skye ⭑

❝ tracklist ❞  ─── hard to explain—the strokes ❦ re-do—modern baseball ❦ fluorescent adolescent—arctic monkeys ❦ why do you only call me when you’re high?—arctic monkeys ❦ warm glow—hippo campus ❦ softcore—nbhd ❦ line without a hook—ricky montgomery ❦ talk too much—coin ❦ mystery of love—sufjan stevens ❦ lovers rock—tv girl ❦ sofia—clairo

the afternoon sun filtered through the high, dusty windows of the library, catching the steady swirl of dust motes right over the exact table you’d claimed since the beginning of the semester. you dropped your heavy backpack onto the wood with a loud deliberate thud.

the boy sitting across from you didn’t even flinch. he kept his head down, his posture perfectly straight, mechanical pencil moving with silent precision across his grid notebook. he looked exactly like what everyone said he was: the quintessential good boy—neat collar, impeccably organised highlighters, and a calm demeanor that made him look completely unbothered by the midterms looming over your heads.

you pulled out your own chair, the screech of it against the floor intentionally louder than it needed to be. you sat down, smoothing out your pants, and flipped open your thick textbook right to the section on advanced kinematics.

for the first twenty minutes, the only sound between you two was the scratch of your pencils against your respective books and the rhythmic turning of pages. you didn’t know him nor did he know you. you were just two nameless students drowning in the same brutal syllabus who passed each other in class… until the practice quiz grades were posted online.

your phone buzzed in your lap. you quickly tapped the screen, scrolling down to the class leaderboard.

rank 1: yn yln – 98%

a tiny, satisfied smirk tugs at the corner of your lips—you couldn’t help it. you leaned back slightly, letting out a soft, airy breath of relief.

across the table, the boy’s pencil abruptly stopped. he checked his own phone. 

rank 2: eom seonghyeon – 97.5%

you watched his dark eyes scan the screen, his expression completely unreadable. then, slowly, he raised his head. it was the first time he’d ever actually looked at you—truly looked at you—instead of just glancing past you like a background character in the library or in his class.

his eyes were incredibly sharp behind his thin frames, tracking the small smirk still lingering on your face.

“you’re happy,” he said. his voice was quiet, lower than you expected, but it cut right through the silence of the room.

“just relieved,” you said, setting your phone face down. “it was a tough quiz.”

he clicked his mechanical pencil once. twice. the rhythmic sound felt like a countdown. “a point five difference.”

“a win is a win.”

“it’s a practice quiz,” he countered, though his fingers tightened slightly around his pencil. “it doesn’t mean anything for the actual midterm.”

you leaned forward, resting your chin on your hand. “if it doesn’t mean anything, why are you staring?”

he didn’t blink. he slowly closed his notebook, the paper making a crisp, decisive sound. “i’m just analysing the competition.”

“competition?” you let out a dry laugh. “i thought we were just two students working on the same syllabus.”

“we were,” he said, a faint, dangerous spark finally breaking through his perfect, unbothered composure. “until these scores were posted. what’s your name?”

you smiled, tapping the cover of your textbook. “look at the top of the leaderboard tomorrow. you’ll see it there again.”

his lips thinned into a straight line. he didn’t look angry—not really—but the effortless calm he’d been radiating all afternoon was completely gone.

“arrogant,” he muttered, though he made no effort to look away from you.

“confident,” you corrected, tilting your head. “there’s a difference.”

“we’ll see if that confidence holds up during the fluid mechanics module next week.” he reached for his highlighters, neatly lining them up by colour, though his movements were just a fraction faster than they had been before. “most people drop a few percentage points there.”

“is that what happened to you last semester?”

he paused, a green highlighter hovering just an inch above his desk. “i got a ninety-nine.”

“well,” you whispered, leaning in a little closer across the worn wood of the table. “then you’d better start studying harder, because i don’t plan on getting a ninety-nine. i want a hundred.”

he let out a short, quiet breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, though his face remained entirely serious. he capped his pen with a sharp click. “you’re ridiculous.”

“i’m top of the leaderboard.”

“for now.” he opened his notebook again, flipping past the pages he’d already finished, his eyes dropping back to his formulas, but he didn’t completely shut you out this time. “what’s your name? really.”

“why? so you can write it on a dartboard?”

“so i know exactly whose score i’m beating in the next exam.”

you looked at him for a second, watching the way the afternoon light caught the edge of his glasses. you liked the challenge in his voice—it made the stifling library air feel a little less suffocating.

“find out yourself,” you said, picking up your pencil. “if you’re as good as i’ve heard others say you are, it shouldn’t take you very long.”

he didn’t argue, but he stared at you for a second longer, his gaze heavy and calculating, before finally dropping his eyes back down to his notes. the silence settled between you again, but it wasn’t the dead, empty quiet from before, instead it felt charged now.

for the next hour, neither of you spoke. but every time you turned a page, you could feel his eyes track the movement. every time he clicked his pencil, it felt intentional. 

around five o’clock, the library started to empty out. the golden light shifted into a dull, cool grey as the sun dipped behind the campus buildings. your shoulders ached from slouching over the kinematics problems, and the numbers were starting to blur together on the page. you started packing up your things, sliding your notebook into your bag.

seonghyeon didn’t look up, but his pencil slowed down. “leaving already?”

“some of us have a life outside of advanced physics,” you said, zipping up your backpack, knowing full well you were going to go home and study anyway.

“or you’re just giving up for the day.”

you paused, looking down at him. he was still writing, his handwriting perfectly neat despite the hours he’d spent at the table. “i’m three chapters ahead of the lecture syllabus, dude. i’m hardly ‘giving up’.”

“four chapters,” he murmured softly.

“what?”

he finally capped his pencil (who caps a pencil? you wondered.) and looked up at you, a tiny, almost imperceptible tilt at the corner of his mouth. “i’m four chapters ahead. just so you know where the bar is set.”

you let out a quiet scoff, swinging your backpack over one shoulder. “keep telling yourself that. see you tomorrow, rank two.”

“goodnight, rank one.”

you turned and walked away, the heavy library doors swinging shut behind you. as you stepped out into the cool evening air, you pulled out your phone and opened the student portal, looking at the leaderboard one last time.

he was right about one thing—next week’s module was going to be brutal. you smiled to yourself and shoved the phone into your pocket. you were going to have to study twice as hard tonight.

☆

the next morning, the library was freezing—the air conditioning was blasting at full speed, cutting right through the fabric of your jumper. you arrived twenty minutes earlier than usual, fully expecting to have the table to yourself.

you didn’t, of course.

seonghyeon was already there. his hair was slightly damp from the morning drizzle, his glasses pushed up into his hair as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. a large paper cup from the campus coffee shop sat right at his elbow, condensation pooling on the wood.

you dropped your bag onto the chair. “do you live here?”

he blinked, startled out of his trance, and quickly pulled his glasses back down. his eyes were slightly bloodshot. “you’re early.”

“so are you,” you said, pulling out your chair. “and you look like you haven’t slept.”

“i sleep fine,” he muttered, closing a tab on his laptop before you could see what was on the screen. “i just like getting a head start.”

“right.” you leaned over the table, trying to peek at his notes. “how far into the fluid mechanics notes did you get last night?”

seonghyeon shifted his arm, blocking his notebook from your view with a level of pettiness that honestly impressed you. “far enough.”

“don’t be like that,” you laughed, pulling your own laptop out. “we could actually share notes. you know, be efficient.”

“i don’t share notes with people who call me rank two.”

“but it’s your name,” you teased, opening the class portal. “until you earn a new one, anyway.”

you clicked on the updated leaderboard, fully expecting to see your name still sitting pretty at the top. but as the page loaded, your smile faltered.

rank 1: eom seonghyeon – 99.5% rank 2: yn yln – 98%

he had retaken the optional mock module at three in the morning.

you stared at the screen, then slowly looked up at him. he was already watching you, a smug, entirely infuriating expression on his face. he took a slow sip of his coffee.

“morning, rank two,” he said softly.

you stared at him, your fingers tightening around the edge of your laptop screen. “three in the morning, dude? really?”

“the server is faster at night,” he said, completely deadpan. “less traffic, you know.”

“you’re insane.” you slammed your laptop shut, the click sharp in the quiet morning air. “you actually stayed up just to beat me by one and a half percent on a mock test that doesn’t even count toward the final grade.”

“one point five is a massive margin in physics,” he replied, leaning back in his chair. he looked exhausted, the faint dark circles under his eyes giving him away, but his posture was still impeccably straight. “and it clearly counted enough to make you shut your computer.”

“fan behaviour,” you leaned across the table, dropping your voice to a harsh whisper. “enjoy it while it lasts.”

“oh, i plan to.”

“because by noon, i’m taking it back.” you reached into your bag and pulled out three different coloured pens, lining them up on the table with an aggressive amount of neatness. “i don’t need sleep either.”

seonghyeon watched your pens, a flicker of amusement crossing his face before his expression smoothed back out into his usual calm mask. “is that a challenge?”

“it’s a promise.” you flipped open your notebook to a blank page, pressing the spine down firmly. “now stop talking to me. you’re distracting my internal calculator.”

“you started the conversation,” he pointed out, but he was already opening his own notebook again.

“and i’m ending it.”

for the next three hours, neither of you looked up. the only sound between you was the furious clicking of keys and the sharp scratch of your pens against paper. it felt like a war zone disguised as a study session. 

around eleven, your phone vibrated on the table. you didn’t look at it, too deep into a complex buoyancy equation, but a second later, seonghyeon’s phone buzzed too. then another buzz. and another.

you finally glanced up. seonghyeon was already looking at his screen, his eyebrows knitting together in a rare display of genuine confusion.

“what is it?” you asked.

he tapped the screen, scrolling quickly. “the professor just sent an email. the midterm format changed.”

“changed how?”

he lifted his head, his sharp eyes meeting yours across the table, the smugness completely gone. “it’s not individual anymore. he’s pairing up the top ten students based on the leaderboard for a collaborative laboratory exam.”

your stomach dropped. you slowly reached for your phone, opening the email. there it was, right at the bottom of the page.

pair 1: eom seonghyeon & yn yln.

you stared at the text, then back up at him. “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

seonghyeon closed his eyes for a brief second, letting out a slow, controlled breath. when he opened them, he looked directly at you. “well, rank two. looks like we’re going to have to work… together.”

you stared at the screen, your mind entirely blank for a fraction of a second before the reality of it set in. “collaborative? in an advanced mechanics module? that’s not an exam, that’s a safety hazard.”

“it’s twenty percent of the final grade,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, serious register again. he put his phone face down on the table with a neat, deliberate click. “and right now, your one point five percent deficit is my problem.”

“my deficit?” you scoffed, leaning forward. “i got a ninety-eight, man. i’m not exactly dragging you down to the bottom of the curve.”

“no, but you’re unpredictable,” he said, his eyes scanning your messy stack of scrap paper, covered in scribbled notes and crossed-out equations. “you skip steps in your derivations. i’ve watched you do it. you jump straight to the conclusion because you think you’re too fast for the middle work.”

you chuckled, pulling your papers closer to your chest. “it’s called intuition. it works.”

“‘intuition’ is what gets people killed in a lab setting,” he replied smoothly, crossing his arms. “or worse, it drops our average to a ninety-five.”

“oh, god forbid,” you muttered, rolling your eyes. “a ninety-five. the absolute horror.”

seonghyeon didn’t laugh. he just watched you, his gaze steady and infuriatingly calm behind his glasses. “i haven’t had a grade lower than a ninety-eight since… ever, and i don’t intend to start now because my partner wants to play it by ear.”

“i don’t ‘play it by ear’,” you snapped, keeping your voice low as the librarian walked past the end of your aisle, throwing a warning glance your way. you waited until her footsteps faded before continuing. “i just don’t need to write down every single basic algebraic step like i’m twelve, but fine, if we’re doing this, we do it properly. what’s the plan, rank one?”

a tiny, almost invisible shift occurred in his expression—the ghost of a satisfied smirk. he reached into his bag and pulled out a fresh, pristine folder, sliding it across the table toward you.

“i already split the syllabus into two distinct sections based on our strengths,” he said.

you stared at the folder, then at him. “the email came out three minutes ago.”

“i write templates for potential group projects at the start of every term,” he said, completely serious. “open it.”

you opened it. his handwriting was unfortunately perfect. “you gave me the fluid dynamics derivations.”

“you’re faster at conceptual calculus than i am,” he admitted, though it looked like the words physically pained him to say. “i took the error analysis and the hardware setup. we meet here at seven every morning until the exam.”

“seven?” you groaned. “the library isn’t even fully heated at seven.”

“then bring a thicker jumper,” he said, clicking his pencil. “we have exactly four days to make sure you stop skipping your steps.”

you glared at the folder, then at the top of his perfectly neat head as he immediately went back to his work. “you’re a tyrant. you know that, right?”

“i’m pragmatic,” he murmured, his pencil already scratching against the paper. “there’s a difference.”

“right.” you pulled the pristine folder closer, flipping through the meticulously structured pages. as much as you wanted to tear it up on principle, his breakdown of the syllabus was… brilliant. he’d mapped out every potential bottleneck in the lab exam with sickening precision.

you sighed, leaning back in your chair and pulling your sleeves down over your hands. “fine. seven am. but if i die of hypothermia before the midterm, my ghost is failing the exam with you.”

“ghosts don’t have academic records,” he said, not looking up. “but if you die, i’ll simply request a solo accommodation form from the department. i’ve already drafted the email template for that too.”

you paused, staring at him. “you’re joking.”

seonghyeon finally raised his head, his dark eyes fixed on yours behind his thin frames. his face was entirely expressionless, but there was a sharp, dangerous glint in his eyes that made your pulse do something strange. “try me.”

you let out a short, dry laugh, leaning your elbows back on the table. “i liked you better when you were rank two, seonghyeon. you were far less terrifying.”

“then you’d better study harder,” he said, his voice dropping into a quiet, steady rhythm that caught you off guard. “because i don’t plan on letting you see that version of me again.” he slid a blank sheet of his notebook’s paper across the table, tapping the top of it with the tip of his mechanical pencil. “now,” he said, his gaze locking onto yours. “show me your derivation for the navier-stokes continuity equation. and write down every single step.”

you grabbed your pen, the plastic clicking loudly against the table. “fine. but if i get bored halfway through, i’m drawing a leaderboard in the margin.”

“if you draw on my paper, i’m taking your highlighters,” he said calmly, his eyes already tracking the first stroke of your pen.

you started deriving the the equation, your hand moving fast, writing down the density parameters and the velocity vector fields. you deliberately exaggerated the pressure gradient steps, making sure the symbols were huge and impossible to miss. “there. see? completely legal, entirely thorough calculus.”

seonghyeon leaned across the table, his face coming close enough that you could smell the faint, bitter scent of the black coffee on him. his eyes scanned the lines of handwriting.

“you missed the local acceleration term in the derivative,” he said, his finger coming down to tap the blank space right before the convective acceleration expression.

you squinted at the paper. “no, i didn’t. it’s implied because the flow is steady-state.”

“the prompt didn’t state the flow was steady-state,” he countered, his voice flat but entirely certain. he reached over, took the pen straight out of your hand—his fingers brushing against yours for a brief, cold second—and neatly wrote down the partial derivative of velocity with respect to time. “never assume steady-state unless the boundary conditions explicitly give it to you.”

you leaned back, crossing your arms. “you’re splitting hairs.”

“i’m saving us from losing half a mark on a technicality.” he handed the pen back to you, cap first. “do the next part. and don’t assume anything this time.”

“i assume you must be really fun at parties.”

“i don’t go to parties,” he said, shifting his laptop slightly to the left. “they’re an inefficient use of time.”

“obviously,” you muttered, though you pulled the paper back toward you and restarted the next line of the derivation.

for the next two hours, it went exactly like that—a slow, grueling back-and-forth where every single one of your mathematical shortcuts was systematically dismantled by his red pen. he was infuriatingly precise, but as the pages started piling up between you, you noticed something else—he wasn’t just fixing your mistakes to be smug anymore, rather, he was actually matching your pace, keeping up with the rapid-fire way your brain jumped from one complex concept to the next.

by the time the library clock struck two, your wrist was aching.

“enough,” you said, dropping your pen onto the table. “my brain is entirely fried. if i look at another reynolds number, i’m going to throw up right here.”

seonghyeon looked up from his notebook. he didn’t look ‘fried’ at all, though the dark circles under his eyes seemed a little deeper in the afternoon light. he slowly gathered the loose sheets of paper, tapping them against the table to align the edges perfectly before sliding them into the folder.

“that was acceptable,” he said.

you let out a dry laugh. “acceptable? i just gave you a masterclass in fluid kinematics.”

“you gave me a lot of unnecessary attitude,” he corrected, though he was carefully putting his highlighters away in their designated slots in his pencil case. “but the math was mostly correct. we’re on schedule.”

“high praise coming from the machine,” you said, swinging your bag onto your shoulder. you stood up, looking down at him as he zipped his laptop case. “same time tomorrow?”

he paused, his hand hovering over the zipper. he looked up at you through his glasses, his expression unreadable for a second before that tiny, dangerous spark returned to his eyes.

“seven sharp,” he said. “and bring your own coffee. i won’t be sharing mine.”

“wouldn’t dream of it, rank one,” you smiled, turning toward the exit.

☆

the next morning, you arrived at the library at exactly six fifty-five. the sky outside was a heavy, bruising shade of purple, and the air inside the lobby felt like the inside of a fridge. you had a giant, steaming travel mug of black coffee gripped between both hands like a lifeline. you walked down the narrow aisle toward your usual table, fully expecting to be the first one there, but he was already sitting down.

seonghyeon was wearing a thick, dark grey woollen jumper that made him look slightly less like a human calculator and more like a normal university student, though his posture remained characteristically rigid. he had his laptop open, a massive textbook propped up against it, and three separate sheets of grid paper laid out in a perfect, parallel row.

“you’re five minutes early,” he said without looking up from his screen.

“and you’re terrifying,” you said, dropping your bag onto the chair opposite him. “do you actually sleep here? honestly. tell me the truth. do you have a sleeping bag hidden behind the self-help section or something?”

“the library doors open at six forty-five for postgraduate students,” he said, finally raising his eyes. he glanced at the travel mug in your hands, his expression entirely neutral. “you brought coffee.”

“obviously. i value my life.” you sat down, immediately pulling your knees up toward your chest to trap what little warmth you had left. “what are we doing today? more agonising derivations?”

“hardware architecture,” he said, sliding one of the grid sheets across the table toward you. it was a flawlessly drawn schematic of the fluid mechanics laboratory rig, complete with labels, flow meters, and digital sensor ports. “the lab exam isn’t just theory. we have to calibrate the differential pressure transducers ourselves. if we mismatch the digital inputs, the software throws an error code, and we lose five marks instantly.”

you looked at the diagram, tracing the neat lines with your finger. “i know how to calibrate a transducer, seonghyeon.”

“you know how to do it on paper,” he corrected, leaning forward. “but in the actual lab, the valves are old. the bleed screws on the pressure lines are stiff. if you force them, you introduce air bubbles into the system, which skews the density readings.”

you raised an eyebrow, taking a slow sip of your coffee. “and let me guess. you’ve already practiced on the actual rig?”

“i spent two hours in the basement lab yesterday afternoon while you were at your lecture,” he said, entirely unabashed. “the third rig from the left has a faulty bypass valve. if the professor assigns us that station, we need to manually offset the volumetric flow rate by four percent to get an accurate reynolds number.”

you stared at him, the mug hovering just below your lips. “you are a… deeply pathological individual.”

“i’m thorough,” he said, tapping the diagram. “if we get the broken rig and we don’t account for the valve, our error margins will look like we didn’t even study. now, look at the sensor pin configuration. if i handle the physical calibration, can you code the real-time data script in under five minutes?”

“i can do it in three,” you said, the competitive sting instantly waking your brain up better than the caffeine. “provided you don’t keep breathing down my neck about the syntax.”

“i only comment on your syntax because you use single-letter variables,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, irritatingly logical tone. “it’s bad practice.”

“it’s faster.”

“it’s messy.” 

“it works,” you snapped, opening your laptop with a definitive click. “set a timer. three minutes. give me the data parameters.”

he watched you for a second, his dark eyes fixed on yours. a slow, tiny shift occurred at the corner of his mouth—the absolute closest he ever got to a smile.

“two minutes and fifty seconds,” he said, his fingers flying across his own keyboard. “starting now.”

your fingers flew across the keyboard, the clicks loud and rhythmic against the dead silence of the dawn library. you didn’t look up, not even when the screen flashed a syntax warning. you backspaced with a vicious tap, corrected the logic, and kept going.

seonghyeon didn’t say a word. he just sat there, his phone lying between you on the table, the digital stopwatch ticking down the seconds in bright green digits.

00:45. 

00:44.

“done,” you muttered, hitting the final compile key with a sharp, satisfied slam of your index finger.

the terminal cleared. the script executed perfectly, spitting out the simulated calibration data in neat, uniform columns. you leaned back, crossed your arms, and pointed at his phone. the timer read 00:41. you had thirteen seconds to spare.

seonghyeon looked at your screen, his eyes scanning the code from top to bottom. he didn’t say anything for a long time. he just leaned closer, his shoulder nearly brushing yours as he studied the loop structure you’d written.

“you used a global variable,” he said quietly.

“it compiled, didn’t it?”

“it’s efficient,” he admitted, the words coming out slow and reluctant. he looked up, his face closer than you anticipated. behind his glasses, his dark eyes were incredibly sharp, tracking the small, triumphant grin on your face. “but it’s still dangerous practice.”

“admit it. it was brilliant.”

“it was fast,” he corrected, though he finally reached out and tapped the screen of his phone, resetting the timer. “but speed doesn’t matter if the hardware fails. tomorrow we have the open-lab session. we get exactly thirty minutes to test the actual rigs.”

you picked up your travel mug, taking a long, warm gulp of coffee. “so we go straight for the third rig from the left. the one with the broken valve.”

“exactly.” he closed his laptop, the mechanical click sounding incredibly final. “if we can master the worst station in the room, the rest of the class won’t even be a factor.”

you tilted your head, watching him pack his notebook into his bag. “you really hate losing, don’t you?”

“i don’t see the point in preparing for anything less than perfect,” he said, looking at you over the top of his glasses. “and right now, you’re the only variable i can’t fully control.”

“get used to it,” you smiled, leaning your chin on your hand. “because i’m not planning on letting you control me. we’re partners, rank one. fifty-fifty.”

he paused, his hand resting on the zipper of his backpack. he looked at you for a long beat, his expression unreadable, before a faint, dark glint flickered in his eyes.

“we’ll see about that tomorrow at seven.”

☆

the open-lab session was pure chaos. the basement room was suffocatingly loud, filled with the hum of heavy machinery, the rushing sound of water through the pipes, and the anxious chatter of thirty other students frantically trying to calibrate their equipment.

“third rig,” seonghyeon hissed in your ear, his hand catching your elbow to pull you through the crowd.

you followed him to the far corner of the lab. the station looked older than the others, the digital readout flickering slightly. seonghyeon immediately dropped to his knees, pulling a small wrench from his bag, while you set your laptop down on the workbench and plugged in the interface cable.

“the professor is watching,” you muttered, looking over your shoulder. “he’s checking the time logs.”

“ignore him,” seonghyeon said, his voice tense as he worked the stiff bleed screw on the pressure line. “focus on the data script. if the flow meter spikes past four litres per second, override the digital input manually.”

“i’m on it. just get the air bubbles out.”

your fingers blurred over the keys. the interface terminal was throwing error after error as the old rig struggled to stabilise.

“ten seconds left on our slot,” you warned, your heart hammering against your ribs. “seonghyeon, the volumetric rate is tanking.”

“three degrees to the left,” he muttered, his knuckles turning white as he forced the faulty valve. “now. run the script.”

you slammed the enter key.

the terminal screen went entirely black for a terrifying half-second. then, a single row of green text flashed across the screen.

calibration successful. error margin: 0.02%.

it wasn’t just accurate; it was flawless. better than the manufacturer’s factory settings.

“we did it!” you shrieked, completely forgetting where you were.

seonghyeon bolted to his feet, his face lit up with a huge, uncharacteristic grin that entirely transformed his strict features. before your brain could even register the logic of it, you threw your arms around his neck, and he grabbed you by the waist, lifting you slightly off the ground in a dizzying, triumphant hug.

for a split second, you could feel the solid warmth of his woollen jumper, the rapid thud of his heartbeat, and the completely real, unfiltered rush of winning together.

then, the reality of the crowded basement lab crashed back in.

you both froze.

he immediately stepped back, his hands dropping to his sides as if he’d just touched hot iron. you stumbled back a step, instantly smoothing down the front of your pants, your face burning a furious shade of red.

“uh,” you cleared your throat, looking literally anywhere else but his face. “right. so. the code... the code worked.”

“yes,” he said, his voice suddenly three octaves higher than usual. he quickly snatched his glasses off his face, wiping them vigorously on his jumper though they were completely clean. “the... the data parameters were highly satisfactory.”

“highly satisfactory,” you echoed, letting out a forced, incredibly awkward laugh. “haha. yeah… absolutely. totally professional.”

“completely professional,” he agreed, his eyes fixed firmly on the floorboards as he frantically stuffed his wrench back into his bag. “it was merely a standard demonstration of collaborative efficiency.”

“obviously,” you muttered, shutting your laptop so fast you nearly caught your fingers in the screen. “nothing happened.”

“nothing at all,” he murmured, though his ears were still bright red as he swung his bag over his shoulder.

the walk back up from the basement lab to the library was the longest five minutes of your entire life. neither of you said a word. the silence was thick, entirely different from the competitive tension you’d spent the last week building up. every time your shoulders accidentally brushed in the narrow corridor, you both practically jumped an inch apart.

by the time you reached your usual table, the golden afternoon light was just beginning to hit the high windows. you dropped your bag onto the chair. it didn’t make a loud thud this time since you were trying too hard to be quiet.

seonghyeon stood by his side of the table, his fingers nervously tracing the edge of his folder before he finally sat down. he cleared his throat, his face entirely serious again, though the faint pink tint on his ears hadn’t completely faded.

“we need to review the error analysis for the final report,” he said, his voice dropping back into that familiar, structured rhythm. “now that the calibration is complete.”

you pulled out your laptop, opening the student portal just to give your eyes something to look at. “right. error analysis. wouldn’t want to lose that point five percent.”

you clicked the leaderboard page out of habit, expecting to see the same frozen standings from the morning, but the page refreshed. the professor had updated the project progress marks based on the open-lab performance.

rank 1: yn yln & eom seonghyeon – 99.8%

you stared at the screen, a genuine smile breaking through the lingering awkwardness. you tilted the screen toward him. “well. look at that.”

seonghyeon leaned forward, his eyes scanning the text. the strict line of his mouth softened, and that tiny, familiar spark returned to his eyes behind his thin frames.

“a ninety-nine point eight,” he murmured, looking up to meet your gaze. “acceptable.”

“acceptable?” you scoffed, leaning back and crossing your arms. “we literally broke the curve, dude. you can confess it was brilliant. the professor’s ghost isn’t going to haunt you.”

“it was a team effort,” he said, though there was a definite lightness in his tone now. he opened his notebook, but instead of writing a formula, he paused, his pencil hovering over the top of the blank page. “which means the old titles are technically obsolete.”

you raised an eyebrow. “the old titles?”

“i’m no longer rank two, and you’re no longer rank one, or vice versa,” he said, looking at you over the top of his glasses. “we’re tied.”

“so what are you going to call me then? partner?” you laughed.

“too formal,” he said, a small, dangerous glint flickering in his eyes as he finally wrote something down at the top of his sheet. he turned the notebook around so you could see it.

written in his perfect handwriting was a single word: anomaly.

you let out a short laugh. “anomaly? really? isn’t that a mouthful?”

“you defy the expected data structure,” he explained, completely deadpan. “you skip steps, you use terrible syntax, and somehow you still get the correct result. you’re a statistical anomaly.”

“guess i’ll take it,” you smiled, reaching across the table and snatching the pencil straight out of his fingers. you flipped to the inside cover of his pristine folder and wrote a single word right under his name in large, messy letters: valve.

seonghyeon squinted at it. “valve?”

“because you’re completely stiff, you put too much pressure on everything, and you’re obsessed with the basement rig,” you said, sliding the pencil back to him. “plus, if i don’t ‘manually offset’ your attitude by four percent, you’re entirely impossible to work with.”

he stared at the word on his folder, his lips twitching slightly. he didn’t erase it. instead, he just pulled his laptop closer.

“get your script open,” he said softly, his fingers hitting the keys. “we have a report to finish.”

“right behind you,” you replied, opening your own files.

seonghyeon stared at the word on his folder, his eyebrows flattening into a deeply unimpressed line. “valve. really. that’s the absolute limit of your creative capacity.”

“okay, fine, it was a rough draft,” you muttered, leaning across the table and snatching the pencil back. you aggressively scribbled out the word until it was just a dark graphite blur. “you’re right. it lacks nuance. you deserve something that truly encapsulates your whole... vibe.”

he crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. “i tremble with anticipation.”

you tapped the eraser against your chin, looking him up and down. the perfectly straight posture, the pristine jumper, the sharp eyes tracking your every move like a hawk waiting for a syntax error.

“genius,” you said, a slow, malicious grin spreading across your face. you leaned forward, dropping your voice to a sweet, patronising purr. “how about genius?”

seonghyeon didn’t even blink. “that’s not a nickname. that’s just a statement of fact.”

“no, you don’t get it,” you said, resting your chin in your hands, your eyes dripping with mock admiration. “it’s about the delivery, like when you start explaining basic boundary conditions for the third time, i can just sigh and say, ‘whatever you say, genius’.”

a tiny, annoyed muscle twitched in his jaw. “patronising.”

“exactly. it’s perfect for you,” you laughed, spinning the pencil between your fingers. “or wait—what about professor? since you clearly want to teach the class so badly. we can get you a little tweed jacket with the elbow patches. you’d love it—”

“i’m nineteen,” he said flatly.

“could’ve fooled me with that attitude, professor.” you leaned in a little closer, tilting your head. “what’s wrong? don’t like being managed?”

seonghyeon stared at you for a long beat, his dark eyes narrowing. the annoyed look faded, replaced by that quiet, dangerous focus that always made your chest feel slightly tight. he reached out, his cool fingers brushing yours as he took the pencil back.

“if i’m genius,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave as he wrote something neat at the top of your page. “then you’re prodigy.”

you squinted at the paper. “prodigy? sounds nice.”

“it’s not,” he said smoothly, capping the pencil with a soft click. “it means you have an annoying amount of natural talent, but you’re fundamentally undisciplined and require constant supervision so you don’t ruin the curve.”

you let out a dry gasp. “you did not just call me undisciplined.”

“i believe the technical term is: a liability,” he corrected, a tiny smirk finally breaking through his stoic expression. he tapped the screen of your laptop. “now open the data log, prodigy. let’s see if your brilliant brain can handle basic error propagation.”

“i hate you,” you whispered, though you were already opening the file, a stupid smile tugging at the corners of your lips.

“good,” he said softly, his fingers already already running across his keyboard. “now focus.”

the library grew even quieter as the clock ticked past seven in the evening. the gold light had entirely evaporated, leaving only the harsh, white glare of your laptop screens bouncing off the dark windows.

you were staring at a particularly nasty section of the error analysis report, the numbers beginning to swim into an indistinguishable grey blur. you let out a long, dramatic groan, dropping your forehead directly onto the open pages of your textbook.

“my brain has officially reached maximum capacity,” you mumbled into the paper, your voice muffled. “if i try to calculate one more standard deviation, i’m going to set this table on fire.”

across the table, the steady, rhythmic clicking of seonghyeon’s keyboard paused.

“we have three pages left,” his voice cut through the silence, crisp and completely unaffected by the twelve hours you’d both logged today. “and the library doesn’t allow open flames.”

you lifted your head just enough to glare at him through your messy bangs. he looked infuriatingly neat. his collar was still straight, his hair hadn’t even lost its parting, and his glasses sat perfectly on the bridge of his nose.

“are you even human?” you muttered, sitting back up and rubbing your eyes. “seriously. do you have a lithium-ion battery in there? how are you still moving?”

seonghyeon leaned back, folding his arms across his dark jumper. he looked down at you, his sharp eyes holding a look that was somewhere between absolute superiority and something softer—something almost amused.

“i have discipline,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “something you might want to look into before the actual exam on friday.”

“i have plenty of discipline,” you countered, taking a desperate, final sip of your entirely cold coffee. you grimaced and set the mug down. “i just also happen to possess biological limitations. unlike certain robotic entities.”

“right.” he stood up, his chair making a faint, muffled sound against the floor.

you blinked, watching him. “where are you going? giving up?”

“i’m getting a fresh coffee from the vending machine downstairs,” he said, leaning down to pick up his wallet from the desk. he paused, his dark eyes fixing on your empty mug, then shifting up to look directly into yours. “do you want one, or is the prodigy too weak to handle another dose of caffeine?”

you let out a dry, exhausted laugh, pushing your empty travel mug across the wood toward him. “make it extra strong, genius. if i fall asleep while you’re checking my syntax, you’ll have to write that solo accommodation email for real.”

he caught the mug by the handle. his fingers were warm where they briefly brushed against yours, a sharp contrast to the freezing library air.

“two minutes,” he murmured, turning on his heel and walking down the dark aisle.

you watched him go, your lips curving into a stupid, tired smile as you pulled the report back toward you. for a machine, he wasn’t completely terrible.

when he came back, he slid your travel mug across the table with a soft, metallic clink. the steam rising from it smelled heavy and sweet—not the bitter black sludge he usually drank.

you took a sip and blinked. “did you put sugar in this?”

“you were starting to look aggressive,” he said, sitting down and adjusting his glasses. “i considered it a preventative safety measure for the library equipment.”

“whatever you say, genius,” you murmured, wrapping your cold hands around the warm mug. you stared at the report on your screen, then looked over at the fresh page he’d opened in his notebook. at the very top, he’d neatly penned ‘prodigy’s data corrections’.

you frowned slightly, tracing the edge of your mug. “hey.”

“what?” he didn’t look up, his fingers already typing.

“i think i changed my mind.”

seonghyeon’s fingers paused on the keyboard. he slowly raised his head, his sharp eyes fixing on you. “about the error propagation logic? because if you’re trying to shortcut the variance formula again—”

“no, not the math,” you interrupted, leaning your chin in your hand. you let out a small, tired laugh, looking directly at him. “about the nicknames. i think i actually prefer anomaly. it’s cuter.”

he stared at you. for a split second, the robot completely broke down. his posture stayed rigid, but his eyes widened just a fraction, and a sudden, dark flush crept up from the collar of his jumper, staining the tips of his ears a bright, furious red.

“cuter,” he repeated, his voice flat, though it lacked its usual sharp certainty.

“yeah,” you said, enjoying the way he completely lost his composure. you leaned a little closer across the worn wood. “prodigy sounds like you expect me to be perfect. anomaly feels like... i don’t know, like i’m the only thing that messes up your perfect little system.”

he didn’t say anything for a long second. he just looked at you, his throat moving as he swallowed hard. he quickly grabbed his pen, turning his eyes back down to his notebook so fast you were surprised his glasses didn’t fly off.

“it’s a statistically accurate description,” he muttered, his handwriting suddenly much less precise as he scribbled out a line of text. “nothing more.”

“right,” you smiled, taking another sip of the sweet coffee. “sure, genius. whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“shut up and calculate the standard deviation,” he whispered, his ears still burning under the harsh library lights.

“on it,” you laughed, hitting the keys.

the clock near the main desk clicked over to nine. the library was completely deserted now, save for the occasional distant thud of the security guard’s boots two floors down. the room had gotten even colder, the heavy silence pulling the two of you into a strange, insular little world under the yellow glow of the single desk lamp you’d left on.

you shifted in your seat, your shoulder lightly bumping against his. somewhere around eight o’clock, you’d moved your laptop to his side of the table under the guise of ‘better screen angles for the graph comparisons.’ he hadn’t protested.

“you’re leaning again,” he murmured, his voice incredibly soft in the quiet room.

“i’m freezing, genius,’ you complained, not moving away. in fact, you nudged your arm against his thick woollen sleeve. “and you’re like a human radiator for some reason. it’s basic thermodynamics—heat flows from hotter objects to colder ones.”

seonghyeon let out a quiet breath, the sound far closer than it used to be. he didn’t pull away either. instead, he shifted his laptop a fraction of an inch closer to yours, his hand resting on the desk just a few centimetres from your own.

“that’s an incredibly lazy application of the second law,” he said, but his tone lacked any real bite. it was just a low, teasing murmur.

“it works,” you smiled, looking sideways at him. from this close, you could see the tiny reflection of the spreadsheet columns in his glasses, and the way a few stray, damp strands of his hair from the morning rain had finally dried into a messy curl near his temple. “admit it. you like having the anomaly around.”

he paused, his fingers hovering over the trackpad. he slowly turned his head to look at you. because you were already leaning in, his face was barely a breath away. his sharp eyes looked dark, heavy, and completely focused on you.

“you’re loud,” he whispered, his eyes dropping briefly to your lips before snapping back to your gaze. “you leave ink stains on the desk. and your file naming conventions are an absolute disaster.”

“but?” you prompted, a tiny, teasing smirk playing at the corner of your mouth, your heart doing a sudden, violent flip against your ribs.

“but,” he repeated, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on your arms stand up. he slowly reached out, his warm fingers brushing against the side of your hand before he deliberately slid his index finger under yours, locking your hand against the table. “your calculus is acceptable.”

“just acceptable?” you whispered back, your fingers tightening around his.

“ninety-nine point eight percent acceptable,” he murmured, a genuine, completely unforced smile finally breaking through his strict expression. “which is close enough to perfect for now.”

the silence stretched out between you, long and heavy, but the tightness in your chest didn’t feel like panic anymore. it felt like waiting.

his fingers stayed hooked under yours, warm and steady against the cool wood of the table. you didn’t move your hand away, and he didn’t pull back. for a long time, the only sound was the faint, rhythmic hum of the fan.

“you’re not writing anything,” you whispered, your eyes dropping down to the blank line on his screen.

“you’re distracting the calculator,” he murmured back. his thumb shifted, just a fraction of an inch, the rough edge of his skin brushing against the side of your wrist. the touch was tiny, almost imperceptible, but it made a sharp prickle of heat shoot straight up your arm.

“i thought the genius was supposed to have absolute focus,” you teased, though your voice lacked its usual sharp edge. it came out soft, slightly breathless.

seonghyeon didn’t answer right away. he slowly turned his wrist, his palm sliding flat against yours until your fingers slotted together, completely natural, hiding the messy ink stains on your skin under the heavy warmth of his hand. his grip wasn’t tight, just firm enough to keep you right there.

“i do,” he said, his eyes fixing on yours with that quiet, terrifying intensity. “i’m focusing.”

“on the report?”

“on my anomaly.”

your breath hitched. you looked down at your joined hands, your heart hammering so loudly against your ribs you were certain he could hear it in the dead quiet of the aisle. you let out a tiny, shaky laugh, nudging his shoulder with yours. “that’s... highly irregular behaviour, professor.”

“the data changed,” he whispered, his head tilting slightly closer, his breath warm against your cheek. “i’m adjusting the model.”

he didn’t lean in to kiss you. he didn’t push it further. he just sat there, his shoulder pressed against yours, holding your hand under the pale yellow glow of the desk lamp while the clock on the wall kept ticking closer to midnight.

“we still have two pages left,” you murmured, though you didn’t make any move to look back at the screen.

“i know,” seonghyeon said softly, his thumb tracing a slow, deliberate circle over the back of your hand. “we’ll finish it tomorrow at seven.”

the library security guard finally kicked you both out at midnight, his keys jangling loudly as he ushered you toward the glass doors. outside, the air was crisp, the earlier rain leaving the pavement slick and reflecting the amber glow of the streetlights.

“i’m driving you home,” seonghyeon said, adjusting the strap of his backpack. it wasn’t a question.

“you don’t have to do that, genius,” you said, shivering as the night air hit your face. “the night bus is still running.”

“it’s late, it’s freezing, and the data script is on your laptop. if you get kidnapped, i have to re-do the whole thing alone,” he said, turning toward the student parking lot. “let’s go.”

his car was exactly like him—a sensible, perfectly clean silver sedan. the interior smelled faintly of mint and old paper. as soon as the engine started, he cranked the heater up, the warm air immediately blasting against your frozen hands.

for the first ten minutes, the silence was quiet and comfortable. the city blurred past the windows in a stream of neon lights. it was the first time in a week you weren’t actively looking at an equation.

“so,” you said, leaning back against the headrest and looking at his profile. without his usual glasses on—he’d switched them for a pair of driving glasses—he looked softer. “does the genius actually do anything besides calculate fluid velocity? what’s your life look like when you’re not breaking the academic curve?”

seonghyeon kept his eyes fixed on the road, his hands perfectly positioned at ten and two on the steering wheel. “i take care of my sister.”

you blinked, turning slightly in your seat. “you have a sister?”

“a younger one. she’s fourteen,” he said, the corner of his mouth softening into a genuinely warm expression you hadn’t seen before. “and she’s currently convinced that she’s going to be a professional artist, which means our kitchen table is permanently covered in charcoal dust and acrylic paint. it’s completely inefficient, but... she likes it.”

“that’s... actually really sweet,” you murmured, a faint smile touching your lips. you looked out the side window as he took a smooth left turn. “i’m an only child.”

“really?” he glanced at you briefly before looking back at the road. “i would have guessed you had three older brothers based on how aggressive you get over a leaderboard.”

“yah!” you laughed, nudging his shoulder. “no, it’s just me. honestly... it gets pretty quiet. especially during exam season when my parents are working late.” you looked down at your hands, your voice dropping a little lower, losing its usual teasing energy. “sometimes i see people complaining about their siblings, and i just... secretly wish i had someone to talk to at home. someone to yell at, or share things with, or just have around so the house doesn’t feel so massive. like everyone else does.”

the car slowed down, pulling up to the curb right outside your apartment building. seonghyeon put the car in park but kept the engine running, the warmth wrapping around you both. he didn’t say anything for a long moment. he just turned his head, his dark eyes studying your face in the dim cabin light. the teasing, condescending mask was completely gone, replaced by that steady, grounding presence from the library.

“you don’t have to be completely alone at home,” he said quietly.

you looked up, meeting his gaze. “what?”

he reached over, his fingers lightly tapping the edge of your phone where it sat in the console, displaying the route to your house. “the library opens at seven. but if you’re stuck on something at three in the morning... the server is faster at night anyway. you can just call me.”

your heart gave a small, distinct thump against your ribs. “is that an official recommendation, professor?” you whispered, a tiny, tentative smile returning to your face.

“it’s a calculated strategy, my anomaly,” he murmured back, his eyes holding yours, warm and completely serious. “to ensure our collaborative efficiency remains perfect.”

you stared at him, the soft hum of the car engine filling the tiny space between you. a slow, teasing smile pulled at your lips despite the fluttering in your chest. “three in the morning, though? that sounds an awful lot like you’re trying to disrupt my sleep schedule, genius.”

“i’m simply offering a technical resource,” he replied smoothly, though the slight adjustment he made to his driving glasses gave him away. “if the anomaly is offline, the system doesn’t function properly. it’s preventative maintenance.”

“preventative maintenance,” you echoed, shaking your head as you reached for your backpack. “you really have a romantic term for everything.”

“goodnight, yn,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, grounding register that caught you off guard. he didn’t pull his hand back immediately from the console, his fingers resting just inches from where yours had been.

“night, genius,” you called, opening the car door. the crisp night air hit you, but the warmth from the car stayed with you all the way up to your apartment.

☆

the next three days went by in a blur of intense focus and shifting boundaries. the constant fighting had completely dissolved into something entirely different—a quick, sharp banter that felt more like a dance than a debate. when you accidentally skipped a step in your final error propagation proof, he didn’t dismantle you with his red pen; he just leaned in, his shoulder firmly pressed against yours, and whispered, “you’re doing it again,” before sliding his own neatly lined paper under your hand.

by friday afternoon, the actual midterm was practically an afterthought. you navigated the old, faulty third rig like you’d built it yourselves, your code executing flawlessly while seonghyeon handled the stiff valves without losing a single percent of efficiency.

when the final grades popped up on the department board an hour after the exam, there it was at the very top.

100%

“perfect,” you stated, leaning against the hallway wall, looking at the screen.

“satisfactory,” seonghyeon corrected, standing right beside you. but he was looking at you, not the board, a genuine, unmasked smile completely softening his sharp features.

“oh, come on, a hundred percent is perfect, even by your metrics,” you laughed, turning to face him.

“the grade is perfect,” he murmured, stepping a fraction closer, his dark eyes fixed on yours. the hallway was buzzing with students rushing past, but everything else felt entirely distant. “the partnership was the unexpected variable.”

you tilted your head, your heart doing that familiar, erratic flip. “and what does the data say about the variable now that the exam is over?”

seonghyeon reached down, his fingers lightly brushing against the side of your hand before sliding into yours, locking his fingers with yours right there in the middle of the corridor.

“the model requires further long-term testing,” he said softly, a tiny, brilliant smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “starting tomorrow. seven sharp?”

“make it eight,” you smiled, tightening your grip on his hand. “your anomaly needs her sleep.”

seonghyeon’s smirk widened just a fraction, the sharp lines of his face softening completely. “eight,” he repeated, as if checking the word against a mental schedule. “highly irregular, but... acceptable, i suppose.”

“look at you, compromising,” you teased, your thumb lightly brushing the back of his hand. “the physics department might strip you of your title if they find out.”

“they won’t,” he murmured, his grip on your hand firm and steady as he guided you toward the exit doors, completely ignoring the curious glances from a few of your classmates passing by. “because our data speaks for itself. a hundred percent leaves no room for administrative intervention.”

the outside air was cool, but the afternoon sun was bright, hitting the campus courtyard in broad, golden sheets. for the first time in a week, you didn’t feel the crushing weight of a deadline hanging over your shoulders.

as you walked down the stone steps together, your fingers still laced perfectly between his, you glanced sideways at his profile. his glasses were caught in the sunlight, and he looked remarkably relaxed for someone who spent his life stressing over the second decimal place.

“so,” you said, your voice dropping into a quieter, slightly hollow tone as you looked out over the crowded square. “i guess it’s back to reality now. my parents are pulled into an overnight shift at the clinic, so the apartment is going to feel about ten times bigger than usual tonight. just me, a microwave meal, and the absolute silence of a completed syllabus,” you thought aloud.

seonghyeon stopped at the edge of the pavement, turning to face you fully. he looked down at your joined hands, his thumb pausing its steady rhythm against your knuckles, before his dark eyes lifted to study your face. the analytical, distant look was entirely gone, replaced by that quiet, deliberate focus.

“my sister demanded i bring home actual pastry from the bakery near the station to celebrate the end of our exams,” he said, his voice dropping a fraction lower, losing its usual rigid pacing. “she also bought a new set of heavy-weight sketching paper that she claims requires a second opinion.”

you tilted your head, a little confused. “okay? i’m sure her art is great, but—”

“come with me,” he interrupted softly.

you blinked, staring at him. “what?”

“you said you didn’t like the silence,” seonghyeon said, his eyes holding yours, warm and completely serious. “and minji has been tracking the leaderboard updates via my laptop screen for the last four days anyway. she informed me this morning that if i didn’t bring the person responsible for making me look human home, she would purposefully misplace my engineering rulers.”

you let out a genuine laugh, the slight emptiness in your chest instantly melting away into a sudden, chaotic flutter. “she threatens your stationery? oh, i like her already. she knows exactly how to handle the genius.”

“she’s a menace,” seonghyeon corrected automatically, though the sheer fondness in his tone completely contradicted the word. he squeezed your hand gently, stepping a fraction closer until the toes of your shoes almost brushed his. “she’s loud, she’s messy, and she will definitely try to get you to spill all my embarrassing study habits. it’s a completely uncontrolled environment.”

“sounds perfect for an anomaly,” you smiled, looking up at him.

“it is,” he whispered, his free hand reaching up to gently tuck a stray, wavy lock of your bangs behind your ear, his warm fingers lingering against your cheek for just a second. “let’s go.”

the ride to his house was completely different from the midnight drive two days ago. the car was still warm, but the heavy silence had evaporated, replaced by the low hum of the radio and the steady, quiet rhythm of seonghyeon’s voice as he detailed his sister’s chaotic routine.

he pulled up to a neat, two-story house in a quiet residential lane. before he could even turn the key all the way back in the ignition, the front door flew open. a girl with the exact same dark, sharp eyes as seonghyeon—but with her hair pulled into two messy, paint-stained buns—stood on the porch, leaning heavily against the doorframe with her arms crossed.

“you’re exactly six minutes later than the navigation app predicted, eom seonghyeon,” she called out as you both stepped out of the car. “i was about to start hiding the mechanical pencils.”

“traffic at the junction was heavier due to friday afternoon clear-out,” seonghyeon replied, his tone instantly slipping into that familiar, deadpan defensive mode as he grabbed the box of pastries from the back seat. “and don’t touch the pencils, minji.”

minji completely ignored him, her eyes shifting immediately to you. a massive, wicked grin spread across her face. “you must be the anomaly.”

you couldn’t help but laugh, walking up the steps beside seonghyeon. “the one and only. and you must be the stationery thief.”

“she’s a criminal element,” seonghyeon muttered, nudging his sister out of the doorway with his elbow so we could step inside.

the house didn’t feel massive or empty at all. it smelled like vanilla tea, wood polish, and the distinct, sharp scent of turpentine. just like he had warned, the dining table just off the kitchen was entirely buried under giant sheets of grey charcoal paper, scattered blending stumps, and a half-finished portrait of a very annoyed-looking cat.

“don’t look at that one, it’s terrible,” minji said quickly, dragging two chairs out from the edge of the clutter. “sit down! seonghyeon, go make the tea. the good kind, not the bitter grass you drink.”

“i know how to make tea,” he said flatly, setting the pastry box down on the counter. he looked back at you over the top of his glasses, his expression a mix of resignation and that quiet, soft warmth that always made your chest feel tight. “don’t let her interrogate you.”

“i’m making no promises,” you smiled, sitting down and immediately leaning over to look at a sketchbook minji had pushed toward you.

for the next hour, the kitchen was louder than your own apartment had been in months. minji was a whirlwind of energy, showing you her character designs, complaining about her middle school art teacher, and gleefully revealing that seonghyeon had actually colour-coded his high school diaries by emotional variance.

“he didn’t,” you gasped, looking over at the kitchen counter where he was standing, his back to you as he poured the hot water.

“he did!” minji leaned in, whispering loudly. “blue was for ‘highly regular,’ red was for ‘inefficient’. he stopped doing it when i stole the red pen.”

“minji,” seonghyeon’s voice carried over the hum of the kettle, low and warning, though you could see the dark flush creeping up the back of his neck from behind.

you leaned your chin in your hand, watching his rigid posture as he carefully arranged three mugs on a wooden tray. the warmth of the house, the loud, messy life filling the room, and the steady, protective weight of his presence just a few feet away completely washed over you. your quiet, empty apartment across town felt miles away.

seonghyeon walked back over, setting the tray down in the single clear spot on the table. he sat down in the chair right next to yours, his shoulder immediately pressing against your sleeve, solid and warm.

“she’s exaggerating,” he murmured, his dark eyes meeting yours as he slid a mug of sweet vanilla tea toward you.

“i don’t know, professor,” you teased softly, your eyes dropping down to where his hand rested on the table, just an inch from yours under the edge of a giant sketch sheet. “the data seems pretty consistent.”

seonghyeon didn’t pull away. instead, beneath the overlapping edges of his sister’s charcoal drawings, his fingers slid sideways, hooking quietly around yours and locking them tight.

“the system has evolved since then,” he whispered, his thumb tracing a slow circle over your knuckles while minji reached for a pastry, completely oblivious. “the current model is much less predictable.”

minji was currently in the middle of a highly animated demonstration of how she planned to sneak a giant, six-foot canvas into her art classroom next week, using her hands to mimic the dimensions of the school corridor.

“and then, if the vice-principal turns the corner, i just hold it up and pretend i’m a very realistic wall,” she insisted, her paint-stained buns shaking as she laughed.

“a flawless tactical maneuver,” you grinned, leaning forward and grabbing a custard pastry from the box. “though if you need a diversion script to throw off his schedule, i know a guy who specialises in timing logs.”

“oh, absolutely not,” minji snorted, waving a charcoal-covered finger at her brother. “he’d just calculate the exact velocity of my suspension and tell me it’s an inefficient use of canvas space.”

across the table, seonghyeon didn’t even attempt to defend his honour. he just leaned back in his chair, his hands wrapped around his mug of tea, watching the two of you. for someone who usually looked like he was trying to solve a differential equation in his head, his face was completely relaxed. his dark eyes shifted from minji’s laughing face back to yours, a soft, incredibly quiet warmth settling over his features. he didn’t say a word, but the tiny, contented curve of his mouth spoke volumes. you could practically feel the happiness radiating off him—the deep, grounding satisfaction of seeing his two favorite variables fitting perfectly into the same equation.

when you caught him staring, you tilted your head, shooting him a quiet, teasing smirk. he didn’t blink or look away this time. he just held your gaze, his eyes dark and heavy with a look that made your throat go suddenly dry, before he took a slow sip of his tea.

“anyway,” minji said, suddenly snapping her sketchbook shut, leaving a small puff of graphite dust in the air. “i need to wash this acrylic off my hands before it permanently bonds to my skin. seonghyeon, go show her that old textbook she was asking about. it’s upstairs in your cave.”

“it’s a bedroom, minji, not a cave,” seonghyeon muttered, standing up and clearing the empty pastry wrapper.

“whatever, professor,” she called out over her shoulder as she skipped toward the hallway bathroom.

seonghyeon turned to you, pushing his glasses slightly higher on his nose. “the textbook has the exact logic gates we were arguing about for the final question. it’s on my shelf upstairs, if you actually want to prove your theory.”

“obviously,” you said, standing up and smoothing down your pants. “i don’t back down from a technical debate.”

his room was exactly what you expected, yet entirely intimate in a way that made your heart clip your ribs. it was pristine—books lined up by subject, a desk with perfectly gridded notebooks, and a heavy wood bookshelf against the wall. but it also smelled completely like him—that sharp, clean scent of mint and fresh paper.

seonghyeon walked over to the shelf, his fingers scanning the spines before pulling down a thick, leather-bound volume. “here. page two hundred and fourteen. look at the diagram.”

you walked over, but instead of taking the book, you leaned against the edge of his neatly made bed, the soft mattress giving way slightly under your weight. “why don’t you just open it for me, genius? save me the effort.”

he paused and slowly turned around, the heavy textbook held between his hands, his eyes tracking you as you sat back on the edge of the dark blue comforter. the space between you suddenly felt incredibly small, the distant sound of minji humming in the bathroom downstairs fading into absolute static.

he walked over, his steps slow and deliberate, before setting the book down on the desk beside the bed. he didn’t stay standing. he sat down right next to you, the mattress shifting, his long leg brushing against yours from ankle to hip.

the tension that had been building for the last three days—through every accidental shoulder brush, every midnight drive, and every locked hand under the library table—suddenly snapped tight, vibrating in the inches between your faces.

“you’re distracting the system again,” he whispered, his voice dropping in a way that made your breath hitch.

“the system looks completely offline to me,” you murmured back, your eyes dropping down to his lips before rising to meet his gaze behind his glasses.

seonghyeon reached up, his fingers steady but slightly warm as he slipped his glasses off his face, setting them down on the nightstand with a quiet click. without them, his eyes looked wider, darker, and completely unguarded.

“anomaly,” he breathed, his hand coming up to cup the side of your jaw, his thumb smoothing over your cheekbone, tilting your face up just a fraction.

“hm, genius?” you whispered, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat.

“shut up, please,” he murmured softly, and then finally leaned in.

the kiss wasn’t rigid or calculated at all. it was soft, heavy, and completely real, his lips pressing against yours with a slow, desperate kind of relief that took your breath entirely away. you let out a small, shaky sigh against his mouth, your hands instantly reaching up to knot into the front of his dark woollen jumper, pulling him closer until there was no space left between you at all.

he shifted, his other hand sliding around to the back of your neck, his fingers tangling into your hair, holding you steady as the kiss deepened, turning sweeter, warmer, and completely melting every piece of information in your brain.

when he finally pulled back just a fraction, his forehead rested against yours, both of your breaths coming out short and uneven in the quiet room.

seonghyeon’s eyes fluttered open, a brilliant, completely unmasked smile breaking across his face as he looked at your flushed cheeks.

“the margin of error,” he whispered, his thumb lightly tracing your bottom lip. “is exactly zero.”

you let out a soft, breathless laugh, your hands still tightly gripping the wool of his jumper. “zero? you’re getting sloppy, professor. i thought you always accounted for environmental unpredictability.”

“you are the environmental unpredictability,” seonghyeon murmured, his voice incredibly low and rough as he leaned in again, his lips catching yours in another quick, lingering kiss that made your toes curl. his thumb was still smoothing over your jawline, his touch so tender it felt entirely distinct from the rigid, competitive boy you’d met a month ago.

when he finally pulled back to look at you, his chest was heaving slightly. without his glasses, his dark eyes held a sort of heavy, unguarded softness that was reserved completely for you. a few stray locks of his neat hair had fallen across his forehead, making him look completely undone.

“irregular data structures,” he whispered, a tiny, brilliant smirk returning to his lips as he reached over to the nightstand, sliding his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. the lenses instantly caught the warm light of his desk lamp. “but the experimental results are highly satisfactory.”

“highly satisfactory,” you echoed, reaching up to fix the collar of his jumper, your heart still doing double-time against your ribs. “is that the best you can do?”

“perfect,” he corrected softly, his hand coming down to cover yours, slotting his fingers firmly between yours and bringing them down from his collar to press them against the dark blue comforter. “the results are perfect.”

from downstairs, the sudden, loud clatter of a metal paint tray hitting the kitchen floor cut straight through the quiet of the bedroom, followed immediately by minji’s distant yell. “i didn’t break it! it fell due to gravitational inefficiency!”

you both froze, staring at each other for a split second before you both burst into quiet, simultaneous laughter.

seonghyeon let out a long, defeated sigh, shaking his head as he rested his forehead against your shoulder for a brief, heavy second. “she’s going to destroy the house before we even finish the tea.”

“well,” you smiled, leaning down to press a quick, daring kiss to the top of his head, right where his hair parted. “we better go save your engineering rulers, genius.”

“agreed, my anomaly,” he murmured, his eyes crinkling behind his frames as he stood up, pulling you gently off the bed along with him, his hand refusing to let go of yours for even a second. “let’s go manage the tiny monster of a variable.”

you both walked down the stairs, your hands still loosely linked until you reached the final step, where he gave your knuckles one last, lingering squeeze before letting go.

the kitchen was exactly the chaotic scene minji’s shout had promised. she was on her hands and knees, aggressively wiping at a massive splash of bright turquoise water on the tiles with a wad of paper towels.

“i swear it was the cat,” minji said immediately, looking up with a completely guilty grin as you both walked in. her eyes darted instantly to seonghyeon’s face, then to yours, her gaze widening slightly as she took in your flushed cheeks and her brother’s completely missing analytical frown. a knowing, wicked smile spread across her face. “well. you guys took a long time to look up a logic gate graph or whatever.”

seonghyeon didn’t even blink, though a telltale smudge of pink returned to the tips of his ears. he walked straight past her, grabbed the proper floor mop from the utility closet, and handed it down to her. “the cat is currently sleeping on the living room sofa, minji. your theory is extremely flawed.”

“whatever, ‘genius’,” she snorted, taking the mop and throwing a wink in your direction. “hey, yn, you should stay for dinner. seonghyeon is making kimchi fried rice, and he actually measures the sesame oil with a syringe so it’s ‘mathematically balanced’. it’s hilarious to watch.”

you laughed, leaning against the counter as seonghyeon took the empty tea mugs and rinsed them in the sink. “a syringe? really?”

“it ensures consistent flavor distribution,” seonghyeon’s voice came from above the running water, entirely deadpan, though he shot a mock-glare over his shoulder at his sister.

“i’d love to stay,” you said softly, your eyes meeting his. the earlier emptiness of your own quiet apartment felt entirely distant now, completely replaced by the warmth of this kitchen, the messy charcoal sheets on the table, and the boy currently trying very hard to look like a machine while his ears were still bright red. he turned off the tap, drying his hands on a towel. he walked back over to where you stood, his shoulder lightly brushing yours as he reached for the rice cooker.

“ninety-nine point eight percent consistent,” he murmured, his voice dropping just low enough for only you to hear, a tiny, brilliant spark dancing behind his thin frames. “but i suppose i can alter the recipe for a special variable.”

“just make sure you don’t ruin the curve, professor,” you whispered back with a smirk.

minji let out a dramatic, suffering groan from the floor, leaning heavily on the mop handle. “please do not talk about curves or variables while i’m trying to clean up a spill. it’s ruining my artistic aura.”

“your aura is currently eighty percent turquoise pigment, minji,” seonghyeon remarked smoothly, already pulling the ingredients out of the fridge with the practiced precision of a seasoned lab technician. the spring onions, the kimchi, the eggs—everything was lined up on the chopping board in a perfect, geometric grid.

you leaned your hip against the counter, watching his hands. his fingers were steady, his cuts entirely uniform. “you know, for someone who claims to hate inefficiency, you’re spending a lot of time making this look like a food styling commercial.”

he paused, the knife hovering over a spring onion. he glanced up at you over the top of his glasses, the sharp yellow kitchen light catching the dark depth of his eyes. “presentation affects the psychological perception of flavor density, yn. it’s simple cognitive science.”

“sure it is,” you teased, reaching out and deliberately picking up one of the neatly diced pieces of kimchi, popping it into your mouth before he could stop you. “flawless density.”

a tiny, helpless twitch of a smile broke through his expression. he shook his head, turning back to the stove, but as he moved the pan, his foot lightly nudged against yours under the cabinet lip—a quiet, secret connection while minji was distracted throwing the wet paper towels into the bin.

dinner was loud, messy, and entirely perfect. you sat at the edge of the charcoal-streaked table, sharing the ‘mathematically balanced’ rice directly out of the pan because minji insisted washing three extra bowls was an inefficient use of human labor—an argument seonghyeon surprisingly conceded to after you agreed with her.

by the time the clock in the hallway chimed ten, the heavy fatigue of the long week finally began to settle into your bones. your head felt heavy, a soft yawn escaping your lips as you helped seonghyeon clear the last of the glasses.

“the anomaly’s battery is operating at critical levels,” seonghyeon noted quietly, chuckling, his hand reaching out to catch the glass you were holding, his fingers brushing yours with that familiar, grounding warmth. “i’m driving you home.”

“yeah,” you murmured, not even trying to argue this time. “i think the code is crashing.”

later, minji ran out to the porch to wave you off, wrapped in a giant, oversized paint hoodie. “come back on sunday! i need you to help me convince him that a six-foot canvas is a household necessity!”

“i’ll be there!” you called back, laughing as you slid into the passenger seat of his car.

the drive back was quiet, but it wasn’t the lonely, distant silence of the previous days. it felt full, heavy with the memory of the warm kitchen, the messy sketches, and the quiet room upstairs. the heater hummed softly, blowing warm air over your knees as the city lights blurred past.

when the car smoothly pulled up to the curb outside your apartment building, seonghyeon put it in park but left the engine running. the amber streetlamps filtered through the window, casting long, soft shadows across his sharp profile.

you unbuckled your seatbelt but didn’t move to open the door. instead, you turned in your seat, leaning your head back against the headrest to look at him. “thanks for taking me with you, hyeon. the house... didn’t feel massive tonight.”

he turned his head. without his driving glasses on, his eyes were incredibly soft, completely exposed in the dim light of the dashboard. he reached across the console, his hand sliding flat against yours, locking his fingers firmly between yours.

“the model functions better when the variable is integrated, you know,” he whispered, his thumb smoothing over the back of your hand with a slow, deliberate pressure.

“is that a scientific conclusion, professor?” you whispered back, leaning slightly closer across the space between the seats.

“it’s an empirical fact,” he murmured.

he leaned across the console, his hand shifting to the back of your neck, his fingers curling gently into your hair as he pulled you into a slow, lingering kiss. it was quiet, heavy with the promise of tomorrow, his lips warm and completely certain against yours. when he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours for a brief, breathless second, a genuine, brilliant smile touching his lips.

“eight o’clock tomorrow, anomaly,” he whispered against your skin. “don’t be late.”

“make it eight-fifteen, genius,” you smiled, kissing the corner of his jaw before finally reaching for the door handle. “the system needs a buffer.”

“whatever you say, angel.”

© hyuneskkami ❦

❝ tracklist ❞  ─── hard to explain—the strokes ❦ re-do—modern baseball ❦ fluorescent adolescent—arctic monkeys ❦ why do you only call me when you’re high?—arctic monkeys ❦ warm glow—hippo campus ❦ softcore—nbhd ❦ line without a hook—ricky montgomery ❦ talk too much—coin ❦ mystery of love—sufjan stevens ❦ lovers rock—tv girl ❦ sofia—clairo

the afternoon sun filtered through the high, dusty windows of the library, catching the steady swirl of dust motes right over the exact table you’d claimed since the beginning of the semester. you dropped your heavy backpack onto the wood with a loud deliberate thud.

the boy sitting across from you didn’t even flinch. he kept his head down, his posture perfectly straight, mechanical pencil moving with silent precision across his grid notebook. he looked exactly like what everyone said he was: the quintessential good boy—neat collar, impeccably organised highlighters, and a calm demeanor that made him look completely unbothered by the midterms looming over your heads.

you pulled out your own chair, the screech of it against the floor intentionally louder than it needed to be. you sat down, smoothing out your pants, and flipped open your thick textbook right to the section on advanced kinematics.

for the first twenty minutes, the only sound between you two was the scratch of your pencils against your respective books and the rhythmic turning of pages. you didn’t know him nor did he know you. you were just two nameless students drowning in the same brutal syllabus who passed each other in class… until the practice quiz grades were posted online.

your phone buzzed in your lap. you quickly tapped the screen, scrolling down to the class leaderboard.

rank 1: yn yln – 98%

a tiny, satisfied smirk tugs at the corner of your lips—you couldn’t help it. you leaned back slightly, letting out a soft, airy breath of relief.

across the table, the boy’s pencil abruptly stopped. he checked his own phone. 

rank 2: eom seonghyeon – 97.5%

you watched his dark eyes scan the screen, his expression completely unreadable. then, slowly, he raised his head. it was the first time he’d ever actually looked at you—truly looked at you—instead of just glancing past you like a background character in the library or in his class.

his eyes were incredibly sharp behind his thin frames, tracking the small smirk still lingering on your face.

“you’re happy,” he said. his voice was quiet, lower than you expected, but it cut right through the silence of the room.

“just relieved,” you said, setting your phone face down. “it was a tough quiz.”

he clicked his mechanical pencil once. twice. the rhythmic sound felt like a countdown. “a point five difference.”

“a win is a win.”

“it’s a practice quiz,” he countered, though his fingers tightened slightly around his pencil. “it doesn’t mean anything for the actual midterm.”

you leaned forward, resting your chin on your hand. “if it doesn’t mean anything, why are you staring?”

he didn’t blink. he slowly closed his notebook, the paper making a crisp, decisive sound. “i’m just analysing the competition.”

“competition?” you let out a dry laugh. “i thought we were just two students working on the same syllabus.”

“we were,” he said, a faint, dangerous spark finally breaking through his perfect, unbothered composure. “until these scores were posted. what’s your name?”

you smiled, tapping the cover of your textbook. “look at the top of the leaderboard tomorrow. you’ll see it there again.”

his lips thinned into a straight line. he didn’t look angry—not really—but the effortless calm he’d been radiating all afternoon was completely gone.

“arrogant,” he muttered, though he made no effort to look away from you.

“confident,” you corrected, tilting your head. “there’s a difference.”

“we’ll see if that confidence holds up during the fluid mechanics module next week.” he reached for his highlighters, neatly lining them up by colour, though his movements were just a fraction faster than they had been before. “most people drop a few percentage points there.”

“is that what happened to you last semester?”

he paused, a green highlighter hovering just an inch above his desk. “i got a ninety-nine.”

“well,” you whispered, leaning in a little closer across the worn wood of the table. “then you’d better start studying harder, because i don’t plan on getting a ninety-nine. i want a hundred.”

he let out a short, quiet breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, though his face remained entirely serious. he capped his pen with a sharp click. “you’re ridiculous.”

“i’m top of the leaderboard.”

“for now.” he opened his notebook again, flipping past the pages he’d already finished, his eyes dropping back to his formulas, but he didn’t completely shut you out this time. “what’s your name? really.”

“why? so you can write it on a dartboard?”

“so i know exactly whose score i’m beating in the next exam.”

you looked at him for a second, watching the way the afternoon light caught the edge of his glasses. you liked the challenge in his voice—it made the stifling library air feel a little less suffocating.

“find out yourself,” you said, picking up your pencil. “if you’re as good as i’ve heard others say you are, it shouldn’t take you very long.”

he didn’t argue, but he stared at you for a second longer, his gaze heavy and calculating, before finally dropping his eyes back down to his notes. the silence settled between you again, but it wasn’t the dead, empty quiet from before, instead it felt charged now.

for the next hour, neither of you spoke. but every time you turned a page, you could feel his eyes track the movement. every time he clicked his pencil, it felt intentional. 

around five o’clock, the library started to empty out. the golden light shifted into a dull, cool grey as the sun dipped behind the campus buildings. your shoulders ached from slouching over the kinematics problems, and the numbers were starting to blur together on the page. you started packing up your things, sliding your notebook into your bag.

seonghyeon didn’t look up, but his pencil slowed down. “leaving already?”

“some of us have a life outside of advanced physics,” you said, zipping up your backpack, knowing full well you were going to go home and study anyway.

“or you’re just giving up for the day.”

you paused, looking down at him. he was still writing, his handwriting perfectly neat despite the hours he’d spent at the table. “i’m three chapters ahead of the lecture syllabus, dude. i’m hardly ‘giving up’.”

“four chapters,” he murmured softly.

“what?”

he finally capped his pencil (who caps a pencil? you wondered.) and looked up at you, a tiny, almost imperceptible tilt at the corner of his mouth. “i’m four chapters ahead. just so you know where the bar is set.”

you let out a quiet scoff, swinging your backpack over one shoulder. “keep telling yourself that. see you tomorrow, rank two.”

“goodnight, rank one.”

you turned and walked away, the heavy library doors swinging shut behind you. as you stepped out into the cool evening air, you pulled out your phone and opened the student portal, looking at the leaderboard one last time.

he was right about one thing—next week’s module was going to be brutal. you smiled to yourself and shoved the phone into your pocket. you were going to have to study twice as hard tonight.

☆

the next morning, the library was freezing—the air conditioning was blasting at full speed, cutting right through the fabric of your jumper. you arrived twenty minutes earlier than usual, fully expecting to have the table to yourself.

you didn’t, of course.

seonghyeon was already there. his hair was slightly damp from the morning drizzle, his glasses pushed up into his hair as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. a large paper cup from the campus coffee shop sat right at his elbow, condensation pooling on the wood.

you dropped your bag onto the chair. “do you live here?”

he blinked, startled out of his trance, and quickly pulled his glasses back down. his eyes were slightly bloodshot. “you’re early.”

“so are you,” you said, pulling out your chair. “and you look like you haven’t slept.”

“i sleep fine,” he muttered, closing a tab on his laptop before you could see what was on the screen. “i just like getting a head start.”

“right.” you leaned over the table, trying to peek at his notes. “how far into the fluid mechanics notes did you get last night?”

seonghyeon shifted his arm, blocking his notebook from your view with a level of pettiness that honestly impressed you. “far enough.”

“don’t be like that,” you laughed, pulling your own laptop out. “we could actually share notes. you know, be efficient.”

“i don’t share notes with people who call me rank two.”

“but it’s your name,” you teased, opening the class portal. “until you earn a new one, anyway.”

you clicked on the updated leaderboard, fully expecting to see your name still sitting pretty at the top. but as the page loaded, your smile faltered.

rank 1: eom seonghyeon – 99.5% rank 2: yn yln – 98%

he had retaken the optional mock module at three in the morning.

you stared at the screen, then slowly looked up at him. he was already watching you, a smug, entirely infuriating expression on his face. he took a slow sip of his coffee.

“morning, rank two,” he said softly.

you stared at him, your fingers tightening around the edge of your laptop screen. “three in the morning, dude? really?”

“the server is faster at night,” he said, completely deadpan. “less traffic, you know.”

“you’re insane.” you slammed your laptop shut, the click sharp in the quiet morning air. “you actually stayed up just to beat me by one and a half percent on a mock test that doesn’t even count toward the final grade.”

“one point five is a massive margin in physics,” he replied, leaning back in his chair. he looked exhausted, the faint dark circles under his eyes giving him away, but his posture was still impeccably straight. “and it clearly counted enough to make you shut your computer.”

“fan behaviour,” you leaned across the table, dropping your voice to a harsh whisper. “enjoy it while it lasts.”

“oh, i plan to.”

“because by noon, i’m taking it back.” you reached into your bag and pulled out three different coloured pens, lining them up on the table with an aggressive amount of neatness. “i don’t need sleep either.”

seonghyeon watched your pens, a flicker of amusement crossing his face before his expression smoothed back out into his usual calm mask. “is that a challenge?”

“it’s a promise.” you flipped open your notebook to a blank page, pressing the spine down firmly. “now stop talking to me. you’re distracting my internal calculator.”

“you started the conversation,” he pointed out, but he was already opening his own notebook again.

“and i’m ending it.”

for the next three hours, neither of you looked up. the only sound between you was the furious clicking of keys and the sharp scratch of your pens against paper. it felt like a war zone disguised as a study session. 

around eleven, your phone vibrated on the table. you didn’t look at it, too deep into a complex buoyancy equation, but a second later, seonghyeon’s phone buzzed too. then another buzz. and another.

you finally glanced up. seonghyeon was already looking at his screen, his eyebrows knitting together in a rare display of genuine confusion.

“what is it?” you asked.

he tapped the screen, scrolling quickly. “the professor just sent an email. the midterm format changed.”

“changed how?”

he lifted his head, his sharp eyes meeting yours across the table, the smugness completely gone. “it’s not individual anymore. he’s pairing up the top ten students based on the leaderboard for a collaborative laboratory exam.”

your stomach dropped. you slowly reached for your phone, opening the email. there it was, right at the bottom of the page.

pair 1: eom seonghyeon & yn yln.

you stared at the text, then back up at him. “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

seonghyeon closed his eyes for a brief second, letting out a slow, controlled breath. when he opened them, he looked directly at you. “well, rank two. looks like we’re going to have to work… together.”

you stared at the screen, your mind entirely blank for a fraction of a second before the reality of it set in. “collaborative? in an advanced mechanics module? that’s not an exam, that’s a safety hazard.”

“it’s twenty percent of the final grade,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, serious register again. he put his phone face down on the table with a neat, deliberate click. “and right now, your one point five percent deficit is my problem.”

“my deficit?” you scoffed, leaning forward. “i got a ninety-eight, man. i’m not exactly dragging you down to the bottom of the curve.”

“no, but you’re unpredictable,” he said, his eyes scanning your messy stack of scrap paper, covered in scribbled notes and crossed-out equations. “you skip steps in your derivations. i’ve watched you do it. you jump straight to the conclusion because you think you’re too fast for the middle work.”

you chuckled, pulling your papers closer to your chest. “it’s called intuition. it works.”

“‘intuition’ is what gets people killed in a lab setting,” he replied smoothly, crossing his arms. “or worse, it drops our average to a ninety-five.”

“oh, god forbid,” you muttered, rolling your eyes. “a ninety-five. the absolute horror.”

seonghyeon didn’t laugh. he just watched you, his gaze steady and infuriatingly calm behind his glasses. “i haven’t had a grade lower than a ninety-eight since… ever, and i don’t intend to start now because my partner wants to play it by ear.”

“i don’t ‘play it by ear’,” you snapped, keeping your voice low as the librarian walked past the end of your aisle, throwing a warning glance your way. you waited until her footsteps faded before continuing. “i just don’t need to write down every single basic algebraic step like i’m twelve, but fine, if we’re doing this, we do it properly. what’s the plan, rank one?”

a tiny, almost invisible shift occurred in his expression—the ghost of a satisfied smirk. he reached into his bag and pulled out a fresh, pristine folder, sliding it across the table toward you.

“i already split the syllabus into two distinct sections based on our strengths,” he said.

you stared at the folder, then at him. “the email came out three minutes ago.”

“i write templates for potential group projects at the start of every term,” he said, completely serious. “open it.”

you opened it. his handwriting was unfortunately perfect. “you gave me the fluid dynamics derivations.”

“you’re faster at conceptual calculus than i am,” he admitted, though it looked like the words physically pained him to say. “i took the error analysis and the hardware setup. we meet here at seven every morning until the exam.”

“seven?” you groaned. “the library isn’t even fully heated at seven.”

“then bring a thicker jumper,” he said, clicking his pencil. “we have exactly four days to make sure you stop skipping your steps.”

you glared at the folder, then at the top of his perfectly neat head as he immediately went back to his work. “you’re a tyrant. you know that, right?”

“i’m pragmatic,” he murmured, his pencil already scratching against the paper. “there’s a difference.”

“right.” you pulled the pristine folder closer, flipping through the meticulously structured pages. as much as you wanted to tear it up on principle, his breakdown of the syllabus was… brilliant. he’d mapped out every potential bottleneck in the lab exam with sickening precision.

you sighed, leaning back in your chair and pulling your sleeves down over your hands. “fine. seven am. but if i die of hypothermia before the midterm, my ghost is failing the exam with you.”

“ghosts don’t have academic records,” he said, not looking up. “but if you die, i’ll simply request a solo accommodation form from the department. i’ve already drafted the email template for that too.”

you paused, staring at him. “you’re joking.”

seonghyeon finally raised his head, his dark eyes fixed on yours behind his thin frames. his face was entirely expressionless, but there was a sharp, dangerous glint in his eyes that made your pulse do something strange. “try me.”

you let out a short, dry laugh, leaning your elbows back on the table. “i liked you better when you were rank two, seonghyeon. you were far less terrifying.”

“then you’d better study harder,” he said, his voice dropping into a quiet, steady rhythm that caught you off guard. “because i don’t plan on letting you see that version of me again.” he slid a blank sheet of his notebook’s paper across the table, tapping the top of it with the tip of his mechanical pencil. “now,” he said, his gaze locking onto yours. “show me your derivation for the navier-stokes continuity equation. and write down every single step.”

you grabbed your pen, the plastic clicking loudly against the table. “fine. but if i get bored halfway through, i’m drawing a leaderboard in the margin.”

“if you draw on my paper, i’m taking your highlighters,” he said calmly, his eyes already tracking the first stroke of your pen.

you started deriving the the equation, your hand moving fast, writing down the density parameters and the velocity vector fields. you deliberately exaggerated the pressure gradient steps, making sure the symbols were huge and impossible to miss. “there. see? completely legal, entirely thorough calculus.”

seonghyeon leaned across the table, his face coming close enough that you could smell the faint, bitter scent of the black coffee on him. his eyes scanned the lines of handwriting.

“you missed the local acceleration term in the derivative,” he said, his finger coming down to tap the blank space right before the convective acceleration expression.

you squinted at the paper. “no, i didn’t. it’s implied because the flow is steady-state.”

“the prompt didn’t state the flow was steady-state,” he countered, his voice flat but entirely certain. he reached over, took the pen straight out of your hand—his fingers brushing against yours for a brief, cold second—and neatly wrote down the partial derivative of velocity with respect to time. “never assume steady-state unless the boundary conditions explicitly give it to you.”

you leaned back, crossing your arms. “you’re splitting hairs.”

“i’m saving us from losing half a mark on a technicality.” he handed the pen back to you, cap first. “do the next part. and don’t assume anything this time.”

“i assume you must be really fun at parties.”

“i don’t go to parties,” he said, shifting his laptop slightly to the left. “they’re an inefficient use of time.”

“obviously,” you muttered, though you pulled the paper back toward you and restarted the next line of the derivation.

for the next two hours, it went exactly like that—a slow, grueling back-and-forth where every single one of your mathematical shortcuts was systematically dismantled by his red pen. he was infuriatingly precise, but as the pages started piling up between you, you noticed something else—he wasn’t just fixing your mistakes to be smug anymore, rather, he was actually matching your pace, keeping up with the rapid-fire way your brain jumped from one complex concept to the next.

by the time the library clock struck two, your wrist was aching.

“enough,” you said, dropping your pen onto the table. “my brain is entirely fried. if i look at another reynolds number, i’m going to throw up right here.”

seonghyeon looked up from his notebook. he didn’t look ‘fried’ at all, though the dark circles under his eyes seemed a little deeper in the afternoon light. he slowly gathered the loose sheets of paper, tapping them against the table to align the edges perfectly before sliding them into the folder.

“that was acceptable,” he said.

you let out a dry laugh. “acceptable? i just gave you a masterclass in fluid kinematics.”

“you gave me a lot of unnecessary attitude,” he corrected, though he was carefully putting his highlighters away in their designated slots in his pencil case. “but the math was mostly correct. we’re on schedule.”

“high praise coming from the machine,” you said, swinging your bag onto your shoulder. you stood up, looking down at him as he zipped his laptop case. “same time tomorrow?”

he paused, his hand hovering over the zipper. he looked up at you through his glasses, his expression unreadable for a second before that tiny, dangerous spark returned to his eyes.

“seven sharp,” he said. “and bring your own coffee. i won’t be sharing mine.”

“wouldn’t dream of it, rank one,” you smiled, turning toward the exit.

☆

the next morning, you arrived at the library at exactly six fifty-five. the sky outside was a heavy, bruising shade of purple, and the air inside the lobby felt like the inside of a fridge. you had a giant, steaming travel mug of black coffee gripped between both hands like a lifeline. you walked down the narrow aisle toward your usual table, fully expecting to be the first one there, but he was already sitting down.

seonghyeon was wearing a thick, dark grey woollen jumper that made him look slightly less like a human calculator and more like a normal university student, though his posture remained characteristically rigid. he had his laptop open, a massive textbook propped up against it, and three separate sheets of grid paper laid out in a perfect, parallel row.

“you’re five minutes early,” he said without looking up from his screen.

“and you’re terrifying,” you said, dropping your bag onto the chair opposite him. “do you actually sleep here? honestly. tell me the truth. do you have a sleeping bag hidden behind the self-help section or something?”

“the library doors open at six forty-five for postgraduate students,” he said, finally raising his eyes. he glanced at the travel mug in your hands, his expression entirely neutral. “you brought coffee.”

“obviously. i value my life.” you sat down, immediately pulling your knees up toward your chest to trap what little warmth you had left. “what are we doing today? more agonising derivations?”

“hardware architecture,” he said, sliding one of the grid sheets across the table toward you. it was a flawlessly drawn schematic of the fluid mechanics laboratory rig, complete with labels, flow meters, and digital sensor ports. “the lab exam isn’t just theory. we have to calibrate the differential pressure transducers ourselves. if we mismatch the digital inputs, the software throws an error code, and we lose five marks instantly.”

you looked at the diagram, tracing the neat lines with your finger. “i know how to calibrate a transducer, seonghyeon.”

“you know how to do it on paper,” he corrected, leaning forward. “but in the actual lab, the valves are old. the bleed screws on the pressure lines are stiff. if you force them, you introduce air bubbles into the system, which skews the density readings.”

you raised an eyebrow, taking a slow sip of your coffee. “and let me guess. you’ve already practiced on the actual rig?”

“i spent two hours in the basement lab yesterday afternoon while you were at your lecture,” he said, entirely unabashed. “the third rig from the left has a faulty bypass valve. if the professor assigns us that station, we need to manually offset the volumetric flow rate by four percent to get an accurate reynolds number.”

you stared at him, the mug hovering just below your lips. “you are a… deeply pathological individual.”

“i’m thorough,” he said, tapping the diagram. “if we get the broken rig and we don’t account for the valve, our error margins will look like we didn’t even study. now, look at the sensor pin configuration. if i handle the physical calibration, can you code the real-time data script in under five minutes?”

“i can do it in three,” you said, the competitive sting instantly waking your brain up better than the caffeine. “provided you don’t keep breathing down my neck about the syntax.”

“i only comment on your syntax because you use single-letter variables,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, irritatingly logical tone. “it’s bad practice.”

“it’s faster.”

“it’s messy.” 

“it works,” you snapped, opening your laptop with a definitive click. “set a timer. three minutes. give me the data parameters.”

he watched you for a second, his dark eyes fixed on yours. a slow, tiny shift occurred at the corner of his mouth—the absolute closest he ever got to a smile.

“two minutes and fifty seconds,” he said, his fingers flying across his own keyboard. “starting now.”

your fingers flew across the keyboard, the clicks loud and rhythmic against the dead silence of the dawn library. you didn’t look up, not even when the screen flashed a syntax warning. you backspaced with a vicious tap, corrected the logic, and kept going.

seonghyeon didn’t say a word. he just sat there, his phone lying between you on the table, the digital stopwatch ticking down the seconds in bright green digits.

00:45. 

00:44.

“done,” you muttered, hitting the final compile key with a sharp, satisfied slam of your index finger.

the terminal cleared. the script executed perfectly, spitting out the simulated calibration data in neat, uniform columns. you leaned back, crossed your arms, and pointed at his phone. the timer read 00:41. you had thirteen seconds to spare.

seonghyeon looked at your screen, his eyes scanning the code from top to bottom. he didn’t say anything for a long time. he just leaned closer, his shoulder nearly brushing yours as he studied the loop structure you’d written.

“you used a global variable,” he said quietly.

“it compiled, didn’t it?”

“it’s efficient,” he admitted, the words coming out slow and reluctant. he looked up, his face closer than you anticipated. behind his glasses, his dark eyes were incredibly sharp, tracking the small, triumphant grin on your face. “but it’s still dangerous practice.”

“admit it. it was brilliant.”

“it was fast,” he corrected, though he finally reached out and tapped the screen of his phone, resetting the timer. “but speed doesn’t matter if the hardware fails. tomorrow we have the open-lab session. we get exactly thirty minutes to test the actual rigs.”

you picked up your travel mug, taking a long, warm gulp of coffee. “so we go straight for the third rig from the left. the one with the broken valve.”

“exactly.” he closed his laptop, the mechanical click sounding incredibly final. “if we can master the worst station in the room, the rest of the class won’t even be a factor.”

you tilted your head, watching him pack his notebook into his bag. “you really hate losing, don’t you?”

“i don’t see the point in preparing for anything less than perfect,” he said, looking at you over the top of his glasses. “and right now, you’re the only variable i can’t fully control.”

“get used to it,” you smiled, leaning your chin on your hand. “because i’m not planning on letting you control me. we’re partners, rank one. fifty-fifty.”

he paused, his hand resting on the zipper of his backpack. he looked at you for a long beat, his expression unreadable, before a faint, dark glint flickered in his eyes.

“we’ll see about that tomorrow at seven.”

☆

the open-lab session was pure chaos. the basement room was suffocatingly loud, filled with the hum of heavy machinery, the rushing sound of water through the pipes, and the anxious chatter of thirty other students frantically trying to calibrate their equipment.

“third rig,” seonghyeon hissed in your ear, his hand catching your elbow to pull you through the crowd.

you followed him to the far corner of the lab. the station looked older than the others, the digital readout flickering slightly. seonghyeon immediately dropped to his knees, pulling a small wrench from his bag, while you set your laptop down on the workbench and plugged in the interface cable.

“the professor is watching,” you muttered, looking over your shoulder. “he’s checking the time logs.”

“ignore him,” seonghyeon said, his voice tense as he worked the stiff bleed screw on the pressure line. “focus on the data script. if the flow meter spikes past four litres per second, override the digital input manually.”

“i’m on it. just get the air bubbles out.”

your fingers blurred over the keys. the interface terminal was throwing error after error as the old rig struggled to stabilise.

“ten seconds left on our slot,” you warned, your heart hammering against your ribs. “seonghyeon, the volumetric rate is tanking.”

“three degrees to the left,” he muttered, his knuckles turning white as he forced the faulty valve. “now. run the script.”

you slammed the enter key.

the terminal screen went entirely black for a terrifying half-second. then, a single row of green text flashed across the screen.

calibration successful. error margin: 0.02%.

it wasn’t just accurate; it was flawless. better than the manufacturer’s factory settings.

“we did it!” you shrieked, completely forgetting where you were.

seonghyeon bolted to his feet, his face lit up with a huge, uncharacteristic grin that entirely transformed his strict features. before your brain could even register the logic of it, you threw your arms around his neck, and he grabbed you by the waist, lifting you slightly off the ground in a dizzying, triumphant hug.

for a split second, you could feel the solid warmth of his woollen jumper, the rapid thud of his heartbeat, and the completely real, unfiltered rush of winning together.

then, the reality of the crowded basement lab crashed back in.

you both froze.

he immediately stepped back, his hands dropping to his sides as if he’d just touched hot iron. you stumbled back a step, instantly smoothing down the front of your pants, your face burning a furious shade of red.

“uh,” you cleared your throat, looking literally anywhere else but his face. “right. so. the code... the code worked.”

“yes,” he said, his voice suddenly three octaves higher than usual. he quickly snatched his glasses off his face, wiping them vigorously on his jumper though they were completely clean. “the... the data parameters were highly satisfactory.”

“highly satisfactory,” you echoed, letting out a forced, incredibly awkward laugh. “haha. yeah… absolutely. totally professional.”

“completely professional,” he agreed, his eyes fixed firmly on the floorboards as he frantically stuffed his wrench back into his bag. “it was merely a standard demonstration of collaborative efficiency.”

“obviously,” you muttered, shutting your laptop so fast you nearly caught your fingers in the screen. “nothing happened.”

“nothing at all,” he murmured, though his ears were still bright red as he swung his bag over his shoulder.

the walk back up from the basement lab to the library was the longest five minutes of your entire life. neither of you said a word. the silence was thick, entirely different from the competitive tension you’d spent the last week building up. every time your shoulders accidentally brushed in the narrow corridor, you both practically jumped an inch apart.

by the time you reached your usual table, the golden afternoon light was just beginning to hit the high windows. you dropped your bag onto the chair. it didn’t make a loud thud this time since you were trying too hard to be quiet.

seonghyeon stood by his side of the table, his fingers nervously tracing the edge of his folder before he finally sat down. he cleared his throat, his face entirely serious again, though the faint pink tint on his ears hadn’t completely faded.

“we need to review the error analysis for the final report,” he said, his voice dropping back into that familiar, structured rhythm. “now that the calibration is complete.”

you pulled out your laptop, opening the student portal just to give your eyes something to look at. “right. error analysis. wouldn’t want to lose that point five percent.”

you clicked the leaderboard page out of habit, expecting to see the same frozen standings from the morning, but the page refreshed. the professor had updated the project progress marks based on the open-lab performance.

rank 1: yn yln & eom seonghyeon – 99.8%

you stared at the screen, a genuine smile breaking through the lingering awkwardness. you tilted the screen toward him. “well. look at that.”

seonghyeon leaned forward, his eyes scanning the text. the strict line of his mouth softened, and that tiny, familiar spark returned to his eyes behind his thin frames.

“a ninety-nine point eight,” he murmured, looking up to meet your gaze. “acceptable.”

“acceptable?” you scoffed, leaning back and crossing your arms. “we literally broke the curve, dude. you can confess it was brilliant. the professor’s ghost isn’t going to haunt you.”

“it was a team effort,” he said, though there was a definite lightness in his tone now. he opened his notebook, but instead of writing a formula, he paused, his pencil hovering over the top of the blank page. “which means the old titles are technically obsolete.”

you raised an eyebrow. “the old titles?”

“i’m no longer rank two, and you’re no longer rank one, or vice versa,” he said, looking at you over the top of his glasses. “we’re tied.”

“so what are you going to call me then? partner?” you laughed.

“too formal,” he said, a small, dangerous glint flickering in his eyes as he finally wrote something down at the top of his sheet. he turned the notebook around so you could see it.

written in his perfect handwriting was a single word: anomaly.

you let out a short laugh. “anomaly? really? isn’t that a mouthful?”

“you defy the expected data structure,” he explained, completely deadpan. “you skip steps, you use terrible syntax, and somehow you still get the correct result. you’re a statistical anomaly.”

“guess i’ll take it,” you smiled, reaching across the table and snatching the pencil straight out of his fingers. you flipped to the inside cover of his pristine folder and wrote a single word right under his name in large, messy letters: valve.

seonghyeon squinted at it. “valve?”

“because you’re completely stiff, you put too much pressure on everything, and you’re obsessed with the basement rig,” you said, sliding the pencil back to him. “plus, if i don’t ‘manually offset’ your attitude by four percent, you’re entirely impossible to work with.”

he stared at the word on his folder, his lips twitching slightly. he didn’t erase it. instead, he just pulled his laptop closer.

“get your script open,” he said softly, his fingers hitting the keys. “we have a report to finish.”

“right behind you,” you replied, opening your own files.

seonghyeon stared at the word on his folder, his eyebrows flattening into a deeply unimpressed line. “valve. really. that’s the absolute limit of your creative capacity.”

“okay, fine, it was a rough draft,” you muttered, leaning across the table and snatching the pencil back. you aggressively scribbled out the word until it was just a dark graphite blur. “you’re right. it lacks nuance. you deserve something that truly encapsulates your whole... vibe.”

he crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. “i tremble with anticipation.”

you tapped the eraser against your chin, looking him up and down. the perfectly straight posture, the pristine jumper, the sharp eyes tracking your every move like a hawk waiting for a syntax error.

“genius,” you said, a slow, malicious grin spreading across your face. you leaned forward, dropping your voice to a sweet, patronising purr. “how about genius?”

seonghyeon didn’t even blink. “that’s not a nickname. that’s just a statement of fact.”

“no, you don’t get it,” you said, resting your chin in your hands, your eyes dripping with mock admiration. “it’s about the delivery, like when you start explaining basic boundary conditions for the third time, i can just sigh and say, ‘whatever you say, genius’.”

a tiny, annoyed muscle twitched in his jaw. “patronising.”

“exactly. it’s perfect for you,” you laughed, spinning the pencil between your fingers. “or wait—what about professor? since you clearly want to teach the class so badly. we can get you a little tweed jacket with the elbow patches. you’d love it—”

“i’m nineteen,” he said flatly.

“could’ve fooled me with that attitude, professor.” you leaned in a little closer, tilting your head. “what’s wrong? don’t like being managed?”

seonghyeon stared at you for a long beat, his dark eyes narrowing. the annoyed look faded, replaced by that quiet, dangerous focus that always made your chest feel slightly tight. he reached out, his cool fingers brushing yours as he took the pencil back.

“if i’m genius,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave as he wrote something neat at the top of your page. “then you’re prodigy.”

you squinted at the paper. “prodigy? sounds nice.”

“it’s not,” he said smoothly, capping the pencil with a soft click. “it means you have an annoying amount of natural talent, but you’re fundamentally undisciplined and require constant supervision so you don’t ruin the curve.”

you let out a dry gasp. “you did not just call me undisciplined.”

“i believe the technical term is: a liability,” he corrected, a tiny smirk finally breaking through his stoic expression. he tapped the screen of your laptop. “now open the data log, prodigy. let’s see if your brilliant brain can handle basic error propagation.”

“i hate you,” you whispered, though you were already opening the file, a stupid smile tugging at the corners of your lips.

“good,” he said softly, his fingers already already running across his keyboard. “now focus.”

the library grew even quieter as the clock ticked past seven in the evening. the gold light had entirely evaporated, leaving only the harsh, white glare of your laptop screens bouncing off the dark windows.

you were staring at a particularly nasty section of the error analysis report, the numbers beginning to swim into an indistinguishable grey blur. you let out a long, dramatic groan, dropping your forehead directly onto the open pages of your textbook.

“my brain has officially reached maximum capacity,” you mumbled into the paper, your voice muffled. “if i try to calculate one more standard deviation, i’m going to set this table on fire.”

across the table, the steady, rhythmic clicking of seonghyeon’s keyboard paused.

“we have three pages left,” his voice cut through the silence, crisp and completely unaffected by the twelve hours you’d both logged today. “and the library doesn’t allow open flames.”

you lifted your head just enough to glare at him through your messy bangs. he looked infuriatingly neat. his collar was still straight, his hair hadn’t even lost its parting, and his glasses sat perfectly on the bridge of his nose.

“are you even human?” you muttered, sitting back up and rubbing your eyes. “seriously. do you have a lithium-ion battery in there? how are you still moving?”

seonghyeon leaned back, folding his arms across his dark jumper. he looked down at you, his sharp eyes holding a look that was somewhere between absolute superiority and something softer—something almost amused.

“i have discipline,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “something you might want to look into before the actual exam on friday.”

“i have plenty of discipline,” you countered, taking a desperate, final sip of your entirely cold coffee. you grimaced and set the mug down. “i just also happen to possess biological limitations. unlike certain robotic entities.”

“right.” he stood up, his chair making a faint, muffled sound against the floor.

you blinked, watching him. “where are you going? giving up?”

“i’m getting a fresh coffee from the vending machine downstairs,” he said, leaning down to pick up his wallet from the desk. he paused, his dark eyes fixing on your empty mug, then shifting up to look directly into yours. “do you want one, or is the prodigy too weak to handle another dose of caffeine?”

you let out a dry, exhausted laugh, pushing your empty travel mug across the wood toward him. “make it extra strong, genius. if i fall asleep while you’re checking my syntax, you’ll have to write that solo accommodation email for real.”

he caught the mug by the handle. his fingers were warm where they briefly brushed against yours, a sharp contrast to the freezing library air.

“two minutes,” he murmured, turning on his heel and walking down the dark aisle.

you watched him go, your lips curving into a stupid, tired smile as you pulled the report back toward you. for a machine, he wasn’t completely terrible.

when he came back, he slid your travel mug across the table with a soft, metallic clink. the steam rising from it smelled heavy and sweet—not the bitter black sludge he usually drank.

you took a sip and blinked. “did you put sugar in this?”

“you were starting to look aggressive,” he said, sitting down and adjusting his glasses. “i considered it a preventative safety measure for the library equipment.”

“whatever you say, genius,” you murmured, wrapping your cold hands around the warm mug. you stared at the report on your screen, then looked over at the fresh page he’d opened in his notebook. at the very top, he’d neatly penned ‘prodigy’s data corrections’.

you frowned slightly, tracing the edge of your mug. “hey.”

“what?” he didn’t look up, his fingers already typing.

“i think i changed my mind.”

seonghyeon’s fingers paused on the keyboard. he slowly raised his head, his sharp eyes fixing on you. “about the error propagation logic? because if you’re trying to shortcut the variance formula again—”

“no, not the math,” you interrupted, leaning your chin in your hand. you let out a small, tired laugh, looking directly at him. “about the nicknames. i think i actually prefer anomaly. it’s cuter.”

he stared at you. for a split second, the robot completely broke down. his posture stayed rigid, but his eyes widened just a fraction, and a sudden, dark flush crept up from the collar of his jumper, staining the tips of his ears a bright, furious red.

“cuter,” he repeated, his voice flat, though it lacked its usual sharp certainty.

“yeah,” you said, enjoying the way he completely lost his composure. you leaned a little closer across the worn wood. “prodigy sounds like you expect me to be perfect. anomaly feels like... i don’t know, like i’m the only thing that messes up your perfect little system.”

he didn’t say anything for a long second. he just looked at you, his throat moving as he swallowed hard. he quickly grabbed his pen, turning his eyes back down to his notebook so fast you were surprised his glasses didn’t fly off.

“it’s a statistically accurate description,” he muttered, his handwriting suddenly much less precise as he scribbled out a line of text. “nothing more.”

“right,” you smiled, taking another sip of the sweet coffee. “sure, genius. whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“shut up and calculate the standard deviation,” he whispered, his ears still burning under the harsh library lights.

“on it,” you laughed, hitting the keys.

the clock near the main desk clicked over to nine. the library was completely deserted now, save for the occasional distant thud of the security guard’s boots two floors down. the room had gotten even colder, the heavy silence pulling the two of you into a strange, insular little world under the yellow glow of the single desk lamp you’d left on.

you shifted in your seat, your shoulder lightly bumping against his. somewhere around eight o’clock, you’d moved your laptop to his side of the table under the guise of ‘better screen angles for the graph comparisons.’ he hadn’t protested.

“you’re leaning again,” he murmured, his voice incredibly soft in the quiet room.

“i’m freezing, genius,’ you complained, not moving away. in fact, you nudged your arm against his thick woollen sleeve. “and you’re like a human radiator for some reason. it’s basic thermodynamics—heat flows from hotter objects to colder ones.”

seonghyeon let out a quiet breath, the sound far closer than it used to be. he didn’t pull away either. instead, he shifted his laptop a fraction of an inch closer to yours, his hand resting on the desk just a few centimetres from your own.

“that’s an incredibly lazy application of the second law,” he said, but his tone lacked any real bite. it was just a low, teasing murmur.

“it works,” you smiled, looking sideways at him. from this close, you could see the tiny reflection of the spreadsheet columns in his glasses, and the way a few stray, damp strands of his hair from the morning rain had finally dried into a messy curl near his temple. “admit it. you like having the anomaly around.”

he paused, his fingers hovering over the trackpad. he slowly turned his head to look at you. because you were already leaning in, his face was barely a breath away. his sharp eyes looked dark, heavy, and completely focused on you.

“you’re loud,” he whispered, his eyes dropping briefly to your lips before snapping back to your gaze. “you leave ink stains on the desk. and your file naming conventions are an absolute disaster.”

“but?” you prompted, a tiny, teasing smirk playing at the corner of your mouth, your heart doing a sudden, violent flip against your ribs.

“but,” he repeated, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on your arms stand up. he slowly reached out, his warm fingers brushing against the side of your hand before he deliberately slid his index finger under yours, locking your hand against the table. “your calculus is acceptable.”

“just acceptable?” you whispered back, your fingers tightening around his.

“ninety-nine point eight percent acceptable,” he murmured, a genuine, completely unforced smile finally breaking through his strict expression. “which is close enough to perfect for now.”

the silence stretched out between you, long and heavy, but the tightness in your chest didn’t feel like panic anymore. it felt like waiting.

his fingers stayed hooked under yours, warm and steady against the cool wood of the table. you didn’t move your hand away, and he didn’t pull back. for a long time, the only sound was the faint, rhythmic hum of the fan.

“you’re not writing anything,” you whispered, your eyes dropping down to the blank line on his screen.

“you’re distracting the calculator,” he murmured back. his thumb shifted, just a fraction of an inch, the rough edge of his skin brushing against the side of your wrist. the touch was tiny, almost imperceptible, but it made a sharp prickle of heat shoot straight up your arm.

“i thought the genius was supposed to have absolute focus,” you teased, though your voice lacked its usual sharp edge. it came out soft, slightly breathless.

seonghyeon didn’t answer right away. he slowly turned his wrist, his palm sliding flat against yours until your fingers slotted together, completely natural, hiding the messy ink stains on your skin under the heavy warmth of his hand. his grip wasn’t tight, just firm enough to keep you right there.

“i do,” he said, his eyes fixing on yours with that quiet, terrifying intensity. “i’m focusing.”

“on the report?”

“on my anomaly.”

your breath hitched. you looked down at your joined hands, your heart hammering so loudly against your ribs you were certain he could hear it in the dead quiet of the aisle. you let out a tiny, shaky laugh, nudging his shoulder with yours. “that’s... highly irregular behaviour, professor.”

“the data changed,” he whispered, his head tilting slightly closer, his breath warm against your cheek. “i’m adjusting the model.”

he didn’t lean in to kiss you. he didn’t push it further. he just sat there, his shoulder pressed against yours, holding your hand under the pale yellow glow of the desk lamp while the clock on the wall kept ticking closer to midnight.

“we still have two pages left,” you murmured, though you didn’t make any move to look back at the screen.

“i know,” seonghyeon said softly, his thumb tracing a slow, deliberate circle over the back of your hand. “we’ll finish it tomorrow at seven.”

the library security guard finally kicked you both out at midnight, his keys jangling loudly as he ushered you toward the glass doors. outside, the air was crisp, the earlier rain leaving the pavement slick and reflecting the amber glow of the streetlights.

“i’m driving you home,” seonghyeon said, adjusting the strap of his backpack. it wasn’t a question.

“you don’t have to do that, genius,” you said, shivering as the night air hit your face. “the night bus is still running.”

“it’s late, it’s freezing, and the data script is on your laptop. if you get kidnapped, i have to re-do the whole thing alone,” he said, turning toward the student parking lot. “let’s go.”

his car was exactly like him—a sensible, perfectly clean silver sedan. the interior smelled faintly of mint and old paper. as soon as the engine started, he cranked the heater up, the warm air immediately blasting against your frozen hands.

for the first ten minutes, the silence was quiet and comfortable. the city blurred past the windows in a stream of neon lights. it was the first time in a week you weren’t actively looking at an equation.

“so,” you said, leaning back against the headrest and looking at his profile. without his usual glasses on—he’d switched them for a pair of driving glasses—he looked softer. “does the genius actually do anything besides calculate fluid velocity? what’s your life look like when you’re not breaking the academic curve?”

seonghyeon kept his eyes fixed on the road, his hands perfectly positioned at ten and two on the steering wheel. “i take care of my sister.”

you blinked, turning slightly in your seat. “you have a sister?”

“a younger one. she’s fourteen,” he said, the corner of his mouth softening into a genuinely warm expression you hadn’t seen before. “and she’s currently convinced that she’s going to be a professional artist, which means our kitchen table is permanently covered in charcoal dust and acrylic paint. it’s completely inefficient, but... she likes it.”

“that’s... actually really sweet,” you murmured, a faint smile touching your lips. you looked out the side window as he took a smooth left turn. “i’m an only child.”

“really?” he glanced at you briefly before looking back at the road. “i would have guessed you had three older brothers based on how aggressive you get over a leaderboard.”

“yah!” you laughed, nudging his shoulder. “no, it’s just me. honestly... it gets pretty quiet. especially during exam season when my parents are working late.” you looked down at your hands, your voice dropping a little lower, losing its usual teasing energy. “sometimes i see people complaining about their siblings, and i just... secretly wish i had someone to talk to at home. someone to yell at, or share things with, or just have around so the house doesn’t feel so massive. like everyone else does.”

the car slowed down, pulling up to the curb right outside your apartment building. seonghyeon put the car in park but kept the engine running, the warmth wrapping around you both. he didn’t say anything for a long moment. he just turned his head, his dark eyes studying your face in the dim cabin light. the teasing, condescending mask was completely gone, replaced by that steady, grounding presence from the library.

“you don’t have to be completely alone at home,” he said quietly.

you looked up, meeting his gaze. “what?”

he reached over, his fingers lightly tapping the edge of your phone where it sat in the console, displaying the route to your house. “the library opens at seven. but if you’re stuck on something at three in the morning... the server is faster at night anyway. you can just call me.”

your heart gave a small, distinct thump against your ribs. “is that an official recommendation, professor?” you whispered, a tiny, tentative smile returning to your face.

“it’s a calculated strategy, my anomaly,” he murmured back, his eyes holding yours, warm and completely serious. “to ensure our collaborative efficiency remains perfect.”

you stared at him, the soft hum of the car engine filling the tiny space between you. a slow, teasing smile pulled at your lips despite the fluttering in your chest. “three in the morning, though? that sounds an awful lot like you’re trying to disrupt my sleep schedule, genius.”

“i’m simply offering a technical resource,” he replied smoothly, though the slight adjustment he made to his driving glasses gave him away. “if the anomaly is offline, the system doesn’t function properly. it’s preventative maintenance.”

“preventative maintenance,” you echoed, shaking your head as you reached for your backpack. “you really have a romantic term for everything.”

“goodnight, yn,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, grounding register that caught you off guard. he didn’t pull his hand back immediately from the console, his fingers resting just inches from where yours had been.

“night, genius,” you called, opening the car door. the crisp night air hit you, but the warmth from the car stayed with you all the way up to your apartment.

☆

the next three days went by in a blur of intense focus and shifting boundaries. the constant fighting had completely dissolved into something entirely different—a quick, sharp banter that felt more like a dance than a debate. when you accidentally skipped a step in your final error propagation proof, he didn’t dismantle you with his red pen; he just leaned in, his shoulder firmly pressed against yours, and whispered, “you’re doing it again,” before sliding his own neatly lined paper under your hand.

by friday afternoon, the actual midterm was practically an afterthought. you navigated the old, faulty third rig like you’d built it yourselves, your code executing flawlessly while seonghyeon handled the stiff valves without losing a single percent of efficiency.

when the final grades popped up on the department board an hour after the exam, there it was at the very top.

100%

“perfect,” you stated, leaning against the hallway wall, looking at the screen.

“satisfactory,” seonghyeon corrected, standing right beside you. but he was looking at you, not the board, a genuine, unmasked smile completely softening his sharp features.

“oh, come on, a hundred percent is perfect, even by your metrics,” you laughed, turning to face him.

“the grade is perfect,” he murmured, stepping a fraction closer, his dark eyes fixed on yours. the hallway was buzzing with students rushing past, but everything else felt entirely distant. “the partnership was the unexpected variable.”

you tilted your head, your heart doing that familiar, erratic flip. “and what does the data say about the variable now that the exam is over?”

seonghyeon reached down, his fingers lightly brushing against the side of your hand before sliding into yours, locking his fingers with yours right there in the middle of the corridor.

“the model requires further long-term testing,” he said softly, a tiny, brilliant smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “starting tomorrow. seven sharp?”

“make it eight,” you smiled, tightening your grip on his hand. “your anomaly needs her sleep.”

seonghyeon’s smirk widened just a fraction, the sharp lines of his face softening completely. “eight,” he repeated, as if checking the word against a mental schedule. “highly irregular, but... acceptable, i suppose.”

“look at you, compromising,” you teased, your thumb lightly brushing the back of his hand. “the physics department might strip you of your title if they find out.”

“they won’t,” he murmured, his grip on your hand firm and steady as he guided you toward the exit doors, completely ignoring the curious glances from a few of your classmates passing by. “because our data speaks for itself. a hundred percent leaves no room for administrative intervention.”

the outside air was cool, but the afternoon sun was bright, hitting the campus courtyard in broad, golden sheets. for the first time in a week, you didn’t feel the crushing weight of a deadline hanging over your shoulders.

as you walked down the stone steps together, your fingers still laced perfectly between his, you glanced sideways at his profile. his glasses were caught in the sunlight, and he looked remarkably relaxed for someone who spent his life stressing over the second decimal place.

“so,” you said, your voice dropping into a quieter, slightly hollow tone as you looked out over the crowded square. “i guess it’s back to reality now. my parents are pulled into an overnight shift at the clinic, so the apartment is going to feel about ten times bigger than usual tonight. just me, a microwave meal, and the absolute silence of a completed syllabus,” you thought aloud.

seonghyeon stopped at the edge of the pavement, turning to face you fully. he looked down at your joined hands, his thumb pausing its steady rhythm against your knuckles, before his dark eyes lifted to study your face. the analytical, distant look was entirely gone, replaced by that quiet, deliberate focus.

“my sister demanded i bring home actual pastry from the bakery near the station to celebrate the end of our exams,” he said, his voice dropping a fraction lower, losing its usual rigid pacing. “she also bought a new set of heavy-weight sketching paper that she claims requires a second opinion.”

you tilted your head, a little confused. “okay? i’m sure her art is great, but—”

“come with me,” he interrupted softly.

you blinked, staring at him. “what?”

“you said you didn’t like the silence,” seonghyeon said, his eyes holding yours, warm and completely serious. “and minji has been tracking the leaderboard updates via my laptop screen for the last four days anyway. she informed me this morning that if i didn’t bring the person responsible for making me look human home, she would purposefully misplace my engineering rulers.”

you let out a genuine laugh, the slight emptiness in your chest instantly melting away into a sudden, chaotic flutter. “she threatens your stationery? oh, i like her already. she knows exactly how to handle the genius.”

“she’s a menace,” seonghyeon corrected automatically, though the sheer fondness in his tone completely contradicted the word. he squeezed your hand gently, stepping a fraction closer until the toes of your shoes almost brushed his. “she’s loud, she’s messy, and she will definitely try to get you to spill all my embarrassing study habits. it’s a completely uncontrolled environment.”

“sounds perfect for an anomaly,” you smiled, looking up at him.

“it is,” he whispered, his free hand reaching up to gently tuck a stray, wavy lock of your bangs behind your ear, his warm fingers lingering against your cheek for just a second. “let’s go.”

the ride to his house was completely different from the midnight drive two days ago. the car was still warm, but the heavy silence had evaporated, replaced by the low hum of the radio and the steady, quiet rhythm of seonghyeon’s voice as he detailed his sister’s chaotic routine.

he pulled up to a neat, two-story house in a quiet residential lane. before he could even turn the key all the way back in the ignition, the front door flew open. a girl with the exact same dark, sharp eyes as seonghyeon—but with her hair pulled into two messy, paint-stained buns—stood on the porch, leaning heavily against the doorframe with her arms crossed.

“you’re exactly six minutes later than the navigation app predicted, eom seonghyeon,” she called out as you both stepped out of the car. “i was about to start hiding the mechanical pencils.”

“traffic at the junction was heavier due to friday afternoon clear-out,” seonghyeon replied, his tone instantly slipping into that familiar, deadpan defensive mode as he grabbed the box of pastries from the back seat. “and don’t touch the pencils, minji.”

minji completely ignored him, her eyes shifting immediately to you. a massive, wicked grin spread across her face. “you must be the anomaly.”

you couldn’t help but laugh, walking up the steps beside seonghyeon. “the one and only. and you must be the stationery thief.”

“she’s a criminal element,” seonghyeon muttered, nudging his sister out of the doorway with his elbow so we could step inside.

the house didn’t feel massive or empty at all. it smelled like vanilla tea, wood polish, and the distinct, sharp scent of turpentine. just like he had warned, the dining table just off the kitchen was entirely buried under giant sheets of grey charcoal paper, scattered blending stumps, and a half-finished portrait of a very annoyed-looking cat.

“don’t look at that one, it’s terrible,” minji said quickly, dragging two chairs out from the edge of the clutter. “sit down! seonghyeon, go make the tea. the good kind, not the bitter grass you drink.”

“i know how to make tea,” he said flatly, setting the pastry box down on the counter. he looked back at you over the top of his glasses, his expression a mix of resignation and that quiet, soft warmth that always made your chest feel tight. “don’t let her interrogate you.”

“i’m making no promises,” you smiled, sitting down and immediately leaning over to look at a sketchbook minji had pushed toward you.

for the next hour, the kitchen was louder than your own apartment had been in months. minji was a whirlwind of energy, showing you her character designs, complaining about her middle school art teacher, and gleefully revealing that seonghyeon had actually colour-coded his high school diaries by emotional variance.

“he didn’t,” you gasped, looking over at the kitchen counter where he was standing, his back to you as he poured the hot water.

“he did!” minji leaned in, whispering loudly. “blue was for ‘highly regular,’ red was for ‘inefficient’. he stopped doing it when i stole the red pen.”

“minji,” seonghyeon’s voice carried over the hum of the kettle, low and warning, though you could see the dark flush creeping up the back of his neck from behind.

you leaned your chin in your hand, watching his rigid posture as he carefully arranged three mugs on a wooden tray. the warmth of the house, the loud, messy life filling the room, and the steady, protective weight of his presence just a few feet away completely washed over you. your quiet, empty apartment across town felt miles away.

seonghyeon walked back over, setting the tray down in the single clear spot on the table. he sat down in the chair right next to yours, his shoulder immediately pressing against your sleeve, solid and warm.

“she’s exaggerating,” he murmured, his dark eyes meeting yours as he slid a mug of sweet vanilla tea toward you.

“i don’t know, professor,” you teased softly, your eyes dropping down to where his hand rested on the table, just an inch from yours under the edge of a giant sketch sheet. “the data seems pretty consistent.”

seonghyeon didn’t pull away. instead, beneath the overlapping edges of his sister’s charcoal drawings, his fingers slid sideways, hooking quietly around yours and locking them tight.

“the system has evolved since then,” he whispered, his thumb tracing a slow circle over your knuckles while minji reached for a pastry, completely oblivious. “the current model is much less predictable.”

minji was currently in the middle of a highly animated demonstration of how she planned to sneak a giant, six-foot canvas into her art classroom next week, using her hands to mimic the dimensions of the school corridor.

“and then, if the vice-principal turns the corner, i just hold it up and pretend i’m a very realistic wall,” she insisted, her paint-stained buns shaking as she laughed.

“a flawless tactical maneuver,” you grinned, leaning forward and grabbing a custard pastry from the box. “though if you need a diversion script to throw off his schedule, i know a guy who specialises in timing logs.”

“oh, absolutely not,” minji snorted, waving a charcoal-covered finger at her brother. “he’d just calculate the exact velocity of my suspension and tell me it’s an inefficient use of canvas space.”

across the table, seonghyeon didn’t even attempt to defend his honour. he just leaned back in his chair, his hands wrapped around his mug of tea, watching the two of you. for someone who usually looked like he was trying to solve a differential equation in his head, his face was completely relaxed. his dark eyes shifted from minji’s laughing face back to yours, a soft, incredibly quiet warmth settling over his features. he didn’t say a word, but the tiny, contented curve of his mouth spoke volumes. you could practically feel the happiness radiating off him—the deep, grounding satisfaction of seeing his two favorite variables fitting perfectly into the same equation.

when you caught him staring, you tilted your head, shooting him a quiet, teasing smirk. he didn’t blink or look away this time. he just held your gaze, his eyes dark and heavy with a look that made your throat go suddenly dry, before he took a slow sip of his tea.

“anyway,” minji said, suddenly snapping her sketchbook shut, leaving a small puff of graphite dust in the air. “i need to wash this acrylic off my hands before it permanently bonds to my skin. seonghyeon, go show her that old textbook she was asking about. it’s upstairs in your cave.”

“it’s a bedroom, minji, not a cave,” seonghyeon muttered, standing up and clearing the empty pastry wrapper.

“whatever, professor,” she called out over her shoulder as she skipped toward the hallway bathroom.

seonghyeon turned to you, pushing his glasses slightly higher on his nose. “the textbook has the exact logic gates we were arguing about for the final question. it’s on my shelf upstairs, if you actually want to prove your theory.”

“obviously,” you said, standing up and smoothing down your pants. “i don’t back down from a technical debate.”

his room was exactly what you expected, yet entirely intimate in a way that made your heart clip your ribs. it was pristine—books lined up by subject, a desk with perfectly gridded notebooks, and a heavy wood bookshelf against the wall. but it also smelled completely like him—that sharp, clean scent of mint and fresh paper.

seonghyeon walked over to the shelf, his fingers scanning the spines before pulling down a thick, leather-bound volume. “here. page two hundred and fourteen. look at the diagram.”

you walked over, but instead of taking the book, you leaned against the edge of his neatly made bed, the soft mattress giving way slightly under your weight. “why don’t you just open it for me, genius? save me the effort.”

he paused and slowly turned around, the heavy textbook held between his hands, his eyes tracking you as you sat back on the edge of the dark blue comforter. the space between you suddenly felt incredibly small, the distant sound of minji humming in the bathroom downstairs fading into absolute static.

he walked over, his steps slow and deliberate, before setting the book down on the desk beside the bed. he didn’t stay standing. he sat down right next to you, the mattress shifting, his long leg brushing against yours from ankle to hip.

the tension that had been building for the last three days—through every accidental shoulder brush, every midnight drive, and every locked hand under the library table—suddenly snapped tight, vibrating in the inches between your faces.

“you’re distracting the system again,” he whispered, his voice dropping in a way that made your breath hitch.

“the system looks completely offline to me,” you murmured back, your eyes dropping down to his lips before rising to meet his gaze behind his glasses.

seonghyeon reached up, his fingers steady but slightly warm as he slipped his glasses off his face, setting them down on the nightstand with a quiet click. without them, his eyes looked wider, darker, and completely unguarded.

“anomaly,” he breathed, his hand coming up to cup the side of your jaw, his thumb smoothing over your cheekbone, tilting your face up just a fraction.

“hm, genius?” you whispered, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat.

“shut up, please,” he murmured softly, and then finally leaned in.

the kiss wasn’t rigid or calculated at all. it was soft, heavy, and completely real, his lips pressing against yours with a slow, desperate kind of relief that took your breath entirely away. you let out a small, shaky sigh against his mouth, your hands instantly reaching up to knot into the front of his dark woollen jumper, pulling him closer until there was no space left between you at all.

he shifted, his other hand sliding around to the back of your neck, his fingers tangling into your hair, holding you steady as the kiss deepened, turning sweeter, warmer, and completely melting every piece of information in your brain.

when he finally pulled back just a fraction, his forehead rested against yours, both of your breaths coming out short and uneven in the quiet room.

seonghyeon’s eyes fluttered open, a brilliant, completely unmasked smile breaking across his face as he looked at your flushed cheeks.

“the margin of error,” he whispered, his thumb lightly tracing your bottom lip. “is exactly zero.”

you let out a soft, breathless laugh, your hands still tightly gripping the wool of his jumper. “zero? you’re getting sloppy, professor. i thought you always accounted for environmental unpredictability.”

“you are the environmental unpredictability,” seonghyeon murmured, his voice incredibly low and rough as he leaned in again, his lips catching yours in another quick, lingering kiss that made your toes curl. his thumb was still smoothing over your jawline, his touch so tender it felt entirely distinct from the rigid, competitive boy you’d met a month ago.

when he finally pulled back to look at you, his chest was heaving slightly. without his glasses, his dark eyes held a sort of heavy, unguarded softness that was reserved completely for you. a few stray locks of his neat hair had fallen across his forehead, making him look completely undone.

“irregular data structures,” he whispered, a tiny, brilliant smirk returning to his lips as he reached over to the nightstand, sliding his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. the lenses instantly caught the warm light of his desk lamp. “but the experimental results are highly satisfactory.”

“highly satisfactory,” you echoed, reaching up to fix the collar of his jumper, your heart still doing double-time against your ribs. “is that the best you can do?”

“perfect,” he corrected softly, his hand coming down to cover yours, slotting his fingers firmly between yours and bringing them down from his collar to press them against the dark blue comforter. “the results are perfect.”

from downstairs, the sudden, loud clatter of a metal paint tray hitting the kitchen floor cut straight through the quiet of the bedroom, followed immediately by minji’s distant yell. “i didn’t break it! it fell due to gravitational inefficiency!”

you both froze, staring at each other for a split second before you both burst into quiet, simultaneous laughter.

seonghyeon let out a long, defeated sigh, shaking his head as he rested his forehead against your shoulder for a brief, heavy second. “she’s going to destroy the house before we even finish the tea.”

“well,” you smiled, leaning down to press a quick, daring kiss to the top of his head, right where his hair parted. “we better go save your engineering rulers, genius.”

“agreed, my anomaly,” he murmured, his eyes crinkling behind his frames as he stood up, pulling you gently off the bed along with him, his hand refusing to let go of yours for even a second. “let’s go manage the tiny monster of a variable.”

you both walked down the stairs, your hands still loosely linked until you reached the final step, where he gave your knuckles one last, lingering squeeze before letting go.

the kitchen was exactly the chaotic scene minji’s shout had promised. she was on her hands and knees, aggressively wiping at a massive splash of bright turquoise water on the tiles with a wad of paper towels.

“i swear it was the cat,” minji said immediately, looking up with a completely guilty grin as you both walked in. her eyes darted instantly to seonghyeon’s face, then to yours, her gaze widening slightly as she took in your flushed cheeks and her brother’s completely missing analytical frown. a knowing, wicked smile spread across her face. “well. you guys took a long time to look up a logic gate graph or whatever.”

seonghyeon didn’t even blink, though a telltale smudge of pink returned to the tips of his ears. he walked straight past her, grabbed the proper floor mop from the utility closet, and handed it down to her. “the cat is currently sleeping on the living room sofa, minji. your theory is extremely flawed.”

“whatever, ‘genius’,” she snorted, taking the mop and throwing a wink in your direction. “hey, yn, you should stay for dinner. seonghyeon is making kimchi fried rice, and he actually measures the sesame oil with a syringe so it’s ‘mathematically balanced’. it’s hilarious to watch.”

you laughed, leaning against the counter as seonghyeon took the empty tea mugs and rinsed them in the sink. “a syringe? really?”

“it ensures consistent flavor distribution,” seonghyeon’s voice came from above the running water, entirely deadpan, though he shot a mock-glare over his shoulder at his sister.

“i’d love to stay,” you said softly, your eyes meeting his. the earlier emptiness of your own quiet apartment felt entirely distant now, completely replaced by the warmth of this kitchen, the messy charcoal sheets on the table, and the boy currently trying very hard to look like a machine while his ears were still bright red. he turned off the tap, drying his hands on a towel. he walked back over to where you stood, his shoulder lightly brushing yours as he reached for the rice cooker.

“ninety-nine point eight percent consistent,” he murmured, his voice dropping just low enough for only you to hear, a tiny, brilliant spark dancing behind his thin frames. “but i suppose i can alter the recipe for a special variable.”

“just make sure you don’t ruin the curve, professor,” you whispered back with a smirk.

minji let out a dramatic, suffering groan from the floor, leaning heavily on the mop handle. “please do not talk about curves or variables while i’m trying to clean up a spill. it’s ruining my artistic aura.”

“your aura is currently eighty percent turquoise pigment, minji,” seonghyeon remarked smoothly, already pulling the ingredients out of the fridge with the practiced precision of a seasoned lab technician. the spring onions, the kimchi, the eggs—everything was lined up on the chopping board in a perfect, geometric grid.

you leaned your hip against the counter, watching his hands. his fingers were steady, his cuts entirely uniform. “you know, for someone who claims to hate inefficiency, you’re spending a lot of time making this look like a food styling commercial.”

he paused, the knife hovering over a spring onion. he glanced up at you over the top of his glasses, the sharp yellow kitchen light catching the dark depth of his eyes. “presentation affects the psychological perception of flavor density, yn. it’s simple cognitive science.”

“sure it is,” you teased, reaching out and deliberately picking up one of the neatly diced pieces of kimchi, popping it into your mouth before he could stop you. “flawless density.”

a tiny, helpless twitch of a smile broke through his expression. he shook his head, turning back to the stove, but as he moved the pan, his foot lightly nudged against yours under the cabinet lip—a quiet, secret connection while minji was distracted throwing the wet paper towels into the bin.

dinner was loud, messy, and entirely perfect. you sat at the edge of the charcoal-streaked table, sharing the ‘mathematically balanced’ rice directly out of the pan because minji insisted washing three extra bowls was an inefficient use of human labor—an argument seonghyeon surprisingly conceded to after you agreed with her.

by the time the clock in the hallway chimed ten, the heavy fatigue of the long week finally began to settle into your bones. your head felt heavy, a soft yawn escaping your lips as you helped seonghyeon clear the last of the glasses.

“the anomaly’s battery is operating at critical levels,” seonghyeon noted quietly, chuckling, his hand reaching out to catch the glass you were holding, his fingers brushing yours with that familiar, grounding warmth. “i’m driving you home.”

“yeah,” you murmured, not even trying to argue this time. “i think the code is crashing.”

later, minji ran out to the porch to wave you off, wrapped in a giant, oversized paint hoodie. “come back on sunday! i need you to help me convince him that a six-foot canvas is a household necessity!”

“i’ll be there!” you called back, laughing as you slid into the passenger seat of his car.

the drive back was quiet, but it wasn’t the lonely, distant silence of the previous days. it felt full, heavy with the memory of the warm kitchen, the messy sketches, and the quiet room upstairs. the heater hummed softly, blowing warm air over your knees as the city lights blurred past.

when the car smoothly pulled up to the curb outside your apartment building, seonghyeon put it in park but left the engine running. the amber streetlamps filtered through the window, casting long, soft shadows across his sharp profile.

you unbuckled your seatbelt but didn’t move to open the door. instead, you turned in your seat, leaning your head back against the headrest to look at him. “thanks for taking me with you, hyeon. the house... didn’t feel massive tonight.”

he turned his head. without his driving glasses on, his eyes were incredibly soft, completely exposed in the dim light of the dashboard. he reached across the console, his hand sliding flat against yours, locking his fingers firmly between yours.

“the model functions better when the variable is integrated, you know,” he whispered, his thumb smoothing over the back of your hand with a slow, deliberate pressure.

“is that a scientific conclusion, professor?” you whispered back, leaning slightly closer across the space between the seats.

“it’s an empirical fact,” he murmured.

he leaned across the console, his hand shifting to the back of your neck, his fingers curling gently into your hair as he pulled you into a slow, lingering kiss. it was quiet, heavy with the promise of tomorrow, his lips warm and completely certain against yours. when he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours for a brief, breathless second, a genuine, brilliant smile touching his lips.

“eight o’clock tomorrow, anomaly,” he whispered against your skin. “don’t be late.”

“make it eight-fifteen, genius,” you smiled, kissing the corner of his jaw before finally reaching for the door handle. “the system needs a buffer.”

“whatever you say, angel.”

© hyuneskkami ❦

❝ tracklist ❞  ─── hard to explain—the strokes ❦ re-do—modern baseball ❦ fluorescent adolescent—arctic monkeys ❦ why do you only call me when you’re high?—arctic monkeys ❦ warm glow—hippo campus ❦ softcore—nbhd ❦ line without a hook—ricky montgomery ❦ talk too much—coin ❦ mystery of love—sufjan stevens ❦ lovers rock—tv girl ❦ sofia—clairo

the afternoon sun filtered through the high, dusty windows of the library, catching the steady swirl of dust motes right over the exact table you’d claimed since the beginning of the semester. you dropped your heavy backpack onto the wood with a loud deliberate thud.

the boy sitting across from you didn’t even flinch. he kept his head down, his posture perfectly straight, mechanical pencil moving with silent precision across his grid notebook. he looked exactly like what everyone said he was: the quintessential good boy—neat collar, impeccably organised highlighters, and a calm demeanor that made him look completely unbothered by the midterms looming over your heads.

you pulled out your own chair, the screech of it against the floor intentionally louder than it needed to be. you sat down, smoothing out your pants, and flipped open your thick textbook right to the section on advanced kinematics.

for the first twenty minutes, the only sound between you two was the scratch of your pencils against your respective books and the rhythmic turning of pages. you didn’t know him nor did he know you. you were just two nameless students drowning in the same brutal syllabus who passed each other in class… until the practice quiz grades were posted online.

your phone buzzed in your lap. you quickly tapped the screen, scrolling down to the class leaderboard.

rank 1: yn yln – 98%

a tiny, satisfied smirk tugs at the corner of your lips—you couldn’t help it. you leaned back slightly, letting out a soft, airy breath of relief.

across the table, the boy’s pencil abruptly stopped. he checked his own phone. 

rank 2: eom seonghyeon – 97.5%

you watched his dark eyes scan the screen, his expression completely unreadable. then, slowly, he raised his head. it was the first time he’d ever actually looked at you—truly looked at you—instead of just glancing past you like a background character in the library or in his class.

his eyes were incredibly sharp behind his thin frames, tracking the small smirk still lingering on your face.

“you’re happy,” he said. his voice was quiet, lower than you expected, but it cut right through the silence of the room.

“just relieved,” you said, setting your phone face down. “it was a tough quiz.”

he clicked his mechanical pencil once. twice. the rhythmic sound felt like a countdown. “a point five difference.”

“a win is a win.”

“it’s a practice quiz,” he countered, though his fingers tightened slightly around his pencil. “it doesn’t mean anything for the actual midterm.”

you leaned forward, resting your chin on your hand. “if it doesn’t mean anything, why are you staring?”

he didn’t blink. he slowly closed his notebook, the paper making a crisp, decisive sound. “i’m just analysing the competition.”

“competition?” you let out a dry laugh. “i thought we were just two students working on the same syllabus.”

“we were,” he said, a faint, dangerous spark finally breaking through his perfect, unbothered composure. “until these scores were posted. what’s your name?”

you smiled, tapping the cover of your textbook. “look at the top of the leaderboard tomorrow. you’ll see it there again.”

his lips thinned into a straight line. he didn’t look angry—not really—but the effortless calm he’d been radiating all afternoon was completely gone.

“arrogant,” he muttered, though he made no effort to look away from you.

“confident,” you corrected, tilting your head. “there’s a difference.”

“we’ll see if that confidence holds up during the fluid mechanics module next week.” he reached for his highlighters, neatly lining them up by colour, though his movements were just a fraction faster than they had been before. “most people drop a few percentage points there.”

“is that what happened to you last semester?”

he paused, a green highlighter hovering just an inch above his desk. “i got a ninety-nine.”

“well,” you whispered, leaning in a little closer across the worn wood of the table. “then you’d better start studying harder, because i don’t plan on getting a ninety-nine. i want a hundred.”

he let out a short, quiet breath that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, though his face remained entirely serious. he capped his pen with a sharp click. “you’re ridiculous.”

“i’m top of the leaderboard.”

“for now.” he opened his notebook again, flipping past the pages he’d already finished, his eyes dropping back to his formulas, but he didn’t completely shut you out this time. “what’s your name? really.”

“why? so you can write it on a dartboard?”

“so i know exactly whose score i’m beating in the next exam.”

you looked at him for a second, watching the way the afternoon light caught the edge of his glasses. you liked the challenge in his voice—it made the stifling library air feel a little less suffocating.

“find out yourself,” you said, picking up your pencil. “if you’re as good as i’ve heard others say you are, it shouldn’t take you very long.”

he didn’t argue, but he stared at you for a second longer, his gaze heavy and calculating, before finally dropping his eyes back down to his notes. the silence settled between you again, but it wasn’t the dead, empty quiet from before, instead it felt charged now.

for the next hour, neither of you spoke. but every time you turned a page, you could feel his eyes track the movement. every time he clicked his pencil, it felt intentional. 

around five o’clock, the library started to empty out. the golden light shifted into a dull, cool grey as the sun dipped behind the campus buildings. your shoulders ached from slouching over the kinematics problems, and the numbers were starting to blur together on the page. you started packing up your things, sliding your notebook into your bag.

seonghyeon didn’t look up, but his pencil slowed down. “leaving already?”

“some of us have a life outside of advanced physics,” you said, zipping up your backpack, knowing full well you were going to go home and study anyway.

“or you’re just giving up for the day.”

you paused, looking down at him. he was still writing, his handwriting perfectly neat despite the hours he’d spent at the table. “i’m three chapters ahead of the lecture syllabus, dude. i’m hardly ‘giving up’.”

“four chapters,” he murmured softly.

“what?”

he finally capped his pencil (who caps a pencil? you wondered.) and looked up at you, a tiny, almost imperceptible tilt at the corner of his mouth. “i’m four chapters ahead. just so you know where the bar is set.”

you let out a quiet scoff, swinging your backpack over one shoulder. “keep telling yourself that. see you tomorrow, rank two.”

“goodnight, rank one.”

you turned and walked away, the heavy library doors swinging shut behind you. as you stepped out into the cool evening air, you pulled out your phone and opened the student portal, looking at the leaderboard one last time.

he was right about one thing—next week’s module was going to be brutal. you smiled to yourself and shoved the phone into your pocket. you were going to have to study twice as hard tonight.

☆

the next morning, the library was freezing—the air conditioning was blasting at full speed, cutting right through the fabric of your jumper. you arrived twenty minutes earlier than usual, fully expecting to have the table to yourself.

you didn’t, of course.

seonghyeon was already there. his hair was slightly damp from the morning drizzle, his glasses pushed up into his hair as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. a large paper cup from the campus coffee shop sat right at his elbow, condensation pooling on the wood.

you dropped your bag onto the chair. “do you live here?”

he blinked, startled out of his trance, and quickly pulled his glasses back down. his eyes were slightly bloodshot. “you’re early.”

“so are you,” you said, pulling out your chair. “and you look like you haven’t slept.”

“i sleep fine,” he muttered, closing a tab on his laptop before you could see what was on the screen. “i just like getting a head start.”

“right.” you leaned over the table, trying to peek at his notes. “how far into the fluid mechanics notes did you get last night?”

seonghyeon shifted his arm, blocking his notebook from your view with a level of pettiness that honestly impressed you. “far enough.”

“don’t be like that,” you laughed, pulling your own laptop out. “we could actually share notes. you know, be efficient.”

“i don’t share notes with people who call me rank two.”

“but it’s your name,” you teased, opening the class portal. “until you earn a new one, anyway.”

you clicked on the updated leaderboard, fully expecting to see your name still sitting pretty at the top. but as the page loaded, your smile faltered.

rank 1: eom seonghyeon – 99.5% rank 2: yn yln – 98%

he had retaken the optional mock module at three in the morning.

you stared at the screen, then slowly looked up at him. he was already watching you, a smug, entirely infuriating expression on his face. he took a slow sip of his coffee.

“morning, rank two,” he said softly.

you stared at him, your fingers tightening around the edge of your laptop screen. “three in the morning, dude? really?”

“the server is faster at night,” he said, completely deadpan. “less traffic, you know.”

“you’re insane.” you slammed your laptop shut, the click sharp in the quiet morning air. “you actually stayed up just to beat me by one and a half percent on a mock test that doesn’t even count toward the final grade.”

“one point five is a massive margin in physics,” he replied, leaning back in his chair. he looked exhausted, the faint dark circles under his eyes giving him away, but his posture was still impeccably straight. “and it clearly counted enough to make you shut your computer.”

“fan behaviour,” you leaned across the table, dropping your voice to a harsh whisper. “enjoy it while it lasts.”

“oh, i plan to.”

“because by noon, i’m taking it back.” you reached into your bag and pulled out three different coloured pens, lining them up on the table with an aggressive amount of neatness. “i don’t need sleep either.”

seonghyeon watched your pens, a flicker of amusement crossing his face before his expression smoothed back out into his usual calm mask. “is that a challenge?”

“it’s a promise.” you flipped open your notebook to a blank page, pressing the spine down firmly. “now stop talking to me. you’re distracting my internal calculator.”

“you started the conversation,” he pointed out, but he was already opening his own notebook again.

“and i’m ending it.”

for the next three hours, neither of you looked up. the only sound between you was the furious clicking of keys and the sharp scratch of your pens against paper. it felt like a war zone disguised as a study session. 

around eleven, your phone vibrated on the table. you didn’t look at it, too deep into a complex buoyancy equation, but a second later, seonghyeon’s phone buzzed too. then another buzz. and another.

you finally glanced up. seonghyeon was already looking at his screen, his eyebrows knitting together in a rare display of genuine confusion.

“what is it?” you asked.

he tapped the screen, scrolling quickly. “the professor just sent an email. the midterm format changed.”

“changed how?”

he lifted his head, his sharp eyes meeting yours across the table, the smugness completely gone. “it’s not individual anymore. he’s pairing up the top ten students based on the leaderboard for a collaborative laboratory exam.”

your stomach dropped. you slowly reached for your phone, opening the email. there it was, right at the bottom of the page.

pair 1: eom seonghyeon & yn yln.

you stared at the text, then back up at him. “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

seonghyeon closed his eyes for a brief second, letting out a slow, controlled breath. when he opened them, he looked directly at you. “well, rank two. looks like we’re going to have to work… together.”

you stared at the screen, your mind entirely blank for a fraction of a second before the reality of it set in. “collaborative? in an advanced mechanics module? that’s not an exam, that’s a safety hazard.”

“it’s twenty percent of the final grade,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, serious register again. he put his phone face down on the table with a neat, deliberate click. “and right now, your one point five percent deficit is my problem.”

“my deficit?” you scoffed, leaning forward. “i got a ninety-eight, man. i’m not exactly dragging you down to the bottom of the curve.”

“no, but you’re unpredictable,” he said, his eyes scanning your messy stack of scrap paper, covered in scribbled notes and crossed-out equations. “you skip steps in your derivations. i’ve watched you do it. you jump straight to the conclusion because you think you’re too fast for the middle work.”

you chuckled, pulling your papers closer to your chest. “it’s called intuition. it works.”

“‘intuition’ is what gets people killed in a lab setting,” he replied smoothly, crossing his arms. “or worse, it drops our average to a ninety-five.”

“oh, god forbid,” you muttered, rolling your eyes. “a ninety-five. the absolute horror.”

seonghyeon didn’t laugh. he just watched you, his gaze steady and infuriatingly calm behind his glasses. “i haven’t had a grade lower than a ninety-eight since… ever, and i don’t intend to start now because my partner wants to play it by ear.”

“i don’t ‘play it by ear’,” you snapped, keeping your voice low as the librarian walked past the end of your aisle, throwing a warning glance your way. you waited until her footsteps faded before continuing. “i just don’t need to write down every single basic algebraic step like i’m twelve, but fine, if we’re doing this, we do it properly. what’s the plan, rank one?”

a tiny, almost invisible shift occurred in his expression—the ghost of a satisfied smirk. he reached into his bag and pulled out a fresh, pristine folder, sliding it across the table toward you.

“i already split the syllabus into two distinct sections based on our strengths,” he said.

you stared at the folder, then at him. “the email came out three minutes ago.”

“i write templates for potential group projects at the start of every term,” he said, completely serious. “open it.”

you opened it. his handwriting was unfortunately perfect. “you gave me the fluid dynamics derivations.”

“you’re faster at conceptual calculus than i am,” he admitted, though it looked like the words physically pained him to say. “i took the error analysis and the hardware setup. we meet here at seven every morning until the exam.”

“seven?” you groaned. “the library isn’t even fully heated at seven.”

“then bring a thicker jumper,” he said, clicking his pencil. “we have exactly four days to make sure you stop skipping your steps.”

you glared at the folder, then at the top of his perfectly neat head as he immediately went back to his work. “you’re a tyrant. you know that, right?”

“i’m pragmatic,” he murmured, his pencil already scratching against the paper. “there’s a difference.”

“right.” you pulled the pristine folder closer, flipping through the meticulously structured pages. as much as you wanted to tear it up on principle, his breakdown of the syllabus was… brilliant. he’d mapped out every potential bottleneck in the lab exam with sickening precision.

you sighed, leaning back in your chair and pulling your sleeves down over your hands. “fine. seven am. but if i die of hypothermia before the midterm, my ghost is failing the exam with you.”

“ghosts don’t have academic records,” he said, not looking up. “but if you die, i’ll simply request a solo accommodation form from the department. i’ve already drafted the email template for that too.”

you paused, staring at him. “you’re joking.”

seonghyeon finally raised his head, his dark eyes fixed on yours behind his thin frames. his face was entirely expressionless, but there was a sharp, dangerous glint in his eyes that made your pulse do something strange. “try me.”

you let out a short, dry laugh, leaning your elbows back on the table. “i liked you better when you were rank two, seonghyeon. you were far less terrifying.”

“then you’d better study harder,” he said, his voice dropping into a quiet, steady rhythm that caught you off guard. “because i don’t plan on letting you see that version of me again.” he slid a blank sheet of his notebook’s paper across the table, tapping the top of it with the tip of his mechanical pencil. “now,” he said, his gaze locking onto yours. “show me your derivation for the navier-stokes continuity equation. and write down every single step.”

you grabbed your pen, the plastic clicking loudly against the table. “fine. but if i get bored halfway through, i’m drawing a leaderboard in the margin.”

“if you draw on my paper, i’m taking your highlighters,” he said calmly, his eyes already tracking the first stroke of your pen.

you started deriving the the equation, your hand moving fast, writing down the density parameters and the velocity vector fields. you deliberately exaggerated the pressure gradient steps, making sure the symbols were huge and impossible to miss. “there. see? completely legal, entirely thorough calculus.”

seonghyeon leaned across the table, his face coming close enough that you could smell the faint, bitter scent of the black coffee on him. his eyes scanned the lines of handwriting.

“you missed the local acceleration term in the derivative,” he said, his finger coming down to tap the blank space right before the convective acceleration expression.

you squinted at the paper. “no, i didn’t. it’s implied because the flow is steady-state.”

“the prompt didn’t state the flow was steady-state,” he countered, his voice flat but entirely certain. he reached over, took the pen straight out of your hand—his fingers brushing against yours for a brief, cold second—and neatly wrote down the partial derivative of velocity with respect to time. “never assume steady-state unless the boundary conditions explicitly give it to you.”

you leaned back, crossing your arms. “you’re splitting hairs.”

“i’m saving us from losing half a mark on a technicality.” he handed the pen back to you, cap first. “do the next part. and don’t assume anything this time.”

“i assume you must be really fun at parties.”

“i don’t go to parties,” he said, shifting his laptop slightly to the left. “they’re an inefficient use of time.”

“obviously,” you muttered, though you pulled the paper back toward you and restarted the next line of the derivation.

for the next two hours, it went exactly like that—a slow, grueling back-and-forth where every single one of your mathematical shortcuts was systematically dismantled by his red pen. he was infuriatingly precise, but as the pages started piling up between you, you noticed something else—he wasn’t just fixing your mistakes to be smug anymore, rather, he was actually matching your pace, keeping up with the rapid-fire way your brain jumped from one complex concept to the next.

by the time the library clock struck two, your wrist was aching.

“enough,” you said, dropping your pen onto the table. “my brain is entirely fried. if i look at another reynolds number, i’m going to throw up right here.”

seonghyeon looked up from his notebook. he didn’t look ‘fried’ at all, though the dark circles under his eyes seemed a little deeper in the afternoon light. he slowly gathered the loose sheets of paper, tapping them against the table to align the edges perfectly before sliding them into the folder.

“that was acceptable,” he said.

you let out a dry laugh. “acceptable? i just gave you a masterclass in fluid kinematics.”

“you gave me a lot of unnecessary attitude,” he corrected, though he was carefully putting his highlighters away in their designated slots in his pencil case. “but the math was mostly correct. we’re on schedule.”

“high praise coming from the machine,” you said, swinging your bag onto your shoulder. you stood up, looking down at him as he zipped his laptop case. “same time tomorrow?”

he paused, his hand hovering over the zipper. he looked up at you through his glasses, his expression unreadable for a second before that tiny, dangerous spark returned to his eyes.

“seven sharp,” he said. “and bring your own coffee. i won’t be sharing mine.”

“wouldn’t dream of it, rank one,” you smiled, turning toward the exit.

☆

the next morning, you arrived at the library at exactly six fifty-five. the sky outside was a heavy, bruising shade of purple, and the air inside the lobby felt like the inside of a fridge. you had a giant, steaming travel mug of black coffee gripped between both hands like a lifeline. you walked down the narrow aisle toward your usual table, fully expecting to be the first one there, but he was already sitting down.

seonghyeon was wearing a thick, dark grey woollen jumper that made him look slightly less like a human calculator and more like a normal university student, though his posture remained characteristically rigid. he had his laptop open, a massive textbook propped up against it, and three separate sheets of grid paper laid out in a perfect, parallel row.

“you’re five minutes early,” he said without looking up from his screen.

“and you’re terrifying,” you said, dropping your bag onto the chair opposite him. “do you actually sleep here? honestly. tell me the truth. do you have a sleeping bag hidden behind the self-help section or something?”

“the library doors open at six forty-five for postgraduate students,” he said, finally raising his eyes. he glanced at the travel mug in your hands, his expression entirely neutral. “you brought coffee.”

“obviously. i value my life.” you sat down, immediately pulling your knees up toward your chest to trap what little warmth you had left. “what are we doing today? more agonising derivations?”

“hardware architecture,” he said, sliding one of the grid sheets across the table toward you. it was a flawlessly drawn schematic of the fluid mechanics laboratory rig, complete with labels, flow meters, and digital sensor ports. “the lab exam isn’t just theory. we have to calibrate the differential pressure transducers ourselves. if we mismatch the digital inputs, the software throws an error code, and we lose five marks instantly.”

you looked at the diagram, tracing the neat lines with your finger. “i know how to calibrate a transducer, seonghyeon.”

“you know how to do it on paper,” he corrected, leaning forward. “but in the actual lab, the valves are old. the bleed screws on the pressure lines are stiff. if you force them, you introduce air bubbles into the system, which skews the density readings.”

you raised an eyebrow, taking a slow sip of your coffee. “and let me guess. you’ve already practiced on the actual rig?”

“i spent two hours in the basement lab yesterday afternoon while you were at your lecture,” he said, entirely unabashed. “the third rig from the left has a faulty bypass valve. if the professor assigns us that station, we need to manually offset the volumetric flow rate by four percent to get an accurate reynolds number.”

you stared at him, the mug hovering just below your lips. “you are a… deeply pathological individual.”

“i’m thorough,” he said, tapping the diagram. “if we get the broken rig and we don’t account for the valve, our error margins will look like we didn’t even study. now, look at the sensor pin configuration. if i handle the physical calibration, can you code the real-time data script in under five minutes?”

“i can do it in three,” you said, the competitive sting instantly waking your brain up better than the caffeine. “provided you don’t keep breathing down my neck about the syntax.”

“i only comment on your syntax because you use single-letter variables,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, irritatingly logical tone. “it’s bad practice.”

“it’s faster.”

“it’s messy.” 

“it works,” you snapped, opening your laptop with a definitive click. “set a timer. three minutes. give me the data parameters.”

he watched you for a second, his dark eyes fixed on yours. a slow, tiny shift occurred at the corner of his mouth—the absolute closest he ever got to a smile.

“two minutes and fifty seconds,” he said, his fingers flying across his own keyboard. “starting now.”

your fingers flew across the keyboard, the clicks loud and rhythmic against the dead silence of the dawn library. you didn’t look up, not even when the screen flashed a syntax warning. you backspaced with a vicious tap, corrected the logic, and kept going.

seonghyeon didn’t say a word. he just sat there, his phone lying between you on the table, the digital stopwatch ticking down the seconds in bright green digits.

00:45. 

00:44.

“done,” you muttered, hitting the final compile key with a sharp, satisfied slam of your index finger.

the terminal cleared. the script executed perfectly, spitting out the simulated calibration data in neat, uniform columns. you leaned back, crossed your arms, and pointed at his phone. the timer read 00:41. you had thirteen seconds to spare.

seonghyeon looked at your screen, his eyes scanning the code from top to bottom. he didn’t say anything for a long time. he just leaned closer, his shoulder nearly brushing yours as he studied the loop structure you’d written.

“you used a global variable,” he said quietly.

“it compiled, didn’t it?”

“it’s efficient,” he admitted, the words coming out slow and reluctant. he looked up, his face closer than you anticipated. behind his glasses, his dark eyes were incredibly sharp, tracking the small, triumphant grin on your face. “but it’s still dangerous practice.”

“admit it. it was brilliant.”

“it was fast,” he corrected, though he finally reached out and tapped the screen of his phone, resetting the timer. “but speed doesn’t matter if the hardware fails. tomorrow we have the open-lab session. we get exactly thirty minutes to test the actual rigs.”

you picked up your travel mug, taking a long, warm gulp of coffee. “so we go straight for the third rig from the left. the one with the broken valve.”

“exactly.” he closed his laptop, the mechanical click sounding incredibly final. “if we can master the worst station in the room, the rest of the class won’t even be a factor.”

you tilted your head, watching him pack his notebook into his bag. “you really hate losing, don’t you?”

“i don’t see the point in preparing for anything less than perfect,” he said, looking at you over the top of his glasses. “and right now, you’re the only variable i can’t fully control.”

“get used to it,” you smiled, leaning your chin on your hand. “because i’m not planning on letting you control me. we’re partners, rank one. fifty-fifty.”

he paused, his hand resting on the zipper of his backpack. he looked at you for a long beat, his expression unreadable, before a faint, dark glint flickered in his eyes.

“we’ll see about that tomorrow at seven.”

☆

the open-lab session was pure chaos. the basement room was suffocatingly loud, filled with the hum of heavy machinery, the rushing sound of water through the pipes, and the anxious chatter of thirty other students frantically trying to calibrate their equipment.

“third rig,” seonghyeon hissed in your ear, his hand catching your elbow to pull you through the crowd.

you followed him to the far corner of the lab. the station looked older than the others, the digital readout flickering slightly. seonghyeon immediately dropped to his knees, pulling a small wrench from his bag, while you set your laptop down on the workbench and plugged in the interface cable.

“the professor is watching,” you muttered, looking over your shoulder. “he’s checking the time logs.”

“ignore him,” seonghyeon said, his voice tense as he worked the stiff bleed screw on the pressure line. “focus on the data script. if the flow meter spikes past four litres per second, override the digital input manually.”

“i’m on it. just get the air bubbles out.”

your fingers blurred over the keys. the interface terminal was throwing error after error as the old rig struggled to stabilise.

“ten seconds left on our slot,” you warned, your heart hammering against your ribs. “seonghyeon, the volumetric rate is tanking.”

“three degrees to the left,” he muttered, his knuckles turning white as he forced the faulty valve. “now. run the script.”

you slammed the enter key.

the terminal screen went entirely black for a terrifying half-second. then, a single row of green text flashed across the screen.

calibration successful. error margin: 0.02%.

it wasn’t just accurate; it was flawless. better than the manufacturer’s factory settings.

“we did it!” you shrieked, completely forgetting where you were.

seonghyeon bolted to his feet, his face lit up with a huge, uncharacteristic grin that entirely transformed his strict features. before your brain could even register the logic of it, you threw your arms around his neck, and he grabbed you by the waist, lifting you slightly off the ground in a dizzying, triumphant hug.

for a split second, you could feel the solid warmth of his woollen jumper, the rapid thud of his heartbeat, and the completely real, unfiltered rush of winning together.

then, the reality of the crowded basement lab crashed back in.

you both froze.

he immediately stepped back, his hands dropping to his sides as if he’d just touched hot iron. you stumbled back a step, instantly smoothing down the front of your pants, your face burning a furious shade of red.

“uh,” you cleared your throat, looking literally anywhere else but his face. “right. so. the code... the code worked.”

“yes,” he said, his voice suddenly three octaves higher than usual. he quickly snatched his glasses off his face, wiping them vigorously on his jumper though they were completely clean. “the... the data parameters were highly satisfactory.”

“highly satisfactory,” you echoed, letting out a forced, incredibly awkward laugh. “haha. yeah… absolutely. totally professional.”

“completely professional,” he agreed, his eyes fixed firmly on the floorboards as he frantically stuffed his wrench back into his bag. “it was merely a standard demonstration of collaborative efficiency.”

“obviously,” you muttered, shutting your laptop so fast you nearly caught your fingers in the screen. “nothing happened.”

“nothing at all,” he murmured, though his ears were still bright red as he swung his bag over his shoulder.

the walk back up from the basement lab to the library was the longest five minutes of your entire life. neither of you said a word. the silence was thick, entirely different from the competitive tension you’d spent the last week building up. every time your shoulders accidentally brushed in the narrow corridor, you both practically jumped an inch apart.

by the time you reached your usual table, the golden afternoon light was just beginning to hit the high windows. you dropped your bag onto the chair. it didn’t make a loud thud this time since you were trying too hard to be quiet.

seonghyeon stood by his side of the table, his fingers nervously tracing the edge of his folder before he finally sat down. he cleared his throat, his face entirely serious again, though the faint pink tint on his ears hadn’t completely faded.

“we need to review the error analysis for the final report,” he said, his voice dropping back into that familiar, structured rhythm. “now that the calibration is complete.”

you pulled out your laptop, opening the student portal just to give your eyes something to look at. “right. error analysis. wouldn’t want to lose that point five percent.”

you clicked the leaderboard page out of habit, expecting to see the same frozen standings from the morning, but the page refreshed. the professor had updated the project progress marks based on the open-lab performance.

rank 1: yn yln & eom seonghyeon – 99.8%

you stared at the screen, a genuine smile breaking through the lingering awkwardness. you tilted the screen toward him. “well. look at that.”

seonghyeon leaned forward, his eyes scanning the text. the strict line of his mouth softened, and that tiny, familiar spark returned to his eyes behind his thin frames.

“a ninety-nine point eight,” he murmured, looking up to meet your gaze. “acceptable.”

“acceptable?” you scoffed, leaning back and crossing your arms. “we literally broke the curve, dude. you can confess it was brilliant. the professor’s ghost isn’t going to haunt you.”

“it was a team effort,” he said, though there was a definite lightness in his tone now. he opened his notebook, but instead of writing a formula, he paused, his pencil hovering over the top of the blank page. “which means the old titles are technically obsolete.”

you raised an eyebrow. “the old titles?”

“i’m no longer rank two, and you’re no longer rank one, or vice versa,” he said, looking at you over the top of his glasses. “we’re tied.”

“so what are you going to call me then? partner?” you laughed.

“too formal,” he said, a small, dangerous glint flickering in his eyes as he finally wrote something down at the top of his sheet. he turned the notebook around so you could see it.

written in his perfect handwriting was a single word: anomaly.

you let out a short laugh. “anomaly? really? isn’t that a mouthful?”

“you defy the expected data structure,” he explained, completely deadpan. “you skip steps, you use terrible syntax, and somehow you still get the correct result. you’re a statistical anomaly.”

“guess i’ll take it,” you smiled, reaching across the table and snatching the pencil straight out of his fingers. you flipped to the inside cover of his pristine folder and wrote a single word right under his name in large, messy letters: valve.

seonghyeon squinted at it. “valve?”

“because you’re completely stiff, you put too much pressure on everything, and you’re obsessed with the basement rig,” you said, sliding the pencil back to him. “plus, if i don’t ‘manually offset’ your attitude by four percent, you’re entirely impossible to work with.”

he stared at the word on his folder, his lips twitching slightly. he didn’t erase it. instead, he just pulled his laptop closer.

“get your script open,” he said softly, his fingers hitting the keys. “we have a report to finish.”

“right behind you,” you replied, opening your own files.

seonghyeon stared at the word on his folder, his eyebrows flattening into a deeply unimpressed line. “valve. really. that’s the absolute limit of your creative capacity.”

“okay, fine, it was a rough draft,” you muttered, leaning across the table and snatching the pencil back. you aggressively scribbled out the word until it was just a dark graphite blur. “you’re right. it lacks nuance. you deserve something that truly encapsulates your whole... vibe.”

he crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. “i tremble with anticipation.”

you tapped the eraser against your chin, looking him up and down. the perfectly straight posture, the pristine jumper, the sharp eyes tracking your every move like a hawk waiting for a syntax error.

“genius,” you said, a slow, malicious grin spreading across your face. you leaned forward, dropping your voice to a sweet, patronising purr. “how about genius?”

seonghyeon didn’t even blink. “that’s not a nickname. that’s just a statement of fact.”

“no, you don’t get it,” you said, resting your chin in your hands, your eyes dripping with mock admiration. “it’s about the delivery, like when you start explaining basic boundary conditions for the third time, i can just sigh and say, ‘whatever you say, genius’.”

a tiny, annoyed muscle twitched in his jaw. “patronising.”

“exactly. it’s perfect for you,” you laughed, spinning the pencil between your fingers. “or wait—what about professor? since you clearly want to teach the class so badly. we can get you a little tweed jacket with the elbow patches. you’d love it—”

“i’m nineteen,” he said flatly.

“could’ve fooled me with that attitude, professor.” you leaned in a little closer, tilting your head. “what’s wrong? don’t like being managed?”

seonghyeon stared at you for a long beat, his dark eyes narrowing. the annoyed look faded, replaced by that quiet, dangerous focus that always made your chest feel slightly tight. he reached out, his cool fingers brushing yours as he took the pencil back.

“if i’m genius,” he murmured, his voice dropping an octave as he wrote something neat at the top of your page. “then you’re prodigy.”

you squinted at the paper. “prodigy? sounds nice.”

“it’s not,” he said smoothly, capping the pencil with a soft click. “it means you have an annoying amount of natural talent, but you’re fundamentally undisciplined and require constant supervision so you don’t ruin the curve.”

you let out a dry gasp. “you did not just call me undisciplined.”

“i believe the technical term is: a liability,” he corrected, a tiny smirk finally breaking through his stoic expression. he tapped the screen of your laptop. “now open the data log, prodigy. let’s see if your brilliant brain can handle basic error propagation.”

“i hate you,” you whispered, though you were already opening the file, a stupid smile tugging at the corners of your lips.

“good,” he said softly, his fingers already already running across his keyboard. “now focus.”

the library grew even quieter as the clock ticked past seven in the evening. the gold light had entirely evaporated, leaving only the harsh, white glare of your laptop screens bouncing off the dark windows.

you were staring at a particularly nasty section of the error analysis report, the numbers beginning to swim into an indistinguishable grey blur. you let out a long, dramatic groan, dropping your forehead directly onto the open pages of your textbook.

“my brain has officially reached maximum capacity,” you mumbled into the paper, your voice muffled. “if i try to calculate one more standard deviation, i’m going to set this table on fire.”

across the table, the steady, rhythmic clicking of seonghyeon’s keyboard paused.

“we have three pages left,” his voice cut through the silence, crisp and completely unaffected by the twelve hours you’d both logged today. “and the library doesn’t allow open flames.”

you lifted your head just enough to glare at him through your messy bangs. he looked infuriatingly neat. his collar was still straight, his hair hadn’t even lost its parting, and his glasses sat perfectly on the bridge of his nose.

“are you even human?” you muttered, sitting back up and rubbing your eyes. “seriously. do you have a lithium-ion battery in there? how are you still moving?”

seonghyeon leaned back, folding his arms across his dark jumper. he looked down at you, his sharp eyes holding a look that was somewhere between absolute superiority and something softer—something almost amused.

“i have discipline,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching. “something you might want to look into before the actual exam on friday.”

“i have plenty of discipline,” you countered, taking a desperate, final sip of your entirely cold coffee. you grimaced and set the mug down. “i just also happen to possess biological limitations. unlike certain robotic entities.”

“right.” he stood up, his chair making a faint, muffled sound against the floor.

you blinked, watching him. “where are you going? giving up?”

“i’m getting a fresh coffee from the vending machine downstairs,” he said, leaning down to pick up his wallet from the desk. he paused, his dark eyes fixing on your empty mug, then shifting up to look directly into yours. “do you want one, or is the prodigy too weak to handle another dose of caffeine?”

you let out a dry, exhausted laugh, pushing your empty travel mug across the wood toward him. “make it extra strong, genius. if i fall asleep while you’re checking my syntax, you’ll have to write that solo accommodation email for real.”

he caught the mug by the handle. his fingers were warm where they briefly brushed against yours, a sharp contrast to the freezing library air.

“two minutes,” he murmured, turning on his heel and walking down the dark aisle.

you watched him go, your lips curving into a stupid, tired smile as you pulled the report back toward you. for a machine, he wasn’t completely terrible.

when he came back, he slid your travel mug across the table with a soft, metallic clink. the steam rising from it smelled heavy and sweet—not the bitter black sludge he usually drank.

you took a sip and blinked. “did you put sugar in this?”

“you were starting to look aggressive,” he said, sitting down and adjusting his glasses. “i considered it a preventative safety measure for the library equipment.”

“whatever you say, genius,” you murmured, wrapping your cold hands around the warm mug. you stared at the report on your screen, then looked over at the fresh page he’d opened in his notebook. at the very top, he’d neatly penned ‘prodigy’s data corrections’.

you frowned slightly, tracing the edge of your mug. “hey.”

“what?” he didn’t look up, his fingers already typing.

“i think i changed my mind.”

seonghyeon’s fingers paused on the keyboard. he slowly raised his head, his sharp eyes fixing on you. “about the error propagation logic? because if you’re trying to shortcut the variance formula again—”

“no, not the math,” you interrupted, leaning your chin in your hand. you let out a small, tired laugh, looking directly at him. “about the nicknames. i think i actually prefer anomaly. it’s cuter.”

he stared at you. for a split second, the robot completely broke down. his posture stayed rigid, but his eyes widened just a fraction, and a sudden, dark flush crept up from the collar of his jumper, staining the tips of his ears a bright, furious red.

“cuter,” he repeated, his voice flat, though it lacked its usual sharp certainty.

“yeah,” you said, enjoying the way he completely lost his composure. you leaned a little closer across the worn wood. “prodigy sounds like you expect me to be perfect. anomaly feels like... i don’t know, like i’m the only thing that messes up your perfect little system.”

he didn’t say anything for a long second. he just looked at you, his throat moving as he swallowed hard. he quickly grabbed his pen, turning his eyes back down to his notebook so fast you were surprised his glasses didn’t fly off.

“it’s a statistically accurate description,” he muttered, his handwriting suddenly much less precise as he scribbled out a line of text. “nothing more.”

“right,” you smiled, taking another sip of the sweet coffee. “sure, genius. whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“shut up and calculate the standard deviation,” he whispered, his ears still burning under the harsh library lights.

“on it,” you laughed, hitting the keys.

the clock near the main desk clicked over to nine. the library was completely deserted now, save for the occasional distant thud of the security guard’s boots two floors down. the room had gotten even colder, the heavy silence pulling the two of you into a strange, insular little world under the yellow glow of the single desk lamp you’d left on.

you shifted in your seat, your shoulder lightly bumping against his. somewhere around eight o’clock, you’d moved your laptop to his side of the table under the guise of ‘better screen angles for the graph comparisons.’ he hadn’t protested.

“you’re leaning again,” he murmured, his voice incredibly soft in the quiet room.

“i’m freezing, genius,’ you complained, not moving away. in fact, you nudged your arm against his thick woollen sleeve. “and you’re like a human radiator for some reason. it’s basic thermodynamics—heat flows from hotter objects to colder ones.”

seonghyeon let out a quiet breath, the sound far closer than it used to be. he didn’t pull away either. instead, he shifted his laptop a fraction of an inch closer to yours, his hand resting on the desk just a few centimetres from your own.

“that’s an incredibly lazy application of the second law,” he said, but his tone lacked any real bite. it was just a low, teasing murmur.

“it works,” you smiled, looking sideways at him. from this close, you could see the tiny reflection of the spreadsheet columns in his glasses, and the way a few stray, damp strands of his hair from the morning rain had finally dried into a messy curl near his temple. “admit it. you like having the anomaly around.”

he paused, his fingers hovering over the trackpad. he slowly turned his head to look at you. because you were already leaning in, his face was barely a breath away. his sharp eyes looked dark, heavy, and completely focused on you.

“you’re loud,” he whispered, his eyes dropping briefly to your lips before snapping back to your gaze. “you leave ink stains on the desk. and your file naming conventions are an absolute disaster.”

“but?” you prompted, a tiny, teasing smirk playing at the corner of your mouth, your heart doing a sudden, violent flip against your ribs.

“but,” he repeated, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on your arms stand up. he slowly reached out, his warm fingers brushing against the side of your hand before he deliberately slid his index finger under yours, locking your hand against the table. “your calculus is acceptable.”

“just acceptable?” you whispered back, your fingers tightening around his.

“ninety-nine point eight percent acceptable,” he murmured, a genuine, completely unforced smile finally breaking through his strict expression. “which is close enough to perfect for now.”

the silence stretched out between you, long and heavy, but the tightness in your chest didn’t feel like panic anymore. it felt like waiting.

his fingers stayed hooked under yours, warm and steady against the cool wood of the table. you didn’t move your hand away, and he didn’t pull back. for a long time, the only sound was the faint, rhythmic hum of the fan.

“you’re not writing anything,” you whispered, your eyes dropping down to the blank line on his screen.

“you’re distracting the calculator,” he murmured back. his thumb shifted, just a fraction of an inch, the rough edge of his skin brushing against the side of your wrist. the touch was tiny, almost imperceptible, but it made a sharp prickle of heat shoot straight up your arm.

“i thought the genius was supposed to have absolute focus,” you teased, though your voice lacked its usual sharp edge. it came out soft, slightly breathless.

seonghyeon didn’t answer right away. he slowly turned his wrist, his palm sliding flat against yours until your fingers slotted together, completely natural, hiding the messy ink stains on your skin under the heavy warmth of his hand. his grip wasn’t tight, just firm enough to keep you right there.

“i do,” he said, his eyes fixing on yours with that quiet, terrifying intensity. “i’m focusing.”

“on the report?”

“on my anomaly.”

your breath hitched. you looked down at your joined hands, your heart hammering so loudly against your ribs you were certain he could hear it in the dead quiet of the aisle. you let out a tiny, shaky laugh, nudging his shoulder with yours. “that’s... highly irregular behaviour, professor.”

“the data changed,” he whispered, his head tilting slightly closer, his breath warm against your cheek. “i’m adjusting the model.”

he didn’t lean in to kiss you. he didn’t push it further. he just sat there, his shoulder pressed against yours, holding your hand under the pale yellow glow of the desk lamp while the clock on the wall kept ticking closer to midnight.

“we still have two pages left,” you murmured, though you didn’t make any move to look back at the screen.

“i know,” seonghyeon said softly, his thumb tracing a slow, deliberate circle over the back of your hand. “we’ll finish it tomorrow at seven.”

the library security guard finally kicked you both out at midnight, his keys jangling loudly as he ushered you toward the glass doors. outside, the air was crisp, the earlier rain leaving the pavement slick and reflecting the amber glow of the streetlights.

“i’m driving you home,” seonghyeon said, adjusting the strap of his backpack. it wasn’t a question.

“you don’t have to do that, genius,” you said, shivering as the night air hit your face. “the night bus is still running.”

“it’s late, it’s freezing, and the data script is on your laptop. if you get kidnapped, i have to re-do the whole thing alone,” he said, turning toward the student parking lot. “let’s go.”

his car was exactly like him—a sensible, perfectly clean silver sedan. the interior smelled faintly of mint and old paper. as soon as the engine started, he cranked the heater up, the warm air immediately blasting against your frozen hands.

for the first ten minutes, the silence was quiet and comfortable. the city blurred past the windows in a stream of neon lights. it was the first time in a week you weren’t actively looking at an equation.

“so,” you said, leaning back against the headrest and looking at his profile. without his usual glasses on—he’d switched them for a pair of driving glasses—he looked softer. “does the genius actually do anything besides calculate fluid velocity? what’s your life look like when you’re not breaking the academic curve?”

seonghyeon kept his eyes fixed on the road, his hands perfectly positioned at ten and two on the steering wheel. “i take care of my sister.”

you blinked, turning slightly in your seat. “you have a sister?”

“a younger one. she’s fourteen,” he said, the corner of his mouth softening into a genuinely warm expression you hadn’t seen before. “and she’s currently convinced that she’s going to be a professional artist, which means our kitchen table is permanently covered in charcoal dust and acrylic paint. it’s completely inefficient, but... she likes it.”

“that’s... actually really sweet,” you murmured, a faint smile touching your lips. you looked out the side window as he took a smooth left turn. “i’m an only child.”

“really?” he glanced at you briefly before looking back at the road. “i would have guessed you had three older brothers based on how aggressive you get over a leaderboard.”

“yah!” you laughed, nudging his shoulder. “no, it’s just me. honestly... it gets pretty quiet. especially during exam season when my parents are working late.” you looked down at your hands, your voice dropping a little lower, losing its usual teasing energy. “sometimes i see people complaining about their siblings, and i just... secretly wish i had someone to talk to at home. someone to yell at, or share things with, or just have around so the house doesn’t feel so massive. like everyone else does.”

the car slowed down, pulling up to the curb right outside your apartment building. seonghyeon put the car in park but kept the engine running, the warmth wrapping around you both. he didn’t say anything for a long moment. he just turned his head, his dark eyes studying your face in the dim cabin light. the teasing, condescending mask was completely gone, replaced by that steady, grounding presence from the library.

“you don’t have to be completely alone at home,” he said quietly.

you looked up, meeting his gaze. “what?”

he reached over, his fingers lightly tapping the edge of your phone where it sat in the console, displaying the route to your house. “the library opens at seven. but if you’re stuck on something at three in the morning... the server is faster at night anyway. you can just call me.”

your heart gave a small, distinct thump against your ribs. “is that an official recommendation, professor?” you whispered, a tiny, tentative smile returning to your face.

“it’s a calculated strategy, my anomaly,” he murmured back, his eyes holding yours, warm and completely serious. “to ensure our collaborative efficiency remains perfect.”

you stared at him, the soft hum of the car engine filling the tiny space between you. a slow, teasing smile pulled at your lips despite the fluttering in your chest. “three in the morning, though? that sounds an awful lot like you’re trying to disrupt my sleep schedule, genius.”

“i’m simply offering a technical resource,” he replied smoothly, though the slight adjustment he made to his driving glasses gave him away. “if the anomaly is offline, the system doesn’t function properly. it’s preventative maintenance.”

“preventative maintenance,” you echoed, shaking your head as you reached for your backpack. “you really have a romantic term for everything.”

“goodnight, yn,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, grounding register that caught you off guard. he didn’t pull his hand back immediately from the console, his fingers resting just inches from where yours had been.

“night, genius,” you called, opening the car door. the crisp night air hit you, but the warmth from the car stayed with you all the way up to your apartment.

☆

the next three days went by in a blur of intense focus and shifting boundaries. the constant fighting had completely dissolved into something entirely different—a quick, sharp banter that felt more like a dance than a debate. when you accidentally skipped a step in your final error propagation proof, he didn’t dismantle you with his red pen; he just leaned in, his shoulder firmly pressed against yours, and whispered, “you’re doing it again,” before sliding his own neatly lined paper under your hand.

by friday afternoon, the actual midterm was practically an afterthought. you navigated the old, faulty third rig like you’d built it yourselves, your code executing flawlessly while seonghyeon handled the stiff valves without losing a single percent of efficiency.

when the final grades popped up on the department board an hour after the exam, there it was at the very top.

100%

“perfect,” you stated, leaning against the hallway wall, looking at the screen.

“satisfactory,” seonghyeon corrected, standing right beside you. but he was looking at you, not the board, a genuine, unmasked smile completely softening his sharp features.

“oh, come on, a hundred percent is perfect, even by your metrics,” you laughed, turning to face him.

“the grade is perfect,” he murmured, stepping a fraction closer, his dark eyes fixed on yours. the hallway was buzzing with students rushing past, but everything else felt entirely distant. “the partnership was the unexpected variable.”

you tilted your head, your heart doing that familiar, erratic flip. “and what does the data say about the variable now that the exam is over?”

seonghyeon reached down, his fingers lightly brushing against the side of your hand before sliding into yours, locking his fingers with yours right there in the middle of the corridor.

“the model requires further long-term testing,” he said softly, a tiny, brilliant smirk playing at the corner of his mouth. “starting tomorrow. seven sharp?”

“make it eight,” you smiled, tightening your grip on his hand. “your anomaly needs her sleep.”

seonghyeon’s smirk widened just a fraction, the sharp lines of his face softening completely. “eight,” he repeated, as if checking the word against a mental schedule. “highly irregular, but... acceptable, i suppose.”

“look at you, compromising,” you teased, your thumb lightly brushing the back of his hand. “the physics department might strip you of your title if they find out.”

“they won’t,” he murmured, his grip on your hand firm and steady as he guided you toward the exit doors, completely ignoring the curious glances from a few of your classmates passing by. “because our data speaks for itself. a hundred percent leaves no room for administrative intervention.”

the outside air was cool, but the afternoon sun was bright, hitting the campus courtyard in broad, golden sheets. for the first time in a week, you didn’t feel the crushing weight of a deadline hanging over your shoulders.

as you walked down the stone steps together, your fingers still laced perfectly between his, you glanced sideways at his profile. his glasses were caught in the sunlight, and he looked remarkably relaxed for someone who spent his life stressing over the second decimal place.

“so,” you said, your voice dropping into a quieter, slightly hollow tone as you looked out over the crowded square. “i guess it’s back to reality now. my parents are pulled into an overnight shift at the clinic, so the apartment is going to feel about ten times bigger than usual tonight. just me, a microwave meal, and the absolute silence of a completed syllabus,” you thought aloud.

seonghyeon stopped at the edge of the pavement, turning to face you fully. he looked down at your joined hands, his thumb pausing its steady rhythm against your knuckles, before his dark eyes lifted to study your face. the analytical, distant look was entirely gone, replaced by that quiet, deliberate focus.

“my sister demanded i bring home actual pastry from the bakery near the station to celebrate the end of our exams,” he said, his voice dropping a fraction lower, losing its usual rigid pacing. “she also bought a new set of heavy-weight sketching paper that she claims requires a second opinion.”

you tilted your head, a little confused. “okay? i’m sure her art is great, but—”

“come with me,” he interrupted softly.

you blinked, staring at him. “what?”

“you said you didn’t like the silence,” seonghyeon said, his eyes holding yours, warm and completely serious. “and minji has been tracking the leaderboard updates via my laptop screen for the last four days anyway. she informed me this morning that if i didn’t bring the person responsible for making me look human home, she would purposefully misplace my engineering rulers.”

you let out a genuine laugh, the slight emptiness in your chest instantly melting away into a sudden, chaotic flutter. “she threatens your stationery? oh, i like her already. she knows exactly how to handle the genius.”

“she’s a menace,” seonghyeon corrected automatically, though the sheer fondness in his tone completely contradicted the word. he squeezed your hand gently, stepping a fraction closer until the toes of your shoes almost brushed his. “she’s loud, she’s messy, and she will definitely try to get you to spill all my embarrassing study habits. it’s a completely uncontrolled environment.”

“sounds perfect for an anomaly,” you smiled, looking up at him.

“it is,” he whispered, his free hand reaching up to gently tuck a stray, wavy lock of your bangs behind your ear, his warm fingers lingering against your cheek for just a second. “let’s go.”

the ride to his house was completely different from the midnight drive two days ago. the car was still warm, but the heavy silence had evaporated, replaced by the low hum of the radio and the steady, quiet rhythm of seonghyeon’s voice as he detailed his sister’s chaotic routine.

he pulled up to a neat, two-story house in a quiet residential lane. before he could even turn the key all the way back in the ignition, the front door flew open. a girl with the exact same dark, sharp eyes as seonghyeon—but with her hair pulled into two messy, paint-stained buns—stood on the porch, leaning heavily against the doorframe with her arms crossed.

“you’re exactly six minutes later than the navigation app predicted, eom seonghyeon,” she called out as you both stepped out of the car. “i was about to start hiding the mechanical pencils.”

“traffic at the junction was heavier due to friday afternoon clear-out,” seonghyeon replied, his tone instantly slipping into that familiar, deadpan defensive mode as he grabbed the box of pastries from the back seat. “and don’t touch the pencils, minji.”

minji completely ignored him, her eyes shifting immediately to you. a massive, wicked grin spread across her face. “you must be the anomaly.”

you couldn’t help but laugh, walking up the steps beside seonghyeon. “the one and only. and you must be the stationery thief.”

“she’s a criminal element,” seonghyeon muttered, nudging his sister out of the doorway with his elbow so we could step inside.

the house didn’t feel massive or empty at all. it smelled like vanilla tea, wood polish, and the distinct, sharp scent of turpentine. just like he had warned, the dining table just off the kitchen was entirely buried under giant sheets of grey charcoal paper, scattered blending stumps, and a half-finished portrait of a very annoyed-looking cat.

“don’t look at that one, it’s terrible,” minji said quickly, dragging two chairs out from the edge of the clutter. “sit down! seonghyeon, go make the tea. the good kind, not the bitter grass you drink.”

“i know how to make tea,” he said flatly, setting the pastry box down on the counter. he looked back at you over the top of his glasses, his expression a mix of resignation and that quiet, soft warmth that always made your chest feel tight. “don’t let her interrogate you.”

“i’m making no promises,” you smiled, sitting down and immediately leaning over to look at a sketchbook minji had pushed toward you.

for the next hour, the kitchen was louder than your own apartment had been in months. minji was a whirlwind of energy, showing you her character designs, complaining about her middle school art teacher, and gleefully revealing that seonghyeon had actually colour-coded his high school diaries by emotional variance.

“he didn’t,” you gasped, looking over at the kitchen counter where he was standing, his back to you as he poured the hot water.

“he did!” minji leaned in, whispering loudly. “blue was for ‘highly regular,’ red was for ‘inefficient’. he stopped doing it when i stole the red pen.”

“minji,” seonghyeon’s voice carried over the hum of the kettle, low and warning, though you could see the dark flush creeping up the back of his neck from behind.

you leaned your chin in your hand, watching his rigid posture as he carefully arranged three mugs on a wooden tray. the warmth of the house, the loud, messy life filling the room, and the steady, protective weight of his presence just a few feet away completely washed over you. your quiet, empty apartment across town felt miles away.

seonghyeon walked back over, setting the tray down in the single clear spot on the table. he sat down in the chair right next to yours, his shoulder immediately pressing against your sleeve, solid and warm.

“she’s exaggerating,” he murmured, his dark eyes meeting yours as he slid a mug of sweet vanilla tea toward you.

“i don’t know, professor,” you teased softly, your eyes dropping down to where his hand rested on the table, just an inch from yours under the edge of a giant sketch sheet. “the data seems pretty consistent.”

seonghyeon didn’t pull away. instead, beneath the overlapping edges of his sister’s charcoal drawings, his fingers slid sideways, hooking quietly around yours and locking them tight.

“the system has evolved since then,” he whispered, his thumb tracing a slow circle over your knuckles while minji reached for a pastry, completely oblivious. “the current model is much less predictable.”

minji was currently in the middle of a highly animated demonstration of how she planned to sneak a giant, six-foot canvas into her art classroom next week, using her hands to mimic the dimensions of the school corridor.

“and then, if the vice-principal turns the corner, i just hold it up and pretend i’m a very realistic wall,” she insisted, her paint-stained buns shaking as she laughed.

“a flawless tactical maneuver,” you grinned, leaning forward and grabbing a custard pastry from the box. “though if you need a diversion script to throw off his schedule, i know a guy who specialises in timing logs.”

“oh, absolutely not,” minji snorted, waving a charcoal-covered finger at her brother. “he’d just calculate the exact velocity of my suspension and tell me it’s an inefficient use of canvas space.”

across the table, seonghyeon didn’t even attempt to defend his honour. he just leaned back in his chair, his hands wrapped around his mug of tea, watching the two of you. for someone who usually looked like he was trying to solve a differential equation in his head, his face was completely relaxed. his dark eyes shifted from minji’s laughing face back to yours, a soft, incredibly quiet warmth settling over his features. he didn’t say a word, but the tiny, contented curve of his mouth spoke volumes. you could practically feel the happiness radiating off him—the deep, grounding satisfaction of seeing his two favorite variables fitting perfectly into the same equation.

when you caught him staring, you tilted your head, shooting him a quiet, teasing smirk. he didn’t blink or look away this time. he just held your gaze, his eyes dark and heavy with a look that made your throat go suddenly dry, before he took a slow sip of his tea.

“anyway,” minji said, suddenly snapping her sketchbook shut, leaving a small puff of graphite dust in the air. “i need to wash this acrylic off my hands before it permanently bonds to my skin. seonghyeon, go show her that old textbook she was asking about. it’s upstairs in your cave.”

“it’s a bedroom, minji, not a cave,” seonghyeon muttered, standing up and clearing the empty pastry wrapper.

“whatever, professor,” she called out over her shoulder as she skipped toward the hallway bathroom.

seonghyeon turned to you, pushing his glasses slightly higher on his nose. “the textbook has the exact logic gates we were arguing about for the final question. it’s on my shelf upstairs, if you actually want to prove your theory.”

“obviously,” you said, standing up and smoothing down your pants. “i don’t back down from a technical debate.”

his room was exactly what you expected, yet entirely intimate in a way that made your heart clip your ribs. it was pristine—books lined up by subject, a desk with perfectly gridded notebooks, and a heavy wood bookshelf against the wall. but it also smelled completely like him—that sharp, clean scent of mint and fresh paper.

seonghyeon walked over to the shelf, his fingers scanning the spines before pulling down a thick, leather-bound volume. “here. page two hundred and fourteen. look at the diagram.”

you walked over, but instead of taking the book, you leaned against the edge of his neatly made bed, the soft mattress giving way slightly under your weight. “why don’t you just open it for me, genius? save me the effort.”

he paused and slowly turned around, the heavy textbook held between his hands, his eyes tracking you as you sat back on the edge of the dark blue comforter. the space between you suddenly felt incredibly small, the distant sound of minji humming in the bathroom downstairs fading into absolute static.

he walked over, his steps slow and deliberate, before setting the book down on the desk beside the bed. he didn’t stay standing. he sat down right next to you, the mattress shifting, his long leg brushing against yours from ankle to hip.

the tension that had been building for the last three days—through every accidental shoulder brush, every midnight drive, and every locked hand under the library table—suddenly snapped tight, vibrating in the inches between your faces.

“you’re distracting the system again,” he whispered, his voice dropping in a way that made your breath hitch.

“the system looks completely offline to me,” you murmured back, your eyes dropping down to his lips before rising to meet his gaze behind his glasses.

seonghyeon reached up, his fingers steady but slightly warm as he slipped his glasses off his face, setting them down on the nightstand with a quiet click. without them, his eyes looked wider, darker, and completely unguarded.

“anomaly,” he breathed, his hand coming up to cup the side of your jaw, his thumb smoothing over your cheekbone, tilting your face up just a fraction.

“hm, genius?” you whispered, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your throat.

“shut up, please,” he murmured softly, and then finally leaned in.

the kiss wasn’t rigid or calculated at all. it was soft, heavy, and completely real, his lips pressing against yours with a slow, desperate kind of relief that took your breath entirely away. you let out a small, shaky sigh against his mouth, your hands instantly reaching up to knot into the front of his dark woollen jumper, pulling him closer until there was no space left between you at all.

he shifted, his other hand sliding around to the back of your neck, his fingers tangling into your hair, holding you steady as the kiss deepened, turning sweeter, warmer, and completely melting every piece of information in your brain.

when he finally pulled back just a fraction, his forehead rested against yours, both of your breaths coming out short and uneven in the quiet room.

seonghyeon’s eyes fluttered open, a brilliant, completely unmasked smile breaking across his face as he looked at your flushed cheeks.

“the margin of error,” he whispered, his thumb lightly tracing your bottom lip. “is exactly zero.”

you let out a soft, breathless laugh, your hands still tightly gripping the wool of his jumper. “zero? you’re getting sloppy, professor. i thought you always accounted for environmental unpredictability.”

“you are the environmental unpredictability,” seonghyeon murmured, his voice incredibly low and rough as he leaned in again, his lips catching yours in another quick, lingering kiss that made your toes curl. his thumb was still smoothing over your jawline, his touch so tender it felt entirely distinct from the rigid, competitive boy you’d met a month ago.

when he finally pulled back to look at you, his chest was heaving slightly. without his glasses, his dark eyes held a sort of heavy, unguarded softness that was reserved completely for you. a few stray locks of his neat hair had fallen across his forehead, making him look completely undone.

“irregular data structures,” he whispered, a tiny, brilliant smirk returning to his lips as he reached over to the nightstand, sliding his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. the lenses instantly caught the warm light of his desk lamp. “but the experimental results are highly satisfactory.”

“highly satisfactory,” you echoed, reaching up to fix the collar of his jumper, your heart still doing double-time against your ribs. “is that the best you can do?”

“perfect,” he corrected softly, his hand coming down to cover yours, slotting his fingers firmly between yours and bringing them down from his collar to press them against the dark blue comforter. “the results are perfect.”

from downstairs, the sudden, loud clatter of a metal paint tray hitting the kitchen floor cut straight through the quiet of the bedroom, followed immediately by minji’s distant yell. “i didn’t break it! it fell due to gravitational inefficiency!”

you both froze, staring at each other for a split second before you both burst into quiet, simultaneous laughter.

seonghyeon let out a long, defeated sigh, shaking his head as he rested his forehead against your shoulder for a brief, heavy second. “she’s going to destroy the house before we even finish the tea.”

“well,” you smiled, leaning down to press a quick, daring kiss to the top of his head, right where his hair parted. “we better go save your engineering rulers, genius.”

“agreed, my anomaly,” he murmured, his eyes crinkling behind his frames as he stood up, pulling you gently off the bed along with him, his hand refusing to let go of yours for even a second. “let’s go manage the tiny monster of a variable.”

you both walked down the stairs, your hands still loosely linked until you reached the final step, where he gave your knuckles one last, lingering squeeze before letting go.

the kitchen was exactly the chaotic scene minji’s shout had promised. she was on her hands and knees, aggressively wiping at a massive splash of bright turquoise water on the tiles with a wad of paper towels.

“i swear it was the cat,” minji said immediately, looking up with a completely guilty grin as you both walked in. her eyes darted instantly to seonghyeon’s face, then to yours, her gaze widening slightly as she took in your flushed cheeks and her brother’s completely missing analytical frown. a knowing, wicked smile spread across her face. “well. you guys took a long time to look up a logic gate graph or whatever.”

seonghyeon didn’t even blink, though a telltale smudge of pink returned to the tips of his ears. he walked straight past her, grabbed the proper floor mop from the utility closet, and handed it down to her. “the cat is currently sleeping on the living room sofa, minji. your theory is extremely flawed.”

“whatever, ‘genius’,” she snorted, taking the mop and throwing a wink in your direction. “hey, yn, you should stay for dinner. seonghyeon is making kimchi fried rice, and he actually measures the sesame oil with a syringe so it’s ‘mathematically balanced’. it’s hilarious to watch.”

you laughed, leaning against the counter as seonghyeon took the empty tea mugs and rinsed them in the sink. “a syringe? really?”

“it ensures consistent flavor distribution,” seonghyeon’s voice came from above the running water, entirely deadpan, though he shot a mock-glare over his shoulder at his sister.

“i’d love to stay,” you said softly, your eyes meeting his. the earlier emptiness of your own quiet apartment felt entirely distant now, completely replaced by the warmth of this kitchen, the messy charcoal sheets on the table, and the boy currently trying very hard to look like a machine while his ears were still bright red. he turned off the tap, drying his hands on a towel. he walked back over to where you stood, his shoulder lightly brushing yours as he reached for the rice cooker.

“ninety-nine point eight percent consistent,” he murmured, his voice dropping just low enough for only you to hear, a tiny, brilliant spark dancing behind his thin frames. “but i suppose i can alter the recipe for a special variable.”

“just make sure you don’t ruin the curve, professor,” you whispered back with a smirk.

minji let out a dramatic, suffering groan from the floor, leaning heavily on the mop handle. “please do not talk about curves or variables while i’m trying to clean up a spill. it’s ruining my artistic aura.”

“your aura is currently eighty percent turquoise pigment, minji,” seonghyeon remarked smoothly, already pulling the ingredients out of the fridge with the practiced precision of a seasoned lab technician. the spring onions, the kimchi, the eggs—everything was lined up on the chopping board in a perfect, geometric grid.

you leaned your hip against the counter, watching his hands. his fingers were steady, his cuts entirely uniform. “you know, for someone who claims to hate inefficiency, you’re spending a lot of time making this look like a food styling commercial.”

he paused, the knife hovering over a spring onion. he glanced up at you over the top of his glasses, the sharp yellow kitchen light catching the dark depth of his eyes. “presentation affects the psychological perception of flavor density, yn. it’s simple cognitive science.”

“sure it is,” you teased, reaching out and deliberately picking up one of the neatly diced pieces of kimchi, popping it into your mouth before he could stop you. “flawless density.”

a tiny, helpless twitch of a smile broke through his expression. he shook his head, turning back to the stove, but as he moved the pan, his foot lightly nudged against yours under the cabinet lip—a quiet, secret connection while minji was distracted throwing the wet paper towels into the bin.

dinner was loud, messy, and entirely perfect. you sat at the edge of the charcoal-streaked table, sharing the ‘mathematically balanced’ rice directly out of the pan because minji insisted washing three extra bowls was an inefficient use of human labor—an argument seonghyeon surprisingly conceded to after you agreed with her.

by the time the clock in the hallway chimed ten, the heavy fatigue of the long week finally began to settle into your bones. your head felt heavy, a soft yawn escaping your lips as you helped seonghyeon clear the last of the glasses.

“the anomaly’s battery is operating at critical levels,” seonghyeon noted quietly, chuckling, his hand reaching out to catch the glass you were holding, his fingers brushing yours with that familiar, grounding warmth. “i’m driving you home.”

“yeah,” you murmured, not even trying to argue this time. “i think the code is crashing.”

later, minji ran out to the porch to wave you off, wrapped in a giant, oversized paint hoodie. “come back on sunday! i need you to help me convince him that a six-foot canvas is a household necessity!”

“i’ll be there!” you called back, laughing as you slid into the passenger seat of his car.

the drive back was quiet, but it wasn’t the lonely, distant silence of the previous days. it felt full, heavy with the memory of the warm kitchen, the messy sketches, and the quiet room upstairs. the heater hummed softly, blowing warm air over your knees as the city lights blurred past.

when the car smoothly pulled up to the curb outside your apartment building, seonghyeon put it in park but left the engine running. the amber streetlamps filtered through the window, casting long, soft shadows across his sharp profile.

you unbuckled your seatbelt but didn’t move to open the door. instead, you turned in your seat, leaning your head back against the headrest to look at him. “thanks for taking me with you, hyeon. the house... didn’t feel massive tonight.”

he turned his head. without his driving glasses on, his eyes were incredibly soft, completely exposed in the dim light of the dashboard. he reached across the console, his hand sliding flat against yours, locking his fingers firmly between yours.

“the model functions better when the variable is integrated, you know,” he whispered, his thumb smoothing over the back of your hand with a slow, deliberate pressure.

“is that a scientific conclusion, professor?” you whispered back, leaning slightly closer across the space between the seats.

“it’s an empirical fact,” he murmured.

he leaned across the console, his hand shifting to the back of your neck, his fingers curling gently into your hair as he pulled you into a slow, lingering kiss. it was quiet, heavy with the promise of tomorrow, his lips warm and completely certain against yours. when he pulled back, his forehead rested against yours for a brief, breathless second, a genuine, brilliant smile touching his lips.

“eight o’clock tomorrow, anomaly,” he whispered against your skin. “don’t be late.”

“make it eight-fifteen, genius,” you smiled, kissing the corner of his jaw before finally reaching for the door handle. “the system needs a buffer.”

“whatever you say, angel.”

© hyuneskkami ❦