Slughorn rambled enthusiastically about the “fascinating nature of adolescent attraction.”

You wanted to disappear into the Black Lake and never emerge again.

Juhoon, unfortunately, followed you out of the classroom almost immediately because that’s what he always did.

You could hear his footsteps behind you as you moved through the dungeon corridors, measured and unhurried in a way that somehow made your nervousness worse. He said nothing at first, merely falling into step beside you as naturally as breathing.

Usually, the silence between you was comfortable. Now it felt suffocating.

“You’re walking unusually fast,” Juhoon observed after several moments.

You kept your eyes fixed ahead. “Am I?”

“Yes.”

A pause passed between you. Then, quieter: “You’ve been avoiding looking at me since class ended.”

Heat crept instantly back into your face. “I’m not avoiding you.”

“Hm.” The sound alone told you he didn’t believe a word of it.

You risked a glance toward him then, only to regret it immediately. Juhoon was already watching you, and it wasn’t casual, either. It was intent, like he was trying to solve something. It made your stomach twist painfully.

“You’re staring,” you muttered.

“And you’re nervous.”

“I’m not nervous.”

Another pause.

“Hm.”

You hated when he did that.

The worst part was that Juhoon himself did not appear entirely unaffected either, no matter how composed he attempted to remain. His shoulders seemed slightly tenser than usual beneath his robes, jaw tightening faintly every few seconds like he was restraining thoughts he had no intention of voicing aloud.

Which, somehow, only confirmed your suspicions further.

Merlin. Juhoon had smelled you in the Amortentia potion.

You nearly walked directly into another student before a hand closed instantly around your wrist, pulling you smoothly out of the way before impact.

“Careful,” Juhoon murmured.

The touch burned far hotter than it should have. His fingers remained around your wrist for one second too long before releasing you, though whether he noticed that fact himself, you couldn’t tell.

Neither of you moved immediately afterward.

The corridor around you buzzed with distant conversation and footsteps, students brushing past without a second glance, yet the space between you suddenly felt strangely still.

Dangerously still.

Juhoon’s gaze dropped briefly toward your face, lingering there with unsettling focus, and for one reckless moment, you thought he might actually say something. Maybe ask or even acknowledge it.

Instead, he simply adjusted your cloak where it had slipped from your shoulder during your near collision, movements careful and composed despite the tension crackling quietly between the two of you.

Then he stepped back.

“There’s a Slytherin meeting tonight,” he said smoothly, as though neither of you were internally unraveling. “Don’t be late.”

And just like that, the moment vanished like any other time you had come close to branching further than just an arrangement.

Days passed as such, and you continued your… whatever it was you and Juhoon had become.

Not quite fake. Not entirely real. Something dangerously in between.

The awkwardness following the Amortentia incident never truly disappeared, though neither of you acknowledged it aloud. Instead, it settled quietly beneath your interactions, lingering within prolonged glances and near touches that suddenly felt far too intentional.

If Juhoon noticed the shift between you, he gave no indication of it. But afterward, he seemed even more attentive than before.

His hand found the small of your back far more often in the corridors, not that you had been keeping track though. His gaze lingered longer whenever you spoke. Sometimes, during late evenings in the common room, you would glance up from your book only to find him already watching you with that same unreadable expression that made your stomach twist painfully every single time.

It was unbearable.

Worse still, it was becoming impossible to tell where the act ended anymore.

Perhaps that was why the letter from your mother unsettled you as much as it did.

The envelope arrived during breakfast one icy December morning, bearing your family crest stamped neatly into dark green wax. You already knew it would be unpleasant before even opening it.

Across from you, Juhoon glanced up briefly from his tea as you broke the seal.

Your mother’s elegant handwriting greeted you immediately.

You and Juhoon are expected to attend the Rosier Winter Solstice Ball during holiday recess. Considering recent developments, your appearance together will be beneficial for both families.

Do try not to embarrass us.

You stared at the letter for several long moments before sighing deeply and handing it across the table.

Juhoon scanned the contents silently. “The Rosier ball,” he murmured.

You groaned softly. “I was hoping to avoid that this year.”

“So was I.”

That alone was enough to tell you exactly how insufferable the event would be.

The Rosier Winter Solstice Ball was infamous amongst pureblood society—less celebration and more political performance disguised beneath expensive robes and orchestral music. Old families gathered beneath enchanted chandeliers to exchange alliances, gossip, and carefully concealed threats while pretending it was all perfectly civilized.

Children of noble houses were displayed like prized assets.

And now, apparently, the two of you would be attending together officially.

Wonderful.

“You realise everyone’s going to stare at us the entire night,” you muttered.

Juhoon folded the letter neatly before setting it back down beside your plate. “They already do.”

Annoyingly enough, he wasn’t wrong.

The Rosier estate looked almost unreal beneath winter snowfall.

Ancient stone walls towered against the dark sky, every window glowing with warm golden light while enchanted snow drifted elegantly through the air without ever touching the ground. Inside, the manor glittered beneath towering crystal chandeliers, their reflections dancing across polished marble floors and gold-trimmed walls lined with moving portraits older than Hogwarts itself.

The ballroom itself was already crowded upon arrival.

Pureblood heirs draped in expensive fabrics moved gracefully through clusters of conversation while orchestral music echoed softly throughout the hall. Jewel-toned gowns shimmered beneath candlelight, dark tailored suits embroidered subtly with family crests and ancient runes.

Politics disguised as elegance.

Exactly as exhausting as you remembered.

The moment you entered beside Juhoon, attention shifted immediately.

Not openly, of course, pureblood society was far too practiced for something so crude. But you felt it all the same: eyes following the two of you across the ballroom, whispers murmured quietly behind crystal glasses as your arrival spread through the crowd.

Because this was the first time many of them had seen you together publicly since the announcement.

And Juhoon played the role far too well.

His hand settled against your waist almost instantly upon entering the ballroom, warm and steady through the fabric of your dress as he guided you smoothly through the crowd. The gesture appeared effortless, natural enough that no one would question it for a second, yet the touch lingered in your mind far longer than it should have.

You became painfully aware of him throughout the evening.

The way he pulled your chair out before you could sit during dinner, and he leaned down slightly whenever speaking near your ear, his voice low enough that no one else could overhear. Even how his fingers brushed absentmindedly against your own while passing you a drink.

Every action was perfectly measured. Perfectly convincing.

That should have reassured you.

Instead, it unsettled you more with every passing hour because Juhoon was terrifyingly good at acting like he adored you.

At one point during the evening, an older witch smiled knowingly as the two of you crossed the ballroom together. “You make a beautiful couple,” she remarked warmly and your polite smile nearly faltered.

Juhoon’s hand tightened subtly at your waist.

“Thank you,” he replied smoothly before you could answer. As though he meant it.

That haunted you for the remainder of the night.

Especially once the dancing began.

His hand rested against your waist while the other held yours carefully, guiding you effortlessly across the ballroom floor beneath glittering chandeliers and floating candlelight. Every movement felt controlled, elegant, practiced from years of aristocratic upbringing.

And all the while, people watched the two of you.

You could feel their attention constantly. Admiration, curiosity, approval for the perfect pureblood pair. Exactly what your families wanted.

The thought should have disgusted you, but your attention remained fixed on Juhoon.

His gaze never truly left your face while you danced and he instinctively guided you away whenever couples drifted too close. There was an almost protective way he carried himself beside you throughout the evening, calm and watchful like he was aware of everything happening around you at all times.

None of it felt forced or fake, and somewhere between his hand against your waist and the quiet sound of his voice near your ear, a dangerous thought began settling heavily into your chest.

How much of this was actually pretending anymore?

The thought lingered uncomfortably for the rest of the evening.

You tried to dismiss it. Tried to blame the atmosphere instead—the golden candlelight, the orchestral music swelling softly throughout the ballroom, the overwhelming intensity of old pureblood traditions wrapped so elegantly around the two of you.

But every time you convinced yourself you were overthinking things, Juhoon would do something small and devastating.

A witch from the Parkinson family attempted to pull you into conversation near the refreshments table, speaking animatedly about Ministry affairs while several older purebloods listened nearby. You barely managed a polite response before feeling Juhoon’s presence settle beside you once more.

He didn’t interrupt, he was never rude enough for that. But somehow the conversation ended less than a minute later regardless and his hand brushed lightly against your lower back as he guided you away through the crowd.

“You looked miserable,” he murmured.

You glanced sideways at him. “And you decided to rescue me?”

“You say that like it’s unusual.”

The response came so naturally that your steps faltered slightly before you recollected yourself.

At some point during the evening, your mother approached the two of you with a satisfied expression that immediately made you wary.

“You look lovely together,” she commented, gaze flickering approvingly between you and Juhoon. “People have been speaking very highly of your relationship tonight.”

You resisted the urge to grimace. Beside you, Juhoon remained flawlessly composed. “That was the intention,” he replied smoothly.

Your mother seemed pleased by the answer, though her attention lingered suspiciously on the hand resting against your waist before she eventually disappeared back into the crowd.

The moment she left, you exhaled quietly. “I think she’s planning our wedding already.”

Juhoon took a slow sip from his drink. “She wouldn’t be the only one.”

You nearly choked. He glanced at you then, one eyebrow lifting faintly as though amused by your reaction.

“You’re joking.”

“Mostly.”

That was not reassuring whatsoever.

The longer the evening continued, the more impossible Juhoon became to ignore. You noticed the way people reacted to him around you.

How conversations shifted whenever he stepped closer and other pureblood heirs kept a respectful distance without needing to be told. His eyes would follow you instinctively anytime someone else attempted to monopolize your attention for too long.

Protective. Always protective.

Though there was something sharper threaded beneath it tonight.

You first noticed it properly when Eunwoo Carrow approached you near the ballroom balcony.

Eunwoo was charming in the polished, aristocratic sort of way most pureblood sons were taught to be: handsome enough, socially graceful enough, and entirely too aware of both facts.

“Enjoying the evening?” He asked pleasantly, offering you a glass of champagne from a passing tray.

“Trying to,” you replied lightly.

Eunwoo smiled. “I must admit, your relationship came as quite the surprise.”

You hummed softly. “Did it?”

“To everyone else? Perhaps not.” His gaze flickered briefly across the ballroom before returning to you. “To Juhoon’s admirers, however, it was devastating news.”

You almost laughed. The idea of Juhoon inspiring admiration rather than fear within Hogwarts remained endlessly amusing.

Still, before you could respond, Eunwoo stepped slightly closer. Not enough to be improper, just enough to be noticed.

“You know,” he continued smoothly, “if things between you and Juhoon ever become… less serious, I’d be very interested in—”

A hand settled suddenly against the small of your back. Warm, steady and wholly possessive.

Juhoon.

You had not even seen him approach.

“Carrow,” Juhoon greeted calmly beside you and Eunwoo’s posture stiffened almost imperceptibly.

“Juhoon.”

There was no hostility in his tone, and that somehow made the tension worse.

Juhoon’s hand remained firmly against your waist as his gaze settled on Eunwoo with quiet composure. “I believe she was just about to join me for the next dance.”

You blinked. You had not been aware there was another dance but Eunwoo clearly recognised the dismissal for what it was. Still smiling faintly, he inclined his head. “Of course. Wouldn’t want to keep your partner.”

Then he left.

The moment he disappeared into the crowd, silence settled briefly between the two of you.

Juhoon’s hand had not moved. In fact, if anything, his fingers seemed to tighten slightly against your waist before relaxing again.

“You disappeared,” you said eventually, mostly because the tension had become unbearable otherwise.

“I was speaking with my father.”

“You looked thrilled.”

“I considered poisoning my drink halfway through the conversation.”

You laughed softly before you could stop yourself and the sound seemed to catch his attention immediately. Juhoon’s gaze shifted toward you then—fully toward you—and for one strange, suspended moment, the noise of the ballroom faded entirely into the background.

Your breath caught painfully in your throat.

Then his eyes flickered briefly toward the crowd behind you, expression cooling almost instantly. “Eunwoo was standing too close to you.”

The words startled you. Not because of what he said, but because of how he said it. Flat. Controlled

Jealous.

You stared at him.

Juhoon, meanwhile, seemed to realise only afterward what he had admitted aloud.

A strange flicker crossed his expression before his composure slid immediately back into place.

“He has a reputation,” he added smoothly as though that explained anything. As though your pulse had not just quickened violently at the implication hidden beneath his words.

Before you could respond, the orchestra began another slow waltz somewhere across the ballroom. Juhoon held your gaze for one lingering second before finally speaking once more. “Dance with me.”

It was not phrased like a question.

Juhoon was already extending his hand toward you, expression calm and unreadable beneath the golden glow of the chandeliers overhead. Around the two of you, couples began drifting back toward the center of the ballroom as the orchestra swelled into another slow waltz.

For a moment, you simply stared at him.

Then, against every sensible thought currently screaming through your mind, you placed your hand in his.

The ballroom blurred softly around you as Juhoon guided you back onto the dance floor, one hand settling once more against your waist while the other held yours with practiced ease. The movement between you felt almost instinctive now, frighteningly natural as he led you effortlessly through the crowd.

You hated how easily your body responded to him and how naturally you fit beside him.

The music echoed softly throughout the hall while candlelight flickered against polished marble floors, shadows dancing across expensive fabrics and glittering jewelry. Pureblood heirs moved elegantly around you beneath floating chandeliers, every step carefully perfected through years of aristocratic upbringing.

Yet somehow, despite the sheer number of people surrounding you, your attention remained painfully fixed on Juhoon alone and how his gaze lingered on your face with unnerving intensity every time you looked up.

“You’re staring again,” you murmured softly.

“Am I?”

“You know you are.”

A faint flicker of amusement crossed his expression. “And yet you continue letting me.”

Your heartbeat stumbled embarrassingly and you looked away immediately, but that only seemed to amuse him further.

You weren’t embarrassed merely because Juhoon was flirting, but because he did it so rarely that every small remark carried far too much weight.

Especially when directed at you.

For several moments, neither of you spoke again, you simply danced. The orchestra played softly around you while the rest of the ballroom faded into meaningless noise, your attention narrowing dangerously to the person standing impossibly close before you.

You became painfully aware of every tiny detail: the faint scent of cedarwood lingering against his clothes, the smooth fabric beneath your fingertips, the warmth of his hand through the layers of your clothing.

And perhaps worst of all was the look in his eyes, because Juhoon looked at you like someone trying very hard not to say something.

Your chest tightened painfully.

“You’re quiet,” he observed eventually.

“So are you.”

“I usually am.”

“That’s true.”

There was a brief lull between you as you attempted to avoid his eyes, it becoming far too overwhelming.

“You’ve been avoiding me since Potions.”

Your stomach dropped instantly. Of course he would notice that, Juhoon notices everything. “I have not.”

His eyebrow lifted slightly. “You walked into a suit of armor yesterday because you were too busy pretending not to look at me.”

Heat rushed immediately to your face. “That happened once.”

“You apologised to it.”

You wanted the floor to swallow you whole.

To your horror, the corner of Juhoon’s mouth twitched faintly upward.Not quite a smile, but worse. Fond amusement.

Juhoon was enjoying your embarrassment far too much for your liking.

“You’re insufferable,” you muttered.

“So I’ve been told.”

Despite yourself, you laughed softly and the sound seemed to affect him instantly. Something in his expression softened almost imperceptibly, the usual sharpness in his gaze easing for half a second before his composure returned.

But you saw it, and suddenly the air between you felt far too warm.

The dance slowed gradually as the music neared its end though neither of you moved apart immediately afterward. Juhoon’s hand remained against your waist, your own still resting lightly against his shoulder while the final notes echoed softly throughout the ballroom.

People continued moving around you yet the moment felt strangely isolated all the same. Dangerously intimate.

Then someone called Juhoon’s name from across the ballroom and the spell shattered instantly.

His expression cooled back into practiced neutrality as he glanced toward the source of the interruption: his father standing near a cluster of Ministry officials, already looking impatient.

You felt the shift immediately. The reminder of where you were. Who you were. What this arrangement was supposed to be.

Juhoon exhaled quietly through his nose before lowering his gaze back toward you. “I need to speak with him.”

“Go,” you replied, perhaps a little too quickly.

Something unreadable flickered across his expression. Then, slowly, his hand slipped from your waist and the absence of it felt far more noticeable than it should have.

“I’ll find you afterward,” he said, and before you could properly process the implication hidden within those words, he turned and disappeared into the crowd.

You remained standing there for several moments after he left, pulse still uneven beneath your ribs.

Across the ballroom, people continued watching you. Whispering quietly behind jeweled glasses and polite smiles. A perfect pair, a future alliance, apureblood success story.

If only they knew.

Though, standing there beneath glittering chandeliers with the ghost of Juhoon’s touch still lingering against your waist, you were no longer entirely certain what the truth actually was anymore.

The ball ended late into the night.

Snow drifted softly outside the manor as guests gradually disappeared through the Floo network one by one, the grand ballroom slowly emptying of music and conversation. By the time you finally stepped outside onto the manor steps, exhaustion had settled heavily into your bones.

Cold winter air bit instantly against your skin.

Beside you, Juhoon adjusted his gloves silently before glancing toward you.

“You’re cold.”

“I’ll survive.”

“Hm.”

Before you could question the sound, he removed the heavy dark cloak draped over his shoulders and settled it carefully around yours.

Your breath caught slightly. “Juhoon—”

“You’re shivering.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re terrible at lying.”

The familiar scent of cedarwood and mint wrapped around you immediately beneath the warmth of the cloak, making your chest tighten painfully all over again.

Neither of you spoke for several moments afterward. Snow fell quietly around the two of you while golden light spilled from the manor windows behind you, soft orchestral music still faintly audible through the walls.

“You handled tonight well,” Juhoon finally spoke, cutting through the silence.

You blinked softly. “That sounds almost like a compliment.”

“It is.”

You looked at him then, seeing the slight exhaustion beneath his composed expression and the careful way he stood beside you despite clearly wanting to leave the event hours ago. Even the way his gaze softened almost imperceptibly whenever it rested on you for too long.

And suddenly, horrifyingly, one realisation settled heavily in your chest above all others.

You liked this version of him far too much.

The thought terrified you, because this was never supposed to become real.

The return to Hogwarts following that night was as regular as it could have been.

You maintained what had already been present between the two of you: quiet touches, shared glances, the familiar ease that had long since settled into your routines. If anything, the aftermath of the Rosier ball only seemed to deepen the strange intimacy growing steadily between you and Juhoon.

Though neither of you acknowledged it, why would you? That would have required emotional honesty, something both of you had been raised to avoid almost professionally.

Instead, life simply… continued.

Mornings at the Slytherin table, late nights in the library, walking side-by-side through crowded corridors while students instinctively moved aside to let the two of you pass.

He still looked at you in that quiet, dangerous way that made your pulse stumble embarrassingly every single time, and it was becoming a problem. A rather significant one.

Especially because Juhoon himself appeared entirely unaffected, at least outwardly.

Though there were smal moments where his composure slipped just enough to make your chest tighten painfully.

Like after Quidditch matches.

Juhoon rarely lingered after practice or games. Once finished, he usually disappeared quickly with the rest of the Slytherin team, expression unreadable beneath windswept dark hair while students crowded noisily around the pitch.

And yet, recently, you had developed the unfortunate habit of waiting for him afterward.

You weren’t entirely sure when that started.

Maybe after one particularly brutal practice where he had shown up in the common room with blood running down his jaw from a stray Bludger hit and still calmly asked if you had finished your Potions essay. Or maybe after realising he always searched the stands for you before matches began.

Either way, it became routine.

So when the Slytherin versus Gryffindor match ended beneath a cold grey February sky, you found yourself lingering near the edge of the pitch while students poured noisily from the stands around you.

Slytherin had won by the skin of their teeth.

The atmosphere buzzed loudly with excitement and irritation alike as students argued over fouls and close calls while snow crunched beneath moving crowds.

You spotted Juhoon almost immediately.

He stood near the locker room entrance speaking briefly with another teammate, broom tucked beneath one arm while his Quidditch robes clung slightly to his frame from exertion. Even from a distance, he carried himself with the same composed sharpness he always did, though a faint flush lingered across his cheeks from the cold.

And, as though sensing your attention instantly, his gaze lifted, finding you immediately. Something subtle softened in his expression before he nodded once toward you, small enough that no one else would notice.

Your stomach betrayed you instantly.

Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

“You know,” a voice drawled beside you suddenly, “he’s terrifyingly possessive for someone pretending to date you.”

You turned to find a Gryffindor boy leaning casually against the wooden railing nearby, red-and-gold scarf hanging loosely around his neck.

Cormac McLaggen.

Wonderful.

You had spoken to him perhaps twice in your entire life, both interactions equally unpleasant.

“You Gryffindors spend an odd amount of time thinking about Slytherin relationships,” you replied flatly.

Cormac grinned, entirely unbothered. “Hard not to when your boyfriend looks ready to kill anyone who breathes too close to you.”

Your eyes flickered instinctively toward Juhoon.

Unfortunately, Cormac was not entirely wrong. Even across the crowded pitch, Juhoon’s attention remained fixed on the two of you now, expression unreadable from this distance.

You sighed internally. “He’s not going to murder you, McLaggen.”

“Shame,” he mused. “Would’ve made this conversation more entertaining.”

Before you could respond, he stepped slightly closer.

“You know,” he continued lightly, “I still think it’s strange.”

“What is?”

“You and Juhoon.” His mouth tilted faintly. “He doesn’t exactly seem like the romantic type.”

You folded your arms. “And you’re an expert on romance?”

“Not particularly. But I am excellent at recognising when someone looks one inconvenience away from homicide.”

Despite yourself, you nearly laughed, and unfortunately that only encouraged him.

“You could do better, you know.”

The comment immediately soured your expression. “And there it is.”

Cormac shrugged. “I’m serious. Half the school’s terrified of him.”

“That sounds like their problem.”

“Hm.” His eyes flickered briefly toward Juhoon again. “You know, I think he’s glaring at me.”

“He glares at everyone.”

“Not usually like that.”

Before you could respond, Cormac’s hand landed suddenly against your waist. Lightly, casually and entirely intentionally.

The reaction was immediate.

A hand closed sharply around Cormac’s wrist.

“Remove your hand.”

The temperature around you seemed to drop instantly.

Juhoon stood beside you now, expression perfectly calm despite the dangerous stillness settled beneath his voice. Snow drifted softly around the three of you while nearby conversations gradually began faltering one by one.

Because everyone had noticed.

Cormac looked almost entertained. “Well,” he drawled slowly, “you almost sound jealous.”

Juhoon did not answer immediately which somehow only made the silence infinitely worse. Slowly, deliberately, he stepped closer, his expression unreadable and his eyes cold.

“Don’t touch what’s mine.”

The entire pitch seemed to fall silent. You felt the shift ripple outward through the surrounding students almost instantly. Shock. Interest. Tension.

Because pureblood men did not say things like that lightly.

Not publicly. Not unless they meant them.

And Merlin—

Juhoon had sounded terrifyingly serious.

Cormac’s amusement finally faltered slightly beneath the weight of Juhoon’s stare. After one long moment, he raised his hands in mock surrender and stepped backward.

“Relax,” he muttered. “Didn’t realise the act had become so convincing.”

Act.

Right.

Your stomach twisted painfully.

Juhoon said nothing as Cormac disappeared back into the crowd.

He simply remained beside you, jaw tight beneath his calm expression while snow drifted silently between the two of you. Then, after several long seconds: “Are you alright?”

The question startled you because despite everything that had just happened, genuine concern still threaded quietly beneath his voice.

You stared at him, seeing the cold fury lingering carefully restrained behind his eyes, feeling the hand still hovering faintly near your waist as though resisting the urge to touch you again.

And suddenly one horrifying thought repeated loudly through your mind over and over again.

That didn’t sound fake at all

Students were still staring, but were pretending not to, of course.

But you could feel it all the same: the curious glances, the whispered conversations beginning almost immediately now that Cormac had retreated somewhere into the crowd looking considerably less smug than before.

Beside you, Juhoon appeared entirely unaffected by the attention.

Though you knew him well enough now to recognise the tension lingering beneath his composure. His jaw remained slightly tight with his shoulders rigid beneath dark Quidditch robes.

He was still angry.

Juhoon finally looked down at you properly, expression cooling slightly once he confirmed you were unharmed. “You should head back inside,” he said calmly. “It’s freezing.”

The normalcy of the statement almost made you laugh. As though he had not just publicly implied ownership over you in front of half the school. “You threatened him.”

“I told him to remove his hand.”

“You called me yours.”

The words slipped out before you could stop them and for the first time since arriving at the pitch, Juhoon went still. Not visibly enough, most people would not have noticed it.

But you did. Always.

A strange pause settled between the two of you while snow drifted quietly around your shoulders. Then, in that carefully neutral tone you recognised all too well as him attempting to keep composure: “Would you have preferred I let him continue touching you?”

That was not an answer. You knew it and he knew it. Still, the quiet sharpness beneath his voice made your pulse stumble embarrassingly. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

His gaze lingered on your face for one long moment. Then he looked away first.

“I dislike people treating you disrespectfully,” he said finally, tone measured. “McLaggen was aware of what he was doing.”

Again, not an answer.

And somehow, that only made things worse because Juhoon was many things, but careless with words was not one of them.

If he truly had not meant what he said, he could have—would have—corrected himself easily.

Instead, he had sidestepped the issue entirely.

Coward.

The realisation should have annoyed you more than it did. Unfortunately, all it really accomplished was making your heartbeat increasingly difficult to ignore.

The walk back toward the castle passed in unusual silence.

Students parted around the two of you instinctively as you crossed the grounds, several Slytherins glancing toward Juhoon with poorly concealed amusement while others looked faintly alarmed.

The story was already spreading.

Mina nearly looked delighted when the two of you entered the common room later that evening.

“Oh, this is brilliant,” she announced immediately from her spot near the fireplace. “People are saying Juhoon nearly hexed McLaggen’s hand off.”

“I did not,” Juhoon replied flatly.

Jaehyun looked up from the armchair beside her, expression unbearably smug. “Pity. That would’ve been romantic.”

You dropped into the sofa opposite them with a tired groan. “It was not romantic.”

Jaehyun snorted softly. “Right. Because publicly claiming someone in front of half the school is completely casual behavior.”

Beside you, Juhoon removed his gloves with slow precision, appearing utterly unbothered by the conversation despite the faint narrowing of his eyes. “He touched her intentionally,” he said simply.

Mina’s grin widened immediately. “And you cared enough to threaten him over it.”

“I told him not to touch what belongs to me.”

Your stomach flipped violently. Apparently hearing the sentence repeated aloud was somehow even worse.

Jaehyun looked genuinely entertained now. “Merlin, you’re serious.”

Only then did Juhoon finally seem to realise how his words sounded to literally everyone else in the room. A strange flicker crossed his expression, brief and unreadable.

Then his composure returned almost immediately. “You’re all being dramatic.”

“No,” Mina replied cheerfully, “you’re just painfully repressed.”

You made a choking sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough while Jaehyun outright lost composure beside her.

Juhoon, meanwhile, looked moments away from leaving the room entirely, which was perhaps the clearest sign yet that they had struck a nerve. Unfortunately for him, Mina was nowhere near finished.

“You do realise,” she continued, still entirely too pleased with herself, “that half the school thinks the two of you are practically engaged now?”

“Half the school already thought that,” you muttered.

“Yes, but now they think Juhoon is one mild inconvenience away from committing murder over you.” She paused thoughtfully. “Honestly, it’s very romantic in a concerning sort of way.”

Juhoon exhaled slowly through his nose. “You’re insufferable.”

“But I’m still correct.”

The room dissolved into amused conversation afterward, though you barely registered most of it. Your mind only consumed one thing.

Don’t touch what’s mine.

The words repeated themselves relentlessly, lodged somewhere deep beneath your ribs in a way that made concentrating nearly impossible. Every time you replayed the scene in your head, your stomach twisted all over again.

None of it had sounded fake. And perhaps worse still was the fact that a part of you desperately wished it wasn’t.

Across the common room, conversation carried on around you almost normally now, though several students still occasionally glanced toward the two of you with poorly concealed curiosity.

Juhoon, meanwhile, appeared entirely unaffected. At least outwardly.

He sat beside you with one arm draped lazily over the back of the sofa, expression calm as Jaehyun continued provoking Mina into increasingly dramatic arguments near the fireplace.

Yet every so often, you caught him briefly looking at you like he was thinking too hard about something, and it made your pulse unbearably uneven.

Eventually, sometime past midnight, Juhoon stood abruptly from the sofa. “I have something to deal with,” he said simply.

Jaehyun frowned faintly. “At this hour?”

“It won’t take long.”

Something about the answer unsettled you immediately, though before you could ask anything further, his gaze shifted briefly toward you.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then he left and the common room suddenly felt colder afterward.

That night, you lay awake far longer than usual.

Moonlight filtered dimly through the Slytherin dormitory windows while the Black Lake cast shifting shadows against the stone walls, the distant sound of water echoing faintly throughout the silence.

Sleep refused to come. Every time you closed your eyes, your mind dragged you back toward the Quidditch pitch. Toward Juhoon’s voice. Toward the possessiveness threaded through it so naturally it frightened you.

You rolled over with an irritated sigh, you were being pathetic honestly.

Somewhere in the distance, the castle clock chimed quietly.

Then came the knock. Barely audible.

Your brow furrowed immediately. Slowly pushing yourself upright, you crossed the dormitory carefully so as not to wake the others before opening the door slightly—

And froze.

Juhoon stood in the corridor.

For one horrifying second, your mind struggled to process what you were seeing.

His dark robes were disheveled, damp with melting snow near the hems, and a thin line of blood traced down from beneath his sleeve onto his hand. A bruise had already begun darkening along the sharp line of his jaw.

Your stomach dropped instantly. “Juhoon—”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically.

The lie would have been more convincing if blood wasn’t actively dripping onto the dungeon floor.

You grabbed his wrist immediately and pulled him inside before anyone else could see. “What happened?”

“Nothing serious.”

“That is objectively untrue.”

He said nothing as you shut the door behind him.

Only once the room fell quiet again did you realise how exhausted he looked.His usual composure remained intact, but thinner somehow, stretched carefully over something heavier beneath the surface.

And suddenly you remembered Jaehyun’s question earlier.

‘At this hour?’

Pureblood business. You hated the phrase because it always meant something unpleasant.

“Sit down,” you ordered softly.

To your surprise, Juhoon obeyed without argument, and that alone worried you more than the injuries.

You retrieved your wand quickly, murmuring a healing spell beneath your breath as you knelt carefully in front of him. The cut along his hand sealed slowly beneath the glow of magic, though bruising still lingered stubbornly across his knuckles.

Your fingers brushed lightly against his wrist while adjusting his sleeve. He went very still.

“What did your father send you to do?” You asked quietly.

A long silence followed until he eventually answered. “It doesn’t matter.”

Which meant it mattered very much.

You looked up at him properly then, and Juhoon avoided your gaze, which was another first.

Anger flared suddenly beneath your concern, though not at him. At the fact that someone had hurt him badly enough for him to show up at your door in the middle of the night pretending he was fine.

“You should’ve gone to Madam Pomfrey,” you murmured while examining the bruise near his jaw carefully.

“I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

The question hung quietly between the two of you. Juhoon finally looked at you then and suddenly the exhaustion in his expression became painfully visible beneath the careful restraint he wore so constantly around everyone else.

For several seconds, neither of you spoke.

“I trust you more.” He spoke quietly, and the words hit harder than anything else possibly could have.

Your breath caught instantly, the air suddenly feeling far too thin inside the quiet dormitory.

Because Juhoon did not trust people.

Ever.

Not professors. Not classmates. Not even most of his own family.

Trust, to someone like him, was not given lightly. It was not something carelessly handed out through affection or familiarity. You had spent years watching him keep everyone at arm’s length with that cold, perfect composure of his, allowing people only carefully measured versions of himself and nothing more.

He trusted strategy, logic and control.

People were another matter entirely.

And yet somehow, somewhere along the way, he had begun seeking you out first. Standing beside you instinctively. Looking for you in crowds. Coming to you tonight instead of anyone else despite the blood staining his sleeve and exhaustion carved quietly beneath his expression.

Trust from Juhoon was not soft.

It was dangerous. Intimate. Rare.

And he had handed it to you so simply it nearly shattered something inside your chest.

The silence afterward felt unbearably fragile.

Your hand still rested lightly against his wrist, fingers curled faintly against the fabric of his sleeve while moonlight spilled silver-blue across the room around you. Outside the dungeon windows, the Black Lake shifted restlessly against the glass, shadows dancing faintly along the stone walls.

Neither of you moved. Neither of you looked away.

Juhoon’s gaze held yours steadily, dark eyes quieter than you had ever seen them before. Not guarded or unreadable.

Just tired, maybe even honest. Somehow that vulnerability unsettled you more than all his sharpness ever had.

Because Juhoon was terrifying when controlled. But this version of him: exhausted enough to lower his walls around you, felt infinitely more dangerous to your heart.

Slowly, almost cautiously, he lifted his free hand toward your face. The movement was uncharacteristically hesitant, as though he was unsure whether he was allowed to touch you like this and this mattered enough to make even him nervous.

That realisation alone made your pulse stutter painfully.

He gave you every possible opportunity to pull away, but you didn’t.

His fingers brushed gently against your jaw, warm against your skin despite the cold lingering from outside. The touch was careful, almost reverent in a way that made something tight unravel slowly inside your chest.

You had never seen Juhoon uncertain before. Never. Yet now, looking at you, there was the faintest trace of hesitation beneath his composure. Like this frightened him too.

“Juhoon…” you whispered softly.

His name left your lips almost unintentionally, barely louder than the shifting water outside.

But the effect it had on him was immediate. Something in his expression changed instantly, subtle but unmistakable.

The final crack in his restraint.

His eyes lowered briefly toward your mouth before returning to your gaze again, as though searching for any sign you wanted him to stop.

You didn’t.

He was still watching you.

Even now—even with his face inches from yours and his breath warm against your lips—Juhoon's gaze searched yours one final time. Looking for hesitation. Looking for the smallest sign that you wanted to pull away, that this was too much, that the months of careful restraint had been there for a reason.

You held his stare and didn't blink.

And something in him broke.

Not dramatically. Juhoon was not built for dramatics. But you felt it in the way his exhale shuddered almost imperceptibly against your mouth, in the barely-there tremble of his fingers where they pressed against your jaw.

Then his eyes, those sharp, assessing eyes that saw everything, that had been watching you for years, closed and he kissed you.

The first brush of his lips was impossibly soft, almost reverent, he seemed afraid you might dissolve beneath his touch if he pressed too hard. His mouth moved against yours with devastating care, slow and searching, as though he was memorising the shape of you one breath at a time.

You felt everything.

The slight roughness of his lower lip. The warmth of him, spreading through you like something slow and honey-thick. The way his thumb traced a gentle arc along your cheekbone as he tilted his head, changing the angle, finding the place where you fit together best.

A small sound escaped you that was barely a whisper, barely anything at all, and Juhoon swallowed it like it was something sacred.

His free hand came up to cradle the back of your neck, fingers threading carefully into your hair. Just holding and grounding himself in the reality of you.

The kiss deepened by millimeters.

Still slow. Still careful. But surer now: his lips parting slightly against yours, the barest brush of warmth that made your breath catch and your fingers tighten in the fabric of his sleeve.

He smelled like cedarwood and mint and something underneath that was simply him, the scent you had been catching across library tables and common room sofas for months, that had haunted you after the Amortentia until you couldn't smell it without thinking of him.

Now it surrounded you completely.

Your hand slid from his sleeve to his chest without conscious thought, palm flat against the steady beat of his heart beneath his robes. It was racing. Juhoon's heart was racing.

The realisation struck you like a stunning spell, that beneath all that careful composure, beneath the exhaustion and the blood still drying on his sleeve and the bruised knuckles he hadn't explained, he was just as affected as you were. Just as undone.

The tension bled from his shoulders slowly, minute by minute, as the kiss continued. What had started almost tentatively softened into something more certain, more trusting. Like he had finally stopped waiting for you to push him away.

When his lips gentled against yours, soft and lingering, you felt the question in it.

Is this alright?

You answered by leaning into him, by letting your fingers curl against his chest, by kissing him back with everything you had been too afraid to name for months.

His breath caught.

And then, finally and impossibly, he smiled against your mouth.

Just a small thing, barely there. But you felt it in the curve of his lips beneath yours, and something warm and devastating bloomed behind your ribs.

When he pulled back, it was only far enough to rest his forehead against yours. His breathing was uneven in a way you had never heard before.

Neither of you spoke. The dormitory was silent around you, just the distant ripple of the Black Lake against the windows and the soft, shared warmth of two people who had stopped pretending.

His thumb traced once more along your jaw. For the first time in as long as you could remember, Juhoon looked entirely at peace. His eyes lingered on yours for several long seconds before he exhaled softly, almost like he was still processing what had just happened himself.

“So,” you whispered weakly, still slightly breathless, “this is becoming a problem.”

To your surprise, the faintest hint of amusement flickered across his face. “A significant one.”

You laughed quietly despite yourself, the sound soft in the silence between you.

And suddenly, with his forehead still resting against yours and warmth lingering against your skin, one devastating realisation settled fully into your chest at last.

This had stopped being fake a very long time ago.

The days following that night changed something between you.

Not visibly. To everyone else, very little seemed different.

You and Juhoon still moved through Hogwarts exactly as before: side by side through crowded corridors, seated together at the Slytherin table, existing within each other’s orbit with the same quiet inevitability that had long since become normal.

But now there was an awareness neither of you could ignore anymore. Every touch lingered longer than before, every glance felt heavier.

Kissing Juhoon had turned out to be a catastrophic mistake for someone attempting to remain emotionally detached because now you knew how careful he could be. How gentle and devastatingly soft he became only with you. It ruined you completely.

The worst part was that neither of you discussed what happened afterward.

The kiss had not magically transformed the two of you into people capable of openly discussing emotions. If anything, it only made the tension between you sharper, quieter, more intimate in ways that felt almost unbearable.

Still, there were moments.

Late evenings in the common room where his fingers absentmindedly traced against yours beneath the table. Lingering touches in empty corridors. The way his gaze softened almost imperceptibly whenever you laughed now, as though he no longer bothered hiding it properly.

And Merlin, the staring had somehow become worse.

You noticed it constantly, it was as if he was still trying to understand how this had happened. As though he found himself just as dangerous to you as you did to him.

Perhaps that was why the realisation settled so heavily inside your chest one quiet evening near the end of term.

The two of you sat alone in the Astronomy Tower long after curfew, the castle silent beneath you while cold night air drifted softly through the open arches. The sky above stretched endlessly dark and glittering, moonlight spilling silver across the stone floor where you sat beside one another.

Juhoon rested against the wall beside you, one knee drawn slightly upward while absentmindedly turning one of his silver rings between his fingers.

Comfortable silence settled naturally between you as it always had.

You glanced toward him eventually. “You know,” you murmured quietly, “this arrangement has become complicated.”

The words were light, attempting humor, but your chest tightened anyway because suddenly the weight of it all felt painfully obvious. The fact that somewhere along the way, Juhoon had become the first person you searched for in every room.

He went still beside you, then his gaze shifted toward yours slowly, moonlight catching faintly against the sharp line of his jaw.

“It was complicated the moment I asked you.”

Your breath caught instantly. The world seemed to narrow painfully around those words. You stared at him and suddenly every moment replayed itself differently in your mind.

The way he had looked at you before the arrangement ever started, how quickly he proposed it, how natural everything between you had always felt from the very beginning.

“You already liked me.” Your voice came out quieter than intended. 

Juhoon’s gaze held yours steadily for several long seconds.

Then, finally, he spoke: “Yes.”

The simple honesty of it nearly unraveled you and your heartbeat turned uneven instantly.

“How long?” You asked softly.

A faint crease appeared between his brows, as though considering the question carefully. “I don’t know.”

Which meant a long time.

Merlin.

You looked away briefly, overwhelmed by the realisation settling slowly into place inside your chest. All this time, you had thought Juhoon adapted too naturally to pretending, but he had never really been pretending at all. Not entirely.

“I thought you hated most people,” you whispered weakly.

The corner of his mouth lifted faintly. “I do.”

Despite everything, a small laugh escaped you and the sound softened his expression immediately. There it was again.

That look he only ever seemed to have around you now: quieter than his usual sharp composure, stripped of all the careful distance he maintained with everyone else.

Then, after a long pause, Juhoon quietly spoke again. “You were the only person I wanted beside me.”

The words settled heavily between you, devastatingly sincere, somehow making them infinitely worse.

Because Juhoon did not ever say things he didn’t mean.

Your chest ached painfully beneath the weight of it. He had chosen you long before any arrangement existed, before you had even considered Juhoon to be your own. Through all his restraint and careful control, it had always been you standing at the center of his attention.

You swallowed hard. “Juhoon…”

His eyes remained fixed on yours steadily, patient in a way that felt almost unbearably intimate now.

There were no masks or pretending, it was just him. And maybe that was the moment you finally understood the true danger of loving someone like Juhoon, because once he gave someone his trust, his loyalty, his care—

He gave it completely.

Below the Astronomy Tower, Hogwarts slept quietly beneath moonlight and drifting clouds, distant torchlight glowing warmly through castle windows while cold night air curled softly around the stone arches.

Neither of you moved away from each other.

Juhoon still sat close enough that your shoulders brushed occasionally whenever either of you shifted slightly, his presence warm and steady beside you in the chill of the tower.

And suddenly, absurdly, you didn’t know what to say.

Because what response even existed for something like that?

You were the only person I wanted beside me.

The words continued echoing somewhere deep inside your chest, dangerously gentle in a way that made your throat tighten painfully.

Juhoon, meanwhile, appeared entirely calm again. Though by now you recognised the signs well enough to know better: the slight tension in his fingers where they rested against his knee, and the way his gaze avoided yours for perhaps half a second longer than usual afterward.

He was waiting for your response.

For all his composure, Juhoon was still giving you something fragile here. Trusting you with pieces of himself he clearly offered to almost no one. And that mattered more than any dramatic declaration ever could have.

“You know,” you said quietly after a long moment, “you’re terrible at communicating.”

A faint huff of laughter escaped him unexpectedly. “You’re not particularly good at it either.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“I’m choosing denial intentionally.”

The corner of his mouth lifted slightly. “If that is what you want to believe.”

Your chest tightened embarrassingly at the sight.

Merlin. You had become far too attached to the rare moments when Juhoon looked openly amused around you.

You found yourself smiling faintly back at him without thinking and his expression softened almost immediately at the sight.

Dangerous. Everything about this was dangerous now.

Another quiet pause settled between you before you finally spoke again. “So,” you murmured carefully, “when exactly were you planning on telling me?”

“I wasn’t.”

You blinked. “What?”

Juhoon looked entirely unbothered by your confusion. “The arrangement was useful,” he replied calmly. “You were comfortable. I had no intention of complicating things further.”

“You mean more than fake dating me for months while secretly being in love with me?”

There was a brief pause.

“Yes.” He answered.

You stared at him in disbelief while he remained perfectly serious. “That is deeply concerning behavior.”

“I’m aware.”

“And you still continued?”

His gaze shifted toward you again then, quieter now. “You were happy.”

The simple sincerity behind the answer stole every sarcastic response directly from your mouth.

Because that was the problem with Juhoon. Beneath all the sharpness and composure and carefully restrained emotion, he cared with terrifying intensity once someone mattered to him, and that felt infinitely more intimate than grand gestures ever could have.

Your voice softened before you could stop it. “You really were just going to keep pretending forever.”

“If necessary.”

“Merlin.”

A faint trace of amusement flickered across his face again at your horrified expression. Then his eyes lowered briefly toward your hand resting against the stone floor between the two of you.

You barely noticed the movement before his fingers brushed lightly against yours tentatively, as if he was still uncertain whether he was allowed to do that now despite everything.

The thought alone nearly ruined you.

Without thinking, you turned your hand slightly beneath his, allowing your fingers to slide carefully between his.

Juhoon went still beside you, though not because he disliked it. It was, in fact, quite the opposite. You felt the subtle way his hand tightened around yours almost immediately afterward and your pulse stumbled softly.

“You know,” you murmured after several seconds, unable to stop yourself, “you’re significantly softer than people think you are.”

Juhoon looked unimpressed. “Don’t spread that around.”

You laughed quietly, the sound echoing softly through the tower, swallowed quickly by the night around you.

For a moment, neither of you spoke again. You simply sat there together in comfortable silence, fingers intertwined while moonlight spilled silver across the stone floor. It felt strangely peaceful. 

At some point, his thumb brushed absentmindedly against your knuckles. The tiny gesture nearly stopped your heart entirely.

“How unfortunate,” you murmured weakly.

His brows lifted faintly. “What is?”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

The words slipped out before you could reconsider them, and silence followed immediately afterward. You stared straight ahead at the night sky, suddenly unable to look directly at him.

“Well,” you continued awkwardly, “that sounded less humiliating in my head.”

For one terrifying second, Juhoon said absolutely nothing. Then you felt his hand tighten around yours.

When you finally forced yourself to glance sideways, his expression had gone strangely soft again—that same rare look he reserved only for you, stripped entirely of sharp edges.

And very quietly, like something precious, he replied: “I know.”

Your breath caught. “You know?”

“You look at me the same way I look at you.” The devastating thing was that he sounded so certain about it, like he had noticed long before you had because of course he had. Juhoon noticed everything about you.

“You’re frighteningly observant.”

“Hm.”

His gaze lingered on your face for another long second before he leaned forward slightly, pressing another slow kiss against your mouth.

This one felt different from the first. It was certain now. Neither of you needed to question what this was anymore.

And beneath the silver glow of the moon high above Hogwarts, with Juhoon’s hand warm around yours and years of restrained affection finally unraveling quietly between you, you realised something almost laughably simple.

You had been his long before the fake dating arrangement ever began.

And somehow, impossibly—

He stopped, blinking slowly before he let out an eventual sigh.

"Juhoon!" The girl declared, voice trembling but brave. "I've liked you since the winter recital. Will you go out with me?"

The crowd that materialised from thin air was a testament to his particular brand of fame: part football star, part unreasonably good-looking, all mysterious smiles and sharp jawlines that granted him endless unwanted attention.

"Sorry," he said, not unkindly, but with zero hesitation. "I'm not interested."

Her face crumpled slightly, he spotted the slight tremble of her lips but chose to ignore it, he had been asked out by far too many girls he didn’t even know the names of. To make things worse the crowd erupted and ooooh'd, Juhoon wanting the ground to swallow him whole just so he could escape.

And then—because this was always the follow-up, there was always a follow-up—she pressed further. "Is it because of that rumour? About you and that girl?"

Juhoon's expression didn't change an inch, he remained entirely neutral. He'd been asked this before, dozens of times actually. In classrooms, in hallways, in DMs he never opened.

"There's no rumour," he said carefully, calculated. "There's just me, and I'm not interested."

It wasn't a denial, but it wasn't a confirmation either. It was a door left slightly ajar, and he knew it. He'd learned, over the past few months, that saying too much would only make things worse. Confirming would bring a different kind of attention: the curious, invasive kind that might scare you away, and Juhoon was doing anything in his power to protect you from that.

So he stayed quiet and let people wonder and spin the rumour mill, but his gaze was already drifting, snagged by a flash of recognisable hair and chunky sneakers thudding against the floor near the iron gates.

He spotted you walking onto the school ground, plugged into the earphones you carried around like they were your own child. Your head was down and you were moving through the morning like water through rocks, oblivious and unhurried, having absolutely no idea that a crowd of forty people was watching a girl get rejected over glitter glue by your very own secret boyfriend.

His eyes tracked you as you passed behind the building, feeling something in his chest tighten once you disappeared from his view.

He should stay and let the crowd dissipate naturally, let the dance girl save face, let the rumours simmer without him adding fuel.

Instead, he decided to push through the people encircling him. An elbow here, a muttered apology there. By the time he broke free, he was almost jogging, passing the last few remaining students entering school grounds.

"Y/N!" He called out once he was sure the crowd was outside of sight, though you didn't hear him and kept walking forward.

Of course you didn't. Your world existed behind those headphones, tucked away somewhere he'd somehow wrangled himself into a few months ago. He quickened his pace, closing the distance between you just as you entered the doors to the humanities wing.

He reached out and tugged gently on the cord of your left earbud.

You startled,  a tiny jump that made him want to apologise and laugh at the same time. Your eyes went wide for a split second before they registered who it was, softening immediately.

"Oh." You pulled the other earbud out, placing them into the same pocket as your phone. "Hi, Jju."

"Hey, yourself." He fell into step beside you, matching your pace like it was second nature. His shoulder brushed yours, sending sparks down your arm. "You planning on doing anything after school today?"

You looked up at him, seeing the slight smile resting against his lips that always seemed present when he was watching you.

"Why…?" You dragged out, but you knew all too well what he was about to ask. You'd had the same exchange many times before.

He tilted his head, that smile widening just a fraction. "My game’s at four. Home field. Against Busan."

"You play Busan every month."

"And every month I ask you to come." He shrugged, like it was obvious, though the slighting reddening of his cheeks gave far too much away than he would’ve liked. "And every month you say you'll think about it."

"Maybe this month I will."

He stopped walking and you kept going for two more steps before you realised he wasn't beside you anymore. You turned around, finding him standing frozen in the middle of the hallway, expression caught somewhere between hopeful and terrified.

"Wait," he said. "Really?"

You bit the inside of your cheek to keep from smiling. The morning light was filtering through the hallway windows, catching the edges of his hair, and he looked so genuinely thrown off that you almost felt bad.

Almost.

"I said maybe," you reminded him, turning back around and continuing toward your classroom. You heard his footsteps rush to catch up and you attempted to suppress the smile crawling onto your lips.

"That's not nothing," he said, falling back into step beside you. "That's closer to a yes than you've ever given me."

"Don't read into it."

"I'm going to read into it so hard."

You laughed despite yourself, a quiet, breathy thing that you tried to hide by looking straight ahead though how could he not notice it? However, in your attempt at indifference you failed to spot the softening of his gaze as he watched you, the smile on his lips mirroring your own. His shoulder brushed yours again, and this time you didn't move away.

"Four o'clock," he said again, like he was making sure you remembered.

"I know you play at four o'clock, Jju."

"Just making sure."

You stopped outside your classroom. The door was still propped open, students filing in, the familiar chaos of first period settling into place. You should have gone in by now, you were already late by hallway standards, but he was still standing there, looking at you like you'd just offered him something precious and something in your chest twisted.

"I'll think about it," you said softly.

His eyes crinkled at the corners. "That's all I'm asking for."

Someone suddenly bumped into him from behind—a freshman who immediately turned purple and stammered an apology. Juhoon waved it off without even sparing the boy a glance, his attention not once wandering from your face.

"You should get to class," you finally said, maintaining eye contact despite the flood of heat rushing up your neck.

"I should," he agreed, though neither of you moved.

The bell rang, shrill and insistent. You watched his expression shift from soft to reluctant to something that looked almost like resignation. He wanted to say something—you could see it in the way his jaw worked, the way his lips parted slightly before pressing shut again.

"Go," you said gently, insistently.

He exhaled. "See you at the game?"

"Maybe."

"Y/N."

"I said maybe."

He shook his head, but he was smiling again. "Fine," he said, already backing away. "Maybe. I'll take maybe."

You watched him walk backward down the hallway for a few steps before he finally turned around, running a hand through his hair as he disappeared around the corner.

You stood there for a moment longer than necessary, your hand resting on the doorframe, feeling the ghost of his shoulder against yours. That boy had you completely wrapped around his fingers and you don’t think he even realised it.

The thought was quickly pushed aside as you entered the class, already wishing the day would just pass by faster.

By the time four o'clock rolled around you had already made up your mind.

You stood at the edge of the field, hands tucked into the pocket of your hoodie, watching the crowd filter into the bleachers. The sun was starting its slow descent, painting everything in shades of gold and amber. The air smelled like grass and sweat and the faint sweetness of someone's overpriced coffee from the concession stand.

You entered the bleachers, your eyes trained on the field watching the players warm up.

You didn’t know if he had seen you yet, it was hard to tell from this distance, he was focused, sharp, his dark hair already sticking to his forehead despite the cool evening air. He moved across the field like he owned it, like the grass was an extension of his own body.

Someone bumped into your shoulder.

"Oh, sorry!" A girl with braces and a phone case covered in stickers smiled at you. "Are you here for the game?"

You hesitated for a brief moment. "I know someone on the team."

"Me too!" She grinned, gesturing toward the field. "I'm here for Juhoon. He's so cute, right? Do you think the rumour is true? About him having a girlfriend?"

Your stomach tightened. "I don't know."

"I hope it's not," she said, already turning toward the bleachers. "He never confirms anything, so there's still a chance, right?"

Right, you thought. There's still a chance.

You watched her bounce down the metal steps and settle into the front row—the fanclub row, you realised—spotting the familiar cluster of matching headbands and handmade signs. There were at least fifteen of them today, maybe more. They had a choreographed cheer that they practiced during warm-ups, their voices carrying across the field in a high-pitched chorus.

You found a spot midway up the bleachers that was off to the side: far enough from the fanclub that you wouldn't be lumped in with them, close enough that you could still see your boyfriend’s every movement.

The whistle blew and the game began

Juhoon was everywhere in the first half. He was in the midfield, then on the wing, then tracking back to defend, then sprinting forward again. His jersey was already dark with sweat, but he didn't slow down

The fanclub screamed every time he touched the ball, and you remained completely, and utterly silent.

He had a chance in the fifteenth minute: a loose ball that bounced his way just outside the box. He didn't hesitate, striking it first time, and the crowd held its breath as the ball curved toward the top corner.

The goalkeeper just barely got a hand to it and it deflected wide.

Juhoon swore, loud enough that you could just catch the sound of it from the bleachers. Then he turned and jogged back into position, shaking his head.

But in that moment—just before he turned—his eyes swept the stands.

And found you.

His whole body stilled for half a second and his expression flickered from frustration to something softer. He didn't smile nor wave but his hand came up, just briefly, and touched his chest, right over his heart.

Then he turned and disappeared back into the play.

Beside you, someone gasped. "Did he just—did you see that? Who was he looking at?"

You pulled your hoodie strings tighter and said nothing.

The score reached 1-0 by the second half when Juhoon stole the ball from a Busan midfielder.

It was a beautiful tackle: perfectly timed, perfectly clean. He won possession and burst forward, two defenders closing in on either side. The crowd was on its feet, the fanclub shrieking, the air electric.

He feinted left, went right, and suddenly he was through.

There was only one defender left, and the goalkeeper was rushing out toward him.

Juhoon didn't panic. He waited momentarily, and then he slotted the ball into the bottom corner, so casual it looked effortless.

The net rippled and the stands exploded.

Juhoon was breathing hard, sweat dripping down his face in droplets before he looked up at the bleachers, directly to where you were, as though he had memorised exactly where you were positioned in the short second he had noticed your presence.

You had risen up the moment he scored, though your reaction was far less exaggerated than the fanclub that stood before you. Instead, when your eyes locked onto his, you beamed at him, a sight that was so rare to come by in public that Juhoon’s legs almost gave out.

His teammates mobbed him, pulling him into a group hug, ruffling his hair. but over their shoulders, you saw him grinning, that private grin that was just for you. 

Quickly the team recollected themselves and continued the game, Juhoon’s eyes lingering on you for just a moment longer before he ran after them

The final whistle eventually blew indicating the end of the game, and Juhoon’s team ended up winning 3-1. He had scored twice, assisting on the third, and it was, by any measure, a phenomenal performance.

The crowd filtered out of the bleachers in waves. You waited at the bottom of the stands, pretending to check your phone, pretending you weren't watching the players pack up near the bench.

The fanclub was already there.

You saw them from across the field: a cluster of maybe fifteen girls, all wearing those matching headbands, all pressing forward like moths to a flame. They surrounded the bench area, calling Juhoon's name alongside the names of his many other teammates, waving their phones, jostling for position.

You watched one of them grab his arm before hgently extract himself. Another quickly pushed forward with a water bottle, and a third with a handmade card.

He was smiling  that polite, practiced smile he used for people he didn't know, but his eyes kept drifting, scanning and searching, looking for you.

You shifted your weight from foot to foot, suddenly aware of how far away you were standing. How separate. How invisible.

You wondered what to do. The possibility of going over there and having to push through a stampede of teenage girls just to talk to your boyfriend made you feel sick. But you had also sat through the entire game and wanted to congratulate him on his plays, so leaving was out of the question.

A girl with pigtails grabbed his sleeve. "Juhoon! Is it true you're single? My friend wants to know!"

The other girls giggled, leaning in and waiting to hear his answer. Juhoon's expression didn't change. "I don't talk about that stuff."

"That's not a no!"

"It's not a yes either."

The girls laughed like he'd said something funny. You bit your lip, your hands curling into fists inside your hoodie pocket. You wanted to tell them that he’s yours, that they needed to back off, but the words got stuck in your throat.

Because you'd never said it out loud. Because you'd never claimed him publicly. Because for all these girls knew, the rumour was exactly that: a rumour, a ghost story, a maybe that didn't mean anything.

You couldn't blame them for trying.

Whilst lost in the maze of your thoughts, Juhoon's gaze finally found you.

You saw the exact moment it happened. His polite, practiced smile had flickered like a mask slipping, just for a second. His eyes locked onto yours across the field, and something in his expression shifted. 

The girl with pigtails was still talking. Something about a photo, about waiting all season, about how her friend really liked him. But Juhoon wasn't listening anymore.

He was looking at you, and you were looking right back at him. Neither of you moved for a long, suspended moment. The fanclub chattered around him, entirely oblivious. The rest of the team packed up their bags whilst the sun dipped lower, casting long shadows across the grass.

Then Juhoon moved, just a shift of weight initially, a turning of shoulders. He gently extracted his arm from the girl's grip, murmured something you couldn't hear, and then he was walking straight toward you.

The fanclub turned, confused, following his gaze. One by one, they spotted you standing by the corner flag in your hoodie and sneakers, hands still buried in your pocket, heart pounding so loud you were sure everyone could hear it.

Whispers rippled through the group, likely questioning who you were and if you were the rumour girl, but you paid attention to none of it, your focus remained entirely on the boy appraoching you.

Juhoon didn't look back. His cleats squelched softly on the grass; his hair was damp with sweat, sticking to his forehead; his cheeks were flushed from the game.

And his eyes—those dark, steady eyes you adored so deeply—were locked on yours, paying no mind to anything else around.

You should say something, you should smile, wave, do something normal. But your voice had abandoned you, and your feet felt nailed to the ground, and all you could do was watch him get closer.

He was ten meters away. Then five. Then—

"You scored," you blurted out, because the silence was too loud and your heart was too fast and you needed to fill the space between you with something. "Jju, you played so good today—"

His hands were on your cheeks before you could finish.

Warm palms with calloused fingers from years of gripping football balls, from hours of practice, from the way he'd been clenching and unclenching his fists all game, waiting. He cupped your face like you were something precious, something breakable, like you might shatter if he didn't hold you carefully enough.

And then he was pulling you toward him.

There was desperation in the way he closed the distance, months of restraint finally snapping. His fingers curled around the curve of your jaw, tilting your face up to meet his, and suddenly his lips were on yours.

The world stopped.

The field. The sunset. The fanclub. The whispers. The entire universe condensed into a single point of contact: his mouth against yours, soft and certain and hungry, like he'd been waiting all day for this. 

He kissed you as though he was afraid you'd disappear. Like every time he'd watched you walk away to your classroom, every time he'd bitten his tongue when someone asked about the rumour, every time he'd wanted to reach for your hand in the hallway and stopped himself—it had all been building to this.

His lips slanted over yours, and you felt the sigh he let out, felt the way his shoulders dropped like he'd been holding his breath for weeks and could finally exhale.

Your hands came up automatically, fisting in the fabric of his jersey. The material was damp with sweat beneath your fingers, but you didn't care. 

His nose pressed against your cheek, his breath was warm on your skin, he tasted like the mint gum he always chewed before games, mixed with something saltier, something that was just him, a taste you couldn't name but would recognise anywhere, in any lifetime.

One of his hands slid from your cheek to the back of your neck, fingers threading into the hair at your nape. The other stayed where it was, thumb still stroking gentle, absent arcs against your cheekbone. He wasn't rushing anymore, the desperation had softened into something else: something deeper, something that felt like finally.

Behind you, someone gasped. A phone clattered to the ground. Someone else whispered, oh my god.

You didn't care.

You couldn't care. Not with the way he was kissing you, slow and deliberate now, like he was trying to memorise the shape of your lips and tell you everything he'd never been able to say.

When he finally pulled back, you were both breathing hard.

Your eyes fluttered open to find his were still closed, his forehead pressed against yours, his breath mingling with your breath. His hands were still on you—one in your hair, one on your cheek—and neither of you moved to break the contact.

"Jju," you whispered.

"Took me long enough," he murmured, voice rough.

You let out a shaky laugh. "Took you long enough to what?"

He finally opened his eyes. They were dark, intense, holding yours like he was afraid you'd disappear if he blinked. "To do that," he said. "To stop lying and pretending you're just a rumour."

Behind him, the fanclub stood frozen. Some had their phones out: filming, probably, or taking photos. Others just stood there, mouths open, processing the fact that the boy they had been daydreaming about just kissed a girl in a hoodie by the corner flag.

You should have felt embarrassed, even self-conscious.

But Juhoon was still holding your face, still looking at you like you'd hung the moon, and somehow that made everything else fade away.

"The rumour," you said quietly. "It's not a rumour anymore."

"No," he agreed. "It never was."

You looked at him, seeing how the tension that had previously been in his shoulders now dissipated and left a calmness that only appeared when you were within his reach.

"Juhoon," you whispered.

"Y/N."

"You should probably let go of my face now."

He smiled gently, his thumb tracing your cheek once more as his eyes tracked your features. "Probably."

Instead he pulled you towards him again, this time his lips lingered on your forehead, a soft comfort against the lingering stares of everyone watching the two of you.