mishi⁷

Park Sunghoon wouldn’t really describe himself as a waiter.

After all, when he had been hired at the luxurious resort of Marriotte, he had been hired as a lifeguard.

Mr. Hwang — or Mr. Grumpy as Sunghoon came to know the staff members not so affectionately called their head manager — had been clear about Sunghoon’s part at the resort: for forty hours a week, he had to monitor the pool area, enforce rules, and respond to emergencies, ensuring the guests’ safety as if their lives were made of spun gold.

“Because they are,” Mr. Hwang said, his tone coming with a certainty so untroubled that it forced Sunghoon to clench his jaw in an attempt to prevent the honest reply from rolling out of his mouth.

In another universe, he wouldn’t have been born in a poor family residing on the small island of Jeju, and could have used such a speech to decline the offer as jobs weren’t a matter of survival at the age of eighteen. But in this, he was born into a poor family residing on the small island of Jeju, and jobs were a matter of survival even before. So, when he saw the contract with ten thousand won per hour in bold letters, he signed it as he had learned to sign his father’s hospital forms — fast, and without questions for which he couldn’t afford.

But not once — not even once — Mr. Hwang had mentioned that Sunghoon had to learn about French champagne and fill in for waiters, turning fragile crystal into another kind of hazard.

Yet — here he was.

Tray in hand, and wearing a shirt he had borrowed so many times that Jongseong had already stopped accepting it back.

In the few hours he had been given off his lifeguard duty, the deck had been completely altered. The beach chairs that usually angled toward the water were gone, replaced by long tables laid out with linen so white and crisp, they looked ironed — probably Mrs. Kye being ordered to do them along with the suite’s linens — only for the children to ruin everything, clutching it on their chubby hands as they kept on what Sunghoon suspected to be a game of tag.

If it were any other night, he would have told them not to run — not so close to the pool — but luxury was nimble and so was everything in Marriotte, and the pool was not a pool tonight, but just another part of the grand decoration, and such warning was unnecessary. So, Sunghoon only walked past them, moving between the guests, and catching fragments of conversations as he passed: mergers, villa renovations, summers that last forever because this was the nature of the average Marriotte guests — people so high in the social ladder — that they could control the sun.

Somewhere in there, a woman gestured for him to trade her empty glass for another one, her eyes never moving toward him — not even when she groaned a finally at him, and Sunghoon mumbled an excuse as if he had in fact been late for an appointment with her.

By the corner of his eyes, he caught a blur of bare legs and pastel silk weaving between the chairs’ backs, and tried to move out of the way, but a child darted through the narrow gap between two tables and bumped right into his thigh.

There was a child’s gasp. A tiny oh no and Sunghoon was falling sideways, bringing the tray with him.

Crystal flutes exploded against the porcelain floor, and shards and golden champagne burst out, soaking through his clothes in a cold rush, instantly sour-sweet and expensive in a way his tongue didn’t understand. And for one terrible and infinite moment, everything seemed to halt.

The string quartet faltered, and conversations dissipated in the middle of a sentence — all the furor of the party suddenly replaced by a silence so complete that Sunghoon could hear his own ragged breathing and the tinkling sound of the crystal still settling against the floor.

He felt the weight of tens of eyes on him, and his face burned with a shame so intense that he felt it like a physical force.

But worse than that was the immediate calculation.

How many glasses had he been carrying? Twelve? No. It surely was more than that, and the last time a staff member broke this amount of flutes, he had not only lost all his monthly salary, but owed the resort the subsequent one. And it wasn’t even filled with Krug Clos d’Ambonnay or any French shit that had been demanding that the staff members handle it with white gloves in the kitchen throughout the whole night.

Sunghoon would be lucky if he was going to manage to buy an ice pop by the end of the summer.

“Oh, my God!” He heard your voice cutting through the panic already spiraling in his mind, and it was enough to make Sunghoon gather himself, pushing up on his elbows. Crystal crunched beneath him with a sound that made him wince before he found himself staring up at you.

“I am so sorry, my cousin—” you began, but Sunghoon wasn’t really listening.

You were beautiful, and he hated that it was his first thought — he hated the way his breath caught despite the fury flooding through his veins like acid. Your hair was swept up in a twist that had probably required an hour and a professional to bring on the exact tendrils that now framed your face in that kind of perfection. Diamond earrings dangled from your ears, each one probably worth more than the whole set of flutes your cousin had just cost him, and catching all the fairy lights overhead, sending sparkles across your exposed collarbones as you knelt by his side. The skirts of your dress sank into the champagne, darkening at where it touched the floor, but you did not even look at it. Your face stayed on him — as if you couldn’t come to care about anything but him at this exact moment.

But Sunghoon wasn’t naive — not anymore — after years of serving people like you, he knew exactly how this would go.

People like you didn’t have to hold onto anything for long. Not objects. Not consequences. Not people.

The moment he left your sight, he would vanish from your life.

“Are you hurt?” you asked. “Oh no, you are.”

Sunghoon glanced down at his left hand, catching a glimpse of where a slice had opened across his palm, and allowed blood to gather too quickly, bright and shocking against his champagne-soaked sleeve.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw you reaching out to him.

“Don’t!” He snapped, the word cutting through the air louder than he expected

He pushed air into his lungs and did the only thing he could think to do: assess, contain, fix.

Perhaps if he moved fast enough, the damage would look smaller — it would cost less.

“I only meant to—”

“I’m fine,” he bit out, the words nipping as badly as where the shard had bitten him as he pressed it against the floor to push himself up. “Completely fine.”

“I—” you began again, but Sunghoon had already stood up, bowing at you in something between an acknowledgement and a dismissal.

“I’ll get it cleaned,” he said, turning and walking away.

You didn’t say anything this time, but merely stood still.

As Sunghoon walked toward the main building entrance, he caught the sight of a waiter approaching you — a young girl who had been hired just for the summer and Sunghoon didn’t care about getting her name — she said something about getting you dry, and getting you up from the floor which was a terrible floor, by the way, very slippery, she hushed as an apology, although everything Sunghoon saw was some type of premium porcelain and couldn’t remember it being truly slippery until now.

What a disaster, he thought. What an absolute disaster.

⋆˚꩜｡

By the time Sunghoon walked back onto the pool deck, the party had already resumed its glittering momentum.

The string quartet played on, and guests chatted in that same wash of careless sound as they did previously, moving through their conversation, their glasses of champagne — their effortlessly perfect lives — and leaving Sunghoon to kneel beside the shattered glass alone, cleaning up a mess that would cost him more than he could afford.

He worked methodically, sweeping and mopping until the deck shone again, and the cut on his palm burned hotter than his own shame.

He would need a cigarette tonight.

When he was walking back to the main building, a staff member intercepted him, her expression pinched with barely concealed irritation.

“Mr. Hwang wants to see you,” she said. “Now.”

Something cracked deeper in Sunghoon’s chest, something that felt dangerously close to breaking completely.

This was it, then. The scorn — if not the possible firing — he had been expecting.

He followed the woman through the last steps into the lobby, and behind the desk to the administrative area, each step heavier than the last, as if gravity itself were conspiring to make this walk as painful as possible.

Mr. Hwang’s office door was open.

The older man already sat behind his striking table, but he didn’t look up as Sunghoon entered. He just continued to review something on his computer screen with the kind of deliberate patience that was clearly meant to make Sunghoon suffer.

And it worked. Something within his stomach tightened as he stood there.

“Sit,” Mr. Hwang said, still not looking at him.

Sunghoon did as he said, and Mr. Hwang finally turned away from his screen, leaning back in his chair as he wove his fingers on the table in front of him.

“That was quite a performance tonight, don’t you agree?” Mr. Hwang asked. “Entertaining our guests by shattering a few million won’s worth of crystal.”

Sunghoon’s jaw clenched. “It was an accident. A child—”

“I’m aware of what happened,” Mr. Hwang cut in. “The young lady came to see me personally. Paid for every single glass, and insisted — no, begged — for nothing happen to you. That you were just doing your job and she was at fault for being negligent with her cousin—”

Mr. Hwang kept talking, but Sunghoon had already stopped listening after the word beg. Something had twisted in his chest then — a complicated knot of emotions he couldn’t quite begin to untangle.

If you paid, it meant that he wouldn’t lose his salary. He wouldn’t go back to his parents’ house empty-handed and be unable to help.

He wouldn’t drown — not this month, at least.

But then the moment soured, suddenly and irreversibly, because the rope had been thrown by you.

Sunghoon’s mind moved back to the pool deck before he could even stop himself, retracing the way you had dropped to your knees, champagne darkening the skirts of your dress like it didn’t matter — as if he mattered more.

He had thought it was pity — perhaps a performance — a rich girl’s impulse to feel good about being kind.

But begging wasn’t performative. Not when you could have just walked away, gone to your glimmering suite, and left him to deal with all the mess.

“She—” Sunghoon started, more in surprise than defense — the idea of you sitting in that exact same chair changed the shape of you in his head, and it startled him, the thought that he might actually like you — but Mr. Hwang had interpreted his intervention wrongly, holding up a hand.

“I don’t want to hear your excuses,” he said. “I should fire you for your attitude tonight. You seem to have forgotten something fundamental about this job. Those guests down there?” He turned, vaguely gesturing toward the window and the party still sparkling under them. “They pay more in a stay than you and I will earn in our entire lives combined.”

“This resort, your salary, my salary,” he continued. “It all exists because of them. So when they ask you to jump, you don’t question it — you surely don’t get angry at it — you ask how high and you smile while doing so. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Sunghoon said, the word coming before he could catch himself weighing them — before his pride could ride up and demand something impossible like fairness — because yes meant he would still be here in the morning, allowed to exist in this building that smelled like money, lemon, and polish.

The same citrus scent of this exact office, but as Sunghoon inhaled he could swear he caught champagne instead and — coconuts?

“Good,” Mr. Hwang said. “You’re not fired. But you’re being punished. Tomorrow you’re on yacht duty.”

Sunghoon halted. “I’m scheduled poolside, Jaeyun and I—”

“You’re scheduled wherever I tell you — and I am telling you that you’re on yacht duty tomorrow,” Mr. Hwang said, the corner of his lips moving upwards as if he was suddenly bemused. “The overnight charter with the corporate group. Departure at nine. Back at sunrise. I know how much you all love that.”

Actually, everyone knew.

Yacht duty was punishment dressed as scheduling.

It ran late into the night until dawn, the guests getting drunker and more difficult as the hours wore on. It was exhausting, demeaning, and occasionally dangerous — especially for lifeguards — and that was why Jaeyun and he always threw a coin for it, the loser getting the duty with a lot of complaints.

“Consider it a learning experience,” Mr. Hwang said, his voice suddenly dripping with a false benevolence. “A reminder of what happens when you forget your place. Now get out of my office. And Sunghoon?” He paused, allowing Sunghoon to take his moment to look back at him. “If I hear about another attitude problem from you — I don’t care which guest provoked it. You’re gone. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” he said. “Sir.”

⋆˚꩜｡

Sunghoon hadn’t realized how haggard his breath felt until the elevator doors opened at the staff floor and he inhaled for what felt like the first time in ages. His lungs filled with the scent of bleach and damp walls in a way that only happened in this particular poorly ventilated hallway.

While the rest of the resort glimmered in gold and navy carpets that smelled like lemon and polish, here — so under the ground — everything was slightly shoddy, and messy.

And perhaps that was why his brain tried to refuse the fact that you were here — here — just a few steps down the hallway, hair undone and in a dress simpler than the one he had seen you earlier on, but surely still, not fit to be under these humming fluorescent tubes, and surrounded by stacked boxes and off-white walls that had been scuffed by decades of carts, shoulders and hurried bodies.

The elevator dinged behind him as someone else called for it, and Sunghoon’s first instinct was to turn back at it, check if he had been the one to step into the wrong floor, but not only the peeling paint gave way that he didn’t, but the small sign with STAFF ONLY in bold letters.

“Excuse me,” you tried.

Sunghoon spun back at you, trying his best to don a neutral aspect, but as you walked in his direction he felt as if he was losing control of his own body. He suddenly didn’t know how to stand — he had done it his whole life but suddenly he didn’t know how to be on his own feet.

The harsh fluorescent lights should have been unflattering, but they only made the small details about you impossible to ignore. A few strands of hair clung at the skin of your neck, taken by a thin thread of sweat in that way that Jeju summers always managed in their early days, and the edge of your lipstick was smudged at one corner, as though you had been biting on it and couldn’t come to find the time to check it on a mirror, and he felt delirious, his heart thudding harder the longer he looked — not because you were still beautiful despite it all, but because it were evidences that you had lived through the last hours too.

All together with him.

“I brought this,” you said out of silence, extending your hand to him, and only then did he notice you had been holding something: a simple and stupid roll of gauze in a plastic wrapping with the resort’s logo. “I asked at the front desk for a first aid kit, but they said they could not give it to me — if I had some type of injury they could contact a doctor — I tried explaining it was not for me, bu—”

You paused, taking in a breath as though you had rehearsed this whole speech before coming, curating every word carefully through your way down here but something had escaped you and now you didn’t know how to restart without losing the thin thread of courage you used to start.

“You shouldn’t be here.” He heard himself saying.

Your fingers tightened around the gauze, your neat, pale, and perfect nails crinkling the plastic and making it seem even smaller compared to the world you came from.

“Well, I know — I had to bribe a bellhop—”

The elevator dinged again, this time announcing someone’s arrival and Sunghoon’s composure snapped in half. He couldn’t take another scene — not tonight — not when Mr. Hwang had been clear that he was on his last chance.

His body acted before his mind could, reaching out for your free hand. His fingers closed around yours as he pulled you through the cluttered hallway, catching and opening the first knob he had found before he pushed you both inside — he first, and then you — pressing your body against his as he closed the door and engulfed you both in the darkness.

It wasn’t a real room, he realized, but the makeshift cabinet the room attendants used to stock supplies. The space so cluttered and small that when you gasped he felt it against his neck, warm and sweet smelling, coconuts, and the scent of the champagne still stuck on your skin as if you had changed, but didn’t wash yourself in the hurry of coming after him.

Outside, a cart squeaked as someone wheeled it out of the elevator, and he prayed it was one of the room attendant just ending their shift early and not coming for a supply.

“What—” you began, but Sunghoon raised a finger to his lips, earning himself a wince as he did so. He had forgotten about the cut in his palm, and he suddenly wished he could forget again. But as his finger hovered by his lips for another moment, the throbbing only increased as if the cut itself had remembered its existence and couldn’t cease now.

“Your hand,” you whispered.

Sunghoon shook his head at your worry, but you were already reaching out for him, the tip of your fingers brushing against his fevered pulse.

Someone laughed outside — the sound being so close — it felt dangerous, and if anyone opened this door and found you here it would be the end for him.

It wouldn’t matter what you had to say to Mr. Hwang this time. You wouldn’t be able to save him.

Not that he wanted to be saved by you. One time had been more than he could owe you.

Your fingertips moved through him, finding the cut.

“Don’t—” he hissed, his voice coming louder than the cabinet could hold and it didn’t just land on you — but in the air within — breaking something he didn’t realize that even existed until now.

Your hand dropped back to your own chest as your eyes flickered to his name tag and then, around, your breathing shallower as though you were suddenly trying to become smaller. And in the silence that followed, Sunghoon felt the moment when you came to realize something too.

“I am sorry. I did not realize it could get you in trouble,” you said, and the softness of it made him sick with himself. “I—”

But whatever the rest of your phrase was supposed to be, Sunghoon would never know because you were shaking your head then, reaching for the knob behind you.

The door opened with the smallest complaint of its hinges, and the fluorescent hallway light cut across your shoulder, the pale line of your collarbone, the gleam of your diamond earring.

And then you were gone, taking your warmth back with you.

⋆˚꩜｡

Sunghoon wasn’t sure how long he stayed in that small cabinet, but by the time he stepped out of it, he had grown so accustomed to the darkness that the humming fluorescent tubes had acquired a brightness so intense that his eyes hurt the whole way to the locker room.

As he walked to his locker, he felt as if he wasn’t fully inside of his own skin — as if his mind was somewhere else apart from his whole body — hovering on every single second of this unending night, replaying them as if repetition could change the way he made you leave.

He took off the borrowed shirt and shoved it into his bag in an attempt to let go of everything, but the champagne scent rose anyway, sweet, sharp, and expensive in a way that made his stomach turn. And he was suddenly back at the pool deck, your dress soaking on that same disgusting thing — he was back at that small cabinet you both so close up together, he felt all of your reactions.

Sunghoon pressed the heels of his hands against his forehead and stood like that for a second — breathing and telling himself that if he just stayed still long enough his body would remember how to be normal again — one breath, then another, counting them the way he was used to count drags as he was trying not to think, the way smoke used to give his hands something to do other than shake, and for one humiliating moment, he wished he had a cigarette more than he wished he had a clean shirt.

For as long as he lived, he feared champagne would remind him of you.

Somewhere behind him, a locker door clanged.

“You look like you fought a chandelier.” Sunghoon heard, and he didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

Jaeyun had been raised in Australia, which gave him a peculiar accent that most girls called cute, but it only made Sunghoon certain that he could pick his best friend’s voice out from the whole island — perhaps the world.

“Wrong,” Sunghoon replied, finally looking at him. “The chandelier fought me.”

“Are you alright?”

“I have been worse.”

Jaeyun leaned against his open locker, his hair damp, and a towel curled around his neck as though he had just come in from a late dip — which he probably had. As Sunghoon had been unfortunate enough to be scheduled for the unusable pool tonight, Jaeyun had taken the small portion of the beach the resort claimed as theirs, and annually opened a debate online about whether they could.

“I’m fine,” Sunghoon confirmed.

“What happened?” Jaeyun asked, but Sunghoon only shrugged at the question.

“Champagne.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have,” Sunghoon replied, reaching out for his clean t-shirt, tugging it over his head. He winced as he did so, the cut reopening for the second time of the night as the fabric caught.

“Hoon—”

“I’m fine.”

“You said that already,” Jaeyun shot back. “And it was a lie.”

“A child ran into me,” Sunghoon said then. “Crystal flutes went everywhere, and then—”

“And then?” Jaeyun pressed.

And then there was you — you asking if he was hurt. You at Mr. Hwang’s office begging for nothing to happen to him. You down here with gauze in your hands, and lipstick smudged and all he did was shove you in a cabinet and be rude again.

Where had you even left the gauze? Sunghoon wondered. Had you dropped it in the cabinet? Somewhere in the hallways as he pushed you through?

He suddenly felt like checking.

Inside the locker room, Jaeyun exhaled at Sunghoon’s sayings, reaching out for his own first aid kit and extending it to Sunghoon, but when Sunghoon didn’t reach back to it, Jaeyun recoiled and opened it himself.

Sunghoon watched as his friend walked toward him, taking his hand, and cleaning the cut with the kind of methodical calm that only made him feel worse at everything.

“You panicked because you’re scared.”

“What?”

Jaeyun tilted his head, but he didn’t look up. He continued with his doings — now, pressing in a gauze against it. “You shoved a rich guest into a closet because someone might see you standing close to them. That’s fear, Sunghoon.”

“Congratulations. You just discovered that I’m employed.” Sunghoon let out a humorless laugh. “It’s not fear, Jae — it’s common sense—”

“Alright, let’s say it’s both then,” Jaeyun said. “Common sense because Mr. Grumpy’s an asshole and those policies are bullshit, and fear because you keep thinking if you breathe wrong, your whole life is going to collapse above you.”

The world seemed to halt then and there, the air suddenly too still and allowing Sunghoon to notice how he ached at these words, a sharp twinge that started at his chest and spread to his throat, tightening there and making him breathless because Jaeyun had said it too cleanly — too accurately — and naming it made it now undeniable.

“Find her,” Jaeyun said. “Talk to her.”

“No”

“Why?”

“Because if Mr. Hwang finds out, he’ll fire me,” Sunghoon said, his voice harsher than he intended. “Because if the other staff see me talking to her, they’ll talk. Because if people start talking, it will become a rumor, and rumors become problems.” He swallowed. “And I can’t afford problems.”

“I expected more from you, Sunghoon,” Jaeyun said, but Sunghoon could tell that his heart wasn’t in it — not really.

“No doubt that was your first mistake.”

“So can you afford being the kind of person who makes someone feel like they’re hated merely for trying to help?” Jaeyun asked, and it felt like a slap.

Sunghoon couldn’t, and that was what had been eating him since you left.

They finished changing in silence, Sunghoon shoving his things into his bag with more force than necessary while Jaeyun remained calm on the other side, closing his locker so carefully, Sunghoon hadn’t realized he did, until he was standing by his side, completely changed and his bag hanging on one of his shoulders.

“Motorcycle still broken?” Jaeyun asked.

“Yeah.”

Jaeyun’s expression softened, his lips curling into the type of smile that only appeared when Sunghoon made it sound like he didn’t care.

“So you are still stuck with me.”

⋆˚꩜｡

The service exit opened onto the staff lot, and immediately, Jeju’s night shrouded him. The humming fluorescent tubes of the interior were taken by the dimmer yellowish lights of the parking lot, and the smell of bleach was replaced by the sea wind cutting through the heat, carrying salt, tangerine, and earthy cedar forest.

Somewhere above, the party was still going on — laughter and music carried faintly across the breeze — but here it was all Jeju, rough and wild.

The parking lot was mostly empty, only a few staff cars lined up, including Jaeyun’s old Jeep at the far end, its paint sun-faded and stubbornly alive.

Sunghoon stopped for a second — just before they reached it.

“Do you mind if I have a smoke?”

“Of course, I do,” Jaeyun snapped. “This thing will kill you.”

Sunghoon pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his bag anyway, selecting a single one out and lighting it up.

The first drag hit him all at once. The ember brightened in the dark as he inhaled, a small orange circle reflecting faintly on his knuckles, and the taste of cheap tobacco bloomed bitter on his tongue before settling in his lungs.

He exhaled, watching the stream unravel and vanish into Jeju’s air, and for a moment he let himself believe that if he kept drawing in smoke and letting it go, he could empty his chest out of this night too.

Out of you.

“You lost the coin toss,” Jaeyun said then.

“What?”

“The yacht duty.” Jaeyun slid to him. “You didn’t mention it. Which means you’re trying to pretend it isn’t happening.”

Sunghoon dropped his hand out of his mouth, his fingers tightening. He wasn’t sure if he was intentionally pretending, but he surely didn’t want to bring this up.

“It’s happening.”

“Mr. Hwang is such a—” Jaeyun began, but he cut himself off, sighing deeply and dramatically as he pushed his hair out of his forehead. For a moment, Sunghoon got confused if Jaeyun understood that he was the one not going to the yacht tomorrow night. But he quickly realized that the fact was — Jaeyun did understand — it was just that he felt everything too deeply, and he cared for Sunghoon too much to allow such an unfairness to go on as nothing. “Okay. You’ll survive — I’ll bring you food. I’ll bring you even this stupid pack of cigarettes if necessary. And I’ll come rescue you if some executive tries to throw you into the sea.”

The scenario made Sunghoon want to laugh and what a strange feeling it was because it had been months since Sunghoon wanted to laugh — perhaps years.

“See?” Jaeyun asked, his lips curling into a smile once again. “Park Sunghoon is still a human.”

Sunghoon rolled his eyes and dragged in again.

“So what are you going to do about it?” Jaeyun asked.

“About the yacht?”

“About her, Sunghoon.”

“What can I do? I don’t even know her name — and I’ll probably never see her again.”

“You work at a luxury resort where she’s not only staying, but attending events,” Jaeyun said. “I’m guessing if you actually tried to find her, you could,”

His voice dropped.

“Jongseong is only leaving for Seoul at the end of summer, he could—” Jaeyun raised his hand, typing on an invisible keyboard. “The question is whether you want to try.”

Did he? Sunghoon wasn’t sure. The thought of facing you again made him want to sink to the ground. But the idea of never seeing you again also sits as an open wound in his chest.

“Find her,” Jaeyun said out of silence. “Your angel in the form of a heiress.”

Sunghoon wanted to see you again. Thank you, at least, and say sorry for the closet situation. And Jaeyun grinned as though he had read it through Sunghoon’s mind.

“Come on,” Jaeyun said, unlocking the car with a single jingle of keys. “Let’s get out of here before Mr. Grumpy finds something else to punish you for — like breathing too loudly or existing in his general vicinity.”

Sunghoon pulled the passenger door open and climbed in, sinking into the familiar worn seat. The car smelled like salt water, suncream, and the cheap air freshener Jaeyun had hung on the front mirror which was supposed to smell like fresh pine, but mostly just smelled like chemicals.

As Jaeyun tried the engine — letting it catch and taking on three times before it finally started — Sunghoon found himself staring at his reflection in the side mirror. He was exhausted, in need of a shower and long hours of sleep, but surely, he was not drowning in debt and not fired.

All because of you.

“By the way,” Jaeyun said, glancing at him across the gearstick. “Your motorcycle is dead-dead, or is it just being dramatic?”

“Dramatic, I hope,” Sunghoon said. “Jihoon’s brother is still checking on it.”

Jaeyun hummed, his right hand reaching for the gearstick and putting it in the fourth, racing the car just enough to allow the breeze to brush in — the perfect blend of salty sea air, tangerine, and earthy cedar forest taking over the small vehicle — it was undeniable Jeju’s summer.

And for some reason, it made Sunghoon’s skin creep a little.

The summer of his twenty-two years had begun, although Sunghoon didn’t know what it truly meant.

Yet.

The next night came with the scent of sea air, salt, and teak wood floors.

The yacht sailed from the resort’s private dock at the sunset as Mr. Hwang had promised, its hull gleaming under the floodlights, and turning the water below into a black sheet of polished glass as the deck swarmed with men in tailored suits and women with hair pinned into effortless perfection, as if the wind itself had been instructed not to touch them too harshly — bribed, perhaps — something Sunghoon thought that rich people only did in movies, but then you came over and—

God.

He couldn’t stop thinking about you.

Sunghoon stood at the lifeguard’s designated spot, his eyes scanning the crowd for what felt like the millionth time.

He told himself he wasn’t looking for you — that it was only instinct — he was taking stock of guests, counting faces and risks as his job demanded, but his eyes kept hovering on silhouettes. On bare shoulders, and flash of jewelry. On the slope of necks, and twist of hairs that could have been yours until he stared for a moment too long and noticed that it wasn’t.

Perhaps you hadn’t come, he thought. Perhaps—

But then, he saw you.

Not full at first, but in pieces — as if his mind had somehow learned that he needed to recognize you in fragments because the whole was too much for him to handle at once — he saw the glint of an earring. The curve of your wrist as you lifted your hand to brush a stray strand of hair to the back of your ears.

Your dress was different tonight — simpler than the pool party’s silk, but cut in a way that felt almost deliberate. The thin fabric caught the yacht’s lights, and gave them back like it had been made for this exact setting, and your hair — God, your hair was down, spreading over the expanse of your shoulders, and moving only when the wind found it.

Sunghoon watched you for a second too long, hating himself for doing so because it gave you enough time to catch him on it.

Your gazes locked over, and for a brief moment — a moment so brief, he thought he had imagined it — you softened at him. Not a smile, but something in your eyes that recognized him, and remembered. Your hand rose halfway, fingers hovering in a hesitant greeting that seemed to have decided itself before you came to your senses and faltered, glancing down and lowering your hand to your side, folding into the fabric of your dress.

Sunghoon’s heart did something stupid and painful within his chest and he stood up without meaning to, giving a step toward you and then another, and another.

But before he could reach you, someone stepped into the space within.

A man around your age, tall in that clean and polished way that suggested that not only had he never been poor, but his father hadn’t, nor his grandfather, nor his grandfather’s father. His dyed hair was styled, but not stiff, his suit in perfect shape despite the hours within the yacht and he moved to your side as if he belonged there — as if your proximity was something granted to him by default.

And perhaps it had.

Perhaps the world was more unfair than Sunghoon had ever realized because as he felt unsure about stepping close to you, the man leaned in without a second thought, saying something into your ear, and earning a turn of your head toward him, altogether with a small smile appearing at the corner of your lips and causing something to flare in Sunghoon — hot, immediate, and humiliating.

It was ridiculous and Sunghoon knew that. He didn’t know your name. He had snapped at you twice and had shoved you into a closet like contraband when you were just trying to help. He had no right to want anything from you — not even your attention — yet his stomach tightened anyway, just as it had when Mr. Hwang said that you had begged for him to be spared because honestly, some part of him had decided that you were a story he knew he could not afford but he could not stop reading.

The man said something more, and you let out a breath that could have been a laugh if you allowed it to be. Your hand rose to brush his arm in a gesture so casual — it could have been even dismissal — but Sunghoon’s fingers closed on themselves until the cut from the night previous ached and he had to force his face into neutrality.

He was still trying to decide whether to approach you when the furor began.

It was not one single thing, but a chain of small ones that snapped too fast to catch: someone shouted near the bar, a glass tipped and bled its champagne in a thin gold spill across the teak, a laugh turned too sharp within the night air, and the music stuttered as if something had snagged the performers mid-song before he remembered they were being paid and forced the melody back into place.

Sunghoon’s head turned on instinct toward the commotion, his lifeguard training overriding and making his body already catalog risks, exits, water, the ways panic liked to masquerade as entertainment until it wasn’t.

In his periphery, Sunghoon caught you drifting closer to the railing, stepping away from a man drunkenly stumbling backwards, but it had been in vain. The man’s shoulder bumped into yours anyway and it was enough for your balance to break — enough for you to take one instinctive step to correct it, heel sliding back, searching for the deck to hold you the way it always had, but the teak beneath your heels betrayed you with a slickness you couldn’t have seen under the lights, and your foot slipped.

It wasn’t dramatic, but small, and almost quiet — the kind of slip that people recovered from all the time. You reached for the railing on reflex, fingers stretching out, a flash of jewelry, skin meeting metal. But your hand didn’t close right, didn’t clamp with the sure grip it needed; it caught and slid instead, palm skimming along polished steel like it had been oiled, and suddenly the correction became the fall, your weight tipping past the point where muscle could argue with gravity.

There was a pause that felt like the whole deck had held its breath before someone screamed what could have been your name and bodies surged toward the rail, leaning over as they peered down into the dark water that moved as if nothing had happened at all — as if it hadn’t just taken you — and Sunghoon ran, pushing through the guests with his shoulders, ignoring the outrage, the startled curses, the hands that grabbed at him as if he were the problem, until the railing came up in front of him, and the sea was just below, black and moving.

Sunghoon could not see you — not at first — the yacht’s lights did nothing to brighten up beyond its surface, and it was as dark as it was above, but then he did. A pale flickering shape, and he didn’t allow himself to consider anything before he vaulted the railing, diving into the water with a splash he didn’t hear.

It was late, and the night sea did not feel like summer, but winter — cold and heavy — dragging at Sunghoon’s uniform and pulling at him like it wanted to keep him for itself, too. Salt surged into his mouth as he broke the surface, and for a second his lungs stuttered, confused by the air that wasn’t clean.

Sunghoon had rescued drowning guests before. Of course, he had — Marriotte had a way of grinding the same disasters into repetition until one’s body learned them the way it learned to shape their names — but it always had been at the pool with its two meters of depth or the obedient edge of the resort’s stolen coast. But the sea was neither of them — it didn’t stay still — no matter how desperate someone was.

He heard shouting above, the deck erupting into chaos, but it faded fast, blurred by the rush of his own blood and the slap of waves against his face, and Sunghoon didn’t allow himself to think.

The water went colder as he went under, the world shrinking into nothing but darkness, pressure, and the frantic sweep of his hands through nothing again and again and again, until the tip of his fingers finally hit some fabric.

He grabbed hard, his fists tangling in what he hoped to be your dress, and yanked at it. You came to him limp and heavy, your hair floating around your face. And for one horrible second he couldn’t tell if you were conscious at all — if you were here with him — and he felt his heart weighing at the thought. It didn’t matter if you were one of those stupid rich guests. It didn’t matter if what you had been pulling at him was all an act — to lose you here felt like something he couldn’t handle.

Many hours later, Jaeyun was going to ask Sunghoon how it happened but he — under the aftermath of his panic — wouldn’t know how to.

He remembered how he hooked an arm under your shoulders and kicked upward, breaking the surface with a gasp for which you didn’t replicate, and how it broke the last threat of self-control on him.

He remembered keeping one arm around you and swimming with the other, fighting against the weight of your body, the drag of your dress, and the way the waves kept trying to pry you from him like greedy hands. He remembered how the yacht loomed above like a wall, all made of light, varnished wood, and people leaning over the edge with a mix of expressions. He remembered how his limbs were shaking by the time he reached the ladder and how he almost missed the first rung, having to force himself to jam his foot onto it, lifting you as best he could, bracing you against his chest. He remembered hauling, rung by rung, and getting you to the deck with the help of strangers’ hands, and then the world narrowed again into only you.

Only you and the way you lie on the wooden floor and soaked through. Your skin on a tone that seemed all wrong under the harsh yacht lights. But what horrified him the most was that your chest did not rise.

Someone shouted to call a doctor. Someone shouted to turn the yacht back — to do something — but no one seemed to be doing anything fast enough.

Sunghoon didn’t remember dropping himself onto his knees, but he remembered how his hands shook so badly he almost couldn’t place them. And once again, he had to force himself to take control — to press the heel of his palm to your sternum as the way he had been trained, and start the compressions, counting out loud because counting meant he would not fall apart.

“Come on,” he heard himself whispering between one compression and another. “Come on.”

The yacht rocked gently and the breeze brushed as if nothing was wrong, as if the night wasn’t holding a catastrophe on its teeth.

His hands began to hurt at some point and his arms burned. But he forced himself to keep the rhythm, to keep pressing. He forced himself to keep you here.

Sunghoon tilted your head back and pinched your nose, hesitating — just a fraction of a second — because you were you. And he didn’t know what it meant yet, only that it felt enormous within his chest already.

He bent close, mouth on yours, salt and fear thick in his throat, and strawberries on his lips.

“Breathe for me,” he whispered, the words spilling out like prayer, like command, like begging for which he didn’t have the right to, but did anyway. “Please, Angel. Please — breathe for me.”

You coughed.

Small at first. A weak shudder that made his heart lurch so hard it hurt. Water spilled from your mouth before you turned your head, choking, and dragging in air like it was something new you had to learn.

You were trembling and drenched, just as much as Sunghoon, but he couldn’t come to care about himself.

“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re alright.”

Your chin lifted at it, your gazes locking. It was only seconds that you studied each other, but it seemed a whole eternity to Sunghoon. His heart whipped against his ribs, and although he tried to, he couldn’t collect his thoughts. His lips parted as if he meant to tell you something, but he stopped, and by the time he tried again, the man from earlier was kneeling by your side.

He moved fast, shrugging off his suit with a practiced urgency. He didn’t look at Sunghoon — not really — not at all. His focus was on you, his hands already wrapping the piece around your shoulders, around your wet hair, and the parts of you exposed to the night wind before his hands molded against your arms with a steadiness that Sunghoon couldn’t feign even if he tried to.

“It is fine,” the man said to you. “It is fine. I have got you.”

I have got you.

The words rolled like theft in the air.

Sunghoon had hauled you out of the sea, he had breathed life into you, and still his mind went petty and sharp at a sentence that sounded like possession because the ocean had just tried to possess you first and Sunghoon was still in that wild part of himself that thought: mine to save, mine to keep safe, mine-

He swallowed.

You looked at the other man, dazed and lips parted as one of his arms slipped under your knees and the other rounded over your shoulders, bringing you into his arms before lifting you up.

“Give her some space,” he snapped at the people around and they did — tumbling into their own feet as they stepped back and opened space — because he sounded like someone who should be listened to.

Sunghoon rose as if to follow — as if his mind had once again forgotten that his role was done already — but a hand caught his elbow — someone steadying him, or stopping him. He wasn’t sure, and it didn’t matter.

The night was all shapes and noise.

Your head turned slightly as you were taken away, hair dripping onto the other’s sleeve. And for a heartbeat — a small, burning heartbeat — your eyes found Sunghoon’s. They were unfocused, but they found him anyway, and something in them softened — recognition again, the same thin thread from earlier on. And Sunghoon’s throat tightened with the raw realization that he didn’t want to let you go again.

But then you were gone anyway, taken into the yacht’s interior, and swallowed by light and warmth that wasn’t his, and his eyes merely remained at the place you disappeared in, hardly feeling part of his own body.

His hands were red and raw from compressions, the cut from the night previous all open and bleeding into his bandage. His chest heaved too fast and sea tasted permanent in his throat as if it had moved in and decided to live there.

Around him, the guests’ fear had already begun to convert into a story that sounded pretty — something they could repeat later with dramatic pauses and glittering eyes — using it to make their own hearts feel brave. But Sunghoon didn’t hear any of it.

He only heard your first cough.

He only felt the moment your lungs had chosen to come back.

“Young man,” someone called.

Sunghoon didn’t turn at first — he couldn’t — he couldn’t come to gather himself enough to face another person because although he wasn’t in the water anymore, there was something inside of him fighting still.

Perhaps there would always be a part of him fighting from now on.

“Young man,” the person repeated, stepping closer and the scent of expensive cologne cut through the salt, awakening Sunghoon before the touch at his shoulders did and he forced himself to turn. “What is your name?”

“Sunghoon,” he heard himself saying. “Park Sunghoon.”

The man nodded as he echoed it, his face drawn tight in that kind of controlled expression that suggested he had learned too early how to control his emotions from showing in public.

And Sunghoon caught himself opening his mouth, ready to apologize before he even knew what for — an old instinct, perhaps, sharpened by employment and hierarchy and the knowledge that rich people’s anger was its own kind of weather. But the man’s voice came out rough.

“Thank you,” he said, and for a brief moment Sunghoon felt confused, but the man continued, “my daughter,” and the two words changed the air. The whole deck seemed to tilt into a new shape. “You—”

His voice broke just slightly before he paused, tightening his jaw as he forced it back into place.

“You brought her back.” Sunghoon’s lungs seized again, but this time it wasn’t from the cold. It was from the sudden, horrible clarity that you weren’t a guest or a body or a problem.

You were someone’s daughter.

Someone’s world.

Sunghoon only nodded, because words felt too small then. Because if he spoke, his voice might crack open and reveal how close he had been to losing control.

Your father looked at him for another long second — memorizing his face, perhaps, or the uniform, or the fact that Sunghoon still looked like someone half-made out of seawater and shock.

“Thank you,” your father said again, quieter, as if the first time had been for pride and the second was for truth. “I will not forget it.”

Your father handed Sunghoon a business card and tapped his shoulder once — just once — a brief, human contact that felt almost unreal.

Sunghoon was shivering so violently that the bare push made him nearly drop the piece of paper on the yacht’s floor, but he forced himself to hold, his fingers closing so strongly that the cut from the night previous throbbed as a crease formed in the paper.

He didn’t think the card would come in use, yet — it felt soothing — because names were the first thing one reached for when they were trying to keep someone from vanishing, and he had your last name.

Sunghoon had your last name.

Sleep came so unwillingly to Sunghoon that it refused to last long.

Throughout the past three summers since he had been hired, he had been the one to get the yacht duty — not very lucky, yes — but it always gave him the best sleep of his life.

Sunghoon wasn’t an early bird. He didn’t request to be smoothed and tucked in bed at ten like Jaeyun, but he liked to sleep his nights away, so to be deprived of it always took something from him, but not today.

Sunghoon woke not even a full hour after he had laid himself on the bed, the shafts of light slipping through his curtainless windows and streaming over the place just as it had — yet, he couldn’t stay still anymore.

His body felt like it had been wound too tightly. His arms ached from the compressions. His throat tasted like the sea. And when he blinked, the deck lights flared behind his eyelids.

He swung his legs off the bed.

The small room was warm already, Jeju’s summer pressing through the thin walls with such insistence that the air clung on and the fan in the corner stuttered in vain. Somewhere outside, scooters whined down the road, and a bird shrieked the way birds did here — loud, territorial, unashamed.

Sunghoon washed his face with water that barely came cold, dragged a comb through his hair with more violence than care, and changed into the cleanest shirt he had, though clean didn’t mean much when his skin still remembered salt.

He looked at his hand. The cut had reopened under the bandage, a thin line of blood shimmering like a warning, but he only wrapped it again and left before his mind could catch up and tell him to be smart.

Because if Sunghoon paused long enough to think, he wouldn’t move at all.

⋆˚꩜｡

The resort sat above the road like it always did.

Marriotte didn’t belong to Jeju, but it pretended to, dressing itself in stone and dark wood and tasteful greenery, but it was too polished to be Jeju’s, and quiet in a way that didn’t come from the peace of the island, but from money making sure no one got loud unless paid to.

Sunghoon walked up the steps in the heat and felt the instant change the moment he crossed the threshold. Outside, it was Jeju’s summer, but inside it was Marriotte’s type of summer.

The lobby was not only large. It was layered.

It didn’t open itself like a normal room. It unfolded.

Walkways split from walkways. Corridors slipped away behind screens of dark wood and potted plants that looked so perfect it once led Jaeyun and Jongseong to bet if they were real. Stairs didn’t just lead upward — they led sideways, down, somewhere, dipping like secrets. Hallways branched from hallways, and then branched again, like the building had been designed by someone who enjoyed watching people get lost and pretend they weren’t.

There were walls of glass that gave the illusion of openness, but even those felt controlled because beyond them, the garden glimmered wet and green, water beading on leaves not only holding Jeju’s true nature, but turning it into decoration.

It was early, but the staff already moved through like ghosts in pressed uniforms and present only when summoned as the guests existed in the opposite. Guests floated as they made their check-ins, taking space without apologizing for it in the way only rich people could.

Sunghoon hated that he was here on his day off.

Sunghoon hated that he was here at all.

He walked past the concierge desk and felt eyes flick in his direction in recognition. Not only because they knew him, but because he looked like a staff. He moved like a staff. He carried himself like someone who had learned to keep his shoulders tight so the world couldn’t slip knives between his ribs.

He turned toward the reception.

Jongseong stood behind the desk, immaculate until he saw Sunghoon and something in his face cracked.

“What are you doing here?” Jongseong hissed through a smile that wasn’t meant for his friend, but the couple checking in beside him. His eyes didn’t leave Sunghoon’s face even as his hands moved through the motions of hospitality, tapping at the keyboard, sliding keycards over with practiced grace. “It’s your day off.”

The couple left, and before Jongseong could call the next guest to come, Sunghoon stepped in.

“I know — I need something.”

“No.”

Sunghoon blinked. “I didn’t even ask yet.”

“You don’t have to,” Jongseong murmured, his eyes flicking to the security camera in the corner, before it found Sunghoon again. “Whatever it is, the answer is no. Go home.”

Sunghoon’s throat tightened as he reached into the pocket of jeans, pulling out your father’s business card. The edges were damp-soft from having been clenched too long. He didn’t hand it over, not fully — he only let Jongseong read the last name.

And for a moment, Sunghoon saw it — the shift, the understanding snapping into place like a lock turning once Jongseong made sense of the letters.

Jongseong’s mouth parted, then closed. And when their eyes met again, He stared at Sunghoon as if he had just said he wanted to walk into fire because he missed the warmth.

“You can’t just—” Jongseong began, then stopped himself as guests walked by, their laughter trailing behind them like perfume. He lowered his voice further. “You can’t just ask for a suite. That’s not a thing.”

“I’m not asking you to tell her family’s suite,” Sunghoon lied.

He didn’t know what he was asking for.

“I’ll lose my job — we will lose our jobs,” Jongseong said, but despite the harshness with which his words came out, his expression didn’t match it for long.

“Are you okay?” Jongseong asked, but Sunghoon couldn’t come to answer.

Okay was a word for people who knew what they were, and he didn’t, or at least, he didn’t know anymore. Sunghoon had once believed that he had built himself into something durable and steady, yet you had come, and now, there was something different inside of him, something raw and unpracticed, and if he admitted it — even if just once — it would become real. Not an impulse. Not a passing stupidity. But something he was afraid that wouldn’t fit back inside his chest.

Jongseong exhaled slowly, looking down at his screen.

For one long second, Sunghoon thought he had silently been told to leave. But then, Jongseong’s shoulders sank — just slightly.

“Fine,” he breathed. “Fine, but if you ruin my life, I swear I’ll kill you myself.”

Sunghoon’s pulse jumped — not at the threat. He knew Jongseong would never — but at the view of his friend tapping at the keyboard, and then, tapping some more before he leaned forward, his voice turned into a whisper that scraped against the polished air.

“1512. Rooftop,” Jongseong said. “Go fast and I swear—”

“I know,” Sunghoon replied, already turning away.

He didn’t let himself thank him. He didn’t let himself hesitate. Gratitude was slow, and Sunghoon was running out of control.

His heart raced as he moved through the corridor, taking the elevator just as it was closing with an old couple that paid him no mind, and pressed the elevator’s buttons to the rooftop — rooftop, he had worked for years here and never once had he stepped there, and for a second he wondered if he truly could, if the elevator wouldn’t strangely stop operating and preventing him, but the doors slid shut, and the elevator began to rise. And with every floor it passed, Sunghoon felt like he was doing something he couldn’t undo. Like he was climbing toward a line he couldn’t uncross.

But still — he couldn’t stop.

⋆˚꩜｡

When the doors slid open for one last time, Sunghoon was surprised.

The rooftop had never been a place for the staff, but a rumor. A word whispered in the laundry room when the machines were loud enough to swallow the envy in their words. A direction pointed with a chin when a celebrity checked in and someone wanted to pretend they hadn’t looked because on the surface, they didn’t care. A level the elevator did not even list on the ordinary panel — but kept on a clean, discreet button because those who could afford the rooftop’s suites had lives that didn’t include asking.

Yet — it was exactly like the corridors below. 

The same thick carpets and light colored walls.

In every few steps, there were doors and he found himself staring at the details because the more familiar it seemed, the less anxious he felt. The brushed gold trim on the wall. The line of orchids arranged in vases that had to be replaced every morning. 

But then — absurdly — there was a vending machine.

It stood near the corner where the corridor split, sleek and silver, its glass front filled with neat rows of bottled water, imported teas, protein bars in minimalist packaging, tiny tins of nuts that probably cost more than the whole staff cafeteria’s lunch. But it was a vending machine — a vending machine up here.

Sunghoon slowed without meaning to stare at it.

He had grown up with vending machines that swallowed coins and didn’t always give anything back. Machines that smelled like dust and heat, that dispensed cheap coffee in paper cups, that sat near bus stops where men smoked and teenagers laughed too loudly because they had nothing else to do, but this one looked clean enough to eat off.

He imagined you for a moment — you, with your diamond earrings, your silk dresses and your life that seemed to exist beyond consequences — standing here, under that artificial light and pressing buttons for a bottle of water.

It didn’t fit.

He couldn’t imagine rich people needing something quick. And yet the machine existed, which meant someone up here had once been thirsty enough not to call room service.

The thought made him feel strangely dizzy, as if the world had tilted and revealed a seam that shouldn’t even exist. 

He forced himself to move.

His bandaged hand throbbed with each swing of his arm.

When Sunghoon stood in front of your family’s suite door, he hesitated, feeling a disconcerting flutter in his chest with the realization that he had no idea what he was doing.

He brushed a hand over his face, the bandage pulling at his skin, but before he could do anything else, the door opened, the morning’s sunlight racing out and making him blink a few times before he got used to it.

But it wasn’t you at the door, nor your father, nor anyone related to you — it was Mrs. Kye, the old maid that Jaeyun once joked had perhaps been there since the foundation of the hotel, but Sunghoon never laughed about it. Mrs. Kye was one of the nicest staff members.

“Sunghoon?” she called. “What are you doing here?”

“I—” he began, not sure how he was supposed to explain everything. His throat felt too tight for words that weren’t rehearsed. “I was looking for someone. She is a guest, her family is staying in this suite—”

“Sunghoon,” Mrs. Kye cut in, and there it was — the edge of the rules in her tone, the weight of them. “You know the rules.”

He swallowed.

“She almost drowned yesterday,” he said. “I just — I just want to check if she is alright. In the hurry, I couldn’t tell her what symptoms she should watch out for.”

The lie came so easily it almost felt true. But Sunghoon knew Mrs. Kye wasn’t buying it by the way she sighed, shaking her head, and for a moment he thought it was over — that she would close the door and he would need to go back down the elevator and pretend this impulse had never happened. But Mrs. Kye’s eyes lingered on him for a moment too long, traveling through the worn bandage, the frayed edge of his shirt and his washed jeans. She took the way he stood like someone trying to take up less space than he was allowed, and he knew without knowing it hurt her. She had seen boys like him come through this resort every summer; she had seen which ones laughed, and which ones counted. And Sunghoon had always been the kind who counted and she knew.

“Playground,” she said then, her voice coming so low that Sunghoon took a while to notice she had really spoken. “She was with her cousin,” Mrs. Kye continued, glancing over her shoulder into the suite as if making sure no one was listening too closely. “Asked if there was anything like that in the hotel.”

His breath caught.

“Go.”

Sunghoon didn’t trust himself to answer and so, he only bowed, quick and deep, and before his gratitude could trip him into being seen.

⋆˚꩜｡

The playground was not really a playground.

It was a corner of the resort’s garden that had been dressed up for children the way Marriotte dressed up everything: carefully, expensively, and with the kind of effort that pretended to be effortless. The ground was padded with soft, springy flooring that looked like it had never met a scraped knee. A small slide curved like a ribbon beside a miniature climbing frame made of polished wood, the grain of it so perfect it felt staged — as if the trees had been grown for the singular purpose of becoming décor. Even the air smelled curated: sunscreen and cut grass, the resort’s citrus polish ghosting over it all, as though even childhood had to be sanitized before it could be permitted to exist.

Sunghoon approached slowly. And at first, he didn’t see you, but the children.

They sat cross-legged in a loose semicircle on the padded ground, faces tilted upward, eyes wide with the bright, unfiltered devotion that only children could offer. Sunghoon was used to it; spring was a great time for Jeju, but not for Marriotte, and he had taught swimming lessons at public pools when Marriotte’s rooms weren’t so full and the pool not so required that he needed to complete full hours. He knew the way children trusted without thinking, how they listened with their whole bodies, how easily they could be soothed by a voice that sounded sure.

What unsettled him was who they were listening to.

Sunghoon recognized your voice with a physical certainty, as though his body had memorized it before his mind could refuse, but how could he not? He had replayed the night of the pool party like a punishment: your gasp, your apologies. He had heard you in the staff elevator, in the locker room, in the thin, cruel moment before sleep took him and the crueler one after it abandoned him.

You had been a ghost to him through the past days, but now it was real — sat on the edge of a bench that looked too clean to have ever hosted a tired body — your hair looser than it had been on the yacht, darker at the ends as if you had showered and simply didn’t care about drying it. And a book rested open in your hands, spine broken in the middle the way books only were when someone actually read them. 

Your cousin sat by your side, one fist balled in the fabric of your dress as though you were the only solid thing in the world, a plush toy trapped under her arm.

Sunghoon opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and for a heartbeat, he simply stood there, watching you. 

A child noticed him first — then another — heads turning in a soft disturbance that spread through the group until their attention broke from you and stumbled toward him.

And you noticed him too.

It was barely anything — just your chin lifting, a slow blink like you didn’t trust your eyes — but still, it hit him anyway, sharp as a hook under the ribs and Sunghoon’s body reacted before his brain could file it away as harmless. His shoulders tightened, and his breath caught, every instinct screaming be still, be professional, don’t be seen wanting. But the garden was shifting out of place anyway, as if the world had tilted and decided you were the only thing worth keeping upright because God — you were. 

You watched him for a moment — perhaps two — before you turned to the children, slipping a bookmark between the pages and excusing yourself with the seriousness of someone stepping out of a meeting — and stood up.

Your cousin clung harder for a second, startled by the motion, and you reached for her without even seeming to consider — one arm scooping her up against your side and letting her settle against you, cheek pressed to your shoulders, and fingers now locked in your hair — before you stepped forward, crossing the place toward him. 

And for the second time he caught himself trying his best to don a neutral aspect, but as you walked in his direction he felt as if he was losing control of his own body. Sunghoon didn’t know what to do with his hands. He let them hang uselessly at his sides, then shoved them into his pockets, then pulled them out again because it looked rude, because it looked like he was nervous, because it looked like he was waiting for you.

Which he was.

But the truth didn’t seem that easy to admit.

“Hi,” you said, your voice coming breathless in a way that didn’t match the short distance you had walked, and Sunghoon’s mind snagged on the inconsistency like it was a safety hazard because well, it made no sense — but then it did – and that small understanding warmed him in a way he didn’t want to allow. His fingers flexed at his side, bandage tugging, and grounding him back into his body before he made himself remember how to speak.

“Hi,” Sunghoon echoed.

Your cousin shifted at the sound of him, her arms tightening around your shoulders as she hid herself into the crook of your neck. You murmured something in her ear, softly, and too low for Sunghoon to make sense of what it had been, but whatever it was, it got her lifting her head and looking at Sunghoon again, round-eyed and shiny with embarrassment. 

“Sorry,” your cousin whispered. It had been so quiet that Sunghoon almost thought he had imagined it — but then, her lips continued shaped into the word, and his breath caught in surprise. 

Sunghoon bent down a little, lowering himself to your cousin’s eye level in the way he did with the children at the public pool, his instincts taking over where his pride usually lived whenever he breathed Marriotte’s air.

“It’s okay,” he said, hesitating for a moment before he lifted his bandaged hand and gave her a small thumbs up, the gesture making the healing skin pinch, but he didn’t allow it to show. “I will survive.”

Your cousin blinked at him before she tried to hide again, her fingers twisting on the locks of your hair in a manner that should have been painful. But if anything, you gently patted her back. 

And when Sunghoon straightened himself, he caught you smiling.

Not in that one polite and restrained way he had seen you wear the previous night, but something small and helpless at the edges, as if it had happened to you without your consent — as if your body had decided that because he had offered something of himself, you had to give something back.

And the fairness of it felt strange in his chest. Heat climbed up the back of his neck and into his ears. Sunghoon didn’t know what to do with the fact that you were looking at him like that, so he blinked, and glanced away, setting his mouth back into place as if it had betrayed him.

“Do you want to go back to the other children?” you asked your cousin, receiving a nod almost immediately. 

The moment her feet touched the padded ground, she retreated — not far, not truly — choosing the safety of the other children in a blunt instinct Sunghoon understood too well.

And with her gone, there was nothing left to hone the moment into harmlessness — no child, no movement, no noise to hide behind — just you and him, with the air between you tightening into something quiet and dangerous despite the bright morning.

Sunghoon should have stepped back — he knew — but his feet didn’t listen. Something in him held, stubbornly, as if staying was a risk he recognized but chose anyway.

“I—” you began, at the same time as him.

“You first.”

“I had asked for you,” you said quietly. “At the reception, however, they said it was your day off.”

“It is,” he heard himself answering, but when he didn’t put in any further information, you continued:

“I wanted to thank you — for saving me last night.”

“It’s my job.”

“I know.”

“Then don’t—” His throat scraped. “Don’t thank me.”

You halted, surprised by his words. And for a moment Sunghoon was afraid he had been once again too rude without thinking, but then, a shadow of humor softened your mouth subtly, almost careful. Not a smile, exactly. But something that said you weren’t afraid to meet him where he stood — not anymore.

“Alright,” you said. “I take my formal thanks back. Yet still — I am grateful.”

Sunghoon swallowed. The morning was too bright for how fragile he suddenly felt, the air too clean for the way his chest still tasted like fear. And his hands-bandaged too roughly for what he wanted.

“Your turn,” you remembered.

“I’m grateful too,” he admitted. “For what you did the other night. It saved my month.”

“It just didn’t feel right,” you replied, your brows drawing together — that small divot returning like an old habit, and Sunghoon couldn’t help but feel that familiar heat rising anyway, quick and instinctive. Of course it didn’t. Things never did, and somehow the rich always had a way of smoothing the edges down — paying until the world agreed to look away.

The thought sharpened on his tongue, ready to become something ugly.

But then, he caught himself, almost startled by his own reflex because you were standing right in front of him, smaller in the sunlight than you had been under the pool lights and yacht’s dazzle, and looking at him like you meant it.

Sunghoon swallowed, letting the anger fold back into his chest where it belonged.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “After — all of it.”

“My throat hurts a bit,” you said. “And I am smelling water.”

“Smelling water?”

“Not like a wet breeze,” you clarified, almost apologetic for the strangeness of it. “Actual water. Like I am breathing it.”

“It’s normal,” he said. “But you should rest today. Be attentive. If you get a fever, if breathing gets worse, if you feel tired in a way that doesn’t make sense—”

“I know.”

Sunghoon halted then. Of course you did. Someone had already told you — a doctor, perhaps a private one, someone whose name you didn’t have to wait for. The thought put a sour edge on Sunghoon’s tongue, and he hated himself for it.

His gaze dropped instead to the book in your hands. 

“You shouldn’t be reading out loud,” he said before he could stop himself. “Not if your throat hurts.”

Your gaze dropped to the book as well, only for a fraction of a second before your gaze encountered him again, and when you did, you smiled. 

“Finish it for me, then.”

“What?”

“You said I shouldn’t be reading,” you countered, and he could hear the amusement threading your voice. “But the children will be disappointed if they don’t hear the end.”

You tilted the book toward him. “Finish it for me.”

Sunghoon glanced past you, catching the children still turned toward you both, eyes bright and hungry for gossip.

It was a trap, he knew it, perhaps your whole existence was a trap to him.

He had not come here to perform. He had not come here to sit in a garden playground and read to rich children while his heart tried to hammer itself out of his ribs. And yet — you looked at him as if you were trusting him with something small.

As if you weren’t afraid he would drop it.

He reached out. The bandage on his hand made the motion clumsy, and for the briefest second his fingers brushed against yours as he took the book — the touch more a delirium than a real thing — but it made his whole body go rigid for a moment too long before he walked to the children, sitting where you once did and cleared his throat.

The children stared.

You sat back, allowing your cousin to tumble into you once again, and watching him with the kind of patience that made him feel exposed.

Sunghoon began.

His voice came out awkward at first — too careful, too flat — and he hated the sound of himself in this setting. But soon he caught himself changing voices for the characters, letting a higher pitch slip for one, a rougher edge for another. A child giggled. Then another, a small sequence until your laugh broke through and something warm rose in Sunghoon’s chest, and it took him a long time to notice that it was pride — a foolish pride for making you laugh. 

When he finished the book, the children groaned in protest, and he handed it back to you as if it might burn him.

“Thank you,” you said again. And time he didn’t tell you not to, but just nodded, because some refusals felt pointless against you.

Somewhere behind you, a nanny called, and the children broke apart the way children always did — all devotion, and then none at all — feet pattering off across the soft flooring, laughter dissolving into the garden as if it had never been held.

But you stayed — still as a held breath, hands quiet at your sides, your gaze fixed on him like you were waiting for something he hadn’t learned how to give and Sunghoon didn’t know what to do with that.

“I should go,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. His fingers found his jeans on instinct, smoothing at a crease that wasn’t there because perhaps — perhaps he could press order back into his body if he tried hard enough.

You nodded at his saying but as he turned away, you called out his name and he stopped.

He didn’t mean to but his feet simply listened.

It was the first time you had ever said his name, and it landed wrong in the best way, catching him under the ribs. Not only because of your accent, all made in the knottiness of Seoul, but because coming from your mouth it sounded softened and slower, drawn out as if you had stolen it and made it all yours.

“Wait,” you said.

And he did.

“My father,” you continued. “He is in hope that you are going to call — he wanted to thank you properly. And—” You hesitated, the same kind of hesitation you had in the staff hallway: bravery gathering itself again. “He wanted to make sure you are taken care of.”

Sunghoon’s throat tightened at your words. He didn’t want to be taken care of. Not by you. Not by anyone who could turn care into debt.

“I’m fine,” he said automatically, and you looked at him like you already knew it was a lie.

“Dinner,” you said.

Sunghoon blinked. “What?”

“You should come to have dinner,” you repeated. “With us.”

With us.

You didn’t say it, but the meaning was explicit: you were inviting him to have dinner with your family — your family who occupied one of the suites on the rooftop corridor with its vending machine, and it made his reality tilt.

The whole world you belonged to was being offered to him, yet he knew — it was a treasure that was never meant to be touched by him.

“I—” Sunghoon started. “I’m not sure if I can — there’s a policy.”

You nodded at him, and it should’ve been the end of it. But instead, you stepped in — careful as if you knew exactly where too close began and chose to stop just short of it. And the air between you tightened, charged in that quiet way Sunghoon hated because it made him aware of everything at once: your breath, the warmth of skin, the soft, loose strand of hair the breeze had freed.

His hand almost moved on instinct — one simple lift of fingers as if to tuck it back where it belonged but he caught himself and you did it yourself.

“Can I see your phone?” you asked.

“My phone?” he echoed, but his hands were already reaching, unlocking it, placing it in yours like surrender.

He watched you type quickly. He watched the ease of your fingers, the certainty of you — or at least, the way you fake it, because your hands held it too tightly and you were biting at the corner of your lip, smudging on your lipstick and leaving it on the way you had on the night of your first encounter.

“We always have dinner at the resort’s restaurant, I will send you the time,” you said, giving him the phone back. “If you feel like — just come. My father will be more than happy to do something about the policy.”

He stared down at his phone, finding the message you sent to yourself and your name, sitting there as if it belonged.

He looked up, but you were already moving away, as if you knew the moment was too dangerous to linger in. 

“Goodbye,” you said, almost under your breath, and Sunghoon’s chest tightened at the sound. 

“Bye,” he managed.

You held his gaze for a heartbeat too long, almost as if you were trying to memorize him in daylight, storing the version of him that existed under the sun instead of under dim lights and bad decisions before you finally turned and walked back to where your cousin sat, giving him just a single glance back as if you wanted to check whether he was still there.

Sunghoon found it adorable in a way that terrified him.

It made him want to follow you back — tug at the thin thread you had left behind and see if it would truly hold.

But instead, he ran. Sunghoon found the staff access and took the stairs — two at a time — fleeing so quickly that the encounter began to feel weightless behind him, unreal in that particular way of dreams: gone the moment you wake, but still warm in your skin.

⋆˚꩜｡

Jaeyun had barely arrived for his shift when Sunghoon found him. The air smelled like salt and sunscreen and the faint metallic tang of old engineers.

“I talked to her,” Sunghoon said before even greeting, and the urgency in his tone startled even himself.

“Who?” Jaeyun asked — more reflex than curiosity — because the moment his gaze landed on Sunghoon, the question dissolved on its own, understanding settling without needing an explanation. “Angel.”

Sunghoon corrected him by saying your name before he could even feel self-conscious about the syllables because if he thought about it, he would notice how they were intimate — as if saying them out loud was an admission. It was ridiculous, but it was also true: it felt like the moment he spoke your name, the thread between your lives tightened.

“You lost me,” Jaeyun said. “How did we go from not even knowing her name to you being invited to have dinner with her and her parents tonight?”

Sunghoon explained — or at least, tried to explain — about the yacht, the rescue, the strange gravity of you, the way his body seemed to move toward you before his mind could decide. And although Jaeyun listened with the amusement of someone watching a friend walk willingly into danger everything he said was:

“What are you wearing?” 

Sunghoon looked down at himself.

“No,” Jaeyun cut him off immediately. “Tonight. What are you wearing to dinner?”

“I don’t even know if I should—” Sunghoon said. 

“You can’t be fucking serious, Park Sunghoon,” Jaeyun cut. “You’re going.”

⋆˚꩜｡

It was around three in the afternoon when Sunghoon received Mr. Hwang’s message approving his dinner with your family, a brief and cold string of words that didn’t even try to hide the warning: this wasn’t a permission, but a leash — Mr. Hwang knew where Sunghoon was — and if he slipped, even if barely, it would not be an accident anymore. It would be a choice. Sunghoon knew the rules — God, he knew it so damn well that even with the approval all written on his phone screen, he felt unsure about it, but then he received your message with a tiny please at the end, and he couldn’t come to care about being smart.

By evening, Sunghoon was freshly showered, hair damp at the nape of his neck, and Jongseong’s suit pressed and scented with Mrs. Kye’s laundry soap like a borrowed dignity.

The host didn’t know him, but a few waiters did, and as he stepped inside, he felt their glances like something material at the back of his neck.

He wasn’t a staff at the moment, nor a guest, and it somehow felt more troublesome than being either.

But then, he saw you — and you saw him too, your lips parting in that one smile you had given him at the playground, and something within him misfired.

The windows were thrown open at your back and the last gold of the day cut through the room, catching on crystal glasses and expensive cutlery until everything glittered underneath it. And you — you looked like you belonged there. Not because of the dress, the jewelry, or the easy curve of your mouth, but because the light itself knew your worth and reached for you as much.

Sunghoon took one steadying breath — yet lost it the moment you stood up, saying something to your parents before you walked toward him, and he had the strange, irrational thought that for as long as he lived, he would know the scent of you and the sound of you approaching him.

“You came,” you whispered, and Sunghoon felt his breath hitching once again. His fingers flexed once at his sides, grounding him back into his body, but he couldn’t find a sentence that didn’t give too much away, so he didn’t give you any.

You didn’t seem to mind it as you led him to your family’s table and introduced him, your finger steady on the cover of his suit.

Your mother was the first to move. Not a polite nod from her chair, nor a measured smile meant for strangers and for which Sunghoon had been prepared — but a real reaction — immediate and strangely human. She stood from where she was, reaching for his hands before Sunghoon could decide what to do with his own, holding him so warmly yet carefully that it surprised him.

“Sunghoon,” your mother called. “I do not feel like I can thank you enough.”

“It was — it was my job, ma’am.”

“No,” she said, and for a moment her warmth sharpened into something almost fierce. “It was more than that to me.”

The words came out darker than she seemed to intend — too honest for a table set in crystal and gold — and she seemed to realize it the moment they landed because her expression shifted then. Embarrassment, perhaps, for letting too much truth rise to the surface in front of people who measured vulnerability like weakness.

“And please,” she added, voice gentler again, “no ma’am.”

She glanced toward your father then. “We are family friends after all.”

“She is right,” your father agreed. He seemed to want to say more, but before he could do so, his phone chimed.

“Byeongseok,” he said, stepping away with a brief excuse and a plea for them to sit before him, and for one moment, Sunghoon could swear he felt you stiffening by his side, your shoulders drawing inward as your hands closed too tightly on the arms of your chair as you sat down, but he couldn’t come to ask the reason behind it.

Not even when your father hung up and the person he supposed to be Byeongseok appeared and greeted your parents like old acquaintances.

Not even when your mother smiled at him with clear familiarity or your father clapped a hand against the younger man’s shoulder with the ease of habit.

Sunghoon didn’t dare to ask — not even when Byeongseok turned to you with a fond smile and bright eyes — simply unable to hide the irrational happiness of seeing you.

You stood up again, allowing Byeongseok to hug you, and when his arms wrapped around your waist, it happened with the ease of someone who had never had to wonder if he was allowed to touch the world like this — like proximity was a language he had been fluent in ever since his childhood. Byeongseok pulled you in without any further question, the fabric of your dress creasing under his grip and his cologne turning into a private air between you, and when his lips chased your temple, something settled inside of Sunghoon. Not a thought, exactly, but not a feeling he could name in a way that could make sense. 

There was a sudden flare under his ribs, a reflex like pulling a hand away from the fire, except that there was nowhere to put it — nowhere to hide — and so, he only watched, understanding with a clarity so clean, it made him dizzy. It was what belonging looked like: not asked for, not earned, just assumed.

Byeongseok not only had the type of face women in this island would make lines for, but he knew how to wear his money well — Jongseong’s suit was great, honestly, the best people could find at Jeju’s malls, but anyone who said no one could tell the difference between a suit from the mall and a suit made by a clever designer had never seen the latter and Sunghoon was seeing one — not to mention that Byeongseok made a strange image near you, almost too fitting. Almost too perfect.

And Sunghoon hated the way that thought honed something in him.

The craving hit him suddenly then — sharp and familiar. Smoke at the back of his throat, something bitter enough to burn this feeling out before it rooted itself deeper. His fingers moved through his lips before he could even think about it, placing a cigarette that wasn’t even there.

“Byeongseok,” you said, drawing yourself back. “This is Sunghoon. You might remember him from last night — he was the one who saved me.”

Byeongseok frowned as his gaze fell on Sunghoon, confusion settling heavily over his features because he didn’t recall. But Sunghoon couldn’t blame him. He couldn’t have told this was the man who took you away until you mentioned it.

“Sunghoon — this is Byeongseok, son of my father’s business partner, and my classmate at the university. He was there last night as well.”

“Sunghoon has joined us per her request,” your father explained, nodding briefly toward you.

“Great,” Byeongseok replied immediately, but something about the brightness of his voice felt just half a beat too late, too polished to be entirely sincere.

Byeongseok sat down by your side, and soon enough, his parents arrived, quietly changing the shape of the evening.

Smiles settled into place as though rehearsed beforehand. Greetings were exchanged with the precise familiarity of people who had known each other long enough to stop performing enthusiasm and start performing balance instead. 

Byeongseok’s mother smiled often, but Sunghoon quickly realized it was the kind of warmth that could never truly reach the room. And his father looked at the table the way businessmen looked at properties — assessing, categorizing, deciding what belonged naturally and what had merely been allowed inside.

Still, the beginning remained civil.

Byeongseok’s mother asked about Sunghoon’s life in Jeju, and he answered the way he had been trained to answer guests: politely, briefly, and with nothing that couldn’t be more than entertaining — even when she pressed again, head tilted as if she were fishing for a story he could be made into, Sunghoon didn’t give her one. He kept his smile soft and his words cleaner, guiding the conversation along familiar paths without offering anything that could be held too tightly.

But then, the menus arrived.

“Always so many good options,” Byeongseok’s father commented lightly, leaning back in his chair. “What would you recommend, Sunghoon? If staff were allowed to eat those, of course.”

Heat crawled through Sunghoon’s neck before he could even stop it and he had to force his face to keep still. No flinch, no tell, no satisfaction given.

He understood the tactic: Say it smiling, say it soft, and if Sunghoon reacted, Sunghoon would be the problem. Not the man who had said it. That was how this worked.

Sunghoon’s jaw tightened with the unfairness, and the urge to answer with something that would cut back grew bigger — but then, you spoke.

“Sunghoon is here as our guest,” you said, your eyes never even leaving the menu. “Perhaps it would be better to ask the chef.”

The words were light enough that someone outside the table may not even notice them, but Sunghoon did.

Your parents did.

As well as Byeongseok’s. 

Byeongseok’s father gave a short laugh then, lifting his hands slightly in surrender.

“I was joking.”

“We know, however, my daughter is right,” your father cut. “Perhaps we should call the chef if we want recommendations — although Jeonbok is calling me tonight.”

He looked up through his menu to your mother.

“What do you think?”

Your mother hummed in agreement, visibly grateful for the shift.

“Would wine match?” she asked.

Sunghoon expected you to smile then, to claim victory, and let your eyes meet him with that one spark you had worn on the playground. Yet it never came. If anything, you turned even more still than before, shoulders drawn in as you had at the beginning of everything, and he understood then, that you were different near these people — quieter — if not non-existent. As if showing too much of yourself was something that could be used against you later, in a quieter room, with words that only sounded nice at the surface but sliced you open if listened to it more carefully.

And the realization settled in his chest like heat.

Protective wasn’t a word he had ever used for feelings. It sounded like something out of a movie, a pretty story for which he couldn’t afford. But whatever this was, it was real.

His knee bumped into yours, perhaps accidentally, or perhaps it was his body leading him to what he should do, but it caught your attention, and you looked at him.

It’s okay, he meant and you bumped him back as though you had understood.

⋆˚꩜｡

Nothing truly happened between the main course and dessert — or at least — nothing that Sunghoon could point to directly.

Every new plate earned a sound from Byeongseok’s mother — too loud for the room and too practiced to be true — but her husband hummed in agreement anyway, and by the time the dessert was served, the table’s volume had swelled because Byeongseok’s family didn’t just fill the room, but took it apart and rebuilt it around themselves, as if the air belonged to them by default.

Sunghoon kept his posture straight. His borrowed suit sat stiff across his shoulders, and his bandaged hand rested in his lap, where no one would ask questions. He nodded when addressed, and answered when appropriate, smiling cleanly and briefly — nothing that could be used later as proof that he had forgotten his place — but the exhaustion crept in anyway. 

Not the kind that came from a late shift, but the kind that came from holding yourself still while other people moved freely.

By his side, you had gone even quieter than before, your eyes trained on your plate as if digging at your chocolate sphere required your full concentration. 

Sunghoon watched you for a moment too long, his knee still angled toward yours under the table, close enough that he could feel the faintest shift when you moved. 

“You are supposed to break it,” Sunghoon said, quiet enough that it couldn’t interfere with the conversation going around the table, but direct enough that it couldn’t be mistaken for nothing. “Not dig.”  

“I beg your pardon?”  

“You break the layer above, not—” he paused, leaning in as if the rest of the table might steal the sentence.  

You leaned forward too, almost instinctively — meeting him in the small space he had made until your shoulders nearly brushed and the world narrowed to the dessert between you. 

Sunghoon reached out for you, his knuckles brushing yours as he took the spoon from your hand, and the contact short-circuited his brain for a fraction of a second because you were warm, soft, and close enough that he could catch your scent under the restaurant’s citrus polish and your mother’s selected wine — coconut and strawberries, just like the night you met.

His breath caught.  

He brought the spoon down and cracked the chocolate shell with one clean press — the surface split neatly, revealing the cake beneath, darker and softer, steam barely rising.

“I knew,” you whispered.  

Sunghoon halted then.

Of course you knew. Fancy desserts weren’t a novelty to you — you had probably broken a hundred chocolate shells in your life without thinking twice. You were digging not by ignorance, but because you were buying seconds — letting the chocolate shell and the soft cake beneath it become cover. Something small to hold onto, something to keep your hands moving so you didn’t have to lift your eyes to the furor of the table.

The realization made something in his chest hurt, sudden and sharp, like he had swallowed the wrong thing and it lodged in his throat.

His gaze flicked up to your face before he could stop himself.

You weren’t looking at the dessert anymore — not really — you were looking at him, eyes softened in a way that made the noise around the table feel suddenly far away. And Sunghoon knew he should lean back — put distance where it belonged, fold himself into his place again before anyone could notice.

But you were too close still and he didn’t want to be the one to let go.

He stayed as if staying could be harmless, as if the room couldn’t take this small thing and make it cost — even when your fingers brushed his again, taking in the spoon.

“Thank you regardless,” you said. “And I’m sorry.”  

I’m — not I am — and he caught the slip just as you did, your voice already smoothing itself back into I am, back into etiquette, but it was already too late.

Byeongseok’s mother waved her spoon again, mid-story. “And then I told her, I said, ‘You cannot possibly wear that to the chairman’s event.’ Can you imagine? The girl looked like she had been dressed by a toddler—”

The rest of the table chuckled, but not you.

“It’s loud,” he said, and you huffed at him.  

“Yes,” you agreed. “It is loud.”

The corner of Sunghoon’s mouth twitched in what could turn into a smile, but it was quickly taken by the way you went quiet again, folding inward until you were nothing but manners and stillness beside all that noise. 

He could pretend he didn’t see it — he could — but he didn’t.

Sunghoon let his knee stay angled toward yours under the table, a small act of defiance no one could call out, and felt the decision settle in him with a steadiness that scared him.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked. Your eyebrows furrowed at his sudden question, your surprise flickering across your features, and Sunghoon rushed on before he could talk himself out of it. “Not now, but after — after the dinner is finished — if you want to, we can go somewhere else.”

Your chin dipped once, so small it could have been nothing, yet, it wasn’t. 

His voice lowered. 

“If you leave by the resort’s main entrance and turn right, you’ll see a park full of red flowers and a black bench — I’ll be there waiting for you.” 

⋆˚꩜｡

The bench was colder than July should allow.

It sat at the edge of the small park like a leftover thought — the black paint worn thin by the number of sunsets. And above it, the red flowers flared under the streetlights, clustered and moving only when the wind picked up — Jeju’s sea air slipping in from somewhere beyond the resort’s polished boundaries and carrying salt, damp soil, and the faint sweetness of crushed petals.

Sunghoon sat with his hands clasped together so tight his knuckles ached with the pressure, and his cut pinched underneath the bandage, but even with such discomfort, he couldn’t come to release. 

Perhaps because the night air kept biting at his skin, and his body was struggling to keep heat in. Or maybe it was dinner and the way the restaurant’s light had made everything sparkle — it was normal to feel wound too tightly after standing inside wealth for too long, after all — money was a room with no windows, and it made the lungs forget how to expand. 

But his gaze kept flicking to the same stretch of road.

The resort’s main entrance was somewhere behind him, out of sight but too close still — and that was the problem. Every second that passed stretched longer, the way time did whenever someone stared at it too directly. And the idea of you not coming settled like a weight under his ribs, heavy enough to make his posture go stiller. 

He had spoken too boldly — too recklessly — he had asked a question for which he had no right to ask, offered a door he didn’t even know if you could open. But now that the words were out in the air, he couldn’t pull them back. 

Sunghoon couldn’t pretend they hadn’t existed. 

He glanced down at his suit — Jongseong’s suit, actually — although it was supposed to have become his the moment he had put it on, but the fabric sat wrong across his shoulders, sleeves a centimeter too small because Jongseong had always been shorter, and it was clear now that he looked like someone he wasn’t — like someone who could sit at your father’s table without feeling the world shift under him. 

The thought made his stomach twist. 

He dragged in a breath, tasting the air — flowers, damp earth, and the distant trace of cigarette smoke from somewhere down the road and he wondered if he should smoke, but his pack was still in the locker room, safely hidden with his clothes. 

And not to mention that he didn’t even know if you mind cigarettes. Perhaps you despite the smell of it as much as Jaeyun, and if you ever came—

God

Sunghoon leaned in, forehead resting against his clasped hands. 

But then, he saw a movement in his periphery. 

At first it was only a shape separating itself from the dark — a silhouette against the faint spill of light from the resort’s property, slow and hesitant as if the body itself wasn’t sure it was allowed to keep walking. And Sunghoon’s spine straightened before he could stop it, the motion too sudden for him to even have time to consider preventing it.

His heart didn’t leap, exactly — but shifted, like something inside him had been forgotten and finally remembered its existence.

Sunghoon rose. He didn’t mean to do it so quickly, but the bench seemed to push him up anyway, and by the time you reached the edge of the park, he was already standing there, hands useless at his sides, and the night suddenly too loud in his ears. 

For a second you only looked at him, chest rising and falling just a bit faster than it should have from such a short walk, and your eyes bright in a way that didn’t match the dim light. As if you had been running internally even when your feet hadn’t.

“I thought you wouldn’t come,” Sunghoon heard himself say, and hated the way the honesty slipped out before he could catch it.

“I almost didn’t,” you admitted. “My parents were taking forever to go to their room. My mother kept asking if I was tired. If I wanted tea. If I wanted to sleep early.”

“And?”

“And I said yes,” you said, and something small changed in your expression, a flicker of the mischievous he had seen at the playground. “To all of it.”

Sunghoon nodded at you, only once — only because he understood and he didn’t want you to explain further. Explanations could turn into an apology, and he didn’t want your apology — not tonight, not anymore — not when the corners of your lips were already curling into a smile. 

You glanced at the bench, and then, at him. “Is this—” you paused. “Is this where you always wait?”

“No,” he said. “Only tonight.”

The words sat between you — true enough to make the space feel thinner, but if anything, you stepped even closer — the red flowers behind you making your skin look warmer than it probably was. 

Sunghoon’s hand lifted without his permission — not to touch you, not really, just hovering near your elbow like a reflex, like his body decided to lead you away from danger before his mind had agreed it was allowed. But he caught himself at the last second and dropped it back.

“We should go,” he said then. “Before someone sees.”

“Where?”

“Where do you want to go?” 

You glanced toward the road first, watching the faint spill of the resort light that didn’t quite reach the park before you looked back — looked at him, the wind picking and shifting a strand of your hair across your cheek in the process, and he was thankful that you reached for it fastly, tucking it behind your own ear before his hand could mischief again.

“Somewhere,” you said. “Anywhere.”

⋆˚꩜｡

The resort disappeared behind you in trimmed hedges, stone paths, and the last spill of gold light thinning between the trees until it couldn’t reach. Even the air changed. Less citrus polish and more Jeju: salt threaded through the dark laced with tangerine, damp earth, cedar, and something sharp-green from the moss that climbed the trunks like it owned them. Even the sounds shifted as you kept walking, string music and fountain hush traded for insects, a burst of laughter somewhere down the road — the messy life of the island bleeding back in.

Sunghoon led you along a path that dipped and narrowed, the trees thinning until the sky opened. And then the beach was simply there — no staging, no chairs and parasols with Marriotte’s logo, but just the sea moving in slow, endless pulls toward the pale sand.

He stepped down first, shoes sinking just slightly, and you followed — until you didn’t.

You stopped at the line where pavement ended and sand began, staring at the sea for a quiet moment before your gaze dropped to your feet, to the heels that suddenly looked ridiculous here.

“I—” you started, already crouching to slip one off, but the sand shifted under you, breaking your balance.

It had been nothing more than a small slip, your ankle rolling in a way that could have passed unnoticed — but Sunghoon was watching, and before you could pretend it hadn’t happened, his hand had already closed around your forearm, firm and quick, saving you from a fall that would never really come.

Your skin was warm under his grip, summer still caught in you somewhere, and suddenly, you were so close and the night so still. All he could feel was the breeze on his cheeks, your breath feathering against his skin, and the sea hissing at the shore.

“Careful,” he whispered.

You steadied yourself, letting out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh — embarrassed and relieved all at once — before you slipped the heel off properly this time, then the other, holding them by the straps as you finally stepped further.

“Is this one of those beaches where you’re not allowed to go in the water at certain times?”

“Allowed,” he echoed. The word sounded strangely cute coming from you, but it was all wrong out here, too Marriotte, and he hated what that place had taught you to carry.

He bent down and unlaced his shoes, slipping them off before he stepped further, finding where the sea had already touched the sand and left it wet, but he stopped there then, looking over his shoulder at you, as if offering the path with his body.

“Come on,” he said. “This isn’t Marriotte. We can do what we like for a little while.”

You hesitated for a moment, lips parting as though you meant to say something else — but whatever it was, you let it go with a small shake of your head and followed.

Sunghoon kept his pace slower than normal, not looking back fully — just enough to confirm you were still there, a step behind him, heels hooked securely over your fingers — and matching your pace when it slowed, pretending he wasn’t listening to every change in your breathing like it could mean something.

The shoreline pulled in and out, foam thinning and retreating, leaving the sand dark and shining under the moonlight. A small wave slid up in a cold sheet and flattened at Sunghoon’s feet, soaking the hem of his trousers. 

“I am sorry,” you said. “I had no idea that my father had invited Byeongseok and his parents. If I had, I would have told you to come some other time. I know they are—” but you never finished. There wasn’t anything you could say that they hadn’t already proven to be, and so, you merely shook your head, your gaze dropping back at your feet. “I am genuinely sorry.”

Sunghoon halted then, not realizing he had done it until you halted too, turning to find him a step behind. He never thought he had any problem with speaking and talking, but now he realized that perhaps whenever he had something serious to say, he needed to go still first. 

“Byeongseok,” he began.

“What about him?”

“Are you both a — thing?” 

“What?” you laughed, less because you were amused than because you knew you were supposed to be. “He is a friend — kind of, I don’t know.”

You shuddered.

“Our parents have known each other since university and co-founded their first company together,” you explained. “When our mothers got pregnant around the same time, it was already decided that Byeongseok and I should be friends too — actually, when they figured out our genders, even — even marriage was in the talks.”

The world didn’t stop then. The wind kept blowing, tucking loose strands of your hair and sending them through the night in thin ribbons of moonlight. The sea kept hissing at the shore in its slow, indifferent rhythm, as if it had never learned the meaning of names. But Sunghoon went painfully still.

It shouldn’t have made him feel anything — this truth of yours — but it did, because it carried the sharpest fact with it: you could slip away without anyone even touching you. You could turn back toward Marriotte’s gold light and be absorbed by it like you’d never stood here at all. Like this beach was only a pause between rules. Like the night had borrowed you and would have to give you back.

And the thought spiked so suddenly that it made him angry.

Sunghoon worked his jaw once and swallowed hard, as if he could force the feeling down to wherever he kept everything else. But it didn’t go. It stayed lodged in his throat, cold, heavy, and growing harder with every second he didn’t say it out loud: don’t go.

And in the hush of the moment, you continued, your voice slipping into the space before his could, soft and quick, like you were trying to save you both from something.

“It is not so terrible,” you told him, and for a moment he couldn’t tell what you were referring to. “I mean, I am not the type of person who did much — ever since childhood — as you can notice. I did not have much experience with anything. I do not know how to swim, and I only know how to ride a bike because one of my babysitters thought it was absurd that I did not know how at the age of twelve.”

“Twelve?” Sunghoon echoed, his voice softer than he expected. He tried to picture a twelve-year-old you and someone finally deciding you should know how to balance yourself on two wheels. “What else have you never tried?” 

“Carnivals, arcades, street food,” you said, and it hurt Sunghoon to notice how you didn’t even seem to go very far into your mind before coming up with those, as if you had already listed all the things life had kept from you, holding it on a secret corner. “I’ve also never played in the rain.”

You didn’t look at him when you said it. You looked at the water instead, and the words hung there a moment — small and wrong against the sea.

“What else do children do?” you asked quietly.

“In Jeju?” Sunghoon echoed, and you shuddered a little because the problem wasn’t Jeju at all, but that you didn’t know what children did anywhere.

His gaze slid past you, down the shoreline, and toward where the harbor lights would be if you followed the coast far enough.

“Fishing boats,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

He glanced back at you. “Have you ever been on one?”

“No,” you laughed, and it sounded like surprise more than amusement. “Not even close.”

Sunghoon didn’t think. He just decided.

“Come.”

“Now?”

He nodded, already moving — already turning it into something inevitable before he could talk himself out of it. Sunghoon stepped into your space, reaching for you. His fingers closing around your wrist, as though he was afraid you’d vanish if he didn’t anchor you to the moment.

He didn’t look back as he led you along the shoreline. He only tightened his grip once — pulling you farther down the beach with the sound of the sea and his heart pounding against his ears. 

⋆˚꩜｡

Sunghoon didn’t stop walking until the sand gave way to wood and damp rope, until the harbor opened up in front of you and it was too late to turn back.

Boats rested low in the water, tied close to the dock as their hulls knocked softly in the tide’s slow pull. The air here was thick with things the resort would’ve scrubbed away: seaweed gone sweet at the rocks, gasoline that never fully left the planks, fish in a way that didn’t come plated, and rope that held the day’s work in its fibers.

He stepped onto the dock and led you between the boats without slowing until he found one smaller than the rest — paint chipped, name faded to something half-forgotten, but still rocking with a stubborn kind of life.

“Is it yours?” you asked.

Sunghoon shook his head, letting go of your hand only so he could climb down first, one hand on the rail, knees bending on instinct as the boat dipped beneath his weight and steadied again. 

“It was — is my father’s, but he doesn’t use it anymore,” Sunghoon answered, looking back up at you from the deck. 

“It moves,” he warned. “Just — just step where I tell you.”

“You know,” you whispered. “The last time I was on something like this, I slipped and caused chaos — what if I slip again?”

“I’ll jump after you again,” he replied, taking a moment too long to notice how silly he had sounded, but you laughed then — real, and soft — cheeks growing a shade darker beneath the lights, and Sunghoon decided that he didn’t care. He could be as silly as he needed to be to see you like this. 

“I am trusting you on this,” you said. 

Sunghoon reached up toward you, not offering his hand like something romantic, but lifting his arms like he was preparing to catch you before you could fall.

“Come,” he said, and when you stepped closer, he didn’t give either of you time to second-guess it. His hands found your waist, fingers curling and holding onto as he lifted you.

The boat shifted under him as he brought you down, the deck dipping at the exact wrong moment, and making Sunghoon’s balance break — just a fraction — but he stumbled anyway, the two of you jolting together.

Your lips parted on a gasp, and you were suddenly too close again. The air between you thinned enough that Sunghoon could not only hear but feel it against his mouth, sweet with the strawberry cocktail you had been nursing at dinner and chocolate from the dessert he almost stole from you.

He wasn’t sure what had come to your mind, but your gaze dropped to his lips, and for one stupid second, he thought the deck had tilted again, some tide moving the boat beneath your feet, because he caught himself moving toward you — toward whatever it was.

It was absurd, honestly, how quickly his body betrayed him. How instinct moved first: the pull forward, the half-formed reach, the mind going blank in the same way it did right before a dive.

But then, his mind snapped back in with the same brutal timing it always had, and Sunghoon halted.

He forced his hands to stay where they were. Forced his feet to hold, and his gaze to move up and off your mouth — off the sweet stain of chocolate and strawberries on the air — because if he kept looking, he didn’t trust himself not to finish what his body had started.

For a moment, neither of you moved. The only still point in the middle of a harbor that continued to creak as it always had: water brushing softly against wood, rope shifting overhead, and the hull answering the tide with a slow, patient pull for which Sunghoon couldn’t bring himself to match. But then, you stepped aside, your gaze already skittering away, and searching for anything to hold onto that wasn’t this.

“It is a nice boat,” you said. “Why does your father not use it anymore?” 

His fingers flexed once at his sides — a newfound habit to ground him back into his body — as he breathed in.

“He had a stroke a few years ago,” he said, and it came out with the same level of emotion the doctors had said back then, like a fact because well, it was what it was. “It interrupted the blood flow to his spinal cord for long enough — long enough for his legs to stop working.”

It made you turn back at him, your gaze settling on him with a softness Sunghoon didn’t know what to do with because it didn’t feel like pity, not really. It felt like you were staying. As if you’d reached for the ugly truth and, instead of handing it back to him, you were holding one corner of it with your bare hands, because you didn’t want to give it back to him, not when it weighed so much, and it made his breath catch.

He looked away on instinct, jaw tightening as if he could lock the reaction behind his teeth, but his throat still burned anyway, sudden and sharp. The harbor lights blurred for a second on the water’s surface, trembling lines turning softer as he blinked and forced his eyes to behave.

“I am so sorry, Sunghoon,” you said, quietly. “I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for you.”

Something in his chest shifted at the way you said it — for him, not just his father — and it left him unsteady in a way the boat never could. He pressed his tongue to the back of his teeth, swallowing once, and then again, as if he could force the feeling down into a place it wouldn’t show.

But he couldn’t — he never could, not with you.

“Yeah,” Sunghoon managed, rough around the edges. Then, after a beat, like the words had to be pried loose: “It was—”

“It was my last year in high school and suddenly I was having to get part-time jobs to help with the bills. University exams and everything that came with it became just a reality that couldn’t be mine,” he said, the words coming out in a rush, like now that he had started, he couldn’t stop. “I graduated by a miracle, I would say — and then I got the job at Marriotte, and it’s not like we are rich, but it gave us some breathing room. They pay well — I mean, not enough to cover a dozen of crystal glasses with one of the most expensive champagnes comfortably—”

“That is why you reacted that way,” you said.

“Desperate?” 

“I wasn’t going to use this word.”

Sunghoon’s lips twitched.

“You can be harsh with me, Angel,” he said, and regretted the nickname the second it left his mouth. It sounded too familiar — too owned — but if anything, you smiled at him, ending the distance you had previously created and reaching for him, your thumb brushing the space between his brows.

“You are frowning,” you whispered.

Sunghoon hadn’t noticed it — he couldn’t come to care, actually — all he could think about was the warmth of your thumb, the faint smell of coconuts at your skin, and the sudden, odd urgency in him to keep you there and not let you slip away again.

“Do you want me to take her out a bit?” he asked, his voice lower than he intended. “It’s better once the lights are behind us.”

“The boat?” you asked, and he was surprised by how excited you sounded. “Can you?”

He moved before he could overthink it, reaching past you to the console by the cabin, fingers finding switches and knobs with the muscle memory of a childhood he didn’t talk about much. 

The cabin itself crouched in the middle of the boat — small windows clouded with salt, paint chipped, a cheap string of bulbs hanging along a metal frame overhead from one decision he was too young to remember. Warm light spilled onto coiled rope and a cooler shoved against the cabin wall, onto a bucket with a cracked handle and nets bunched like shed skins.

The boat rocked in small answers as he worked, impatient, like it wanted to be out in the water too.

You stepped into the cabin’s shadow, close enough to watch without getting in the way. 

The engine coughed when he turned it over, and Sunghoon coaxed it gently — hand steady, voice low under his breath as if the boat could hear him. It sputtered again, then finally caught, a rough vibration running through the deck and up his legs, swallowing the harbor’s quieter noises.

Sunghoon guided the boat out, slow at first, easing past the tighter line of docked vessels. The harbor lights stayed bright behind you for a moment — gold smearing across the water — before they began to thin.

And then, gradually, the world changed. The air opened. The smell of gasoline softened into salt and night. The noises of the docks dissolved into nothing but the sea’s quiet insistence and the boat’s engine thudding like a heartbeat.

You leaned a little, peering past the cabin.

“It is — dark,” you said.

“You aren’t supposed to be looking down.”

“I—”

Sunghoon killed the engine, and the sudden silence landed heavy and solemn, although the boat continued to drift, tide and current doing what they always did, and the hull continued to knock against the water.

“Come,” he said.

Sunghoon stepped out and moved toward the side passage between the cabin and the rail. It was narrow — barely enough for one person to pass without turning sideways, and you seemed to notice it right away.

“Is it — safe?” you asked, and Sunghoon snorted at it.

“Define safe,” he said, because it wasn’t, but there was no other way, and so, he merely turned sideways, giving in a few steps into the narrow patch before he glanced back at you.

“Like this,” he instructed. “Sideways — you can use the cabin for support.”

You did as he said, following him into the gap.

The cabin wall pressed close as you both moved, and only when you reached the bow, the space widened by a few inches — not much, but enough to feel like freedom. The cabin lights were dimmer here, allowing the sky to be everything.

Sunghoon looked at you for a second, taking in the way you stared upward, your lips parting in a gasp you didn’t quite release.

Sunghoon didn’t wait for you to decide. He lowered himself first, back meeting the wood, one arm tucked under his head like he belonged to the boat in a way he didn’t belong anywhere else. 

You watched him as if you weren’t sure you were allowed to follow, but then you did anyway, lying down beside him.

Above, the stars were so bright they looked spilled — silver and white against a dark so deep, it swallowed the last memory of the harbor.

And it was so nice to just lie there with you — backs resting against the deck as you watched the stars — as if you both had shared something and were no longer alone with yourselves and your little secrets, because well, you had.

“You know,” you began. “You made me do two things I have never done in the span of a single hour — be in a fishing boat and watch the stars.”

“Have you never watched the stars?” he asked.

“Not really,” you said. “There are too many lights in Seoul, it’s almost impossible to see the stars.”

“That’s a waste.”

You laughed at that — so small and soft — as if the night had pulled it out of you without asking and Sunghoon’s mouth twitched at the sound. He kept his eyes on the sky, knowing it was safer than looking at you, but your laughter stayed in his chest anyway, warm, stubborn, and making something within him shift.

“We could do more,” he said, the words escaping before he could prevent them. “Not tonight, but while you are in Jeju — I could teach you how to swim — there is a public pool nearby, we could go there after my working hours at the resort.”

He was rambling at this point, trying to turn the thing he had just offered into something practical — something that could be scheduled and explained and, if necessary, defended. As if putting it into logistics could make it safer.

“I mean—”

“I would love to,” you cut in. “I genuinely would love to.”

“Tomorrow, if you can,” he said. “Let’s meet on the bench.”

“Tomorrow,” you said. “At our spot.”

“Our spot,” he heard himself agreeing. 

Sunghoon couldn’t tell how long you stayed there, the boat drifting and rocking beneath your backs, but it was enough for the air to shift, the night cooling as if the morning had already started to gather itself somewhere out of his sight. And Sunghoon understood, with a clarity that made something within his chest tighten, that soon the world would wake up, and he would have to take you back. Tomorrow was going to come no matter what, and yet still — he wanted it to. 

If it were to be with you, he wanted it to.