There is only one thorn on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life.

Every morning, you wake up feeling refreshed from eight hours of restful sleep. You go downstairs to the kitchen, a boiling cup of milky Earl Grey tea already waiting for you, and eat breakfast with your brother Jinwoo and father. Your mom dashes in, placing a kiss on your and Jinwoo’s foreheads, and on your dad’s lips, saying she’s late for work but will see you in the evening. “Have fun at school,” she bids every morning without fail. Your dad teaches Korean Literature at your school, so the three of you drive there together. He watches amusedly as you and Jinwoo bicker light-heartedly on the way there—even in the pits of his puberty, you and your brother get along like two peas in a pod. He still tells you about everything he learns at school and fills you in on the drama in his class, up-to-date with everything even though he pretends not to be interested.

You’re always one of the first to arrive at school, so you scroll through your feed or finish up some homework as you wait for your classmates to file in. Your friends circle your table and you chat about the last episode of the show you’ve been watching until the bell rings and they leave you for their assigned seat.

Class starts with your teacher handing out the math tests you took last week. “Jay and Y/N, great job, keep it up,” he says as he walks past you and the boy in front of you, and hands you your paper. Relief floods your body as you take in the bright red 82 in the top right-hand corner—not the best of the class, but enough for you to be satisfied. 

Good friends, good grades—nothing extraordinary, but it’s a life you dare say any high school senior would want.

There’s just that one thing. The thorn in your side that won’t stop poking.

You glare at it as it whips around in its seat and takes a peek at the grade on your paper before you get to snatch it away from view. It only gives you three seconds to rejoice over your grade. 

“Aw, Y/N. Good effort! Maybe you’ll do better next time!” Jongseong coos, holding up his test for you to see and glare even harder at. 85. Not that big of a difference, but it makes you want to punch the faux sympathetic pout off of his face. 

You’re about to spit something just as petty back at him, but someone whispers your name, and you turn your head in their direction. Beside you, Jake is smiling at you as he asks what grade you got. Your attention is swiftly taken off of Jongseong, whom you don’t even notice dramatically rolling his eyes, huffing in annoyance, and turning around. 

“82,” you whisper back, holding up your paper for Jake to see. His friendly, absurdly handsome smile makes your ears burn. “You?”

The corners of his lips fall down into a sad pout—the kind that makes your heart melt rather than gets on your nerves like someone else. “68,” he says. Leans in over the gap between your tables. Your heart jumps uncontrollably around your rib cage. “Do you wanna go over it together during the break? I think I need some help.”

One-on-one time with Jake Sim? You don’t need to be asked twice. You nod silently, almost mesmerized by Jake as his grin widens. He leans back in his chair. “Perfect. I’ll see you in the library, then.”

“Library, yeah,” you echo dumbly, but thankfully, your teacher tells you to all quiet down and starts the lesson. 

You’re antsy all throughout the rest of your morning classes and lunch break, so nervous that you barely manage to finish your yogurt. Of course, your friends, Sunoo and Kazuha, have a field day with this, and even you can’t help but laugh along as they jump between reassuring you that it’ll be fine, slapping your shoulders with excitement and making fun of your uncharacteristic quietness.

Jake arrives at the library five minutes after you, looking around the room before he finds you at the big round table in the back of the library. Your brain is too riddled with anxiety for you to make more small talk than “Hey,” “Hey,” “How was your lunch?” “Good, yours?” “Good.” And so you just jump straight into it.

You’ve only had a couple minutes of quiet explanation on your part and heavy nodding on Jake’s when Jay appears at the entrance of the library. He spots you and Jake immediately, and without any hesitation whatsoever heads towards you and sits down at your table, right across from the two of you.

“Hey, Jay,” Jake greets in a friendly manner, but Jay only responds with a nod of his head.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he says when he notices you glaring. “I won’t bother you.”

As if he could be anything other than a bother, you think, but courteously keep to yourself. The childish rivalry you and Jongseong have got going on has no business spoiling a rare hour of alone time you get with Jake. As you go over the exercises he had the most trouble with on the test with you, your eyes often drift over to Jongseong as if to check on him—you’re cautious like he’s a spider in the corner of the room that might spring on you at any moment.

And indeed, the moment your gaze leaves him for more than a minute as you explain an intricate theorem to Jake, he’s out of sight, and panic shoots through you. Where the hell has he suddenly gone off to? you wonder, but not for long.

“There’s a much easier way to do this, really,” says a voice from behind you, and of course, it’s none other than Jongseong himself, quite literally butting his way into your tutoring session. Right between you and Jake, he bends over and rests his elbows on the table, taking Jake’s pencil from him and describing the theorem in a way that isn’t that much simpler. Your eyes shoot bullets into the side of his face while he, unbothered, explains this and that to Jake, who glances at you a couple of times but otherwise does not seem so perturbed by the sudden change of tutor. Either Jongseong doesn’t notice your glare or doesn’t care, because he doesn’t budge.

Just when they’re done with the exercise and you think you’ll get Jake to yourself again, another voice appears from behind, a much higher, girlier one. You notice the hand on Jake’s shoulder first, until slowly, your eyes drift to the face—you recognize Yunjin, head of the cheerleading squad, and she’s smiling at you, a smile that at once tries to cover and betrays her surprise at seeing you and Jake together. She doesn’t acknowledge you any more than that, gaze going back to “Jakey,” asking him if he wants to head to class together. You check the time—five minutes before the first bell rings. What do they need so much time getting to class for? It’s not like any room in this school is more than a three-minute walk away.

But Jake doesn’t even look back at you, just says “Sure!” with far too much enthusiasm for your taste as he packs his stuff. “Thanks, you two,” he says, looking at Jay first, then at you. You think his eyes linger on you for a second, but just like that, he’s gone, him and Yunjin walking side-by-side.

You watch them leave—they look good together, the cheerleading captain and the soccer team’s star. The white Vans she’s wearing have a bunch of red love hearts on them that look drawn on, and you think, Of course, Jake is the type to date someone cute, someone fun, someone who would draw on their shoes. Not someone like you, whose idea of a good Friday night is lighting up a scented candle and reading your favorite novel for the nth time. When they’ve left the library, you slump in your seat, crumpling the sheet of paper you had drawn a bunch of graphs and formulae on to make things clearer for Jake. Jay awkwardly clears his throat and finally returns to his seat, looking at you with his lips pressed in a tight line.

“Y/N?” he asks tentatively, and the sound is too much to bear, so you pack your things and head to your next class early, too. Your mind is racing with a million thoughts a minute—who is that girl to Jake, how come you’ve never seen them together before, how come he was so eager to leave with her, what was that smile she gave you about? In the fifty-five minutes of your biology class, which you uncharacteristically don’t pay any attention to, you’ve convinced yourself that they are crazy in love and that none of Jake’s actions or words towards you had ever meant anything, that you’d liked him so much you’d dreamt up the possibility of his liking you back, too.

Your next lesson starts—the smile Jake gives you as he walks into History is so bright, it dissipates any clouds hanging over your head. You do believe in male-female friendships, but despite yourself, you can’t help but think that anyone in a relationship wouldn’t give someone else such a perfect, warm smile. It just wouldn’t be right. And so, you reason with yourself that simply walking to a class together didn’t mean two people were a couple.

For an hour, you stare at the back of Jake’s head, and although you do eventually come to the more sensible conclusion that a smile may just be a smile, you also think it's unlikely that he and Yunjin would be a thing. If they were, why would they hide it? Jake is so nice, you wouldn’t be surprised if he’d exaggerated his enthusiasm upon seeing her. You’re sure you still have your chances. He even says see you tomorrow when class is over and slips out of the room to go to soccer practice. 

You feel like you’re walking on cloud 9 as you head from History to your next class—but when you remember that the next class is German, your mood drops significantly. Because the universe has it out for you, you and Jay are two of just ten students in your year taking German as your second foreign language option, everyone else having gone for either French, Japanese or Spanish. Your reasoning for it is that your dad has had an obsession with Germany since his year abroad in Bavaria, and twelve-year-old you had wanted to make him happy. Eighteen-year-old you regrets it slightly, but at least now your dad is ecstatic every time you tell him in German that the dinner he made was really tasty. Why Jongseong decided to take it beats you—he’s probably just insane.

But because you don’t really know anyone else in the class, and because it’s your last period of the day, you have no friends to run off with once the lesson is over, and he gets to bother you all the way from the classroom door to the staff parking lot. 

You’ve barely finished bidding Auf Wiedersehen to your teacher and Jongseong is already harassing you. “So, I didn’t take you as the type to be into guys like Jake Sim.” He says Jake’s name with such disdain, like he thinks he’s so much better than him, or like he hates him. It confuses you just as much as it annoys you; Jongseong didn’t seem to have a problem with Jake earlier at the library.

“And that’s your business, because…?”

You don’t look at Jongseong, who’s quickened his pace to keep up with yours, but you can feel the smirk on his face. It’s insufferable. “Oh, it’s none of my business. I’m just surprised, is all. You guys are so… I don’t know, different.”

You scoff. “If you think I’m not good enough for someone like Jake, I’d rather you tell me straight up, Jongseong. Or actually,” you say, looking up at him with a dry smile. “Keep it to yourself and leave me alone.”

He looks offended by your words, and it only adds to your already immense annoyance—he’s the one who just insulted you, so why is he looking at you with those stupid furrowed eyebrows?

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t need to.”

“No, Y/N.” He grabs your wrist and makes you face him, your stomach flipping in surprise that you quickly cover up. When he releases you, you cross your arms over your chest and wait for him to speak, keeping your eyes trained on a spot behind him. “I don’t think he’s too good for you.” 

This makes you look at him. You have to admit, your curiosity is piqued. Not like Jongseong to say anything even vaguely in your favor. “He’s just…” He sighs, searches for the right word. “Well, he’s just a bit of a dick, isn’t he?”

You freeze for a second. You’re so taken aback, your scoff comes out more as a laugh—Park Jongseong, king supreme of all dicks at this school, just called Jake Sim a dick?

“I’m sorry?”

He sighs again, as though you’re the unreasonable one. “He’s so… smug. A wannabe class clown and thinks he’s the shit because he’s on the soccer team. Have you seen the way he swaggers around school?”

You look at him with fake sympathy. “Jong, are you jealous?”

“Pfft. No way. I just think it’s a shame you keep going after these dudes who are not even worth your time, or whatever, so yeah…” he says, voice trailing off and looking down at his feet as he speaks. Hands in pockets and blank expression on his face, you can tell he’s trying to look cool, but the way he’s avoiding your gaze is a dead give-away. Even his ears have turned red. Jongseong is having one of those shy moments he has when he’s trying to be nice to you. Clearly, a simple act of kindness towards you is so hard for him that it radically changes the way he behaves. 

Like when you were fifteen and you just couldn’t get this stupid art project right, so he stayed behind for three hours after school with you, helping you draw and paint and cut and glue. 

Like when you were sixteen and your grandma just passed away, making you miss a week of school, and without a word, barely looking at you, he gave you a stack of handwritten notes of all the lessons you missed. To this day, you’re not sure how he did it—you weren’t in the same class that year.

Like when you were seventeen and Park Sunghoon rejected you in the middle of a crowded hallway. You’d run off to the girls’ bathroom to cry it out, but Jongseong quickly found you and spent the entire period cursing Sunghoon out instead of being in English, like you were both meant to be. He was uncharacteristically nice to you for a few days after that, never starting an argument for no reason or interrupting you when you spoke. When you snapped at him, telling him it only made you feel worse that he treated you differently, he smiled and told you how stupid you looked when you cried. It made you laugh more than it should’ve.

Like now, when he suddenly decides that Jake Sim is also a wrong choice for you. “Him and Sunghoon are good friends, you know that?” he says. “Birds of a feather, and all…”

So you know that Jongseong is not all bad. He has his redeeming qualities. He can even be nice sometimes, when he so wishes. But those moments are so few and far between that when he returns to his usual insufferable self, you wonder if you’d dreamt it all up. Which is why you can’t quite take him seriously right now. You roll your eyes and resume walking towards the parking lot, but of course, he continues to follow you. “Why do you even care who I go after?”

“I don’t-”

“You clearly do, otherwise you wouldn’t be bothering me like this.”

“Well, if all your attention is taken up by that douche, who am I going to go up against?”

“That’s what you’re worried about? That I stop arguing with you?” you say, disbelief clear in your voice.

“I’m offended, Y/N,” he starts, his sarcastic tone making you roll your eyes again. “That our little rivalry matters so little to you.”

“We’re not even the top students of our class, for God’s sake, we’re not fighting over anything.”

“I’ve actually got the best grades in German, thanks very much.”

“Whatever. I wouldn’t call it a rivalry so much as a mutual dislike of each other, because one of us woke up one day and decided to start going against everything the other said.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

The exit to the parking lot now appears to you like the gates of heaven. You don’t even bother replying to him, thinking that he’ll just leave you alone now that you’re here. But as you step outside, he places himself in front of you and blocks your path, arms splayed out, eyes wide like he’s just seen a ghost.

“What are you-”

“Have you done the German homework for tomorrow?”

The sudden change of subject gives you whiplash. “What? No, Miss Schumacher assigned it just now-”

“Well, given your tendency for getting the word order all wrong, I can already tell you you’re not gonna have fun with it-”

You pinch the nose of your bridge, trying to calm yourself down before you lose what’s remaining of your mind. “Jongseong, were you actually dropped on the head as a baby? Go away. My dad’s gonna be here any second.” You try to walk around him, but he steps in front of you again. You peer up at him, undisguised annoyance in your eyes. Where are your dad and brother when you need them?

“I’m just saying, you’ll probably need help with it-”

“I won’t. And if I do, I’ll just use Google. Now get out of my way,” you say, and manage to duck under one of his arms.

Then you see it.

Well, actually, it takes you a second to understand what it is you’re seeing. At first, you think it’s one of those horny couples thinking they’re being really discreet by going to the staff parking lot to make out, when in reality they could be caught by any one at any time. They’re just far enough that when you do a double take, you realize that you do know the back of that head; that fluffy mop of brown hair. You sit behind it every History period, next to it every Maths and English period.

The girl is up against the wall, and you can’t really see her, what with her and Jake’s tongues being down each other’s throat and his body blocking her from your view, his hands on her hips, her arms around his shoulders. All the works. She’s wearing a cheerleader uniform, so she could be any of twenty girls—but you’re pretty sure only one of them wears a pair of white Vans with red love hearts on them.

Your heart sinks to your stomach.

You’re frozen in place when a whistle rings in the distance, and Jake and Yunjin separate, giggling to each other as they jog to wherever the sound came from. The sports field, probably. It’s Monday; the cheerleaders and the soccer team share the field for their practice. 

Jake spots you and Jongseong staring at them. He waves quickly, awkwardly at you, still smiling even when surprise coats his features. Yunjin tugs on his hand and just like that, they’re gone. 

“Y/N-” 

Jay’s voice fades in the background. You want to get away from this situation as quickly as possible—it’s embarrassing enough seeing the guy you like and thought you had a chance with kissing a girl that is arguably much more on his level than you are, but having Jongseong of all people not only witness it, but try to protect you from it, God knows why, makes it impossibly mortifying. You speed-walk to your dad’s car, huffing as you plop in your seat and slamming the door behind you. Your brother is already sitting in the passenger seat, and you don’t even argue with him about it. When you only give single-word replies to his questions, he shrugs and returns to playing Clash of Clans on his phone. 

The moment you get home, you fish a five cent coin from your purse, change into mud boots and grab your dog’s leash. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

After half-an-hour of trudging through leaves and soft ground, muddy from many a rainy November night, you and Pablo, your massive, fluffy airhead of a German Shepherd, find yourselves at the well in the middle of the forest. Ever since you were little, you have attributed magic powers to the well—not that anyone told you any sort of myth about it, but you remember reading a story about a magic well and decided that your well would be magical, too. You’ve never wanted to abuse its powers, so you’ve used your wishes conscientiously: things like getting a certain present at Christmas (when you were nine and the most important thing ever was getting the Monster High doll you wanted) or not stuttering during your presentation in class (when you really didn’t want to embarrass yourself in front of Park Sunghoon and his cool friends). Every wish you’ve made has come true. Whenever a faint voice of reason tells you that it’s because you always ask for very realistic things, you squash it and continue to believe in the well.

Because today, you’re not asking for something realistic. 

Today, you’re asking the well to show you the way to love.

You’ve grown up watching The Notebook and Pride & Prejudice. Your parents are high school sweethearts who are still, twenty-five years later, happily married. You devour romance novels and binge-watch Asian dramas, the more unrealistic and romantic, the better. You are convinced that soulmates exist, that love always finds a way, that it is there for anyone to see. That it can take form in a childhood friend, an archnemesis, a total stranger.  

But for some reason, it hasn’t shown itself to you yet, no matter how valiantly you’ve looked. 

You’re absolutely sick and tired of it. It is Jake kissing another girl, it’s Sunghoon leading you on for months and then rejecting you in front of everyone, it’s your ex-boyfriend-who-shall-not-be-named, your first love and first heartbreak, dumping you after a year and getting with the girl he had told you not to worry about a week later. At a party a few months later, he’d said, word for word, “At least I didn’t cheat on you.”

Coin lodged between your hands, you interlace your fingers and press your palms closely together, eyes screwed shut in desperation. “Hey,” you start simply, because you and the well are good friends. “It’s been a while since I’ve asked for anything, so I hope you can indulge me… This is gonna sound so cliché, but I’m really tired of getting fucked over by boys — excuse my French — and I just wanna meet the person who’s right for me, you know? Mom’s always reminding me that I’m only eighteen, and that I’ve got plenty of time to meet someone, but I just feel like if I don’t find someone now, I never will. And if I get fucked over again — sorry — I’ll just lose hope and write off men for the rest of my life. So help a girl out, will you? I’ll leave it to you how you wanna go about it, but… just show me that there’s someone out there. Please.”

When you open your eyes, you need a few seconds to adjust to the darkness. You toss the coin in the well. It doesn’t make a sound as it hits the bottom, as if it has been absorbed within the old brick walls. You know better than to question it—the well works in mysterious ways.

You’re quiet that entire evening, making up an excuse of a tiring day at school when your parents ask. Really, you’re just thinking about your wish, whether it’ll work, what might happen. You half-ass your homework—Jay was right, the German exercises throw you into a bout of despair, so you quickly close your textbook and bury yourself in your sheets, falling asleep hours earlier than you usually would.

--

For some reason, the first thing you notice when you wake up is that it’s still dark outside. It must be the middle of the night, you think. It takes you a few seconds to realize that you’re in a completely strange room.

Instead of your floral-patterned sheets, you find yourself covered by delicate silk sheets that your parents would never agree to buy you, no matter how adamantly you argued for the benefits of silk for your skin. If skincare experts online had convinced you of one thing, it was that silk would do wonders for your obstinate acne. You slide out of bed and find a pair of slippers on the floor, as if waiting for you. Even the pajamas you’re wearing are fancier, more grown up than the ones you have at home, a set composed of a pinstriped button-up and shorts. You look around, for some reason more surprised and curious than panicked. You could’ve been kidnapped, for all you know, but all you care about right now is this room. Rather than the pink and white walls that have surrounded you since childhood, covered with pictures of you and your friends, postcards of artwork bought at museums, and posters of your favorite movies, the walls here are beige and mostly bare, except for a painting of Japanese cherry blossoms above the bed and a family portrait on the opposite wall, above a wooden chest of drawers. 

The family portrait. A woman, a man, and what you can only assume are their children. They look like twins—two girls. Can’t be older than three years old. Out of the four faces, you recognize two of them. You recognize them far too well. One of them is yours, of course. You look slightly older, by a decade, maybe? You’re glad to know that you won’t fall off after twenty-five, like much of social media has led you to believe. 

The other face you recognize immediately, too, but it takes you a few seconds to truly believe it.

It belongs to none other than Park Jongseong.

A dry chuckle falls from your throat, as if someone has just made a very insulting joke at your expense and you have to pretend you find it funny. The well has a very odd sense of humor, you think. It’s probably just a prank, a magic-induced nightmare before the real thing. Except this already feels real, disorientingly so. The fabric on your skin, the picture, the room. It all feels too real, more tangible than any dream you’ve ever had.

You take a step closer towards the picture, as if looking at it harder will make Jongseong’s face fade into that of another man, the real man that will become your husband and father of your children. But alas, his features remain the same, frozen in time by the photographer’s camera. He, too, looks older—and not only does he not fall off after twenty-five, he becomes all the more handsome for it.

Is this how you find out that Jongseong was handsome all along? You stare at it until the familiar face becomes practically unrecognizable, like repeating a word so much it stops feeling like one. The straight nose, the almond-shaped eyes that seem to have softened overtime, whereas his jaw has remained as sharp as ever. Have his eyebrows always framed his face so perfectly? Has that dimple always been there? 

You look around again, and the bright numbers on the bedside alarm clock catches your attention. They read 9:57 p.m., but it’s the date that makes your stomach sink—today is still the 18th of November, but ten years later. You stare at the clock, at the unfamiliar number, a date so far into the future you can’t wrap your head around it. You could barely envision life after high school.

Downstairs, the sudden clang of pots and the sound of a tap running manage to rip your gaze away from the alarm clock. An overwhelming curiosity tells you to follow the noise. This is all a dream, so there are no consequences if you explore a bit more, right? 

You’ve never been in this house before, and you have no idea where your feet are taking you until you find yourself in the kitchen. It’s the only lit room in the house, and you’re creepily standing in the dark under a wide archway that connects the kitchen to what looks like the dining room. A man has his back to you, washing dishes and putting them out to dry on a rack next to the sink. He’s wearing a white cotton sweater, one that you feel you recognise without ever having seen before, and a brown apron is tied around his neck and waist. 

The first thing you think to yourself is Oh, his haircut hasn’t changed. In almost every class you share with him, Jongseong has made it a point to sit either next to you or right in front of you, so you’ve spent a lot of time glaring at the back of his head. You wouldn’t be surprised if he started developing two eye-shaped bald spots there. His hair is still short and spiky at the back and on the sides, longer on the top. When he lets it grow too long, it sometimes covers his eyes, and he obnoxiously keeps having to push it back like a heartthrob in an 80s movie. 

Something like a memory flashes through your mind, blurry like those images you aren’t sure came from a dream or from real life. Your surroundings are unclear, but Jay’s face is nestled against your neck, your hand in his hair. You can feel the softness of the close shave against your palm as clearly as if you were touching it right now. You ask him why he’s always kept it that way, and he replies that it’s simple to maintain. Then in classic Jay fashion, he adds, “And it makes me look awesome.”

Another memory, a clearer one, this time—this definitely happened. It’s halfway through sophomore year, a random Tuesday, and Jay walks in, holding his head high and looking smugly around himself. The bastard got a new haircut. Long gone, his messy, unorganized flop of black hair that looked like it didn’t know what it was doing; hello, sleek undercut. It accentuates all of his best features, which is terrible news for you. You had never even thought of Jongseong as someone having “best” features, but now they’re being thrown in your face. His nose. His jawline. His smile.

It ruins your day, and a few after that. You can’t quite put it into words when your friends ask what’s wrong at lunch—or rather, you don’t wanna face the humiliation of uttering something along the lines of “Park Jongseong looks good with his new haircut, and it’s bothering me.”

Here, it’s a familiar sight in an unfamiliar environment, the back of his head. Without really thinking, you take a step forward. Jongseong starts at the sound of your slippers against the marble floor tiles, but his face relaxes into a smile when he sees you.

“Oh, it’s just you, honey. I thought you were sleeping.”

Just you. As if the two of you being in the same kitchen is normal. You guess it must be, to this version of Jongseong. To him, you’re not the annoying girl he strives to best in every class—you’re honey. 

“I was,” you say, walking around the kitchen island to join him by the sink. Something in you needs to look at him, really look at him, maybe pinch yourself or pinch him to be sure you’re not going crazy. Maybe you caught wafts of some ancient algae that lives in the well and made you hallucinate?

“I left a plate out for you in case you woke up. Made your favorite. The girls weren’t so happy, seeing as it’s the third time this month,” he says with the special kind of smile reserved for parents talking about their children. The girls. A mention so casual, so obvious, your heart hurts. “But I think I got it really right this time,” he continues. “Honestly, it might even be better than the original.”

He goes back to washing the dishes and you watch the sponge in his hands as it scrubs away tomato sauce, the soap as it runs from the plates into the sink. A knot forms in your stomach, something like a deep sadness that overwhelms you all of a sudden, and tears form in your eyes, threatening to fall any second.

When you haven’t budged in almost a minute, Jongseong starts to say, in an intimate, almost worried voice, “Aren’t you going to eat, honey?” but when he sees your wet eyes, the tremble in your lower lip, he shuts the water immediately and dries his hands. With his thumbs, he wipes away the tears that have started falling from your eyes. “What’s wrong?” he whispers.

You can’t reconcile the man in front of you with the image you have of the boy that torments you in every class you share. You can’t reconcile the genuine concern in his voice with the snarky tone you’re met with every day. And yet, they respond to the same name, their features are identical, if not for the years that separate them, the stress of adulthood on one and the carefreeness of youth on the other. 

Your body reacts automatically to the soft touch—never in a million years would you let the Jongseong you know come near you like this, but here, nothing feels more natural than his hands on your face, your shoulders, your hair, as though they’re just as much his as they are yours. You realize the emotion in your stomach is not sadness—tears fall, but you’re not sad. You’ve never felt as home as you do now, and if one thing romantic novels have taught you, is that this must be love.

You look up at the man in front of you, eyebrows furrowed as you search his face for confirmation or some sort of an answer. There’s a tremble in your voice when you speak next. “I just… I think I love you, Jongseong.”

He chuckles. “Well, we established that a while ago, didn’t we? What with getting married and having kids. But I’m glad you still feel that way.”

The mention of marriage and children doesn’t faze you nearly as much as it should. You’ve only got one thing on your mind. “Do you love me too?”

You expect him to laugh—not out of cruelty, but because the answer is so obvious, it almost doesn’t deserve to be answered seriously. Like when your brother asks if he can have one more of your cookies and you tell him you’ll cut his hand off. Sometimes you think it’s easier to be sarcastic than be unabashedly nice to someone. Especially with Jongseong, whom you don’t expect kindness or patience from, you wait for him to stay something like, “No, that’s why I’ve stayed with you these eight years.” 

So when instead, he says, “More than anything on this Earth,” voice low and vulnerable, tears flow even harder. 

“Sorry, it’s probably just my period,” you say through sobs, although you have no idea where in her menstrual cycle this version of you is.

Jongseong chuckles again, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “You do get emotional around this time.” And you cry more, because you can’t believe someone other than your mother knows you so well that they know what your period symptoms are.

Rubbing soothing circles against your back and whispering soft words in your ear, he holds you for as long as you need to calm down. When you finally do, he tells you to go sit on the couch, that he’ll finish up the dishes then heat and bring your food for you. You think you’ve got your emotions under control, but the moment you bite the pasta, cooked to perfection with the most succulent tomato sauce you’ve ever had, sweet with a little kick of spice and a generous amount of parmesan cheese, tears start to fall again as if you had an endless stock of water behind your eyes.

“This is so good,” you mumble.

Jongseong smiles, his gaze full of affection miraculously directed at you as he tucks away strands of your hair so they don’t get in your eyes or in your food. “I’m glad, baby.”

You react to the nickname viscerally, words tumbling out of your mouth before you can even understand them. “You haven’t called me that in ages.” You widen your eyes at yourself, wondering how this was something you even knew. But when you look at Jongseong, all he does is smile more.

“You’re right, I haven’t. I guess I was reminded of college. You cried all the time back then. As much as it pained me, I can’t say I wasn’t happy to be the one you always came to for comfort.”

You haven’t been through college yet, so you should be unable to tell whether this truly happened or not—and yet, the memories of the body you’re in all confirm what Jongseong just said. But it feels impossible—going to university with him, letting yourself be vulnerable enough with him to not only cry in front of him but let him comfort you. Whatever could have happened in the years between the present you know and your time at university for things to change so drastically?

But before you can make sense of any of it, Jongseong speaks again. “Why? Do you like it when I call you baby?”

Your stomach flips. Heat rises to your face at his words, the tone with which he said them, the things he was alluding to—you know that having children means you’d popped your cherry at some point, that you’d had sex with Jongseong specifically, but to be confronted with the fact was something else. 

“Maybe,” you mumble, and proceed to stuff your mouth with pasta so that you can’t incriminate yourself further.

He puts on a recent movie, something you should arguably be paying attention to, since you’re literally getting a glimpse into the future of cinema—you could steal the idea, go back to your present and sell it for an outrageous price.

But Jongseong’s presence next to you makes it impossible to concentrate on anything but him. The warmth emanating from him, the scent of his perfume envelop you, give you a sense of just how real this all is—despite how comfortable being with him like this feels, you’re still not convinced you’re not just in an unsettlingly vivid dream. You take one of his hands in yours, examining each finger, turning his hand over, tracing the lines of his palm, smoothing your thumb over his nails—it’s an undeniably human hand. Warm against yours, slightly rough. He’s started using hand cream, you think, all these winters when his dry hands would crack because of the cold coming up to your mind, teenage Jongseong’s hard refusal to wear any sort of cream to protect himself. Memories bob up to the surface: fixing his cracked hands up with a plaster, your tear falling on his hand, the both of you in your school uniforms in what looks like the school infirmary; awkwardly gifting him some hand cream the Christmas of that year, not looking at him as you hand him the small package. Saying, “It’s a waste of plasters for something that could be fixed so easily.” Him treating you to warm, spicy tteokbokki because he felt bad for not having gotten you anything, even though this was the first time either of you had ever given the other one a present.

As your fingers trail up from his hand to his forearm, his shoulder, his jawline, more memories flood your mind. Clumsy first kisses; squabbles of the kind you were already used to; lazy mornings in bed; hours spent in your kitchen or his, before you shared one, cooking dinner together; the way you felt when he proposed, a feeling so intense remembering it is almost unbearable now. Your eyes and fingers examine his face in detail—even though you’ve seen him almost every day since the start of high school, this feels like the first time you really perceive him. The delicate bow of his lips, the strong nose, the softness in his eyes when he looks at you. Your heart beats uncontrollably as you hold each other’s gazes, but you feel inexplicably relaxed at the same time, two nearly opposing realities fighting each other inside of you—one in which you and Jongseong regarding each other with such affection is unthinkable, the other in which it is daily routine.

“Movie not to your taste?” he asks, voice gentle, breaking you out of your stupor.

“Hm?”

He nods towards the TV screen. “I see you’re not paying much attention.”

“No. I have… things on my mind.”

He raises an eyebrow, a smirk slowly growing on his lips. “Yeah?” You think your heart might actually flatline when he brings you in closer to his chest, and, face buried in your hair, says, “You know, I’ve been thinking that the twins might want a younger sibling to play with soon enough…”

You’re not sure whether he actually wants a third child or if this is weird dirty talk that apparently turns parents on—all you know is that this is something future you will deal with, not high school senior you. 

You whip up your head at him, eyes wide in panic that he mirrors immediately. “Or—or not. Later. Later?” You nod fervently, and the worry dissipates from his handsome features. “Okay, later,” he whispers, kissing the top of your head before returning his attention to the movie. 

A couple hours later, you’re laying in bed in the dark together—you can tell Jongseong is falling asleep by the regularity of his breathing and his stillness, but you’re wide awake. You don’t know how you’ve managed to spend all this time with him, acting like the wife he knows and loves, without imploding. But suddenly, the idea of waking up in your childhood bed, surrounded by your pink-and-white walls, going downstairs to be greeted by your brother and parents, sends a wave of panic through you. You haven’t felt this comfortable in a long time—Jongseong’s arm draped over your waist, the fact that you could reach over and feel his skin against your palm if you wanted. You don’t want to go back to a time where you hate him. In fact, you don’t know if you could hate him after this.

“Jongseong?” you say softly, the syllables unfamiliar on your tongue, even though the name rings brusquely through your head for the best part of every day.

It takes a few seconds, but he reacts eventually. “Hm? Did you just call me Jongseong?” he murmurs sleepily, as if you’d just called him Robert or Christopher and not the name his own parents gave him.

“Yeah.”

He chuckles. “Now that’s something you haven’t called me in ages. Makes me feel like you’re mad at me,” he says, turning over and burying his face in the crook of your neck. His hair tickles your skin, and one of your hands comes up reflexively to feel the softness of his close shave.

“...Jong?” you try.

“That’s a step up, but not quite what I want,” he mumbles.

You’re silent for a few moments. “Honey,” you say tentatively, voice a mere whisper.

“That’s better.” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Will you be here in the morning?”

“Mh-hm. It’s Saturday tomorrow.”

“No,” you say, feeling out of breath. “I mean, will you be here?”

You’re aware you’re not making much sense—and yet, Jongseong needs no further explanation. “Of course, baby,” he starts, voice soothing. “I’ll be here tomorrow, and the day after that, and every day afterwards. ‘Til death do us part, remember?”

You let out a shaky breath. “Okay.”

“I love you, Y/N.”

“I love you, too,” you find yourself saying, and, more importantly, meaning. It’s the last thing either of you says before falling asleep.

--

Tears are streaming down your face when you wake up the next day. When you open your eyes, pink and white obnoxiously stare back at you. The clock reads 7:12, just three minutes before your alarm goes off, and unfortunately for high school you, the night hasn’t given in to Saturday morning—it’s Tuesday, and you have to go to school and act as if you hadn’t just had the weirdest, most realistic dream of your life. You don’t even get a weekend to shake this weird feeling in your stomach off, you’re going to have to face Park Jongseong full force. At least, this will become your friends’ favorite bit for the foreseeable future.

They’re already sitting in the classroom when you get there, animatedly chatting to each other. You plop down in your seat in front of them, and when they see the sullen look on your face, ask you what’s wrong.

“Did you wake up during the night to play Hay Day again?” Kazuha asks, eyebrows knotted with genuine worry.

“I’m not that person anymore,” you reply. “No, I just had a really weird dream. More like a nightmare, really. It feels like I didn’t get any sleep.”

“What was it about?” Sunoo asks.

Your eyes dart back-and-forth between the two of them as you brace yourself for their reactions. Not wanting anyone else to overhear, you lean in conspiratorially. They mirror you. “I was married to Park Jongseong,” you whisper. As expected, they burst into laughter immediately, and you lean back in your seat, crossing your arms in annoyance. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s very funny,” Kazuha retorts. “It’s ironic, even, considering how much you hate the guy.”

“Exactly!”

“But I guess even you know how ridiculous it is that you hate him, if your brain is able to imagine yourself being married to him,” Sunoo adds, shrugging. “It’s a good reminder that you’re literally the only person in this school with a vendetta against him.”

Kazuha nods energetically. “He picked up a pen for me, once. He’s a nice guy.”

You look around the room in panic. “Keep it down, will you?” you hush, despite the fact that no one is paying any attention to the three of you. You sigh, resolving yourself to telling them the entire truth. “But guys, I’m scared. I think this might be a sign.”

Their eyebrows perk up. “A sign that your hatred of him has actually been disguising a crush this entire time?” Sunoo asks, feigning innocence.

“No—what? Where did you get that idea?”

“Nowhere. Go on.”

“Whatever. Come here,” you say, gesturing for them to huddle again. “It’s the well.”

“Oh my God, Y/N, you’ve actually lost it,” Kazuha says, fascinated by your stupidity.

“I’m not going to tolerate any well slander, this is serious. I just wanted it to reassure me that there was someone out there for me. And then I had that stupid dream.”

Kazuha and Sunoo exchange a look like they’re parents trying to announce to their daughter that she’s adopted. “Y/N…” Sunoo starts.

“This is crazy. Like, love philters and writing Park Sunghoon’s name a hundred times are one thing, this is…”

“Crazy,” Sunoo said, nodding along. “This is crazy. There’s no other word for it. Your eighteen years of boyfriendlessness have finally caught up to you.”

“You guys don’t get it. What about that time I asked it to give me a good grade on our Literature exam and I literally came first out of our class? Or when I told it I missed Jung Hae-in and his military discharge announcement came the next day?” you say, aware that the look in your eyes is only confirming their suspicions—but you need someone to believe you, or at the very least understand you.

“One, you’re a good student. Two, that was pure coincidence,” Sunoo explains.

“But girl, if you want to marry Jay, that’s fine. You’ve got our blessing,” Kazuha says, shrugging.

“Yeah. He picked up her pen, once,” Sunoo adds.

“And you know, you guys clearly have some sort of chemistry.”

You scoff. “If you think that him refuting my every word and finding every opportunity to make fun of me, then yeah, I guess you could say we have chemistry.”

“You guys have banter,” Kazuha says as if it’s obvious.

“Oh, please. Banter is cute. I want to kill him every time he opens his mouth.”

Your friends both roll their eyes. “While I understand that most men are better off staying quiet—no offense, Sunoo—”

“None taken.”

“You have to admit Jay is not nearly as insufferable as you make him out to be,” Kazuha says.

“Are you kidding me? He’s always acting like a child. Rubbing it in my face when he gets a better grade, trying to start arguments for no reason, sucking up to teachers, stealing my erasers, for God’s sake, you’d think he’s twelve. I know that I’m not on the majority's side, but I seriously cannot understand how other people tolerate him at all.”

Sunoo sighs. “Because he’s nice to everyone. He never hesitates to help people, he’s even funny, sometimes, and—well, look at him.” He nods his head towards the door, and when you turn around, Jongseong is indeed walking in the classroom. “He’s not a bad-looking boy.”

“Gosh, Sunoo, maybe you should marry him,” Kazuha says, but since you laid your eyes on Jongseong, you’ve stopped listening.

You feel weird. You look at him, and you feel weird. It’s the same feeling you had during your sleep last night, a feeling that paralyzes you from head to toe, that starts in your stomach and spreads to your entire body, weighs you down in your chair. 

“Hey, guys,” he greets simply, and his voice wraps itself around your heart and squeezes. You can’t do anything but watch him as he takes his seat next to you, plopping his bag on the table and taking his notebook out. He looks at you, watches you watching him, then swivels around in his chair.

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks your friends.

“She had a dream that she m—”

“Do not finish that sentence, Zuha, if you want to live to see another day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she replies, a satisfied little smile on her lips.

Despite yourself, you’re still staring at Jongseong, trying to figure out what the hell these emotions are that are raging up a storm inside of you. Instead of ignoring you, he turns to face you, resting his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm as he stares back at you, smirking. “What’s up, Y/N? Has it finally dawned on you how devastatingly handsome I am?” he asks, and you frown, because he’s not so far off from the truth.

“Please, kids, it’s 9 a.m., don’t flirt right in front of us,” Sunoo says, despair in his voice.

“She’s the one who started it,” Jongseong replies, still looking at you, his smirk growing.

For some reason, this startles you out of your trance, and you look away from him like you’ve been burned, preoccupying yourself instead with your notes for this class. “In your dreams, Jongseong,” you mumble.

“More like in yours,” Kazuha says, her and Sunoo giggling.

“Zuha!” you exclaim. Jongseong looks at you with raised eyebrows, and with his infuriating capacity to put two and two together, you’re scared he’s figured out what she meant, but you’re literally saved by your teacher who walks in at that moment and starts the class. 

The second the bell rings to signify the end of the class, you hurriedly pack your things and mutter an excuse about needing the bathroom, trying to get as far away as possible from the boy whose all-too familiar scent had messed with your thoughts all class, whose every brush of his arm against yours had made your heart race uncontrollably.

--

It hadn’t just been a dream. It couldn’t have been.

Just like there was no doubt the 28-year-old Jongseong from last night had once been the annoying boy you knew, the 18-year-old Jongseong was sure to one day become the husband of your dreams. A devoted partner and father, his presence comforting, his good looks indeed devastating, unwavering.

There was no mistake to be made. The well had worked its magic.

Whether you liked it or not, you would end up marrying Park Jongseong. You, of all people; him, of all people.

Was there already something of your future husband in the boy that snickered when you mixed up your genders in German class, or would he one day spring out of nowhere? Apparently, you’d be around to find out.

But for now, how to act around him? It felt unfair that you were privy to this knowledge of your shared future while he was ignorant of it. Blissfully, perhaps. You couldn’t imagine that he would rejoice much at this news.

Your mind is somewhere else the entire day. At lunch, your other friends try to get the thing that’s obviously bothering you out of you, but Kazuha and Sunoo are there to tell them not to bother. You’d needed to tell someone about it, but you don’t want the entire school to know about your marital premonitions. The two knuckleheads you call your best friends are already doing a good enough job teasing you about it—”There’s your husband, Y/N,” when Jongseong walks past; “So have you thought of baby names? Kayleigh and Mackayleigh, perhaps?” unsolicited, during Physics. You turn around to check on the culprit — because yes, Jongseong is the culprit here, you, a mere a victim — and when he notices you staring, nods at you as if to say, What’s your problem?, trying to look threatening in his white lab coat that’s three sizes too big and protective goggles.

It doesn’t help that Jongseong has a way of hovering around you. Even in classes in which your teachers assigned the seats for you, he’s never far from your seat. The two of you sit next to each other in German, your last class every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. But today, the seat next to you is empty—what would’ve been a cause for celebration just yesterday is now a source of worry. You’d seen him just two hours ago in your previous class together, so where the hell was he now? He’s lucky that your teacher is an old German lady who always spends the first ten minutes of the lesson rambling about something in dialectal German no one understands but nods along to anyway. When he walks into the room, five minutes late, she just says, “Hallo, Jay,” and continues with her story. It’s about her first school trip to Berlin when she was fifteen and the country was still divided. You think.

He winks at you when he takes his seat and you roll your eyes. You pretend to listen to your teacher for thirty seconds, then hit him gently with your elbow. “Where were you?” you ask without looking at him.

He doesn’t answer immediately, probably surprised you initiated a non-hostile conversation with him for once. “I was just hanging out with my friends, something you clearly wouldn’t understand.”

And your friends wondered why you hated him?

“Still having imaginary friends at eighteen is really concerning, Jongseong. You should see someone about it.”

When you glance at him, he’s already looking right at you, smiling. You’ve never felt so conscious of your side profile. 

“Why? Were you worried?” he whispers, kicking your foot with his.

You look at him, horrified—where the hell had he gotten that idea? How was he so spot-on? You scoff, trying to diffuse the tension inside yourself. “No.”

He kicks your foot again. “I was five minutes late and you started to worry?”

“No. Stop.”

“I didn’t know you cared about me so much, Y/N.”

This time, you give him a harsh look, one that lets him know you really mean your words—“Stop it.” Finally, he relents, getting the assigned homework out now that the teacher has actually started the lesson. Your face softens—he looks hurt. Guilt tugs at your heartstrings.

Despite what you might say, you like the way things are with Jongseong. If some people always need to be crushing on someone, you always need to have someone you perceive as an enemy—it was Na Jaemin in elementary school, because he’d once made fun of your incapability to climb the monkey bars; Shin Ryujin, in middle school, for kissing your crush during a game of spin-the-bottle at your own birthday party; Park Jongseong, since freshman year, for simply existing. Your reasons for disliking him are trivial, you’ll admit. You weren’t sure you could even place a finger on what had first triggered your disdain towards him—one too many awful jokes, one too many times raising his hand in class and rattling off a perfect answer, then looking around himself proudly, one too many roars of laughter heard throughout the entire cafeteria. The fact that no one else seemed to be bothered by him only added to your aggravation. He just got on your nerves, and it seemed that you openly showing your dislike of him — him, who was so used to being loved by everyone around him, pampered by his family, praised by his teachers, popular among his peers — was enough to make him dislike you, too. So, after a few failed attempts at trying to be your friend, because Jongseong was unable to not be friends with everyone he met, he didn’t simply give up. 

If he couldn’t be your friend, then fine, he’d be your enemy.

At least, that’s how it appears to you, still now. It’s never gone dangerously far, but if there’s an opening to tease you or get on your nerves, he’ll do it. Not passing you the ball during soccer, or conversely, only aiming for you during dodgeball, not sharing his textbook with you when you forgot it unless you beg, loudly clearing his throat when you speak in class. And, lately, pouring salt on your wounds in the form of reminding you how impossible you and Jake Sim are. His motto must be if there’s a will, there’s a way. And when it comes to making your life hell, his will is infinite.

Everything is upside-down now. The question of how your relationship can possibly go from this to that obsesses you. It feels like you’re more capable of sharing a funeral, dying at each others’ hands, than a wedding. 

“Jong, your textbook.”

He squints at you. “Funny how I’m Jongseong when you hate me, Jong when you need a textbook,” he says, sliding his book closer to himself.

“It’s not my fault your name is a mouthful,” you retort, trying to pull it back to the middle of the table, but he’s quicker than you.

“Then maybe you should call me Jay, like everyone else on Earth.”

“Where’s the fun in that? Now give it here. Please?” you ask, mustering your best smile. Any other teacher would’ve scolded the two of you by now, but Ms. Schumacher is peacefully going on about the importance of word order and punctuation in the German sentence, oblivious to her two students bickering in the back row. Jongseong usually never sits at the back of the classroom—only here.

He gives in, smiling back, but there’s something behind it, something that tells you nothing good is brewing in his brain. “Only because you’re so pretty.”

Normally, this kind of remark would’ve warranted a slap on the arm or an array of insults, but if today is anything, it is not normal. You look at him like you’ve been stung, visions of your not-dream coming to you in flashes like you’re the titular character on That’s So Raven—the affection in your husband’s eyes, the kindness in his words, the sincerity in his smile. Again, you’re left to wonder if this man is already taking root inside of the boy next to you, if Jongseong’s future capacity to love you presently exists in his heart.

Does your future capacity to love him already exist in your heart?

You watch as his smirk softens into a grin, your flusteredness and lack of a response clearly amusing him, then as he circles the exercises Ms. Schumacher is assigning for the lesson. She seems to have forgotten there was homework due—Jongseong will be sure to remind her of it quickly.

He kicks your foot again, tells you to focus. His ears have turned red.

You wonder if those capacities haven’t existed from the start.

--

As much as you love a good friends-to-lovers story, characters hiding their feelings out of fear of ruining the friendship have never failed to frustrate you — just tell her, you dummy, it’s obvious she likes you too — and yet, you’ve never related more than now.

Whatever it is that you and Jongseong have, you don’t want to lose it. It adds entertainment to your otherwise average life. 

“Good thing she didn’t pick on you while we went over the homework, ‘cause you clearly put zero effort in. And I wouldn’t have helped you, even if you’d asked, by the way.”

You hum absent-mindedly as you put your notebook and pencil holder in your bag. Are you sure that these are even your feelings in the first place? Just because the well put a silly idea in your head doesn’t mean you have to believe it like it’s scripture. If what you saw is real, then it will happen in its own time. Things don’t have to start changing right this instant.

“Gosh, Y/N, what’s up with you today? You’re so boring,” Jongseong continues, following you out of the classroom. 

“Just tired,” you reply. Wouldn’t it be unnatural if you were to radically alter the way you behave with Jongseong? Love should come about organically. Sure, his presence has always provoked some kind of reaction within you, but that’s usually been annoyance. Whether he’s stealing the fifth eraser you’ve bought that month or running on the soccer field, beads of sweat running down his temples, hair sticking out everywhere, victoriously smiling when his team scores—you’re annoyed. Whether he’s sticking up his hand higher than yours or going to the school dance with Ahn Yujin—you’re annoyed. When you learned that she’d been his neighbor since infancy and that she had a boyfriend, who went to another school and only trusted Jongseong to take her to the dance, you were still annoyed—this time at yourself for feeling even the tiniest bit relieved that nothing was going on between them.

And this — his quick steps trying to keep up with yours, his dumb story about yogurt coming out of Heeseung’s nose today at lunch when they were laughing too hard — yes, you’re still annoyed. But you realize you’re not annoyed at him.

You’re annoyed at how he makes you feel.

“Y/N?” he says, but you’re too deep in your thoughts, only vaguely registering the sound until he repeats it, louder this time, and grabs your hand, making you abruptly stop walking. “Are you sure everything’s okay?” he asks with genuine concern in his voice. “You’re barely listening to me. I mean, it’s not like you usually really do, but you’d have told me to get lost, like, five minutes ago now…”

He chuckles self-deprecatingly, but despite his words, you’re focusing on something else yet again. His hand on yours, his loose hold on your fingers. Your brain is yelling at you—hold his hand, hug him. It’s like there are still traces of the 28-year-old version of you you visited yesterday, urging you to behave like her and not 18-year-old you. 

So, the well had let you know that you need not look much further to find what you wanted. Here it is, in the form of a boy you have convinced yourself you hated, and hated you, and yet, he’s holding your hand, asking you if you’re okay, worry knotting his eyebrows together. 

Hold his hand. Hug him. Instead, you retract your hand, let it fall limply by your side. Jongseong’s eyebrows shoot up.

He’s so close, the supposed love of your life. You don’t know how to reach out to him.

For now, you smile. “Get lost, Jong.”

--

you guys how the hell do i act around jongseong now that i know our fates are romantically intertwined

kazuha i think not treating him like the number one public enemy would be a good start

you so what… be nice to him? how do i do that

sunoo oh my god y/n when she has to treat another person like a regular human being

you he’s not just another person!

sunoo okayyyyy i see you little miss repressed feelings

you i hate u

kazuha just don’t roll your eyes at everything he says anymore and don’t start arguments for no reason

you he’s the one who starts them… but okay i’ll try

--

“Let’s pair up for the reading analysis today. You can stay with your deskmate or pick a partner, I don’t mind as long as you get the work done. I’m talking about you, Chaewon and Yuri. This is English class, not a gossip session.”

The second your English teacher has finished speaking, Jongseong swivels in his chair. “Let’s partner up, Y/N?”

“What about me?” Jake asks, eyes darting back-and-forth between the two of you.

“You can partner up with Minju,” Jongseong replies, pointing to the girl he’s usually seated next to. “Look. You guys will be great together. Say hi, Minju.” Minju waves shyly at Jake, braces on display as she smiles ecstatically. It’s not everyday that she gets to talk to one of the most popular guys in school.

Jake reluctantly switches seats with him, glancing back at you and Jongseong who just grins at him, fake friendliness plastered on his lips, until he turns around again. Your new partner’s smile softens and reaches his eyes when he looks at you. “Hi.”

You have to look away—you feel your face burn under his gaze. “Hi, Jong.”

He tilts his head. “What? Do you hate me so much that you can’t even look at me now?” he asks, and you can’t tell whether he’s joking or genuine.

You frown. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh? That’s a recent development.”

“I guess,” you mumble after a few seconds. Is it really? You suddenly can’t remember if you ever really hated him, or if you’d exaggerated your own feelings.

His smile widens. “Well, good. I mean, you were going to have to realize at some point that I really am funny, smart, endearing, handsome-”

“Back to hating.”

“Let’s start the assignment.”

You agree on reading the passage first, but you realize halfway through that not a single word has been absorbed. “Hey. Why did you switch seats with him?” you ask, whispering so as not to be overheard.

Jongseong shrugs. “I thought you wouldn’t want to work with him, considering…”

“Right.” You’re silent again, but only for a bit. “What’s it to you?” you mumble. 

He scoffs. “Sorry for trying to be considerate.”

“That’s not—”

“Let’s just focus on this.”

His sudden coldness vexes you. You know you should let it go — don’t start arguments for no reason, and all that — and you know it’s childish, but you can’t help yourself. You have certain reflexes you’re not particularly proud of when it comes to one Park Jongseong. “Let’s just focus on this,” you repeat, mocking his grumbling tone of voice and shaking your head like a puppet.

He glares at you. “Can you not act like a toddler for once?”

“Can you not be a dick for once?” you bite back.

“Y/N, Jongseong, I’m sure you’re having a fascinating conversation on the use of chiaroscuro in the text?” your teacher asks, a look of warning on his face.

“Yes, sir,” you reply, embarrassed.

“Yes, so much chiaroscuro,” Jongseong mumbles, resting his cheek on his knuckles. When the teacher has turned away, he kicks your foot. “See, you’re getting us in trouble.”

“Do you even know what chiaroscuro is?” 

He hesitates. “That’s not the problem here. You are.”

“Well, maybe if you didn’t-”

“Y/N, Jay, final warning.”

“Sorry,” you both say at the same time. With one last glare at each other, you finally get to work.

So your plan to start getting along with Jongseong isn’t in full-force yet. On the drive back home that afternoon, you reassure yourself that these things take time. When the moment is right, the two of you will grow closer.

--

But increasingly, it feels as though the right moment will never come.

Two months have passed since your visit to the well, and things between you and Jongseong have not changed. Not really, at least.

You still bicker like cat and dog — it goes without saying that you’re the cute puppy and he’s the heartless cat — and he gets as much on your nerves as ever, especially now that you know that the potential to be nice to you, to love you, even, exists somewhere inside him. Somewhere deeply hidden perhaps, but somewhere nonetheless. Of course, after telling yourself that what must come will come of its own accord, you haven’t done much to change the dynamic between the two of you. But if you used to see your retaliations against him as necessary to your survival, you now find some sort of enjoyment in them—some might call it Stockholm Syndrome, you perceive it as a step in the right direction. You’ve followed one of Kazuha’s pieces of advice: you don’t roll your eyes at him anymore, simply because you don’t feel the need to. You argue with him with a smile on your face, his attempts at insulting or annoying you have started to make you laugh.

He doesn’t say anything but seems to gladly welcome this change. If you get a lower grade than him on a test, he doesn’t try to stick the knife in further, but genuinely offers to go over it with you later. If you give in after two hours of tearing your hair out over a German exercise and text him for help, he doesn’t make fun of you. If he says something particularly arrogant or makes a really bad joke, all you need to do is give him a look, and he’ll mumble an apology. 

Could it have been like this the entire time? you wonder, watching him across the schoolyard as he and Heeseung hunt for Pokémon. Just a couple months ago, you would’ve scrunched your nose at the sight, making fun of him for his childish interests. Now, you notice the way he laughs, audible all the way to where you sit with Kazuha and Sunoo, the way he jumps excitedly and points at things only he and his friend see, and all you feel is endearment.

“Look at you, look at that,” Sunoo says as he hits you on the forehead with his metal spoon, startling you. He tuts. “You’ve got love dripping from your eyes, sweetie.”

“Sunoo, that’s disgusting.”

“Love? I know.”

“No, your spoon. Your saliva’s all over that,” you say, and all he does is eat another mouthful of his yogurt while staring wide-eyed right at you. When you look back at Jongseong, he’s high-fiving Heeseung. You wonder which creature he’s caught now. In the library yesterday, he spent thirty minutes showing you every single one he had captured so far instead of revising for the upcoming Physics test.

“Yeah, we know you’d like someone else’s saliva more,” Kazuha chimes in, and the two of them snort.

“It’s not like that,” you say, biting into an apple slice.

“Oh yeah? What’s it like, then?” Kazuha asks.

“We’re… becoming friends,” you say, but you’re not sure who you’re trying to convince more.

“Y/N, I’ve had to watch the two of you giggling to yourselves in the library one too many times to believe you’re friends. I know your homework’s not that funny,” Sunoo argues.

“Friends can giggle with each other!” you exclaim, but your friends are inflexible.

“I would tell you to get yourself together if you giggled at me like that,” he says.

“I saw you twirl your hair the other day,” Kazuha adds.

“I never—When?!”

She shrugs. “The other day.”

You deflate, crushed under your friends’ accusations. “I wouldn’t twirl my hair…” you mumble. You decide to busy yourself with your apple slices, not even bothering to find out what Kazuha and Sunoo start snickering and elbowing each other about.

“Hey,” a familiar voice greets, making you look up. Jongseong smiles at you and steals an apple slice from your tupperware as he sits down next to you, Heeseung across from him.

“Hi, Jong,” you say, sitting up straighter. You offer a piece of fruit to Heeseung but he declines, saying he doesn’t like apples without peanut butter.

In front of you, your friends exchange a look, and you’re immediately terrified of what they’ll do next. Leaning in, they place their elbows on the table, and Kazuha starts them off. “Jay, you and Y/N know each other pretty well, right?”

Jongseong glances at you, eyes wide. “Uh, sure.”

“Have you ever noticed her, say, twirling her hair?” Sunoo asks, tilting his head innocently at the poor boy by your side.

You’ve never seen him look so confused. “Um, yeah, she does that when she’s concentrating on something, sometimes…”

They lean back. “Huh,” Kazuha says, studying Jongseong’s face.

“Interesting. Very interesting,” Sunoo says, slowly nodding.

You glare at your friends. “See, that’s different,” you tell them. “I was concentrating on something, not doing… whatever you guys had in mind.”

Jongseong looks at you. “What did they have in mind?”

You answer before either of them can dig your grave any deeper. “Nothing. It’s nothing. We were just having a stupid conversation.” You muster your most convincing smile, and the subject is finally dropped.

No one says anything for a few moments, until Heeseung decides to speak up: “You should’ve seen Jay earlier, Y/N. He caught this super rare version of Pikachu earlier, it was awesome.”

“Dude…” Jongseong murmurs.

“What?” Heeseung asks, his enthusiasm quickly dissolving into confusion. Jongseong just shakes his head. Thankfully for all of you, the bell rings then, and you head to class. The three of them walk in front of you while you and Jongseong fall back a step.

“Why were you guys sitting outside? It’s freezing today,” he asks you. Walking side-by-side like this, you can’t help but notice the inches he has over you, the broadness of his shoulders in comparison to yours.

“They turned the heat way too high in the cafeteria, so we came outside for some fresh air,” you explain. He’s right, the air is chilly today—it’s a few days into December, and the temperatures have been accordingly low.

“Aren’t you cold?”

Your heart skips a beat. One of the side effects of not being at each other’s throat anymore was that you got more and more often to be privy to this side of Jongseong—attentive, considerate, kind. What you once thought were his moral attempts at not being so mean to you all the time, you found out was actually his real nature. He wasn’t a prick who was sometimes nice, he was a nice person who turned into a prick with you. Whether the fault lay on him or you was another debate.

“No, I’m alright,” you say, but your body decides to betray you and makes you sneeze three times in a row.

“Bless you,” Jongseong says, laughing. “Here.” You try to stop him, pushing his hands away, but he takes his gloves off and forces them in your palms.

“I’m going to be inside for the next four hours, Jong, I’ll be fine. Keep them.”

“No, it’s okay. Just so you can warm up quicker.”

You eventually give in, putting the gloves over your hands, laughing at the extra fabric that hangs off the tip of your fingers. But when you look at Jongseong’s now-bare hands, something catches your attention. Stopping in the hallway, you grab one of them, examining the cuts on his knuckles. “You need to wear hand cream, Jong, your hands are too chapped.”

He lets you turn his hand over, smooth over his skin, do the same thing with his other hand. “Men don’t wear hand cream,” he says, a grin on his lips.

You burst out laughing. “I think that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“Seriously, though, I don’t like the way it feels. Too sticky.”

“You just need to get a quick-absorption one.” Then, you make the terrible mistake of looking up from his hand and meeting his eyes—you gasp silently, his gaze and soft smile transporting you right back to that night, the images of 28-year-old and 18-year-old Jongseong mixing into each other, becoming indistinct from each other. Your gaze drifts down to his lips — chapped, too, when they’re usually plumper, rosier — and his hand, still in yours, balls into a fist. The second bell rings and you both take a step back, eyes meeting again for a brief moment before looking down at the floor. With uncharacteristically shy, embarrassed words of parting, you make your separate ways to your next classes.

“That was beautiful, Y/N,” Sunoo says, waiting for you by the door, and you walk past him without so much as a glance.

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

--

sunoo jay and y/n almost kissed earlier

kazuha WHAAAAT

you KIM SUNOO.

kazuha WHEN?????

sunoo right before class after the lunch break y/n was sooo embarrassed afterwards lol

you we did NOT almost kiss you’re talking out of your ass

kazuha i can’t believe i missed this fml

you YOU DIDNT MISS ANYTHING NOTHING HAPPENED

sunoo be serious u guys we’re standing inches apart

you were* and no we weren’t

sunoo oh stfu it was autocorrect i saw it w my own eyes y/n… you WERE literally holding his hand and staring into those beautiful eyes of his

kazuha sunoo…?

sunoo what can’t a man acknowledge another man’s objective attractiveness if i was y/n i would’ve folded the moment i saw him

you literally one of the first times he talked to me was to make fun of my handwriting

sunoo yeah he’s on his tsundere shit i fw it

you …

sunoo anyways zuha you shouldve seen it when the bell rang they practically leaped away from each other and u didnt know what to do w yourselves afterwards likeeee it was so obvi what you both were thinking of

kazuha cuuuute

you i resent these accusations.

sunoo istg if u dont kiss him next time i will

kazuha ???

you SUNOO?

sunoo WHAT

--

Something happens a few days before the start of winter break.

Ms. Schumacher is absent, gone off to Germany to visit her family there—she has enough seniority in the school that they let her abandon her responsibilities as a teacher once in a while. A week is too short a period of time for them to bother finding a substitute. It’s usually your last class of the day, but you have to wait around for your dad to be done working, so while most of your classmates have gone home early, you sit with about six other people in the unsupervised study room, absent-mindedly jotting down tid-bits of dialogue for your new story idea, too preoccupied with Jongseong’s absence to really pay attention to anything else. It’s fifteen minutes after the hour, but he’s nowhere to be found, although you know for a fact that he takes those weird Molecular Gastronomy cooking classes your Chemistry teacher offers for extra credit every Thursday after school, so he should be here. And anyways, if he’d gone home, he would’ve texted you something like, Have fun sitting around for an hour, I’m gonna go do awesome stuff with Heeseung, even if awesome stuff meant playing Mario Kart or drinking Sprite and holding a two-person burping contest.

You’re so engrossed in your own thoughts that you pay no mind to the sudden ding of a phone in the room, followed by some gasps and heated whispers. The exchanged words go through one ear and out the other—There was a fight? In the locker rooms? It must be bad if they were sent to the nurse before the principal… Huh? Over who? So he took both of them on? Damn, I didn’t know Jay got like that. He seems so well-behaved.

Your head whips up at the mention of your friend’s name. “Jay? Did something happen to him?” you ask out loud, the whispers dying down immediately as everybody stares at you. 

Gaeul, who was in your class last year, is the only one who answers you. Holding up and waving her phone, she says, “They say he got into a fight.”

Jongseong? A fight? It sounds like a practical joke. He admitted to you he once started crying watching Heeseung playing Call of Duty, it was so violent. You shake your head. “He-he did? With who?”

Gaeul and the girl next to her exchange a concerned, almost guilty look. “Jake and Sunghoon.” The crease between your eyebrows deepened. You don’t need to ask anything else before she adds, “They’re at the nurse’s station. It sounds pretty bad…”

That’s enough for you to leap out of your chair and run to the nurse’s station. It seems the news has spread impossibly quickly among your year group—even Kazuha and Sunoo are already blowing your phone, asking you if you’ve heard, if you know how Jay is. You ignore them, reminding yourself to text them back later, until one message from Sunoo in particular catches your attention: It apparently started because Sunghoon said something about you, Y/N. They’re saying Jay got angry.

The nurse is busy on the phone when you get there, her back to the entrance, so you’re able to slip in unnoticed. You head to the adjoining room where the beds are, all three of them taken—you walk by Sunghoon first, his arms crossed over his chest and pointedly not looking at you, then by Jake, who calls out your name. You glare at him and pull on the white plastic curtain that separates his bed from Jongseong’s. They’re already going to hear you, you don’t need them seeing you on top of that. 

Jongseong sits up with a grunt when you appear at the end of his bed. The sight of him makes your stomach flip, and not in a good way, for once—his left eye is swollen and circled by a deep purple bruise, shiny with ointment, there’s a cut on his cheek, his lower lip is busted, his right hand is wrapped in bandages. “Oh my God,” you whisper as you help him up, voice breaking. He stares at his hands, jaw locking when you gently place one palm on his good hand, the other on the side of his face, moving it this way and that so you can take a better look at his injuries. He winces, and you let go, resting your hand on his shoulder instead. “What the hell got into you?” you whisper vehemently, unable to decide if you’re worried or angry or both as tears form in your eyes.

He tries to shrug, but even that seems to hurt. “Don’t shrug, Jongseong, tell me what happened.”

“I’m Jongseong again now?” he says, attempting a smile, but only one corner of his lips rises.

You sigh. Even in this state, he has to be a smart-ass. “You’re Jong when I need a textbook, Jongseong when you get into stupid fights,” you reply, and he smiles wider but immediately winces, hand coming up to the cut on his lip. You notice that his hand is still riddled with cracks, and whether they’re due to their dryness or to this fight doesn’t matter—”Wait here,” you say, and go rummage through some drawers for plasters. “She forgot some spots.” You feel Jongseong’s eyes on your face as you patch him up to the best of your abilities.

“I don’t want to tell you what happened. I’ll do the job of hating these idiots for the both of us, so don’t concern yourself with them,” he says, apparently not caring that the idiots in question can hear his every word.

He keeps his promise—you never hear another word from him about the cause of the fight. 

Later, you find out through other means, namely Sunoo’s questionably remarkable ability to unearth any and all gossip, that in the locker rooms after Phys Ed, someone had started Jake on the topic of Yunjin, who had been recently revealed as his girlfriend. They’d apparently kept it secret because it was just fooling around at first, and only later had gotten serious enough for them to parade around the school as the couple. 

It had been an unremarkable conversation until Jake said, “You guys know Y/N from our class? She saw us in the staff parking lot once, and I was sure we’d be busted then. But she didn’t tell anyone.” And just like that, the conversation turned to you, someone who was usually never a topic among these boys, jocks, soccer players, “the kind of people who peak in high school and still have a superiority complex at forty,” as Sunoo describes them. 

He has a harder time explaining what happened next, can’t quite look you in the eye as he recounts what was said. “So, this is what they say, apparently someone said that you used to be obsessed with Sunghoon, then with Jake, and Sunghoon said you… Well, he said you were pathetic, that asshole, and that you had been so easy to lead on, then Jake joined in, saying the same things, basically, how funny it was seeing you so obviously in love with him when he would never give you a chance…” He looks at you worriedly, but you tell him to go on. “And so that’s when Jay got up and just straight-up punched Jake in the face. And while Jake was trying to figure out what happened, Jay punched Sunghoon, and then they both got on him, pushing him, but when he wouldn’t stop throwing punches, they started fighting, too. I think they all got some good ones in before the other boys were able to break them apart and the P.E. teacher arrived…”

But that would be later. Now, sitting with Jongseong in the nurse’s station, tears falling onto the plasters you place on his hand, nothing matters but him. You don’t need the details—he’s hurt, he got hurt over you, you feel as though every cut on his body may well have been done by your own hand. You’ve never felt so guilty for something you didn’t do. Your voice trembles when you speak; you’re unable to look at him, at his busted eye. “I just don’t want you to get hurt for me.”

Without missing a beat, he says, “What else would I get hurt for?”

You can only meet his eyes for a split second. Even like this, he manages to look at you with the same softness that has haunted you since the night you met 28-year-old Jongseong, that has rendered all thoughts of anything other than him meaningless since the day your gaze drifted down to his lips just weeks ago. “Jong…” is all you can mutter as you look down at your hands holding each others’, your lips trembling.

He raises his bandaged hand, still not used to his dominant side being ineffective for now, then lowers it when he realizes. Clumsily, he pats your hair with his left hand. “Don’t cry, please…”

Jake’s head pops out from behind the curtain. “Y/N, I’m really sorry—”

“Not right now, man,” Jay quickly interrupts. Jake pathetically disappears behind the curtain again.

“Just promise me you won’t do this again.”

“Y/N…”

“Promise me,” you say, more demanding this time, sticking out your pinky finger. Jay, hesitant, looks between your outstretched finger and your face a few times, but eventually gives in.

The nurse, upon coming to check on the boys, catches you with Jongseong and chases you out immediately. You sulk back to study hall, where everyone’s head perks up the moment you walk in. “They’re okay,” you reassure vaguely, and unenthusiastically answer their many questions. It’s only a few minutes until the bell rings, and you’re free to go then.

--

jong so… guess who got a five-day suspension

you you idiot what did your parents say?

jong they’re not happy i have to do all the household chores for a month

you boo-hoo

jong not sure why i came here thinking i’d get some comfort…

you … are you feeling better?

jong a little bit the nurse gave us some really strong painkillers but i’m okay because there’s a pretty girl that’s going to drop off the homework for me after school every day :)

you oh did you ask chaewon to do that?

jong um no i was talking about you ..if that’s okay

you haha i know i just wanted you to say it straight up

jong ykw maybe i should just ask chaewon

you i’ll see you tomorrow jong!!

jong :) see you tomorrow pretty 

 --

The months that separate your return to school and graduation come and go in the blink of an eye. Jongseong can’t come to school the last day before the holidays or the first four days after, and he’s grounded in-between. Things change bit by bit with every day you visit him—To give him the homework, you tell his parents, although there isn’t much to do when the semester isn’t in full swing, and you could’ve easily sent him pictures. The first time, you spend more time scouring the pictures and trinkets in his room than actually talking to him, and awkwardly give him a half-hug when he tells you he won’t be able to hang out at all during the break before practically running out of his house, your heart beating a thousand miles a minute from the innocent contact. By the fourth time, you lie together on his bed and talk about your plans for college, your hands sitting centimeters apart on the navy sheets. You haven’t dared touch his hand since that day in the nurse’s station.

You’re window-shopping with Kazuha when you spot the hand cream you had seen yourself gifting Jongseong in your well-given vision. Buying it is one thing, actually giving it to him is another, an awkward, stuttery situation in which the wrapping done by the store employee suddenly seems over-the-top and out-of-place. But Jongseong seems to like it—it’s the last day of his suspension, his black eye is now a yellow-ish color, he can smile without risking splitting his lip in two. He applies it immediately, tells you he’ll make sure to wear it every day until the end of winter. You find yourself wishing there was something you could give him for every season so he wouldn’t go a day without thinking of you. When you leave, he bashfully thanks you for making sure he doesn’t fall behind and says he’s excited to see you at school the next day. You hardly know what to do with yourself, so you squeak out a “me too” and slip out the door.

His first day back is a Friday. It starts with Mathematics, a class in which you sit by each other. You remember the first week of classes when Kazuha and Sunoo had ran to sit with each other, expressly because they knew that if he saw you were sitting alone, he’d take the seat next to you, just to better torment you all year. You’d resented it then; it couldn’t make you happier now. Your body is humming with nervous energy, your foot tapping relentlessly against the tiled floor. When he appears in the doorframe, you wave at him as if he’d forgotten his seat in three weeks of absence. His elbow brushes against yours as he sits down.

Between the two of you, friendship blossoms over these months. To the detriment of everyone around you, you continue to bicker as you always have, but it’s now clearly done out of habit, out of affection, even, than out of actual dislike of each other. He and Heeseung slowly integrate your small group of three, and before you know it, it feels as though there have always been five of you. Together, you welcome spring.

In January, to thank you for helping him to pick out his mom’s birthday present, Jongseong treats you to some tteokbokki, which you said you’d been craving all week. He orders the spiciest one, then has to take a sip of water between every bite. You laugh at his teary eyes and red face while you devour the bright red rice cakes easily. 

In February, he makes a show of giving you and Kazuha and Heeseung and Sunoo some homemade chocolates, saying it’s a friend thing. You find out that evening that the others each have five in their box—there are twenty in yours. It’s one of the things that makes you second guess what sort of feelings he has for you. For years, you’ve been convinced he harbored strong feelings of disdain for you; now, he seems to enjoy your friendship. You’re scared to read too much into anything, because if Jongseong is well-liked throughout school, it’s for a reason: he’s nice. To everyone. Even to you, too, nowadays. But if nice is giving five chocolates, what is giving twenty?

A sudden realization hits you in March—Jongseong appears at your door, drenched from the rain, a bag of your favorite snacks in hand. “You weren’t at school today. I had to find out you were sick from Kazuha,” he says as if she was a random classmate of yours and not your best friend, as if he should be the first to know about these kinds of things. Your mom rushes him in, finds him so charming in the five minutes they converse that she decides he should stay over for dinner, and as you watch him laughing with her, you think, I haven’t thought of 28-year-old Jongseong in ages. I’ve only thought of you. And although you can trace the start of your feelings to that dream-like experience you had, you can now say with confidence that it’s not the only reason for them.

College application results come out in April, right on his birthday. The five of you celebrate together at an American-style diner, gorging yourselves on crispy bacon and chocolate chip pancakes. Kazuha is going back to Japan, almost a decade after moving to South Korea—”I’m gonna miss you guys, but I miss takoyaki and my grandma more right now.” Heeseung has been accepted into the Engineering department at the country’s top university. You, Sunoo and Jongseong are all heading to the same place: you for Screenwriting, which you’ve known since you were one of the winners of the scholarship contest last October, Sunoo for Communications, whatever that is, and Jongseong for European History and Literature with a minor in German, that freak. It’s a good university, and it’s not far from home. The way Jongseong tells you about his acceptance sticks with you: he doesn’t say, They accepted me, too, or, I’m going to the same university as you. He says, We’ll be together.

May is filled with afternoons at the park when you should all be studying for exams. Your mom keeps asking when she’s going to see “that wonderful boy” again. Your friendship with Jongseong has given him new ways of teasing you—after four years of near-kleptomaniac tendencies, he’s finally stopped stealing your erasers and has instead started to let his gaze linger on your face, to call you pretty when you least expect it, to tuck your hair behind your ear. You hate it most when he asks you whether there’s something from your romance novels or movies that you want him to recreate. “Is there a field big enough nearby that I can walk through at the break of dawn, Mister Darcy-style?” he’ll say, or “I’ve always wanted to try that upside-down kiss from Spider-Man. It’s a classic, really.” 

Summer comes early in June. You need to bring a two-liter water bottle and a hand fan to your exams, and you’ve never felt such relief as when it was all over. After endless pictures with your parents and siblings, just your parents, just your siblings, then Kazuha and Sunoo, together, then separately, then with Heeseung and Jongseong as well, Kazuha forces you and Jongseong together, watching with a smile as he shyly wraps an arm around your waist and you awkwardly throw up a peace sign. It’s your first picture of just the two of you.

In July, you and Jongseong unlock a new first: saying goodbye. He’s leaving to stay with his American family as he does every summer. You show up at his house the day before at four p.m. “to help him pack,” you say, but it’s Jongseong, and he finished packing two days ago. So instead, you sit on his desk chair, he on his bed, and you fight back tears. “You’re coming back, right?” you ask, like he’s leaving to go to war and not Seattle. Amusement and affection flicker in his eyes. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t throw four more years of being a pain in your ass away, would I?” he says, and you smile, because you know it’s going to be much more than four years.

But he doesn’t just leave you with a few nice words. Avoiding your gaze, he hands you an envelope. Inside is a single ticket, a two-month membership for your city’s arthouse cinema that you can only go to when they have student deals or when your parents have had enough of your begging. You can’t even begin to imagine how much this must’ve cost. “Jong…” you murmur, in awe at the thin slip of paper between your hands. “This is incredible. Thank you so much.”

Jongseong looks down at his feet, fighting a smile as he kicks the invisible rocks that obviously litter the floor of his bedroom. “I thought you’d get bored without me around, so, that way you can entertain yourself, I guess… And if you run into any film bros next year, you’ll have seen as many pretentious movies as them.”

You burst into laughter then, and, without thinking, wrap your arms around his neck, thanking him over and over again. It takes him a second, but he wraps his arms around your waist and says it’s no big deal.

As you walk down the path from your house, he calls out your name. “Don’t be a stranger,” he says.

You smile. “Never.”

So, he’s not here for summer. Kazuha is working in her parents’ ramen restaurant to make some money before leaving, even Heeseung leaves two weeks into July for Seoul to visit some relatives there and get accustomed to life in the big city. You only get to laze around with Sunoo, but even he eventually leaves for his grandparents’ house by the sea, making you promise you’ll come visit him at some point, otherwise he’ll “die of boredom.” 

It’s August now, and your brain and body alike buzz with restlessness. You go to the cinema almost every day, making the best of your subscription. If you’re not going around your house looking for spider webs with your vacuum cleaner, you’re riding random bus lines and discovering parts of your town you’ve never set foot in before. If you’re not making your way through your never-ending pile of unread books, you’re creating your own stories, finally taking the time to properly outline and draft the one-line ideas you’ve had sitting in your Notes app, preparing yourself for the start of your degree. Your mind is taken up with love stories. From Romeo & Juliet to Dirty Dancing to Book Lovers, you can’t get enough of the genre. You become particularly obsessed with stories involving time travel, rewatching After Time and Lovely Runner like they contain some precious knowledge. By the end of the month, you’ve turned your life into an eight-episode TV series—a desperate girl makes a wish on a star only to discover she is fated to marry the one boy she hates most. You know you’d watch that. You send Sunoo and Kazuha the pilot, and after calling you insane numerous times but also heaping on praises, Sunoo says this: lol your going through jay withdrawals.

It shakes you so much you’re not even compelled to message back you’re*.

But he’s not wrong. The more you let yourself admit it, the more you realize how true it is: you miss Jongseong. You text once in a while, you’ve even stayed up late talking on the phone a couple of times, but you miss him, his corporeal form, having his gaze on you, having the possibility but never the courage to touch him. Every day, there’s something you want to tell him about. The cats huddling around a young neighborhood kid as he pours milk into a bowl, the clearance sale at your local library, most books for one buck only, the actor from an 90s Hong Kong film you swear has the exact same smile as him. You don’t want to bother him, so you write letters instead. Some you send, some you don’t—the ones you keep hidden in your drawer usually hint too obviously at your feelings for him. Some of them don’t just hint and contain lines of your declarations: I miss you, everything I see reminds me of you, I want to check that your bruises have healed completely even though the last trace of them faded months ago. You keep these letters a secret, even from Sunoo and Kazuha, who would never let you live down such woebegone, down bad behavior.

You do it because it feels good, getting all of your feelings out on paper. You’re a romantic at heart, so you’re prone to over-exaggeration when it comes to things like these—but everything that you write remains based in truth. You’d started with a postcard of your hometown, jokingly writing, Don’t forget where you came from. How is it over there? and he’d actually replied with a postcard of his own, filling it from top to bottom. You easily went from these small postcards to multiple pages of stream-of-consciousness-like writing. You think it’s the most romantic thing you’ve ever done—although you’re not sure he feels the same way, considering he still writes to the German pen pal Ms. Schumacher had assigned him in your first year of high school. No one else’s correspondence had lasted more than four months because she’d immediately forgotten to make sure you kept in touch regularly.

I ran into Jake Sim at the city library, you write one day. You’ve replied to everything in his latest letter, so you’re now catching him up on your recent adventures. He was checking out some books about Linguistics, of all things—he bought me bubble tea afterwards and told me that the injury he got last April was actually a relief. Did you know his father was a big name in soccer here? Apparently, he never wanted to be a soccer player that badly, and he wants to do Linguistics and Social Anthropology, who would’ve guessed it. He’s like Troy Bolton if High School Musical was about Humanities and not singing. Anyways, you probably don’t want me to go on and on about him, so I won’t, but we did talk about that fight you guys had back in December. He apologized for it, to you and me both, although he didn’t go into much detail — Sunoo is still the only one who’s had the balls to tell me exactly what happened, and he wasn’t even there! — and I was reticent at first, but he seemed genuine. He said he didn’t even hang out with Sunghoon or Yunjin or any of those people anymore, that it was only out of convenience really, and that he hopes starting university will be like turning over a new leaf. Well, he could be full of shit, who knows. As I sat there listening to him I wondered what it was I used to see in him. He’s nice enough, but we only spoke about him for the entire hour. He asked me no questions that weren’t “and you?” so it was a bit exhausting. 

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you.

You look at your words, smiling to yourself—this is one of the times where you find yourself erring from the topic at hand, instead indulging in sappiness and nostalgia. You write about how your opinion of Jongseong has changed over these months, how it wasn’t seeing him as your husband in all those years that had really shaken things up, but rather that day in the nurse’s station, the frightening colors around his eye, his attitude like it was natural that he would get hurt like this for you. You write, Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

“I’m going to the Post Office for a package soon, Y/N. Are you done with your letter?” your mom calls from the staircase landing.

“Give me five minutes!” you call back.

You forage through your drawer for a new sheet of paper and re-write your letter, making sure to leave any compromising parts out and fold both letters into neat squares—one that will cross the seas and reach Jongseong, one that will live out its days in the darkness of your crowded drawer. You’ve run out of envelopes, so you go look for one in your parents’ office. Your mom calls out your name again, impatient to leave — if she sends her package off before twelve p.m., it will get to the receiver tomorrow, and she’s hell-bent on getting perfect five-star Vinted reviews — so you hurriedly put your letter in the envelope, close it, stamp it, and write Jongseong’s name and address on the back. The other letter you absent-mindedly throw in your drawer with the dozens of other letters in which you’d crossed the line.

--

A few weeks later, like an apparition, Jongseong stands before you again.

He’s tanner from months under the Washington sun, from afternoons spent at his family’s lake house, on their boat. His hair is slightly shorter and suits him even better; you don’t recognize any of the clothes he wears. He grumbles as his mother goes back-and-forth between hugging him, staring at him worriedly and reminding him to call at least twice a week while his father unpacks the trunk. “I’ll only be a thirty-minute train ride away, Mom,” he says. 

He’s still Jong.

You moved in yesterday, and you’re now waiting for your new roommate, who, after five minutes of deliberating whether she should bring a jacket or not and finally decided against it, changed her mind the minute she stepped outside. 

It’s been two months since you last saw him. Shortly after sending your letter, you’d gone to stay with Sunoo’s grandparents for a week, just a day before he was set to come back from Seattle. Amid packing and other preparations, you haven’t had time to see each other. Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texted you. You replied that it wasn’t a problem, you told him which dorm you’d been assigned and found out his was the one next door.

When he notices you staring, he does a double-take. You wave at him, and even from this distance, you see the blush that creeps up his neck and takes over his face as he shyly waves back. You’ve never seen him like this—he’s always been either arrogant or friendly, never… flustered. He makes a motion as if to say, I’ll text you, and heads inside the building with his parents and all of his luggage.  

Indeed, he texts you some hours later while you’re sharing a piece of strawberry and matcha cake with your roommate Liz, whom you find out is half-German—Jongseong and your dad would probably love her for that simple fact. Some of the first things she’d asked you were what your astrological signs were and whether you wanted her to pull tarot cards for you when she was all done setting up her side of the room. Between that and her dyed blonde hair, you’d felt comfortable telling her all about Jongseong, the well and your dream. Unlike your skeptical and sarcastic friends, she’d nodded along to your every word, a serious expression on her face. “A sign from the universe,” she’d called it, and she gasped in excitement when his name appeared on your screen.

He sends you a link to a freshers’ week event, some potted plant sale happening on the main campus square, and asks if you’re free to go with him tomorrow. I need something to liven up that depressing room, he writes.

So that’s how you find yourselves among green plants of all shapes and sizes, searching for one that’s both low-maintenance and appealing to the eye. You’re glad that you have something to actually do—if you were just sitting at a café and having a conversation, you’re not sure you’d be able to stand the awkwardness. You’d chalked up his behavior on the day of his move-in to nerves, or to surprise upon seeing you so unexpectedly. But apparently, it wasn’t a one-time thing. He keeps clearing his throat as if he were sick with some cold, won’t look into your eyes for more than split seconds at a time, and in complete opposition to his usual confident, deliberate speech, talks in a quick and disorderly manner. And he’s either really caught a cold, or his ears have just permanently turned red. You ask him if something’s wrong a couple times, but he violently shakes his head, says, “No, what could be wrong?” then looks at you as if you might tell him what’s wrong.

When you’re alone again, you wonder what on earth could have happened over the summer that could make him change his behavior with you so radically. Did something happen in Seattle? Maybe he met someone there and doesn’t know how to tell you. Maybe you went overboard with your letters, he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, he wants to let you down easy but doesn’t know how to tell you. Or maybe—maybe you got impossibly pretty during those two months, and absence does make the heart grow fonder, as they say, and every thought you have about him, he has about you, but he doesn’t know how to tell you.

In any case, he’s hiding something.

The theory that he might want to stop being friends soon falls flat—the invitations to other freshers’ events keep coming, be it free wine & pizza taster sessions from the Wine Society, karaoke nights with the Taylor Swift Society or a shark movie marathon with the Bad Film Society, and he never turns you down when you tell him there’s something you want to visit in this new city of yours, even when the thing you want to visit in question is a bakery you have to queue in front of at seven a.m. if you want to get a pain au chocolat. In your defense, they turn out to be the best ones you and Jongseong have ever tried—although, to be fair, neither of you has been to France.

Things progressively return to normal. He’s able to make eye contact for more than three seconds again, he listens carefully and laughs along when you tell him about your week by the sea with Sunoo, he fills you in on what Heeseung’s been up to. One thing remains different, however—when you throw quips at him, he usually would’ve delighted in coming up with a better, wittier response, but now, he’ll roll his eyes at best, look at you amusedly and stay silent at worst. “Won’t you even entertain me?” you ask him once, to which he replies that you’re doing a good job entertaining yourself as is. 

Instead, he becomes more earnest. As per usual you badger him with questions like Aren’t I so pretty right now? or Isn’t my outfit so cute today? to get a reaction out of him, and if during your high school days he’d either fake a puking sound or look you up and down and grumble I guess, he now smiles and simply says Yes, you are, Yes, it is. It seems impossible to keep track of his attitude: one day, he’s one thing, the next, he’s another person entirely. 

It annoys you. You take his changing demeanor to mean that now that he’s a college student, he won’t indulge in your childish squabbles anymore, as though he was above all of that now, when just three months ago he was stalking your parents’ Facebooks to find unfavorable photos of you from when you were thirteen and using them as reaction pictures in your friends’ group chat. You think of your graduation day, of the box he’d given you, all done up in wrapper paper and a bow—he had filled it with every eraser he’d stolen from you over the years, he’d even gone so far as to date every single one of them, from the second of October freshman year to the twenty-eighth of November of your senior year. You didn’t count them, but there had to be at least a hundred. At the time, you’d just thought it was funny—but what if the gesture had meant something deeper than you’d realized? What if he was marking the end of something with that box? No more playing around, we’re adults now. But classes have barely started, you don’t know your way to the off-campus library, you aren’t a different person to who you were just weeks or even months earlier. Why is he acting like he is? You look at him, and you see the boy whose fault it was you had to buy a new eraser every week—who knows how many books you could’ve bought with that money. But when he turns to look at you, too, and your eyes meet, you’re suddenly assailed with the memories of that night, the kind eyes, the soft smile. 

Does his future capacity to love me already exist in his heart?

Your heartbeat speeds up and you have to look away.

--

From your letters, it seems to be much hotter back home than in Seattle—you talk of sunburns, of afternoons spent inside with the fan on maximum speed, of ice melting instantly and watering down your Coke Zeros, whereas Jay can walk around the city pleasantly and needs to bring a jacket if he’ll be out until late after sundown. And yet, as he reads your latest letter, his skin prickles feverishly, from the top of his head to the tip of his toes. He’d excitedly torn the envelope open the second it arrived in the mail, heart thumping as he counted the pages, at least three more than usual — he was always happy that you wanted to talk to him at all, so the fact that you had this much to tell him sent him over the moon — but he would have never expected what was awaiting him inside.

With a smile on his face, he read your replies to the questions he’d asked you last time, your reactions to everything he told you about, the live Mariners game, the lake house, the rides on the boat. He imagined you as you sat at your desk in your room he’d only seen once, when you’d held a small party for your birthday and he, having arrived first, was honored with a tour of your house. He imagined your smile, the way you played with your hair when you focused on something, wondered whether you pondered every word before you wrote it down as he did or whether you poured your thoughts out onto the page without hesitation. His smile faltered when Jake Sim’s name appeared in your neat handwriting, but he was relieved to find out your description of him now was miles away from the one at the start of the school year. 

Then you start writing about him. Him, Park Jongseong, and your words startle him so much, it’s like he’d forgotten he was the recipient of this letter in the first place.

But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. 

He’s been lying comfortably in his bed, but he sits up the moment his eyes take in these words. If there is one topic the two of you have practically never broached, it’s this exactly: your relationship, the changes it’s gone through this past year. Except for a few mentions made in jest here and there, you’ve always conveniently ignored the fact that not so long ago, you were at each other’s throats. At least, you were at his throat, and Jay let you be, let you think the hatred went both ways, when in reality all he wanted was to keep you close one way or another. To him, anything was better than indifference.

But here you are, writing about how you feel about him, not in hints, not in jokes, but actually telling him black and white what goes through your head when you think of him—in other words, everything he’s been dying to know ever since he met you and especially ever since you started warming up to him a few months ago.

I have never told you about that night because I know it’ll just be more fodder for you to endlessly tease me, and I haven’t even mentioned it in these letters that I write and don’t send. Sometimes I debate the ethics of it—if I know something about our futures, isn’t it right that you know, too? But then again, I still hesitate whether what happened was real or not. As with anything, the more time passes, the more I forget about it. What kind of cheese you’d put on the pasta, the movie that played in the background, whether the stairs were carpeted or wooded—these details have evaded me by now. All I clearly remember is your face and how I felt, seeing it then, seeing it the next day at school, ten years younger, the same exact person in what felt like a different universe. As much as I tried to deny it, I know now that it was no coincidence—I was talking about it with Sunoo and he said that sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. He’s not always a dimwit. And he’s right, the kind of love I felt from you in that dream — or not-dream — I’ve yearned for it ever since I first watched Pride & Prejudice, the 2005 film to be precise, when I was ten. But with you? That was what I couldn’t believe at first. I don’t think I need to explain why—you were there, I think you knew how I felt about you for over three years, it’s not like I tried to hide it.

Then you turned up and the sight of you was enough to bring back all the feelings from that dream. You must’ve wondered why my behavior with you switched so suddenly—well, a glimpse into marital bliss is sometimes enough for a girl to make some changes in her life. Yet I valiantly tried to convince myself that any flutter of my heart around you was due to this stupid dream, to a version of you my brain had conjured up because it was starved for affection, and you happened to be at the forefront of my mind, even if not for the right reasons. But it was no use. I had entertained the possibility that this future was really mine, and I couldn’t go back to seeing you as the boy who annoyed the living daylights out of me.

But Jong, if you weren’t you, I would’ve been confused for a week and then I would’ve gotten over it. I stayed confused for a while, and everything you did only served to confuse me further. I started to notice you more, to see you for who you were and not for the idea I had constructed of you in my head, I stopped taking note of only the things that reinforced this idea. And that changed everything.

Let’s get it out of the way: as much as I hate to admit it because it proves you right, I saw that you are indeed devastatingly handsome. It devastates me every time I have to look at that stupid, wonderful face of yours. And if aging is something you’re worried about, don’t be. I’ve seen you at 28, and let’s just say that your jaw somehow only gets more chiseled. I’ve realized that you don’t just participate in class to be a prick — except for when you contradict me in Literature, I know you only do that to piss me off, and yes, it works — but that you actually care about what we learn and that you don’t want the teacher to feel like they’re talking to a classroom full of students made out of bricks. I’ve also realized that you didn’t specifically pick German to be the one subject where you must beat me at all costs, you just actually really like German, even if I’m still undetermined as to why. And I can finally admit to myself—you are funny. Sometimes. There were so many times I had to stop myself from laughing at one of your idiotic puns because I could not bear to give you the satisfaction. That feeling when the worst person you know makes a funny joke, and all that. And as much as I’ve mocked you for it, I do actually like your laugh. I like that you’re only loud when you laugh, or sneeze, or get excited over something. You don’t scream, you don’t get angry, and I think that’s a lot for a boy fresh out of puberty. Or for any boy, really. 

But above all, you’re kind, Jong. I think it’s the best thing about you. I think it’s the best thing anyone can be. I see it in your patience with Heeseung when he starts one of his rants better reserved for Reddit than real life, I see it in the way you took Sunoo and Kazuha in stride, even though they’re a bit rough around the edges sometimes, I see it in the way you guide the freshmen at the start of every year, when all anyone does is complain about them, I see it in the gentleness with which you let down the girls who confess to you, even the more persistent ones. I used to think they were crazy, but I understand them more than ever now. I also used to think that all those kindnesses meant that the ones you occasionally showed me meant nothing more than that—occasional kindnesses. You were just a nice guy, occasionally so to me. But you sort of ratted yourself out when you gave me those twenty chocolates for Valentine’s.

Or, really, what made things clearer was that fight in December. I guess I was wrong—you do get angry. I remember a thought I had at the time: just when I think I know you, you do something to shake it all up. You punched two of the star soccer players of our school in the face because they said some mean, unimportant things about me. Thinking about it now, I still don’t understand it. Was it another one of your acts of kindness? 

And then I thought of those other times you helped me out. Do you remember them—the art project, the handwritten notes after my grandma passed away, you tearing Park Sunghoon a new one in the girls’ bathroom. I’m sure there are many more that I’ve dismissed simply because I did not want to see you in any other light than the one I’d decided to shine on you. 

Maybe I’m rewriting the past here, but I’ve been thinking about something lately. The theme today seems to be honesty, so I’ll lay myself bare and tell you something I haven’t told anyone yet, not even myself. The more I write, the more I become aware of its truth. I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. Maybe that’s why I kept buying erasers.

I don’t have the best memory — I suspect iron deficiency, it runs in my mom’s side of the family — but I do remember this. The first time I saw you. I haven’t noticed your face changing in real time, but I’m sure I’d laugh at how much of a baby you looked back then. Although I didn’t fare much better, I’m sure. Well, you’re the one that has all these embarrassing pictures of me, you freak, so I’m sure you could tell me. Moving on… 

I found you really cute. You were chatting to the person next to you, maybe it was Heeseung, I didn’t look properly—I only looked at you. Don’t laugh at me. It was the first day of high school, there was a nervous energy in the air, but you seemed happy to be there. You know I don’t have hordes of friends like you do, I don’t walk through life with people naturally gravitating towards me. I’m okay with it now, but it was something I struggled with back then. Kazuha, Sunoo and I have had each other since our elementary days, and I never needed more than that—but fifteen is the prime age for comparison, and as the weeks passed and we got used to being high schoolers, I listened to everyone sing your praises, I watched as you talked with all of our classmates, even our teachers, like you were old friends. But we sat next to each other in a couple of classes, and you wouldn't talk to me outside of partnered work. I, who wanted to be easily charmed by you like everyone else was, who thought maybe you’d help me come out of my shell. But it felt like sitting next to me was torture to you, like the boy whom I watched speak with ease to everyone else disappeared when I was around. And so — and I’m not proud of this — every smart remark in class, every joke that had the entire class roaring, every high five you gave out in the hallway, I started to despise them. And by association, I started to despise you. After that, it was easy to find fault in everything you did, my contempt was only enhanced by everyone’s admiration. But I’m not alone here. It went both ways, didn’t it? I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. I don’t blame us for how we acted, only for taking so long to get our heads out of our asses.

(I have to say, I also have a thing for hating people. Remind me to tell you about Na Jaemin and Shin Ryujin one of these days.)

Anyways, I think it’s because I had liked you so much at first that I could then seemingly hate you so much. But I never hated you, Jong, not really. I’m sorry if I gave you that impression. Can I take it all back now? 

Now that we’re entering university soon, I can’t help but look back on high school. This is what I want to know, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have the courage to ask you, because if your answer is the one I suspect, I don’t know how I’ll handle all the regret in my heart.

Have I been wrong about you this whole time? I thought you harbored the same negative feelings towards me as I had you since the moment you’d laid eyes on me, but all of a sudden, here you were, bloody, bandaged hand holding mine. Even with your busted eye, you looked like an angel next to all that white in the nurse’s station. I’ll never forget your words that day. Would you really not get hurt for anything else, Jong?

Your letter abruptly ends here, no concluding remarks, no wishing him a fun time in Seattle and looking forward to his next letter, no sign-off. It was as if someone cut you off before you could say everything you wanted, but then why send him this seemingly unfinished letter? It is all the more bizarre since your letters are usually meticulous: you write on every other line, it looks like you take your time with every single letter, the only disturbance in your otherwise perfect handwriting is your going back-and-forth between cursive and script s’s. But this particular letter looks rushed, your lines are sloppy, some words need to be read a few times over to be understood. What kind of state had you been in, writing these words? Jay’s heart swells, thinking that you were as moved writing as he was reading. He even looks through your letter again, wishing to find a tear stain somewhere, but there are none. Maybe he’s been watching too many of these romantic period dramas you always go on about.

He has to pace his room when he’s done reading your letter, but he feels trapped inside these four walls, so he dashes outside, saying that he’s getting some air when his relatives ask him where he’s off to in such a rush, and walks around the block five times. When he’s back in his room, he rereads your letter, eyes taking in each and every word slowly and carefully, making sure he doesn’t misread anything.

You like him. You, Y/N, like him, Jongseong, it’s a fact, it’s real, you said so yourself, you went into quite some detail about it, he can’t believe it, but it’s real, it’s written right there on the page, if anyone dares tell him he’s fooling himself, he can prove them wrong, you’re the one who said it.

The smile doesn’t leave his lips for the rest of the day, he can barely eat, he’s already full of happiness. He reads your words over and over before falling asleep, committing them to memory, dreaming about them, about you.

You. How should he respond to this? Are you even expecting a response? You seem to know he’s not impartial to you, either, although that’s an understatement. 

In the following days, the thought that you hadn’t meant to send him this letter nags at him. The abrupt ending, the absence of your usual Love, Y/N. The fact that this had come out of left field—none of your previous letters had even a romantic undertone, no matter how he tried in his own to hint at his missing you, the most reference to seeing each other again you would give him was It’ll be better to show you this in real life. The act of sending letters itself didn’t feel very platonic, but you never went there, so he didn’t, either. He had secretly yearned to have you this close all these years, he would never forgive himself if he ended up chasing you away now with his over-eagerness.

You had landed on something very real in your letter: I don’t think you liked that I didn’t like you and openly showed it, so used to being everyone’s favorite person you were. I remember how you showily tried to be nice to me after that, maybe you just wanted another friend, but I didn’t let you. He cursed his fifteen-year-old self, that idiot who couldn’t even speak to a girl no matter how much he wanted to, just because she was so pretty, he was afraid of saying something stupid and messing it up before it even had a chance to start.

On days when you’d had particularly nasty or petty arguments — it could get pretty bad, at the start, before you both started maturing and realized how ridiculous you were, especially with your classmates telling you to keep it classy — he’d stay up all night, wondering why you hated him so much in the first place, what on Earth he could’ve done to warrant such vitriol. Now, finally, he knew, and he could only resent the fact that no one had invented time machines yet, so he could nip his useless ego in the bud; so he could tell younger Jay not to take it personally, that you had your reasons for disliking him, that even if you hadn’t, the world won’t end if someone doesn’t like him like everyone usually does. 

Because, he hates to admit, that was what had done it for Jay. He couldn’t stand that someone — not just someone, but one of the prettiest girls he’d ever seen, a girl he’d been hyping himself up to talk to every day, but never found the courage to — didn’t immediately fall for his charms. And not just that, but even showed just how much she disliked him. You looked him up-and-down with disdain, made disgusted faces at his jokes, rolled your eyes when he spoke up in class. It made him burn with anger, but he also weirdly enjoyed it—at least, you were paying attention to him. So, he amped it up. Talked louder, laughed louder, hovered around you. He even stole your erasers, wrote the date on which he’d taken them, kept them in a box on his desk that he looked at every time he studied at home. He aimed to beat you in every class you shared, even though neither of you cared that much about grades—the annoyed look on your face when he boasted about the two points he’d gotten over you was enough satisfaction.

All in all, he behaved like a child, and you reciprocated in like.

Until you didn’t.

It was a random Tuesday when something in your attitude towards him shifted. It wasn’t a complete 180, but he noticed everything about you, so even a slight change of your tone was obvious to him. You started using your nickname for him more often than his full name—he never told you, but of course he loved that you didn’t call him Jay like everyone else, that you had your own way of addressing him. It was a sign to him that the two of you had something special, even if it was on the opposite end of the spectrum of what he wanted with you.

He again spent sleepless nights wondering what had caused this change: was it something he had done, or something within you? It was a welcome change, that much was sure, but he was initially too confused to take it in stride. He’d long made peace with the fact that he’d never have you the way he really wanted, so he was fine with whatever this was—but now, you were changing, your interactions were tinged with something like shyness, the distance between you felt greater than ever. He tried to keep up his smart-ass appearances around you, but you only indulged in your old habits once in a while, as though you had grown tired of arguing with him, even of giving him the time of day.

So he resolved himself to adapting his behavior to yours. If you stared at him intently like his face was a puzzle you were trying to solve, he let you, rested his head on his palm and smiled as he stared back at you. Finally, he had an excuse to look at you without you threatening to punch him or saying a picture would last longer. He knew they did, he’d had to resort to scrolling through Sunoo’s and Kazuha’s Instagrams to find any photos of you. Yours was private and at the time, you would’ve probably cursed him out if he’d sent a follow request. If you seemed too annoyed or upset over something, he’d leave you alone, he’d do something nice to let you know you didn’t need to have your guards up at all times around him. If you seemed to silently call for a truce of hostilities, he easily complied.

Then, after a few weeks, your petty arguments resumed, but those too were different—if before they felt filled with real disdain and irritation, they now seemed to be a comfortable habit to fall back on, almost like a fun hobby. Those, too, Jay readily welcomed.

And so things changed in a direction Jay had never thought would one day be possible. You gave him no explanations, nor did he ask for any, and soon he stopped losing sleep over the why’s and the how’s and simply let himself enjoy the fact that you now had the semblance of a friendship, that he could compliment you and pass it off as amical teasing, that he could learn things about you like what you spent your weekends doing, what your relationship with your family was like, whether you were a dog or cat person, whether you wanted to visit his farm in Stardew Valley. 

Unsurprisingly, this only enhanced his already pathetically strong feelings for you. He worried over how to make sure this wasn’t some sort of 30-day friendship trial you had wanted to test out. He reveled in the fact that his top university of choice was the one you had already been accepted to. He now knew what it felt like to have you smile at him, smile because of him, and he never wanted again to live in a world where this was not a daily occurrence. 

He now sort of has an answer—your letter doesn’t make it very clear, it makes him think again that you really had not meant to send it, but you seem to have had a dream. A dream of him, 28-year-old him, to be precise, of your life together—he’s not sure. At this point in time, he doesn’t care much, either. Whether it was a dream or a real vision of the future that you had, all that matters is that it allowed you to see him in a new light, a light which he had hoped for years would one day appear to you, and it had changed things. And now, you liked him.

You said so yourself.

He’s at a loss for words. He can’t concentrate for long enough to put all his thoughts in order, he can’t make himself calm down and write his feelings down. He has to pack to go home, once he’s home, he’ll have to pack for university. But it’s only two weeks from now to the day you meet again, and it’ll be better to say what he wants to say in person, anyway.

Is it okay if I respond to your letter in person? I think I’ll be too busy these two coming weeks, he texts you.

And then those two weeks pass like two seconds and you’re there, a few meters away from him. All the speeches he’d prepared in his head, from grand declarations of love to laid-back admittances of Yeah, I like you too, you’re cool, I guess, they all vanish from his head. For fourteen days he’s been going through scenarios upon scenarios of your reunion, what you’d look like, what he’d say, how you’d react. But now that he can actually see you, now that he would just have to walk a few steps if he wanted to touch you, hug you, kiss you — hoping that was something you wanted to do — he freezes. He forgets how his body works, the part in his brain that’s meant to manage language ability fails him. HIs mom calls him over, urging him into his new dorm building, and all he can do is wave back at you like an idiot.

When finally he musters the courage to text you, what he hopes will be the day that starts your romantic relationship turns into the day Park Jongseong realizes how much of a loser he is. For the first hour, he can’t look at you, he can’t get through a sentence without stuttering out half of his words, he runs out of things to say in record time. All he can think of is how easy it’d be to grab one of your hands, hold it in his and walk around this stupid potted plant sale as if the two of you were two halves of a whole. He doesn’t even want a potted plant, his roommate already has five, he just wanted an excuse to see you. He steals glances at you when you’re looking elsewhere, and he notices everything about you tenfold now that he can, now that caring about you doesn’t need to be in vain any longer. He tells himself that he just needs to calm down a bit, even when you have the confirmation that the person you’re about to confess to already likes you, revealing your feelings to someone is always nerve-wracking, the two of you haven’t seen in each other in a while, he’ll talk to you once his heart gets out of his throat.

But you’re acting normal. Suspiciously so. You’re acting like you never told him you liked him, like nothing has changed between you. He rereads your letter the second he gets back to his dorm. He’s not crazy, it’s written right there, I like you, Jong. I think I have for a long time, longer than either of us thinks. He knows the words by heart now, but he checks them anyway. So why are you acting like you never said anything? Had you really not meant to send that letter? Did Jay actually intrude on your private thoughts by reading words that had never meant to be seen by another soul?

You continue to behave as you usually would around him, but if he couldn’t go back to vicious bickering when things changed the first time, he can’t go back to friendly bickering now that things — for him — have changed a second time. He doesn’t even want friendly to be in your shared vocabulary anymore. 

So he stops giving in. If you make fun of him, he just stands there with an unimpressed if amused look on his face. If you pedantically correct him on something, he just nods his head and accepts it. He can tell you’re bothered by it, but he needs to show you that he doesn’t want to go on being just friends with you—he wants to compliment you without having to pass it off as teasing, he wants to stare at you with hearts in his eyes without having to look away when you catch him, he wants to spend every waking second of every day with you, he wants to hold your hand, hold you. 

He could wait for things to change slowly again, but why wait when he could help things along?

--

It’s nine p.m. on a Saturday and you’re sneaking Jongseong into your dorm. Liz is away for the weekend, gone back home to celebrate her aunt’s birthday, so you have the room to yourselves. It took some convincing to get him to come — What if we get caught coming in, What if your T.A. sees us, What if I get reported to campus police — and so when your verbal reassurances failed to work, you resorted to blinking up at him through your lashes and that did the trick.

Jongseong was in many ways unlike any other man you’d ever met; in some other ways, he was the exact same.

Plastic bag of the tteokbokki you’d asked for in hand, he looks around the deserted hallways like someone might jump out of nowhere and beat him to a pulp at any given moment. At this time of the week, everyone’s out partying or holed up in their dorms, presumably either to rest or because of a lack of friends so early on in the semester. You grab his free hand and hurry him along to the elevator—once inside, it takes you a few seconds before you realize you’re still holding it, and you retract your hand quickly while he just smiles. 

You settle yourselves on the floor—comfort is not worth getting gochujang sauce on your white sheets. You sit criss-cross in front of each other, the food between the two of you, and catch up on your first week of class in-between bites of spicy, gooey rice cakes and fish cakes. You wonder, if one day you and Jongseong are no longer friends, how long you will keep associating tteokbokki with him.

When you tell him that you and Jake share a class, Introduction to Film Studies, he gives you a look. “What’s that face for?” you ask.

“Did you guys sit next to each other?”

You chuckle. “Of course. We only knew each other in that room, it would’ve been weird not to.”

He continues to stare at you. After a while, he muses, “You’re not…?”

You halt in your tracks, rice cake at the end of your plastic fork hanging in the air, halfway between the container and your mouth. “Whatever you’re thinking, the answer is no.” Still in love with him, interested in him again, you don’t know the exact details of Jongseong’s thought process, all you know is he has nothing to worry about—if it’s something he worries about.

When a smile slowly grows on his lips and he nods, saying, “Okay, good,” you let yourself think it might be.

Later, you’re ten minutes into a senseless blockbuster movie when he suddenly pauses it. It snaps you out of a trance—his hand was awfully close to yours, so is his shoulder, his thigh, his knee, everything, really, and you haven’t been able to concentrate on anything but the warmth radiating off his skin and the intensity with which you crave to feel it intentionally rather than accidentally. When he speaks, there’s something serious in his tone that makes you nervous. “Y/N,” he says as he turns to you, and now his face is awfully close, too. There’s still many centimeters separating you, but in this tiny, barely lit-up room, he feels closer than ever before. “Do you remember when I said I’d reply to your letter in real life?”

You tilt your head. “Yeah, that was ages ago.”

“Well, I thought I’d do it now.”

“Now?”

He takes a deep, shaky breath. “Now.”

And then those safe centimeters suddenly disappear, and Jongseong’s lips are on yours. It’s a brief, chaste kiss, so quick you wonder if it even happened when he leans back again.

“I like you, too,” he says, and your heart stops.

“W-what?” is all you can say back, eyes wide like he’s just admitted to killing someone rather than reciprocating your feelings.

His confident facade quickly crumbles. “God, this was so much cooler in my head, I-I’m sorry.” He pulls something out of his sweatpants pocket, pages folded over and over into a tiny square. As he unfolds them, you recognize your paper, your handwriting—but what do your letters have anything to do with him kissing you, of all things? “I don’t think you meant to send this. But I’m glad you did.”

He hands you the pages and your eyes skim over the words, not detecting anything out of the ordinary, until—But it got me thinking about your fight again. Reflecting on it now, I can say that it was a turning point for me in my perception of you. You remember this line, because you had made sure to strike it and everything that came afterward out when you rewrote the letter that you would actually send Jongseong. So how was he giving you this? 

“I-How do you have this?” you ask, voice trembling. You feel as though your heart overflows with all kinds of emotions, and so your eyes follow, tears staining your lower lashes. 

But Jongseong is not one to let you hide things from him. “Hey, no, it’s okay,” he says, warm hands coming to cup your face. “Look at me.” You have no choice but to oblige—his gaze is somehow both soft and stern, a mix of concern and determination. “Did you mean what you wrote in here?” You nod. “Then everything’s okay. You don’t know how happy I was reading this.”

The tension in your body slowly starts to fade. “Really?”

“Really. I cherish every single word in there.”

“Really?” you repeat, and he chuckles.

“Really.”

Your heartbeat speeds up as you gaze into his eyes, as you let yourself bask in the affection and endearment you find there. You can’t quite comprehend what’s happening. The letter, the kiss, his confession, your inadvertent confession, it’s all a mess in your head; so sudden, but such a long time coming at the same time. You never imagined that things would change so quickly—less than a year ago, you thought Jongseong was the most irritating person on this planet. After meeting his 28-year-old self, you thought it’d take ages for the two of you to be on such good terms. But now, just a week into your first semester of university, belly full of tteokbokki and Sprite, you like each other enough not only to be in the same room without hurling insults at each other but to actually be smiling at each other, willingly at that.

Your eyes drift down to his lips, just like in the hallway all those months ago, and the words slip out before you can stop them. They’re a mere whisper—”Kiss me again.”

Jongseong doesn’t need to be told twice. Still cupping your face, he bridges the gap between the two of you again, and this time, when your lips meet, they don’t come apart so quickly. It’s your first kiss, and it’s nothing short of magical, better than any romance novel could’ve prepared you for. His lips are warm and soft against yours, moving slowly, gingerly; as if he’s scared to take any wrong step, he lets you control the pace, follows every tilt of your head this way and that. It’s a relief that he seems to know as little about this as you do—his hands haven’t moved from your face, yours are on his knees, all you can do is focus on the movement of your lips, to think of anything else at the same time would be overwhelming. 

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he suddenly says, face still so close you can feel his breath on your lips as he speaks. 

“Hm?” you hum, body reeling from the kiss.

“I’ve liked you from the start,” he repeats, grinning—he looks relieved, like he’s been waiting to say these words for a long time. “I can’t believe this is happening after all these years. Or at all, really.”

“I think I did, too.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that in your letter.”

Your eyes widen and you bury your face in your hands as Jongseong laughs. “You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” you mumble.

He smooths over your hair with one hand, brings your face back up with the other. “Don’t worry. I won’t ever make you regret this.”

Your brain and heart are too all over the place for you to come up with a coherent answer, so you lean in and reconnect your lips to his. It’s already becoming your favorite sensation, feeling him smile into the kiss, threading your fingers in his soft hair.

Time passes delicately like this, the two of you on your single bed, in the sheets that you bought three weeks ago. A lot of it is spent kissing and learning how to fall into each other’s rhythm, but you also spend hours talking, comparing situations and how you’d experienced them. You thought his occasional acts of kindness were done out of guilt, evidence that he did have some morals; he was trying to show he cared about you. He thought you’d despised him from the moment you saw him; you reiterate in more detail than your letter what really happened, you say you wish you knew then what you know now. 

“But I never hated you, Jong. I think I wanted to believe that I did, but I never actually did.”

“You glared at me everytime I walked past like I killed a member of your family.”

You groan, ashamed of yourself. “I did, didn’t I?”

“You did,” he says, chuckling, placing a kiss on your forehead. His arms are around you, your head rests atop his heart—you’ve never felt more comfortable in your life. “But it’s okay. We’re here now, and I don’t want us to have any regrets about high school. We had a good time, didn’t we?”

You tilt your head up to look at him. “I’m sure you did, stealing all my erasers.”

He lets out a hearty laugh. Clearly, he’s very proud of his feat. “Hey, I gave all of them back.”

“And what am I going to do with a hundred erasers, Jong?” you ask, laughing too, pecking his cheek aggressively—your way of punishing him for a grave deed.

“Keep them as a token of my love for you,” he says, and your breath falters at the mention of that word. “In fifty years, it’ll be a sign that I’ve liked you since the beginning, I just had a funny way of showing it.”

“Fifty years, huh?”

He grins. “Fifty, a hundred, whatever. You’re not getting rid of me.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

You’re both smiling so wide, you can barely manage a kiss. He trails kisses from your lips to your ear. Holding you close, he whispers, “It’s always been you, Y/N. Always and only you.”

There may be thorns on the otherwise immaculate rose that is your life, but Park Jongseong was never one of them—all along, he was a bud waiting to bloom.

--

The more time passes, the more you wonder whether that night you had seen in your vision will ever come. There’s been evenings similar to it—crashing the minute you came home from a long day on set, telling yourself you’d take a fifteen-minute power nap only to wake up three hours later and coming downstairs to find your husband cooking dinner, cleaning the kitchen, taking care of your son or simply watching TV, but waiting for you, always waiting for you. He seems as happy now watching you come down the stairs as he was then finding your face among all the students flocking out of lecture halls. 

The details are blurry now, but many small things seem to be different from what you’d seen. He still tries to recreate your favorite meal, but it’s not pasta all'arrabbiata, it’s laksa, because your first date as an official couple was to a Malaysian restaurant, not an Italian one. He’s still the best father you know, but you have one son, not twin girls—although that offer to “give him a younger sibling to play with” is always on the table. Even the house you live in is different from the one in your dream, which has now become nothing more than a funny anecdote you share with people when they ask you the story of how you and Jongseong met.

You think of Sunoo’s words from all those years ago: Sometimes, we want something so badly, we conjure it up for ourselves. Had 18-year-old you been in such denial over her feelings for Jongseong that she’d had to convince herself a magical well had bestowed a crazy dream upon her to admit that, yes, there was something there, something other than childish hatred?

It doesn’t matter anymore. Months pass without you thinking about that well, anyway. 

Tonight, you come home late from work after having had to do last-minute changes to the script for your current project, a movie that starts shooting in a few days. Jongseong texted you that he was going to bed an hour or so again, so you’re greeted by a plate of japchae covered in film paper. The post-it note stuck to it reads, I’m afraid of the repercussions of too much curry consumption on our son, so no laksa tonight my love. Hope you like it. Come to bed quick. You were starving a second ago, but you decide food can wait—other things can’t.

You tiptoe up the stairs and into your son’s room, breathing in the scent of his hair and placing a kiss there. His hair is still worryingly sparse, but if he’s anything like his dad, it’ll come in a bit later than the other kids. You always thought babies with a full head of hair were freaky, anyway. He doesn’t budge a bit, sleeping like a log—his dad is another story, shuffling in bed the moment you step into your shared bedroom. He opens his arms wide, a silent invitation.

“You’re home,” he says as you attach yourself to his body, your leg hiked up over his, your face buried in the crook of his neck, your thumb caressing the start of stubble on his cheeks.

You smile. “I am.”

© asahicore on Tumblr, 2024. please do not repost, translate, or plagiarize my works. support your creators by reblogging and leaving feedback!

there was something… off about him. he was a little too pale, a little too perfect. the way his eyes seemed to glint in the fairy lights sent shivers down your spine, not the good kind. maybe it was the way he never seemed to eat anything, politely declining every dish offered with a charming smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. or maybe it was just a gut feeling, a primal instinct screaming that there was more to heeseung than met the eye.

as you nursed your lukewarm coffee, heeseung materialised beside you, a plate piled high with (uneaten) pasta in his hand. his smile, as always, was dazzling.

"hey there! i'm heeseung, from 3b. i’ve been meaning to meet you for a while! everyone's been raving about you."

you narrowed your eyes at him. "is that right?"

he chuckled, a sound a little too melodious. "absolutely! they say you make the best chocolate chip cookies on the floor." he gestured to the burnt offering on the table. "though, these brownies look like they could use some work."

a sarcastic snort escaped your lips. "they're mrs. park's. apparently, baking isn't her forte."

heeseung's smile faltered for a brief moment, a flicker of something unreadable crossing his features before he recovered. "well, maybe next time you could bring your famous cookies," he suggested, his voice smooth as silk.

you raised an eyebrow, suspicion solidifying in your gut. "maybe i will," you said, your voice devoid of warmth.

heeseung seemed to hesitate, the air crackling with a strange tension. then, with another dazzling smile, he excused himself and moved on to mrs. kim, who was already gushing about his "nonexistent" culinary skills.

you watched him go, a cold dread settling in your stomach. he might be fooling everyone else, but you wouldn't be swayed by his facade. there was something about heeseung, something dark and unsettling, and you were determined to find out what it was.

weeks bled into months, and your suspicions about heeseung only intensified. he'd become the bane of your existence, a charming yet infuriating shadow that seemed to follow you around the building. every potluck, every hallway encounter was a constant push and pull between your icy suspicion and his playful facade.

he revelled in teasing you, his compliments bordering on flirtatious. "looking lovely today, aren’t you?" he'd purr, his eyes gleaming with an amusement that sent shivers down your spine. you'd counter with sarcastic remarks that usually sailed right over his head, leaving you more frustrated than ever.

one particularly rainy afternoon, you were rushing down the hallway, arms laden with groceries, when the treacherous floor betrayed you. your foot slipped, and you went sprawling towards the cold tile. but before you could hit the ground, strong arms wrapped around you, pulling you upright with surprising ease.

for a moment, you were trapped in heeseung's embrace. your ear was pressed against his chest, and a jolt of fear shot through you. there was no comforting thud of a heartbeat, just a chilling silence. his touch was icy cold, sending a wave of goosebumps erupting across your skin.

you scrambled away from him, a mixture of terror and anger twisting your features. "don't touch me!" you hissed, dropping a bag of groceries with a clatter.

heeseung straightened, his smile unwavering. "whoa there. just trying to be a good neighbour."

you glared at him, your voice trembling. "there's nothing neighbourly about you, heeseung. what are you?"

his smile faltered for a flicker of a second, a flicker you caught this time. but it was gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by his usual charming facade. "just a guy who likes to help out a damsel in distress," he said, his voice laced with amusement.

but the amusement didn't reach his eyes. they held a glint of something predatory, something that confirmed your worst fears. he wasn't normal. and whatever he was, it was becoming increasingly clear that he was toying with you.

you grabbed the remaining grocery bags, clutching them tightly to your chest as if they were a shield. "don't think this is over, heeseung," you hissed, your voice surprisingly steady despite the fear gnawing at your insides. "i'll find out who you are, and i'll expose you."

he tilted his head, a playful glint back in his eyes. "is that a challenge, darling?" he asked, his voice a low murmur that sent shivers down your spine. "be careful what you wish for. you might just find out more than you bargained for."

with that cryptic message hanging in the air, he turned and sauntered back to his apartment, leaving you alone in the hallway, the weight of his words and the chilling memory of his touch settling over you like a shroud. you were determined to unravel the mystery of heeseung, but a new, terrifying question gnawed at you: were you prepared for what you might find?

sleep evaded you that night. the unsettling encounter with heeseung replayed on a loop in your mind. you tossed and turned, the silence punctuated only by the rhythmic tapping of rain against your window. finally, unable to bear the tension any longer, you crept out of bed and tiptoed towards the door, hoping to get some fresh air.

just as you were about to unlock the door the ‘ding’ of the elevator’s arrival stopped you in your tracks. who could it be this late at night?

peeking through the peephole, you were met with a sight that sent a fresh wave of terror coursing through you. heeseung stood casually a few feet away from your door, the rain slicking his dark hair back from his forehead.

he was whistling a cheerful tune, completely oblivious to your scrutiny. but what truly sent shivers down your spine was the state of his hands. they were stained with something dark and viscous, drying in the cool night air. it looked… suspiciously like blood.

the blood ran cold in your veins. just as you were about to pull back, heeseung paused, his head tilting ever so slightly as if he could sense you watching. a slow, unnerving smirk spread across his face, his eyes seeming to lock with yours through the peephole. how? it was impossible.

panic clawed at you. you stumbled back, adrenaline flooding your system. you had to warn the others. heeseung couldn't be trusted.

the next day, you stormed into mrs. kim's apartment, her usual cheery demeanour replaced by a frantic urgency. you blurted out everything – the coldness, the lack of a heartbeat, and the bloodstains you witnessed the night before.

mrs. kim, however, listened with a furrowed brow. "blood? are you sure, dear? heeseung wouldn't hurt a fly."

heeseung, conveniently appearing in the midst of your outburst, played the part of the concerned neighbour perfectly.

"is everything alright here?" he asked, his voice dripping with feigned innocence. "seems a little tense."

mrs. kim just dismissed him, shaking her head with a small chuckle, “nothing dear, it’s not important.”

his smile was disarming, his eyes brimming with feigned innocence. "oh i see. what were you two talking about so intently then?"

you glared at him, your voice trembling with barely contained anger. "i was just telling mrs. kim about your… unusual habits." you recounted the previous night's events, your gaze flitting between mrs. kim and heeseung.

heeseung chuckled, a light, airy sound that sent shivers down your spine. immediately, his expression morphed into one of concern, looking at mrs kim. "hasn’t she been acting strangely lately? maybe a little… stressed?"

his words stung. he was twisting the narrative, making you seem paranoid and delusional. your frustration grew, your voice rising as you tried to explain what you saw, but your neighbour's eyes held only pity and dismissal.

mrs. kim patted your hand soothingly. "maybe you're just a little stressed, dear. heeseung's a good boy, always looking out for everyone. don't you worry about him."

shame burned in your cheeks. you were alone, your warnings falling on deaf ears. heeseung's smile widened, the glint in his eyes predatory.

"see?" he said, his voice low and menacing, but directed only at you. "sometimes, silence is the best policy."

with that, he turned and sauntered away, leaving you trapped in a nightmare you couldn't seem to wake up from.

back in your apartment, you sank onto the couch, a defeated sigh escaping your lips. you were alone, your suspicions dismissed as paranoia. but the image of heeseung's bloodstained hands, his chilling smirk, burned into your memory. you wouldn't give up. you had to find a way to expose him, to prove to everyone that the perfect neighbour was nothing but a monster in disguise.

the bass vibrated through the floor, the air thick with sweat and the sweet scent of spilled cocktails. you were lost in the music, laughing with your friends, a rare moment of reprieve from the constant worry that was heeseung. the tipsy buzz from the vodka-cranberries only amplified the carefree feeling, pushing his unsettling presence to the back of your mind.

tipsy from a few too many drinks, you excused yourself, needing a momentary escape from the pulsating heat of the dance floor of the club. the cool night air was a welcome change as you stepped into the balcony, the cityscape shimmering under the neon glow. a sudden prickle ran down your spine, making you stop mid-step. it was the distinct feeling of someone's gaze boring into you, a predator sizing up its prey.

your heart hammered against your ribs as you spun around, searching the crowd. there, leaning against the wall opposite the club entrance, stood heeseung. his perfect features were cast in shadow, but the glint of his eyes in the darkness sent a shiver down your spine. he held a drink in his hand, his knuckles white around the glass, as if tightening his grip to control himself.

the moment you locked eyes with him, the air crackled with a tension so thick you could almost taste it. it wasn't just fear this time. there was a strange undercurrent, a dark energy that seemed to emanate from him.

your mind, fuzzy from the alcohol, couldn't quite grasp it, but your body reacted instinctively. panic surged through you, erasing the tipsy haze. this wasn't the charming neighbour; this was the dangerous entity you'd glimpsed before.

you didn't waste a second. turning on your heel, you practically sprinted back into the club, weaving through the crowd. your breath came out in ragged gasps, fueled by a cocktail of fear and the alcohol throbbing in your veins.

with a desperate lunge, you pushed open the nearest door, the sign above it proclaiming it a restroom.

just as you fumbled for the lock, a strong hand shot past your shoulder, wedging itself between the door and the frame. you froze, staring in horror as heeseung casually pushed his way in behind you. he slammed the door shut with a sickening thud, the lock clicking ominously behind him.

he cornered you against the door, his body acting as a wall and a scent that was both familiar and strangely intoxicating. the air crackled with unspoken tension, thick with the remnants of your fear and an undeniable spark of…something else.

“what do you think you’re doing?”, you winced at how weak your voice sounded.

he leaned impossibly close, his breath chilly against your ear. he seemed to be tipsy as well, with the way he stumbled and invaded your personal space.

the alcohol loosened your inhibitions, and his voice, usually smooth and playful, now had a dark, alluring edge to it.

"you looked beautiful dancing under those lights," he whispered, his words sending shivers down your spine. "such a shame you seem to hate me so."

his nearness was overwhelming. you couldn't feel any heat radiating from his body, but the way his lips brushed against your ear sent a jolt through you. his voice, usually smooth as silk, now had a rough edge, sending a shiver down your spine that wasn't entirely unpleasant.

your mind, fuzzy from the alcohol, struggled to process the situation. he was terrifying, yes, but a strange, confusing attraction warred with the fear simmering beneath the surface.

your gaze latched onto the physical beauty in front of you - the sharp angles of his jaw, the way the moonlight glinted off his dark brown eyes. all the warnings you'd tried to ignore hammered against your intoxicated mind, but for some reason, they held no power in the face of the undeniable magnetism of the man pinning you to the door.

“what do you want from me”, your words came out in a hushed whisper, scared as if speaking any louder would ruin the moment.

his gaze flitted down to your lips as he got closer to you, now only a breath away. he leaned closer, the scent of something foreign, yet oddly alluring, invading your senses.

his gaze dropped to your lips, painted a soft pink from the drinks you'd consumed.

before you could register the movement, his lips were on yours. the kiss was a whirlwind of conflicting emotions – the initial shock giving way to a surge of heat that defied logic. his hand slid down your back, pressing you flush against the wooden door.you clung to him, a confused mix of fear and a thrilling sense of forbidden desire coursing through you.

the kiss deepened, becoming desperate, hungry. he tasted of something sweet and metallic, a strange anomaly that sent a jolt through your system. you ignored it, caught up in the intoxicating whirlwind.

his body was freezing cold, save for his lips, his skin a contrast against the heat from your body which made a wave of concern rise up in the back of your head. but it was all forgotten as his hand moved to your neck, his fingers trailing a chilly path before dipping behind your ear.

you gasped at the sudden feeling, and heeseung took the opportunity to let his tongue enter your mouth. the kiss got messier and hotter, as if he was trying to devour you whole.

he rained kisses down your jawline, each one a searing brand against your skin. his touch sent shivers of anticipation down your spine, your breath hitching as you felt his teeth graze a sensitive spot.

it wasn't a bite, not yet. it was a brush, a feather-light caress that sent a jolt through your system. but it wasn't just the touch. there was something… different about his canines. they were sharper, pointier than human teeth, and the sensation sent a wave of surprise through you.

he froze, the movement of his mouth stopping abruptly. his breath hitched in his throat, coming out in ragged gasps like a predator startled mid-hunt. his eyes, locked on your neck, flickered with a mix of hunger and… something else. a flicker of remorse, a struggle you couldn't quite decipher.

the tension in the room was suffocating. you stared back at him, your mind a tangled mess of confusion and desire. but before you could form a question, before you could understand the shift in him, heeseung pulled away. his grip on your neck loosened, replaced by a cold indifference.

his eyes, once filled with a dark desire, now held a chilling emptiness. the warmth of his body vanished as he stepped back, leaving you feeling exposed and vulnerable. he stared at you for a long, agonising moment, his eyes unreadable.

then, in a swift movement, he turned and walked out of the bathroom, leaving you pressed against the door, the memory of the heated kiss a stark contrast to the cold dread settling in your stomach.

the heat of the kiss still lingered on your lips, a confusing memory tainted by the chilling realisation of what he truly was. you cradled your neck, the phantom sensation of his sharp touch lingering long after he was gone.

days bled into a strange silence. the unsettling encounters with heeseung, once a daily occurrence, had vanished. you wouldn't normally miss his presence, but the sudden absence gnawed at you with an unsettling curiosity. you found yourself glancing down the hallway at his door more often than you cared to admit, the memory of the stolen kiss replaying in your mind in a confusing loop.

the thought of venturing to his apartment, of seeking him out after the charged encounter in the washroom, sent a jolt of nervous energy through you.

shame burned in your cheeks at the memory of the heated kiss, a stark contrast to the chilling way he'd left you. yet, a sliver of concern gnawed at you. his absence was unnerving.

finally, curiosity, laced with apprehension, won over your better judgement. you stood outside his door, heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs. taking a deep breath, you raised your hand and knocked tentatively.

the silence stretched for what felt like an eternity before the door creaked open a sliver. heeseung stood there, his face pale and drawn, dark circles smudging the area under his eyes. he looked… unwell.

"heeseung?" you ventured, surprised by the concern that slipped into your voice. "are you alright? you look terrible."

he didn't answer, just stared at you with an icy indifference that sent a shiver down your spine. the playful glint in his eyes, once so unsettling, was replaced by a hollowness that chilled you to the bone.

heeseung scoffed, a harsh sound that scraped against your nerves. "i'm fine. now leave."

the hostility in his voice stung. the concern you felt evaporated, replaced by a cold anger.

"look," you snapped, "i just came to see if you were okay. but clearly, you don't want the help."

he scoffed, a humourless sound. "of course not. why would i need help from the likes of you?"

he slammed the door shut before you could retort, leaving you standing alone in the hallway, the echo of his harsh words ringing in your ears. shame burned in your cheeks, a confusing mix of hurt and anger churning in your gut.

how dare he act like you were the villain? he was the one who made your life a living nightmare, the one with secrets that sent shivers down your spine.

scowling, you berated yourself for your momentary lapse in judgement. you hated him. you had to.

he was a danger, a monster in disguise. yet, the flicker of something vulnerable you'd glimpsed in his eyes, the way he'd pulled away so abruptly… it was a confusing puzzle you couldn't seem to solve.

heeseung stumbled out of his apartment, a desperate lurch in his gait that spoke volumes of his weakened state. he fumbled with grabbing his keys, nearly dropping them, before finally unlocking the deadbolt.

he needed to get out, anywhere but the suffocating confines of his apartment. he threw a glance down the hallway, hoping for an empty elevator, but his luck had run dry. the red "in use" light mocked him above the metal doors.

he slammed on the button, urgency pushing past the haze in his head. as the doors dinged open, revealing you standing there, his heart sank.

heeseung flinched back, shuffling into the corner like a wounded animal. "get… out," he rasped, his voice barely a whisper.

"seriously?" you scoffed, following him with your glare. "that makeout session in the club must have been rough if you can't even stand the sight of me now."

heeseung remained silent, the effort of breathing stealing his focus. you rolled your eyes, muttering under your breath about his lack of manners. you turned away, choosing to ignore him.

suddenly, the elevator lurched to a halt, plunging the cramped space into slight darkness. a metallic groan filled the air.

"great," you sighed, reaching for the call button. "looks like we're stuck."

a strained voice answered through the speaker, informing you that a technician would be on their way shortly.

"shortly?" you groaned. "how long is shortly?"

"it's hard to say, ma'am. there's been a minor fault in the system."

you groaned, sinking down onto the floor.

heeseung remained silent, his body trembling. every passing second felt like an eternity. hunger gnawed at him, a primal urge clawing its way to the surface. he gritted his teeth, fighting against the monstrous transformation that threatened to take over.

"hey," he rasped, his voice barely a whisper.

you shot him a sceptical glance. "what?"

shame burned in his throat, but the need for survival outweighed his pride. "do you… by any chance… have any blood on you?"

you leaned closer, your suspicions finally confirmed.

"about time you admitted it," you cheered, a triumphant smirk creeping across your face. "i knew you weren't normal."

heeseung let out a dark chuckle, a sound devoid of humour. "don't get too excited," he rasped. "you shouldn't be so happy about this."

"oh, come on," you scoffed. "spill it. what are you? some kind of freak?"

a tense silence followed, broken only by the hum of the faulty elevator. finally, he spoke, his voice barely a whisper.

"vampire."

shock flooded your system. it was one thing to suspect, another to hear it confirmed.

"no way," you scoffed, refusing to believe it. "vampires don't exist."

but his next words sent a shiver down your spine. "the reason i stopped you at the club… it wasn't because of the kiss. it was the smell of your blood. it was… intoxicating."

"ever since i've met you…" he began, his voice surprisingly soft despite the edge of desperation in it. "the smell of your blood, so sweet, has been driving me crazy. so different from anything i've ever encountered."

he paused, a tremor running through his voice. "for years, i've resisted feeding on humans. morality, you might call it. i rely on animal blood, a poor substitute at best. but your blood…" he took a shaky breath, "it was like a siren song. after that night, i can’t even smell any other type of blood without my stomach churning in disgust."

you listened intently, a strange fascination battling with the fear that coiled in your gut. this wasn't the heeseung you knew, the playful neighbor who reveled in teasing you. this was a creature raw and exposed, driven by a primal need he could barely articulate.

"years," he continued, his voice cracking slightly. "years of animal blood, a constant reminder of what i can't have. but then you…" he trailed off, the echo of that night in the club hanging heavy between you.

a shiver ran down your spine, but it wasn't entirely from fear. there was a vulnerability in his confession, a desperate need for something more than just sustenance.

"the challenge," he said, his voice gaining a tinge of bitterness. "the forbidden fruit. maybe that's what drew me in at first. but then…" he hesitated, a flicker of something akin to shame crossing his features.

"then what?" you prompted, your voice barely a whisper. this wasn't how you'd imagined confronting a vampire, yet here you were, drawn into his story.

"don't you see?" heeseung's voice rose, a tremor of desperation colouring it. "you make me weak, vulnerable. yet, your defiance only intensifies the pull. you're everything i shouldn't want, everything i crave."

the revelation sent a jolt through you, a terrifying mix of fear and… something else. the line between predator and prey seemed to blur in the confines of the elevator. you were trapped, yes, but there was also a strange sense of being held hostage by a creature consumed by a desire he both craved and loathed.

the silence that followed heeseung's confession stretched on, thick with a tension that was no longer just fear. you understood him, perhaps better than he understood himself.

taking a deep breath, you surprised yourself by what you said next. "maybe there’s another way."

heeseung's head snapped up, his eyes searching your face in the dim light. "what do you mean?"

"i can help" you held out your wrist, the moonlight filtering through a crack in the elevator door illuminating the delicate veins beneath your skin. "you said you needed blood. maybe i can…

he recoiled as if struck. "no. absolutely not. i won't—"

"heeseung," you interrupted, your voice firm despite the tremor in your heart. "look at me. i'm not scared. in fact…" you hesitated, a blush creeping up your neck. "maybe i… feel the same way."

the air crackled with a new kind of tension. heeseung stared at you, his face a mask of disbelief. "the same way? how?"

"like you said," you whispered, "forbidden. a dangerous attraction." you met his gaze, holding it with a newfound resolve. "if this is what you need, i… i consent."

heeseung's breath hitched. shame flickered in his eyes, quickly replaced by a raw hunger that made your own pulse quicken. "but," he said, his voice low and urgent, "i need more. much more. and from… a different place."

your stomach lurched. "different place?"

a flicker of vulnerability crossed his features. "my apologies," he murmured. "to properly sustain me, i need… the jugular."

the word hung heavy in the air, a primal request that sent a wave of apprehension through you. the image of a vampire sinking its fangs into someone's neck flashed before your eyes. but then, against your better judgment, you found yourself nodding slowly.

a surge of relief, tinged with desperation, washed over heeseung. he moved towards you, a predator closing in on its prey. the closeness brought back a memory - the night in the club bathroom, pressed against the wall, his chilly breath on your neck.

he trapped you against the corner, his body a wall of heat, completely different from the other day where he was freezing.

"please," he rasped, his voice raw with hunger and a strange, desperate plea. "i can't control myself much longer. let me…"

his voice trailed off, replaced by a whimper that both shocked and ignited something within you. this wasn't the cold, calculating heeseung you'd feared. this was a creature on the brink, his monstrous hunger battling with a threadbare shred of control.

"alright," you whispered, the word leaving your lips before you could overthink it.

he didn't hesitate. he leaned in, his movements a blur of desperation. kisses, hot and wet, rained down on your neck, each one a branding iron leaving a fiery mark. you closed your eyes, bracing yourself for the pain. but it never came.

instead, as his fangs pierced your skin, a jolt of something unexpected surged through you. it wasn't pain, but a warmth that spread through your body like liquid fire. your mind grew hazy, your senses overwhelmed by a wave of pleasure that originated from the very point of contact.

he moaned, a deep, primal sound that echoed in the confined space. "so sweet," he whispered, his voice thick with desire. "the best i've ever tasted."

he drank deeply, his body trembling with each intake. you could hear him purring, a low rumble that resonated deep within your core. the pleasure was overwhelming, a dizzying mixture of pain and pleasure that left you gasping for breath. your mind turned hazy, each noise tumbling out of his lips sounding like liquid gold to you.

when he finally pulled away, breathless and satiated, he looked at you with an intensity that sent shivers down your spine. he languidly licked away the remnants of blood from the wound, his warm tongue sending a jolt of electricity through you.

he didn't stop there. he swiped at the blood that trickled down your collarbone, his tongue making a suggestive swipe against your skin. a dangerous glint flickered in his eyes, and you couldn't help but lean closer, a thrill coursing through you.

the jarring hum of the elevator coming back to life jolted you both from your current position. heeseung, his fangs retracted, quickly pressed the button for your floor. a strange mixture of fear and elation bubbled in your chest, a sensation as unfamiliar as the pleasure you'd just experienced.

he turned to you, his eyes searching your face. "are you alright?" his voice was concerned, a stark contrast to his needy whines just moments ago.

you hesitantly reached for your neck, expecting a throbbing pain. instead, you found smooth, unmarked skin. a gasp escaped your lips. "it… it healed?"

heeseung nodded, a hint of a smirk playing on his lips. "vampire saliva," he explained casually. "has a few… interesting properties. speeds up healing, for one."

a blush crept up your cheeks as you recalled the wave of euphoria that had washed over you during his feeding. "and…" you stammered, "the pleasure?"

"speaking of pleasure," heeseung's voice dipped to a husky whisper, "vampire saliva has another... side effect."

he leaned closer, his lips brushing against your ear. "an aphrodisiac," he breathed, his words sending a shiver down your spine. "especially potent when mixed with a good dose of desire. all thanks to those initial kisses on your neck i had planted.”

"so that's why…" you mumbled, suddenly embarrassed.

the elevator doors slid open, revealing the familiar hallway. you stepped out, feeling oddly energised despite the ordeal. a playful smile tugged at your lips.

"so," you said, turning to face him, your fingers playfully tapping his arm, "how do you plan to repay me for that little… service?"

heeseung raised an eyebrow, a playful glint in his eyes. before he could answer, he leaned down, his lips brushing against your forehead in a sweet kiss. pulling away, he grinned, his fangs catching the dim light playfully.

your heart hammered in your chest as he took your hand, his touch sending a spark of heat through you. stepping closer to your apartment, he winked.

"let's discuss repayment options in private, shall we?" he said, his voice dripping with a promise of things to come.

he took your hand again, his touch surprisingly warm despite his vampiric nature. before you could respond, he gently steered you towards your apartment, leaving you breathless and caught in the undercurrent of a dangerous, exhilarating game you'd just begun to play.

as you fumbled with your keys, trying to unlock the door in hurry, he leaned down next to you and murmured, his voice a low, suggestive rumble.

"i'm sure you taste just as good everywhere else."

𝗰𝗼𝗽𝘆𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 ©𝗴𝘆𝘂𝘂𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗿𝘆𝘆 on Tumblr

"you need to rest," he says, and for once, there's no teasing lilt to his voice, no flirtation. just quiet authority.

you want to protest, but the weight pressing on your limbs betrays you. heeseung exhales sharply, like he’s irritated, like he's mad at you for being this fragile. but his actions betray him. his arm hooks around your waist, guiding you toward the couch with a touch gentler than you’ve ever known from him.

"sit," he orders, and you’re too drained to argue.

he watches you for a beat, something unreadable flickering behind his dark eyes. then, without another word, he steps away, disappearing toward the door.

your stomach knots. "where are you—"

"just sleep," he says, not turning back. "i’ll be back."

and then he's gone.

but the tension he leaves behind lingers, curling in your chest, coiling in your veins. sleep does not come easily. not with the memory of his hands still burning against your skin. not with the echo of his voice, rough and low, still whispering through your mind.

not with the reminder that, for all the danger heeseung poses, you still let him in.

you wake up with a sharp inhale, the kind that feels like resurfacing from deep underwater. for a second, you expect the weight of exhaustion to drag you back down, to feel the lingering ache of what heeseung took from you. but when you push yourself upright, there’s nothing. no dizziness, no weakness, no soreness in your limbs.

physically, you feel fine. too fine.

your fingers ghost over your neck, searching for evidence of his touch—of his bite—but your skin is smooth, unmarked. as if it never happened. but you know it did. you can still feel it, phantom traces of the way his lips had burned against your skin before his fangs had pierced through. the way he had held you afterwards, firm but careful, something unreadable in his darkened gaze.

something had changed. you felt it.

but now, in the cold quiet of morning, it almost seems like a fever dream.

you exhale, slow and controlled, forcing yourself to push past it. you are not going to sit here analysing a moment that clearly meant nothing to him. heeseung had left without a word. again.

if he can move on, so can you.

so you do.

you wake up early, run until your legs ache, drink coffee even though you don’t need it, just for something warm to hold onto. you take extra shifts, bury yourself in work, fill the empty spaces of your day with anything and everything that will keep your mind from circling back to him.

and yet.

no matter what you do, his absence lingers.

not once do you hear his voice in the hallway, teasing or otherwise. not once do you catch his gaze from across the courtyard, that knowing smirk playing at his lips. you don’t see him by the elevators, don’t hear his steps behind you, don’t feel his presence like a shadow at your back.

and it’s wrong.

because for weeks, heeseung was everywhere. inescapable. a constant thorn in your side, always watching, always pushing, always there.

but now?

nothing.

and you hate that it bothers you. hate that a part of you waits for something—anything—to prove that you didn’t imagine it all. that what happened between you mattered.

by the fifth day, you’re frustrated. restless. itching for something, for him, just so you don’t have to sit with this stupid, unbearable silence.

and then, finally, he appears.

not in some dramatic moment, not in some fateful encounter charged with tension, but in the mailroom.

you nearly miss him entirely, too lost in your thoughts to notice at first. but then, there he is. standing in front of the row of metal mailboxes, effortlessly composed, as if nothing has changed.

except it has.

you stop mid-step, heart hammering. heeseung is right there. close enough to touch. close enough that if he just looked up, just met your eyes—

but he doesn’t.

he doesn’t even hesitate. just opens his mailbox, pulls out a single envelope, tucks it into the pocket of his jacket.

no teasing. no smirk. not even a glance in your direction.

heeseung doesn’t acknowledge you at all.

your breath catches, a sharp pang blooming in your chest. you don’t know what you expected—some sign that he’s affected, that he remembers everything as vividly as you do—but the complete indifference?

it stings.

more than you care to admit.

you watch as he turns, his movements smooth, unhurried. his gaze flickers past you, impassive, as if you’re just another person in the building. just another insignificant moment in his day.

then, without a word, he walks away.

just like that.

you stand frozen, heart pounding, anger rising to smother the ache.

days have passed since the encounter in the mailroom, since heeseung brushed past you as if you were nothing. you hate how much it gets to you. how much you miss the push and pull, the way he used to get under your skin like it was his favourite pastime. but if he wants to act like nothing happened, fine. you’ll just have to remind him.

the opportunity comes unexpectedly.

you’re standing in the hallway, ripping open a package with more force than necessary, frustration still simmering beneath your skin. the cardboard is stubborn, sealed too tightly, and in your impatience, the jagged edge of the tape slices cleanly across your fingertip.

"fuck," you hiss, pulling your hand back. a single bead of blood wells up, bright and rich against your skin.

at that exact moment, the elevator dings.

the doors slide open, and heeseung steps out.

your breath catches.

his reaction is immediate, visceral. his entire body goes still, eyes locking onto your hand before you can even think to move. his pupils dilate, dark swallowing lighter brown, his lips parting slightly as if he’s just been hit with a scent too intoxicating to ignore.

for the first time in days, you have him.

it’s reckless and stupid, but you do it anyway.

without breaking eye contact, you bring your hand to your lips, tongue darting out to slowly lick away the blood.

it’s a calculated move, a challenge, a dare. you see it the moment something cracks in him—his jaw tightens, his hands curling into fists at his sides. the hunger is there, raw and barely restrained, flickering across his face like a fire he’s desperately trying to smother.

you expect him to snap. to say something cutting, to lunge, to do anything.

but instead, his expression hardens.

just like in the mailroom, he schools his features into cold indifference, locks every bit of his hunger behind a wall of steel.

without a word, he walks past you.

you’re left standing there, lips tingling, the taste of your own blood still faint on your tongue.

at first, it feels like victory.

but later, when you’re lying in bed, staring at the ceiling with your body burning too hot beneath the sheets, it doesn’t feel like winning at all.

you shift restlessly, fingers clenching at your comforter, but nothing soothes the restless ache under your skin. the teasing had been for him. a way to make him react. so why does your body feel unsatisfied? why does your breath still hitch at the memory of his eyes, dark and hungry, before he forced himself to walk away?

why does your throat feel dry at the thought of his teeth against your skin again?

he’s a vampire, for fuck’s sake. you shouldn’t be acting like this.

you squeeze your eyes shut, willing the thoughts away, but they remain, curling around you like an addiction you refuse to name.

you tell yourself you’re still in control.

you don’t quite believe it.

you don’t know when it happens—when the frustration festers into something unbearable, when the tension morphs into something that demands to be acknowledged.

all you know is that it’s late, and you’re standing outside heeseung’s door, pulse hammering, knuckles hovering just inches from the dark wood.

your body feels wrong. too warm, too tight, every inch of you coiled with an ache you don’t want to name. sleep has evaded you for nights, ever since that moment in the hallway, ever since you tasted your own blood on your tongue and saw the raw hunger flicker across his face.

he hadn’t touched you. hadn’t spoken. hadn’t given you anything.

and yet, he’s everywhere. in the silence of your apartment, in the ghost of his hands on your body, in the phantom heat of his breath against your skin. he’s burrowed under your skin, insidious and intoxicating, refusing to let go.

your fist connects with the door before you can second-guess yourself. once. twice. sharp, deliberate knocks that feel like surrender.

the sound echoes in the hallway. there’s just the presence of silence thick enough to choke you—then, you hear the faint creak of movement inside.

your breath catches.

seconds later, the door swings open, and he’s there.

heeseung leans against the frame, one hand braced above his head, and every thought in your head blanks at the sight of him.

he’s shirtless.

his skin gleams under the dim hallway lights, the planes of his collarbones sharp and distracting. his hair is tousled and messy—like he’s been running his hands through it, like he’s been restless, pacing, waiting for something he never wanted to name.

but his eyes—his eyes—are the worst part.

they flicker over you, taking in your tense stance, your parted lips, the way you’re still catching your breath like you ran here.

for a moment, just for a brief, flickering second—he looks wrecked.

then he schools his expression, forces something cold into his gaze, and when he finally speaks, his voice is hoarse.

"what are you doing here?"

you swallow hard, fingers curling at your sides. "i think you already know."

heeseung exhales sharply, turning his head away for a second, like he needs to think. like he needs to remind himself why this is a bad idea.

"you shouldn’t be here." his voice is rough, frayed at the edges.

"but i am."

that gets his attention.

his gaze snaps back to yours, and something flickers in the depths of his dark eyes—something dangerous.

"you don’t know what you’re asking for," he murmurs, voice quieter now, like he’s losing the will to fight this.

you take a step closer. "then show me."

his throat bobs, the muscle in his jaw ticking, tension rolling through his frame like he’s seconds away from breaking.

heeseung sways forward.

it’s so subtle you almost miss it, but you don’t.

"say it," he rasps, his fingers twitching at his sides like he wants to reach for you, like he’s still holding himself back.

"say what you want."

you know what he’s doing. he’s giving you one last chance. one final moment to walk away before this turns into something neither of you can take back.

but you don’t move.

"you."

the single word leaves your lips breathlessly quiet, dripping with your true feelings. and then, in the span of a heartbeat, he breaks.

his hands are on you before you can process it, shoving you back against the doorframe, his lips crashing into yours, all heat and hunger and frustration.

his mouth is relentless, desperate, claiming yours with a kind of urgency that makes your knees go weak. heeseung kisses you like he’s trying to devour you, like he’s spent weeks, months, forever waiting for this moment. his lips are soft but unrelenting, molding perfectly against yours, his breath hot and uneven as he drinks you in.

his hands are everywhere—gripping at your waist, your hips, sliding up your spine, pulling you against him like he doesn’t just want you close, he needs you closer. your fingers tangle into his hair, tugging slightly, and the sound that rumbles from his throat is a deep, hungry growl that sends a sharp jolt of heat straight through you.

his tongue brushes against your bottom lip, slow and teasing, before he deepens the kiss. it’s intoxicating, the way he moves, the way he controls the moment without ever taking it away from you. his lips part yours easily, his tongue sliding against yours, coaxing, demanding, taking.

a gasp catches in your throat, and heeseung seizes the moment, swallowing it whole, his fingers pressing deeper into your skin. he tilts his head, angling the kiss even deeper, his body pressing flush against yours, pinning you between him and the door.

"i hate you," he mutters between kisses, teeth catching your bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth. "do you know how hard i tried to stay away?"

"then why didn’t you?" your voice is a whisper, barely a breath.

his forehead presses against yours, his eyes dark and wild.

"because i fucking can’t."

his mouth is on you again before you can respond. this time, it’s slower—more deliberate. his tongue parts your lips, tasting you, savoring the way you melt beneath him. he deepens the kiss, his hands roaming, sliding beneath your shirt, gripping at your bare skin like he can’t stand the distance.

your teeth graze his bottom lip, and he groans as his grip tightens on you.

"tell me to stop," he breathes against your lips, voice strained, shaking with restraint.

but you don’t.

you tilt your head, exposing the side of your neck, pulse hammering beneath your skin.

and heeseung shatters.

his breath hitches, a sharp, broken sound, before his fangs sink into your skin.

the pain is brief, sharp, before it melts into something else entirely—something warm and dizzying and consuming. a moan slips past your lips, your fingers flying to his shoulders, gripping onto him as a wave of unbearable pleasure crashes through you.

he holds you steady, arms locking around your waist, pulling you flush against him as he drinks deep.

it’s too much. not enough.

your body trembles, caught in the haze of sensation, every nerve alight. the tension that’s been coiling inside you for days—finally breaks.

and relief floods through you.

heeseung pulls back too soon, licking over the fresh wound, soothing the sting. his breath is ragged, his hands still gripping you tightly, his body trembling with the force of his own restraint.

but you don’t let go.

your fingers curl into his skin, your own body still burning, still aching, and it’s only when heeseung lifts his head, his lips brushing over your pulse point, that you realize—

you don’t want this to end.

his eyes meet yours, darker than you’ve ever seen them.

"sweetheart," he murmurs, voice thick with satisfaction, with possession that made you shudder.

heeseung smirks, but there’s something softer beneath it now—something dangerously close to fondness.

his hands slide down your back, grounding you, keeping you steady.

"i hope you know," he says, his lips brushing against the fresh mark on your neck, "you’re mine now."

your breath catches.

and god help you, but you want to be.

his lips are still slick with your blood. you can feel it in the way they drag against your skin, slow and deliberate, a silent claim that makes heat coil low in your stomach. his breath is uneven, his grip firm on your waist like he’s holding himself back—or holding himself together.

your head tilts slightly, trying to catch your breath, trying to regain some semblance of control. but you don’t get the chance, because he suddenly picks you up, hands gripping your thighs as your legs instinctively wrap around his waist. you squeal as he carries you effortlessly, like you weigh nothing, like he’s been waiting to do this.

you barely register the way your back collides with the mattress, how his weight follows, pressing you down, his body caging yours in. his lips don’t leave yours—not for a second. he kisses you softly, like you’re the only thing that can sate the hunger clawing at his insides.

his hand slides beneath your shirt, fingers skimming over your burning skin, and you shudder. your own hands roam desperately—grasping at his bare shoulders, threading through his hair, clinging to him like you’ll fall apart if you let go.

everything blurs—a feverish mess of heat, tangled limbs, whispered breaths. every touch stokes the fire burning in your veins, every movement winds the tension between you tighter.

but then, he stops.

his forehead rests against yours, his breathing uneven.

"not tonight," he murmurs, voice strained, reluctant.

you blink up at him, dazed, lips tingling, body thrumming with electricity. "why not?"

heeseung’s fingers trace absent circles against your skin, his touch soothing. "because if i start, i won’t stop."

he exhales sharply, his lips ghosting over your cheek. "and you deserve better than that."

your chest tightens, but not with disappointment. with something else. something warmer.

"stay," he says softly, his voice quieter now, his hand curling around your wrist. "just for tonight."

and somehow, that’s enough.

he pulls you against him, arms wrapping around you, pressing you into the sheets. he shifts until you’re tucked against his chest, one arm draped over your waist, the other beneath the pillows. the way he holds you is instinctive, like he’s done this a thousand times before—like he’s been waiting to do this.

your breath is uneven as you try to process it all—the way his body fits against yours, the warmth of his skin, the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your palm.

"you okay?" heeseung’s voice is quieter now, rough with exhaustion but laced with something else. something deeper.

you swallow, nodding. "yeah."

he hums softly, his fingers tracing idle circles against your back.

"this is new," you murmur, barely above a whisper.

"what is?"

"you," you say, tilting your head to meet his gaze. "not pushing me away."

heeseung’s lips twitch, but his smirk doesn’t hold its usual sharpness. instead, he watches you, studying your face like he’s trying to commit every inch of it to memory.

"i think i got tired of running."

your breath catches. you don’t know what to say to that—what to do with that. so you don’t say anything.

instead, you shift closer, letting your fingers trace over the bare skin of his chest, over the sharp planes of his collarbones, the steady beat of his heart beneath your touch. heeseung shivers, his breath hitching just slightly.

he shifts, rolling onto his side, bringing you with him so you’re pressed against his chest, so close you can feel his breath against your lips.

his fingers tilt your chin up, and the moment stretches, charged, waiting—until he leans in, pressing the softest kiss against your lips.

it’s nothing like before. nothing like the desperation, the hunger, the madness that had consumed you both just minutes ago.

this one is slow. lingering. almost tender.

his hand settles against your jaw, thumb tracing delicate patterns along your cheekbone.

then after a long silence he hesitantly speaks up, "why were you looking for me?"

your breath stills.

heeseung’s voice is careful, but not indifferent. it’s something softer, something almost uncertain.

"you were avoiding me," you murmur, pressing your palm flat against his chest. "i wanted to know why."

heeseung doesn’t answer right away. his fingers still, hesitating, before he exhales, a slow, heavy sound.

"because i was afraid."

that makes you look up. "afraid?"

his jaw tenses. "afraid that if i let myself have this—have you—i wouldn't be able to stop."

your throat tightens. "and now?"

heeseung’s lips twitch, but it’s not quite a smirk. "i already lost that fight, sweetheart."

your heart clenches, something warm unfurling deep in your chest.

"then stop pretending you don’t want this." your voice is quieter now, steadier.

his eyes flicker over your face, searching, considering.

"and what if i do?" he murmurs. "what if i want all of it?"

you feel your breath hitch, pulse stuttering beneath your skin.

"then we figure it out."

the silence stretches, but this time, it’s not heavy. it’s something else, something warm.

heeseung exhales softly, then leans in, pressing a slow, lingering kiss to your temple.

"you drive me insane," he mumbles, lips brushing against your skin.

"good," you whisper, smiling against his shoulder.

heeseung shifts slightly, pressing you closer, his fingers slipping under the hem of your shirt, tracing absentminded patterns against your spine.

"so," he says after a beat, voice tinged with amusement, "what do you think people will say when they find out you’re dating a vampire?"

your stomach flips.

"who said anything about dating?" you tease, lifting your head slightly.

heeseung raises an eyebrow, the ghost of a smirk tugging at his lips. "oh? you want me all to yourself, but you don’t want to call it dating?"

you roll your eyes, nudging him playfully. "you’re impossible."

"and you’re stuck with me now."

his voice is light, teasing, but there’s something real underneath it—something steady, something sure.

something that tells you this isn’t just tonight.

it’s more.

you let out a soft laugh, burying your face in the crook of his neck, breathing him in.

"guess i am."

Sunghoon chose the worse time to come over. Your home was in a state of disarray; boxes against the wall, clothes scattered everywhere, and leftover food on the coffee table from lunch that you’d yet to put away. You were supposed to welcome him to… this?

Before you can even hurriedly clean and shove clothes into the closet, the door knob jiggles a bit. The door opens carefully when Sunghoon pushes inside with his bag in hand. He looks at you like this was normal. Like he was just supposed to walk in when he so desired.

“Hello,” he nods. As if sensing your confusion, he holds up a key and shuts the door behind him. “You gave me a spare, if you remember.”

Suddenly you were cursing the you of five months ago, because why on earth did you give him a key? You can only laugh awkwardly and shift your weight while your eyes dart around your house. He’s judging you. You just know it. He’s judging your modest home—despite the absurdity of a girl your age owning a home—and he’s mentally scrutinizing how messy it is. He has to be.

You never get your confirmation to that, though, because he sits on your couch like he owns the place. Sunghoon beckons you over with a hand and a polite nod, urging you to sit like a guest in your own home.

“You might be wondering why I came. I… well, I needed help choosing centerpieces.”

Centerpieces? Like, the same centerpieces that you’d literally witnessed him choose at the cake tasting? How could he need help with centerpieces? Sunghoon takes out what looks to be a catalog from his bag and clicks his pen, sliding them across the coffee table while skillfully avoiding the leftovers.

“I chose the one circled in red.” Roses, black eyed susans, and daylilies were clustered in a vase in varying shades of yellow and orange on the paper. Frankly, it looked a hot mess. Sunghoon realized it with the grimace on your face. “You don’t like it.” A statement, not a question.

“It’s so… um, wow!” You laugh awkwardly, glancing up at him with a strained smile. You hate it. The flowers look messily clustered together like someone just looked up “yellow flowers” on google and picked the first three that showed up. Who would do such a thing? “It’s definitely something.”

“But… the colors. Are they not beautiful?”

“The yellow and orange is great, just… not like this. Honestly, this is so fucking ugly.” Sunghoon flinches at your straightforwardness. His lips form a weirdly attractive mix of a frown and a pout. Wait, what? Focus.

“Island Citrus is the wedding color of the year. How could you not like it?” His brows pinch together. He truly cannot fathom your dislike for it. He spent hours researching what type of bouquet a woman your age would like and now you’re telling him you hate it..? “Brides magazine said so.”

“Brides what? Sunghoon, nobody cares what some bride blog says. This is terrible,” you can’t help but laugh at his stupidity. Maybe ‘Stolid Sunghoon’ wasn’t so robotic after all.

“Well, which one do you like?” He tilts his head and nods at the catalog. It takes two minutes of silence for you to flip through the catalog and find one you like. Sliding off the couch, you plop down on the floor to lean across the table when you push the catalog back and point at the bouquet.

“Pretty, no?” The bouquet is a complete turn around from what he’d picked. The catalog showed vase holding dark hellebores, black knight scabiosas, and chocolate cosmos. He blinks down you twice. Is he supposed to sit with you? Should he sit on the floor? He doesn’t usually do such a thing. Is your carpet vaccumed? Cleaned? How often do you do it? What if—

“Um, hello? Do you not like it that much?” You furrow your eyebrows with laughter. It snaps Sunghoon out of his trance. With what he considers a brave, noble act, he slides down and sits on the floor as well. His hands rest folded in his lap as he nods.

“It is… dark?” He offers, pressing his lips together. He can’t say he hates it, but it’s just not what he was expecting. “Do you like it?”

“Mhm.”

“Then it’s a done deal.” Sunghoon grabs the pen from your side of the table and circles the bouquet, writing ‘chosen.’ beside it in what’s weirdly the most legible handwriting you’ve ever seen from a man. “Thank you for your help. It was a truly vexing matter.”

Honestly, it was anything but vexing. Sunghoon personally couldn’t care less about a centerpiece; but, he assumed it mattered to you. With his hours of research about what a woman would like, he chose what he thought you’d enjoy. Come to find out you didn’t even think you were being represented in the wedding? That was the last thing he wanted. He’d already been in the area anyway—meaning, he was thirty minutes away and made the drive in fifteen—so why not travel to your place and find your opinion on the matter?

“Right. Well. Glad I could help.” You offer him a small smile that you can only home looks real. An awkward silence overtakes the room. At least, awkward for you. Sunghoon’s buzzing inside with satisfaction thinking he’s finally pleased you. Maybe this way you’ll be more willing to marry him. He’d hate to go into this marriage with your intense hate for him. He’s halfway through daydreaming what you’d name your first born daughter (yes, daughter. the first born must be a daughter, he thinks.) when you cough.

“Oh, right. Well, I… guess I’ll be on my way,” he nods almost solemnly. On the outside, he looks normal. Unaffected, per usual. You’d never think he was silently hoping your children would have your eyes and his moles. Sunghoon pushes himself up, dusting invisible lint off his clothes. He stares down at you expectantly.

What the hell does he want? you wonder. Why’s he looking at you like that? It’s weird. Make him stop. Ugh, stop!

“Aren’t you going to see me off?” He furrows his brows in confusion. Isn’t this the part where you kiss him goodbye?

“Oh, sure.” You stand and lead him to the door, opening it for him. He stands there. Expecting. Waiting. The only things going through your mind are questions about why he’s not out yet.

Sunghoon almost laughs. Ah, he gets it now. You’re shy, aren’t you? That’s okay. He can help you work your way up to a real kiss. Sunghoon leans down to kiss your cheek, his arm sliding around your waist to pull you into a hug right after. He pats your back like he’s done some incredibly good deed before pulling away.

“I’ll see you on Friday at seven for the dinner run through. Goodbye,” he waves and turns on his heel out of the door. 

Did this guy just fucking kiss your cheek?

You’re left staring at his car as it pulls out of your driveway. He doesn’t look back. At least, not by turning his head. He uses his side mirrors, though. You laugh incredulously.

“Fucking weirdo,” you whisper to yourself, shutting the door and turning back to packing up your things. 

© esoriae ! all rights reserved. no translations, plagiarism, modifications, reposts, or ai feeding.

you paused. your gaze faltering to his lips before you swallowed, looking away with a sharp exhale. it was brief, but he caught it and scoffed.

there was absolutely no way he could actually tell you, especially now—even if he would've liked to.

you two were similar in the fact that it was excruciatingly difficult to verbalize what you were feeling when the emotions got too serious. the both of you had this nonverbal mutual agreement to never pry if something felt off. though heeseung would break that rule quite frequently because he hated seeing you in a bad mood. but you… you stuck to it like an oath.

even now.

even with heeseung offering himself to you on a silver platter.

"heeseung…" you whispered, with no purpose apart from feeling the familiarity of the shape of his name against your lips as your shoulders drooped.

and then there was nothing.

you and heeseung sat in silence. the only sound that could be heard was the light patter of the rain against the canopy of the bench. glimpses of your younger selves running and jumping around the playground flashed through his mind. you two used to be such a mess. though now, the mess was no longer just soggy mud on brand new shoes.

you came home for spring break despite sunghoon's persistent attempts to keep you with him. and although you wished to spend every single second with him, you hadn't seen your family in a while.

"it's just a week." you said to sunghoon, who could barely rip himself away from your embrace.

you compromised by calling him every night before going to bed. and even when you did absolutely nothing, sunghoon still needed to hear your voice.

what you didn't know was that heeseung came home too. he came back for space. to clear his clouded mind. because that was nearly physically impossible for him to do with you constantly in his presence.

but here you were.

again.

"are you cold?" heeseung said, reaching for the sleeve of your sweatshirt soaked from the leaking canopy. "you're getting wet—"

a smile escaped you before you could stop it. and it was the first time he didn't avoid meeting your eyes in months.

"—don't… don't make it weird." he let out a soft laugh with a kind of sincerity you hadn't heard from him in a while.

he stretched your arm closer to him, pulling a small rag out of his coat to pat the spot dry.

"that’s not gonna work," you taunted.

"it's literally working though."

"yeah, barely."

"just shut up," he scoffed.

"why do you even have that with you?"

"old habit." his grip on you slackened. "i guess."

when you were kids, he'd have bandages, a tube of healing ointment, a pack of wipes, and a rag stored somewhere on his person whenever you guys went to the playground. he had these cargo shorts he wore everywhere, with numerous pockets to hold all the necessities. because for some reason, you'd always end up falling in dirt, or bruising your knee. and he wanted to be the one to fix everything for you.

as you grew older, heeseung continued to take care of you. even just a year ago, you and chaewon dragged him and anton to a night out in the city. you were adamant about walking for miles in these heels that literally bore into your flesh.

chaewon tried to convince you to wear flats but you didn't listen. and then after two hours of walking, you finally caved and told them your feet rubbed raw from the straps. anton offered to carry you on his back as you sat down, groaning in agony. you refused, knowing that would just end up with you both on the ground because the only workout anton ever did was typing.

and instead of adding on to chaewon's 'i told you so's, heeseung pulled the very flats she told you to wear out of the sides of his socks, under the legs of his pants.

"bro, you've had these the entire time?" you yelled at him, causing side glances and murmurs from people passing by. "and didn't fucking tell me!"

"shut up," he grumbled, ignoring the small gasps from chaewon and anton as he knelt in front of you. he slipped off your heels, bandaged the bruises on your feet, and put the flats on for you. "there. now stop complaining."

heeseung, your personal brooding knight in shining armor.

you nudged him out of his thoughts, pointing to the kids playing in the rain. "where are their parents?" their giggles sent an uneasiness down heeseung’s spine. "it's literally raining."

they reminded him of you. everything reminded him of you.

"like that wasn't you a few years ago," heeseung joked, sliding his coat off and putting it over your shoulders.

"a few years? bro, that was like, way over a decade ago." and you pulled his coat tighter around your body.

over a decade and it was still consistently plaguing heeseung's mind. over a decade and he still couldn't get over it.

maybe it was jealousy?

well no, not maybe. it was most definetly jealousy. that he could admit to himself at least. and maybe that jealousy was also mixed with the fear of being replaced because you didn't seem to need him anymore.

"you know, my mom still calls you my protector, heeseung," you said so softly that if he wasn't already tuned into you he wouldn't have heard you over the rain.

the quiet between sentences didn't feel awkward, just heavy and stifled.

"really?" heeseung softly smiled to himself. at least someone in the world believed you still needed him despite the outgrown fantasy.

"yeah, she's ridiculous," you laughed, turning your body so you two were face to face. "she wants to see you actually."

heeseung swallowed, heart beating a bit faster. his eyes followed your hands as you reached for his.

it's an old habit. he told himself, as if he didn't physically feel each goosebump on his body raise under your contact. a strand of your hair fell in front of your face. and he should've held himself back but he didn't, carefully using the hand you weren't holding to tuck the strand behind your ear. it was muscle memory.

"she wanted to ask if you approved…" you gently traced the outlines of his fingers and he blinked rapidly, feeling your lingering touch in every nerve of his body. "…of sunghoon."

right.

sunghoon.

how could he have forgotten.

"why does it matter what i think of him?"

but it meant everything to you though. and to your mom, apparently.

"um… i kinda told her i broke up with all the other boyfriends 'cause you didn't like them," you winced, peeking at him through one eye. "please don't hate me."

what the fuck?

"me?" disbelief was heavily laced in his tone. "i didn't like them? dude… when did i ever say anything about any of them? now your mom probably thinks i'm some insane guy controlling her daughter. she probably hates— holy shit— why would you say that to her?"

"no, hee, she loves you. probably loves you more than me actually," you giggled, "you're a good judge of character… and she likes that you're picky about people."

i'm not picky, i just don't want anyone to be with you.

oh.

okay…

there it was. again. and that was definitely something he shouldn't say out loud.

what did heeseung think of sunghoon?

well, there was a brief moment where he thought maybe time would be an advantage. heeseung had known you for years while sunghoon only had a few months to compete with. but if time was really the advantage that would mean heeseung would've already had the upper hand.

and he didn't. he never did. because he never said anything.

sunghoon was everything heeseung wasn't.

sunghoon would've told you the very second he started to feel things, even if he didn't understand what exactly he was feeling. sunghoon wouldn't have believed space from you would magically fix his state of mind. sunghoon would’ve never shut down, much less shut you out. and sunghoon would've never left anything unsaid.

"did you really break up with them because of me?"

the back of your throat stung, and you blinked hard before answering him, “i did. yes."

heeseung's breathing staggered. he squeezed his eyes tightly before looking up to meet your gaze. and although he seemed to have gained some composure, the second he saw your face, he grimaced at the tear running down your cheek. you heard him draw in a breath while his eyes examined your expression for any telltale signs of discomfort. his eyebrows furrowed, fingers almost twitching towards you, but for the first time, he held himself back from reaching out to comfort you.

"why?"

you choked at his directness and your gaze quickly dropped to your distorted reflection held in the puddle, contemplating how honest he wanted you to be. “i mean…” you trailed off. and your face grew hot because you could almost physically feel his eyes boring into the side of your face. though you couldn’t bear to look at him in this moment. "i've never liked anyone," you sniffled, using the back of your sleeve to wipe your nose, "…more than i like you."

heeseung swallowed the forming lump in his throat and his entire body went limp. and you had almost forgotten you were clutching his fingers until your palms soon felt cold as his warmth slipped away from your grasp. still, you couldn’t find the strength to look at him even after the shaky breath he let out.

you were such a confusing person. an unsolvable puzzle. it was one of the things he used to hate about you. and he felt so stupid because for one brief moment, he was met with a flicker of hope before he pulled his hand away. but the thing was, heeseung now had you figured out. he knew you said things in ways that could come off meaning something much stronger than what you truly intended. you telling everyone you were in love with him a lifetime ago being the first.

i’ve never liked anyone more than i like you.

you had a weird way with words. a way that made it feel like heeseung’s heart had been swallowed, so that his stomach could be turned inside out to be put on display, solely for you. yet, even if he had gotten on his knees and held up his bleeding heart as a sacrifice for you… you would’ve looked away and would’ve never seen it. because you’ve never seen heeseung. not in the same way he sees you. he knew that now. he knew you almost too well despite sometimes wishing he didn’t know you at all.

heeseung sighed into the silence, shifting to a more comfortable postion.

"but sunghoon?"

"he's different," a smile grew on your face as you sniffed, "he's like… i find myself feeling things with him i've never felt before." you glanced at heeseung briefly and he nodded, urging you to continue. "he's the complete opposite of me in a way. i really like that. and he makes me feel good about myself. i kinda like that makes me feel nervous? i— is that weird?"

"no." heeseung let out a small chuckle. "i don't think so." it was like the light in your eyes was immediately switched on the moment you started talking about him. but the light didn’t break him this time.

"and it's like i finally understand why people don't dread being with their partner."

"you're telling me you dreaded the ones before?"

"i mean yeah, i didn't like them."

heeseung's face contorted in disbelief and you shoved his shoulder lightly, "don't even look at me like that. heeseung. bro, they were so fucking insufferable," you deadpanned.

"you're literally insane."

heeseung smiled to himself. your 'craziness' was one of the traits he loved most about you. and he could only dream of experiencing it in the way only sunghoon ever will.

it wouldn't be fair to make you choose between the two. it wasn't something heeseung would actually make you do but how could he not think about it? it was a selfish thought that was consistently pushed down but brought right back up again whenever heeseung saw how you looked at sunghoon as if he created earth just for you. or when he remembered the image of sunghoon's hands roaming all over your body—the thing that forced heeseung to face the reality of it all. it left a sour taste in his mouth. and more often than he'd like to admit, he wondered what would it feel like to take sunghoon’s place.

but heeseung wasn't yours. and you weren’t his.

deep down he knew sunghoon was the type of person you needed to be with. someone who was nothing like himself. and he was fully aware that even if he did give you an ultimatum, and even if you did choose him, that wouldn't necessarily mean that he would have you in the way sunghoon has you. that’s not to say it didn’t hurt to come to terms with. but he had to check something. for his own sake.

his head hung low. "if i asked you," he hesitated, chewing on the inside of his cheeks.

should he really even be saying this?

"to break up with him… would you do it?" heeseung's teeth were clenched and his body felt like he was dropped straight into a firepit. a stark contrast to the biting cold under the rain.

your eyebrows shot up immediately. "what… i don't—" you stammered, your fidgeting hands frozen and intertwined with his.

it was a valid question though. by heeseung's logic at least. because he needed to know if it was worth keeping to himself. if it was worth pushing down again.

"—no. i wouldn't."

and those were the exact words he needed to hear.

"good."

"i really do like sunghoon," you whispered, leaning your head against heeseung's shoulder.

"yeah?" his arm wrapped around your shoulder to shield you from the leak above.

"yeah, i do."

"well then, i'm happy for you." he meant it wholeheartedly.

“i love you, heeseung. always.”

he inhaled shrarply, pushing aside his last bit of pride. "i love you too."

if heeseung had told sunghoon he liked you, would that have changed the way things turned out?

maybe it would've changed a lot of things.

but it was too little, too late.

because sunghoon was perfect for you. and heeseung couldn’t fight perfect.

[previous] << masterlist >> [the end.]

notes; hello chat. hello people. i know i took ages to post this last chapter and i genuinely am really sorry for the wait. i cannot thank you guys enough for being so patient with me for don’t make it weird, especially those who have been with this from the very first chapter. i actually started writing this right before things went down in march… so initially it was hard for me to get back to this and fix it into something i saw worth putting out. i’m honestly still not even sure if i’m fully satisfied with this but… i’m think i’ve conveyed the exactly feeling i was trying to put into this chapter. i hate to subject JLBU heeseung to this… like he’s one of my favorite characters to write honestly. but things will get better for him in the future of this universe. #beliebedat !!! anyways… this is the final chapter of don’t make it weird. and i really really hope you guys enjoyed this (and i hope it was worth the wait😖). also, if you have any questions about anything relating to this story (or if you just want to share your thoughts lol), feel free send an ask or message and i’ll be more than happy to answer! this endnote was way longer than i expected… oops. but thank youuu again for reading and being soo patient. RAWRRR ILY SAUR MUCH 💗💗💗 !!!

[solonenova library ❀⋆.ೃ࿔*:･]

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campus’s hottest man. the senior literally everyone knew and wanted to sleep with. the guy who somehow managed to look irritated even while playing hero right now.

the trance everyone was under regarding him didn’t quite affect you, maybe because he was the biggest asshole you ever laid your eyes on, or maybe because of his infamous denial of true connection like getting a fucking girlfriend, he completely swore against feelings.

“hi!” you grinned.

he didn’t bother responding before lifting you off the table with ease.

"what . . . hey!"

he ignored your protests, one arm around your waist, the other under your knees as he carried you in front of him through the crowd.

the party erupted in whistles as it seemed everyone’s sudden attention was on you instead minding their own business.

"lee!"

"taking your little girlfriend home?"

"shut up," heeseung said without looking back.

you buried your burning face against his shoulder, his black shirt smelling of cologne and cigarette smoke.

"they're so embarrassing."

"so are you."

you gasped dramatically . . . heeseung usually fired comments at you, so this came as no surprise.

“you are so rude, seungie.”

he sighed at the pestering nickname you had called him since your freshmen year. if he was allowed to play his cliche older fuckboy role then you were more than qualified to give him a silly nickname that he despised.

"you were dancing on a table,” he said matter of factly as if the concept was so foreign.

“it’s called having fun,” you rolled your eyes as he continued to carry you bridal style through the chaos, “you should totally try it sometime.”

the cool night air surrounded you suddenly. the music became background noise behind the closed front door as heeseung finally set you down to sit on the porch steps and he crouched in front of you.

"where's my sister?"

you blinked slowly. “stella?”

“yeah,” he huffed out in amusement. “i only have one sister, y’know?”

". . .bathroom."

"you sure?"

"i think." you pointed vaguely toward the house. the last time you saw stella she told you that she had to pee really bad, or was it when that cute sophomore pulled her away to dance? you had absolutely no idea.

heeseung pinched the bridge of his nose and you realized how often he was in a state of distress around you . . . did the man ever relax?

"i'm texting her. i'm taking you back to your dorm."

your eyes widened because there was absolutely no way lee heeseung would be the one taking you home tonight and not that sexy man in your english lit class.

"no!"

"no?"

“i wanna stay,” you whined, looking like a toddler throwing a tantrum over candy or something. “c’mon, i saved this tiny ass dress for tonight!”

you watched heeseung’s eyes fall to the lacy black dress that was indeed very short and hugged your curves just right before snapping back onto your face.

he mumbled something that sounded of an “mhm” mixed with a cough. was he nervous?

“i've had . . ." you squinted as though calculating. ". . .a perfectly reasonable amount of alcohol.”

"you almost ate shit falling off that table."

“but, you caught me,” you said while patting his bicep twice, “so technically nothing bad happened.”

heeseung stared at you for a long second. this was probably the first time you had seen him look so vulnerable, no scowl on his face or sneer comments. the sight was actually pleasant.

“you look good tonight.”

the words casually left your mouth like the weight of them wasn’t incredibly heavy. it seemed to have its impact on heeseung as his expression fell unreadable, his brows furrowing, like the cold facade he wore melted ever so slightly.

“oh, yeah?” he snorted. that expressionless mask immediately back like it never left.

“don’t pretend that you don’t enjoy talking to me.”

"hm, that's your theory?"

"mhm,” you dragged the sound out, tilting your head. “how come you just always happen to show up whenever i'm in trouble?”

he hesitated. "you just make me nervous."

the words seemed to slip out before he could stop them. both of you were really just blurting out shit tonight, huh?

his eyes widened ever so slightly and you blinked. the two of you were staring at each other frozen.

". . .i make you nervous?"

he stood up from his crouched position and suddenly looked incredibly fascinated by the framework of the house’s exterior, literally anything but this conversation.

"i didn't say that."

"you absolutely did!”

you stood too and stepped closer, wobbling only a little to which he grabbed ahold of your elbow lightly to keep you steady.

“don’t do that,” heeseung said in deep voice.

"you get nervous?"

he sighed. "you're tipsy."

"so?"

"so this conversation can wait until tomorrow."

"but tomorrow you'll go back to pretending you don't like me."

“is that what you think of me?” he laughed under his breath.

you nodded, lashes batting up at him. the breeze moved a strand of hair across your face. before you could brush it away, heeseung reached up naturally and tucked it gently behind your ear.

his hand lingering by the side of your flushed face. your eyes met, everything suddenly felt quieter, even that boy throwing up by the fence seemed to disappear.

the past few years of your college life flashed before your eyes, and in the end of every single bad decision, heeseung had always been there whether it was driving you and stella home from a karaoke night that got very out of hand, or constantly saving you from those awkward conversations with the football guys who only wanted to get into your pants . . . god, heeseung had tucked you into your own bed a time or two.

you leaned in without really thinking. the thick tension between you felt as if an invisible string was pulling you closer and he seemed to notice immediately.

his eyes flickered with passion as his gaze dropped to your lips before he closed his eyes for a brief second and stepped back.

"no."

the words came out soft like it wasn’t exactly rejection, but more restriction.

you frowned.

"you don't want to kiss me?"

his bottom lip rolled in between his teeth like the sight of you looking like a sad puppy crushed him . . . he had definitely never looked at you like that before.

"you're not completely sober."

"oh."

never did you think you would be saying this, but curse you lee heeseung for being a gentleman . . . or doing the bare minimum as a man.

“you might forget everything that happened tonight.” his voice dropped to a whisper. “but trust me . . . when i kiss you, that’s the one thing you’ll remember.”

heat rushed to your cheeks that had nothing to do with the drinks. for someone who claimed to hate lovey dovey shit, he was being crazily intimate with his words.

"you think i'll still want to?" you mumbled.

he smiled. “i guess we'll find out, trouble.”

you narrowed your eyes at the nickname, studying him for a second before getting up onto your toes. heeseung froze as instead of his lips, you pressed a light kiss against his cheek.

his entire face softened, shoulders dropping from their previous tense state. “what was that for?"

"so tomorrow . . .” you whispered with a grin, ". . .you know i meant that one."

before words could escape his open mouth, stella pushed through the front door.

"there you two are! hee, did you seriously find her on a table?"

he looked down at you as you tried to suppress a smile.

"unfortunately," he said, unable to hide his own smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth, "yes."

and for the first time since you had met him three years ago, lee heeseung didn’t seem to be hiding his emotions anymore.

the uber drops you off at the curb and you nearly forget to close the door behind you, giggling at your own clumsiness as you wave goodbye to the driver who definitely thinks you're a mess.

you are a mess. a happy, warm, spinning mess.

your heels click unevenly against the pavement as you make your way to the front door, fumbling with your keys for a solid three minutes before realizing you never actually locked it this morning.

jungwon is going to lecture you about that tomorrow, you think, but right now you can't bring yourself to care because the door swings open and there he is.

he's on the couch, laptop balanced on his knees, glasses sliding down his nose, hair sticking up in seven different directions from where he's been running his hands through it.

he looks up when you enter, and his face does that thing it always does when you come home, this soft rearranging of features into something like relief, like love.

"hey," he says, closing the laptop. "i was getting worried. it's almost two."

"sorry," you sing song, kicking off your shoes and almost falling over in the process. "lost track of time. soojin kept buying shots."

he stands, approaching you with the kind of caution usually reserved for wild animals, and you realize you must look as disheveled as you feel. your hair is probably escaping its clips and your lipstick is definitely smeared.

"how many shots?" he asks, taking your purse from your shoulder and setting it on the entry table.

"enough," you say, throwing your arms around his neck and burying your face in his collarbone. he smells like fabric softener and the vanilla candle you keep in the bedroom and something uniquely him, something warm and grounding.

"enough to miss you a lot."

his hands settle on your waist, steadying you. "you saw me this morning."

"still missed you," you mumble against his skin. "missed you every second. kept thinking about your face. your stupid pretty face."

he laughs, the sound rumbling through his chest against yours. "come on, let's get you to bed."

"no," you protest, tightening your grip. "want to stay here. want to hold you."

"you can hold me in bed," he reasons, but he's already giving in, wrapping his arms around your back and swaying slightly with you in the entryway "you're going to have a headache tomorrow."

"worth it," you declare, pulling back to look at him. the room tilts a little, so you grip his shoulders harder. "you're so pretty. did i tell you you're pretty?"

"you mentioned my stupid pretty face, yes."

"no but like," you cup his cheeks in your hands, squishing his face until his lips pucker. "you're the prettiest. the prettiest boy. i'm so lucky. how did i get so lucky?"

he tries to speak but your thumbs are pressing against his mouth, so he just makes a muffled sound that you interpret as agreement.

"exactly," you say, nodding solemnly. "exactly. i'm lucky. you're lucky. we're lucky together."

"okay, lightweight," he says, gently extracting your hands from his face and bringing them to his lips to kiss your knuckles.

"let's get you some water and medicine before you declare your undying love to the coat rack."

"the coat rack wishes," you sniff, but you let him guide you toward the kitchen, leaning heavily against his side.

he settles you at the kitchen island and you watch him move around the space, filling a glass with water, finding the ibuprofen in the cabinet, wetting a paper towel. he moves with such intention, such care, and you feel your chest ache with the sheer volume of your affection for him.

"here," he says, pressing the glass into your hands. "drink all of it."

"yes sir," you salute, spilling a little on your shirt.

he sighs, but he's smiling, that gummy smile that makes your heart stutter.

you drink the water because he asked you to, because you would probably drink poison if he looked at you like that, all soft and fond and patient.

"medicine," he says, holding out two pills.

"don't need it," you argue. "feel fine. feel great. feel like i could run a marathon."

"you could barely walk to the kitchen," he points out. "take the medicine. future you will thank me."

you take the pills, chasing them with the rest of your water, and then he's there with the paper towel, wiping at your mouth with the kind of tenderness that makes you want to cry.

"love you," you say, catching his wrist. "love you so much. like, so much. like if love was a thing you could measure, i would have the most. i would win. gold medal in loving jungwon."

"that's very impressive," he says, leaning in to press a kiss to your forehead. "you're definitely winning."

"really?"

"really. no contest."

you beam at him, all loose and happy and full of feelings that the alcohol has made impossible to filter. "good. because you're my favorite. my favorite person. my favorite everything."

he takes your hand, lacing your fingers together, and starts walking toward the bedroom. you follow, unsteady but unwilling to let go of him, your anchor in the spinning room.

"you're going to regret this in the morning," he warns, pulling back the covers and helping you sit on the edge of the bed.

"never," you say, watching him unbutton your jeans and slide them down your legs. "could never regret you."

he pauses, hands on your calves, and looks up at you. his eyes are dark in the dim light of the bedroom, serious in a way that sobers you slightly.

"you say the nicest things when you're drunk," he murmurs.

"mean them," you insist. "mean them all the time. just say them more when i'm tipsy."

he finishes helping you out of your clothes, replacing them with one of his oversized tshirts that smells like him, and then he's guiding you under the covers, tucking you in like you're something precious.

"stay," you say, catching his hand as he moves to stand. "please. want to sleep with you holding me."

he doesn't hesitate, just kicks off his sweatpants and climbs in beside you, pulling you against his chest. you curl into him immediately, leg thrown over his hip, arm draped across his waist, face buried in the hollow of his throat.

"this okay?" he asks, stroking your hair.

"perfect," you sigh. "you're perfect. did i say that? you're perfect."

"you might have mentioned it."

"good. because you are. take such good care of me. always taking care of me."

"want to," he says quietly, lips brushing your hairline. "love taking care of you."

"even when i'm messy?"

"especially when you're messy," he admits, and you can hear the smile in his voice. "you're cute when you're messy. all soft and honest. tell me everything you're thinking."

"embarrassing," you groan.

"never," he promises. "never embarrassing. i like knowing what you're feeling. even if it's just that you think i'm pretty."

"stupid pretty," you correct, yawning.

"stupid pretty," he agrees.

the room is still spinning but it's slower now, gentler, like you're floating on a lazy river instead of being tossed in waves. his hand is tracing patterns on your back, up and down, circles and figure eights, and you feel yourself drifting, anchored by his heartbeat against your palm.

"jungwon?" you whisper.

"yeah?"

"thank you for waiting up."

"nowhere else i'd be," he says simply.

"love you," you say again, because it bears repeating, because you want him to know it in every cell of his body, because you're tipsy and sentimental and he deserves to hear it a thousand times.

"love you too," he says, and you feel the words vibrate through his chest. "go to sleep, baby. i'll be right here."

"promise?"

"promise."

you believe him. you always believe him. he's never given you a reason not to.

⋆˚✿˖°

Jungwon's whole life has been made up of only two elements, 1. Learning how to fight and protect,  2. Protecting the princess he is assigned for life. Ever since he was a child, he has been taught how to hold a sword before, how to play. How to bow before he could recite the alphabet and how to combat before he started schooling. 

The teacher was his own father, the knight to the queen and her protector who swore to protect the queen until his last breath. And when Jungwon was born, he was raised to not play with toys but wield a sword. He was raised to obey commands and put his life on the line for the person he is assigned to protect. 

A perfect knight. 

A shield. 

When the princess was born, Jungwon was about six years old. Sharp and witty, having wits at the ripe age of eleven. He was one of the brightest for his age, easily passing the others in skills of combat. Jungwon was invited by the queen herself to see the princess after trusting his father to have taught Jungwon well. 

It was one of fate's many games to bring the knight and the princess closer. 

Little Jungwon was very curious to see the princess for himself. He had heard how his father praised the princess's charms and beauty, calling her the moon's child. And when his father told him about being invited, he was delighted with the hopes of seeing the princess for himself. 

“Jungwon-ah, the princess is very delicate, ok?” His father warned him, walking inside the palace towards the royal nursery where the queen and the king resided in waiting for the invitees. Little Jungwon couldn’t express his excitement and joy when they reached the gates of the nursery. The princess was just a door away and he would see if the princess was worthy of such high praise.

“Remember Jungwon, bow to his highness and her highness, do not seem extremely eager and maintain the calm I taught you.” 

It may seem as if Jungwon doesn’t fully understand what his father conveys to him but despite him only being eleven years old, he has been trained and taught many things that even peasants do not possess. Naturally making him much more capable and mature at a child’s age. “Yes, father.” Jungwon took deep breaths and fixed his attire, a knight’s robe to match the one of his father. 

“Here we go.” The older man gave a nod to the guard nearest to him, watching intensely as the door opened slowly. The natural rays from the sun passed through the huge windows in the room, making Jungwon squint and his heart raced at the anticipation of him finally facing the royals along with the princess. “Come Jungwon.” Jungwon obediently followed his father as he led the way into the royal nursery.

To say that the room was beautiful was an understatement. White carpets, floral designs, soft lighting from the sun along with a small chandelier on the ceiling, toys and dolls scattered everywhere on the floor, and a small bed in the center of all, leaning on the wall of the huge glass pane.

The king and the queen sat in the left corner of the room, smiling softly and watching as a small child played near the empty fireplace with her plush toys. The princess. “My lord. My lady.” Jungwon watched his father bow his head in respect while his torso stayed upright. “Ahh, my knight. Welcome.” The queen smiled while the king huffed pleasantly. 

Jungwon bowed down just like his father, showing deep respect to the royals. “I am Yang Jungwon.” He voiced, standing erect and cautious. It wasn't that he needed to be cautious, it was just his upbringing. “Welcome, young knight.” The queen gracefully waved and the king smiled at the young boy, impressed by this mature behaviour. 

“You may see the princess. For I wish Yang Jungwon to be her knight.” 

Jungwon's heart froze, knuckles turning white from the shock. He didn't even show them his training yet, and he was already chosen? “My lady—Jungwon hasn't completed his training—” 

“I agree with the queen, Yang. Your boy seems ready and he will continue to train with you and also other mentors but he will remain in the castle. With princess Y/N” 

The five year old girl, you, looked up at being called a princess, standing up and running up to Jungwon and hugged his waist. “You will be my friend?” Jungwon's heart thumped rapidly inside his chest, face turning red for the nervousness and embarrassment. He was a really shy person and physical affection wasn't his thing.

“Appa! Will he be my friend?” The little you turned to your father, the king and questioned with a huge smile on your face with your eyes sparkling with hope. When Jungwon had first walked in, your eyes had sparkled up in pure joy to meet another friend, someone other than the caretaker. Seeing the young handsome boy, you instantly dropped everything and started staring at him in awe. 

“Yes, princess, He is your friend now.” Your father smiled at you lovingly. You jumped in place at the excitement and hugged him again, nudging your face in his stomach and grinning widely at making a new friend. Jungwon? His heart thumped faster than the time when he ran the fastest. His emotions were all over the place but one thing was sure, you were pretty. Very pretty. And that was the first time he understood the duties of being a knight. Protect you and destroy the danger. 

It has been two weeks since you were under Jungwon’s care and eyes. The caretaker was always there in the nursery but whenever you ran out, Jungwon would drop everything he was doing and run after you to make sure you don’t trip and break your nose, or scrape your soft knee. He used to train in the chamber which was right beside the nursery, always keeping an eye out even when he was in the middle of training and you were taking a nap. 

But today? It was different. It was your birthday and you had not stopped bothering Jungwon since the second you opened your eyes. “Won! Bring me some water!”, “Won! Can you pick me up and swing?”, “Won! Help me pick a dress, I don’t like what she gives me.”, and so much more. Jungwon felt as if he was on a rollercoaster, running around managing you while his father stayed near the royals and finished work there. 

As much as Jungwon cared about you from the past 4 months, he was starting to get annoyed by how frequently you were bothering him during his training for insignificant chores. He didn’t want to get mad at you today, heck he didn’t want to get mad at you ever, but especially today since it was a special day for you but—”Y/N can you not?! Stop bothering me!” 

That was it. He snapped at you while you sneaked him a little piece of cake from the kitchen, wanting to share the first birthday together with him. The problem was that Jungwon snapped at you without even knowing the reason for why he did so. He just snapped when you entered his chambers for the first time with your hands holding a small slice of cake, dirty from the cream. 

The entire world froze, Jungwon froze too after realizing what he had done. He just snapped at you, the one person he has to protect and give up his life for, the one who he will stay by the side of, no matter the age. The one who thought of him as her first friend and deep down he considered her a friend too. The princess. His princess. 

Jungwon turned around to see you standing just inside his chambers, holding a slice of cake in your little hands with frosting dripping and messing up everything. He saw the pretty yellow dress you wore, a soft pastel gown with floral designs which were now messed up with the frosting melting. He saw your lips tremble, soft peach colour popping out as your lips forming a pout. He saw your hair which enhanced your entire innocence, a little ribbon on your hair, soft curls, looking like the perfect princess. 

At last, he saw your eyes, beautiful brown eyes that he always wanted to keep tears away from always, the eyes he never wanted to show any pain, now filled to the brim because of his stupidity. The realization struck him hard. All you wanted was a friend you could laugh with, have fun with on your special day. You could have gone to anyone. The neighbouring kingdom’s daughter who was the same age as you, your cousins who ran around you the whole day to make sure you don’t get hurt.

And even after having so many more individuals who you could be with, you still chose him. You chose him to be the first person to share a special moment with. Not your parents, who birth you. Not your caretaker who has been by your side the second you were born. No, you chose him. A friend you made 4 months ago who now you love. Who you die to see the second you wake up and the one you hug every night before going to your chambers to sleep. And he snapped at you. 

A silent sob escaped your mouth, a single tear dropped. Jungwon’s heart ripped open from his chest at the sight. No. No. Not because of him. Not his princess. “Prin—” You were out his chambers before he could even finish a word. You run wherever your little legs take you, the cake leaving trails behind you on the floor. You were heartbroken. All you wanted to do was have the first celebration with your special friend but he doesn’t care. 

Jungwon stood frozen as you crossed his threshold, sprinting away from his chambers while he stayed frozen on the spot. It wasn’t his fault, right? He did the right thing by finally snapping at you right? Because you were annoying him. He was busy training since the morning and you were bothering him continuously even though you knew he was training. But those thoughts were gone as quick as they arrived when his eyes flashed with your teary eyes. 

No, he wasn’t right. Even if he wanted to snap at you, he could have done it later. He could have stopped himself because he knows it's your special day. No, he needed to find you. He needed to get to you.

“Princess! Wait!” Jungwon ran behind you in full speed as you sprinted towards the ballroom with almost everyone there. Jungwon almost reached you, trying to save you from slamming into someone and hurting yourself or getting your pretty dress dirty. He didn’t want this day for you to be sad. This was your special day and he didn’t want to ever ruin your special day. 

But he was a little late. Before he could grasp your hand and pull you into him, you had slammed into a tall rough leg, the thighs of a soldier who was guarding the place. Your head slams into his thigh and the force pushes you to fall back on the floor with a loud thud. The entire ballroom freezes. The people stop everything they were doing, other kids in the room stop running around and Jungwon froze two steps behind you. 

THUD 

You drop on the floor and flare your arms at the side to steady yourself, the cake smashing pathetically under your fingers, having the soft texture smush and stick to your fingers.

One tear. Two tears. And then you burst out crying. The cake falls from your hand onto your pretty dress, making it dirty which just makes you sob louder. Everyone ran to you in an instant, grabbing you and cradling you in their arms, wiping your tears softly and whispering sweetly in your ears that everything will be alright. That your pretty yellow dress will be cleaned and the birthday will be wonderful. But how could you explain that you weren’t upset because of the dress. You weren’t upset that you bumped into a soldier and fell on your bum. 

You were upset that your only friend yelled at you when all you wanted was to celebrate the special day with him first. That you wanted to eat the cake with him first before you did with anyone else. But, he chose to yell at you. He chose to make you cry. Jungwon couldn’t do anything because you were in the arms of grown ups who were clearly taller than an eleven year old. 

He wanted to hug you, apologize to you and even let you hit him for ever making you cry on your birthday but how could he? Tears filled his little eyes too and his lips trembled. You were crying because of him. He was the one to make you cry. The heartbreak was too much for him to bear too. He looked down and harshly wiped his tears, trying to appear strong but at the end of the day, he was a child too. At the cry of the princess, the king and the queen appeared, the queen taking her in her arms while the king furiously demanded to know who made his princess cry. 

Jungwon flinched, looking up at the furious king before stepping forward with his head bowed. “It was me, your majesty.” Jungwon stammered out, feeling extremely embarrassed and angered by his own actions. The king's expression switched from anger to shock, not believing that Jungwon could make you cry because of how well he treated you. “What did you do, son?” 

Jungwon's eyes stinged with tears at the endearment. He couldn't voice out what actually had happened. That he was being stupid and snapped at you just because you had been annoying him the whole time. How could he say that to the king? 

“Jungwon?” The voice of his father broke the silence. He came over to Jungwon, looking at his son with confusion. “You made her cry?” That's when his dam broke. Jungwon let everything out like a dam gushing out water into an empty path. He explained how he had been practicing but you kept bothering him and he never intended to make you cry or snap at you but in the heat of the moment, he couldn't stop himself and snapped at you and made you cry. 

The room was silent while Jungwon was speaking, the only other sound was of you sobbing softly. You heard everything he said, every word and sucked on your fingers with regret. You saw him cry and that made you sad. You didn't like that feeling. You didn't like feeling sad and seeing your friend sad. Jungwon wiped his eyes and looked at the king with regret, begging for forgiveness and also begging for forgiveness from you. 

He thought he had messed up now, that could never be friends with you the same way again. He thought about how he would miss you calling for him at every minor inconvenience yet he would happily come to your services just to see your sweet smile. He didn't want to lose any of that. Just when Jungwon lost all hopes and thought he would never be her knight again, the entire hall burst out laughing. 

The king and his father too were on the ground, laughing like they have heard the most uproarious thought ever. It was just a little banter with two kids who care about each other a lot and had their first fight. It was the cutest sight. Jungwon and you couldn't understand why the adults were laughing while you both just cried your hearts out, like it was something hilarious. 

You wiggled out the arms of your mother who was holding you and ran to Jungwon, wrapping your hands around him while looking at the crowd. “I forgive you, wonnie.” You whispered and looked up to him with a smile, your hair framing your face so beautifully that Jungwon felt as if his heart had short circuited. The adults' laughter died down as they saw the two of you in each other's arms, smiling and giggling like old friends again after Jungwon had cried and begged for forgiveness. And since you had forgiven him, the king too had no reason to punish you, knowing it was just a children's banter. 

But the bond between the two of you? Grew stronger and the both of you grew closer to each other.

The both of you grew up beautifully in harmony with each other. You were now a beautiful young lady, a princess who was nicknamed, the moon's child, because of your beauty. You were now at the age eighteen where you learned about various things like the court, the committee, the ministers and other royals like the head of soldiers, the nobles and the relations with your neighbouring kingdom. 

Jungwon, now at the age of twenty four, grew up to be a dashing handsome gent. He was appointed to be your personal knight three years ago and since then, he has never left your side for even a second. Friendship apart, he would always take care of you no matter what. It didn't matter to him if he was sick, in pain or just extremely tired. He was wherever you were. 

The relationship between the two of you grew beautifully too. The bond that the both of you share grew stronger and deeper with such extraordinary connections where every peasant admired your pair too. You were the playful one of the duo, the jolly and the happy soul, the free butterfly who slept on flowers with no tension in her mind. Jungwon was quite the opposite. 

If you were the people's lover, he hated people. You would roam around the palace, looking at flowers, wearing a  flowy dress, open hair and a huge smile on your face to light up a world. Jungwon would be two steps right behind you. He would watch you carefully, wearing a sword on his hips at all times whenever he is on duty. He wasn't going to slack off while you were all happy and let that get ruined by some peasant or an arrogant prince who can't take no for an answer. 

But there was something that stung you everyday even though you prided yourself of being his first friend, the one he truly cares about. His sword. The sword that he always carried like it was a part of his own body. He would wake up and wear that sword till the day ended and the cycle would repeat.

The sword was his first wife. The one who grew up with him even before you had ever come into his life and sometimes it made you jealous. You would catch him in his chambers, tending to his sword with such ease and gentleness in his fingers, sharpening the edges and cleaning the rust. His eyes held a certain glint whenever he took care of his sword. Like that sword was his. Sometimes so delicate yet strong, so fierce yet beautiful. His weapon. 

Your heart ached watching him smother his sword with love when you wanted the same, perhaps more.

Ever since you were eleven and he was seventeen, you had developed a terrible crush on your friend. Whenever he was near you, your breaths fumbled, your mind turned to white noise and your eyes scanned for him at all times. Sneaking glances, smiling shyly at him while he was dining with the other guards, your heart raced thinking that maybe one day he would like you too. 

Maybe one day he would see you like a woman and take care of you like he does with his sword, like he gently cradles it and sharpens it beautifully. 

But what you never knew was how you made his heart stop with every shy you would give him. You thought he never noticed you just because he was looking at the guards and having a talk while dining but he noticed. He always noticed anything in relation to you. The soft glances, the stolen moments, the teasing touches, his mind screamed at him to make you his but he couldn't. 

There were two things stopping him and he would never betray his morals. 

1.  You were too young. He was seventeen, an adolescent while you were only eleven. A child. He would never ever view a child with the eyes of a man. You were a child for him, not a woman. A person to protect and die for, not to love and cherish. 

2.  You were a princess. He was a knight. Those two are never meant to be together under any circumstances. He was a commoner while you were a royal. The bloodline will carry on with you and he was not going to be the one to taint it. Your kingdom was the purest of the royals with absolutely no illegitimate children and no other blood other than the royals. 

He was never going to harm that line. So when he understood what you were planning to do, he locked his heart up, threw the key blindly, and forced himself to never ever look at you in such a manner. 

But feelings don't disappear just because a heart is locked up and the mind takes control. The feels are pushed down, forgotten but never lost. Unknowingly, the feelings Jungwon had for you only grew deeper and deeper. And now when he had to keep his feelings out the most, that's when it started to rise back up. To bite him right on his ass. 

“Jungwon, you mustn’t disturb the princess while she is being called upon.” Jungwon’s jaw clenched hard after hearing his fellow guard warn him. Today was the start of the day where you would start allowing suitors from all around the world to try and swoon you for marriage. Having your eighteenth birthday yesterday, Jungwon had been secretly dreading this. 

“I won't disturb her unless the noble tries something first.” He replied, looking straight ahead with a blank face but the pop of veins on his neck told another story. “I'm her knight.” The line of suitors start lining up outside the common hall, having to go through Jungwon before they step inside to meet you. 

Jungwon's mind was going crazy. Seeing the line of handsome and capable men drove him crazy because he didn't want to lose you. His feelings kept rising up without his permission making him get extremely possessive of you, but he shoved all those feelings down and let the nobles in one by one, letting them try to swoon you when all he wanted was just to walk in and hide you from the world and the eyes of other men. 

One by one, they all walked out with failure and the pride in Jungwon rose slowly. That's right. No one deserved you. You deserved the best of the best, the one who can protect you, cherish you, love you.. die for you. “Won! Aish, it was so tiring,” Your voice hits his ears like sweet music when you whine like that. You were finally free after the last suitor had gotten rejected for the day. Jungwon’s head turned in your direction at your voice, seeing you yawn and stretch in the royal gown uncomfortably.

He cleared his throat before quickly looking away. How could you look so good? “Princess, time for lunch.” Jungwon's heart thumped harder at your whine, you pouting so cutely in front of him, looking so adorable. “Won! Are you even listening to me rant?!” You poke his bicep, trying to draw his attention back to your rants but he just looked straight ahead and fixed his sword which was already placed neatly on his waist. “I am, princess.” He said, trying to keep his voice even and calm like he has always been taught. “Liar!” You pouted and turned away from him, walking away faster. 

Fine, if he wants to be difficult, then you can always be difficult. You rejected all of them because they couldn't come close to Jungwon, having love in your heart only for him but even after that, he chose to not look at you while you were dressed up for him, then alright, you can play hard to get too. Jungwon’s eyebrow flutters in amusement as you walk faster than him, crossing your arms above your chest and moving away to your chambers to get ready for the royal lunch. He couldn’t help but smirk a little in amusement at your behaviour. 

“Princess, trying to run away from your own guard?” Jungwon caught up to you in an instant. His legs were obviously much longer and faster than yours plus your huge gown restricted you from walking too fast. His breath hit the back of your ear, like he was teasing you for acting like you don’t care. “Did I get my princess upset?” Jungwon knows this is wrong. He knows he shouldn't speak like this with the princess and that doing this may open his heart unknowingly, hurting him and perhaps hurting you in the process but he just couldn’t stop himself when you looked so cute and mad at him. 

“Go away, Jungwon! I have Heeseu—” 

‘No you don’t. He is with your sister.” Heeseung was the royal knight for your younger sister but you were also close to him because Jungwon was one of his best friends. You knew Jungwon did get a little possessive when you mentioned Heeseung, not liking how you smile while you talk about heeseung to him so this was one of your ways to make him jealous but turns out, he is a step ahead of you. 

“Talk to me, princess.” He smiled gently, the smile that one you know. He has never smiled at anyone, not even his own father. This smile is reserved for you only. He knows your heart melts when you watch his little dimple pop out when he gives you that smile, and it definitely does melt you. It melts you like butter. “You didn't listen to me rant..” You pout, looking at him with doe eyes. And Jungwon? Gone. Heart skipped a beat, face going red and his entire being crumbled. 

He can never maintain the tough knight personality when he is with you. 

“I was, my princess. But, I'm also worried about your dining—” 

“Don't be worried!” You interrupted, “I dine quite well, knight.” You roll your eyes playfully, turning your head away from him in fake annoyance. Jungwon's heart raced at your cuteness, his mind blurring everything around them to only focus on you. This was horrible for him. You were a princess, he was a knight. Not made for each other yet he can never seem to move away from you. 

“I beg for your forgiveness, princess..” Jungwon breathes into your ears, his fingers itching to just let go and grab you by the waist, tugging  you into his chest. God, he was obsessed but he shouldn’t be. Especially when he knows you are too. “Beg properly, knight!” You stop him and turn to face him, arms crossed over your chest as you look at with a playful glare. Jungwon grinned knowingly. You wanted him to kneel and bow his head in utter submission. 

“Will you go that far princess?” He tilted his head and raised a single eyebrow, cocking his head to see behind him. “There is no one here and yes, I will go that far!” You huff, not believing if he would actually do it or not. If you wanted it, then Jungwon would do it. Heck, he would lay his life in front of you without a second thought so what's so shameful about kneeling?

Without wasting another second, Jungwon dropped to his knees and looked up with a smile, “Forgive me, princess. I vow to never ignore you ever again.” He smiled, bowing his head in submission. Your mouth dropped open at his immediate submission, he didn't waste a single second and just went on his knees. Heat bloomed in your body as blush creeped up on your rosy cheeks. You liked it a lot, you liked the sight in front. 

“That's my good knight.” You smile teasingly, trying to hide how much it affected you to see him on his knees for you. A strong man, enough to crack skulls and break bones without breaking a sweat, kneeling before you and giving you all the power. You loved him. You had realized it long ago but never had the courage to admit it because you weren't sure of his feelings but now you know. 

“I forgive you, but on one condition.” Jungwon looked up with amusement and slight confusion on his face. You didn't let him speak and just sprinted towards the grand staircase, making him snap out and chase after you. “Princess! You aren't supposed to—” 

“Just follow me, Won!” Jungwon hears you yell and sprints after you. You run down the staircase, listening to his boots clicking the marble floor as he runs behind you. Your heart raced with nervousness and excitement, your mind buzzing with only one thought. You want to confess today, you want him to accept you as his wife. You didn't care what the laws said, what the kingdom obeyed, you wanted him for yourself and wanted to serve him, love him. 

You sprint outside the castle while giggling, snatching a small rose as you enter the garden. Your yellow gown flowing and fluttering around the bushes. You turn back to glance at Jungwon, smiling widely with innocence and love written in your eyes. 

You turn around completely when you reach the secret spot in the royal garden, the same place you and Jungwon found years ago and it became your secret safe spot where you could just be.. normal people. Not princess and the knight, just a boy and a girl who love each other a lot despite the entire universe gushing in another direction. 

Jungwon caught your waist and pulled you into his chest, panting from running as you laugh whole heartedly and steady yourself on his chest, looking up at him from his chest to find him already looking at you with adoration in his eyes with something else.. something deeper. “Really, Y/N?” He whispered, his arms tightening around your waist. You slowly calm down from your giggles, blushing as you realise the closeness between the two of you.

His face was inches away from yours, his breath hitting your lips, his eyes locked onto yours. Jungwon's heart was going crazy, thumping out his chest. His mind screamed at him to kiss you, to close the gap and forget about the world. Forget about his world and yours, close the gap and kiss. 

No. No, he couldn't. He shouldn't. “What's the condition, Y/N?” He steadied you on your feet and pulled away as if your touch burned him. A whine almost escaped your lips as he pulled back. You had seen his eyes change to raw need before his mind took over again. You wanted him to lose control, to lose himself, forget about the world and just take you like you were his. 

And you were. 

“Hmm, sit down first~” You hide your disappointment and sit on the stone bench carved there, pushing your hair away from your face. Jungwon cleared his throat, taking long steps towards the bench and sat beside you, placing his sword beside him. You scoff at the look of his sword, grabbing it to keep it beside you before he could stop you. “What are you doing?” He asked in surprise. You had never touched his sword, knowing how much it matters to him but for the first time, you took it away from his side? 

“I can't have you distracted by your wife!” You pout, looking at him trying to lighten the air so he doesn't take it as an insult. And he didn't, he found it extremely cute seeing you get jealous over a sword like he cared more about the sword than you. “The sword isn't my wife, darling.” Your breath hitched at his nickname for you, blush creeping up your neck as your heart thumped in your ear. 

“You care more about that sword! I see you taking care of it more than you take care of yourself!” 

“So you are worried about me, princess?” He leaned in smirking, his eyes darting to your lips. Jungwon's adam's apple bob, his mind screaming at him to just let go, his heart begging him to take charge. “Yes, I'm worried about you! Who else will protect me?” You snap, turning away. He chuckled at your behaviour, his hands coming up to grasp your jaw gently, turning you towards him. 

“Don't look away from me, Y/N.” That’s it.

“Can a princess and a knight be together, Jungwon?” Jungwon froze, his blood ran cold and his heart stopped. No, no, you were not asking this question. You weren't. This is a dream. A horrible dream. But it wasn't, you were right in front of him, staring at him with wide eyes. When you see him not answering and just staring, you panic and ramble on, talking about how much you care for him, love him, and are jealous of his sword because his fingers always find his sword before you, how his gaze always sees his sword first and not you, how you wish it was you he would look at first. 

Jungwon's mind was spinning, the world spinning around him. No, no, this isn't happening. He knows you like him, he knows your deep feelings for him because the two of you were never secretive about it. But what he never wanted was any one of you conveying the feelings. No, no he couldn't bear it. The both of you cannot be together. The law forbids it. He forbade it. He forbade you to love him, marry him and maybe one day realize that perhaps you should have chosen a prince. 

Or worse, he would regret choosing you selfishly because you don't belong to a commoner. You belonged to a prince. A royal blood to continue your bloodline and one day take the throne.

“And that's why I want to be your wi—” 

“No.” 

Shivers went down your shine, your mouth sealed shut, eyes widening and snapping up to him only to find anger in them. “No, Y/N.” Your heart shattered, breaking into a million little pieces. No? What did he mean? Did he not like you back? No, he did. “A princess and a knight cannot be together.” Jungwon felt like he was ripping his heart open. He couldn’t look at you when he said no, fearing that he might break down in tears.

 “What? Jungw—” He stood up, looking anywhere but you and reached out to grab his sword, “You are meant for a prince, princess—” 

You yanked his sword away from his reach, tears welling up in your eyes but your blood boiled more. “You do not have any say in who I am meant for!” 

How dare he say that? How dare he say you had no right of choosing who you want to be with? You weren't an object with zero emotions, you were a human. “Give me the sword, princess.” Jungwon looked down, to the side, anywhere but your eyes which he knew were teary by the shake in your voice. “No!” You threw his sword down on the grass and moved back. “You cannot tell me that you don’t feel the same, knight! I know you do!” Your voice cracked at the end, tears softly sliding off your cheeks and onto the grass beneath. He heard it, he heard all of it and it drove him crazy that you were crying because of him. 

Again. 

“Appa! Will he be my friend?” 

No, no, why is that memory coming up again? Stop it. Stop it! Jungwon’s head spun rapidly as he tried to erase the past memories flashing back up, closing his eyes to erase all those.

”Y/N can you not?! Stop bothering me!” 

He clenched his head, his own voice echoing back at him mockingly while he heard you screaming at him for an explanation. “Talk to me, Won! Look at me and tell me you don’t feel the same!”

“That's my good knight.”

“Beg properly, knight!”

Stop it! Stop it Jungwon. Get your mind under control. 

“I forgive you, wonnie.” 

“Look at me, wonnie!” 

Screw the law.

Before you could even process what was happening, his lips were onto yours. He listened, he finally listened to his heart. His lips moved against yours, molding perfectly. This is happening, it's happening. Your fingers twitched, reaching to grab his shoulders to steady yourself as his hands trailed to your waist, molding you into him perfectly. “I love you, dammit.. I love you so much princess, how could you think otherwise?” 

Your mind felt dizzy as he whispered into your mouth, the raw need and love pouring into you. Your eyes flutter open as you look at him after he broke the kiss, seeing your own reflection into his eyes. “I have loved you since the day you hugged me, asking the king if I would be your friend.” He pressed his forehead against yours, his heart thumping out of his chest as he breathed deepened,hitting your swollen lips and rosy cheeks.

“I do feel the same, Y/N.. More than you can imagine.” His finger trailed your jaw, leaving a line of fire erupting under his fingertips on your skin. You leaned into his touch, tears of joy and relief falling into his palm as his eyes turned teary too. “Don’t cry, my princess.. What will I answer to His Majesty?” You chuckled, blinking your tears away as you pushed his chest gently, wiping your tears. “Your eyes are teary too!” He chuckled, nodding before softly grasping your hand and interlocking your fingers, “Well, wipe them for me, princess.” 

“Ahem..”

Both of you flinched. You pushed at his chest hard, separating the two of you but it was too late. 

“Father—”

“Your Majesty—”

You both blush, not daring to look at each other after you both spoke at the same time, syncing unintentionally in front of the king. Jungwon gulped, kneeling on the ground and grabbing his sword before standing up straight, clearing his throat to speak but was cut off by the king, “No need to explain, knight.” The both of you stiffened at his tone, your palm turned sweaty with your heart racing with fear. What will he do? Take Jungwon away? Force you to an incompetent prince against your will? 

“I had suspected this. Afterall, I saw both of you grow up together.” 

Your entire body was heating up in fear, mind feeling dizzy and anxious. Jungwon felt the same, but he wasn’t worried about himself, he was worried about you. “Father, I-I can explain—” He just raised his hand, silencing you in an instant. “I’m not mad, daughter. In fact, we were already preparing for it.” 

…

What? Preparing for it? They knew the both of you had feelings for each other? Were you that obvious? “ The message has been sent to all the kingdoms that you, my daughter, have been engaged to, Prince Yang Jungwon.” 

The day of the wedding arrived. You were dressed in a beautiful white gown with a trail of at least five meters. It was your royal wedding, the day you had been waiting for. You were getting married to your Knight.. Or now promoted to the Prince, Yang Jungwon. That day, you couldn’t believe the words coming out of your father’s mouth. Jungwon? A prince? That's when he explained that there was a secret ritual that your kingdom followed. If there was no prince born or the prince wasn’t worthy of being the ruler, then the title would be passed to the next worthy soul, regardless of their blood.  

And since you never had a brother or found any prince worthy of being your husband, your parents decided to promote Jungwon to the title of Prince. And because Jungwon wasn’t your brother and had no blood connection to your family, he would be an eligible suitor, being made a prince of a small 5part of your kingdom. 

And just like that, Jungwon was now a prince. 

The day you heard the news in the garden, tears burst from your eyes and Jungwon went on his knees, breaking down and bowing his head to the king, thanking the heavens while you felt as if it was all a dream. It wasn’t. It was all real. You were now getting married to your best friend, your knight, your prince. The one who vowed to stay by your side and protect you till death. 

“It’s time, my lady.” One of your ladies-in-waiting speaks, bowing her head gracefully and parting to make space for you. This is it. You were walking down the royal carpet, listening to the soft orchestra as you walked down with your father’s hand tugged with yours. You were finally getting married to the man you love. The man you care for and cherish. You look up from the floor, smiling with joy and your eyes sparking with love and hope.

Yang Jungwon. Standing before you in a royal blue dress shirt, gold cufflinks and white pants. You smile as you see the tears in his eyes, which he was trying his hardest to hold back. “Take care of my princess, Yang Jungwon.” Your father smiled, nodding his head towards Jungwon as he bowed deeply, paying all the respects to the king. “I will, Your Majesty.” 

The two of you stood in front of each other. Your parents sat on the right and his parents on the left. A proud smile on everyone's face as you both shared vows, promising to cherish, love and protect each other until your last breaths. Jungwon picked up the ring box from the golden cushion provided by the priest, taking the diamond ring and locking eyes with you. 

“My princess.. I love you.” He smiled, a single tear dropping from his eye as your eyes teared up too. 

BANG

“Y/N!” 

What.. What happened? Why did everything suddenly slow down? Why are your parents getting up..? Why are his parents getting up..? Why is everyone screaming? 

Why is Jungwon frozen? 

Blood..? Warm blood? On me? Pain? 

“Y/N! No princess, stay with me!” Jungwon snapped out of his trance and immediately jumped to catch you, cradling you in his arms while he screamed your name to keep you conscious. You were shot with an arrow. Right before he slid the ring in your finger, a shot of an arrow hit you straight from the back, piercing through your stomach. 

“Darling, please!” 

“Jungwon, take her away now!” 

Jungwon wasted no time, picking you up in his arms, he sprinted away through the secret canal made in the grand chapel for easy escape. Your gelt your heart beat slowing down, blood oozing from your mouth, “Won..” 

“You are ok, baby. I promise, my princess.” He burst through a secret room which you recognised as the first room you sneaked into while you both were little, playing a game of hide and seek where you ran away and hid so well that Jungwon had actually gotten worried about where you went.

“Princess stay here, I must go back—” 

“No. No, won, stay with me.” You gasped out, clenching his sleeves before he could even take a step out. You didn’t want him to get hurt, you didn’t want him to fight, You wanted him to stay with you in safety, let the soldiers and the military take care of it. But Jungwon couldn’t just stay there and do nothing when someone dared to hurt his princess. All Jungwon saw was red in his eyes, his mind screaming for death. 

“I must go, princess. I am your knight first—”

“No, you aren’t my knight anymore! You are my husband and a prince!” 

Jungwon was going insane. Part of him just wanted to yank his hand away, grab his sword and slay every soul who dared hurt his princess. Wanted to avenge your honour but the other half of him was worried for you. Though a doctor arrived a second later he brought you to hiding, he couldn’t bear to leave you here all alone and hurting. 

Worst case scenarios flashed in his mind. What if you close your eyes forever? What if you take your last breath while he wasn’t there to save you?

“You want to fight for me, won..?” Your soft whisper pulled him out of his trance, his entire focus on you, “Yes, princess.. Please let me.” You smile, struggling to breathe as the doctor gently cut the arrow for a smooth removal. “You must come back to me, knight. You must come back to me safe and sound, wonnie..” 

“I promise.” 

Taking his sword, Jungwon had only one thing in his mind. Destroy. He will destroy anyone who was in part with this scheme of hurting his princess. He will spare no one. Absolutely no one dared to harm you. “Jungwon! It’s Prince Kanju!” A voice echoed from the crowd of people screaming and blood splatters. Heeseung. “Get him!” He turned his head towards the direction of the voice to see Heeseung, his best friend and fellow knight who was covering your sister under his arms.

Prince Kang. The prince you rejected last on the day of your meeting with suitors. He liked you immensely, was perhaps even obsessed with you and didn’t take the rejection nicely. Now, perhaps seeing you get tied to a knight was something he took as an insult. But it was the wrong move to harm you. Jungwon immediately scanned the room, everything slowing down in his eyes. 

Jungwon was thirsty for blood. His heart wounded and mind furious. 

Where is he hiding?

Where will he run off too?

How far? 

There he is. Jungwon spotted him hiding his face behind a black cape, running from the back entrance of the chapel and taking advantage of the chaos. Too late, Jungwon had already seen him.

Prince Kanju will die today. 

He wasted no time and sprinted in that direction. His heart raced with anger and revenge, the blood of his princess stuck to his clothes, a sign of the injury caused to you by him and he will pay for it. Jungwon followed him till he reached the garden of roses, calling out to him to challenge him. “Running away after your crimes, Kangju?” He saw the man pause, freezing in one spot. No one dared to mess with Jungwon and everyone knew to respect him. He was one of the greatest knights of all time. And he had the nerve to hurt his beloved? 

The criminal turned around, plastering a fake smile on his face which seemed much more like a smirk, “Ahh, the husband of the injured, here out in the garden while his wife is suffering alone.” 

Calm down, Jungwon.

“A little birdie told me, it was you who attacked my wife.” Jungwon took a step forward towards the prince, toying with the blade of his sword. “M-Me? You must be mista—”

“Then why are you out in the gardens instead of helping the civilians, moreover, why are you wearing a black cloak, hiding your—oh so handsome face?” He saw the prince’s jaw tick. Satisfaction bloomed Jungwon’s chest at seeing his face scrunched up at being mocked.

“So? What will you do if it was me who planned the attack? Do you have the guts to kill, kid?” 

Not yet, Jungwon.

He took another step forward towards the criminal, his eyes turning black. “You say that as if you have an army behind you to serve you, prince. Forgot that you have nothing?” Jungwon growled, his jaw tightening as he kept taking steps and pushing the prince into a corner. 

Just a little more.

“You ca-can’t kill me! I am a noble while you are just a co-commoner!” Jungwon smiled, tilting his head to the side. “Oh? I can’t? Too bad, I will.” 

Now

A snap of a twig broke the restraints that held Jungwon back. He had cornered the prince into the fence and launched himself towards him. Kangju reached inside his pocket and pulled out a dagger, ducking down skillfully and slashed a huge gash on Jungwon’s chest, ripping the threads of his suit. The knight screamed in pain but lunged the sword straight at the prince’s heart, missing by an inch. 

The prince dashed to the side, making a run for a small opening in the fence for an escape but Jungwon was faster. He swung his sword  in front of him, slicing the prince’s back with ease as he falls down onto the grass with a loud cry, cursing out the knight. “You cannot kill me! My country will wage a war!” 

Jungwon crawled over to the fallen man on the grass, dragging his legs and his blade across the grass to stop over the prince. “Your country will only defend you when it has the resources to fight.” 

Jungwon held the sword with both his hands, raising it right above the chest of the criminal, “See you in hell.” He thrust the blade down right into his heart, piercing through his chest and impaled his blade right into his heart. Finally, he closed his eyes to hear the pain-filled screams of the prince as the blood oozed out in huge spurts, covering both in flesh and blood before silence filled the air. His revenge is done. The threat has been dealt with. 

“Princess you must stay cal—” 

“How can I stay calm when my husband is at war!”

“Your wounds must rest—” 

“Y/N..” 

You whip around at the sound of your name being called, freezing in spot to see the man in front of you. Jungwon. Your husband. Yang Jungwon. Wounded. Bleeding. Dying. At the sight of you safe and sound, Jungwon’s blade drops from his hands and his knees give up beneath him. You watch Jungwon burst into tears and fall on the ground, crying in relief and thanking the heavens that you are ok. 

You escape the clutches of the nurse and run towards your knight, falling onto your knees which shot pain right to your stomach, opening the wounds again but you didn’t care. All you cared about was that he was safe. He was ok and not dead. “Wonnie!” You cup his face and bury your face into his chest as you sob. His blood seeping into your bandages, painting your hair red but you didn’t care. All you cared for was his heart thumping in your ears. All you cared was his chest rising and falling as he gasped into you, sobbing pitifully. 

“You came back. You are ok.” 

“I’m sorry I broke my vow, princess.. I couldn’t come back uninjured.” He buried his face in his hair and pressed kisses all over it. “It doesn’t matter. You are back. That’s all that matters to me.” 

“I love you, my knight..” 

“I love you too, my princess..”

⋆.𐙚 ̊ ✶ 🪽 Haze' note : I hope you enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed writing this and this is dedicated to my beloved @wooyoungmybelovedhusband for always believing in me and supporting me when I doubted my own abilities. Thank you my love!! <33

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