…Feather pillows?

The last thing you remember was being deep in the Blackwoods, far from any sort of shelter or comfort— had you somehow managed to make your way back home after blacking out? You can’t recall a single thing after you had relit your lantern, though you were certain that you were far too lost to find your way back home to the village. Perhaps your village had come looking for you and had taken you back to your cottage, where you were certain to catch an earful from both your mother and from Heeseung…

But these pillows you had at home were stuffed with wool and not feathers. This bed that you lie in did not feel like your own.

Slowly, you crack your eyes open, raising a hand to clutch at your temple— a strange wetness meets your fingertips, one that startles you enough into sitting up. When your blurry vision finally focuses, what you see is most certainly not your cozy bedroom.

You’re lying on a sofa, ancient and worn ragged, its fabric dirty and shredded with bits of hay and feathers sticking through. Pillows of various shapes and colors surround you like padding, stacked behind your head and around your feet to elevate your leg— your leg!

You gasp in horror. Your shawl is gone, and your dress and apron are torn to shreds, revealing your mangled and bloody calf, your horribly swollen and twisted ankle. The sight makes you realize that the aching wasn’t just from your head, but from your entire body; everything hurt from deep in your bones, and even the tiniest movements send sharp pangs through your being. You don’t dare to try and move your foot, just the sight of it alone enough to make you ill, though you do notice that someone had gone through the effort of wrapping it in some sort of bandage-like leaves and stabilizing it with all the pillows. You let go of your temple to study your hand, horrified at how it comes away covered in dark, semi-dried blood.

The events of the night before come rushing back to you all at once. The fear, the running, those brilliant red eyes that stared at you through the dark— as you fell, you were sure that you would die, torn apart and eaten by that bloodthirsty beast. But, aside from your head and your leg, and all the scratches and bruises along your arms, you don’t see any bitemarks or gashes from claws, and all the pain certainly meant that you were still alive. Mother always said that there was no pain in Heaven.

Somebody really did come and save you. Chased that horrible beast away and taken you somewhere safe, tended to your wounds. Wherever you were, this must be your savior’s home.

It’s a terrible excuse for a home, you quickly realize. While there was a small fire in the fireplace, the shattered windows let in icy gusts of wind that chilled you down to the bone. Wooden boards and threadbare blankets try their best to keep in the cold, but enough snowflakes managed to sneak through that small piles of snow were collecting on the rotten wooden floor. From the terrible whistling of the freezing wind, you assume that a snowstorm had begun sometime into the night.

You were in a living room of sorts, in what appears to be a farmhouse, though certainly it has been abandoned for some considerable time; spiderwebs and dust cover every surface, from the large antique fireplace to the rocking chair sat by your side. A staircase was off to your left, some of the steps caved in. The door by the stairs must be the entrance, rickety and swinging in the wind, its lock rusted and broken. To your farthest side, the living room opens into an elaborate decorative archway, leading into a dilapidated kitchen and dining room. You spot five worn chairs around the extravagant dining room table, seemingly scavenged as none of them matched the other. Another, smaller doorway was on the far wall beyond the table, barely visible as it was covered by a dirty linen tablecloth— perhaps it was broken or had holes, or maybe the door wasn’t there at all? It’s impossible that someone lives here, you think… though evidence of it lingers throughout the room. A pair of shoes by the entrance, a worn leather jacket hung over the back of the rocking chair, and most curiously of all, a chipped porcelain plate sat carefully on the floor by the sofa where you lay, bearing thick slices of bread and dried meat.

The sight makes your stomach growl, and you realize with a start just how hungry you are. You haven’t eaten since the evening before, and even that only consisted of a thin, watery stew; crops were poor this past harvest, the livestock frail and sickly from the bad weather, and as hard as you try to cook hearty meals for your family, there was hardly anything to eat. As starving as you were, however, you couldn’t bring yourself to pick off the plate. Anxious thoughts of poison consumed you, and while the stranger who lived in this farmhouse had saved you, it didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t up to something nefarious. You’ll leave, you decide, before the stranger comes back, and find some berries and nuts to fuel your no doubt painful journey home. It would be proper and polite to thank your savior, but you cannot sit around and wait any longer— surely your mother has noticed your absence and riled up the entire village with her worry.

Before you can do anything more than get your hands beneath you to sit up, an unfamiliar voice calls out from behind you, “You’re awake!”

A strange, unfamiliar man steps out from behind the hanging linen, his smile wide and full of teeth. You’re struck immediately by how handsome he is, with a square face and full lips, dirty blonde hair that hung in his face despite his bangs being pushed back. He was tall and well built, with defined muscles in his thick arms, visible through the material of his thin white undershirt. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, exposing the strength and corded veins in his hands and forearms. The lacing on the front was loose and undone, exposing a wide sliver of his chest; your eyes are met with honeyed tan skin, gentle brown eyes that sparkle when he draws nearer. You have dozens of questions, thoughts scattered and spinning circles around your head, but you struggle to find the words for any of them.

“Wh-where am I?” you settle on asking, your throat raw and scratchy from misuse. The man’s smile softens, almost pitying.

“We took you home.” He replies smoothly and simply, like he was talking to a scared child; he’s gotten so close now, almost uncomfortably so. He kneels by the sofa, face hardly a foot from yours. “We found you like this, unconscious on the ground— how did you get hurt, little one? What are you doing so far into the woods?”

“Who’s we?” you insist, ignoring his questions. You don’t think you can answer them anyway. “There are others here?”

He looks at you in a way that makes your skin crawl, though not entirely in a bad way. The look in his eyes was far too familiar for a stranger, akin to the adoration of a loved one. It was as if he was looking through you, studying your insides by studying your face, like he could read your thoughts written on your skin. It makes your stomach flutter and your face burn; no man has ever looked at you with such intensity before.

Longing. He looked at you like he was longing. For what, you don’t know.

“My brothers,” he answers you, “They’re out hunting for now. You must be starving. Please, eat what little I could find for you— I know it’s not much, but you must get your strength up, at least until they come back with a fresh kill. The food will help with the pain, Taehyun can give you more medicine once your belly is full.”

He picks up the plate and offers it to you, but you push it away. “This is your home? Wh-what are you doing living out here, in the Blackwoods? In this terrible place no less! It’s far too dangerous, the monsters—”

“Monsters?” the man echoes curiously, “There are no monsters in this forest.”

“You’re mistaken!” you insist, propping yourself up higher on your hands; through the window you can see only dense trees, not a sliver of the sky, and it feels suffocating. “I saw one with my own eyes! Surely it will come looking for me again. I must get back home to my village, The Blackwoods bring nothing but certain death!”

You swing your feet off the sofa and plant them on the floor, gritting your teeth from the way your ankle screams in agony. Every part of you ached from the simplest of movements, but you cannot wait even a second longer in these terrible woods, like a sitting duck just waiting to be hunted. The man catches you before you make even one step, his large hands gripping your arms roughly. “What are you doing?!” he all but roars, face slack with shock and concern. “You cannot leave in this condition! We’ll keep you safe here, take care of you! You don’t have to worry, nothing can hurt you while you’re with me and my brothers. This beast you speak of, describe it to me and I’ll hunt it down for you. I’ll bring you its head. Anything to ease your fears, my star.”

He eases you back down onto the sofa, nursing your ankle in his large hands-- your head spins with his words, unable to digest any of them. What does he mean, when he calls you his star? He couldn't possibly be serious when he says he'll hunt down that beast, but the deadly look in his eyes frightens you. You couldn't fathom staying here, but it seems as if this man, and his brothers, have no intention of letting you go.

He talks to you like a mad man. Were you... trapped here? Held hostage? What was he going to do to you?

"It was a terrible thing." you whisper, almost to yourself. "Big and hulking, lurking in the shadows. With eyes redder than any I've ever seen, red like blood. It never came into the moonlight, I never got a good look at it outside of just its eyes..."

The man hums in keen interest, trailing his thumb gently over your ankle before guiding you to lay back as you were with your leg propped. "These woods are large and deep, vastly so. My brothers and I have only lived in this wood for a few moons, after we were ambushed and ran out of our old den... your description of this beast, you call it... it sounds a lot like the pack that ambushed us all that time ago. They must have followed us."

"A pack? like wolves?" you gasp, "How did you fight them off?"

"Not quite wolves." He laughs hollowly. "Men, dresserd in furs. You may mistake them for wolves, but none truly live in the Blackwoods. I would recognize them anywhere... they’re my kin, after all."

"What.. what do you mean? Are you saying that you're a wolf? I'm looking right at you and I can tell you myself right now, that you aren't."

The man cracks a crooked grin. "You'll come to find out soon enough. Stay with us, make this your home, at least for now. If the pack had followed us all the way out here, they won't stop until I've killed every last one of them myself. "

"What are you?” you ask in a hushed voice, half in rapture and half in fear.

Your mother always told you that you were too old to believe in magical creatures and beasts from the folklore, but your grandfather had told you countless stories of his own encounters before his death-- no one ever believed him, but you did. You do. And especially after your encounter from the night before, paired with this strange man's words, you'll believe anything. This man... he couldn't possibly be what he seemed.

"My name is Yeonjun." he answers you, which wasn't an answer at all. You accept it nonetheless, settling back onto the sofa though you eye him warily. He's given up on trying to get you to eat, and instead he just kneels by your side and watches you intently, his oak brown eyes deep and searching.

"My name is Y/N." you tell him quietly. For a second, for a reason you can't understand, he looks confused, but quickly covers it up with a warm smile and crinkled eyes.

"That's a beautiful name. It fits you, my beautiful star."

"Why— why are you calling me that? Your star? I don't understand, we've never met before, and I am certainly not yours. And this place is not my home, it will never be. I’ll entertain you and your insistence that I must rest, but only because I’m certain that I wouldn’t make it very far as I am now. Especially with that… thing out there. But the moment I am able I will be leaving this place.”

Yeonjun shakes his head as if you were an ignorant child, his thumb still working over your bruised ankle. "If that is what you wish. But the moon had told me that you would come to me, to us, completing our pack. A shooting star over our den, just like in my dreams... Once those wolves have been eradicated and your foot has healed, you can.... venture out back to your little human village."

Human village. You scoff to yourself.

If he won't tell you himself what ever kind of creature he is underneath his facade of human flesh, you'll just have to find out for yourself.

Just as you open your mouth to hound Yeonjun with another question, that rickety front door swings open with a terrible creak. The sound startles you and makes you squeak, and Yeonjun is quick to throw himself over your body to protect you. He relaxes, however, when he sees the four men who pad into the farmhouse.

"Ah, my brothers. They're finally back... and with fresh kill, I see."

The men make their way to you and Yeonjun, triumphant smiles on their faces. They all appear to be similar in age to their brother, though you note that they look nothing like each other at all, and you doubt that any of them were truly related. It’s just then that you see the large buck they have strung up and hog tied, drug across the floor behind them. It’s fur is matted with mud and snow.  Blood drips from its gnarled antlers onto the wooden floor.

The sight of it sends a terrible wave of nausea through you, and you throw your hand up over your mouth to keep from gagging. The buck's throat had been sliced from ear to ear, jagged and deep enough that it was nearly decapitated, esophagus and arteries exposed. Patches of its fur were torn out of its pale flesh, body covered in terrible scratches and all four of its legs broken and bent in odd, unnatural directions. The buck had been young, evident from the fleshy, bleeding velvet that hung in tatters from its antlers, leaving them looking more like entrails or organs than horns. The four boys were all drenched in it's dark, musky blood, their clothes soaked through and their faces smeared with it, filling the farmhouse with the acrid, coppery scent of death.

The shortest one of them was the first to speak, his voice surpisingly light and airy for his strong build and chiseled face. "It's your turn to dress and cook it, hyung."

Yeonjun scowls at him like a spoiled toddler. "But you're better at it than I am. It's not fair to make me go out in the cold and the snow just to do a poor job."

The tallest one scoffs, his feathery black hair falling over his eyes. "You're so ungrateful! We were just out in that snow for hours! The least you can do is pull your own weight around."

"I have been, thank you. Watch your mouth." Yeonjun sneers. "I've been taking care of our lovely guest here, if you haven't noticed. She's just woken up."

"She's awake!" the boy next to the shortest crows excitedly. Like Yeonjun, he had downy, dirty blonde hair that hung in shaggy tufts over his face and ears. He grinned at you with an upside down smile. "I was starting to get worried she was never going to wake up. She's been asleep for days."

"I've been asleep for days?!" you gasp, swinging your head in Yeonjuns direction— he looks at you guiltily. "How long? Just how long have I been here?"

"About two or three days, give or take. Taehyun has knowledge in healing; he's been tending to your wounds..."

Your heart sinks in your chest, dread weighing down hard on your sloping shoulders. You’ve been missing for days— this is worse than you could have imagined. Your family, Heeseung, the rest of the village… they must all think you’re dead. Perhaps they've even had a funeral for you already, your mother having to spend her last few coins on mourning clothes.

“Oh, Mother, Father, I'm so sorry...." you sniffle, your body shaking like a leaf.

The shock and grief that takes over you is too much to bear, and fat tears began to flow down your cheeks in an endless stream. You sob into your hands as the five men watch over you in silence, all standing still and peering down at you with odd expressions. Yeonjun moves to comfort you, but you shrug him off with a hiccup.

"Let her cry." the fourth brother finally speaks up, his deep voice gruff and annoyed. "I’m starving and we have days’ worth of meat to prepare."

Yeonjun hesitates, but after a moment of hovering he does leave your side. They all filter out one by one; Yeonjun grabs his coat from the rocking chair and storms outside, the large blond brother following him close behind. He drags the buck’s carcass behind him with little effort, a frightening show of strength, its severed neck hung open and dragging across the floor, leaving behind an unsightly trail of smeared blood. The shortest and the tallest made their way through the far archway, while the dark-haired, unfriendly brother disappeared up the wobbly, creaking stairs. You were alone again, stuck on the moldy sofa and gritting your teeth from the lingering pain, your tears not stopping no matter how hard you tried to dry your eyes.

You learned how to cry in silence years ago, never wanting your parents or siblings to overhear; you always had to be strong for them, a pillar for them to lean on. Quietly you grieve for what feels like hours, not Yeonjun nor any of the brothers reappearing to check up on you— as painful as it was to be left to drown in your own sorrow, part of you can’t help but feel grateful for the distance. It gives you the space you need to think clearly, to work out what exactly was happening and what you should do.

Yeonjun was right, as much as you desired to fight him; you were in no condition to make it back through the forest, and you doubt that you could even manage to sneak out of this rickety, creaking farmhouse without alerting at least one of the brothers. And with that beast in the forest… from Yeonjun’s words it seemed as if there were more than just the one you saw, and the idea of coming face to face with a whole pack of them alone and injured sends an ice-cold shiver down your spine. You’ll just have to sit it out here, endure these men and their strangeness for as long as it takes for your foot to heal and for your path to be safe, and before any of them realize you’ll be gone without a trace.

How you were going to explain this to your village, you had no idea…. You’ll figure it out when the time comes.

The shortest brother— Taehyun, you believe his name is— reappears above you once your sobs turn to sniffles, a wicker basket clutched tight in his fists. He approaches your side cautiously, like you would a frightened animal. Your hands hang limply at your sides, and you don't move to look up at him; it doesn't seem to bother him in the slightest, settling down on his knees next to you in stoic silence before unpacking the contents of the basket. Out come clutches of leaves and herbs you've never seen before, and a roll of what looked like doctor’s bandages. It's surprising that he has them, and you wonder briefly where he could have gotten them from. Perhaps somewhere inside this farmhouse.

You hiss in pain when he takes your ankle into his hands, but he ignores you, bending your leg over the side of the sofa to examine the bruising and the open gash across your foot. It was just then that you noticed you had already been bandaged, the off white linen soaked dark red in blood to the point you couldn't distinguish it from the leaves or your skin. he unwinds the old bandage with careful precision and peels away the old leaves, inspecting the wound with an upturned nose before grabbing a few of the new, fresh leaves he had placed down on the dusty floor. You watch as he takes a pocketknife to the skin of the leaves, gently rubbing until the fuzz on the surface gave way and they became malleable and moist before wrapping your foot and ankle in the leaves. There’s a sharp burning sensation when the leaves first make contact with your skin, and you bite your lip to keep in any whimpers as he continues down the entirety of your foot.

"What are those?" you ask him under your breath, picking at the hem of your dress.

"Lamb’s ear." He responds simply, not looking up from his careful handiwork. There’s deer blood still caked and dried on his calloused, rough hands. "They're old, but they'll do for now. I’ll go searching for more later, once the sun comes back up."

"Why are you--"

"It'll keep it from getting infected, and it'll help with the pain. Do you always ask so many questions? I'm doing you a favor."

"Yeonjun asked you to do this." you say, a statement not a question.

Taehyun just nods tersely, his large brown eyes hooded and glaring down the slope of his angular nose. His thick brow was quirked in annoyance, grip on your leg a little rougher as he takes up the bandage and wraps it around over the leaves. He was soft-spoken, but something darker lingered beneath his clipped responses, and the intensity in his face intimidated you. You don't want to anger him any further, so you ask no more questions, instead staring unblinking at your lap as he ties the bandage off and stands back up.

 “Hyung is Alpha. If he demands we serve you, then we will.” He says cryptically, matter of fact and hollow. “Stay off your feet as much as you can for the next moon or so. The more you rest, the faster you’ll heal, and the faster you can leave.”

“A moon?! Do you mean I have to stay here like this for a full month?! That’s preposterous, I can’t possibly—” you sit up suddenly, wincing from the way your body fights the movement.

Taehyun stops you with a single scathing look. “Living under this roof means you live as part of the pack. You’ll obey your alpha as we do, and you’ll obey us as well, omega.”

You open your mouth to ask him what exactly he means by Alpha, but it’s too late—Taehyun picks the basket up and turns to walk away swiftly, leaving you to gape at his retreating back.

The rest of the night goes by in a blur. The boys all wash up for their meal, something you couldn’t help but feel grateful for, even as your stomach turned from the chipped porcelain plates the brothers laid out on the kitchen table, crudely carved slabs of barely cooked venison that still bled when prodded with a knife. Yeonjun carries you to the table as if you were royalty, ignoring your desperate pleas that you could make the few feet yourself. He perches ever so gently on his lap even as you squirm and complain, and he insists on hand feeding you small slices of venison carefully cut one by one— you refuse every unappetizing, bloody piece he wags in front of your face, yet he persists until Taehyun convinces him to stop and eat himself.

The bread and cheese you had been offered earlier was laid out on the table, and as your stomach growled and you grew more ravenous you couldn’t resist from reaching over and picking at the crudely cut cubes and slices. The bread was stale and dry, and the cheese was bitter, but as hungry as you were you couldn’t find it within yourself to care. Yeonjun seems content with you having finally eaten something, and he leaves you be to sit silently on his lap.

Throughout the rest of the meal you’re unsure of what to do with yourself, torn halfway between cowering into Yeonjun’s side and bolting onto the table. The brothers eat like pigs and ogle at you the entire time, odd expressions creased on their messy faces as if you were a creature they had never seen before. You curl into yourself under their gazes, only free of them when Yeonjun finishes his plate and brings you to bed.

His bed. Just as dilapidated as the rest of the house, devoid of anything more than an iron wrought queen bed and a dresser. He gently lays you down gently on the feather mattress and tucks the blankets under your chin. You’re still bloody and dirty, and you feel disgusting, but the idea of bathing or undressing around this man makes your sensitive stomach churn. You lie there completely still, unable to even breathe until he turns and leaves you, but only after seemingly contemplating something within himself for a painfully long moment. The entire house creaks with the movements of the other boys, all getting ready in their own bedrooms, their laughter and banter echoing through the thin walls. Once the last brother goes to sleep you’re left frightfully awake in the silence and in the dark, not even a candle or an oil lamp to ease your fears. All around you was the sounds of the forest, almost deafening now, surrounding and trapping you as if it were alive. You toss and turn for hours, and you’re unable to fall asleep until the sun finally starts to peek back up over the horizon. All you can think of is home, the terrible creaking of the trees, and the violent wind.

As exhaustion finally overtakes you, you swear amongst the howling of the storm, you hear the howl of a wolf.

You don’t know why you return. Perhaps it was to satiate your own morbid curiosity — to tell yourself that last night hadn’t been real, that it had all just been a sick joke played by your wild imagination. Or maybe, maybe you returned because a small part of you, one that you refused to acknowledge, wanted to know more. 

Perhaps it was even in the way the forest called for you as the sun set. The wind sang a foreign, longing melody and the long branches of trees beckoned you closer. You think it was in the way your feet led you through your front door and out in the darkness without a second’s hesitation, without an ounce of fear. 

And so you walk the familiar path of stone and mud, carved by nature itself — pushing through bushes and tripping over snares in search of the familiar light. The night is cold, terribly so. Your arms are wrapped around your chest, jaw clenched and eyes squinting against the chilly breeze. 

For what feels like hours and eternity, you walk. With nothing but the guide of the forest and a strange sense of familiarity you walk. Soon enough, you find what you had been searching for all along — the very thing that had haunted your mind since the evening prior. 

The circus tent stands tall and proud, still raised in the middle of the meadow, far enough to where no human could find it. Not unless they were called, not unless the trees and the wind led them here. 

“Oh– Hi there.” You almost trip over the tiny squirrel. The sight of the familiar yet peculiar little animal makes your heart beat just a little faster. The squirrel, still clad in its red vest and accompanying hat, gives a short squeak as it nuzzles against your outstretched hand. It seemed comfortable around you, not at all skittish. You remember the magician from last night, perhaps he was its owner. 

You supposed asking it would sound kind of stupid. Instead you let it guide you toward the circus opening, just like yesterday. The tiny animal seems eager tonight, jumping on its small feet as it scurries forward. 

The front desk is unoccupied today as well — the same note placed on the table top. “Be back later. Do not feed the squirrel.” 

Alright, noted. 

Walking through the set of thick and crimson curtains takes you inside the large tent. The audience is already seated, excited murmurs echoing through the space as warm lights illuminate the area. The squirrel finds a front row seat for you once again, you don’t question it as you sit down. 

To both your left and right are two women in their fifties this time. Just like last, they’re chatting eagerly with those around them. You still can’t grasp exactly what is being said, the words blend together, coming out a rambled mess that you find yourself unable to decipher. With a small clearing of your throat, you tap the shoulder of the lady to your right. 

“Excuse me.” 

No response, just like last night. You frown, glancing down toward the squirrel like it could answer all of your questions. But the tiny rodent only stares back at you with big and round eyes, its little nose twitching once before it scurries off. You sigh, sinking back into your seat as you give up on the idea of talking to these people completely. 

Slowly your gaze flickers back toward the stage, the one you had been brought onto last night — memories of Taehyun’s hands all over your chest, his lips on your neck, fingers between– You shudder, squeezing your eyes shut for a brief moment. It had been a trick, a magic trick. He was just toying with you, that’s right. Still, the faint flutter in your chest as you thought about his hot breath in your ear was undeniable. 

Somewhere behind your closed eyelids, the lights dim — the hush of conversation around you fading into nothing as a calm quiet sets over the tent. You don’t open your eyes, not until the familiar voice of the announcer pierces the air. 

“Ladies and gentlemen!” 

Your gaze trails after the stark spotlight that bounces off the tent walls, following the circular shape over the crowd’s idle faces as they stare blankly ahead. It was an uncanny sight, one that made the hairs on the back of your neck stand. 

“We are overjoyed to have you here for yet another night of spectacular… fun.” His voice drops as it takes on an almost sultry tone. Your brows furrow and you twist in your seat in another attempt at finding the face behind it all. But just as the night before, you return with nothing. 

In front of you, the spotlight has shifted from the crowd and over to the ring, likely preparing for the arrival of tonight's performance. Surely whatever was in store for tonight would be different, not what had happened last time, not… You swallow, your throat suddenly feeling dry. 

“Have you ever dreamt of flying?” The voice asks, and around you the audience immediately nods. Their heads move in a synchronised rhythm that feels almost programmed. The faceless man chuckles, his laughter echoing throughout the circus tent. “I bet you have. And tonight you will be witnessing no less than such!” 

Somewhere in the distance a drumroll sounds and you find yourself tensing in anticipation of what you might witness. “Bestow your human eyes on the man himself, Choi Yeonjun!” 

The spotlight redirects from the center of the stage, to somewhere higher. You tip your head back to follow the bright circle as it lands on the man, suspended high in the air, held together by the smooth fabric of red silk. 

Your jaw plummets to the floor. Sure your parents had brought you to see aerial silk performers before. But it was never like this… The ropes themselves reached down from somewhere high above, you weren’t sure where they were actually coming from. And the performer himself — he was too high up for it to be possibly safe. 

Yet he seems unbothered. He moves gracefully, letting the crimson silk wrap around his wrists before pulling himself up. Even from a distance you can see the muscle in his arms as he uses pure strength to haul his body high up in the air. 

The crowd around you lets out timed gasps, their monotone gazes following the man tied within the silk. You’re too focused on the sight taking place before you to even spare those beside you a glance. The man moves effortlessly, arms and legs stretching as he strikes impressive poses with the help of such slippery fabric. 

He makes it seem so easy — transforming himself into one pose after the other, the silk falling around him in waves, like it was following his every command. His back arches, the shirt he wears riding up just slightly, enough to reveal the toned outline of his stomach beneath. Your tongue darts out to wet your lips before you can even register it and you shift slightly in your seat. 

Was every performance meant to be so… erotic? Those around you hardly seemed affected, then again, they didn’t seem very responsive in the first place. Were you the only one who saw what was actually going on? Or were you going crazy?

You’re snapped out of your thoughts when the man you had once regarded from a distance suddenly draws in closer. He swings through the silk ropes, his body moving like it was one with the velvety fabric. The spotlight follows him, putting his now sweat-covered skin on a shiny display. 

The man comes to a halt, his grip on the silk loosening just slightly as he lets himself slide down. He stops when his eyes are leveled with yours. From this close you can clearly make out his sharp and prominent features. The way his eyes crinkle when he gives a small smirk, the slope of his nose and the twitch of his perfect lips. He watches you silently for a moment, one hand holding onto the silk that wrapped around his leg — the other one, reaching for you. 

“Would you join me?” 

His voice is just as smooth as the silk he clung to. He asks the question without faltering, the smirk still stretched across the lower half of his face as he waits expectantly for your acceptance of his hand. Your gaze drops to his open palm, then to his waiting expression. This had to be a coincidence, called to the stage not once but twice? Perhaps the magician from last night hadn’t gotten the chance to tell this man that you had already volunteered. 

Without even meaning to, your attention flickers to those beside you, did they not want to be picked? But the crowd remains their motionless self, all of them watching the man in front of you as though that was what they were programmed for. 

“Well?” He suddenly asks, his smirk faltering for just a moment too long. 

You open your mouth to speak but find the words lodged in your throat. So with a subtle nod that could only have been caught by one who watched you intently, you allow him to take your hand in his. — The second you’ve stood from your seat, he’s pulling you along and your feet lift off the ground. 

The shriek that leaves your lips is swallowed by the audience’s eager applause as you’re hoisted into the air. Frantically you grab onto the closest thing you find, that being the man’s shoulder as your other hand remains laced with his. But he only laughs, like your fear was amusing. “I won’t have you fall”, he says in a breathy chuckle. 

You screw your eyes shut, refusing to watch as you feel the man move against you. He climbs the silk like your weight added on top of his was nothing — he takes you higher and higher, and when you dare a peek down over his shoulder, the audience is but a blurry mess of shadows. 

He comes to a brief pause, twisting the silk to hold him up as he instead moves both hands to your hips. “It’s easy — like flying”, he muses when he reaches for your arm. You wanted to argue that flying wasn’t easy at all, and humanly impossible, but you’re cut short when he wraps the silk around your wrist before laying it across your palm — “Hold on here”, he instructs. 

Doing as he says, you find yourself clinging onto the crimson fabric with a vice-like grip, terrified of falling. The man seems thoroughly pleased with the terrified look on your face as he bends down to secure the silk around your ankles as well. When he deems you secure enough, he lets go, pushing back to sway on a separate piece of fabric in front of you. 

“Don’t look down”, he says when he sees your gaze drifting toward the floor. Your attention snaps back up to him and you swallow down a gulp. His lips stretch into a grin, “The fun is up here, not down there.” 

He swings backward, then forward, shifting his weight onto one side makes him circle around you slowly. The spotlight follows him as he does, like a predator stalking its skittish prey just moments before devouring it. “I… Are you not going to ask me my name?” You wonder as he passes your left. 

The man’s grin only widens, a dangerous glint of something almost forbidden shining behind his eyes. “I already know your name”, he says. 

You freeze, fingers curling a little tighter around the silk. How did he… Before you can even muster the question he speaks again. “You know my name too”, he passes your right, “Don’t you?” 

With a slow nod you exhale, “Yeah. Yeonjun.” You remembered the announcer’s words just moments prior. The promise of  a man who knew how to fly — you had never guessed you’d be the one suspended in the air like this. 

Yeonjun chuckles as he loops around you once more. He made it look so simple, like all it took was a little confidence. But you can feel everything, the way the floor beckons you down, the cold air when this high up, and nothing but this strange man and the bright spotlight to accompany you. 

After exhaling a trembling breath, readjusting your grip on the silk one final time, you attempt to move, if only just a little. But to your surprise, and rapidly growing concern, you find yourself unable to move. With a confused grunt you tug on the silk, but the fabric only tightens around your wrists and ankles. “What…” 

Somewhere in the distance, Yeonjun chuckles. His laugh makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand, and soon enough he’s behind you, hands on your hips. “Careful, or you might fall.” His words ghost along your shoulder, then the curve of your neck — “We wouldn’t want to account for an accident now, would we?” 

You frown, regarding the silk that you had initially thought secured you, now you understood it was meant to bind you all along. A shiver runs down your spine, and the worst part is you can’t tell if it's out of fear or excitement. 

Yeonjun presses a quiet kiss to your neck, one you couldn’t see but feel. His hands squeeze around your hips before moving down your thighs, moving just as carefully as the silk that bound you. “Flying is all about the thrill”, he murmurs into your shoulder and you feel him smirk against your skin. 

He lets the tips of his fingers trail over the inner part of your thighs. The bindings around your ankles suddenly tighten before they pull your legs apart — as though they were controlled by something else entirely. You gasp when his palm presses flat against you through your pants. “Your heart’s racing”, he murmurs, “It usually does the first few times.” 

Then, without another word, he retreats. The touch between your legs disappears and you suddenly feel very exposed under the spotlight. 

Twisting your head left and right you search for him, startled when he seems to almost magically appear in front of you a moment later. He tilts his head to the side, held up by silk that wrapped around his waist in a way that seemed impossible. “No need to look so frightened — not like I’m going to let you fall”, he says. 

You want to answer, say something, but nothing comes out. All you can do is watch with wide eyes as Yeonjun leans in to press another kiss to your neck, this one lingering just a second longer than the last. 

His hand brushes along your arms, fingers tracing the silk around your wrists as though he was greeting an old friend. Then his attention diverts to the pants still secured over your hips. “Don’t worry”, he hums as he hooks two fingers around the waistband, “Flying is all about letting go.” With that he tugs the fabric down your thighs, leaving it to pool around your ankles where the bindings rest. 

Yeonjun chuckles, head tipping back enough to meet your gaze. “They’re such a hassle sometimes.” He lets his hand run along the expanse of your thigh, the silk around his waist loosening as he drops down to come eye level with your stomach. 

Lifting the hem of your shirt, Yeonjun surges forward as he leaves a path of kissing along your skin. He takes his time, going over every spot of exposed flesh he can find, open hands running along your calves, then your knees and the outside of your thighs. 

You shudder, nails digging into your own palms as you bite back a noise of surprise when one of his hands brushes the edge of your panties. “I…” With a hesitant glance you dare a peek down at the crowd, wondering if they were watching you just as intently as Yeonjun was. But the sight of them, so far down, it nearly gives you tunnel vision as your head begins to spin. If you fell right now you’d– 

Yeonjun grips your waist, just hard enough to snap your focus back to him. Your chest heaves, heart pounding against your ribcage as the reality of your current predicament settles in. “I–” You begin, blinking faster than normally as you attempt to calm yourself. But Yeonjun just gives your waist another squeeze, the action loosening your tense muscles in an instant. 

“Told you not to look down”, he murmurs when he shifts his attention back to your still covered cunt. “Thrill is fun — but only when it’s moderate..” His fingers trace the lining of your panties, “Too much of it…” He shakes his head, “No good.” Then, without waiting for you to respond he presses an open mouthed kiss to your core through the thin cotton of our underwear.  

A soft gasp spills from your lips when his tongue flicks out to lick a wet stripe along your dressed cunt. His saliva smears over the fabric, but it hardly seems to deter him as his hands move back to your thighs, fingers digging into the soft flesh. 

“What thrills you?” He suddenly asks between sloppy kisses to your already sensitive core. Then he pauses, nose pressed against your clit through our panties in a way that makes you squirm against the bindings. He blinks once, slowly, like he was thinking about something. “No… “ he drawls, “What excites you?” 

You don’t reply, not right away — too caught up in the way his mouth felt against you. “I…” heart drumming in your ears, it’s impossible to form as much as a single coherent thought, especially not with the way Yeonjun presses his nose firmer against your clit. 

“When I do this?” He muses, “Or this?” His tongue replaces his nose, licking against the soaked fabric of your panties. “Maybe this?” He drawls, one of his hands creeping between your thighs as two of his fingers drag along your center. 

The whine that spills from your lips echoes out into the circus tent — your hips bucking against his face without you being able to stop yourself. Yeonjun only chuckles, dark eyes peering up at you through his long lashes, making him look almost ethereal when viewed from above. Saliva and the evidence of your arousal coats both his lips and chin, and he licks them expectantly before saying: “Maybe you’d want it closer?” 

He doesn't wait for your response as he slips his index finger beneath your drenched underwear. He immediately slides it along your wet cunt, circling your fluttering hole as you clench helplessly around nothing. “Oh, I bet this is what excites you the most”, he muses, a wicked smirk stretching across his face. 

Without taking his hands off of you, he turns his face to nose along the inner parts of your thigh. He murmurs something under his breath, the word registering as ‘perfect’ and your heart beats just a little faster. A soft kiss is placed to your thigh, so tender that you could have never anticipated the harsh bite that followed as Yeonjun sinks his teeth into your skin. 

You shriek, straining against the silk bindings in an attempt to avoid the stinging sensation. But the fabric around your wrists and ankles tighten in protest to your futile attempt at escape, silently restricting your movements even more. 

Yeonjun, though not oblivious to your struggle, doesn’t seem to pay it any mind. He places another kiss, this one just as soft as before, to the mark his teeth had left on your skin. “Thrilling wasn’t it?” He drawls upon shifting his attention back toward your still clothed cunt. “It’s more exciting when you don’t know what to expect…” 

His fingers find their way back under your panties, rubbing against your clit teasingly before dipping lower. He tilts his head to the side, a wry grin on his lips. “Call it the element of surprise.” Without another word he suddenly pushes two fingers inside of your throbbing cunt, curling them to draw out as much pleasure for you as possible. 

Your gasp tears through the air, shortly followed by a moan as your head tips forward. With the way your nails are digging into the silk bindings you’re surprised they have yet to tear. For a moment you even manage to forget that you’re suspended high in the air, with nothing but smooth fabric holding you together as Yeonjun tears you apart. Your bleary eyes search for his, and you find him almost instantly. 

He’s gazing up at you, watching each muscle in your jaw tick as you bite back the noises threatening to spill past your lips. “Don’t.” He murmurs against your stomach, thumb finding your clit as his index and middle finger slide through your slick folds before pushing back inside of you. “Don’t hold back.” 

Yeonjun presses a kiss to the soft skin of your stomach, dark eyes meeting yours as he smiles: “Didn’t I tell you? Flying is all about letting go.” 

His fingers curl inside of you one final time, just enough to where all his previous teasing finally reached a boiling point. The tension coiling deep in your gut twists once, your thighs twitching as you squirm against the silk that still holds you stubbornly in place. This time you don’t hold back the sigh of pleasure as your cunt clenches around his fingers, your orgasm washing over you like a tidal wave. 

Yeonjun’s eyes are glued to your face the entire time, his thumb still flicking against your clit as you shudder against him. 

When the last bit of pleasure finally subsides and the once persistent throb leaves behind nothing but a lingering tingle, you finally lift your head — eyes squinting against the harsh spotlight. You swallow, trying to rid yourself of the dry feeling in your mouth. Just what was this circus all about?” 

You don’t have time to question it as Yeonjun moves back up, the silk around him working in his favor when he pulls your pants back up. “How was it?” He asks when he reaches your face, his lips hovering only inches from your own. 

Dumbfounded, you blink. “How was what?” 

Yeonjun chuckles, “Well what do you think?” He cocks his head to the side, one hand giving the silk that wraps around your wrist a small tug, the action makes you sway slightly, and you’re suddenly reminded where you are. Yeonjun only smirks, “Flying.”

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It was getting rather difficult for Beomgyu to keep the heavy look of censure at bay because the more he worked, the more he began to get aggravated with each brushstroke he had once been so sure of. The shadows he had so painstakingly laid appeared ill-conceived under the afternoon light and the inordinate facial features only enunciated his dissatisfaction. Most offensive of all was the goldenrod hue he had selected for the dress. How terribly it clashed with the red of the subject’s hair — he must have been deranged when he decided on it. 

He paused his movements, the bristles of the paintbrush trembling inches away from contacting the canvas as he was reluctant to land another error. The evident clash of loud colours only fueled his frustration towards the piece and it almost made him discard the poor canvas. 

“It looks lovely to me.”

Beomgyu startled a little at the sudden presence of the woman. She held a lavish bouquet of yellow roses as she ambled across the pale marble floor. The same cursed shade of yellow that had been tormenting his senses. The flowers swayed with each movement, giving the illusion that they, too, were taunting him. Beomgyu barely managed to stifle the groan forming in his throat.

“Thank you, Miss Hyeeun,” he said, putting his paintbrush down as another sigh escaped shortly after. “But it’s a bit of a disaster. This piece deserves no praise.”

Hyeeun, the head caretaker, hummed as she arranged the bouquet in a vase on the sidetable beside him. Her dainty fingers caressed the soft petals. Beomgyu noticed the few wrinkles that were beginning to grace her skin, and how striking it looked holding the fresh blooms. He made a mental note to paint the scene later. The painting will need a good name as well, won’t it? He’ll surely come up with something captivating. 

She looked up from the flowers, arching an eyebrow. “You’re not enjoying yourself,” she stated, brushing her hands on her apron. “Isn’t painting meant to be your greatest delight, young lord?”

Beomgyu made a face. “Oh, do not start with that again. Father isn’t here to eavesdrop behind the doors. There’s no need to call me that.” He tugged on her arm, bringing her in front of the canvas. “Come now, be honest with me. Does that yellow not look dreadful beside the red? Surely a paler tone would suit it better, right?”

“If I were to agree with that,” she muttered, narrowing her eyes, “I’d be adding a few more blocks to my tower of lies.”

Beomgyu frowned at the painting, as if by force of will he might somehow find it improved. But the more he looked, the worse it became. The dress overwhelmed the figure, the figure clashed with the background, and the background — he refused even to acknowledge it. The amount of flaws only piled up. So did the subtle, growing discomfort.

“No,” he said with certainty, “red and yellow simply do not complement one another.”

“It surely doesn't make me think of fried sweets, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Hyeeun gave him a side glance, smiling. It managed to get a laugh from Beomgyu. Then she gently tugged on his ear. “And just so you know, dear, it is a fitting combination.” 

“Unfitting,” he murmured, almost under his breath.

Hyeeun exhaled, a breath that almost resembled laughter, though there was no real humour behind it. Beomgyu began to put his tools away. Suddenly, she held his arm and rolled the sleeve of his shirt, baring his skin. It startled him and before he could snatch his arm away, Hyeeun had already seen it.

Dark patches littered his pale skin — blues and violets tangled with sallow yellow edges. 

"Oh, heavens above," she gasped, eyes widening as she took in the state of him.

Beomgyu tried to smile, though it barely reached the corners of his mouth. "It’s all right, Miss Hyeeun," he said gently, placing a hand on her shoulder. His fingers were smudged with oil, and his thumb left a faint mark on the fabric of her blouse. "They don’t hurt so much anymore, see? They’re beginning to heal."

The bruises were hardly more than three days old. Or was it four? He wasn’t sure. Time blurred when his body decided to forget. His mind, clever as it was, had learnt to tuck the worst bits into the furthest corners – something Beomgyu was glad he was capable of doing. After all, he had survived this long. 

Hyeeun sucked in a sharp breath. “He’s a monster.” Her voice was trembling, eyes were glossy. Her hand, which had fallen away from his sleeve, now clutched at her apron. The sight tugged on his heart.

Without a word, Beomgyu wrapped his arms around the woman. She was smaller than he remembered, her back hunched with age and burden. He rested his chin on her shoulder.

"How could anyone treat a boy like this? The boy he brought into his home — how could he?"

Beomgyu smiled ruefully. He was glad she hadn’t called him that man’s son. She never did, and he cherished her all the more for it.

“It’s okay. You know I’m used to it by now,” he assured her.

When they drew apart, Hyeeun’s hands found his arms once more. Her fingers were rough from years of washing linen and chopping roots, but they were careful as they skimmed over his skin, avoiding the darkest bruises. Her thumbs moved in small circles near the edges. “You don’t deserve this. No child deserves to live in fear.”

“I don’t live in fear,” Beomgyu retorted. “I have you.”

Hearing him, Hyeeun let out a tearful laugh. It was a simple act yet it managed to ease the thumping discomfort in his chest. How could he not feel safe? She’s the only one in the house who treated him like a human being. 

“Do you know why I never left this manor even after knowing how cruel that man is?” she asked. Beomgyu knew but he chose to stay silent, letting her finish. “It’s because of you. The day he brought you home from the orphanage, you looked so small and lost, Beomgyu. I told myself then—if he’s staying, then so am I. Someone had to be there for you." She was staring at the floor now, her expression twisted. "That lowlife bastard. He made your life a living hell."

Beomgyu shook his head. He cupped her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks. “Well, he’s not doing a really good job at that either. Because I know I have someone who loves and cares for me.” — Which wasn’t entirely true but having someone like her by his side made the hell worth living.

Hyeeun’s teary eyes softened, the wrinkles at the corners deepening and it almost made Beomgyu’s eyes moisten. For a brief moment, it almost felt alright. But it all came crashing down when a thunderous voice rang behind the closed doors through the halls and all the colours drained from Beomgyu’s face at once. The panic in his eyes was so vivid, so alarming that he whipped his head towards the door — high on alert — as if that person would be here at any moment. 

He wasn’t the only one who was in shock. Hyeeun was bewildered as well. Her voice came faintly. “He’s not meant to be back ‘til next week…”

That was true. Beomgyu’s father had only just departed for his business trip the day before. So why was he here now? And he was looking for Beomgyu. Beomgyu’s senses came back to him. His father was looking for him.

“You’ve got to go,” Beomgyu said urgently, already pushing Hyeeun toward the adjoining door.

All of her protests fell deaf to his ears. Hyeeun can't be seen with him. If his father saw her with him beside the painting — god knows what he’ll do to her and Beomgyu could never let anything happen to the only person who made this hellhole feel like a home to him. 

“Beomgyu, wait—” she whispered-yelled, desperate. “He’ll hurt you.”

Her face was breaking as she clutched onto his hand. Beomgyu could tell she knew he was scared yet he put on a big grin for her. It was feeble and flickered out just as fast, but it was the best he could manage.

“I’ll be fine,” he assured, again. He reached for the doorknob, giving her that final push toward the corridor. “But you won’t be if he sees you.”

With that he closed the door, trying to control his heartbeat as he moved away and walked towards the canvas. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead as he heard the footsteps getting louder and in the blink of an eye the main door to the room flew open. Beomgyu didn’t move an inch. He held his breath in.

Standing at the door was a relatively shorter man but with a strong build. An aura of power and superiority hung in the air around him as walked in.  The man didn’t bat an eye at Beomgyu and instead let his gaze travel around the room. It stopped on the canvas. Beomgyu felt his throat go dry, already knowing what was about to come. 

As if fire had ignited, his father’s eyes lit up like an animal. He turned, nostrils flaring, and strode across the room with long, firm strides toward Beomgyu.

“You impudent little runt!” he barked, and before Beomgyu could so much as take a step back, the man’s hand had already lashed out.

The slap cracked through the air like a whip. Beomgyu’s head snapped to the side, his cheek immediately burning. He didn’t stumble, but his eyes watered and he clenched his jaw, the coppery taste of fear — or blood — thick on his tongue. He was sure the slap left a weal behind already.

A stunned silence followed, only the anger flared breathing of his father reached him because he was now standing right before him.

“How many blasted times do I need to tell you? Painting’s not for men!” the man spat, his large hand now balled around Beomgyu’s collar, dragging him forward.

“I’m sorry,” Beomgyu whispered, looking down. 

“Oh, you will be sorry.”

With brute force, his father shoved him backward. The breath left Beomgyu’s chest as he staggered, nearly losing his footing. Beomgyu’s eyes widened as his father picked up a bottle of paint, remorselessly hurling it straight at the canvas.

Red.

It spattered across the canvas in messy rivulets that bled down the stretched linen and pooled onto the pristine white marble below. Disbelief and anger engulfed the boy but he remained silent, balling his fists as his nails dug crescents on the supple flesh. He waited for his father’s next move because Boemgyu knew it wouldn't simply end there. 

The man approached him again. His eyes were glowering as his hand went for Boemgyu’s face again. Was he going to hit him again? It'd be a hassle for the wound to heal if he hit him on the same spot. He wasn't met with another slap. Instead, a burning pain shot through his scalp. This time he couldn’t bite back his yelp.

“Never,” his father spat through gritted teeth, yanking his hair, “pick up a paintbrush again.” Another wrench, this time enough to feel like hair being plucked off, and Beomgyu clenched his jaw through the sting of fresh tears. “Do you understand, boy?”

Silent tears rolled down his cheeks, the pain making him cry involuntarily. “I understand, father.” 

The man left once he heard him speak. His retreating figure vanished through the doorway, leaving behind a room still humming with the remnants of his fury. 

Beomgyu remained still for a moment, the sting in his scalp fading only slightly, replaced by the slow burn of anger and shame. He raised one hand, pressing his palm to his cheek, where the slap still throbbed in a bright, pulsing ache. His fingers were tacky with red paint now, mixing with the dampness from his tears. He took a breath through his nose, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. However, he was glad that was all his father did. A slap, no matter how much it stung, was better than bruised ribs or a fractured wrist. It would fade quickly enough.

The mess on the canvas was beyond salvaging, not that it mattered. He was going to paint over it anyway. The floor would be a problem. He looked around to search for any other places that had paint on and visibly flinched when he found it.

The red paint had touched the yellow roses.

The vibrance of the yellow extinguished as red traversed, streaks of it curved down their edges like veins, soaking into the softness with an almost grotesque contrast. It was enchanting to look at but in a discomforting way. He stared at it for a while before scoffing. 

“I knew it. Red and yellow don't complement one another.”

He often escaped through the backdoor of the manor after such cruel ordeals, slipping past the kitchens and silent corridors, past the ornate arches and manicured hedges that had long since lost their meaning, until he reached the place where the stone path gave way to earth. A soft canopy of green filtered the light above him, its rustling leaves offering something close to reprieve. The groundskeeper no longer came out this far as no guests were shown this way, and the flowers here were left to bloom or wither on their own.

The path sloped gently into a shallow dirt road, broken in places and littered with dry leaves. It gave way to a small lake at the very outskirts of the manor's reach, where the water, still and golden in the afternoon light, reflected little of the estate’s imposing image. It was secluded enough to feel like a separate world. Out here, the land stopped obeying, and the estate lost its leash and that was precisely why Beomgyu came here. He found a strange comfort in that. This was where he could breathe without having to constantly look over his shoulder in fears of being watched.

The staff in the manor never participated in the abuse, but they didn't do anything to stop it either. Beomgyu understood the fear deeply rooted in them, and also how they’re bound to his father’s authority because they don't wish to bite the hand that feeds them. It didn’t mean he felt any less alone.

He wandered aimlessly, not looking for anything in particular, stepping over fallen branches and dipping his shoes into the wet earth as he walked toward the lake, where the view opened up wide and the sky was allowed to stretch. His thoughts felt too loud in the stillness. He pressed his palm to the back of his neck, trying to ground himself, letting his eyes close. 

It was there, beside a twisted old willow, that he heard it. A soft melody — almost like a lullaby — carried by the wind. 

Beomgyu frowned, uncertain if he imagined it. He hesitantly looked around the expanse of nature, feeling a little conscious because no one was supposed to be here. At least, no one has been here for years anyway. As long as he could remember, it was just him.

Still the melody continued, the faint sweet sound drew him in. His steps quietened as he left the trail, brushing past overgrown hedges and vines that caught at his sleeves.

It was just beyond the slope near the lake’s edge that he saw you.

Sitting leaning against a tree, back to him, knees tucked up as you balanced something in your lap. It was a small, wooden instrument, its polished surface catching small dappled specks of sunlight that filtered through the canopy. You played with care, thumbs dancing slowly over the keys. 

Beomgyu almost turned back. He didn’t know you — what were you doing here?

But something in the melody held him there. The part you began to play was familiar. It was familiar not in a way he could identify, but it was there, lodged in the hollows of memory, where time pressed its thumbprint and left things dusty but intact. His heart churned, not understanding why he felt that way. He knew this melody. He had heard it before, he was sure of it, but where? It slipped just beyond reach, like a name he should’ve remembered.

Your fingers halted in their movement abruptly, though your shoulders stayed relaxed. Beomgyu had not expected to be noticed but you turned your head and looked directly at him. Your eyes didn’t flicker in surprise, nor did you fidget or make any show of being caught unaware. If anything, you looked like you had expected him. You offered a small smile almost as if you were welcoming a neighbor instead of a stranger.

“Oh,” you said, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “Didn’t think anyone came out this far.”

He blinked, awkwardly aware of how out of place he felt now. “Neither did I,” he replied, then immediately wished he hadn’t. He sounded so stupid. What else was he supposed to say? He should have asked who you were, what you were doing here, why you were playing that tune — but something about your presence made it hard to summon suspicion.

You didn’t look like someone out of place. In fact, in his mind it felt like you were the remaining puzzle piece needed to finish the entire scenery. You looked like you belonged here more than he ever had.

“I hope I didn’t bother you,” you added, gently placing the kalimba on your lap. “The sound carries, I guess.”

“No, it’s... fine.” He hesitated, then nodded at the instrument. “That song… it’s—it sounds familiar. What’s it called?”

Your gaze sharpened just slightly but the smile didn’t slip. It made Beomgyu’s skin crawl a little, the goosebumps settling down persistently. “Really?” you said after a pause that wasn’t long enough to be awkward. “I’m afraid you’re probably mistaking it for some other melody. My parents used to sing it to me. It’s old and personal.”

He nodded, though he felt mildly foolish for asking so directly. He shouldn’t have said it like that, so brash outright. He was about to apologize but you laughed lightly. 

“What else does it sound like other than familiar?”

What an odd question. He was caught off guard again, and his brows pulled together. It wasn’t a question he’d expected but Beomgyu found himself pondering, eyes narrowing faintly in thought. He tried to put the feeling into words. “Feels like a dream I forgot.”

You tilted your head at that, your gaze flicking to the side before returning to him. Your expression was thoughtful in a way that made Beomgyu stand a little straighter. Then you smiled, and this time there was a trace of approval in it. “That’s a nice way to put it. You’re an artist.”

“Pardon?” Beomgyu gaped at you. His posture stiffened, unsure of how you’d drawn that conclusion from so few words, from so short a meeting.

You only smiled again, putting the kalimba inside the small satchel by your side. "Only someone who sees the world in shapes and metaphors says things like that. Besides, look at your hands."

You stood up, brushing your clothes as you pointed a finger at his hands. He had cuffed the sleeves up to his arms. The red paint from earlier still decorated his skin as he didn’t clean it off, but what made him squirm on spot was the bruises that too were on display, and for you to see. Beomgyu thought you were pointing at those so he quickly began to cover them by tugging his sleeves down.

You had approached him by then, startling him by gently taking his hands into yours. Your hands were soft and clean unlike his calloused, paint and bruise tainted ones. 

“You have pretty hands.” You looked up at him, squeezing his hands lightly. “Exactly like an artist’s.”

Beomgyu didn’t know what to do with your words. They weren’t coated with mockery. You hadn't looked away from him, not once, and though the bruises were in plain sight, you didn’t recoil or ask about them. It was simply as if they didn’t redefine what you saw when you looked at him. 

The things you said, the things you did, and the way you’d arrived here and folded into this moment weren’t necessarily odd but at the same time they were.

“Who are you?” he quietly asked.

Beomgyu expected you to step away from him but you didn’t. Instead, your grin seemed to have regained a newer kind of life to it as you slightly leaned in towards him. “What do you want me to be? A friend, a stranger, or a dream?”

A gust of wind blew overhead, making the trees sing and the leaves dance around you and him. A ripple washed over the lake in subtle motion, its surface shifting just enough to catch the late afternoon light in warped patterns, as if nature herself waited with you in silence to hear his answer. 

Beomgyu’s mind went into a static silence. His mouth parted but no words came out. Your hands were warm as you held him and that did little to no help making thoughts articulate easier for him. His silence rang loudly in his ears, or wait, was it his breathing? His heartbeat? The sound of his blood rushing into his ears, perhaps? He felt dizzy.

Before he could spiral even further, your soft laughter reached out and pulled him out of his mind like pulling him out from under a water surface.  You hid your laugh behind a hand before using it to wave him off dismissively.

“I'm joking, I'm joking! I'm sorry for messing with you.” You let go of his hands and Beomgyu suddenly felt like he was losing his grip on the world. “I was looking for a quiet spot to play my kalimba and stumbled upon this place. I hope I didn't trespass… I didn’t think this area would have people around.”

Your explanation sounded believable. You looked like you were telling the truth too. You really had nothing else with you, just you and the kalimba, as if you’d simply wandered into the scene from somewhere outside the borders of his world. And technically, you weren’t trespassing. This stretch of land wasn’t private property — at least not under the holdings of his father — so there wasn’t any reason to accuse you of wrongdoing.

Even after conversing with himself in his mind over the rationality of your appearance, he could not speak. And you must have noticed, because you tilted your head just a little, your expression more apologetic than teasing now.

“I’ve probably already confused you enough for one day,” you said, and even though you spoke with a smile your words weren’t comforting to say the least. You were walking away. Your back was now facing him, already a few steps ahead and it didn’t sit right with him.

Beomgyu blinked as if just waking from a daydream. For the first time since you’d approached him, he felt his mind working. — “Will I see you again?” — or maybe no.

It came out more strained than he liked, not because he was desperate or flustered but because the words surprised even him. The moment he said them, he wasn’t sure whether he regretted asking.

The wind had stilled, and your fingers, which had been playing with the edge of your sleeve just a moment ago, fell still at your side. He recoiled internally, because up till now he was assuming you were the odd one between the two of you and now he went and asked such an absurd question. Oh God he must've sounded like a pervert. Hyeeun would be so disappointed.

But you turned slightly, and you did not smile rather had your gaze downwards on the grassy land. It was a different look from what you wore just moments before. It was more solemn, more rueful. 

“If you wish for something with all your heart,” you said without trying to imply more than what the words meant, “it will come true, right?”

The hair on his arms and neck rose as goosebumps kissed his skin the moment you faced him as you said ‘right’ with a small tug of your lips. He felt compelled to look away and every atom in his body was screaming at him to run yet he didn’t want to. The intensity in your gaze enchanted him as much as it made his stomach churn uncomfortably. 

“Goodbye, Beomgyu.”

He shifted slightly on his feet, a breath catching at the back of his throat as he tried to regain his balance. It wasn’t until you were already out of sight, your form swallowed up by the trees and their shadows, that the realization struck him cold and fast. 

He never gave you his name.

It was one of those weary, sleepless nights, where Beomgyu lay in bed with his eyes fixed on the blank expanse overhead. The moonlight that slipped through the edges of the heavy curtains cast faint patches across the walls, and the stillness of the room was far too suffocating to be warm.

His cheek still ached. The maids had noticed; a few hours later, one had returned with an ice pack tucked in a folded cloth napkin, her fingers twitching nervously as she handed it over without meeting his eyes. Albeit some hesitated in fear of getting caught, they couldn’t hide the pity filling their eyes when they saw him. In between his loneliness, he still found reasons to be thankful whenever they did this much for him.

He turned to his side and closed his eyes, hoping that the simple act of shutting out the world might finally lull him into sleep, yet as soon as his eyelids met, that fragile attempt dissolved, leaving him trapped in a restless limbo where thoughts drifted aimlessly. Each night, the same battle raged within Beomgyu, wrestling with the tides of self-reproach, regret, and a gnawing sense of weakness that clung to him and asking why he hadn’t done more. Why did he never fight back?

There were never any answers, only that this was his life now. He had grown used to it. He was forced to grow used to it. His mind wandered through the memories of those countless sleepless nights, the haunting image of the roses tainted with red, the chaos he could neither control nor escape, and the youth he felt slipping away, bartered and sacrificed to forces beyond his command. 

Unexpectedly, he thought of you. A sudden jolt of anxiety coursed through his chest as your presence echoed in the corners of his mind, leaving him bewildered and unsettled by the perplexing fact that you had spoken his name without him ever giving it away.

He shifted onto his back, staring up at the ceiling now illuminated only by the muted moonlight filtering through the curtains. His mind now more awake and alert despite the late hour, anxiety tightening its grip as he considered the reach of his father’s reputation. Granted his father was a man widely recognized as a famous assemblyman but he had hardly ever let the spotlight fall on Beomgyu. Beomgyu remained a shadow, scarcely seen and even less spoken of, his name almost lost amid the noise of his father’s power, making the fact that you had known it all the more unsettling and inexplicable.

Just then, a soft knocking pattern interrupted the swirl of his thoughts. Already knowing who stood on the other side, he sat up wiping a hand over his face to dispel the tension etched into his features. When the door creaked open, relief settled over him like a balm as Hyeeun entered briskly, her steps hurried yet careful as she crossed the room and wrapped him in a firm embrace that squeezed the breath from his lungs. It’s as if all the pain washed away from the prior incident of the morning the moment Hyeeun appeared into his room. 

Pulling away she let her concerned gaze sweep over the angry swelling blooming across his face. “I heard from the other girls,” she said, the sight made her wince involuntarily. “I wish I had the power to save you from this man,” she added, her voice catching slightly as she battled the frustration and helplessness that so often accompanied the helplessness of watching someone you cared for suffer.

Beomgyu placed a hand on hers, the smile never fading. He was truly lucky, he thought, to have someone who still cared for him. That care was a luxury he often felt he hadn’t earned yet Hyeeun gave it freely.

She had raised him herself from the first moment he arrived at the estate, barely tall enough to reach the table and thin as a reed. She made sure he ate, even when he claimed he wasn’t hungry. She taught him his letters with the same care she used to scrub his muddy knees clean after he'd fallen in the garden. At night, she would tuck him into bed and smooth down his hair, pressing a kiss to his head, soft and instinctive, as if he’d always been hers.

His father — the man who had taken him in for reasons Beomgyu still couldn’t fully comprehend back then — had never even bothered to ask whether he needed help with anything; never once checked if he had enough to wear in the winter or if he was struggling to keep up with his lessons. All of that had fallen to Hyeeun, who bore the burden without ever treating it like one. And when his father’s temper turned violent, when a misplaced word or broken glass resulted in bruises darkening his ribs or his arms, it had been Hyeeun who sat beside him late into the night, treating his wounds and humming under her breath. Her hands, though aged by work, were always careful, never trembling even when he winced. If she hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t had her steady presence at his side through those long, difficult years, Beomgyu was certain he wouldn’t still be here.

She had already done more for him than most mothers did for their own children. Beomgyu suddenly became aware of the lump in his throat. He needed her to know how much he appreciated her. 

“On that day…” he began, voice hoarse as he tried to recall it clearly, though time had made some of it hazy. “I wasn't looking at him. In fact, I was looking at you. I felt safe just by your presence, and the way you stared at me — with so much love. I felt I was already loved.”

There was a pause as he exhaled, laughing breathlessly like he was almost embarrassed to admit it. “Quite funny, isn't it? Because I didn't even know you back then. Yet—” he swallowed hard, feeling the familiar tightness at the base of his neck. “Yet something in my mind told me I'd be the happiest if I accepted to be adopted in this family.”

His gaze dropped, fixed on the carpet beneath their feet hoping the pattern might distract him. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her. If he did, he was sure everything he’d worked to suppress would come spilling out in an instant.

“And I know no one will agree with me if I say it — I truly am the happiest despite the things he put me through. Only because of you.”

His voice cracked so he bit down on his lower lip until the pressure bordered on pain, anything to stop himself from losing control. But it became harder to hold back when he felt her hand on his cheek gently coaxing his face upward. Her eyes met his, steady and full of a kind of ache that mirrored his own.

“You’re the closest to someone I can call a mother.

Tears slipped down his face but he didn’t bother wiping them away. There was shame, yes — in crying so openly, in being reduced to this state but there was also a strange sense of relief. He let himself be pulled into her arms once more, head bowed as rubbed comforting circles on his back. He cried until it felt like there was nothing left inside, until the tension in his shoulders began to ease and his body sagged with exhaustion.

“I’m going to get you out of here. I promise you, dear,” Hyeeun said softly, her voice filled with a quiet resolve that might’ve sounded more reassuring in another time, another place.

Beomgyu wanted to believe her but the words, kind as they were, felt hollow not because he doubted her intent, but because the world they lived in didn’t allow for such easy escapes. 

Beomgyu heartily wished to find some way to leave the place with her. “I want you to leave with me,” he whispered. “Wherever I go, I want you to be with me.”

The older woman sighed with a sad smile. She squeezed his hand again — a gesture of reassurance, even if it carried more sadness than comfort. Maybe they both knew that saying such things was the only way to keep themselves afloat. It was in this lull, in this shared exhaustion where no one was trying to pretend strength anymore, that Beomgyu suddenly straightened with the flicker of a thought that hadn’t occurred to him until now.

“Have you perhaps... heard of any girl visiting the lake outside the estate?” — what were the odds? But if anyone knew of strange visitors, it would be Hyeeun. She managed the estate with a precision built from decades of service, and little ever happened around here without her catching wind of it. If she hadn't seen you, then perhaps no one did.

He was hoping, somehow, that she would say yes, that there’d been whispers or at least passing remarks from the groundskeepers or someone who might have seen a figure by the water. 

“A girl?” she repeated, the crease between her eyebrows deepening. “No, dear, I haven’t. The lake is open to the public, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are people out there walking around the place. But I haven’t heard of any particular visitor. Why? Is something the matter?”

She spoke while adjusting the edge of the woolen shawl draped over her shoulder, glancing at him with mild concern. If Hyeeun hadn’t seen you, hadn’t heard anything about you, then maybe you really had just wandered there on a whim, exactly like you said. There was a chance you’d never show up again, that this strange interruption to his life would stay just that: a one-time disruption.

But that didn’t explain how you knew his name. That detail kept catching in his mind like a thorn, refusing to let go and worse, it made him want to see you again. He hoped you came back so he could ask you himself how you knew his name. 

He didn’t even know your name.

He didn’t want her to worry so he shook his head with a small shrug. "No, there’s no problem. You should get some rest. It’s getting late. I’ll try to sleep too. I'm tired."

Sleep eluded him entirely that night, and when his eyes did shut, his dreams twisted around the shape of you, around the tune you played and those eyes he couldn’t forget, as if they’d been watching him far longer than he realized.

Who will I be when I wake after enduring?

He hasn't picked up a paintbrush since then. The brushes had gathered dust at the back of the cupboard where Hyeeun hid them after wiping the blood off his bruises. Over time, Beomgyu had learned what could and could not be done under his father’s roof from the consequence of every innocent act that displeased the man who ruled over the estate like a god with no heaven, only wrath.

There were never no words to guide him, only the bruises that followed if he wandered too far into himself.

He could step out into the garden. He could take a walk as far as the border of the lake. He could even sit idly by the gazebo with a book in his lap. But the moment he picked up a brush, the moment his fingers touched paint, it became a rebellion. Painting was possession of the self, and in his father’s world, no one owned themselves but him.

His father believed a person with passion is a person with desire, and desire breeds autonomy. Autonomy, to a man like his father, was the root of disobedience. Passion lit fires, and he hated fires unless he was the one to set them. So he set fire to the wings Beomgyu just started to mold on himself, stripped him off of his passion and put him behind the bars of a gilded cage that was his father's control.

Since he was allowed to leave the manor, he kept going back to the lake in hopes of seeing you. But it’s been days, and you never showed up. Yet every day since, he returned to the tree where you once sat as though retracing the same dream over and over, hoping you’d step out again like a trick of the light.

Some days he stayed until the first star appeared and the wind grew colder, brushing through his clothes and reminding him that he had a house to return to, even if it never felt like home. Other times, he left just after the sun disappeared behind the trees, the sky a bleeding orange that faded too quickly into grey.

There was no logic to his waiting, just the persistent itch that maybe you’d come back. Perhaps when you do, you’ll offer some clue to why you knew his name and comfort his crumbling mind. Maybe you’ll say something that would make him feel less mad for being haunted by a single meeting. He hoped, and hoped, and hoped.

Should he start wishing with all his heart, just like you said, to make you come back? 

Beomgyu’s eyes snapped open as heat crawled up his neck. He was lying under the tree, the soft blades of the grass tickling his skin and the dappled shadow of the leaves fell on him. He sat up abruptly, grunting softly and shaking his head as if that could physically shake off his prior thought. 

“I think I'm going crazy,” he murmured, eyes casting downward on his lap. 

“Why’s that?”

He didn't scream though it felt like his heart had tried to. It jolted violently in his chest, knocking the breath clean out of his lungs as pain bloomed somewhere under his ribs. He doubled over slightly, hand splaying against his sternum as he tried to pull himself together. But his heartbeat picked up again when his eyes found you.

Leaning sideways against the tree you stood there, half-shadowed by the dappled light filtering through the tree canopy. Hands were clasped behind your back and your eyes were on him, watching with a calm that made it impossible to tell whether you had just arrived or had been standing there all along. You were smiling, like always.

“You came back,” he said, barely more than a breath.

You walked toward him, steps muffled by grass, and crouched down beside him. You settled cross-legged in the grass, your skirt fanning out around you, knees brushing against the edge of his shin.

There was a pomegranate in your hand.

It looked heavy in your hands, its thick skin cracked down the middle like it had split open under its own ripeness. With nimble fingers, you worked it apart, thumbs pressing into the rind, and slowly pulled the halves away from each other. Some of the seeds spilled into your waiting palm, glistening red and slick like beads of glass. One by one, you plucked the arils free, cradling them, letting the juice stain your fingertips in blotches.

“You say that like I disappeared,” you replied without looking at him.

“You did,” Beomgyu said, and this time he sat up straighter. The pain had dulled to a throb. It felt distant now, overpowered by the sudden clarity of being near you again. “I waited here. For days.”

That finally earned him your eyes, tilting your head as though seeing him under new light. “Did you? That was sweet of you. But why?”

Why? — the question cut cleanly through the haze he hadn’t realized he’d fallen into. Up until then, he’d been far more interested in watching the way your fingers pressed into the fruit, how the juice soaked your hands until it dripped down to your wrists in thin crimson trails. He found himself too spellbound by the color against your skin more than he was unnerved. 

“I never told you who I was,” he said finally. “How did you know my name?”

You glanced back on the fruit. “Didn’t you?”

“No,” Beomgyu’s brows pulled together, a slight twitch of confusion and discomfort darkening his features. “No, I didn’t. I’m sure I didn’t."

"Beomgyu," you said, the name drawn out gently, not as if correcting him but as if reminding. As if it had slipped only from his memory and not yours. You plucked a seed from your palm, turning it in your fingers. "You’re doing it again."

He blinked. "Doing what?"

You glanced up again, the movement languid. There was no challenge in your expression, only a vague softness that made his chest tighten. "Misremembering. You always do this when you’re flustered."

"That’s not—" He paused, recalibrating. "Always? We’ve met once."

You held the seed gently against his lips and he, caught in the spell of you, parted them. The seed slipped onto his tongue, and his lips closed around it with the faintest press. Juices traversed from your fingers to his mouth staining his lower lip a vivid red.

You tilted your head with a hum. "Mm. You think so."

The words landed strange and off-kilter. A trap he hadn't realized he’d stepped into until now and yet, part of him wanted to explain himself — to justify the gap in memory he was sure existed. To prove, somehow, that he hadn’t forgotten.

But instead, his voice came out thinner. "You’re saying I told you my name, and… I just forgot?"

You nodded once, as if he’d finally caught on to something obvious. “Well, I suppose it’s easier to think I’m the one making things up.”

He bristled. "That’s not what I meant."

You popped a seed in your own mouth, making a sound that near suggested you weren’t wounded. "Of course not. I’m teasing. But yes, you told me. You were standing exactly over there, and I remember thinking — Beomgyu. It suits him.” You held out a few seeds gripped in between your fingers toward him. “It really suits such an artistic person like him.”

The memory didn't exist in his head — but the way you said it, with such conviction, such warmth, he began to wonder. Did he say it? Maybe he had said it.

He’d read somewhere that trauma reshaped memory like heat to wax. That the brain could tuck things away in corners too high to reach, especially when it didn’t want to remember. It made sense, in a cruel sort of way. After everything with his father, after all the ways he’d learned to forget for survival’s sake, it was almost laughable to think his own name might’ve been lost in the shuffle but maybe it had.

His lips parted and he tilted his head back, allowing your waiting hand to drop the pomegranate seeds into his mouth. A few drops of red juice tricked down your finger and fell on his lips like blood droplets. He felt it trail down his chin but the thought of wiping it away didn’t surface in his mind when he watched how you watched him.

You watched him come away stained red by you, like watching the seeds take root.

"You even said it twice," you added, eyes back on the fruit. "The second time, you said it like you weren’t sure I’d heard it the first time."

The taste burst over his mouth — tart and sweet. He licked his chapped lips to wet them, licking the remnants of the red. He wiped his chin too. "That… doesn’t sound like me."

"No," you agreed, as if this, too, was a kindness. "But maybe that’s why it stuck with me."

He couldn’t tell if you were comforting him or disarming him. Silence unspooled between you. He studied your face, looking for any trace of a play. But you only looked thoughtful, almost fond. Finally, he exhaled, the fight leaving his shoulders. With a sheepish twitch of his mouth he said, "Then I guess I owe you an apology."

"For what?"

His eyes dropped to your stained hands before answering, then to the split open fruit on your lap. "For forgetting. I really… I really don’t remember saying it."

You nodded, the corners of your mouth lifting, as if pleased that everything had fallen back into place. “There you go.” You didn’t avert your gaze. "That’s alright. It happens to you often, doesn’t it? Ah, well, I’m assuming it does."

To anyone else, your statement might have sounded like an offhand comment, but Beomgyu had already come to understand that your words were rarely just that. Though he still hadn’t figured out if you meant half the things you said or simply enjoyed the act of saying them. But it didn’t bother him. In fact, he found himself waiting for your voice to fill the air again simply because it’s different from what he knew.

He assumed you were just unusually good at stringing together patterns from the vaguest of things. From the small details he had shared, you pieced together pictures of him so complete it was fascinating, really. He had met many sharp minds, but none that made the process of deduction look like a pastime. You seemed to understand people on a level that made him feel like he was under a microscope, only he didn't mind it. Quite the opposite. He found himself drawn in by it.

You popped a few more pomegranate seeds into your mouth. One half of the fruit had already been picked clean, left hollow and glistening with residue, while the other half still brimmed with untouched seeds that caught the light with every small shift of the sky above.

"Hold this for a moment," you said, passing him the heavier half of the fruit before rising. "I’ll be right back. I just need to wash my hands."

With that, you made your way slowly toward the lake, then gained lightness as you reached the slope and jogged the rest of the way down. Beomgyu watched your figure dip near the bank, the shallow wind lifting your hem just slightly as you crouched near the water. He quietly followed until he approached you after a beat, watching the way your fingers moved through the water. 

The red bled from your skin in long, graceful tendrils that curled like smoke before dispersing entirely. It reminded him of how his paintbrushes looked after a day spent in color — soaked and stained, then suddenly washed clean in one long motion. He waited in silence, the quiet around you was held there by the sound of water lapping against the rocks and the distant rustle of the wind through nearby reeds.

“You didn’t tell me your name,” he said suddenly. “I remember that much.”

Your hand paused mid-motion. You didn’t look up, eyes stayed trained on the ripples spreading out from your hand.

“I don’t have one,” you said.

If there was hesitation in your voice, it was impossible to name. However, there was certainly a tinge of detachment in the way you said, your tone lacking all your prior wittiness. 

Beomgyu let out a soft laugh, shaking his head as he looked down at the fruit in his hands. “That’s impossible. Everyone has a name.”

You drew a line across the water with your finger, watching how the ripples distorted the reflection of the sky. “Do they?” you asked, finally turning to glance at him. “Or is that just something people need to believe to make sense of themselves?”

He smiled despite himself. Of course you’d say that. He did feel the urge to reply, to counter with logic, with reason, but your gaze subtly unsettled him — not in a bad way though. It was your eccentric personality that made every conversation feel like you were making a game out of it, or maybe trying to see if he could keep up. Maybe that’s what made this feel refreshing. He wasn’t used to being around people who made the world feel this unpredictable.

“A name is your most prized possession,” he said, holding up the fruit like it could serve as evidence. “You should treat it like treasure.”

You were watching him now, searching for something in his face. “That’s lovely,” you said, a faint curve to your lips. “But I think names are more interesting when they’re earned. Don’t you?”

He stilled because he suddenly wasn’t sure where this was going, and he didn’t want to miss a single turn. The breeze pushed past again, scattering a few leaves near his feet.

“You want me to…?” he began, trailing off.

"I want you to give me one," you said at last, standing slowly. Water slid down your fingers and dripped onto the grass below. The pomegranate seeds in his hand glistened like they were watching too.

Beomgyu studied you for a moment longer than perhaps he meant to, his gaze holding a curious stillness. You closed the distance between you with a small step, the grass bending faintly beneath your shoes, your fingers brushing against his as you plucked the half-pomegranate from his palm. The fruit sat in your hand like a stolen jewel but in his eyes it resembled a bleeding heart.

“If you’re offering treasure,” you began, eyeing up at him playfully, “I want to see what kind. But don’t toss it at me like a bone to a stray. Think carefully. Let it come to you like it was meant to.”

His brow rose a fraction, a spark of competitiveness in his tone. “And what do I get in return?”

You tapped the tip of your finger against the fruit’s rind, pretending to think. “Well, you’re not wrong. I do already have a name,” you said, lips curving in a way that didn’t quite match the offhand nature of your words. “And I am, admittedly, toying with you. But—” your voice stretched, eyes narrowing in a mock appraisal, “if you manage to come up with something I actually like, I’ll tell you my real name.”

He nodded slowly. “Alright. I’ll think about it.”

“Good,” you replied, smiling in a way that caught the dimming light like the sky catching fire before night took it. “I’d hate for you to forget again.”

Beomgyu never registered the last bit of your words properly as his mind got occupied by the faint hum of engines drifting from the direction of the manor. His attention completely shifted, and the line of his shoulders altered with the sound, a persistent veil of fatigue settling into his posture. He turned toward you, a shadow of apology in his movement, saying he had to leave, that his father had returned sooner than expected.

You waved it off with a smile that asked for no explanation. “I don’t mind. It was good spending time with you.”

That softened him, even if only briefly. “Thank you for sharing the pomegranate,” he mentioned, then added with a faint smile, “It was really sweet.”

“I want to see you again,” you said, and for a moment his breath caught on the fact that you actually meant it. It was the first time he thought he saw something genuine cross your face, just the plain want of the words themselves.

He nodded slowly, the smallest thread of surprise in his tone. “Sure. I’ll come back.”

And perhaps, one day, he would come to realise that what you offered him today was never only fruit. It was the planting of doubt where certainty had lived, the slow coaxing of temptation into bloom, and the careful crafting of a tie he would not easily cut, no matter how far from this moment he might try to walk.

One seed at a time.

Beomgyu grew somewhat closer to you, one day at a time.

Meeting by the lake had begun to settle into the shape of a routine. You never carried much, always just one thing, as if you lived by some strange rule that balance could only be kept if your hands were light. Some days you brought your kalimba to play as you sat under the tree, Beomgyu lying a few spaces beside you, listening with eyes closed absorbing the fragile, whimsical melody. Other days you carried fruits, breaking them open to share. 

There was a strange comfort in this new presence. Compared to Hyeeun, who gave him maternal warmth, offering guidance and protection, you were the first person who met him at the level of a peer and who validated his thoughts. The difference lodged itself in him before he could even notice, a slow intoxication that seeped into his thoughts until he found himself looking forward to these encounters, craving them almost. Eccentric as your words often were, he welcomed them, so long as they meant he could breathe air not tainted by authority.

But today was not one of those days.

Before Beomgyu sat a plate, its centerpiece a steak seared with artistry, marbled with veins of fat glistening beneath the sheen of butter that pooled at its edges. The rich smell wafted toward him but it did not stir hunger in his stomach; instead, it twisted ans he could not bring himself to lift his fork, for appetite had deserted him the moment he took his seat. The perfection of its arrangement only reminded him of the imperfection of the family gathered around it, or rather, the absence of family at all.

Across from him, his father carved into his own portion, the scrape of steel against porcelain sharp enough to rattle through the silence. The sight of flesh tearing without resistance as he lifted the forkful to his mouth reminded Beomgyu of a predator taking the first kill, claiming the prize while he, the one seated opposite, was expected to watch, to wait. The power imbalance was too hard to ignore — the small hierarchy enforced at every meal.

“There will be a meeting you must attend next month with me,” his father said, finally breaking the silence. He didn’t lift his eyes from the plate, though Beomgyu felt them nonetheless. “There will be men whose approval I require. I trust you understand the importance of leaving no… blemishes in conversation. I cannot afford embarrassment, and I will not tolerate any deviation from propriety or protocol.”

Beomgyu shifted slightly in his chair, the leather creaking faintly under his movement. His lips parted, but no words came, only a shallow breath that he disguised with a swallow. His father did not wait for an answer. 

He set down the knife for a moment to reach for his glass of wine, swirling it lazily before taking a sip. A subtle smile curved his lips as he added, almost as an afterthought, “After all, it is fortunate that I took you in, isn’t it? You must remember where you came from.” The fork clinked against porcelain as he lifted another piece to his mouth. “Do not mistake your place in this household, nor in this family. I took you in, raised you as if you were mine, though you and I both know better. Gratitude, Beomgyu, is the only language you should ever speak. If you forget this, if you step beyond where I allow, I can have you sent away. Far from this table. Far from this country. Do not think it beyond me.”

The implication made a chill run up his spine as the knife in Beomgyu’s hand stilled, his fingers tightening imperceptibly around the handle before he set it down altogether. His throat burned with words he could not voice, the lump lodged there making swallowing impossible. At the mention of being sent away, one might think, yes, Beomgyu should take this opportunity to grasp onto the freedom he so desperately wished for. One might think of this as a golden escape, but no, his father meant anything but granting him freedom. His father meant metaphorical death.

It struck him with a clarity that hollowed him further, that it was not merely his father’s words that landed harder on his soul, but the knowledge that his dreams of freedom might never be more than fleeting illusions.

Nothing is harder on the soul than the smell of dreams while they are evaporating.

“Where do you go when your house isn’t home?”

Later that afternoon, Beomgyu drifted back toward the lakeside, drawn less by choice than by desperation. When he stepped from the line of trees, he stopped short, struck by the sight of you still there. You were looking far off in the distance. For an instant he wondered if you had stayed because of him, because he couldn't show up on time today. 

When he approached you and made his presence known, it occurred to Beomgyu how genuinely startled you look. It was as though all this time, the skin of another self you had been wearing, had been peeled away by mistake. But beomgyu soon threw that thought out of his mind when the other thoughts became too loud and drowned it.

You tilted your head, eyes narrowing slightly at his distant expression. “What did you say?” The question left your lips faintly, touched with genuine confusion.

He bent, reached for a stone, and sent it skipping across the water. It danced briefly across the surface, once, twice, three times, then surrendered, sinking into the depths. He watched the circles widen and collapse — how his own life mirrored that descent, each near ascent followed by collapse, each hope sinking before it could take root.

“Sorry. Forget what I said,” Beomgyu replied, shaking his head. He let another stone fall from his hand, this one left to roll off his palm and clatter against the wood before tipping into the lake. His shoulders sagged with the breath he released. “Just got a lot on my mind.”

Lowering himself onto the dock beside you, he left a careful space in between. His eyes sought the horizon, where the sinking sun stretched across the water in streaks of molten color that looked almost violent in their beauty.

Shouldn’t witnessing something beautiful allow the mind to rest? Then why did his mind still refuse to rest?

He thought of the orphanage, of nights when he hunched over sketch paper until his fingers cramped, tracing dreams into lines and shapes, clinging to the frail conviction that one day he could leave and live by art alone. Back then, the thought of freedom had seemed as reachable as the moon overhead — distant, yet somehow belonging to him if only he could stretch far enough. But the man who had plucked him from those narrow halls had not offered liberation. Instead, he had chained him more tightly, cloaking it beneath the name of father, when in truth it was ownership. At least the orphanage had left him the small rebellion of imagination. Here, he had none. Here, he was a possession. 

The pressure inside him built until it pressed against his ribs, until he almost gasped with the ache of it, and he might have spiraled deeper into it if not for the sudden warmth of your hand closing gently around his. He startled, the touch pulling him back into the present, and when he looked down, he found your face tilted toward his, your eyes softer than he had ever seen them. It shook him, that look, because it was entirely new.

“Beomgyu,” your lips wrapped around the shape of his name. The syllables made an odd shiver race down his spine, leaving him strangely unmoored by the tremor it left behind. “You’re crying.”

He blinked, taken aback, and lifted his hand to his face. His fingertips came away damp and embarrassment shot through him sharp enough to make his movements clumsy. Hastily, he tried to wipe away his tears but your hands caught his midway, rising to hold his face in their frame. His breath stalled, surprised by the intimacy. Your thumbs brushed against his skin, sweeping away the tears with an absent gentleness. The far-off cast in your gaze caught him off guard. It was another new look, one he had not seen on you before.

“Do you want to see where I go?” Your voice slipped softer, the water almost stealing it away. Fingers drifted through the strands of his hair, tucking them behind his ear with a touch that left a trembling chill in its wake setting every nerve in his body alight. You watched him intently, that felt close to holding him in place. “Maybe it would help,” you whispered, the ghost of a question wrapped inside it. “Maybe then you’d stop crying, hm?”

A prosaic afternoon of yet another hot summer day: that’s how Beomgyu had expected his day would roll by, as always per the monochromatic routine. But with his hazy state of mind as he watched the red sky shifting to sea of greens, the image of the manor getting smaller in view and the cacophonies of his thoughts vanishing in thin air replaced by the orchestra of birdsong, Beomgyu apprehended the reality and withdrew his earlier plan. His hand was in yours, and the certainty of your pull drew him onward into the heart of the green.

The forest you entered was oak-brown and primitive. The grasses you stepped on were crackly beneath your feet because of the recent dry spell. Beomgyu tilted his head back, his eyes drinking in the towering trees whose branches twisted into knotted arms, rising higher than his neck could crane. They loomed like old fortresses, their bark etched with the passage of ages, and he marveled that such a place had always existed so near and yet had remained hidden from him.

“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” he asked, allowing himself a curl of mischief even as his pulse thrummed hard and fast with the thrill of being led into this unknown. He glanced about at the darkening canopy and added, “This place reeks of serial killers and ghosts.”

You snorted softly at that, not breaking stride. “Don’t worry, princess. If anything comes for us, I’ll protect you.”

When you turned just then, looking back at him with a grin that seemed carved out of sunlight, he felt warmth roll through him with the same ease as summer air after rain. Safe — that was the word that surfaced, startling in its simplicity. How odd that you, a stranger whose name had yet to pass his lips, made him feel safe.

You pressed on, tracing narrow paths that cut between moss-dark trunks and across stony ground where thin streams rattled over scattered rocks. The forest seemed endless, a kingdom unto itself, until suddenly the trees broke open and revealed a ruin crouched within the clearing. It was a collection of stones and rocks tossed around like children’s blocks, and a large rusty bell lying beneath what was once its tower.

It was as if two eyes weren’t nearly enough to hold it all, the ruin both desolate and wondrous, steeped in a history he could only guess at. “How did you know this place existed?” There were so many words to exist yet Beomgyu failed to capture the full breadth of what he felt.

You slipped your hand from his and bounded forward, twirling with your arms outstretched. “Welcome to my safe haven!” you announced, gesturing to the place with your hands. “Still reeks of serial killers and ghosts?”

Beomgyu found himself too caught up in the marvel of it all to respond straight away. An ancient house on its knees on a journey to shambles, a secluded part of an evergreen forest not too far away from the safety of human life, and a girl who leaves sunmarks with every step amidst this. The more he thought about it the more it began to seem like this place was made solely for you.

You beckoned him closer and chose a seat upon a broken pillar, brushing away the dust before settling. He followed your actions and made himself comfortable on another piece of large rubble.

“No one really knows about this place, after all it’s an abandoned building. It’s always been just me,” you said. Streaks of soft sunlight that playfully broke through the cage of leaves fell across your features, catching in your eyes when you tilted your head. The brown in your eyes came to life, as if they were pools of honey with specks of gold. 

“It’s beautiful,” he murmured at last. His gaze swept over the ruin again before returning to you. “I understand now why you choose to come here.”

You watched him in silence while he lowered his eyes to the ground, his foot tracing absently over the brittle grass at his feet. “Why don’t you paint anymore?”

His head jerked up at that, his lips parting in surprise. A crooked smile tugged at his mouth. “How could you tell?”

Your eyes drifted to his hands, resting idly upon his knees. “They’re clean,” you said simply. “Too clean.”

Beomgyu gave a soft, awkward laugh, scraping the back of his neck with one hand. “I guess I just don’t have much inspiration these days,” he said, making light of it, as if that explanation could cover the ache he carried.

“Does it have anything to do with what you said earlier? About your house not feeling like home?”

His throat worked but no words came. For a moment he only sat there, shoulders curved inward, and you seemed to notice the pause. “Forgive me,” you murmured. “I shouldn’t have asked. I went too far.”

He shook his head at once, almost sharply. “No,” he said, his voice more certain than he felt. “You didn’t. You showed me your sanctuary so  it’s only fair you know this much.” He drew a long breath, tried to dress the truth in lightness though it frayed as it left him. “My father… well, he doesn’t like it when I paint. He’s not even my real father. I was adopted when I was young. He only did it because he’s an assemblyman and he needed the sympathy points to win people over.”

You sat in silence for a long while. Then almost with an indecipherable look you recounted, “The bruises… when I first met you.”

Beomgyu’s head lifted at once, his eyes narrowing in surprise. “You remember?”

You hesitated, then further asked, “Were they…?” You left the sentence unfinished, letting the implication hang.

Beomgyu remained still, letting the forest around him absorb his pause. So did you. His gaze flitted to yours repeatedly, trying to decipher the thoughts behind the neutrality in your face, trying to know whether the knowledge of his past had shifted your perception of him in any way, but there was nothing. 

“That’s why I go to the lakeside whenever I can,” he admitted, still continuing despite your silence. “It makes me feel less like a prisoner when I’m away from the manor.”

“If he lets you outside the house,” you said, tilting your head as though measuring the thought, “why not run away?”

Beomgyu gave a short, humorless laugh. “It’s not that simple,” he replied, the smile that touched his lips hollow. “When you’ve been caged long enough, even if the door is open you don’t know how to fly. My father—” he stopped, corrected himself with a bitter edge, “the man who calls himself my father clipped my wings a long time ago.”

He turned the conversation back toward you as if trying to shift the heaviness elsewhere. “What about you? Why do you come here? And the lakeside?”

Your eyes went to the sky, tracing the patterns of light caught in the branches above. “My parents are dead,” you said curtly. 

“I’m sorry.” Beomgyu’s chest ached at the bluntness of it. He looked at you with softened eyes, though no words of sympathy seemed large enough to comfort the truth you had offered. So the two of you sat without speaking, until you broke it at last.

“You… shouldn’t give up on your dreams because someone is trying their everything to steal it from you,” you started slow, shaping your words carefully as you delivered. “When someone tries this hard to crush them, it only means they know what you’re capable of. He knows that you are capable of breaking through his wall of control, Beomgyu. It means he is afraid of you, of what you might become if you keep going.”

Beomgyu gaped at you, letting your words soak into every crevice of his brain. He was afraid of his father and always has been, and you are saying that his father might be afraid of him?

You shifted, drawing one knee up, your gaze fixed not on him but on the ruin around you. “Don’t let him pin the blame for his own failures onto you. If blame has to be claimed, let him take it. Or—” you paused, almost musing, “learn to take it yourself. There’s a strange luxury in self-reproach. When we decide it’s our fault, no one else has the right to condemn us. It gives us… control, power, even when everything else is stripped away.”

The cadence of your speech, the way your thoughts curved toward shadows, left Beomgyu torn. Part of him felt a tremor run through his chest, stirred by the conviction in your voice, while another part wondered whether you were speaking about him or laying bare fragments of your own story.

In that moment you reminded him of the ocean. There was so much of you he could not see and left to discover, but the little he was given made him feel oddly at home.

The sea… yes, you were just like that. He still had to figure out your name, didn't he? 

You rose and crossed the space between you. Standing over him, you let your gaze cast down, yet within the shade they seemed to glow brighter, carrying a light of their own. “If your house doesn’t feel like home,” you said, “come here instead. I’ll be here.”

Beomgyu felt his throat dry, swallowing thickly. If you were the ocean, then you were quite the gentle one, beckoning him to fall into you promising him a safe place.

In the end, will he sink or swim?

It hadn’t gone unnoticed, the way Beomgyu seemed lighter on his feet these days and it began ever since you started bringing him art supplies to the shared sanctuary. There was a certain brightness to him, a spark that had been dulled for so long it startled even Hyeeun when she caught sight of it. She asked what had changed, her brows lifting as she studied him curiously because she had nearly forgotten what joy looked like on his face.

“I look happy?” he had replied, almost in disbelief. When she nodded, telling him that he looked radiant — more alive than he had in months — he had felt a warmth bloom inside him and his thoughts wandered straight to you. It was fuzzy, soft, like the recollection of a dream he didn’t want to wake from.

He wasn’t the only one who had changed. There was something about you that began to take on a new shape as well though he couldn’t quite put words to it. It wasn’t that you had grown gentler, nor that you had lost that edge of distance you carried with you like a shadow, but rather that you seemed more real to him now. After he had spoken about his father, what you offered him wasn’t pity, the kind of hollow sympathy he despised, but respect of some sort. It did not unsettle him, oddly enough; rather, he found it strangely endearing.

One afternoon, when the two of you were inside the stone house or rather, the fractured shell of what once was a house — you broke the soft rustle of silence by remarking, “You’re taking an awfully long time to come up with a name for me.”

The walls cracked in parts, and ivy had claimed half the places, but Beomgyu had suggested cleaning it up. He spoke of giving it a use, of making it livable, even if only for stolen afternoons. Beomgyu could tell you had been reluctant at first, preferring the wilderness outside, leaning against trees or crouching by the lakeside, always just beyond the reach of walls. But he had motivated you in his own insisting way, proving his resolve by rolling up his sleeves and sweeping debris into piles, clearing out corners with surprising skill despite the cobwebs clinging stubbornly to the high corners and the dust rising in clouds that stung the throat.

He had laughed at your surprise as you were clearly not expecting him to know his way around such tasks and explained, with an almost sheepish pride, that he was no stranger to chores. “At the manor, Hyeeun couldn’t always manage everything herself. I learned to take care of myself when I had to.” He remembered how your gaze had lowered at that, something clouding your expression, though you said nothing as you picked up the leaves and helped him finish.

Now, in the dim hush of the stone house, he sat with a small canvas propped on his knees. You sat across from him, absently plucking at your kalimba when you threw the sentence at him. Your words made him smile, lifting his chin in a wordless beckon. You hesitated, pausing mid-note, but then set the instrument aside and crossed the floor to where he was seated.

When you settled near him, he turned the canvas so you could see. The painting was unfinished but clear enough to recognize, revealing strokes of deep blue and pale foam, the suggestion of an endless horizon where sea met sky. “I’ve been thinking,” He kept his eyes on you as he spoke, almost nervously, though he masked it with a half-smile. “Really hard, about what to call you. Everything you’ve done, everything you’ve said since the day we met—it all keeps leading me back to this.”

You stared at the canvas, and for a heartbeat he thought he saw your composure falter. You studied the painting, then looked back at him. “You’re not about to name me ‘sea’ or ‘ocean,’ are you?” you asked him dryly.

It had him laughing heartily, the sound rich and vibrant as it bounced off the walls. You looked at him, confused at what was so funny, and he couldn’t stop the warmth from spilling. But his laugh was so infectious that (to beomgyu’s surprise) it managed to pull a small smile out of you. He tilted his head, still chuckling, and shook it. “No, of course not—why would I settle for something so plain? Sea, ocean… those are far too generic. If I’ve started with ‘ocean’ as my lead, then I’ll definitely come up with something suitable.” though a shadow adorned his face as his laughter died, “but…” 

A scuffle outside the ruin caught both of your attention — first a faint rustle, then a hollow thump as if something had toppled. Both of you stilled. Through the cracked frame of the broken window came a chorus of shrill, frantic chirps that made Beomgyu’s pulse jolt. He was already on his feet, canvas slipping from his lap to the ground as he hurried outside.

Just beyond the wall, a small nest had tumbled from the ledge, broken into a tangle of twigs and grass, and amidst the debris a baby sparrow writhed helplessly, tiny chest heaving with fragile breaths. Beomgyu’s heart plunged, crouching low as his hands closed gently around the trembling creature, his thumb brushing its downy head as he checked for breaks or twisted wings. Relief crossed his face as he exhaled, speaking as you caught up behind him. “It’s lucky—this little one isn’t too hurt. Shaken, but it’ll be alright.”

Your gaze darted upward at the parent sparrows circling, their wings beating frantically as they cried down at the scene below. “The nest…” 

Beomgyu followed your eyes to the broken mass on the ground, his expression softening into something determined. “I’ll mend it. They can’t be left like this.”

Without another thought, he shifted the bird into your hands, the sudden gesture pulling a startled breath from you. You stiffened, cradling it as though it might shatter at the lightest touch. He caught the hesitation in your posture and offered a small smile that held both reassurance and a hint of mischief.

“Don’t worry. Just stroke its back—like this.” He traced the motion with his own finger in the air. “It’ll calm down. You’ll see.”

Left with no choice, you let the tiny bird rest against your palm, your fingers brushing its soft feathers in hesitant strokes. Meanwhile, Beomgyu knelt down, gathering the scattered pieces of the nest. He worked with surprising care, weaving the twigs back together, layering them with dried grass he pulled from the ground, reshaping the fragile cradle until it resembled a small bowl once more. When he judged it sturdy enough, he tested the edges with his fingers, then climbed carefully over the rubble, finding footholds where stone still held. Balancing himself against the jagged wall, he placed the nest back on the ledge, tucking it into a crevice where it would not fall so easily again.

Looking down at you, he called softly, “Bring it here—gently.”

When you reached him, he leaned low, hands brushing yours as he lifted the sparrow from your palms and set it into the nest. His shoulders loosened with relief as he climbed back down, landing with a grunt, dust clinging to his clothes. Together, the two of you stood back, watching as the parent sparrows swooped down, their cries shifting into softer notes as they settled into the rebuilt nest, wings curving protectively around their child.

“Thank God… this little one will keep living with them, in its home.” The relief in his voice was tempered by a heavy lilt. His gaze clung to the family of sparrows, a softness shadowed by a somber edge, as he had glimpsed what could have been him in their fragile reunion. How pitiful was it to wish yourself in the place of some birds?

“That nest isn’t safe.” You were still staring up. “The forest is full of hawks and crows and they will find them sooner or later. All of this—” you gestured at the ledge, at the desperate little family clinging to one another, “—will end the same way.”

His head turned sharply at your words, confusion flashing across his face, then falling away as he looked back at the sparrows, your point sinking deeper than he wished to admit. So that was it — the cycle. No matter what shelter was built, no matter what fragile peace existed, it could be shattered in an instant by a stronger hand or a sharper claw. His throat tightened as he murmured, almost as if he were trying to convince himself, “Then… at least they’ll be together in the end.”

You exhaled, harsher this time, before your hand gripped his arm that startled him. “No. If you want to be their salvation, then do it properly. Don’t just rebuild what was broken only to leave them exposed again. Move them somewhere safer—where claws and beaks can’t reach. They have a chance at something better, Beomgyu. And you’d deny them that?”

He blinked at you, utterly struck by the sharpness in your tone because he had never seen you like this. His throat worked soundlessly, because he had never once thought about salvation like that, not for himself and certainly not for anyone else. And yet, under the press of your stare, he found himself nodding slowly.

Wordless, he cupped the nest once more and carried it inside, searching until he found a wide crack in the wall where the light streamed in. The gap was narrow but passable, a doorway for wings to slip through, and he eased the nest into place. The sparrows fluttered around him as though testing their new home.

His arms ached faintly from climbing, his palms scraped, but when he stepped back, he felt a strange flicker in his chest. He became their salvation. The birds, at least, had a chance.

You let the silence stretch before breaking it with a question that stopped him cold. “If I gave you a way out of the manor forever, would you take it, Beomgyu?”

His heartbeat stumbled, then raced, and he almost laughed at the absurdity of it. “That’s not possible.” he blurted out, staring at you like you had just spoken madness. Did you think his life was like some birds out in the open?

“Hypothetically,” you pressed, a shadow of defiance in your tone.

His hands curled into fists at his sides before he could stop them because your words sparked something raw in him, causing his composure to crack and his voice to come out louder than he ever meant. “Don’t joke about things like that. I’m not like those sparrows—you don’t understand. My father—” He stopped, shaking his head. “It isn’t that easy. He’s dangerous. I can’t just walk away, no matter how much I want to. I’ll never be free of him.”

The admission echoed too loudly in the hollowed room, and as the last word fell he realized he had all but shouted at you. His face blanched, horror flickering through his features. “I—I didn’t mean to snap. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

But you shook your head before he could finish, eyes falling away from his. “No. I’m sorry too.” A pause stretched, you crossed your arms loosely before eyeing the canvas he dropped on the floor earlier. “You have a good heart, Beomgyu. You’re… kind, even when the world hasn’t given you much reason to be. And you’re braver than you think, though you’re still a little too scared to take the first step. I can feel it. Even when life claws at you, you keep that part of yourself intact. I…” you drew in a breath, voice catching faintly, “I envy that.”

Beomgyu tried so hard to decipher the meaning behind your monologue but he found no roads that lead him to a plausible answer. He didn’t even get the chance to ask you what you were saying because you continued to speak.

“The baby sparrow would’ve died if you hadn’t moved the nest, that its wings were still too frail to hold it aloft, too dependent to fend for itself. But now, because you had chosen differently, because you had carried it to safety, it might live.” Then you turned those same words back on him — asking, no, insisting, “didn’t you too want a chance at life, a chance beyond the shadowed halls of the manor that had held you captive for as long as you can remember?”

Beomgyu began to feel dizzy from all the noises in his head. His thoughts splintered in a dozen directions all at once, scattering like shards of broken glass he couldn’t gather fast enough. He felt fear first, tightening around his ribs at the thought of his father finding out, of his father’s hand coming down not on him this time but on you. Doubt slithered in quickly soon, whispering that this could be another test, that maybe you didn’t mean it, maybe you were just prodding at his wounds to see how he would bleed. Yet beneath those voices was hope. Small and fragile, like the sparrow in his hands only moments ago. He tried to shove it down, but it clung, refusing to be silenced.

How could you help him? Could you really help him? Could you somehow do what he had never managed himself? He thought of nights where he had imagined escape only to remind himself of the price — his father’s reach was long, his cruelty deeper still. What if you underestimated him? What if he caught you both? The idea of you being hurt because of him was unbearable, and the thought left a sour taste in his mouth, made his palms sweat as though he were already clutching at chains.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, drawing in a breath so deep it almost stung. When he opened them again, his gaze landed on the canvas. The sea… you were a gentle tide brushing against the edges of his life with patience. You weren’t trying to drown him. He felt the faintest sense of calm settle in his chest.

“I’ll… think about it,” he said at last, the admission trembling in the air. It was neither promise nor refusal, but the closest he could come to hope without breaking apart.

Ever since that day, Beomgyu’s mind had been a restless field of contradictions.

The meeting was the following week, and it seemed like his father was taking hefty preparations considering he had even gone so far as to select the suit Beomgyu would wear, sending the maids to deliver it to his room as if to remind him that even his appearance was not his own to decide. The garment was crisp, its fabric immaculate, and Beomgyu stared at it for a brief moment before turning away, pushing it aside, not willing to try it on until the event day. 

Things took an even anguishing turn for his mind when one night, while Hyeeun stood near the window folding the laundry and he was preparing to go to bed, she spoke words that felt too good to be true.

“An art show will be held soon in the town.”

As if struck by lightning, Beomgyu’s mind came to a static stop. Before he could ask, she added, “They’ll choose an apprentice for the great artist Kim Kwangsun. He will take whoever wins under his wing and train them.”

The name alone made Beomgyu’s pulse roar in his ears. Kwangsun — the great painter whose works he had only ever seen in books, whose brush seemed to capture fragments of eternity itself. To be under his tutelage would not only mean escape, it would mean recognition, a life defined by what Beomgyu’s own hands could create rather than what his father could destroy.

But at that moment, each of her words seemed hard for him to understand, as if he was a child who was beginning to learn new words. When the cloud of bewilderment finally left his mind, he licked his dry lips. “Why… why are you telling me this?” he stammered.

“Beomgyu, I want you to participate. You don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but this… this might be the door you’ve been waiting for. If things are in our favour, you could have the chance to begin again,” her words sharpened with lividness with each one. 

This felt way too coincidental, both terrifying and intoxicating. It felt impossible that the thought you had planted — if he would take a way out if offered — had now found an echo in Hyeeun’s words. The seed of hope was raging to go wild, no longer content to rest in silence. It screamed for him to seize it, to run toward the possibility of freedom and let his life finally belong to him.

This could be his salvation.

But rationality took over quicker. His mind recoiled, conjuring the shadow of his father’s hand before it even fell. “Father will kill me if he finds out,” he stated pressingly, shaking his head. “You know what he’s capable of—I can only imagine the things he’d do. And you—” his eyes darted to her, “he’d turn on you too. You’d pay the price right alongside me.”

Hyeeun was adamant. She stepped closer, setting the folded shirt aside, her voice softening yet carrying more strength for it. “All your life, he has chained you. And now, for the first time, you’ve been given a chance to break free. If you can’t trust yourself yet, then at least trust me. I won’t stand by and watch you waste away under his roof, not when I know you have a gift meant for more than these walls.”

Beomgyu decided to not act rashly on his overwhelming emotions and take time to decide. How long could he think, though? How long before hesitation became surrender? You were right when you said he was afraid to take the first leap. Perhaps if he spoke with you again it will help him come to a decision. Yes. He needed to see you — before the chance slipped through his fingers like paint running from a brush.

You were as always, waiting for him. When did you become such a turning point in his life? You occupied a place so difficult to define because he shared a closeness with you of someone he had known forever, and yet the mystery of someone who still remained foreign, your true name withheld from him like a secret.  And still, his body betrayed him in its certainty, in the way it recognized you as safe before his mind could put words to the feeling.

He thought of how easily his pulse slowed then picked up when you were near. Around you, he laughed with less restraint, spoke without rehearsing the words in his head, and forgot about time until the sun dipped lower. The soft pull in his chest whenever you glanced at him, and the sudden gentleness that rose in him when he caught the curve of your mouth or the tone in your voice. The body knows, he thought, and his body told him what his mind still struggled to accept: that you had become precious to him.

He thought perhaps you were sent to him by some mercy he did not believe he deserved. How else could he explain your sudden arrival, speaking of escape and daring to imagine a life different from his current one? You wanted him to believe he could leave, you wanted him to believe he could choose, and it shook him more deeply than his own doubts ever had.

A raw desire surged inside him then — an urge to draw you close, to bury himself in the warmth of your presence. Your voice reached him, but the words scattered like dust in the wind. All he could do was move, stepping into the gravity of his longing, arms wrapping around you before he could stop himself.

You stiffened against him, and for a moment he cursed his boldness, but then he felt the hesitation drain from your body, the softening of your breath, and it emboldened him to press his face against the slope of your neck. You smelled faintly sweet, like jasmine, a comfort so achingly tender that his throat closed on itself. He let his arms draw you tighter, and when he felt your arms come around him in return, relief coursed through him so strongly it nearly buckled his knees.

“Can I… stay like this for a while?” He spoke against your skin.

To his surprise, you let out a small laugh. The simple circles you traced along his back soothed his heart. “Are you alright?” you asked softly.

He shook his head against your shoulder, a faint sound escaping him that told you enough. You coaxed him gently, tilting your head so your words reached his ear. “Still caught up in what you’re supposed to decide?”

He lifted his head then, but kept his arms locked around you. His eyes avoided yours, instead tracing the slope of your cheek, the line of your jaw, the delicate dip where your neck met your collarbone. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he confessed, the words raw. “I’ve never dared to think past the dream of freedom. It always felt like… like some fantasy that would crumble if I reached for it. But when I’m with you—” His voice faltered, yet he forced it out. “When I’m with you, I feel like I could be brave enough to try. I feel as though I could face anything, if you’re beside me.”

Heat surged into his face at the admission; he had practically confessed without meaning to. When at last he gathered the courage to meet your eyes, he found them widened in surprise, though the corners of your lips curved up slyly. Tilting your head, you asked, “And you’re feeling brave now too?”

He felt the corners of his own mouth lift, helpless against the warmth that spread through him. “Yeah,” he breathed. “A lot.”

You did not release him from the snare you had woven; you arched a brow, amusement flickering at the edge of your smile. “What’s that bravery making you want to do?”

He paused, his pulse roaring against his ribs as though urging him forward. At last, with a breath he confessed, “I want to kiss you.”

Beomgyu caught the smallest flicker of hesitation in your gaze, and it was enough to send his stomach sinking. Panic surged through him; he released you at once, stepping back a pace as if distance could undo what he feared he had broken. His hands hovered awkwardly in front of him before he lifted one, palm open in a desperate attempt to show he meant no harm. The words tumbled from him with a breathless urgency, his voice strained with remorse. “I—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed myself on you like that. I wasn’t thinking. I don’t want to make you feel trapped.”

But instead of retreating further, you lowered your gaze, lashes veiling your eyes as you reached for him. Your fingers found his, and then both of his hands were gathered into yours. You studied them with a kind of nervous care before threading your fingers through his. The tug you gave was light, almost questioning, but enough to draw him closer again.

You almost whispered the words yet it carried straight to his chest. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

Emboldened by the reassurance in your gesture, Beomgyu felt courage swell anew within him, and he pulled you back toward him, never letting go of your hands, squeezing them once in a silent affirmation. “Are you sure?” he asked, looking for any sign of second thought.

This time, you looked up. A single nod, steady despite the faint tremor in your breath, sealed your answer. “Show me,” you murmured, and though it was barely a whisper, to Beomgyu it rang louder than any command his father had ever thundered.

For a long moment Beomgyu could only stare at you, the pulse in his throat beating far too fast. He was close enough now to see the faint flush spreading along the tips of your ears, to hear the unevenness in your breathing that matched his own, and he thought fleetingly that this was a sight reserved for dreams. His hand slipped back to your waist, and then further, pressing at the small of your back where he let his thumb move in faint circles. Was it to steady you or was it to reassure himself to the reality of your presence — the reason became lost when he came into terms that this was no fleeting dream but something palpably real.

You tilted your face up, your eyes finding his and holding them. He gave you one last chance to pull away, but you only shook your head, and the motion nearly undid him. He bent toward you, heart hammering as his lips brushed yours once, fleeting, just enough to send a jolt coursing through his body. Then, unable to resist the pull any longer, he pressed into you fully. The softness of your lips was everything he had ever imagined and more, and when you kissed him back, it felt as if his chest might break open with the sheer force of it. His hand rose instinctively to your face, fingers cradling your cheek with a tenderness he hadn’t known he was capable of. You gripped the fabric at his waist, clutching at him as though he were something worth holding on to, and the contact sent a warmth through him so fierce he almost staggered.

When he finally drew back, unwilling and breathless, he found you still with your eyes closed. You let out a soft sigh before catching your bottom lip gently between your teeth. Beomgyu felt the heat rush to his face, a blush blooming so vivid he thought for certain you would hear the blood rushing in his ears.

“Was that alright?” Beomgyu asked. His thumb brushed across your cheek in a faint tap, not so much to demand an answer as to feel reassured that you were still right there before him, real and close and not some cruel vision his weary mind had conjured.

You opened your eyes, the lashes lifting slowly and a tender smile curved on your lips. There was a glimmer in your gaze, a shimmer that left him wondering why you looked as though you might cry.

“It was more than alright,” you whispered, the words so quiet that he leaned forward instinctively to catch them, and when you added with a small tilt of your head, “Do you feel rebellious now?” there was a spark of teasing in your tone that made him laugh in earnest.

“Yeah,” he admitted between breaths, still chuckling as he met your gaze again. “All thanks to you.”

The two of you stayed beneath the ivy-curled arch of the ruined walls, the dappled light shifting across your faces as the afternoon stretched long. Beomgyu found himself talking more than he had planned, the words spilling in an unbroken current as he confessed things he thought he’d had to bury in himself forever. He spoke of the art competition Hyeeun had told him of, the way his heart raced at the thought of it, the meeting with his father that loomed like a stormcloud on the horizon, and the sleepless nights he spent tangled in his own dread. You listened without interruption, carried all the emotions he laid out. He had never felt so heard.

When you finally asked if he had already decided on a painting for the competition, he nodded without hesitation. “I have one in mind,” he said, but almost at once his confidence faltered, the doubt sneaking in through the cracks of his composure. “But… I don’t know if it’s enough. What if it’s not worthy of winning?”

Your answer made it sound like truth rather than consolation. You told him that his art had already saved him once, that it had already breathed life into the parts of him his father tried to crush, and that if it could do that, then surely it was strong enough to win him a place in the world beyond these suffocating walls. He clung to those words, let them root themselves in him.

That night, when he lay in his bed, Beomgyu realized that he wasn’t trembling with the usual unrest. His body, for once, allowed him the mercy of stillness, his mind quiet enough to let him drift. He carried into sleep not with the sound of his father’s voice or the sting of his doubts, but your laughter, your encouragement, the press of your lips on his. He dreamt of you through the night, and in those dreams your voice reached him like the consolation of the ocean, vast and endless, a tide that could carry him anywhere.

And after all, once the ocean enters the mind, it never leaves.

Hyeeun brought him the flyer a few days later, slipping it into his hands when she returned from the town with a basket of goods. To know that Hyeeun, too, was willing to risk her position and nudge him toward freedom left him both overwhelmed and quietly trembling inside. Between her faith in him and your constant encouragement, he felt more determined than ever before to win the art competition. 

The candidates had to register in person, and there was no clear excuse that would allow him to slip into town without someone trailing him. For now, he had to tuck that possibility deep in his chest and force himself to focus on what came first — the meeting. Hopefully, if he did good, his father will let him off the hook without much questions. 

The night before the event, sleep barely touched him. By morning, his body felt hollow, yet he had no choice but to rise when the staff bustled into his room. They dressed him in the crisp suit his father had selected, tugging collars straight and brushing invisible specks from his sleeves until he stood polished into an image that was barely him. All the while, his father kept a hawk eye on every of his motions as if he was waiting for Beomgyu to cause a mishap for him to unleash his wrath. 

On the car ride, whispers under his breath that carried more venom than volume, his father recited the rules like scripture — when to bow, when to smile, what to say, what not to even think and threaded threats between them like barbed wire. Beomgyu gave nothing back except a stiff nod here, a blank stare there, swallowing everything into the pit of his stomach where it burned like swallowed fire.

It was sickening how his father’s entire demeanor melted into warmth the moment the doors opened and they stepped into glittering light. The man bowed, shook hands, traded laughter and compliments as though he had never once raised a hand against his son. Beomgyu, standing just behind him, followed suit with the expected grace, bowing to officials, exchanging pleasantries with strangers who wore silk smiles. Their words dripped with honey, but their eyes betrayed them. Some held pity so raw he wanted to shrink under it, others carried evil so bone-shattering that he wanted to run away as soon as possible. He was simply counting down the minutes for this to be over.

After what felt like forever, the return journey began though Beomgyu found himself more alert than ever, because he noticed the peculiarity in his father’s behaviour. The man who had been a shadow of menace for days now looked unusually jolly. Beomgyu suspected that the night’s event had yielded him deals he considered golden. He spoke to no one in particular at first, chuckling under his breath, then a call came through, and the hollow walls of the car filled with his booming laughter. The man spoke of opportunities and names he never bothered to share with his son, before ending the conversation with another peel of laughter that rattled against the windows. 

Beomgyu sat still, hands folded in his lap, stiffening only when his father’s hand clapped down on his shoulder with a jarring weight. The praise that followed was foreign; words of approval that Beomgyu could hardly believe were directed at him. He had behaved well, his father said, and for that he was worthy of a pat and a chuckle. To anyone else, it would seem like a tender moment between father and son, but Beomgyu’s bones knew better.

Beomgyu inclined his head slightly, not daring to break the fragile surface of good humor. The man, already turning away, launched into another fit of chatter with the driver, spinning half-jokes and boasts about new alliances. Beomgyu, calculating beneath his calm exterior, nodded along as though in admiration before offering his own words at the perfect moment—

“Congratulations, father. It sounds as though you’ve secured what you’ve been working toward.” The words tasted like ash on his tongue. He paused, let his tone soften just enough to sound harmless, before adding, “I’ll need to go into town tomorrow—”

Perhaps on another night, suspicion would have lined his father’s gaze, would have chained Beomgyu’s request to interrogation and threats. But tonight, drunk on his own success, the man barely spared him more than a careless wave of the hand. “Go, go,” he said, still chuckling. “Do what you want, just don’t cause trouble.” 

That was Beomgyu's green light and he sat back comfortably against the car seat, not participating in the conversation further. The rest of the car ride, beomgyu had a smile.

The gallery was crowded. Students with sketchbooks tucked beneath their arms, older painters with hands still stained in pigments, children darting between parents who urged them to stand still, and men and women dressed in their best coats. Beomgyu looked around taking in the smiling and vibrant faces of talent surrounding him. So many artists came to sign up for the competition and he thought to himself if it was even possible to compete with them. They carried with them families who clapped shoulders and whispered encouragement but most importantly they looked happy. It was a picture of belonging, and for a moment, Beomgyu wondered what he was doing among them.

He shook himself as though forcing away a cloud. No, no — he could not let his thoughts collapse inward now. He was not entirely alone; Hyeeun had been with him since day one and you had told him more than once that you believed in him. That faith mattered. Just as he was about to scan the crowd for the registration desk, a voice broke through the noise.

“Looking a bit lost there. Are you here to sign up?”

Beomgyu turned to find a young man approaching. He had a charming, friendly smile etched on his lips that enunciated the sparkle of his big eyes. The stranger looked about his age, perhaps even younger, and there was something almost familiar in the openness of his expression.

“I am,” Beomgyu answered, inclining his head politely. “I was just trying to find where to go.”

“Well, you’re in luck then,” the young man said, holding out a hand as though the two had already met. “Kang Taehyun. Come with me, I’ll show you.”

Beomgyu accepted the handshake, the other’s grip firm but not overbearing, and allowed himself to be led through the crowd until Taehyun stopped before a counter stacked with papers, inkpads, and a long line of hopefuls. Beomgyu joined the queue and let his gaze wander again — he found it easier to observe than to think.

Across the room, not far from a display easel propped up with last year’s winning piece, Taehyun stood directing another group of artists toward the line. As though sensing Beomgyu’s eyes, he glanced up, and their gazes met. Beomgyu was probably losing his social skills because how else could he explain the unrecognizable chill running through him upon their eye contact? 

Taehyun gave him a small nod and a smile, Beomgyu, uncertain of how to mirror such natural ease, offered a stiff nod in return, the corners of his mouth tugging upward in an awkward curve. Then Taehyun turned away again, already guiding another nervous painter toward the counter.

Registering his name felt like signing the deal for his new life, Beomgyu’s heart catapulting in his chest as he looked at the approved stamp beside his name. He pressed the form back toward the registrar and stepped aside, chest rising and falling as if he had run. This was his only chance and whatever it took, he could not afford to fail.

From his peripheral vision, he noticed the same young man approaching him again. That bright smile was back on his face when he stopped in front of Beomgyu, hands loosely tucked into his pockets. “All done?” he asked.

“Yes,” Beomgyu replied, dipping his head slightly. “Thank you, for earlier.”

“You look nervous,” Taehyun remarked lightly, tilting his head as he studied him.

Beomgyu’s lips quirked upward faintly. “I think that’s the common feeling packed into this place.” His words were dry, a little self-deprecating, but not entirely untrue. He could almost hear the dozens of hearts pounding around him, his own included.

That earned him a soft laugh, and Taehyun nodded as though Beomgyu had said something particularly clever. “Fair point. Still, it helps to walk around a bit, take your mind off it. Want to look around?”

Beomgyu blinked at him, uncertain. “Ah… but aren’t you a volunteer? Shouldn’t you be working?”

“My shift just ended,” Taehyun answered without missing a beat, lifting one shoulder in a shrug that was almost too casual. Then his eyes sharpened, bright with expectation as he leaned forward slightly. “Mister…?”

Caught off guard, Beomgyu realized with a start how rarely he introduced himself first. “Choi Beomgyu,” he said after a pause, the syllables of his own name tasting strange on his tongue in such a public space.

“Beomgyu,” Taehyun repeated, nodding as if sealing it into memory before gesturing for him to follow. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

The gallery was like a maze, hall after hall of color and silence broken only by the shuffle of shoes and the faint murmur of voices that rose and died away again. Beomgyu followed Taehyun through it, exchanging half-thoughts and fragmented words about the paintings and about nothing in particular. The conversations were not meant to be memorable; they existed only to fill the space between them, like scaffolding that kept Beomgyu from collapsing inward under the awkward pressure of being guided by someone he had just met. And yet Taehyun’s presence was gracious without being overbearing which kept Beomgyu from wishing himself elsewhere.

It was in front of a large canvas, colors sun-scorched and sea-drowned, that Beomgyu stopped. A boy in mid-fall, arms outstretched, feathers scattering around him like dying sparks, the sea below dark and wide, the sky above merciless. 

“Ah, the infamous Icarus,” Taehyun remarked. He felt Taehyun move closer. “I don’t know much about him, only that people say his tale still echoes as tragedy, even now.”

Eyes never once wavering from the scene, Beomgyu’s tone dipped an octave lower when he spoke. “His father, Daedalus, built wings out of feathers and wax so that they could escape the island of Crete. He warned his son not to fly too high, because the sun would melt the wax, and not too low, because the sea would soak the feathers. But Icarus…” He hesitated, then exhaled. “He was overcome by the wonder of flight. He soared upward, forgetting everything but the sky, and the heat tore his wings apart. He fell into the sea and drowned.”

Judging from Taehyun’s expression, it seemed like he was letting the explanation soak into his mind as though trying to see the boy through both lenses at once. Eventually, he said, “So in the end he died because he went against his father’s words. All that brilliance, all that promise, undone because he couldn’t obey. That’s what makes it tragic, isn’t it? Pointless.”

For a long moment Beomgyu said nothing, his jaw tight as he studied the painted boy’s broken flight. Then, he shook his head. “I don’t see it that way.” His gaze was distant, the words coming from him felt like they belonged to someone else. “Icarus fell, yes. But I like to believe he wasn’t afraid. Even when the sea claimed him, what mattered wasn’t the fall. It was that, for one moment, he flew.”

Taehyun turned toward him. “You think there’s fulfillment in that? To burn out like that, for just a taste of freedom?”

Beomgyu’s eyes softened and a faint, almost sorrowful smile tugged at his lips. After a pause, he gave the smallest nod. “Yes. Freedom asks for a price. He paid it. But in return—he knew what it was to soar.”

When Beomgyu returned home that evening, the house felt cavernous in its silence. He didn’t search for his father as such disappearances were commonplace. Beomgyu instead slipped past the polished halls and made his way toward the staff quarters. In the kitchen, he found exactly who he sought.

“Hyeeun,” he called gently, stepping inside. The older woman startled, pressing a hand to her chest before fixing him with a mock glare.

“Good heavens, child, do you mean to take years off my life? You can’t go sneaking up on me like that. I’m old, remember?” she scolded, though the affection in her voice softened every word.

Beomgyu grinned, crossing the space to wrap her in a brief hug before dropping into the chair beside her. “You’ve been saying you’re old for as long as I’ve known you, and yet you still outwork everyone here. What are you looking at?”

On the table lay a worn photo album, its edges frayed, the pages softened by touch and time. Hyeeun closed a hand over it, almost protectively. “Just these. I thought I’d keep them company for a while.”

Together they turned the pages, revisiting pieces of his past. The photos were a mix: some from the orphanage, others taken after adoption, stitched together into a patchwork of memory. The warmth of her presence and the scent of cooking still clinging to her apron wrapped around him as they reminisced, voices occasionally dissolving into laughter at some captured expression of his childhood self. 

One photo in particular drew his eye. He tapped the corner with a finger, brow furrowing. “Ah, this one… this was when the nannies took us on that park trip. I remember chasing after a kite until my shoes were ruined.”

The image showed him with a handful of children, their faces flushed with play. Yet, behind them, almost out of frame, a small family stood frozen in time: a father, a mother, and a girl about his age, their smiles angled toward another camera. The longer he stared, the more the detail nagged at him, a tug at the edges of his memory that refused to resolve into clarity. He tried to summon the day, to piece together fragments, but all that surfaced was an unsettled pull in his chest that he was forgetting something vital from this particular day. 

Before he could dwell longer, Hyeeun turned the page with a little hum, drawing his attention to newer photographs, and the moment slipped away like water through fingers. Beomgyu exhaled and let it go.

“Actually,” he said after a beat, glancing at her with a small smile, “I came to tell you something. I registered for the competition today.”

Her eyes widened, and then her whole face lit up, relief and pride tumbling into her expression at once. “Did you now? Oh, Beomgyu, that’s wonderful! You’ll win, I know it.”

He chuckled softly, looking down at her hands and placed his own over hers. “I don’t want to set my hopes too high, but I swore to myself I’d give everything I have this time. Not just for me, but for you too. If I win… I’ll take you with me like I said. We’ll leave this place behind.”

She squeezed his hand gently. “You always speak as though you owe me something, when all I ever wanted was to see you find your happiness.”

Happiness… the word triggered a memory of something, or rather, of someone. Beomgyu hesitated, a sheepish look crossing his face before he spoke again. “There’s… someone I’d like you to meet, one day.”

Hyeeun’s brows rose, her expression shifting from surprise to dawning curiosity. “Someone? Beomgyu, are you telling me you’ve met a person worth introducing to an old woman like me?”

He nodded, lips quirking into a shy smile. Her disbelieving laugh rang out, bright and affectionate, as she shook her head. “You’ve kept this from me? Well, you’d better not think you’re escaping without details. Who is this person?”

“Not yet,” he said gently, sincerity ran beneath his words. “But when the time is right, I promise I’ll bring her to meet you.”

He couldn’t fall asleep that night; he didn’t know whether it was from the rush of adrenaline that ignited in his veins or the stress caused by the thought that he had to work — and quickly — on a new piece which was presentable and qualified enough for the art show. Beomgyu had to be cautious with his art tools. Things would get ugly if he gets caught by his father again. He had to do it all in one month. 

He got down to work as soon as he knew he was safe to do so. Days and nights were spent behind the piece he worked on. He was diligent and careful — alert not to make any mistakes. There were moments when Hyeeun had to drag him away from the canvas to eat, or to send him for a bath. On days when the manor’s atmosphere grew too watchful, too unsafe for him to risk even a brushstroke, he carried his tools in secret and escaped to the ruins, where your presence became his shelter.

One afternoon, you arrived and settled beside him to watch. Beomgyu did not need to look up to feel your gaze fixed on the canvas, though when he finally did, he caught the expression on your face and smiled faintly. Your eyes were wide, awestruck.

“It’s beautiful already,” you said. The colors caught in the fading light, and your breath seemed to hitch as you took in how far the piece had come. You reached for his hands. Beomgyu let you take them, watching as your fingers traced across his palms, turning them this way and that, as though searching for some hidden proof of pain.

He gave a small laugh, soft and almost boyish in the dim afternoon light. “Are you checking for wounds?”

Your thumb brushed against a callus, but your gaze had already returned to the canvas. Beomgyu tilted his head and cupped your face in one paint-stained hand.

“I’m being careful,” he assured. “That’s why he hasn’t noticed. That’s why I haven’t had to take any blows lately. I know what’s at stake.”

You turned into his touch, eyes shadowed with worry he had seen before, though never quite so open. “Knowing what your father is capable of,” you said, punctuating the half finished sentence with a sigh, you added, “I can’t help but worry for you.” Your hand tightened faintly over his. “But I also know what you’re capable of, Beomgyu. And when I think of that, I’m certain his hold over you won’t last forever. It’s only a matter of time before one day, everything he’s built will turn to ashes."

Beomgyu let out a quiet laugh. “It’s endearing,” he murmured, “how much you trust me.”

Your eyes curved faintly, though not with unguarded joy; there was a rueful tilt to your lips. “You’ve shown me many reasons to trust you,” you said softly. “I told you before, didn’t I? That you are a kind person.”

He stilled for a moment, the brush pausing mid‑air, before he set it down. He leaned closer, brushing a kiss against your linked hands. “I trust you too, just so you know.”

That was when you went quiet for a moment, eyes flicking over his face as though searching for something, before you asked him why. “Why do you trust me? You don’t even know my name, never once asked me where I came from, who my family was or what I could’ve wanted out of this strange companionship that bound the two of us together. Aren’t you afraid?” you pressed, “that I might be here with some other purpose? What if I hurt you?”

Beomgyu sat back, listening, and the canvas waited but he didn’t care, because the question deserved more than an absentminded answer. His gaze dropped briefly to his hands in yours, then lifted to your eyes. He smiled with an open sincerity.

“Maybe it is strange,” he admitted, “trusting someone when I don’t even know the simplest things about them. But you’ve been nothing but a joy in my life since you appeared. If you wanted to hurt me, I think you would’ve done it long ago. You wouldn’t be here, sitting next to me, watching me chase after something I’d given up on a long time ago. You wouldn’t be the one reminding me that my dreams are worth the risk. Unless…” He let out a small laugh, shaking his head. “Unless it’s part of your trick, in which case—I’ll say this much. Instead of harm, you’ve made me work harder, and believe that maybe I have a place beyond these walls. If that’s your scheme, then it’s the kindest one I’ve ever seen.”

The ruins were still, save for the faint rustle of wind passing through broken arches. He leaned in a little closer, lowering his voice like he was sharing a secret with you. “You told me once you envy me for holding onto compassion even when life didn’t give me reasons to. But… I think you’re just as compassionate, maybe more. Otherwise, why do you look at me like you’re about to cry every time?”

Beomgyu’s heart beat wildly as he said those words, watching your face and how for a long while words seemed to desert you. He wondered if your heart was beating fast too? But you sat there hollow-mouthed, perhaps felt caught between wanting to confess everything and refusing to let a single syllable slip. Beomgyu did not appear unsettled by your silence. 

Instead, he turned his gaze toward the broken arches and the scattered stones of the ruin, the evening light slanting across his features as though it wished to frame him in gold. With a small, reflective smile, he said, “Do you know what I’ve realized? You’ve given me more reasons to smile in these past weeks than I’ve had in years. You’ve given me reasons to step out of that house and to look forward to what comes when the sun rises. A cruel heart could never grant that.”

“Do you really think I could be… kind?” you quietly asked.

Beomgyu’s chuckle slipped out, light as if he had caught a breeze between his teeth. He leaned back a little, fingers brushing against the edge of his canvas. “I think I’ve been watching you try to change,” he said warmly but for reasons unknown to him, his words made your eyes dart toward him in alarm. He let that slide. “You don’t need to, you know. You’ve already shown me the heart you carry, but you shift and grow too, and that’s what makes you… harder to pin down. Which is why honestly,” he added with a wry smile, “I’ve hesitated to give you a name.”

Even after having a word for it, there were nights he thought if his definition of you was all that you were. That would be too cruel and unjust for you. He didn’t want to limit you. 

Your brows furrowed, curiosity outweighing the panic that had risen in you moments before. “Define me, you mean?”

“Giving you a name,” he corrected gently, tilting his head as he met your eyes again. “A definition fixes a person into one place, doesn’t it? It leaves no room for change. You—” he broke off briefly, lips tugging into a faint smile, “—you evolve. If you’d still like to know what’s been crossing my mind for you, though, I’d be more than glad to tell you.”

A tremor left you in the form of a shuddering breath, but you replaced it with brightness, shaping it into a smile so true and dazzling that it made his chest ache. “I’d still love to know,” you said, eyes catching the light until they shone with a gloss that made you look as though you stood on the edge of tears. There it was again, looking at him as if you’re about to break.

Something in his own expression softened at that. You turned your face away then, toward the half-finished painting between you. “Hyeeun will love this,” you murmured.

“I hope she does,” he answered. Then, after a small pause, he added with an earnestness that he prayed to reach your heart, “I want you to meet her one day. She’s very dear to me.”

You let your eyes rest on him again, watching the openness with which he spoke of her, the fondness etched into his face as though the thought of her could smooth away every scar he had known. “I can tell she is,” you said, “She brought you up, didn’t she? I can see the proof in you. You’ve grown into a lovely person, Beomgyu.”

Time slipped away faster than he could hold it, until suddenly there was only a week left before the submission.

The day had dawned a dreary overcast. Beomgyu’s gaze wandered for a moment to the window, droplets threading their way downward, before returning to the canvas in front of him. His chest swelled with a quiet pride.

A bouquet of vibrant yellow roses framed by a pair of gentle hands. He had managed to capture the image exactly as it had lived in his memory, as if time had folded to give him back that fleeting sight. Looking at it now, he felt vindicated. The scene was striking, full of warmth, just as he had always believed it would be.

A knock came against the door, breaking his reverie. His heart leapt, the corners of his lips tugging upward the moment he saw Hyeeun standing there. He beckoned her in, his eagerness almost spilling out.

“So you’ve finally decided to show me what you’ve been working on,” she said with a playful tilt of her brow.

“I can promise you it’s worth the wait,” he answered with a laugh.

Hyeeun raised her brows in anticipation when Beomgyu jogged up behind her and gently covered her eyes with his hands, guiding her toward the canvas. A laugh tumbled out of her as she allowed him to lead. When he pulled his hands away, Beomgyu stepped back, searching her face as the veil of surprise lifted. For a heartbeat, she looked baffled, and then it began to dawn on her. Her eyes flicked from the painting to her own hands, and there, gleaming on her ring finger, was the silver band reflected on the painted one.

“Are those…?” Her voice cracked, words catching before they could form.

Beomgyu only nodded, the satisfaction in his chest deepening. Her reaction alone was enough to tell him that he had succeeded. Crossing his arms, he looked at the canvas not as an artist, but as a son. “I’ve named it A Mother’s Love.”

Hyeeun pressed her lips together, her eyes glistening despite the small scoff she gave as she wiped at them. “You really know how to move me, don’t you?”

“You once told me I don’t owe you anything,” he paused, looking down. “But I don’t think that’s true. I owe you everything, and I’ll spend the rest of my life finding ways to repay all the years you spent caring for me, standing by me, and loving me as only you could… mother.”

Her arms went around him in a tearful embrace, and he closed his eyes against her shoulder. For all his words, for all the paint he had poured into canvas after canvas, nothing could quite hold the depth of what she had been to him. So he prayed, silently, fervently, that he might one day be worthy of it all.

And just when you think you’re finally at the peak of having the sun in your grasp, you get reminded why Icarus fell for flying so close to it. 

The night had been like any other but Beomgyu had paused as he passed the door of his father’s office. He should have walked on. His feet should have carried him back to his room, but instead they rooted to the floor as though the very grain of the wood was determined to betray him into eavesdropping.

“The tide is turning in our favor,” he father said, pacing as he spoke, the scrape of his shoes brushing against the carpet. “The numbers are already showing it. They’ll crown me before the final vote is even cast, you’ll see. But all of it means nothing if ghosts are allowed to claw their way out of their graves.”

Beomgyu’s blood ran cold. Across the room, he heard the secretary’s voice. “It’s been more than ten years, sir. Ten years, and not a whisper has surfaced that can truly harm you. The records are buried deep, the editors are in our pocket, and those who might’ve spoken have either been bought or silenced.”

His father let out a short laugh. “And that is why you’ll make sure they still find nothing to tug at. The family’s death was written off as an unfortunate accident, nothing more. A fire, a tragedy, and then the ashes swept clean. Keep it that way. I don’t care how many papers you have to burn or how many mouths you need to shut. My victory depends on silence.”

The secretary’s chair creaked as he leaned back, the faint metallic tap of his pen following. “It will be done. We’ve kept the story buried this long; another season won’t change that. But—people are digging harder now, rival camps are hungrier. If even one old article resurfaces about the murder—”

“Then destroy it,” his father cut in, dismissive. “Destroy it before the ink has time to dry in their minds. We’ve already killed them once; don’t let their memory rise to kill me.”

It was the way his father said it, offhand as if it were no heavier than instructing the staff to clear the dining table, that made Beomgyu’s breath falter. The word murder hung there, stripped of any disguise, spoken so plainly it scalded him. A murder case, reduced to a nuisance of paperwork and bribes. His father’s voice did not even lower when he referred to the life that had been taken — it was the unshaken belief that power was strong enough to wash blood clean, that made Beomgyu’s insides twist.

He didn’t know whose lives had been extinguished, only that the secretary’s agreement confirmed it had been done and that it was not the first time. All his life, he had exaggerated the fact that his father was capable of ‘killing’ only by taking away someone’s dreams but now Beomgyu truly understood — his father was capable of more than cruelty, more than fists and cutting words; he was capable of ending a person entirely. The realization rooted in Beomgyu’s chest like ice. He staggered back from the door as though struck, each step of retreat a battle to keep his breathing quiet, his hands trembling against the banister as he forced himself back to his room.

Once inside, his strength gave out, fumbling the latch shut. He collapsed to the floorboards, chest convulsing with shallow gasps that refused to fill his lungs. The room blurred and spun, palms pressed against his temples as though he could keep the words from seeping deeper into him. His father was capable of killing. He had done it before, and he had hidden it so well that the world lauded him still.

What seized him more violently was not the thought of his own end should the truth of his defiance ever reach his father — it was Hyeeun. 

If his father discovered the plan, if his father so much as suspected her role, what would stop him from erasing her just as he had erased those innocent lives? Hyeeun — sweet Hyeeun, who had given up her years to raise him with tenderness his father never knew — what would he do if she was dragged into the fire? Beomgyu’s nails dug into the floor as his breathing quickened, panic thrashing inside him without direction.

He did not, for one moment, fear what could happen to himself; but the thought of harm falling upon her left him shaking, gasping on the floor. If his father dared to touch Hyeeun, Beomgyu did not know what he might do, only that the boy he was tonight would cease to exist.

He was falling. He was falling and all he wanted was the embrace of the ocean to engulf him so that the terror coursing through his chest would dissolve into something vaster than himself. 

Yet he had not moved all day; the bed had kept him prisoner by dread so thick he could not even bring himself to step outside. Though he thought of the lakeside, though he thought of the ruins, though he thought of you, he could not will his limbs to rise. He remained drowning in his own depression, sick with the wish that you would come find him instead, to appear at his door as if summoned by the desperation he could no longer mask, to drown him instead in the breadth of your presence, to hold him and promise that the truth he learned was nothing more than his hallucination.

He could not bear it any longer. Past midnight, when the stars were scattered pale across the sky, he fled toward the ruins. He did not know if you would be there. He did not even expect it, for you had only ever met him in the span between afternoon and evening, your paths parting with the descent of the sun. And yet, he went, driven by the need to breathe somewhere far from walls built by a murderer.

The ruins at night were a husk of themselves. Steeped in shadow, the stones veined with silver where the moon spilled across them making the place look unreal in its beauty. Reality was already growing porous for Beomgyu from the burden of his emotions. 

In truth, he did not expect anyone. He had prepared himself for emptiness, perhaps even needed it. So when he caught sight of you there seated in that desolate cradle of stone — for a brief second he thought he had conjured you out of longing, a hallucination born of fear.

His knees struck the earth hard. Raw and jagged sobs broke from him shaking him until he bent forward with his face in his hands, incapable of speech, incapable of anything but breaking apart. He dimly registered your startled voice, the sound of you rushing to him, your hands clumsy on his shoulders and his face, trying to discover where he was hurt, what had struck him down.

“Beomgyu—Beomgyu, what happened? Are you hurt? Tell me where—” Your words stumbled over each other in alarm, your palms framing his jaw.

But no words would come. The air tore in and out of his lungs but brought no calm, only more shudders. His hands caught at you desperately, clutching your arms, your shoulder, wherever he could find purchase to feel you weren’t an image he conjured up. 

“Breathe,” you whispered, pulling his face against your shoulder. “Just breathe, it’s alright. You’re here, I’ve got you. You’re safe, Beomgyu.” The cadence of your words was uneven, rushed at times, but that only made them feel more alive.

It took long minutes before anything coherent slipped through his teeth. “I—I can’t—” He broke off, pressing his face harder into your shoulder because the words themselves burned. “The house—it’s—” His chest hitched again, another sob scraping his throat raw. “I don’t know what to do. Hyeeun—I’m so scared.”

You stroked the back of his neck, shushing him in soft fragments but Beomgyu could hear your heart beating in confusion. “Then don’t think about the house right now. You’re here. Just stay here with me. Whatever it is, you don’t have to carry it alone.”

He shook his head, unable to form more. He couldn't place it into words — couldn’t say my father is capable of killing, couldn’t bear to let it take shape. 

You let him be for a little while longer, waiting until the worst of his trembling had passed before gently suggesting that the night air would make him catch a cold if he stayed out any longer. He didn’t resist when you touched his sleeve and urged him to his feet, though his movements were sluggish. His gaze trailed after you when you stooped to collect the lamp you had with you, its pale flame quivering with each step you took toward the ruined structure. 

The ruin looked much as you both had left it the last time — almost domestic in its stillness, thanks to his earlier persistence in sweeping and arranging. The corners were free of the usual drifts of leaves, and the mat you had unrolled together rested against the far wall. You brought him there with a small guiding press, and he sank down onto it. When you passed him your water pouch, he gratefully accepted it. The liquid wet his lips, ran down the corner of his mouth, and only then did he realize how parched he was.

You stayed low before him, crouched so that your eyes caught his without obstruction. The flame from the lamp painted copper onto the brown of your gaze, lending it an otherworldly sheen that held him captive despite himself. He thought, wildly, that if he had enough strength left he would keep staring until the night collapsed into morning, that maybe your eyes could hold him upright where his own body could not. His heart, which only moments ago had raced from panic, now beat with a different restlessness.

“What were you doing here?” he asked at last, his voice roughened not only by thirst. He glanced at the darkness beyond the broken threshold, then back at you. “At this hour, I mean. It’s far too late for you to be wandering.”

Beomgyu once again caught the familiar flicker of hesitation in your gaze as you thought for an answer. He was no fool, he knew you had secrets, but you weren’t an enemy. That much, he was sure of, and if one asked him why then they’d be disappointed knowing he too had no idea why. He just knew.

“I couldn't sleep.” You brushed a stray lock of hair back as you spoke, your gaze drifting briefly toward the lamp. “When my house doesn’t feel like a home, I come here, remember?”

A rueful smile touched his mouth, though it faltered almost as soon as it appeared. “Then I should apologize for invading your space. I didn’t mean to… I didn’t even know if you’d be here. It’s only that—” he swallowed, thumb tightening on the water pouch before setting it aside, “I hoped for you to be here. You’ve become… I don’t even know the word. Important, I suppose. Too important, perhaps. It’s strange—funny, even.”

The wind slipped in through the gaps in the stone, stirring a faint draft that made the flame inside the lamp gutter dangerously, shadows reeling across the walls. The two of you instinctively glanced toward it, watching as it bent and righted itself. The pause in conversation stretched there, tension threading the air in the wake of his words.

“Are you still sure you want to do this?” 

“Do what?”

You looked away, toward the lamp that threatened to die and then flared again, and you shook your head like you were denying both him and yourself. A faint, tired curve of your lips betraying nothing of the turmoil beneath. “You shouldn’t trust me this much.” The words were a weak last attempt at a warning.

Beomgyu chuckled dryly. “You’ve said that before,” he murmured, rubbing at his face with both hands as if he could wake himself from this strange, aching dream. “And I told you—I don’t care. If you were going to hurt me, you would’ve done it already.” His hands dropped back to his lap, his eyes finding yours in the half-light. Softer, almost broken, he added, “You still had the chance to do it tonight… but instead you held me.”

His head tilted, hair falling across his brow as he studied you. “Why do you keep doing it?”

The lamp flickered violently, its glow throwing wild shapes across the walls and cutting harsh lines over his face. He leaned back against the stone, letting his legs stretch before him. The night wind had worked his hair into a tangle, and without thinking, you shifted closer, reaching out to smooth them away. His gaze never broke from yours, even as your fingers threaded lightly through his hair he kept waiting for your answer.

When your silence stretched, he exhaled a breath that trembled at its edges. “It’s too late to take it back now,” he said softly. “I’d rather trust you and be wrong than keep drowning alone.”

It was true. Never once had he felt danger in your presence. Unease, yes, at the beginning, when you had first unsettled him with your strange quietude but never once did he feel the need to truly run away from you. Even if he was destined to burn like Icarus, chasing the warmth of a freedom too close to touch, and even if you were the ocean that would swallow him whole, he could not bring himself to care. Let the story be a tragedy rewritten. He still wanted you.

You said his name — just his name — and the sound of it loosened a sigh from him. His hand rose almost instinctively, closing around yours where it still rested in his hair. That simple gesture drew your eyes to him at last, made you meet him fully beneath the thinning light. The wind surged through the broken windows, and the flame in the lamp gave its last quiver before snuffing out, leaving the two of you in the silvery hush of moonlight.

He saw the way your lips parted with the faint tremor of restraint there, and how your gaze dipped, traced the line of his mouth before returning to his eyes. Beomgyu didn’t move at all, offering the decision into your hands.

You were torn, that much he could see, and guilt pricked him for laying this heaviness on your shoulders. He softened instinctively, ruffling your hair with his palm before patting the top of your head with a small chuckle which was no less warm.

“Thank you,” he said. “For always catching me when I fall, even when you don’t realize it.” He started to push himself upright, brushing dust from his palms. “I’m okay now. I can go back.”

But your hand caught his collar before he could straighten fully, the tug sharp enough to unbalance him, dragging him back down into a sitting position where your mouth caught his. Beomgyu had no time to even melt into the kiss because you were pulling away already. He stared at you when did, still so close that your breaths touched. His pulse pounded so harshly in his ears it drowned out the rustle of the trees outside. Your grip on his collar only tightened, holding him close enough that he could see the way your chest heaved with uneven breaths.

“Please,” you begged, “ask me what you are to me.”

His chest ached at the rawness of it, a smile breaking loose even as he lifted his hand to cradle your jaw, thumb brushing your skin tenderly. “What am I to you?” he whispered.

You cursed under your breath, eyes squeezing shut as though forcing the truth out cost more than you wanted to give, before you opened them again and pinned him in place.

“I want to save you, Choi Beomgyu.”

“I’m all yours.”

Mouth claiming mouth, returning to each other with a rush and much less hesitation this time. His hand slid up to the back of your head, holding you against him. The taste of you filled him, overwhelming and it wasn't enough, never enough, so he angled his mouth to press harder against yours — lips parting, pulling you closer until your knees knocked his thighs. Beomgyu’s back thumped lightly against the wall as you pressed forward, the jolt sending a shiver up his spine. He didn’t even care about the rough stone digging into his shoulders; all he cared about was the feel of you crawling into his lap, your thighs bracketing his hips, your body pressing down until he could hardly breathe for the rush of sensation.

A groan broke from him when you settled more fully against him, the friction near unbearable through the layers of cloth still separating you. Your dress had ridden up over your thighs, exposing warm skin beneath his palms as his hands slid along them, and the shiver that trembled through you only pushed him further into the haze of need. The movement forced another roll of your hips against his that made his vision blur for a moment. He broke from your mouth only to gasp for air, forehead falling against your shoulder, his breath hot where it hit your skin.

“Is this—” he rasped, voice raw with need, “—is this really okay?” His fingers flexed against your waist, betraying his fear of pushing you too far, of losing what he already had.

“Yes,” you breathed against his ear, the word catching on your throat, more exhale than voice. “If you want this too.”

He tilted his head back enough to catch your mouth again, kissing you like that was the only answer possible. “God, I do,” he muttered against your lips, barely coherent as he drew you down harder against him, his hips shifting upward to meet the roll of yours. The friction burned, sharp and maddening, and he couldn’t hold back the whimper that escaped when you rolled down again, slow enough to make his entire body quake.

“You’re trembling,” you whispered against his cheek, your hands threading through his hair, tugging lightly.

“I—” he choked out a breath as his hands slid from your hips up along your back, “—I don’t think I can stop even if I tried.”

“You don’t have to,” you said simply, continuing your blissful torture on him, dragging across the strain between you both. Beomgyu’s jaw dropped around another groan, his eyes squeezing shut at the flood of sensation. His mind shrank to nothing but the heat of your body rocking against his, the sound of your breath mixing with his own, and the wet press of your mouths colliding again and again, each kiss hungrier than the last.

He had thought he’d drown in loneliness before, but this was drowning too — in fire and salt and sweetness, a burn he would gladly take if it meant more of you, closer still, until there was no space left between. He didn’t care if it consumed him entirely; he wanted more, and more, and more.

You pressed another kiss to his lips, and he was hungrier than ever. His voice broke into a low moan against your mouth, his body jolting when the hard line of his arousal slid against your center through the thin barrier of fabric. His face burned crimson as he wrenched back just far enough to groan. You take the break to graze your lips against his neck, and he  shudders beneath you, his fluffy black hair beginning to stick to his forehead from sweat. 

He’s already unbearably hard and his mind was reeling from this in a way no danger, no sleepless night, ever had. He felt you shift back a little, your hand slipping lower, trailing over the bare stretch of his stomach where his shirt had ridden up, before resting with the softest pressure against his crotch. The look of asking for permission you gave him nearly broke him apart. He could only nod, his body begging for you, but more than that, his heart begging to be trusted with this.

It wasn’t just the fire of arousal that consumed him, it was the way you touched him as if he was worth handling with devotion. He had never known gentleness like this, never known safety within desire, but right now you were giving him those so easily — your lips pecking his so softly, your body guiding him instead of overwhelming him. He wanted nothing more than to return that gift, to be your harbor the way you were becoming his. His hands, though trembling, moved to help you out of the thin barrier of fabric that still stood between you, his gaze never leaving yours as if to swear again and again that your comfort was his priority. Every shift, every small intake of your breath, he caught and memorized.

Beomgyu had always held the seed of desire under his tongue and let the wild birds hawk the sky. He had dreamt of being wanted; truly wanted, not as a tool or a passing shadow — something heady and sweet and worthy to be held down. And now, when your heat finally took him in, he understood what it meant to be wanted that way.

The sudden stretch tore a moan out of you before you could stop it, and he clutched at you instinctively as you gasped, the tightness around him enough to strip him of all thought. Your face twisted with pain and pleasure, and his heart wrenched — he kissed you through it, every apology falling between your breaths, every praise spilling across your skin in a desperate attempt to soothe. His lips moving over your jaw, your temple, your mouth, anything he could reach as his hands stroked your sides. He massaged gently, trying to calm you down in the same way you had anchored him, murmuring promises into your hair that he would wait, that you could take all the time you needed.

The moonlight fell over you both, silvering the sheen of sweat on your skin, and when he saw the way your mouth parted, the way your lashes fluttered as you began to move along him, it nearly pushed him over the edge. Every slow rise and fall was a gift, every sound that slipped from you felt like a gospel in his ears that caused waves of pleasure to crash into him.

You kissed him through the waves, left him gasping, and he thought — how could one ever stop loving the ocean, even if it leaves you breathless on its shore?

“Sær.”

Somewhere in that heady haze, the name burned in the back of his mind begging to be given a shape, so Beomgyu let it fall from his lips softly and hushed between breaths. It’s the name he thought of for you. Perhaps in another moment, one that was not this, he might have chosen to tell you your given name. But here in this blissful heat of intimacy, it felt right to give you the name he had forged in the furnace of his chest. Now, when he was bare in every sense, was the only time it could have been spoken.

And the instant it passed, he felt you pausing your movements mid-press, your eyes carrying… was it shock? Disbelief? Caught in the frenzy of stumbling heartbeats he could not tell apart why his heart was pumping so loudly. Did you perhaps not like it? Were you disappointed? 

“Wh–what?” your voice cracked, the sound so broken in the night air. He clenched his jaw, forced his hips to stay still when every muscle screamed to thrust upward into you. Instead he lifted a trembling hand to cup your cheek, brushing the warmth of your skin with his thumb. 

“That’s the name I’ve chosen for you,” he whispered, voice rough with want, rougher with tenderness. “It means–”

“The ocean.”

Countless synonyms of the ocean to exist yet this particular one echoed in his head insistently, stubbornly, and he didn't know why but only that it fit, only that its existence belonged to you. Sær. Ocean. That was what you were to him. Endless, vast, merciless, and yet the only place he could imagine belonging. His final resting place.

Beomgyu’s eyes searched yours like a man praying for absolution when you finished the sentence for him. However, worry started to seize him when you remained quiet with eyes downcast. He pushed himself up, ignoring the way the change in angle made your walls clench tighter around him, ignoring the way his own body begged for movement, and focused only on your face. “You don’t like it?” 

When he tilted your face up with his fingers on your chin, Beomgyu’s heart dropped in his stomach as he saw the tears rolling down your cheeks. Panic clawed through him. He grasped your shoulders as if trying to hold you together, his voice rushing out fast and uneven. “Are you hurt? Am I hurting you? Do you want me to stop? Tell me and I’ll stop, please—”

But you shook your head so fiercely that his words cut off, and in that frantic movement he caught the shimmer of your tears spilling freely. His chest seized, but then you were smiling through it, trembling and tearful yet radiant in a way that shone brighter than any words could have. “No—no,” you whispered, “I’ve never been happier.”

The confession sent a rush through him that loosened the taut coil of tension in his chest, replacing it with a wild, fervent heat that left him gasping against your mouth when your lips found him again, a hungry pull that drew him back into motion, your hips rolling as you seated yourself fully and began to move. Beomgyu swore something had changed right then — intoxicating him more than before.

Every drag of your slick heat around him made his lungs fight for breath, and when you rocked deeper, sinking down until he was pressed to the hilt, he nearly lost himself right there. Your gasps spilled over his mouth, your moans falling into the crook of his throat, and he thought he might die from the sheer sound of you. His hands tightened on your hips, fingers digging into the curves, and he met each thrust with a broken groan, matching your rhythm until it was impossible to tell who was guiding whom, only that you were both drowning together in the same tide.

All of a sudden you smiled at him again, and leaned close until your lips brushed his ear. You whispered your name to him. 

The syllables curled inside him like fire, and he swore his vision blurred, his head snapping back against the wall as his eyes rolled and his mouth fell open around a breathy moan. He looked at you through half-lidded eyes, smiling and whispering your name back to you again and again.

Your name on his tongue made you clench around him as your essence washed over him with soft moans, and he knew he wasn’t going to last. The way your body gripped him, hot and merciless, had him groaning into your shoulder, warning through ragged breaths, “I—I’m close, I can’t—” And you nodded against his skin, letting him go, letting him pull free from your heat just as he broke. The sound that tore from him was high, keening, his throat catching on a pitch he hadn’t known he could reach, while his release painted across his abdomen and chest in hot spurts. His body trembled from the force, every muscle giving out as his head dropped back, hair sticking to his sweat-slick forehead, his whole face and neck and ears flushed a furious red.

Beomgyu watched you lean down, dragging your tongue slowly across his abdomen, licking up the taste of him mixed with salt and heat, your eyes flicking up as you paused against his stomach. That sight was so utterly erotic and filthy that he thought he might spill again right then and there.

His fingers found their way into your hair, stroking along the strands before resting on the back of your head. “Kiss me. Need to know what I taste like on your lips.”

He saw the way your face warmed but then you leaned down again, licking up more of his release before swishing it around your lips. When you pressed your mouth to his, the feeling of it had him groaning deep into you, and he clutched at your nape. 

He swallowed the taste of himself mixed with you — the electricity of your touch had him drowning and soaring at once. His whole body shuddered at the intimacy of it, at the mess and the sweetness, and he thought he would gladly starve forever if only to be fed this again.

When you finally parted, leaving him panting against your mouth, he found himself smiling afterward. “You have a beautiful name.” He hoped he conveyed his earnest feelings in his words.

Beomgyu watched, mesmerized, when you laughed. You have such a beautiful smile. You had always been beautiful to him, though before you had hidden behind a disguise. But now in front of him you were stripped bare of all tricks and pretense. You were showing him your true colours and that, Beomgyu thought, made you look more breathtaking than ever. 

He prayed desperately that he would not come to regret whatever had unraveled between you tonight. He prayed that your damnation might somehow free him, instead of chaining him to some future filled with remorse. But right now, with you in his arms as the two of you laid under the moonlight, it felt just right. He wished to stay like that.

On the day of the art submission, Beomgyu had to be diligent to leave the manor. Seven days until the results, they had announced, and those words had not left his head since. 

He told himself over and over that if a public figure like Kwangsun took notice of him, his father would have no choice but to let him go, to let him pursue what he wanted, if only for the sake of preserving his family’s image. But the thought did not bring comfort for long and his fear knew no bounds since after all his father is quite literally a murderer. 

When the sixth night bled into its end and he prepared to sink beneath the covers, a soft tap against the glass alerted him. His head shot up staring into the darkness, convinced for a moment that he had imagined it. Then it came again, twice this time. He pushed himself up, bare feet cold against the floor, and went to the window, his hand trembling slightly as he unlatched it—

“Hi.”

—too see you there.

You stood framed in the night, the silver wash of the moon outlining you, but it was not the you he knew. You weren’t draped in the light summer dresses or the casual clothes he had grown accustomed to seeing, no, tonight you wore dark garments cut close to your figure — a uniform. The sight shook him because it hinted at a life he had not yet been allowed to glimpse but that detail was not the top of his worry. 

“How—how did you even manage to get in?” He was already panicking, mind racing with the thought of his father’s eyes everywhere. He stepped back just enough to let you climb in. “What if someone saw you—”

But before he could finish, you cradled his face, and your lips crashed against his with such urgency that it drove every frantic thought from his head. Lungs having the air knocked out from them, he staggered back under the force of it, his own hand shooting out to grasp your arm to steady his footing.

There was something desperate about the way you kissed him like it was the last time, as if the world would tear the two of you apart come morning, and that terrified him. A discomfort so prominent began to claw its way up in his chest that he could not push it down no matter how much he tried.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered, when you finally broke away. “Why does it feel like—like you’re about to leave me?”

You only shook your head, your forehead coming to rest against his. “Nothing’s wrong,” you whispered, though your eyes betrayed a depth that unsettled him further. Then, tilting your head back you smirked faintly, words curling off your tongue in that way of yours that always left him defenseless. “Why does it still come as a surprise to you that closeness can’t be achieved from a safe distance, hm?”

Heat shot through his face, and Beomgyu cursed himself for how easily you could melt him. Your teasing expression, paired with the uniform you wore — you looked so different but no less breathtaking that it left him stammering. He knew he looked ridiculous, stuttering for air when all you did was look at him.

You gave a gentle shake of your head again, chuckling before a tiny smile surfaced. “Everything will be okay. That’s why I came—to tell you not to be afraid, no matter what happens.” Your thumb brushed across his cheek, and your gaze never left his, steady even as his heart pounded. “The results are tomorrow, aren’t they? Believe in yourself, Beomgyu. Remember what I promised—” you paused briefly, letting your smile widen, “I will save you, and I will catch you, no matter how you fall.”

The reassurance should have calmed him, but it only heightened his unease. Inside, his chest thrashed with dread, though he kept his expression still, voice as steady as he could manage. “You’re scaring me,” he said, and it came out smaller than he wanted.

But you only laughed softly like you were helping him calm down. “I’m being practical,” you said, nudging his nose with yours. “It’s better to be prepared for anything, don’t you think?”

He hated that you were right. There was no promise that tomorrow would bring triumph. No promise that fate would land in his favor. And yet, even in that terrifying ambiguity, you spoke as if his future was not chained to chance. As if you had already written it differently for him.

So he trusted you, because even when your words hinted at farewells and hidden battles, you had never once turned away from him. What else could he do when your hand was warm against his cheek and your eyes burned with certainty?

His gaze drifted down to the uniform again, questions weighing on his tongue. “Your uh… outfit. Is it for work?” he asked.

You hummed as if the question amused you and stepped back a pace, giving a twirl as though to show yourself off. Then you shoved your hands into your pockets, a playful smile tugging at your lips. “Do I look good?”

His throat bobbed as he swallowed, cheeks warming again. “You do,” he admitted. He let it stop there, did not press further, though a hundred questions burned in him. He only stared softly at the enigma of you and though you offered him crumbs of your secrets, though you showed him pieces like this, he could not bring himself to despise you or fear you for withholding the rest.

You stepped into him once more, wrapping your arms around him. He returned the embrace, burying his face against your shoulder, and that was when you whispered against his ear, “Please wait for me.”

The words throbbed in his skull. His lips parted, the question trembling on the edge of his tongue — what do you mean by that? — but he could not force it out and by the time he gathered his courage, you were already drawing away. So he only held onto the warmth of you as you climbed back through the window. Your smile was soft, and with one last look, you slipped out into the night, leaving him with nothing but the ghost of your kiss and the echo of your promise.

Dawn felt too bright, the pale gold seeping across the horizon feeling almost cruel when his body still trembled with exhaustion.

Beomgyu had not closed his eyes once, and now the morning found him pacing the length of his room. He sat at his desk and tried to sketch, his pencil scratching lines that twisted into nonsense before his frustration tore the paper apart; he reached for a book, but the letters swam before his eyes, meaningless as waves breaking against stone. He pressed his forehead against the windowpane, hoping the cool glass might still his racing thoughts, but all he could see in his reflection was a boy stretched thin between terror and hope.

Hyeeun came to him more than once, gentle in the way she hovered by the doorframe before stepping inside. She reminded him, “You’ve done your part — now it’s the world’s turn to see it.”

She guided him back into his chair when his legs refused to stop moving, brushed his hair out of his face and held his hands when they trembled too violently to keep them still. Yet her reassurances, as tender as they were, could not banish the echo of the words you had left him with at the window. They repeated endlessly, a vow that should have been comforting but instead carved at his chest with each recollection, because the tone in which you had spoken them had left behind the ache of your absence.

Every creak of the hallway, every rattle of wind against the shutters, every stray sound made his heart lurch, convinced that it was not a messenger at the door but his father, that somehow the man had already discovered everything, that the fragile shield of secrecy would shatter and crush him before he ever had the chance to dream of freedom. He sat on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, until the sound he dreaded most came — a knock at the door.

His body jerked upright, cold sweat prickling his neck, and his eyes darted to Hyeeun, who straightened slowly, her mouth pressed into a line as though she too feared what lay beyond that door. But then the voice of a servant filtered through, announcing the arrival of a letter addressed to him, and Beomgyu’s stomach twisted so violently it felt like a blade had cut through him.

The envelope, when it was placed in his shaking hands, almost dropped as his fingers faltered, and Hyeeun’s hands came to rest lightly over his own, urging him to steady himself, urging him to breathe, urging him to open it before his panic consumed him entirely. “Beomgyu,” she said in a way that did not allow disobedience, “you cannot keep fearing what is already written. You owe it to yourself to see it.”

But Beomgyu stood frozen, the envelope heavy as iron. His throat worked uselessly. “What if—” he choked, unable to finish.

What if it told him he was nothing? That every stolen hour by candlelight, every drop of blood hidden in the strokes of his brushes, every secret dream was nothing more than childish delusion?

“You’ll never know if you keep staring at it,” Hyeeun whispered, touching his wrist. Her hand was warm.

His heart hammered against his ribs, a drum of dread, until the silence became unbearable and he tore at the seal with uncoordinated hands.

At first, the words danced, and he had to blink until tears threatened to spill just to make out the letters. He read the ranking once, disbelieving. Twice, his lips trembling over the syllables. A third time, until his vision swam and the letters dissolved into black ink stains.

“It says… it says—” He laughed, a cracked sound that turned into a sob, then another, until tears blurred everything. “First,” he whispered hoarsely, “I ranked first.”

Hyeeun caught him before he collapsed entirely, guiding him down to sit. She was crying too, laughing through her own tears as she wrapped her arms around him. “You did it,” she whispered fiercely into his hair. “You really did it, Beomgyu.”

Pressing his face into her shoulder, his words spilling between broken breaths. “I’m free… I’m free, I’m really—” The rest dissolved into another wave of sobs, his body shaking so violently that the letter slipped from his fingers, fluttering onto the floor. Relief was not graceful; it was messy, all hiccups and laughtert.

The euphoria surged in him like lightning, so overwhelming it forced him to move, to act, to run. He broke from Hyeeun’s embrace with breathless apologies, grabbing his shoes without tying them, bolting through the door, through the grounds, his chest heaving with both joy and desperation. There was only one thought in his mind, one face that rose before him with unbearable longing: yours.

But the lakeside was silent. The ruins were empty. His joy collided with the void of your absence.

His throat tightened as he spun in place, searching the trees, the shadows, the horizon, certain that you would emerge, that you would keep your promise. You did not come.

But still he waited, standing at the edge of the lake with the paper of his triumph folded in his fist, the breeze catching the tears still drying on his cheeks. He whispered into the emptiness, words meant only for you, a vow as fragile as it was unyielding.

“ I’ll wait, just like before. You promised… you promised you’d come for me.”

And though the world around him stayed silent, he remained, eyes fixed on the distance, clinging to the hope that you would return.

Beomgyu welcomed each day half-convinced it had all been a fever dream, that the seal and the words naming him first place had been forged by his starving imagination. He would reach for the folded paper hidden beneath his mattress, hands shaking as he unfolded it, only to collapse into a flood of relief when the words remained the same.

Freedom was almost his, and yet the first step of victory strangely felt incomplete. He carried his sketchbook to the lakeside, to the ruins, waiting for you as he had in those early days. Sometimes he spoke aloud, as if the reeds or the broken stones might carry his words to you: “You’d laugh at how nervous I was,” he muttered one afternoon, biting back a grin that dissolved into a sigh. “I wish you could’ve seen me open it.”

Hyeeun, perceptive as always, saw the faraway look in his eyes. She once voiced her words in the passing, “She gave you courage, didn’t she? Whoever she was.” Beomgyu didn’t answer, but his blush was answer enough.

In the letter it was written that Kwangsun would be meeting the winner. Beomgyu did not know why, but his father had left for another trip on the very day you came to his window, and had been abroad ever since. He overheard the manor staff gossiping about how some “complications” arose that urgently demanded his father’s attention. Beomgyu’s subconscious clawed at him with suspicion — what if it had to do with the cases his father tried so hard to bury? Yet whatever the truth, the absence was a reprieve, buying him enough time to deal with the one thing that mattered.

The atelier was nothing like Beomgyu had imagined.

He had pictured grandeur where the sole elements would be gilded frames, marble flors, and assistants bustling in every nook and cranny. Instead, the space was alive in its chaos, full of mismatched life. There were canvases leaned against walls in crooked stacks and half-finished sketches cluttered tables. At first your senses would be a little tipsy given how strongly the air smelt of turpentine and oil. Dusty light from the tall windows struck the room unevenly casting portraits into half-shadow.

Beomgyu stood in the doorway, palms clammy, his sketch folio clutched so tightly the corners had bent. His heart stuttered with disbelief. This was real. This was him standing here, not the Assemblyman’s son caged in darkness, but Beomgyu the artist, summoned into the workshop of the very man whose name hung in every gallery.

A voice carried across the cluttered room. “So you’re the one.” Kwangsun emerged from behind a canvas, wiping his hands on a rag. His gaze swept over Beomgyu. 

Beomgyu bowed low, words caught in his throat. He managed to spell out a meek greeting which the older man acknowledged with a warm nod.  Kwangsun gestured toward a canvas propped on an easel — the very one that had won the competition. “I’ve looked at this for hours,” he said, stroking his beard.  “It speaks with a voice I recognize. But words on canvas are one thing—hands must answer for them. Do you mind showing me if yours really do?”

Beomgyu blinked. “Show you?” 

Did he not believe Beomgyu drew it? Or maybe it was a test to determine the authenticity of the choice they made. It was fair if they wanted to check.

Kwangsun nodded, his smile hidden beneath this mustache. He gestured to a nearby stool where a clay vase sat, chipped at the rim. “Draw this,” he said simply. “Let me see what you can do when the subject is plain, when beauty isn’t handed to you but must be found.”

The room seemed to shrink. Beomgyu lowered himself onto the stool, knees weak, every painting’s eyes pricking at his skin. His fingers trembled as he pulled paper from his folio, charcoal smudging his palm. For a brief, terrifying moment, he thought the pressure alone might consume him before he had even begun until the first line touched the page.

The noises dissolved, as it always did. The air, the people, even Kwangsun’s presence thinned to nothing. Only the vase existed, and his hand became a conduit between sight and truth. He followed the crack first, tracing the fracture as though it were a vein carrying grief, then the softened curve where shadow wrapped itself in reluctant embrace. Each stroke carried him deeper into the fragile imperfection that only he could see.

When he set the charcoal down, he snapped out of his trance. His throat was parched, his palms damp, his body spent as though the act had drawn something vital from him. The murmur of the atelier returned, louder now, the sound of brushes and low conversation filling the silence he had carved for himself. Beomgyu forced his gaze to stay fixed on his paper when the man leaned over the drawing, his eyes moving slowly across the page. 

He said nothing for so long that Beomgyu’s pulse began to roar. Finally, the artist laughed warmly. “There is fever in these lines,” he said, voice rich, almost approving. He tapped the edge of the sketch with his finger. “A man who sees the crack first, before the whole.”

Beomgyu solemnly swore he could not figure out whether heard praise or warning. He was so nervous he felt like any moment he could be retching his guts out. Beomgyu dared to look up, searching for judgment. But there was pride in his smile.

“You’ll do well,” Kwangsun said at last. “But you must listen carefully, Beomgyu, because what I tell you now will matter more than the praise.”

He stepped back, his eyes fixed not on Beomgyu but somewhere distant, as if speaking half to the ghosts of countless apprentices before him. “Talent can survive poverty. I have seen men paint masterpieces with nothing but a stub of charcoal and a scrap of paper. It can survive ridicule. I have seen crowds laugh, only for the same work to be treasured years later. But talent cannot—will not—survive the hand that seeks to own it.”

Beomgyu frowned. “Own it?”

“Yes.” He moved closer, laying a large, warm hand on Beomgyu’s shoulder, “Protect it—protect yourself—or it will be lost before you’ve even begun.”

The adrenaline roared in his veins to the point it began to eat away his stomach. No one had ever spoken of his art as something alive or worth guarding except for two people. His throat ached, and he had to look away lest his eyes betray him.

“I will teach you what I know,” Kwangsun continued, softer now. “But it will not be an easy road. You’ll work until your bones protest, and some days you’ll hate the sight of a brush. Still—if you endure, you’ll carve a place no one can take from you.” He paused, studying Beomgyu’s face. “Do you understand?”

Beomgyu nodded, though his voice cracked when he said, “Yes, sir.”

Kwangsun laughed again, giving his shoulder a light squeeze. “No ‘sir.’ You’re not a soldier, and I’m not your jailer. Call me teacher if you must, but I’d prefer Kwangsun. We’ll walk this path together—not above and below, but side by side. You’ll stumble, I’ll correct you, and one day, you’ll correct me too. That’s how this works.”

Such warm words were given out so selflessly, beomgyu could not believe his ears. The tremor in his chest eased. This man, with his blunt truths and warm regard, was nothing like his father. He almost laughed at the thought, almost wept too. Standing here, Beomgyu realized he was being offered more than apprenticeship. 

He wondered what sacrifice was made for this kind of luck on his side, but he was grateful, and he wanted to guard this luck.

Beomgyu has been flying for a while now, and has flown quite high.

Whispers in the manor reminded him reality was not suspended forever. Servants spoke of news and rumors from abroad, of the Assemblyman’s swift dealings and the likelihood of his return. Beomgyu pretended not to listen, though his stomach coiled with each word. He buried that fear beneath canvases and sketches, pretending the hours in Kwangsun’s workshop were enough to keep the outside world at bay.

But dread has a way of seeping back in, no matter how many colors one paints over it.

One evening, Hyeeun entered his room with folded hands, watching him pack away another sketch. She spoke softly, as though unwilling to startle the fragile bubble he lived in. “Has Master Kwangsun mentioned… any plans about you moving out of this house?”

Beomgyu paused. “Soon,” he replied, there was a glint of relief beneath his words. “Preparations has started. He already knows about you. I told him I wouldn’t leave without you.” Though beomgyu wished the procedure was fastened, he was grateful it even started.

Her eyes warmed, though a crease of worry remained between her brows. “It comforts me to hear it, but…” She hesitated, pressing her thumb against her palm. “How do you plan on breaking this to your father?”

“When he sees how deep I’ve stepped into this path—how much I’ve already built—and when he realizes Kwangsun stands behind me, he won’t be able to stop it. He values his reputation more than anything. To deny Kwangsun’s offer would be to smear his own image. He won’t risk it.” The firmness in his voice felt foreign to him but it felt good speaking. That man would not tarnish his reputation by refusing the offer of a well known artist when the entire world would be watching.

Hyeeun looked toward the window, where the sky burned with the faint traces of dusk. Her voice lowered, more to herself than to him. “They say he might take longer to return. There are… complications, it seems. Great ones. Perhaps something has already happened.” Her tone thinned into a whisper, heavy with foreboding. “Or is coming.”

Beomgyu caught her words, but he let them pass, unwilling to let shadows spoil what little brightness he had managed to claim.

He waits by the lakeside for you, strolling the ruins daily, looking forward to seeing you again to fill up the hollow space in him that couldn't be filled up by his art’s success. Perhaps he should've asked you about yourself instead of making you carry his sorrow. Perhaps he should’ve been more open about his feelings. Perhaps then you’d taken him with you, wherever you went.

The sun wasn’t out that afternoon. It was buried beneath a sky of heavy clouds that sagged low, threatening to burst open yet holding its rain hostage. Beomgyu rubbed his hands together and blew into them, the cold clinging to his skin like needles. He watched the sky darken further, a faint rumble chasing across the heavens.

He had returned earlier than usual from waiting by the lakeside. 

As he stepped into the premises of the manor, something twisted in his gut. A thunderclap tore across the distance, startling him into loosening the collar at his throat, pulling at it to release the suffocating press of air against his lungs. There was no reason to feel so unsettled, no reason for his pulse to climb like a trapped animal’s… he must be tired that's why he felt so restless.

Still, when he pushed the heavy door of the manor open, his gaze immediately caught on the figure standing just inside the entrance hall. A maid, one of Hyeeun’s most trusted, stood frozen near the wall, her hands trembling at her sides, eyes locked on him with such stark terror that his feet stopped of their own accord. The blood in his veins seemed to turn cold under that stare. 

The moment his eyes met hers, she stumbled forward almost tripping over the hem of her skirt in her desperation to reach him. She lowered her head, but not in the usual, respectful manner. It was more like she was trying to conceal the panic twisting her features. When she drew close enough her words spilled out in a broken rush with a quiet tone as if she was afraid to let them fall into the wrong ears. 

“M-my lord—” her voice cracked, and she swallowed hard, eyes darting to the side before darting back to him. “The sire… the sire has returned.”

Beomgyu felt his vision sway. Returned? His father was not supposed to be here so soon. He was not supposed to return until a few more weeks.

“He—he came back alone,” the maid stammered on, her breath hitching as her fingers twisted together, knuckles white with strain. “No men at his side, not even the secretary. I saw him… I saw him myself, walking through the doors with n-no word of his coming. He—” Her voice wavered, then broke entirely, her body trembling so violently it seemed she might collapse at his feet.

Beomgyu reached out instinctively, gripping her shoulders to steady her. He tried to force calm into his voice. “Breathe,” he said, though his own breaths came short. “Tell me slowly. What happened? What did he do?”

She shook her head, strands of hair slipping loose as she lifted her face to look him dead in the eyes. The fear carved there was so raw it hollowed his stomach. 

“He knows.”

Beomgyu’s blood ran cold. His grip on her shoulder tightened unconsciously as the words echoed in his mind over and over again. Terror seized him to the point he could do nothing but stare at her blankly.

She continued, desperately trying to keep her voice low. “He—he looked furious, more than I’ve ever seen. He ransacked your things and—and—he is waiting in the living room.”

A heavy pounding started behind Beomgyu’s temples, his heartbeat crashing in his ears. He simply managed to ask, “Where is Hyeeun?”

Her eyes widened, her lips parted in a soundless gasp before she shook her head, almost frantically. “I—I don’t know. She was in the kitchen this morning. No one has seen her since.” Her voice broke into a sob, quickly swallowed down as she pressed a hand against her mouth.

Everything around him seemed to fall silent. Every sound swallowed into a thin shrill ringing that pressed against his skull. Beomgyu forced himself to breathe. He could not let his mind run toward the darkest possibilities yet. If his father wanted to face him, then let it be faced. There was no escaping it now.

He steadied his voice enough to tell the maid to leave at once, to gather her fellow servant and not return no matter what they heard. She hesitated, but his insistence gave her the courage to bow and hurry away down the corridor. Once she disappeared, the silence returned, deeper than before. Beomgyu turned toward the corridor that led to the living room, and his legs carried him forward though each step felt as though it sank him into the floor.

He stared at the doorknob like it might sear his skin the moment he touched it. A tightness rose in his chest, breaths coming too shallow, too fast — he closed his eyes, dragged air down his throat until it burned. Was everything he had fought for already collapsing? What if he walked inside and then his future collapsed? Should he turn, find Hyeeun, vanish into the world outside these walls before the trap shut completely? The thoughts clawed at him, frantic, but at last his trembling hand reached out and turned the knob.

The curtains were drawn closed, making the room dark; the only source of light was the fireplace. In the center of the carpet lay a mound so out of place it wrenched the blood from his face — brushes snapped in half, sketchbooks and canvases torn, jars of pigment overturned, their colors bleeding together into an ugly stain. His whole world, piled like refuse waiting for the torch.

His gaze drifted, following the line of the hearth to the sofas. The Assemblyman, his father, sat slouched in the single chair, broad shoulders bent, one hand hanging loose over the armrest, the other resting against his temple. His back was facing beomgyu.

“You finally showed up.”

He had braced himself for that voice to cleave him open, to summon the familiar dread that had ruled his boyhood. Yet, curiously, nothing broke inside him. Instead all he felt was a strange calm. Perhaps he’s been dreading this moment for far too long, and years of fear now finally died out in this moment. Or maybe, this was emotional numbness masquerading as resolve.

Beomgyu stepped forward until only a few paces separated him from the chair, his eyes fixed on the back of that bent head.

“Father.”

The man gave a weak, rasping snort, a sound so careless that it raised a faint tension in Beomgyu’s shoulders. His fingers twitched at his side as he followed the movement of his father’s hand as it dipped into his coat and pulled out an envelope. Beomgyu’s pulse surged when his eyes recognized the seal. So his father had managed to find it when he ransacked his room. It made all sense now — he looked at the pile again — why all his tools were dragged here.

“I was waiting,” Beomgyu said, each word calm though his mind was already racing ahead, laying stones for the path he needed his father to walk. “Waiting for you to come home so I could tell you myself. This isn’t something I meant to hide forever.”

The lie slid from his tongue smoothly. His mind, trained to cower, found itself instead sharpening, wielding deceit like a blade. Manipulation — yes. It was the only weapon he could use against this man, powerful enough to turn his father’s hunger for reputation back upon him. If the Assemblyman wanted to polish his name, Beomgyu would trap him with that very hunger.

His father slowly stood up with an unsteady groan. His legs betrayed him with a slight sway, and Beomgyu’s frown deepened as he took in the disheveled shirt, the collar sagging, the faint smell of sour drink that reached him across the room. Something was wrong — more wrong than usual — but he kept his shoulders squared.

The man’s lip curled into a crooked half-smile as he stumbled a step closer. “What’s this I hear, huh? You actually caught Kwangsun’s eye?” His voice rasped, slurred in the edges. “Ha… guess you’re not as useless as I thought.” He lurched forward another step, the scuff of his boots dragging across the floor, his gaze slipping in and out of focus as if Beomgyu were both present and far away.

Beomgyu did not move back, though the smell of him pressed close. “Yes,” he said, forcing calm into his tone, “it’s better this way, isn’t it? You won’t have to bear the sight of me here. No more disappointments. No more wasted years. This apprenticeship means I’ll be out of this house, away from your sight. You won’t have to feed me, you won’t have to think of me, not once.” His words tumbled with a quiet desperation disguised in reason, laid out like terms of peace, though his hands curled into fists where his father could not see.

The older man let out a low grunt, blinking slowly, his eyes glassy with distraction. His head tilted as if the words reached him through thick fog. He gave a nod that was more of a wobble, muttering sounds that were neither agreement nor refusal. Beomgyu felt the tension coil in his stomach as he searched his father’s hands, his coat pockets, scanning for any glint of metal or object of hidden threat. Finding none, he subtly sighed in relief.

“Beomgyu,” the man gruffed. “Didn’t I tell you… never to touch a paintbrush?”

Beomgyu almost scoffed at his words. His jaw clenched as he forced himself to look at the man, to meet the half-glazed eyes that barely seemed to register his presence. “Father, do you think this will be in your best interest? Turning down the decision of someone like Kwangsun when words have reached the ears of the public that he chose me as his apprentice? Will you stand in front of them all and spit on his name? Will you risk that?”

His blood roared in his veins, heated by anger he had swallowed for too long, a fury that had fermented in the dark years of his youth and now clawed its way out with teeth and fire. For a fleeting, dangerous moment, he forgot that the man before him had killed, had destroyed lives without remorse, and had carved scars into Beomgyu’s own flesh and spirit. All he felt now was the raw burn of defiance.

He drew in a breath, forced it out slowly, as though pacing himself against the urge to strike. These words, so deceptively calm on his tongue, cost him more strength than it looked, and at that moment, he did not know where he got this courage but only one thing played in his mind.

“You’re braver than you think, though you’re still a little too scared to take the first step.” — they echoed inside him as if you were standing there with him, unseen but nearer than the floor beneath his feet.

This was him taking the first step. This was him setting his bravery free. He almost smiled, how even in your absence, even facing the man who haunted his every nightmare, you had given him the push to stand.

His father remained where he was, his gaze cast to the ground, his face shadowed in the glow of the fire. He did not speak, did not even seem to breathe. For his freedom, Beomgyu would do what it took to survive, even if it meant gambling everything on this single confrontation. When the silence stretched unbearably long, Beomgyu shifted forward, lips parting to speak again, but the scrape of his father’s voice broke the air before he could.

“All my life,” his father rasped, “I built myself from reputation. That was my empire, my throne, my kingdom. I bled for it, tore down others for it, did whatever it took to keep my name above theirs.” He began to shuffle closer with his eyes still lowered. “Power in my hands meant no door was closed to me. And I used it. All of it. Until there was nothing left I could not touch.”

Each heavy step he took toward Beomgyu only reverberated louder in his ears. “To taint that prestige… to soil it now, after all I’ve done… that would be unbearable, wouldn’t it? Hah… to deny Kwangsun’s decision, to call the son I have adopted unworthy when the world has already heard otherwise…” 

Beomgyu’s throat tightened as his father’s shadow fell across him. He placed a hand on his shoulder and Beomgyu stiffened under it. The odd gentleness in that specific touch did not make sense at all, but what threw him off even more was when his father embraced him, arms folding around Beomgyu in a manner so alien that it froze him in place.  

The contact was loose yet suffocating all the same. It made Beomgyu’s skin crawl. 

“Beomgyu… you are right. The public must already know of the apprenticeship.”

Those words were so strangely reasonable, almost resigned, that made him wonder if he succeeded in manipulating his father. Was this concession real, or another mask?

The man’s mouth was close enough to his ear for the whisper to feel like a draft of winter down his spine, “But who cares what the public says? Or Kwangsun? What good are their words when my reputation is already rotting?”

Beomgyu’s chest tightened, not from the words but from the sudden fist that crashed into his diaphragm with a force that emptied his lungs in a single violent rush. The air burst out of him in a strangled gasp, pain ricocheting through his ribs, bending his body forward before his mind caught up that he had been struck. The floor caught him hard, and he collapsed in a fit of coughing, his throat convulsing as he tried to drag breath back into his body. 

Through the blur of tears stinging his eyes, he lifted his head, only to see his father looming above mirroring a creature possessed by something far more feral. The familiar predatory glint had returned, burning in his eyes as though no human thought remained behind them. His chest heaved with erratic breaths, shoulders twitching as his hands rose to his own scalp, raking through his hair until tufts stood uneven. He dragged his fingers against his temples, muttering hoarsely, words spilling in broken fragments to himself.

“Ruined… I’m ruined now… it’s all gone, all of it… what I built, gone, gone—” He wheezed with unfocused eyes as though chasing invisible threats. “I made sure of it, I made sure the fire took them. The journalists… that man, his wife—I made sure they burned. I made fucking sure of it.” His voice cracked into a rasp as spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth, his breaths breaking into short, ragged pulls. “But her… their daughter—she should have died with them, she should have died—” He broke off, shaking his head violently, hands clamping tighter on his skull. “No… no, she’s still here, she’s still breathing, she’s behind all this, I can feel it, she’s pulling at the strings, mocking me—mocking—”

Beomgyu, sprawled on the ground and clutching his stomach, could only stare, horror stitching his features as his father raved. The madness in his father’s voice was worse than the strike had been. He tried to rise but his body didn’t cooperate and he had to crawl backward away from his father.

A finger, trembling yet vicious, stabbed the air in Beomgyu’s direction. “I gave you a roof over your fucking head, and this is how you repay me?” the man howled, his voice splitting under its own strain. “I dragged you out of that rotting orphanage, gave you a name, and you think you can spit on me? You think you can run, leave me to rot while you go prancing off into the world, chasing dreams that don’t belong to you? No—no, no, no—I won’t let you go, you hear me? You’ll choke here with me, like you should’ve from the start.”

A violent tug on his hair ripped Beomgyu upward, his body jerking with the movement, his cry strangled into silence by the iron grip at his scalp. His father’s face loomed too close, the spit flying from his mouth catching the light of the hearth, his eyes fever-bright with fury. Beomgyu was hurled back down. His shoulder cracked against the floor, and before he could even roll away, the man kicked his ribs knocking what little air remained in his lungs free in a guttural cough. His vision clouded, sparks dancing at the edges as he groaned in pain trying to get up. 

“Disobedient trash,” his father spat, towering above him, chest heaving like a bellows. “That’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be. Nothing but filth dressed up in a borrowed name.” 

Beomgyu could only half-focus through the haze when his father stormed from the room then returned almost immediately with a metal container. His hand shook so violently that drops sloshed against the rim and splattered dark stains onto the floorboards.

The acrid stench hit Beomgyu’s nose before the sight did, and horror clawed at his chest as the realization unfurled. “No—please, don’t—” he begged, dragging himself forward on his elbows, desperate to stop what his words never could.

His father knocked his hand aside with a vicious swat as though batting a fly. He poured without pause, the liquid hissing as it soaked into the pile. The container clattered against the ground as it was flung away, replaced by the glint of a lighter flicking alive in his palm. The tiny flame wavered, yet in that moment it was more monstrous than any weapon.

Beomgyu’s heart thrashed against his ribs as he dragged himself forward, his voice cracking into a scream that felt ripped from the marrow of his bones. “Stop—please, please!”

But the plea was devoured by the roar that came when flame met fuel. In a breath, the pile was consumed, the fire leaping with a hunger that mocked the boy’s desperation, devouring canvases, brushes, dreams, until only ash would remain. The scene became hazy and Beomgyu didn't know whether it was the tears or the smoke that caused it. 

His father held up the envelope, the final proof of Beomgyu’s triumph, the seal of his apprenticeship, dangling it like a trophy between two fingers. “This too,” he sneered, his voice cracking into gravelly laughter, “let it burn with the rest.” He tossed it into the flames, and in seconds, it was gone, curling into nothing but blackened fragments that rose into the choking air.

His freedom had been within reach, so close he could almost taste it on his tongue, and now it was nothing more than ash and flame before his eyes, dissolving into smoke that choked his lungs and blurred the world into a shifting haze. He couldn't bear to watch it anymore as he dropped his head. How did things end up like this? Everything had been turning in his favor then how — How, how, how, how—

His father crouched down beside him, slapping him hard before tugging on his hair and forced his face up to watch. The acrid heat of the fire licked against his skin, and though the man’s words hit his ears, Beomgyu didn't make a single sound this time. He hardly felt any pain anymore. 

“Consider yourself lucky that you’re not the one burning, boy,” he spat. “Let me warn you,” he went on, pausing long enough to grind his grip tighter into Beomgyu’s scalp, jerking his head like a doll, “if I find you plotting behind my back again—then I’ll send you to where I’ve sent that woman.”

What…? 

There was a static buzz filling his mind. Everything around him seemed to slow down and the world began resting on his eyelids, the backdrop a white noise to his ears. But the ground moved — breaking apart and in the haziness, Beomgyu caught sight of a broken piece of an easel leg, one end burning. 

Beomgyu wrapped his fingers around the charred wood, his palm seared by its heat, and he flung it forward with all the power left in his frame. The wood cracked across his father’s face, a flash of burning flesh and the guttural shriek that followed cutting through the roar in Beomgyu’s ears. The man fell back shrieking in excruciating pain.

Beomgyu breathed through his mouth as he staggered upright, the ringing in his voice getting louder with each passing second. He threw his head back, squeezing his eyes shut to get his vision cleared, but once he opened them and looked at his father — all he saw was red. 

His father writhed at his feet, squirming like some wounded beast, curses breaking and slurring together into a maddened chant that made Beomgyu feel sick. 

“You killed her?” Beomgyu asked, voice hoarse. He stumbled towards his father, bending down to grab him by the collar with shaking hands. “Did you kill her?” His fist drew back and then slammed down, the room was filled with a deafening sound of his fist colliding with his father’s nose. “Answer me, you bastard! Did you kill her?” Beomgyu wailed, his throat burning.

His father choked on blood, eyes rolling to the back of his head as he went in and out of consciousness. His limbs spasmed with weak, pitiful jerks, yet Beomgyu only scoffed through tears that burned his cheeks, the salt stinging his split lip. A crooked smile tore across his face, blood staining his teeth as he spat, “You fucking asshole.”

His gaze wandered the ruined room, hunting for focus through the haze, until it latched onto the shattered vase near his father’s head. The porcelain shards glimmered faintly, the roses strewn in disarray across the floorboards, their petals bruised and torn. It was the vase he had painted.

Memory is a punishment. Memory is a gun you load yourself. You pray it jams, it never does. 

His throat convulsed as a sob broke loose. He recognized the roses — not the previously withered ones he had painted weeks ago, but a fresh bouquet Hyeeun must have placed there. The thought of Hyeeun only made sobs after sobs fall from his lips. Amidst his breakdown, Beomgyu felt his father move beneath him, desperate to crawl away. His father’s eyes flicked open for a fraction, wild and terrified, and in that fractured instant something just snapped inside Beomgyu.

Time seemed to pass in slow motion again. The static in his mind grew and so did the ringing. His hand clutched around a broken piece of the vase as he held his hand up straight above his head. The deafening sound in his ears got louder and the next moments were all a blur.

There is a bitter triumph in crashing when you should be soaring.

All Beomgyu remembered was screaming — so much — that he couldn't even hear his own screams after a while. He dimly registered the fire behind him swelling, the crackle of flames devouring fabric and wood and smoke that behan to suffocate him. His father’s body sagged into stillness at some unknown point, the blood spreading like a dark tide beneath him.

Slowly, the world began to focus again, but he couldn’t stop trembling. 

He stared in utter horror at his hands — drenched in red; the piece of broken vase fell from his grasp as shock paralyzed him. He fell back on the ground, his breathing was erratic as it left him dizzy. 

“What have I done?” 

A rewritten tragedy.

His thirst for freedom, for the promise of a new beginning, had carried him to this very brink. Beomgyu thought he heard a voice, faint and muffled as though spoken from underwater, calling his name through the crackle of burning wood. The sound brushed against his ears, but his mind could not hold on to it. He heard footsteps — they were getting closer. His vision frantically searched around for that voice. But his mind was too far gone to process anything properly.

Everything came to a halt when his eyes fell on the yellow roses. They were smeared in blood this time. How unfortunate. Beomgyu always knew red and yellow were unfitting. 

Looking deeper, yellow was the colour of creativity. When red splattered on the flower — it was almost as if it mocked Beomgyu by showing how his father had disapproved of the artistic creative path undertaken by him; how his hopes, a chance of a new beginning, were snatched away. 

The fire stretched across every surface, breathing, eating, multiplying without restraint, until there was no part of the room that had not been swallowed by it. He sat in the middle of it, dazed, thinking what life might have been had he chosen differently, had he been allowed to choose at all. He let his gaze move slowly from one ruin to the next.

There is a certain beauty in setting the world on fire and watching from the center of the flames.

Maybe he was always meant to fall, like Icarus, wings scorched and torn, his brief taste of freedom punished by fire. Maybe freedom wasn't meant for him at all. And yet, he found himself bargaining, whispering prayers to gods that had never once answered, asking to be remade — if not in this life, then in another. Let him rise again, if only from ashes, even if he had to crawl back into light with burnt skin and hollow lungs. Let him begin again, somewhere far from this room, far from this blood.

As toxic fumes crowded his lungs and visions, he only thought where you could be. Would you come as you once promised, would you catch him before the fall? He felt himself slip, falling, falling, his wings reduced to tattered ash, unable to hold him aloft. He thought of Icarus again, how the boy must have felt in that last moment — not regret, but the sick recognition that the sun had never been meant to touch him.

All of this must be a cruel dream, otherwise why would he feel arms embracing him?

No… solid, real, too real for a dream.

The embrace cut through smoke, cutting through flame, and a scent he knew so well filled his senses until the fire itself felt distant. He let his eyes close, too heavy to keep open, his body folding into the embrace as his mind slipped into silence.His last thought, before darkness took him whole, was of you.

The field stretched wide, the grass tall enough to brush against your knees as you wandered deeper into the thicket where the laughter of the other children faded into the distance. You hadn’t meant to stray so far, only to chase the sound of cicadas or perhaps the flutter of wings overhead, but soon the shade of the trees swallowed the sunlight whole and the paths all blurred into the same directionless green. The more you tried to remember which way your parents had gone, the more the ache in your chest grew until your small hands trembled around the kalimba clutched to your chest.

You sat on a root, cheeks damp, and began pressing the metal tines. The tune was crooked and uneven, but it was the only one you knew — the lullaby your parents sang at night when shadows frightened you. Tears slid over your round cheeks as you played, each chime carrying your wish that they would hear and come find you.

It wasn’t your parents who came. It was a boy, no older than you, stepping out from between the trees with a look of wonder fixed on you. His hair was untidy, his palms smudged with dirt as though he had been running and climbing long before he found you. His eyes drew first to the kalimba in your lap, then to the tears across your face.

“What are you playing?” he asked, tilting his head with a grin. He was missing two teeth. “It sounds really nice.”

You sniffled, shrinking into yourself before whispering that it was the song your parents always sang to you. He nodded as though that explained everything, then crouched down in the dirt so you didn’t have to look up.

“I’m Beomgyu,” he said, the words tumbling out enthusiastically, and then, when you didn’t reply, he said it again, louder and slower, as if maybe you hadn’t heard him the first time. “Beomgyu! That’s me, an artist! What’s your name?”

You shook your head, lips pressed shut, because your parents had always told you not to give your name to strangers. The boy tapped his chin, clearly thinking. “That’s okay. We’ll pretend we’re adventurers, yeah? And right now our quest is to find your family!” His grin widened at his own idea, and he sprang up, brushing off his knees and already setting off. Then he paused, turning back toward you with sudden seriousness. “But you need a name too. Every adventurer needs one. Imagine you earned it because you just became an adventurer. It’s more interesting this way, isn’t it?”

You stared at him warily, wiping your cheeks with your sleeves. His eyes were so bright with excitement that it made refusal difficult. “I read a book once,” he went on, his hands waving as though to capture the memory. “It was really hard, full of words I didn’t understand because it was for grown-ups, but there was one word that stuck with me. It was so pretty I couldn’t forget it.” He bent down again, close enough that his hair nearly brushed yours, and whispered like it was a secret meant for you alone.

“Sær. That’ll be your name.”

When your eyes opened, there was no field, no sunlight, no boy kneeling in front of you. Only the cliff’s jagged edge beneath your legs and the distant roar of fire consuming the manor. Flames licked through windows, black smoke spilling upward in heavy coils that smothered the sky. It had just started swallowing the manor. From this distance, the destruction was strangely muted, like watching a stage set collapse from the back row. Somewhere behind you, thunder muttered over the mountain. You lowered your gaze and closed your eyes once more before opening again to fix on the manor. 

Boots crunched on gravel behind you. Without looking, you knew who it was.

“Congratulations. The assemblyman has died. Your mission is a success.”

You did not turn. The fire reflected faintly in your gaze, and you kept it there, unblinking. You wanted to see how far they could reach. “Have you done what I asked you, Taehyun?”

A low hum came first, then the scuff of shoes on stone as Taehyun shifted his weight. You could hear the faint metallic click of keys in his pocket as he glanced back toward the car parked a little down the slope. “See for yourself,” he said finally, a grin audible in the lilt of his tone.

Your head turned, just slightly, enough to catch the sight of the vehicle. Through the window, an unconscious woman lay under a blanket. This was not the meeting you’d wanted with her, but it was also  inevitable and your chest tightened once before settling again. “Have you been gentle with her?” you asked, the question leaving you coldly.

Taehyun gave a short laugh, scratching at the back of his neck as he strolled toward the car. “Of course. I’m a gentleman, aren’t I? There’s no way I’d handle an elderly woman without respect.” He tugged the blanket higher over her shoulders as he spoke, glancing back at you with a lopsided grin. “She was frightened at first, naturally, but it went smoothly otherwise. No harm done to her… as for the other men… hehe.”

Taehyun’s face cleaned off the grin as he came up behind you. A seriousness clad his tone which wasn’t there moments ago. “What are you planning to do with the boy?”

“It is none of your concern what I do with my pawns,” you answered coolly. 

Taehyun’s laugh that follows is not bright.“Pawn?” he repeats, beyond amused. “Don’t insult my memory. I’ve seen your pawns over the years, how you move them, how you dress them up when they are useful and how fast you set them aside once they have done what you wanted. I haven’t seen one like him before. Don’t bother to dress this in lies for me.”

Silence grows in the space between the two of you, but it is not empty; it tastes of ash and the metallic aftertastes of old plans. Your eyes narrowed slightly as sparks shot out of the broken windows.

Taehyun perhaps sensed your unwillingness to further entertain his remarks. One good thing about him is he knows when to step back. Hence when he spoke again, he gently reminded you of the reality of your world.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said, a patient warning that is practical rather than moral. “We are puppeteers. That’s all we’ve ever been. We pull strings, make pawns dance, send them into the fire so we don’t have to. That’s our purpose—to cut down the filth that the so-called justice system is too rotten to touch. But our world is not his. And if you think of bringing him closer, then you’re dragging him into this hell with us.”

You looked down at your hands, at the faint scar along your palm that felt old and thin as paper under the light, then lifted your eyes to the house. The fire roared louder and you could almost hear it overlapping with the sound of wood snapping from long ago. You  swallowed, the taste of ash still clinging to your tongue after all these years.

“All my life I wanted only one thing,” you say, and the sentence is small against the breadth of the scene. “To destroy the man who burned my entire world to ash in a single night. My parents died all because they tried to expose his corruption; they lit a match to the truth and he doused the evidence just like that. I don’t even know how I survived that night.”  You paused, breathing in slightly as the memory still haunted you.

Even though Taehyun knew your story, he remained silent and let you speak. You mentally thanked him for it.

“He bribed everyone, paid to make it seem like a tragic accident, buried all the leads and soon the case was closed.” You smiled sadly. “His only mistake was never making sure if I died too.”

Watching the flames swallow his house felt like examining a completed equation — a cause and a consequence matched with a blunt, terrible neatness — how fitting, that he should burn in the very way he once burned down your home. He was meant to die this way, by hands he thought he could order and by a vengeance he had never expected to meet.

Taehyun once again asked — “What about Choi Beomgyu?” — this time, uttering his name. It caused your heart to ache more than you had expected. 

When you were given the file, you thought at last the axis of your life would tilt back into place; for years your hunger had been a compass that never wavered, and the dossier looked like the map you had waited for: names, dates, receipts of bribes, a record of how your parents’ killer’s influence had suffocated every attempt at truth. 

Seeing Beomgyu’s name on the paper did something at once absurd and obscene — you remembered the child at the park who was once your savior and the terrible neatness of history when it folds itself so that the wrong people receive mercy and the right ones are crushed. You could only laugh bitterly to yourself back then because the boy from your past had been placed under the care of the very man you had sworn to kill, and the irony tasted like betrayal; in that first hour you made a decision that was blinded by revenge: use what you had been given, treat him like a tool, turn the son into an instrument to remove the father.

You had told yourself you would use Beomgyu, that he would be no more than the main piece set upon the board, an expendable pawn in your long game of retribution. For a time, it even seemed possible. He fit into the parts you expected; he believed the lies you fed him like the pomegranate seeds. And then the plan started to fray at its edges because he kept being, in ways that were not convenient, human. Bruises that mended but did not disappear, flinches at certain words, an almost-childish eagerness at small mercies, a patience that was not the same as weakness.

There were nights you watched him without revealing yourself and found yourself cataloguing his kindnesses like contraband. The more you observed, the more the old certainties you had dressed yourself in — the rhetoric of necessary cruelty, the comfort of being a shadow that arranges people into ends — began to fall apart into a different shape; instead of the cold efficiency you had promised yourself, you felt relief that he was not a mirror of the man you wanted to destroy, and that relief drew an entirely different feeling — care.

It was dangerous, ridiculous, and intoxicating in the worst way — to care for the one whose life could be the tool for your justice — but it was also, for the first time since the night that took everything from you, the truest thing you had felt as a puppeteer. A sharp, selfish, startling desire to save him rather than to use him. Attachment settled not as a concession but as an insistence; the tactics you had deployed so many times without question now tasted like betrayal of your own principles, because to hand him over to violence would be to commit the very injustice you had spent a life trying to rectify. You rehearsed every argument inside your head until the reasons to spare him stacked like stones and each stone became another refusal to let the mission reduce him to a means. You wanted to save him from the cage built around him. You wanted to be his salvation.

“We only kill those who truly deserve it. We always make sure of that, don’t we, Taehyun?” you asked softly.

From where he stood behind you, Taehyun exhaled, the faintest sound of acknowledgment reaching you. “That’s right.”

You then say the thing that rearranges the plan in one small sentence. “Choi Beomgyu doesn’t deserve that.”

You had wanted to harm him because of who his father was, because the ledger of pain called for balancing, but that would be a subtraction of justice by a different name. To hurt him would be to become the rot you had sworn to excise. The doctrine you once cultivated — that the ends sanctify the means — now tasted like ash when the means was Beomgyu. You will not lie to Taehyun about the line you are crossing, because the truth is the only currency left that matters.

“I talked to Choi Beomgyu that day,” he said, as though recalling a casual meeting, though there was a trace of thoughtfulness woven into it. “He did seem like a decent guy. After speaking with him, I caught myself thinking that maybe, under different circumstances, or in another life entirely, I’d have wanted to be his friend.” He gave a short laugh at his own admission, almost surprised by it, then carried on without missing a beat. “I see why you like him. To think you went so far for him. You pulled so many strings behind the scene—perfectly planning the leaflet handover so that old woman would be the one to give him the news of the art competition, making sure Kwangsun noticed his piece. And these were just the surface elements. You really are… the most vicious puppeteer of our generation.”

His voice carried a note of admiration, though the words themselves cut. He clicked his tongue, as if sealing his judgment. “He had waited all his life for freedom, and it killed him the moment it found him.”

You turned your head just enough to catch his profile from the corner of your eye, and the look you gave him stopped him cold. It was not rage, not even anger — it was colder than that, and for a second he seemed to forget the air in his lungs. “Watch what you say, Kang Taehyun,” you said calmly, which contradicted the underlying threat in your words. 

He lifted both hands as if to ward off the weight of your gaze, his lips curling into a nervous chuckle that betrayed his retreat. “Alright, alright,” he murmured, his hands lowering just as easily again. “I’ll keep my mouth in check.”

You remained quiet for a brief moment before finding yout voice again. “He only wanted freedom. That’s all. It wasn’t his fault. None of it was ever his fault.” Your eyes returned to the flames. “I thought if I helped him find it, if I saved him from that man… then I could atone for my sins. Maybe then my parents could rest in peace.” A shallow breath caught in your chest, though your expression did not break. “That man is dead, but my parents are not coming back. Still… at least Beomgyu is free. I thought that maybe, if I saved him, I’d finally feel like I had accomplished something.”

Taehyun hummed, considering your words. “Normal life is gone for him now. To the world, he died tonight in that fire alongside his father. His only choice now is to vanish, build a new name, disappear into another country. Unless…” His eyes slid toward you, narrowing faintly. “Unless you’d rather he joins us. Becomes one of us.”

You shook your head solemnly. “I won’t be dumping such a decision on him to make alone. I’ll be there with him, sorting through every bit of it. He won’t carry this alone, not if I can help it.”

For a moment Taehyun stood over you, his silhouette bent against the restless light of the fire, then he crouched beside you with a sigh. One hand landing on your shoulder with more care than he was known for. “Do you think he’ll forgive you?” he asked, eyes softening as though the question itself pained him. “For what you’ve done? The lies, the secrets, all the deceptions, what if all of that leaves him scorning the sight of you?”

Perhaps you would live the rest of your days under the shadow of Beomgyu’s resentment, and you knew you deserved as much. He had every right to despise you, to spit your name like venom, for while he had shown you warmth in a life that had offered him little else, you had responded with deception, weaving strings around him until he had been caught in a net of your puppet-play. He had been given to you as though by fate, and perhaps fate had meant it as punishment.

“If he hates me then that’s what I’ll carry. I’ll let him see me for who I am. I’ll stand in front of him as myself,” you said at last, not forcing steadiness into your tone, only allowing the truth to rise unadorned. “He has a heart… kinder than the world allowed him, softer than I deserved. I can only hope that one day he will use that heart to forgive me.”

Taehyun rose with a long breath and cast his gaze toward the manor which had become little more than a glowing carcass collapsing into itself. Soon the journalists and fire engines would flood the scene, and by morning the newspapers would write of the assemblyman’s death, his estate reduced to ash, and his son gone with him. The lie would be cemented in ink before the sun rose.

He checked his phone, its glow lighting his face for an instant before he slid it back into his pocket. “My men delivered what you asked for,” he told you, tone clipped by the urgency of time running thin. “A body’s been taken from the morgue, charred beyond recognition. It’s in his place already. We should move quickly before the press takes over.”

You made a sound in acknowledgment and pushed yourself to your feet, brushing ash and dust from the hem of your uniform. Taehyun had already turned toward the car waiting down the dirt path but when he noticed you veering toward the scorched path that led back to the manor, he stopped in his tracks. “Where are you going?” he called out, the urgency in his tone did not sway you.

“I made a promise,” you said with a small smile, every step carrying you closer to the blaze. You did not look back. “And I intend to fulfill it.”

The flames spat and roared, painting your outline against the night, and as you walked toward the burning ruin, you thought of the boy who had yearned for a gentler life but had never been granted it. Freedom burned him instead of warming him.

His sun was never gentle to him, so let his ocean be.

THE END.

You sit drumming your fingers on your knees in a rhythm that’s vaguely familiar but unnamable. The restlessness has to have somewhere to go that isn’t just itching beneath your skin. His home office is immaculate and imposing around you, with tall book shelves that boast old leather-bounds and the dark woodgrain desk in front of you. It’s sterile, though. Meticulous and probably not usually put to use like today.

It’s always like this. The crawling, the tightness in the very center of your chest that bullies your lungs into shallow breaths. It’s ironic that even as you sit in this office with the prospect of maybe finally getting to the very root of what all of it is, you’re still afflicted with your anxiety. It’s both something that was always there and something that just one day pulled up a chair and sat down inside of you. But he’ll know what to do with you. The thought sends another pang of it through you.

His nameplate reads Kang on the desk in cold silver. You’ve been tracing the letters’ engravings. Up and down. It uncoils whatever is so convoluted inside of you when you can get lost in it enough. It always comes back, though.

God, you shouldn’t be here. There isn’t anything so wrong with you that it constituted personal appointments. You aren’t crawling up the walls. But when he had suggested you come here with a grim slash to his mouth, you wavered and took the pen and wrote down your availability for him. And you don’t know exactly why beyond the knot in your tummy that you have wanted to reach in and unravel for too far, too long.

The door clicks shut behind you. His approach is a whisper of fabric and dress shoes on the floorboards and then he appears in front of you. The hair on his head hangs a colorless black and sharp in his even sharper eyes. A pair of wireframe glasses sit on a tall nose and they glint in the window’s light. Even though the professional cut of him is not changed, he’s out of uniform. He wears a white dress shirt instead. It doesn’t make him any less a presence.

Dipping his head, he gives you the distant smile of a medical professional and says, “You’re earlier than me. I didn’t mean to make you wait, excuse me for that. But it’s nice that you know how to keep your times in line, right?”

You straighten your posture out. That’s your fault; it felt wrong to be late when he was already making exceptions to get this appointment for you. It’s not something that happens too often, you’re sure. He’s not making money out of it. This is his personal time and his personal estate. Why he’s even doing it at all, you couldn’t imagine. Being on time seemed like the least you could do for the kindness. “Sorry, too early?” you say, wincing.

“No, not at all.” Taehyun sets a metal pen and a patient file down then takes a seat himself. He steers right away from that airy conversation that a doctor usually starts with and into the orders of business. “Get comfortable, I’ll take a look at your file and we can start to discuss what we did last time.” Clean and efficient as he was back in the clinic, only he doesn’t have any patients or other duties to attend to after this. Just you.

You wet your lips and try to breathe out the anxiety that comes. His sleeves are rolled up to mid-forearm as he flips open all the patient data and records that have landed you here, in his office. All of it. The first time a nurse practitioner had taken you out in the hallway to fulfill the private mental health and safety itinerary just for the pediatrician to later come in and discuss their concerns about your answers with your mom, no doubt. Then the years following that you spent lying every time they asked after that, because she had looked at you sideways on the way home. Because when she asked you, with no lack of jeering on her part, why you told them that you felt a level seven for nerves and a eight out of ten for recurring sad thoughts when you weren’t beaten or abused and never had to go without at home, you didn’t have an answer. It was like opening up and examining it all over again. Because what if you are that girl in the hallway of the doctor’s office begging for attention, now just become a girl that’s embellished the state of her mind so much so that she’s made a highly decorated psychiatrist take the time out of his day to treat her?

 Eyes narrowed on the print, he finds whatever it was he was looking for in the section that tells about patient measurements. Weight and height and all that stuff, for dosages or whatever a doctor might need from it. He props his elbows on the desk and looks at you over his clasped fists. Those eyes are all-seeing. It sets you squirming in your seat. Just what does he see when he looks at you? What does a man that knows the mind from the inside out think of what you can’t even decipher yourself?

“Have you been feeling the anxiety recently? Do you feel like it’s gotten better or worse?” he starts with. The light coming in from the big, grand window behind him gilds his hair, but the black eats up any color there. Just black.

You think on that. It comes and goes for what seems like no reason at all, just like it always has. “Kinda,” you answer noncommittally.

“Kinda, which?”

Cringing, you settle your hands in your lap and say, “I’ve been feeling it.”

Taehyun nods, resting his chin on his laced fingers to better see you. “There we go. We won’t get anywhere if you aren’t honest with me, but we especially won’t if you hide things from yourself.” He lets that settle for a moment, which it does in a prickle over your skin, and then he continues. “So it’s been aggravated recently, then.”

That’s not exactly what you meant, but you swallow thickly and nod. This isn’t the doctor’s office and your mom isn’t here to be told what you say. He knows what to do. “I don’t know what causes it,” you say, voice coming out meek and embarrassing. It’s you sending out feelers, gauging exactly how much you can say. “Sometimes it’s really nothing. I could just be sitting there and then my chest… tightens up. And it makes it worse, because I can’t not think about it.”

The line of his mouth tightens and his eyes flash like he’s got a catch on the hook, but he nods a slow dip of his head like he’s digesting what you’ve said. Like that incisor brain of his hasn’t already picked your words apart and understood them more than you did when they came out of your mouth, for the part of them that was formed in the brain rather than the throat. He sees your mind for what it is: a machine that operates in systems and fundamental biology. It’s a relief. You’ve become so stuck in it that it has taken its own shape as this big, tangled, dark mass that shifts and bends uncomfortably behind your skull like it doesn’t know what to do with its arms or legs. Like a visitor that’s always there.

“It doesn’t have an exact source,” he says, elaborating on your thoughts for you. The slashing plane of his jawline is highlighted on one side where the light finds it. He’s quite young for a man so venerable in his profession, for the prestige of facility he works for and how the front desk lady had looked at you when you told her you had an appointment with Dr. Kang. Taking a long, measuring breath like he’s deliberating, he continues, “This is why I thought I’d bring you here. It’s hard to prescribe drugs for something that I can’t fully understand and just throw them at you when it’s not clear what, exactly, is the root of it. I’m not going to do that to you. Antidepressants aren’t something to be administered too loosely.”

Your stomach sinks a little bit, the old familiar dread of not being listened to settling in it. There was a hope when you came here that he’d write you out a prescription and it would be an end-all-be-all. It’d rip the problem right out. Does even he think you’re bolstering the problem? Does he think you’ve overdramatized it like everybody else has? He’s a psychiatrist, administering drugs is what he’s supposed to do. He was supposed to be the one who would fix it.

“Is the medication bad?’

“No,” he simply says. He regards you with cold, steel eyes like he’s finding a loose thread to pull, and you’re sure there are many. “There is a place for it. I’m not saying that. I just want to make sure I understand the full scope before anything. And I don’t.”

A silence hangs, too long and too empty for you. Your fingers start again. It’s some song that you must’ve heard on the way but didn’t really listen to.

“Your mind is fascinating.” The set of his face doesn’t communicate the notion, but he doesn’t seem like the type of man to fabricate words like that. “There are a lot of other professionals that might have just given you something to try out and sent you on your way, but I believe there’s still a lot to be seen about what’s going on. What’s behind it.”

An unease worms up your spine and it wiggles between the worries you had already walked in here gnawing over. “Something’s wrong with me?” you ask, but the real question lies in the tone that you do. Can you help?

“I need to understand what sets you off,” he elaborates. It’s a careful, intentional choice of words. “And to see how your psychology reacts to stimuli. It’s the only way I can accurately treat it. Which brings me to why I wanted to see you here.” Leaning forward, the space between you shortens. He fills it with the motion. It keeps your mind from running off with the nerves that your racing heart asks it to. “There’s an advantage to inpatient treatment. It means that I get to see your behaviors closer up, without the pressure of examination making you too conscious of them.”

“Inpatient?” you echo, the numbness to your lips not sudden but an inevitability of the anxiety that’s been mounting the moment you woke up this morning and fought the urge to ghost the appointment. Because you knew that you might hear something like this, something that meant you were wrong in some sort of way. “Is it that bad?”

A grim, dry thing twitches on his mouth, like that was exactly the question he was expecting from you. It’s tinder to your burgeoning insecurity. Everything you do, he expects, and what does that say about you? “It’s something to be looked into.” It’s a distinct sidestep around your words. Dread solidifies coldly in your stomach.

Those eyes pin you, the same way they had back in the clinic when he had suggested an out-of-office meeting. He’s looking at you and wondering what state you’re in, if the silence is the hand of your anxiety snatching away a resounding yes, which would be the answer that he knows would be best for you. He’s looking at you and he’s seeing a girl whose mind is sabotaging her wellbeing. It’s what made you sign that paper back then, but it’s what makes you wish you were back home instead right now.

“When?” you ask. “I should probably go and pack up some stuff before heading to the clinic.” It’s an escapee’s answer that alludes to the idea that you have every intention of going through with it, but getting home would be the end of it. Inpatient? That makes no sense. It’s not something that sounds right.

Once again, his clinical black eyes pierce through your skin and then he’s right to the muscle of the matter. Like he sees the sham for what it is. “Don’t worry about it,” he says, closing the patient file and standing to his full height. “I’ll provide everything you need here.”

†

Taehyun doesn’t come to you room much. It’s not like you expected him to come hang out with you or anything; that’s not why you’re here. You’re not a guest, he is not a man you know. You are a patient that he dips in to check on. That’s nothing you can’t realize.

The walls are ornate and simple both. They’re all you have to look at. Your dinner comes to you on a filigree silver tray—a cup of water and pure nutrition. That’s all it took for you to know that the bathroom was connected to your room for a reason, and you weren’t supposed to be out walking those halls. You don’t intend to, either. This place isn’t a home, even if he lives in it. It’s quiet at all hours. The only other thing alive in it is him, the rest of its residents come in the form of the perennial leather chesterfield seat that faces your bed and fancy-footed side tables.

Strangely, you find yourself dreading his sparse appearances. The whole place makes you sick, and he comes with it. You miss home and the luxury of fighting down anxiety in your own bed. It hasn’t gone away, you just are forced to handle it in a place that is foreign and stale and lonelier. Why don’t you just tell him that? It’s up to you to call this quits any time. 

When he pokes in, the words get caught up in your throat. It never happens. The thought of saying it the next time he does punches you right in the chest. You can’t name for yourself why you think he’ll be angry at you if you did.

The windowsill is cold and damp as you halfway sit on the ledge. It’s not particularly warm in here—in fact, it’s always the same temperature—but the air of chill that it emanates says that it’s warmer than it is out there. You take your fingers up and down the white frames, through the condensation. How long you’ve been here, you couldn’t tell. The first day you had a pretty good idea of the time, but it’s started to bleed. A while; that is pretty much all you could say.

“Are you feeling anxious today?” Taehyun says from behind you. His voice startles you. Your shoulders go rigid before you whip your head around to find him leaned back against the door with his arms crossed. The muscles of his forearms are corded and pale.

Your tummy whirls. “I don’t know.” Rooted in place, you at the very least straighten out your lean from the window sill. Something feels new about this time, and you don’t quite like new. Especially not here, where it surrounds you on all fronts. The walls. The smell of the bed.

He observes you a moment, then the line of his lips tenses in a way that suggests that the answer had told him more than you could know. Sighing, he says, “I told you about being truthful with me.” There’s no malice in the way he says it, but there’s a bluntness that feels like the cold steel that medical equipment is made out of.

Aren’t you? That’s the truth. You don’t know what to make of anything right now, and that especially includes him. But it’s not what he sees, so what does it matter? 

“If you don’t speak to me, I can’t know what the problem is.” He unfurls his arms from his chest. Black gloves have been tugged over his hands, medical grade it looks like. That’s new. That’s different. “And you’re making this difficult for me, but it’s really in the end hurting you.”

“I’m sorry,” you say, eyeing those gloves.

Quick to see how you’ve pulled back, he tracks another way. “Take a seat on the best,” he says, “I’ll be right back.”

That, coupled with this new energy, makes you want to do exactly anything but that. But the way he had looked at you a moment ago, with veiled disappointment, makes you do it. Like he looks at you and pities you.

The bedding is plush and made of fine fabrics, clearly never touched or used before yourself. The garish floral pattern belongs exactly in a place like this. He’s gone for only a minute before he returns back through the door and shuts it behind him with a resounding catch of the handle.

In his hands, he had a tray. It doesn’t hold a tasteless dinner of steak and potatoes, which you would pick at for an hour until you had finally gotten it all down. A syringe, a glass bottle holding a clear, thin liquid, and bandages sit in place of it. Stomach turning upside down and a cold front starting in your toes and making its way up through your spine, you flinch.

All you see is the blurring around the corners of your vision. No, not that. The last time you had been poked by a needle you slumped over on the nurse. Acid climbs up your chest and you shake your head. You can’t wonder about why you would need to be injected with anything when a week ago he had said he didn’t want to medicate you, but the thought is there for the briefest moment before it’s overshadowed by ice sludge in your veins.

“It looks scary,” Taehyun says, setting them down on the bed in front of you as he takes a seat. “But it’s going to be good for you. Focus on that.”

In a subtle way, your body bends away from him. You don’t crawl away or kick or scream. This is bone-deep, the presence of him and that needle point so close. Too close. Closing in on you with the intention to stick you, claustrophobia comes with him. All you need is that thing away from you.

The blood’s drained from your face and he sees it. Taking the vial, he sticks the end of the needle through the cap and focuses on the milligram lines as he draws the liquid up. “You’re afraid of needles,” he observes, keen mind still at work even with another task at hand. He doesn’t elaborate or comfort any further. Satisfied, he sets the vial aside too fast for you to read the label. It’s not like you’d recognize any scientific drug names. Is that needle pinch the scariest thing going into your body?

“Wait,” you say, constricted lungs making the word tight and breathless and urgent, panic swelling as he flicks out the bubbles. In a way, it’s humiliating. This panicking. It’s an obstacle for him, another thing he has to deal with because of you. That simple embarrassment of being a grown up that wails and fights the doctor on a needle like a kid.

No trace of irritation appears on his face, though. He’s calm, purposeful resolve. Clinical like the needle he takes up after a quick alcohol wipe, freezing like the fingers he uses to push up the puffy shoulder sleeve plain, shapeless cotton shift he’s provided for you—each fresh one appearing folded at the foot of your bed when you came out of a steaming shower, which meant to some degree he keeps more of an eye on you than you would like to address—and the same ones he wraps around the meat of your upper arm.

“Just a pinch,” he preludes. It’s distant with the focus of getting this over with, and that’s what brings all that building terror to a point. A dizzying one.

The pressure gives way to the cold bite into your muscle. It’s uncomfortable, body locking up, but it’s also anti-climactic like it always is. You work it up bigger in your head. His fingers almost hurt more, holding you still like iron. The injection comes with a press of his thumb and then it’s out of your arm just like that. 

For the briefest moment, he tilts your chin up and checks your eyes, your state. You stare dumbly up at him, still buzzing. The meeting of your eyes is oddly weighted and weightless. A necessity and something else that is impossible to read on him. He plasters a bandaid to the aching injection site, peels his gloves off with composure, gathers up the things, and says, “Take it easy for a while. I’ll be back in to check on you, but you’ll need some rest.” With that said, he disappears back through the door. Done. Whatever that was for, he was in then out and gone again.

Although the worst of it was indubitably over, the tangible fear of needles and pain, something else remained. Something in your body that seeped into places that it shouldn’t, and you think you felt it make its way through you. You think. Something tugs you under too quickly to fully concern yourself with it. 

There was no seeing him that night. Not that you are aware of. The next fragile pieces of consciousness come to you too many days later, where the only way you could tell that so much time had passed was that the walls had whispered it to you.

†

The next time the needle comes, you know to fear it. Doses are good for you. It’s making you better. The shaking has stopped. But you hate the fog and the distance of your brain, how you couldn’t realize how far away you had gotten from yourself until it eventually was time for another. You hate it so much.

With your cheeks pink and your lashes heavy, you look up at Taehyun, who presides over your bedside. He sighs and brushes hair back out of your face. It makes your head more floaty, the image of him more clear and obscure both. He comes and he goes and it always seems like he’d only just left before he’s stepping into your rooms again.

“Are you feeling better today?” he asks. It’s a ratifying question, one that inevitably leads to his eyes going harrowed like your state is personally weighing on him. Like pity, the more you lie to him and the worse you get. He’s trying his best and you’re still falling apart in his hands. But you’re not too far to save. You swear you’re not. The image of him blurs around the edges before you blink it back to sharpness. Soon enough, the tired will come like it always has to, and you’ll fight it all the way until it’s won.

He knows that it’s hard for you to speak in this state; with the drug working its way through your system. The process has gotten slower, but it’s mostly unchanged. He says that it’s good you’re not building a tolerance to it as he wears that blankness that makes it hard to understand anything he really says when it’s been getting harder to fully grasp words. So he takes mercy on you and says, “Your dosage might need to be adjusted. It’s working through you right now, I can see it. But you’ve been doing worse between injections.”

The pad of his thumb, cold, always cold, over the curve of your cheek makes you shudder. When he touches you, the softness of your skin feels dirty. You want to scrub him off you, sometimes. Especially when he touches you with those awful leather gloves. Something passes over his eyes. Something that you’ve come to know through cloudy pieces of memories to be frustration. It’s there when you flinch away from the needle, and it’s here now as he knows with a certainty that you’ve begun associating those bad memories with him. Himself, his touch, the cold, his scent, all that exists between fading consciousness is him and the absence of him.

“If it’s not getting better by your next treatment, we’ll have to find something that’ll help, or we’ll have to up it.” He takes his hand off you and straightens up as he administers the bad news. There’s some part of you, the part that’s slowly going, that imagines that’s intentional. Taehyun is nothing but intentional. There’s no part of your mind that you can go to escape him in, because he already knows the way around and exactly how to pull it right open.

But you feel like you’re getting better. You do. Mouth like cotton, you speak. It comes out hoarse with misuse. “No,” you say, “I’m better.”

Pity. That’s what grates you from behind his glass lenses. “When you lie to me like that, it tells me what I need to know.” The thread of softness, or what sounds like it when his words otherwise come out flat and dead, is a suture knot. The words are exactly what you don’t want to hear. They make your skin crawl. But you lean into it. As fleeting as it is, it’s a gentle soothing hand over the frayed nerves that you are.

Dipping your head, you wish away a rolling wave of nausea. Hair obscures your face. You don’t want him upset with you.

“Look at me.”

The warping of the walls does not ebb, and neither does the slow simmer so hot beneath your skin. It takes everything you have. So he lifts your chin, manicured hand soft but still rougher by all measures than the skin there. You’re barely looking at him, pupils blown wide and the edges of him blurry, but his jaw flickers. “I’m not angry. But hiding things from me, it’s not going to happen anymore. I’ll be forced to intensify your treatment. The worse you’ve gotten, the more you’ve been lying. Do you understand why I’m telling you this?”

Nodding is all you can do. The warping is worse. Crawling around the edges of your vision like colors that are only there if you don’t look for them. It’s so hot.

“Would you like me to read for you?” he asks.

You would. Going dark and watching the pale walls weep is scary alone. He’s never stayed with you for it before. With your nod, he scours the shelves for a moment and takes a seat in the hard leather of the chair. It’s dark out, which is a strange comfort because he always looks less sharp without the cut of light over his skin. The spin cracks open to a random page out of hundreds.

What should be pretty words come out flat. He begins, and it’s like a methodical lack of allegory more than poetry. But it’s words that keep you grounded in reality, and for that they’re warm. They keep away the pull for longer.

Slow blinking comes as much as you don’t want it to. You shift against your pillow and insist on looking at him, only him. Not the perversions of reality that exist beyond his silhouette. The stuff that appears and reminds you why you’re here and that he has to treat you. That you’re sick.

You hang on to it for as long as you can. His speaking becomes a kindness, and your teeth ache for those. You take the silver of his voice and you solidify it in the center of you where a blue and yellow bruise exists. It’s something real, at bare minimum, as reality becomes something you can’t trust.

†

His mouth, his hands, they’re all over you. They cut and bite marks that go from red to a week-old brown too fast. But when his eyes come to yours for what begging words you wanted to say but couldn’t actually make, there’s not the heat of lust.

The words come from something that isn’t actually sound. It’s an amalgamation of the man that ruts in between your thighs, of all the things he is. You choke and you moan, knuckles white all twisted in his dress shirt. It’s not as it usually is, starched and immaculately ironed to the seam. The buttons are down, showing the pale brawn of his chest in a state of dishevelment that was distinctly not him. “Open your eyes,” he husks in your ear.

Your eyes open when you were sure they already were open, and then you’re seeing him on top of you from an outsider’s perspective. Looking down on the two of your rutting bodies. It looks like he could love you, the way that he’s shuddering and keeping himself together at the seams by staying right in your face. That tall nose, glasses slipping, brushes yours. 

Here, it’s not a melt like the way things are after an injection. When you focus on something, it sharpens into a clarity before returning to fuzzy obscurity and you are tugged back to the scene of lust on the bed. It’s so obscene it seems wrong to be looking, even if it’s your body that writhes beneath his. “Please don’t go,” you say. The sound doesn’t actually happen, but Taehyun hears it.

“That better be the truth,” he says, a distortion of words that are blindingly familiar. But the you beneath him on the bed chases the sex without end. Your skin burns. “You better not be lying to me.”

†

As always, it’s time for the shot.

“Don’t touch me,” you say, a violent growl that comes from an animal backed into a corner. Taehyun pauses, the sterile scent of alcohol that both seemed to cling to his skin and also came up from the wipe he’s prepping your arm with. That spot is not so sore as has become customary; it’s been longer from your last dose than you usually go.

When he came in and set up and prepped that needle, you had not freaked out. You watched him. The dissonance has him narrowing his eyes at you. It’s a sudden outburst. Especially when you haven’t panicked over the needle in a long time. You can see the scientific mechanics working behind his eyes.

He asks, “Are you feeling bad today?” 

You hate that question. You have come to hate it with the power of something in you that’s too big to try and understand. It’s bigger than you, who has become so small. “No,” you say, lip trembling. “You touched me. We… I remember it. Get away from me.” You want to scrub it all off until your skin goes red. More than that—you want to scrub off the fact that it’s something you had conjured. Or it wasn’t, and it was real. Both possibilities bounce off the walls of your skull. Maybe scrubbing yourself would reveal which, too.

There’s a break in the clouds. A moment where the sun is able to come through the heavy overcast, and you realize how different your voice sounds. Strangled and raw and brittle, yes. But also insane. You sound cracked open, exactly like somebody who needs intense, invasive treatment.

For the first time since you have known him, Taehyun looks genuinely taken aback. His brows shoot up over his frames. And then it hardens into concrete like it always does when he’s decided to capitalize on the tattered edges of you. The silence goes sterile like everything around you is. “We what?” he says. “You remember what?” They’re diagnostic questions.

There it is. That look he gets when he thinks your mental state is corroded. Pity, rather. It makes you so angry that your eyes burn with tears like a self-fulfilled prophecy. Everything you say and do just proves him right. Second guessing yourself, you speak less sure of yourself than you began. “In bed, this one. You..” Unable to finish that thought, you swallow it down. Because it sounds as crazy to your ears as it really is. “I saw it, I swear I did. You believe me, right?” The fight in your shoulders deflates. “Please. I’m not lying.”

Another moment stretches its ugly self out between you. It reflects your own words back at you and forces you to hear them. You cringe from inside your skin. And then he says, “This is worrying behavior.”

“No,” you say, fingers curling into the duvet so hard it aches. You have to let go to cover the sound that comes from your chest. “I’m not crazy. I’m telling you the truth. I think it was a dream.”

Something’s running wild behind the black of his eyes. It’s so perfectly shrouded that you wouldn’t be able to see it if he weren’t the only tether to reality you’ve had for so long. In a void, though, even a mote of dust is significant. “You’re dreaming of things and confusing them with reality, or it’s something you genuinely believe happened. Either way, distortion of reality is a symptom of a larger issue.” Like signing off his signature on a prescription document, his lips purse with a finality you know you can’t escape. Because he is the one who knows what’s wrong with you, and he has been right about it all the whole time. “I appreciate you being honest with me. We’re going to find a way to mitigate this, alright? I’ll be back later, I have a run to make to my office at the clinic. Get some rest until then.”

The dose, the one you spooked away by acting even crazier, doesn’t come by the usual time of midday, and then not even when night rolls in. You find yourself wishing it had.

†

The rest of Taehyun’s grand home is nothing like the basement. The basement is cold, dank, and it smells of stale mildew walls. The concrete is so cold, and you haven’t gone numb to it no matter how long you’ve been here. All it has done is go bone-deep.

More than anything, your wrists hurt. They ache so badly that as much as you want to move because your spine hurts or your hips do from sitting, you don’t. Any movement is four minutes of shaking as you try and stay absolutely still. Eventually, it goes away.

You should have never said anything. Shivering at the realization you’ve turned over a hundred times since he put you down here, you just wish you hadn’t. All it did was upset him and land you here. It’s a stone-cold truth almost as biting as the floor beneath your bare thighs. And you’ve only had time to think. The fuzz of the injection was not as bad as this. Will he ever let you back up into the room? You’ll take the needle. You’ll take the needle a thousand times.

Some clarity has returned to you with space away from your treatment. The memory of what you had said is a tight, queasy knot in your stomach. You told him that you had a haze-induced sex dream about him. You only get weirder and more grotesque with time. It’s dirty, what your mind made up. The look in his eyes, burned into the back of your eyelids, when you had said it…

A sound breaks you out of a trance that you’ve been in so long that it’s jarring. Infinitely loud. It’s been just the sound of your breathing for how long? The last time you heard the sound of that door was the last time you saw him. Each step of his oxfords down the staircase that leads down into the basement, you hang onto. Straightening up against the concrete wall, your heart jumps to life.

Taehyun catalogues your state briefly. “Are those bothering you?” he says. The sound of his voice settles in a film over you. A soothing balm for how frazzled you must visibly be. He doesn’t have to elaborate for you to know what he means.

“Yes,” you say, wetting chapped lips. “I’m so thirsty.”

Crouching down in front of you, he produces a tin from his pocket. A shudder rips through you. The tin opens to a pasty salve that reeks of bitumen ointment. It’s an ugly ochre, but comes off clear as he rubs it into his fingers. “I thought so. I’m sorry,” he says, working on the ropes with his free hand. “I brought this for you. It should help some, and we’ll get you some water.”

The coarse scrap of the rope coming away seizes your muscles, a fresh new wave of rawness shooting up your arms. Hissing, your head hits the concrete behind you. Now that the dank basement air is on the skin, it’s like they’re new. And the muscles of your shoulderblades twist, finally able to revolt against the position that your wrists bound behind you forced them into.

He curses. Taking your hands, he turns your hands over to see the extent of the irritation. Smoothing the ointment over your tender, rope-burned wrists is searing, but it’s a necessary evil. Even as your tummy twists up and you bite sounds down, you lean into the palm he checks your temperature with.

Croaking, you make sure to tell him what you’ve been sitting here wishing you could. “I feel better,” you say. “I think I’m ready for my treatment again. I didn’t have any dreams.”

A moment lasts too long in the wake of that, where he looks up from your wrists that he tends to search your face with diagnostic weight. There’s something there that makes your stomach flutter. He liked that. You want to tell him more things that make him look at you like that.

“That’s good.” He blows cool air over the coating of the salve the way somebody might wash a dish off before they use it. A creeping, hair-raising tremble wracks you. “I worry about bringing you back to a situation that was inflaming the issue when this one seems to be good for you.”

No. Being here has let you breathe, as damp and rusted as it is. But you couldn’t last another minute here. The thought makes you want to cry and grovel. That was what landed you here, though. So you rearrange your words, still wobbly but much more palatable. Something that he will also like. “I don’t like being down here. I just wanted you to come down, I feel better now that you’re here.”

Something flips in him. It’s not in the fact that you’re doing better, but that tidbit of information that he had been looking for. Searching your gaze for a moment, it seems as though he’s debating.

Your heart gives a painful throb, because that’s infinitely better than anything you’ve ever gotten from him. It’s not cold medical steel, it’s not hollow pity. It’s something else. You want to hoard it and also whatever it is that you did to yourself just so you can keep it always like this. And maybe if you did, you’d get better too.

“Let me go get you something to drink. Your lips are chapped.” He rakes his fingers through your scalp, tidying the mess that your hair has become. Closer than he’s ever been, there’s no noises to bounce off the concrete other than the drag of air he takes in. His nostrils flare like he’s caught a scent and a muscle feathering in the line of his impeccable jaw tells you that he has. A twitch to the corner of his lip and the creak of him clenching his fingers and then expelling it with a flex of them is how he shakes it off. “I’m proud of you,” he says, a veneer for something else he means. “Look at what happens when you’re not on your treatment. You don’t want it to happen again, right?”

I’m proud of you, he said. What a tender ache that it leaves you. You nod your head, trying to hang on to his eyes as he heads back up those stairs, and you pray that you haven’t lied to him this time. Because he will know, he will always know. Before even you. Better than you. 

†

When you know what it is to be in that basement, what the strain of ropes around your wrists feels like, and the starvation of where the mind goes in a place like that, you come to appreciate what you have in a room. Where that place was necessary and spotted with rust, this place is where you want to be. Wrapped up in your blankets is where you want to stay, even if it’s a long, shapeless blur of days spent in bed and bird watching out the window. If you’ve gotten good once, then you can stay like this. You have to.

After Taehyun comes and gives you your shot, he checks on your wrists. The tenderness is still irritating when it brushes the sheets, but through the bandages he wrapped you in, it’s better. You are better, and the more space between you and the basement the better too. With some delicate cleaning by cotton swab and fresh wraps every day, the burn goes away. All that’s left is the ache.

He’s not home today. Outside of treating you, he is still a man with a demanding career and other patients to see to. None like you, though. And that’s a strange comfort. You wash yourself up, float around your room like a wraith, daydream in bed about things you want to tell him to please him but are too scared to commit to. The antique luxury of the room didn’t appeal to you before, but you at some point have come to know the shape of every flower in the comforter, the corners where the dust builds heavier, and all the books on the shelves. Especially the one he had read to you once. You relive it through his voice every time you pick it up and crack it open, sprawled out on your tummy.

Sitting with your knees drawn to your chest, you’ve exhausted all of those things. Sometimes you wonder if it’s all just stircraziness. Like a zoo animal that paces the lengths of its cage so much that it no longer sees the fake, plastic habitat around them. You’ve done plenty of that: pacing. Today you had made your bones tired with it. Each time you crossed back to the opposite side of the room, you turned over the words he had told you those days ago when you were getting your most recent dose. That you’re free to explore outside of your room if it pleases you.

You know he means it; you’ve proven to him that you’re in a state that you can. No matter what, though, you can’t trust it. Some part of you insists that he’ll be mad. Especially when you’ve gotten to a place where you’ve pleased him, surprised him. The depth of his trust seems too shallow and delicate to test.

Then so many hours pass and still, he hasn’t come home. Or at least he hasn’t dipped in to check you. A deeply unsettling thing worms through your brain. He’s never been so late. Should you go see if he’s okay? Or at least wander while he’s not here? You play with the notion until it makes you too sick to be still.

Opening the door yourself is what you start with. It feels big. Leaving this place at your own volition didn’t ever come up as a possibility. You haven’t considered it in a long, long time. Wandering down the halls with the cold floorboards at your feet and your fingers feeling the panelling of the pale walls as you pass, you believe in your gut at every step that this is wrong. You itch to go back to your room. But the long halls are harrowingly unfamiliar for a place you think you’ve spent so long residing inside the walls of. Taehyun is a simple man. The lack of decor doesn’t surprise you. Staleness in the air mingles with the utter lack of anything much at all speaks to what a home that a man who dedicates his life to nothing further than his science would look like. Forgotten. Lacking any true signs of life.

When the light of your room stops being able to illuminate the way for you, a voice startles you. It’s the only other living thing in these walls. Spinning on your heel, Taehyun watches you. “You’re up,” he observes.

A shallow nod is all you answer him with. That wrongness you had shoved down comes back with a vengeance. You’re braced for another trip to the basement.

“Is there something you need?” He’s still in his work clothes, his shirt askew with pulling off a tie and sleeves half-rolled the way he likes them.

You simply say, “You were gone, I…” Wanted to see where you were, it should go. The words tangle up and you can’t push them through.

Taehyun’s eyes cut from your silhouette to your mouth to your eyes. There’s a suffocating beat of silence in which you know for a fact he’s realizing what you meant. That the absence of his regularly scheduled visits bugged you, and that’s why you went out looking. Satisfaction washes over his features, made stark in the dim grey light. “There was a callout and I had to cover my colleague’s appointments for the day. How is your head feeling? Still feeling dizzy like you told me?”

Why does that send a twinge of panic through you? The thought of him treating anybody else. He doesn’t read to them, though. He doesn’t bring them to his home. “Not too much,” you tell him, “it’s started to go away.” The last dose was rough. It hit you just like the first one, so hard you woke up with an aching body with a brain fog in the same fashion and all. He had told you it’s because you lost your tolerance to it. 

That tidbit reminds him of something. Rolling his sleeves up tighter, he says, “Head back to your room. I have something to grab. We’re going to run a few tests that I’ve been needing to do on you.”

A few tests… The last time you heard that, he came in and checked your eyes with a flashlight. He’s always got tests to run, but the way he says it this time. It’s different. It’s different in a way that forces you to fiddle with your fingers to fight down creeping anxiety as you do go wandering back. You don’t feel that anymore, the anxiety. You shouldn’t. He’d be upset if he knew. So you stave the nervous habit for fear that he might be watching you go and seeing it.

You wait on your bed, perfectly crisscrossed in a way that keeps your sleep dress proper on your thighs. Should you go get washed up? Should you count the seconds on your fingers? How long will he take?

He comes in carrying a tray of things like he always does. These things, though, that sit on the tray, freeze you and your ricocheting thoughts right over. Ropes. All you see are ropes. The panic surmounts you.

“What did I do?” you say, hands beginning to shake. Was it leaving your room? But he told you that you could? You don’t want to go back. The pink bracelets around your wrist have just faded so that all that’s left is the proof that it happened. And it’s proof enough for you.

Sighing, Taehyun sets it on the white oat desk beside the bed. “You haven’t done anything.” There’s rope and a softer strip of cotton fabric and then another thing beside them, too. A sleek wand vibrator with a fat rubber head. Your heart jumps up into your throat and chokes you. “I told you that there are some tests I need to run. There are some things that can only be observed when the brain is in a certain state. I need to see how you react under different stimuli,” he says. “Especially you. Especially considering how far you’ve come. You trust me?”

You take a moment to think about that. Do you trust him? It was so bad, for a while there. You existed in a state of bits of hazy consciousness. But he pulled you out of it, even if it hurt. If anything spoke to how well he knew what it took, it was that. “I do,” you breathe, skin clammy.

So much so that you mute your instincts as he unspools the rope that you still remember the dig of. Even as the hair on your arms stands at attention at the innate wrongness in the way he slides your panties down your legs, thumbing the fabric before it disappears into his pocket, and then secures your thighs open with the rope. It constricts you, cutting dents into the doughy fat there and keeping your calves sealed airtight to the backs of your thighs, where a loop around your ankles assures it. You wince when he binds your wrists to the heavy wood of the headboard, but the cotton isn’t like rope. Trying your wrists against it and the impossibility of the rope tie. It doesn’t budge. It won’t. A chill, innate and built into your DNA, explodes out from your center. Whatever Taehyun decides he is about to do to you, there’ll be no running from it.

“These ropes won’t hurt you.” He tugs a knot tighter, impossibly so, until it almost is just too tight. The air on your center, which you are painfully aware is exposed and no amount of trying to shy from it can you do when your thighs are wrapped in binds, is the start of a slow burn. He hasn’t even taken a glance yet and it sets you off kilter. “They’re there so I can get what I need from this. Do you understand?”

That clinical, doctor’s voice rears something in you. Because how can he be so clinical when you are so mortified? When the brush of his bare fingers, without the gloves that he insisted on touching you with otherwise, is enough to send static electricity up through your nervous system?

“You know better than to not answer me,” he says. The vibrator is a lewd thing in his sterile hands. You know he’ll find the answers in this. He’ll peel apart your brain and get to the center of it. Guilt gnaws at you for the way your hands tremble. He’s always found the answer, and you’ve doubted him before.

“Yes, I understand.” Your head cannot keep up with that train of thought. It lags and derails, so now all you are aware of is how, with that out of the way, Taehyun kicks on the tool of choice today.

It is not a syringe. It is not the walls of a basement. It’s the weight of your own mind and a device for pleasure that you could never have imagined watching him take up in his hand. It’s incongruent with the image of the man you’ve come to understand that he is; so disconnected from something like the basal thing that is sex that it’s almost the part that makes the nature of it so heart-stopping. Because he is a man that understands, better than any other man you think could, exactly where your mind will go when he puts that thing to you. What the mind wants and needs as he does it, too.

The first contact comes with a strike of lightning straight through you. It burns your nerves right up. Your entire body bends away from it, wrists raging against their cotton prison which only does it up tighter, back bowing off the bed before arcing the opposite way as you dig your spine back into it. Anything to get away from it—the too much.

There was no working you up with slow touches. Not with him. He watches as you scrabble and reel against your body and he knows that it’s a hard start. But that’s exactly what he needs from you. The way the world warps and rolls out like film around you, you know what it is beyond the vicious buzzing right up against your clit. This is another dose. This is breaking your mind down to its most basic pieces, inserting his presence when you are most simple, and then stitching it back up in a brand new shape that isn’t yours. It’s his. This is a man of psychiatry.

Sobbing hoarsely, your thighs jerk though they don’t have much else to go than against the nip of the rope. Your toes wiggle and it’s not enough to exorcise the knot in your tummy and the excess of the buzz that seizes everywhere else in you.

“It’s too much,” you choke. A new angle of that rubber head against your anatomy breaks the sentence. Right up into the very underside of your clit, where the vibrator’s wrath is even more terrible. You never get to the other words you want to say.

Taehyun echoes you, fascination gleaming in the light of his glasses. “Too much? You always say your treatment is too much.” He goes for loose circles, and you didn’t know the attention of that thing could get any more prevalent. The sound you make proves otherwise. “I could stop. We could come back later. Is that what you want?” Like everything, the questions come out clinical. It’s not different from the way he asks about your anxiety levels for the day, how the soreness in your bicep has progressed, if you have anything you need to tell him. As if your body is not writhing and bucking at the greed of his touch. As if you can even think to answer them.

With the deep tightening in your belly, there’s nothing more that you want than to make it go away. If it’s going to be by stopping it or working it out, you know, by the wild beating of your heart against your ribcage, which it’ll be. Tears burn a delicate path down your temples, into the mess of hair there, as you sob for him a definitive, “No.”

So he gets to work. His fingers are ice cold, the scent of him clean but understatedly male, as he presses a palm to the soft bit of body beneath your navel. And he holds you to it.

The first orgasm shakes the foundations of your frame. You can’t clamp your thighs around his wrist or dig crescents into it, but you try to. The ropes tighten sharply against your attempts, your nails biting into your own wrists. Everything closes up in white heat except for the point of contact where he keeps that tool pressed between your thighs and the snap deep in your belly.

“There,” he says. The muscle in his forearm strains as he pins you down into the mattress harder and he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t even want you to breathe. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

No part of you wants to do that. No part of you has the strength to. But it’s the vivid memory of those words that you remember once in a dream, born of your sorry delusions, that lends you the strength to do it. Your eyes, sealed tight to fight the frantic realization that he’s not stopping down, pop open.

Two of his buttons are undone. On the expanse of chest that it droops and exposes, there’s a freckle right over his sternum where it begins to give way to his chest. That’s something that didn’t exist in the state of your dream, something that interrupts his pale, unmarred skin. It makes him human, makes this all the more haze-inducing. “Good,” he says, noting how the cotton digs into your wrists the more you tug and fail at grabbing him. “I have a lot I want to see in you. Do you like it like this?” Taking the wand for a trip down your cunt, he lets it reverberate through you. Only for a moment, though. Then it’s back on your swollen clit. You want to escape from your body, just to breathe, just for a moment. But Taehyun has plans of unmaking you. “Your body gets very wet. It’s an interesting look into what’s going on up there, isn’t it? It’s funny. I know exactly what’s going through your mind, all those chemicals…” Hair a mess with digging your skull back into the pillows, he reaches out and fixes it for you. A touch like that should be tender, but not with him. He just wants to see right through to your brain better.

This second orgasm tears right through you. It starts in your belly again, but it is so much bigger. It takes control of you, in your chest and your brain and all the way down your thighs to the curl of your toes. How you shake and the sounds that you make, you don’t know. They don’t reach you. All you know is feel; how the whimpers feel coming out of your throat, how the shakes feel as the buzz just never stops and it’s clear that one is not enough. Two is not enough. He is going to keep going. “Oh my god,” you sob, head on a wavelength apart. “Oh, god.”

Taking his hand, he cools the radiating under the soft skin of your cheek. Now more than ever it’s apparent just how cold he is. It’s something that at last, finally, cuts through the overwhelming sensation of hurtling toward another immense peak. Him. And that’s what he wants—to be, in a sea of nothing, the only thing that you notice. The only thing you can latch on to. There was nothing Taehyun ever did that was not with intention down to the very core.

“I like those sounds.” Another peak comes, quicker than the others. The feelings compound with each until now it seems like you’re already on to the next before this one is even over, tummy tightening. “Three,” he announces, eyes roving over the wreckage of you all dark and like steel. A tally, for what? Is he keeping track of how many times he can make you go over? Seeing where the boundaries of your mind sit? You fear that the truth of the matter will disappoint him. Those edges are so much closer now than he might think. The notion that he even intends to go for more sends cold dread twisting up with the carnage in your system. Your eyes burn hot, your lungs even more. You cannot get enough air to help the starvation of oxygen. “Did you know that the sounds you make are a social performance? It’s your brain, telling me not to stop. That you like what he’s doing and you want more of it. To encourage him,” Taehyun says, the scientific fascination behind his devouring gaze the only thing he wears on his face. It’s stone, otherwise. “But I don’t think that’s what this is. Because overwhelming stimuli does almost exactly the same.” A corner of his sharp mouth twitches.

You answer him with the same sounds he picks apart and lays out on the examination table as a trait of basic human biology. The part of you that is just an animal with one simple need. You don’t care what they are; only that you can’t keep them in your chest no matter how hard you try. And maybe he’s right in that—the fact that no part of this is performance.

Taehyun bends down in front of your face, which is thrown to one side as you try to examine every feature of the wallpaper as if you could ignore the forever buzzing against your poor clit. He doesn’t even move it anymore, he gets it right where he wants it and it’s going to stay there now. A few times he has to readjust it because you’re so slick that it slips, but it stays. Even that momentary respite is heaven and pearly gates. His fingers squish the roaring pink of your cheeks as he turns your blown eyes on him. “Four. Do you even understand how much is going on inside of you right now?” he says. His hand, wrapped around it,  must be as numb from the insistent purr of the vibe as much as your cunt is. One sensation blurs into another. Refractory periods don’t exist. Pleasure and ache is constant and dulled but still, against all odds, all-consuming. “All those feel-good hormones your brain is pumping through your system right now. It’s the hallmark of the female brain. A wonder of biology. Made to bring you closer to me, to form bonds to the man that you can’t even realize are forming. Even my scent. My voice.”

Holding your swimming gaze, his face is blurred by tears. But you can see there that Taehyun will never be a normal man. It’s the wicked fascination that burns in it. “Look at that. Six.” The first sound that’s ever gotten close to a laugh comes out like a scalpel’s edge. Pressing a finger to the space between your eyebrows, he says, “It’s all happening in a place that you can’t reach. In the background. Right here.” His gaze flickers to your mouth, documenting the place you’ve broken the poor, soft skin there. “It’s not yours anymore. It’s mine.”

You wish you could metabolize the reality of what it is that he said. But he didn’t want you to, and that’s not why he said it. It’s why he’s shaved your mind down to this nothing. And nothing is what you are. You can’t handle another orgasm. The skin beneath the ropes and cotton have become red, your slick has drooled down your body and begun staining the bed with such mortifying excess, and your sounds are hoarse and breaking. “Please,” you say, a sweet rasp. Isn’t there irony in the fact that the only word you can manage is a plea? For what? For him to stop or to never stop? To come closer because you do itch to be near him, just like he said. You want the scarce presence of him to keep you afloat in this brackish water. You love him. You love him so much and so big that it competes with the tenderness between your thighs and makes it trivial when his approval is so much better and sweeter.

“I don’t think so,” he says, thumbing your nipple through the thin cotton of your chemise. It’s already tightened to a peak when he does, a prickle deeper than skin beginning in your breast and then spreading over the hair on your arms. “There’s so much in there that I still need to see.”

Tests, he had called this. This is your examination table, this bed. The cracking of the headboard, the droning of the tool he uses a medical tool in its own right. You’ll let him see it all even if it breaks you apart.

Taehyun files away each peak, each twisting of your muscles. How you react to them differently, how different stimuli and pressures such as brush here and a dig of his fingers there changes it all. Some he announces and some he doesn’t. Seven. Nine. Eleven. Everytime you think you will not survive the next, you do and it’s blinding. Your slick coats your inner thighs from when he pressed the head there. Your neck is sore, your cunt numb.

The absence of that buzz as he finally pulls the wand from you and clicks it off is impossible loud. Your thoughts are slow and you’re too lazy to enjoy the freedom of your limbs as he works the knots out and unfasted your binds. Whatever is running through your bloodstream, it’s more than bliss. It’s a drug. One not too different from another you know so well in your bones. They’re no doubt meant to do the same thing. He disappears from your periphery, leaving you slow-blinking until he returns to clean up your body. The touches of the warm rag are tender in the shadow of the unshaking sterility he just eroded your body down with. They make your brain happy. You lean into his touch as he fixes the bunching of your dress and maybe it feels a little less cold now than how you remember it.

“You did very good,” he says. That look on his face eats like black holes. “I knew I was right to bring you here.”

Lazy-boned, you lay in bed and those words oscillate and become something so irresistible in your slowed head. It’s your favorite thing to hear, so you spin it a few more times around. That he not only chose you, but he’s glad he did. That the rest of the people he sees ultimately disappoint him when he compares them to you.

When you go to slip on your panties, which you remember should be at the foot end of your bed, you find them missing and remember where they had gone. Out that door along with him, stuffed into the pocket of his impeccably straight dress pants.

What he intends with them, you can only tuck back into bed and drift off imagining. The memory of the flare of his nostrils, such a subtle thing but so impossible to miss on a face that doesn’t budge, in the basement when he had gotten closer than he ever had to you, does wonders in helping you. It paints a picture of something so lewd that you fall asleep pressing your thighs together and delighting in the soreness there. Because he had left it there.

†

Taehyun made the mistake of letting up on the doses. You can see everything so much clearer. It’s been so long since the last that you have finally, for the first time in so long, come to a point where you’re not in the throes of the drug nor the hazy in-between.

The thought of what all this means is something you don’t want to touch. This is the kind of stuff that happens to movie protagonists, all the stuff that’s scary because to some degree it’s rooted in reality. How could it ever have become yours, though? Some nights, the farther you get away from the last injection, you do slip down the slope of convincing yourself that everything was genuine medical practice. That you did go crazy. Whatever name that the great psychiatrist called your disorder, whatever he could create, that’s what you were.

Your tummy goes sick as you shake in bed. He’s not home. The window is closing, and you’re sitting here wasting time. It’s right now or it’s never, because you don’t know if the pinch of the needle will eventually come back. He could come tomorrow and send you back to that place. If you’re never in this position again… Your jaw aches from the tightness of your swallow. It’s too scary to think about.

It’s that time where daylight is a dark, gross grey giving into night that you get up even if your chest and legs protest. They’re too weak on you and you think you won’t make it, but you have to. If he’s not back by now, he will be. That’s an inevitability that you can’t let happen. Much like that first night, the hallways are lonely and unfamiliar with their paleness and it seems like they just don’t stop. If you keep going despite your weak legs, you’ll find a way. You have to. Chest tightening up to a point where it’s nauseating, breaths too shallow to properly feed your brain, you move faster. If you get out of here before the thoughts peeling around the edges can grip you, you’ll make it.

But he had just started to be happy with you. He trusted you so much he didn’t even think you needed the drug anymore. 

The walls open up into a wide entryway. Above it the ceiling is tall, an iron-frame chandelier dim but enough lighting to reflect off the wood of the floors. You go stumbling for it, blood rising higher to the surface and roaring louder in your ears the closer you get until you think you might just fall over. Until you believe, with startling verity, that he’ll step out of the shadows and catch you. The ghost of what his voice would sound like if he did is enough to make your muscles jump. Goosebumps rise over your thighs and arms and it all reaches a head as you close your fist around the french handle and you throw the door open.

Taehyun doesn’t catch you. Because he isn’t here, but the chill of the air outside is. It wraps itself around you and you remember, finally, what it feels like. Did you ever think you would feel it again? Did you even know you were missing it? Tears prick your eyes. You run like hell.

The concrete and rocks tear at your bare feet. You have nothing, no more on than the same monotonous sleep shift that you want off. Even that is his. But you have the thrum in your blood and your mind, and that’s all you need. It’s come back to you. The pavement is cold, and you run straight up the road. Catching your foot on the ground, you go down hard. Your bones bark, your knees hiss, but you don’t have time to feel it. That place needs to be as far behind you as you can get it.

Headlights light up the road from behind you. You must look insane, a girl running wildly nowhere with wind-tangled hair and no shoes. But they’re people, and you have nowhere to go. The thudding of your heart against your ribcage finally catches up to you. You had managed to outrun it until now.

They pull up beside you. A middle aged man braces his arm along the passenger side window that he’s rolled down and he leans out toward you. The worry lines on his forehead crease as he says, with no lack of astonishment, “Where are you running like that to? You’re in the middle of the road, do you realize that?”

Your mouth is dry. Blinking at him, you can’t hear him well over the pulse in your throat.

He must see your gaunt face and gone eyes better up close, because his brow twitches and he straightens up. “Do you need help?” he asks, sharing a bewildered look with the man in the driver’s seat. “Are you alright? You look like hell, girl.”

You do. You do need help. Seeing the flicker of bare, real emotion on another human face tightens your throat.

“Can you not talk?” His voice becomes sharper in the way that an older person’s does when they’re deeply uncomfortable, but you don’t have to hear it to see it dawning on his face. For a moment he disappears through the window of the old beater truck and they talk. He gestures with his hand through it. “Hell, climb on in. Where do we need to take you? The police station’s a long way in the other direction. You got a boyfriend’s house?”

A long way. You can handle that. Closing the door behind you, the scent of old car isn’t something soothing anymore like the fresh air was. It becomes suffocating and it surrounds you. “The police station, please.” Your voice comes out all shaky.

They share another look and one looks over his shoulder at you, dragging his eyes up and down the state of you. “What’s going on with you, then?” he asks, with no particular delicacy.

He sounds so much like an uncle of yours that you just fall apart. A sob shudders through your chest. “Please take me there. I need to go. I need to get there soon, please.” Your shaking lips shape the words into something that must sound insane to them. Digging your fingers into your dress, your shoulders shake. “If he comes, then…”

Silence chokes the cab. There’s something in the driver’s eyes when they catch you in the rearview mirror that sends acid up from your stomach. It’s all pity. The familiar look wraps around your head like bandages and labels you what you will fight and scream against being. Crazy. A girl who’s lost it and is scary to the people around her. The same one was in his eyes once, which sears behind your eyelids. Less warm and human, but the same.

“I mean it!” you sob, pressing your back into the car door. You hadn’t even buckled in. “I’m not lying. You have to believe me. Please!”

Horror replaces pity. “We believe you,” says the one that drives.

The simplicity of that is a punch to the gut. These aren’t the man you have to plead with. They aren’t the man with the sharp mind that would, without a doubt in your mind, find you eventually. Even if you get to that police station, if you sang like a bird about what happened to you in that quiet estate in the nicer part of town and what kind of person lived behind those walls, he would.

And what would happen when he does? Guilt becomes heavy like lead in your stomach. He’s going to hate you. He’s going to take you apart harder. The burn of ropes echoes in the faded but still real marks on your wrists. Look what you went and did when he had finally started to trust you. He never will again, you’d taken a sledgehammer to something so fragile. Breaths begin to come too fast. The walls of the truck, even the windows which you can see the trees passing through, close in on you. You imagine him coming home to find you gone. How much that would upset him when you did so good making him pleased with you.

“Take me back,” you say. It’s a throaty, soft thing amid your sniffles. A dichotomy from what a flailing, cornered animal you were when you climbed in here.

The air stills and the driver looks at you through the mirror. “What did you say?”

Repeating it for him, more terrified but sure of the guilt’s claws in your chest this time than last time, you say, “I want to go back. Can you just please take me back? Or drop me off here, please.”

Pulling over onto the grass shoulder, he gives you a suspicious look. “Are you sure? We’re heading to the station right now.”

Throwing open the door, you wish you could stop. If only your blood didn’t turn to ice when he said that, and if only he had heard you and decided for you, anyway, that you needed to be taken somewhere safe. At least then it could be anybody but your own fault that you ran. But the only thing you did for yourself was the stupid thing. All you did was make it worse for yourself.

If you run, maybe you can make it there before Taehyun does. If you run like hell back. And then you could keep this deep in your chest, let it calcify in your bones, and you’d know better than to do it again.

†

The metal sound of Taehyun tapping his forceps against the water dish jolts you. You’re so jumpy, waiting for the explosion. It doesn’t come. He just narrows his eyes on the heel of your foot and tugs a shard of gravel from it. You bite down sounds with your head hung because anything might bring it—that sharp anger, a twisted downturn of his mouth. But that’s not who Taehyun is.

Silence is his punishment, this time. A tool he uses no different than a needle or a rope or the pleasure of sex. It’s suffocating. You want to break out into sobs and tell him that you didn’t really mean it. To offer yourself up to any other form of punishment just to make him happy that you’re accepting your treatment the way he was once. To pick up the pieces you had shattered and shove them back together because you are so, so scared of what deformation you’ve caused. Will he never be happy with you again?

Your feet ache now that liquid adrenaline’s solidified. All your limbs ache, and your lungs burn like they’ve been chapped with air. He takes meticulous care of the scrapes on your knees. The burn of disinfectant on your weeping, scraped knee burns and you can’t help the hiss it brings this time. He wraps bandages around them after dabbing antiseptics, holding your ankle with a distinct lack of pain or tightness that it’s almost more frightening.

Watching him with wet cheeks, you know now. What he meant when he told you that your brain isn’t yours anymore. Because it’s his in every way that counts. It may sit up in your head, but he had done something terrible. He’d taken his scalpel and opened your very system up to him. A man who understood that you are, horrifyingly, just a set of biological responses and conditionings that, with enough reshaping, could be undone. That the brain was not a rigid structure, but something malleable. He knew exactly where to position you so that his very scent, his very presence, worked in the background. Past the conscious mind, into the organ where he thrives best perverting upon. Like a dog whose mouth can’t help but water when the dinner bell rings, you lean into him still.

You had gotten away. Down the road, so far that you couldn’t even look back and see the silhouette of this place standing behind you. It had made you sick to your stomach. And then you came back. The walk was longer than the run. The cold of his face branded into your skull, clearer with every step you made back, and it wouldn’t stop. 

Taehyun wipes his bloodied tool off and sets them down on the side table, the same bone white as the one you know so well beside your bed. His gaze falls on your face for the first time since you came limping in here with tears in your eyes. Curving his fingers beneath your chin, he looks right into your eyes. How could fire burn so cold? That’s what he is. He is angry. And his anger turns into this. “Do not,” he says, slowly for you, “ever run from me again.”

You worry with a twist to your gut that he’ll go get the needle. That he’ll go take up those ropes again. But why would he need to? They already did their jobs; you came walking right back into him. There was no getting away. Not from your head.

ash: i mean the most i can say is me next lets go ,, this one took my soul but that just means ur reading the stuff that comes from it :3 also yes this is pretty much my theme, but what a better way to start out the event??

I start this as a warning and as a confession. If you, my dear reader, have stumbled upon this as a manual, bury this book deeper than the grave robbers' shovel hits. I cannot tell you enough how devastating it is to have found yourself playing god when we were never intended to do so. 

In my early years, I never understood what people meant when they turned their noses up at doctors, surgeons. How could you, someone who has no knowledge of the human body past your own, criticize the knowledgeable with one sentence? 

How could you shame me for learning the art of savior? Sure, I was no priest; I never claimed I was. Surgery, I guess, is found on that same fine line as priesthood. We all reach out to God, but surgeons and priests graze their fingers along his robes, and some of us, those who try hard enough, twist their hands in the silk and don't let go until the devil drags you right back down to where you belong. 

I never took it as ego, not until you blinked your eyes open and I realized my grievous mistake. 

I was my own undoing, I can confess that to you now, here, my love, because I know it will be you who finds these letters first. With every stitch I picked up, every equation I solved, every prayer I whispered under my breath to bring you back to me, I was slowly unwraving what it meant to be human, what it meant to play God. 

You were my blinding sun, melting the wax of my wings when I flew too close to you. I ask for your forgiveness, because I know myself now, I know the coward hidden under that mask of what I had believed was power, I twisted my god complex around my finger and brought you back, but I should have never played with tools built by men just as foolish as I. 

Forgive me, my love, for I know I can never forgive myself. 

Always yours, Choi Soobin 

✄

Dying had not hurt as you expected it to. What hurt far worse was waking up again so long after being put to rest. 

Somewhere distantly, you had heard him crying softly over your body, and although you could not feel the needles' pin pricks along the seams of where you had been split, you knew what he was doing. You had watched Soobin’s hands, steady and skillful as he stitched along the rind of an orange, the flesh of it tucked gently between his fingers. His knuckles, pink from the cold of the basement, the violet of the sutures thread like a fine line bruise against his pale skin. 

You had studied the way he tied his knots, once, twice, envious of how easy he found it when you had been all but fumbling. He had taken to showing you his technique late at night, when both of you were to retire to your rooms, the dying light from the candles throwing shadows around until you could hardly tell what he was doing. 

“It is getting rather late,” you would hint, your books already tucked away in your bag, fingers stained from ink long since dried after your lectures. 

It was all you needed to say before he blinked up at you, glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose, his dark hair thrown a mess from the long day. “Let me walk you home,” dropping the needle as if it were so easy to pull himself away for you. It had been the one thing that had turned your heart towards him. How after years of working next to each other, you had witnessed fires, flies, and failed lectures all pass by, and he had not looked up for anyone besides you and your soft voice calling him to action. 

He would pack up his things, haphazard in his way, shoving his papers between books half-marked with notes you had pointed out to him in passing. You never expected him to walk you all the way home, not when it was so dark the lamp lights outside were just burning low enough to cast foreign shadows from every tree, or stone built building on the small campus onto the dirt roads. But both of you had taken a liking to one another, even early on in your apprenticeship, when most men would have done anything to step over you for their hand at the scalpel. 

Soobin had done the opposite. Just as blind as you, although with steadier hands, looking for any small sliver of work, just as hungry for knowledge, without care who was eating at the table next to him. He had planned out a schedule, picking over every minute of the day to ensure that both of you had equal opportunity. He was adamant on keeping pace, and if not for you, you're sure he would look just as hollow eyed as the students following behind their physicians just down the hall from your own. 

Your mother had been worried about sending you off to a school that had little to their reputation besides being one of the few that would allow a woman to enter at the same level as a man. But you had been little help around the house, and she had made it a point to tell you to come home with not only your degree but a husband. In only your first letter, your mother could sense your infatuation with your study, but also the fondness you had for soobin and his kind eyes, steady hands, and sweet dimpled smile. 

Even on holiday, your mother had been quick to invite him over, fussing over his clothes, his food, his hair. Properly treating him as if he were your partner and not only your classmate. Although the line had become blurry with every passing night spent bent over books, or the lone citrus you were instructed to practice sutures on. 

He would walk you home, and with his cold-reddened knuckles, brush at your cheek as if he were courting you properly at the doorstep of your family home and not the dressed-up shack assigned as your single dorm. You had not expected to find love, not when you were determined to outshine your family's limited expectations of you. And yet it was quite impossible not to fall in love with Choi Soobin. 

Not when you spent so much time together and he looked at you as if you were the only person who could find sense in his ramblings. His handkerchief written over with bleeding ink as you told him over again to eat, as you yourself fleshed out the missing bits of his theories. You would drag him to the gardens to study out on the grass, the fresh spring lilies fragrant and romantic enough to sometimes make you forget your books. 

And sometimes, even when you both know you shouldn't, he would kiss you, right under your lash line, at the soft easily bruised skin under your eyes. His lips like the wings of a moth, tracing down the curve of your cheek to your waiting mouth. 

You wondered how easy it was to tell that the two of you had found such serenity in each other, enough so to share a bed, either between your sheets or the soft green grass that curled around your ankle when you felt his breath pressed to your pulse. And there in the depths of the basements where you had met for the first time, he had proposed, bumbling through the speech, his hands trembling as he held out the only expansive thing he had ever had in his palm. 

The ring was a fine circle of gold, stamped with your initials, and worn on a chain around your throat, tucked into the soft cotton of your blouse. It was easy to forget about planning a wedding for the summer when you were so focused on studying; it was even easier to forget the breaks in between each long stretch of night, when you should have been sleeping instead of fussing over oranges. 

But soon you would have your exams, not on rind but on flesh, and you could see it weighing heavily on his mind. Maybe you should have let him come with you that night, follow after you like a puppy at the heels of a small child. Maybe if you had stayed even a breath longer, you wouldn't have found yourself dying without much pain or at all. But even in death, you know what happened did so for a reason, that your soft denial, “no, you stay, at least until the candles burn out, promise?” must have saved him from your same tragic end. 

You wondered if he had come to regret his last word to you, his lips to yours, ghosting as they whispered, “promise.” 

And the only thing you could remember in your death was the weight of the ring pressed over your heart, each beat fading out until all you could think was how lucky you were to have at least died loved. 

✄

I did not intend to bring you back my love, at least not at first. 

When I found you in the street, bloodied and so unlike yourself, I could not stop my eyes from crying. It had never been my intention to hold you while your life was leaving you or had already left, for you had still been slightly warm to my touch. I wish, as we had intended through the sanctity of our marriage, you would have died long after me because I knew I would not be able to live in a world without you in it. At least that was the only way I could see for a husband and wife's end. 

Perhaps this is just a reflection of my selfish nature. I am nothing if not selfish when it comes to you, and I don't think I could apologize even now for that. But what I will apologize for is not walking you to your home that night, for being weak enough to fall to the whims of my study as easily as leaves fall from trees in the changing season. 

My last word to you had been ‘promise,’ and maybe if I had been able to keep one, you would not have gone so soon, or at least I could have gone with you and not become what I have now. 

They buried you right in the plot next to the old weeping willow, the cross heavy and polished smooth. I plucked a lily from our favorite spot in the gardens, white and as pure as the dress you would have worn at the foot of the altar when we were to be married. I placed the flower over your coffin moments before they lowered it into the ground, and with a heavy hand, I held the first scoop of dirt that was to cover you. 

That was to be it. Your mother cried, vowed to me that I was welcome back to your childhood home, even if we had not finalized our marriage, even when it felt as if I had been the one to sign off your death that night by letting you leave unattended. I had looked down at my hands, your grave dirt was still clinging to the corners of my fingers, under my nails like blood, and it was as if I had dug you up and not put you under. 

And the idea was born, selfish, full of ego, and grief. I wanted you back, and I thought, how hard could it be? 

You had always warned me of the blindness that comes with study; the dark that bled into academia was not from shadow, but blood, greed, and the unwillingness to let enough be enough. If you had been there, you would have thought me mad, but in the wake of your funeral, it was the only thing that kept me going, as if bringing you back was a candle flickering down the length of a long tunnel I had not found the courage to travel down. 

I needed someone to reel me in before the thoughts became too much. But I made a home in the school's basement, looked over books that talked about the unknown, turned to the bible, read over the story of Lazarus, learned of nerves that could still be triggered after death. And when the planning became intense, I moved my work to my home, right down the hall from the bed we shared that one faithful night, I made my study. 

I prepped for every obstacle, every small adjustment I made to ensure that you would be mine again. You would have been so proud, or so I loved to pretend, because I truly do not know how you would have taken to what I had done. We worked so much with death, you and I, but it never crossed my mind to ask how you would feel about coming back. Even now, I do not know how I myself feel about the reverse of the situation. And maybe I choose not to dive in deep to the parts of myself that know where my true answer resides. 

Because at the end of it all, if you had pulled me from the dirt, clawed your way down in the dead of night as I, there would be little forgiveness. Never could the cracking of your coffin be taken back. There you lay against the pine wood, eyes closed as they should have stayed, your hands crossed over your sternum, the ring I had gifted you placed on your finger, the one with the vein that led to your unbeating heart, because even if you had died, you were still to be my wife. 

You were cold, the edges of your dress stained, and there with the moon as my witness, I fell to your legs and wept.  

I had not been scared of being found, and maybe that was in thanks to my madness. I wrapped your body in a silk sheet, covered your empty grave, and took you home. My table, the one where I was to resurrect you, was easy enough to confuse with the lone metal bed we dissected on during classes. 

I undressed you, cleaning you down, and with the utmost care, I sewed the parts of you that had been split. Right along your seams, the elbows, your shoulders, even at the soft dip of your hip that I had once kissed so tenderly. And I begged for forgiveness, yours, and whoever would listen. 

After hundreds of hours studying, practicing with you over my shoulder, by my side, you were now below my needle, and I had never felt so close to greatness, and yet so far away from you. I kissed at your knee, prepared for the rain to come in hard enough to rock the strongest ships to their sides, to sink them as deeply as I must be laid once it's come to light exactly what I have done. 

As much as I begged for your forgiveness, I fear I know I am the most undeserving, 

Regretfully, Choi Soobin. 

✄

The first breath hurt the most, lungs dusty with time left spent stale, breathing in no air but sitting still six feet under, where all air seemed to be sucked out, leaving not even a sound. You felt the jolt of every nerve, so shocking it undid the hold you had on your chest, mouth opening on the edge of a scream as the inhale took over everything inside you. 

It was not one strike to your limbs that got your heart up with one weak beat, but several, traveling down your joints, your scalp, and spine. You did not feel weak but revitalized, so much so that your heart was beating with a newfound interest in being alive, in being whole again. It was all at once like a horse set off to the races, bolting from the corral, having tasted death hot on its heels just moments before the cracking lightning came again. 

Your eyes, so heavily lidded before, jumped open, the familiar ceiling, the pattern of the rain pattering down in sheets, thick and roaring against the glass. He had cracked it open, the droplets falling like tears over your body, kissing your exposed skin, steaming up like the smoke from a candle as they touched you. 

Everything felt so stiff, even your mind had trouble catching up, your mouth gasping for words it had once tasted and coming back with nothing but air that you greedily sucked down. 

“Darling?” and you felt him before you saw him, built on nerve endings alone, the reverberation of his touch went throughout the whole of your body, still lying flat on the cold metal table. He held your hand, testing the weight of your fingers before they twitched for him, and he laughed. 

Loud and boisterous, he was a mess of disbelief, tears springing to his lashline. He knelt at your wrist, falling to his knees, pressing his forehead to the back of your hand, fit with a bracelet of stitches done up by the steady hold you knew he possessed. And as the rain poured in, his joy turned to bitter agony as sobs wracked his shoulders, and your first thought had not been why, but what had he done? 

✄

There is no greater shame than that of understanding you have become the one thing people should fear. We are meant to create life, but what I did with you? That was no creation. You, my greatest sin, will forever be my undoing, my unmaking, my destruction. 

When you blinked open your eyes, when I felt your touch…I was the happiest I had ever been, and then I realized exactly how disastrous it was to play so freely with tools I never should have picked up.  

Please forgive me, Choi Soobin

✄

The rain did not stop for hours, the floor slick with it as he helped you to sit up. Your modesty was long gone, lost when all you could think of was how strange it was to be able to wiggle your toes, to curl your fingers in his hand or around the lip of the metal table that had been your bed. 

You watched him as he handled you like a vase he was too worried would drop and crack at his feet. But you could feel how tight his stitches were as he guided you to the bathroom, the tub already filled with water, lukewarm and smelling of honeysuckle oil. 

The first sound to escape your lips was a sigh at the feeling of the water enveloping you, the liquid instantly fogging up in clarity as you tested the weight of your arms under the surface. Looking up, you caught Soobin’s watchful eyes, the brown of them tracing the line the water made against your body, cutting out the rest of you from view as you breathed in and out. 

He looked ill, the purple and red bruises around his eyes from the long days and even longer nights without you written over his features as he worried at his bottom lip with his teeth. Instinctively, you reached out for him, hand lifting with a slowness you had not possessed before, breaking through the surface, the ring he had given you kept in place, catching in the candlelight. 

Bending down, he met you halfway, grasping your hand again, curling the digits between his as if he had caught a bird and was too afraid to let go. “How do you feel?” The sleeves of his linen shirt hung heavy at the elbows, rolled up, and yet caught in the water. 

You could not find the words, tongue heavy in your mouth, your throat tight and dry, empty of words you wished would come to you. But there was nothing you would be able to say when you did not know. There was no right feeling, not when you knew this wasn't as it was before, and it wasn't as it was in death. 

It was almost as if he could tell, his brows coming in as he dropped your hand to reach for the bar of soap sitting in the dish at the gold nozzle of the tub. He rubbed it between his hands, lathering up the suds until he reached out again for your hand to lift your arm and glide the stick over your limb, stopping at every row of stitches he came across. 

You watched in quiet wonder how he washes you with soft strokes, cupping his hand under the water only to bring it up to your shoulder to let the droplets slide back down to the pool rippling around you. The beads caught on your stitches, and you wondered how long it had taken him to tie you back together, how many knots had he made to ensure you wouldn't fall right back apart? 

Your mouth moved without effort, swallowing the words that kept getting stuck on the tip of your tongue, and still nothing came as hard as you tried. At the edge of his lips, his frown deepened, his tears not coming back but finding it hard to stay hidden behind his eyes that could not meet yours, not anymore, not after you had first caught sight of him watching you in his quiet wonder. 

And when he was done, he helped you stand again, taking a towel and drying you off. Somewhere distantly, you could remember his hands on you like this before, only in reverse; he had been peeling your top off instead of bringing it over your head. “These will hopefully heal nicely.” 

His thumb hovered just above the seam at your shoulder, the lace of your nightgown as fine as his craftsmanship, the knot left catching in the white threaded flower that had been made with as much care as he had taken with you. Leaving you to stand at the edge of the tub, he reached into the murky water, slightly pink from blood you had not seen speckling the shell of your ear, or the dips of your elbows. 

The only sound in the room was the bubbling tub, the rain, and your breathing that seemed to echo around every part of you after not having done it for what felt like centuries. And through the dark, he led you to his room, the sheets a mess, tossed aside from restless nights he must have spent anywhere but in the bed he lay you down now. 

For the smallest second, you wonder if falling asleep will put you right back under the earth. If you closed your eyes, maybe you wouldn't open them again, and your heart would slow down so much so that it would undo everything that he had done to bring you back. And you wondered if he wanted that to happen with the way he laid down as if he had made the bed to look like a grave, and your waking had only been the start of the end. 

✄

That first night, I stayed up as late as I could. It was not hard; I had enough practice since your passing, funny as it was, since you had always warned me it was better to study on a full night's rest, and I had gone and done the opposite. But it seems I am prone to do the things I'm told not to do. 

I watched you sleep, counting each breath you took until it was evident that you would not slip away from me in rest, and I could not tell if it was for the better or worse. Maybe if I had woken with you in my bed and you were as I had dug you up, they would not have looked at me as anything other than a love lost widower. For if you had been dead when I woke, I don't think I would have left the bed, I'd have lain there and mourned you anew because I would have been grateful that my wrong had been righted below my nose even if you were still gone. They would have come for me, but I think on some level they would have understood. 

This, you being alive again by my hand, they would not have been able to handle. Even I, who had done the work, put in the effort, and knew exactly what price was to be paid, had not understood the full scope of what exactly I was asking for. I watched you as the sun came over the hill, slipping between the curtains, soaking into the floorboards, spilling over your chest, still rising and falling under my careful eye. 

Silently to myself, I wished the sun would come in like a fire, purify my mistakes, still your lungs, and turn the room to ashes so no one would be able to pick clean the truth of the night. But you had been no witch to water only a haunting visualization of my greed. Still, I reached for your wrist, pressing my two fingers to your thready pulse, counting every beat like a prayer for forgiveness because as I held your hand in mine, I realized how amazing it had been to witness such a sin. 

I had still been on the edge of accepting that what had happened was fully wrong, but the knife above my head had been set there the moment I looked down at my fingers and found them covered in your grave dirt. It was a wonder how I had brought you back, how as I held your wrist, pressed over the stitches I had made, even down underneath your flesh, connecting veins in a way that I could even feel your heartbeat, as strange as it felt now, alive and seemingly well. 

But with every passing second, the thread frayed and the knife was soon to fall, even when I hadn't wanted it to. I lifted your wrist to my mouth, kissing over the threading, feeling your pulse against my lips, and faintly I could smell the perfume that always seemed to follow after you, the very same I had longingly believed our children's soft, downy hair would smell when they were still small enough to cradle. 

Everyone had seen you buried, your mother, mine, all of our friends, classmates, and colleagues. There was no reason to think back on dreams of babies when you were dead. It had been a distinct line I had drawn in the sand in that very moment. I had done something no one would have understood. In theory, yes, we would have all wanted you back, but in practice? They had all let you go. Every dream that was held for your future had died with you, and they had not come back as you had with one single crack of lightning. 

No, they had stayed buried, exactly where you should have been and where everyone would have told me to put you right back. So why had I even tried? Why bring you back if I were to keep you locked away? If we were to never have children? If we were never to go back to the school where we had fallen in love with each other and our work? 

I had doomed us eternally to a life that was no better than how it had been before you were back. And maybe that is harsh, maybe my transgression has made me cynical, perhaps I should have just been elated to have you back. Your heart was beating again, the same heart I had fallen for, your brain now awake as it once was, the same one that had spewed ideas that I cherished, and your body, even with its newly coming scars, was still the one that had held me. 

I should have been grateful for the feat I had accomplished. I should have… but as you opened your eyes that second time, the knife fell, and I was split in two for how I felt wishing once again to see you back in your coffin while simultaneously wishing to pull you closer. 

Maybe it would have been better to have walked you that faithful night, whether you came out, or neither of us did, because it seems this new grave I've made us is big enough for two. This is the end, no matter the side I finally decide to end up on, pulling you in or pulling you under. 

Yours, Choi Soobin. 

✄

It was not your first instinct to move from the bed but to lie in it and watch the clouds pass. There was no need to get up when you could not speak, when you had no other plans besides that to finally say one word that you kept trying to reach for but couldn't quite grasp. Your jaw worked in your mouth, rolling around, grinding your teeth, tongue prodding at each one like a pearl you could run between your fingers while it was still strung up on a necklace. 

Soobin had not tried to pull you up from your space; he had set your hand down as if he had never been holding it, placing it by your side with an ease that felt like a dismissal. You had heard him in the kitchen bumping around, making tea, heating soup, setting it on a tray, and bringing it into the room to place at your bedside. But he did not stay to watch you testing your grip on the silk of your nightgown, or the trim of the sheets, did not stay to hear the first word you had grumbled from a throat still dry. 

Instead, he scrubbed at his study space, the one that had filled with rain all night because he had left the window in the ceiling open, the drying blood on the metal table, and all the dust collecting on his books needing cleaning. You could hear the scratching of the bristle brush on the varnished wood floor. Back and forth the sound went with each passing second, until you could picture him on his hands and knees, arms flexing against his rolled sleeves, his cross necklace hanging in the hollow of his billowing shirt, the edge of it catching in all the soap and water he was pushing around. 

You wanted to get up as you had in another life, come to his side and tell him to rest, to stop putting so much work into something that hardly needed attending, because deep down you knew this cycle. This was an avoidance he found himself in often to get his mind off of something he could not face. Countless hours working and studying together, you had seen many of his successes and many of his failures. He had cleaned his whole house the second he had gotten a test back, knowing he would have to retake it, the paper turned down in the other room, and he avoided it as he worked on polishing the tub. 

Now you were just a page turned over in the other room, waiting for him to finally look at you after he had done everything to clean the house as if it was his conscience. You could not find it in yourself to be surprised; you're sure there was little that could get to you now, having been the living proof of the impossible, but it didn't hurt any less. 

So you lay watching the clouds, reach out for words that would feel more like hums than syllables, and when he comes back into the room, dripping sweat down the side of his temple, chest heaving from the work he had put in to avoiding you, you did not expect much. 

But he had surprised you, sitting right at the edge of your bed, just close enough that your knuckle could brush the linen of his pants. And where the clouds had been familiar but never constant, you could study him and remind yourself that he once had been a force that had never changed, even till your last dying moment, you had thought of his face. Even now, as flushed as he was, sweat on his brow, clinging to his dark hair, it was like opening a book you had long since lost in a library you thought you would never have access to again. 

He reached out for the glass of water left on the tray of cold tea and soup, helping the lip to your mouth even when you didn't feel the need for any drink. You coughed, rough and hollow, echoing around the room like a slammed door. But you were thankful for the few sips you could stomach, your eyes fluttered shut, and he stood from your side. 

Instinctively, you reach out for him, hand weak in its attempt to grab his. “Stay,” it was a croak of a word, your voice so different with unuse that you're surprised he didn't recoil. But he didn't need to, not when the look on his face said it all. Maybe you should have known then that he would have wanted to run, but how could you when he bent down again, his thumb coming to your bottom lip, brushing over your mouth, feeling your breath on his fingertip. 

Everything about you was so much more sensitive, every nerve ending fresh and raw from the revival that every little touch felt like ripples of electricity through your whole body. It set your heart into its uneven pattering, as if it had been your first kiss all over again, with you waiting outside your apartment door, counting in your head every blessing that had brought him closer to your side and not just his thumb placed to make sure the sound coming from you was real. 

“I'm only just going to clean myself up,” and he left you, the tub's faucet loud across the house, as he tried to scrub away the root of his problem, the sin he could not get out of the floor, for it was tucked somewhere far deeper beneath his flesh. 

✄

It had taken you a while to finally move from the bed to the study. It had been all on your own, but you know this. I slept in the bed next to you, not well, half awake, turning with a nightmare that was just on the surface of me like fog over a pond. The only task I took care of was your stitches. I fussed over them, making sure they were healing in the way they were supposed to.  

They were unlike how I had done them on the oranges and cadavers; these I could watch like some sick study of what it would be like to finally graduate as a real physician. Somewhere inside me, I was putting distance between us by turning you into something I could learn from. Like caring and counting each stitch as I checked them was a prayer I had received to recite to help me clear my conscience. And I realized I had never really seen bruised skin so up close, if it wasn't my own knee. I found it easier to look at the watercolor stains at every incision marker than look you in the eyes again, even when you called my name. 

It was so much easier on my soul for me to leave you alone in the house, the ghost of you standing at the window looking out over the garden, the gauzy curtains half keeping you shielded from the public. If one had looked up, they would have thought you were haunting the place, a mannequin stuck in the front of a store, and not the amalgamation of my greed. 

You would stand there for hours on end, or so I believed, because the books I knew you loved had been left to collect dust on the nightstand just the same as the food I prepped for you. You did not eat, did not read, just watched for things I could not understand. Maybe I was scared. I had brought you back, and there was no telling what you had seen in your time away, no telling what you saw now with your new thoughts when you did not speak. But I hardly gave you space to say anything, not when I did everything to stay away from the bedroom until I could do nothing but go back. 

How wasteful of me to have brought you back only to avoid you. There was little else besides shame and blood in my body. I lived off of nothing but thoughts of how to stop myself from seemingly loving you while also being disgusted with myself for doing so. Because the body in my bed was yours, but you were not there. I had not been in your presence since you asked me to promise you to leave when the candles had burned out. 

And maybe that is why it felt like mourning you all over again. I had put a brief pause on my grief to work on bringing you back. It had been a piece of driftwood I could cling to in the churning ocean of my loss, but it seems that when the lightning had hit the table, it had also shaken the grip I had on my salvation and pushed me farther down into the pit of my depression, more than I had ever expected. 

I could not see it on myself, not when I looked into the mirror, but I could feel it, like a film over my skin, a weight on my shoulders, and pounding in my head as I thought over again and again that this was so very wrong.

So I found myself in the library, too worried about facing our peers in the basement, where I knew they had known you almost as well as I had. It was easy to avoid them, more so because I had been given a pause in my study to grieve. But I could not escape them entirely, for it was Yeonjun who had found me first, huddled in my corner with the stacks of books like a fort around me. 

“Soobin?” The concern for which he said my name felt telling, but I could not think past him smelling the death on me, the sin. “I thought they had sent you back home till the end of the semester?” 

I had looked like a fish pulled from the lake, mouth opening and closing, caught right under the sun, already setting on the day spent reading over Albertoses. “They did,” I had closed the book pretending to be a pillow, sitting up, rubbing at my eyes, bruised in shades of violets and roses, a cruel bouquet given to anyone who looked at how sorrowful I was. 

“I'm very sorry for your loss. She was a fine scholar, one I would have been happy to have graduated with.” The reminder of you had been cold and at arms length, not because what he was saying wasn't genuine but because my view on you had now been distorted by my own hand, bits of you, as i knew you and as you were now in my bed, had been cut and misshapen into a new being until it was hard to distinguish exactly where you started or ended in any sense. 

It is why I had cringed at the mention of you, not because I didn’t still love you or believed him to be truthful, but because I hated what I had done to you and your memory. If it were found out what I had done, you would not be known for the greatness you had achieved at such a young age as a woman in our field of study. No, I would have ripped it away from you the second someone revealed the truth; you would only be remembered for my misfortune, and it would be as if you were dying by my hand all over, not in my ignorance but despite it. 

You would never be the same, no matter if you were alive or not. Your image, your being, it was all gone because of me, and seeing Yeonjun as normal as ever had only made it clear what was so misshapen about you and I. 

I was no longer in love with something I could not have, no longer in love with something I once had. But that truth did not stop me from the hurt and pain. 

Choi Soobin 

✄

The time alone had been beneficial. You had spent most of it mouthing words that you knew would come back sooner or later after that first plea for soobin to stay by your side. With each passing day that you were left alone, you would make it to the study, picking over the notes soobin had been fast to clean away. 

You're almost surprised he had not burned them like he had his first bad grade. No, maybe he had kept these to marvel over later, or maybe as an answer as to how he had ended up like this. Either way, you had found them the most interesting. Your name written over in his half-sloopy handwriting that he had used on love letters to you over the summer spent long distance. 

Every note, every equation calculated felt like a declaration of love. He had done this all for you, to bring you back, to keep on loving you when you had hurt him the most. You were grateful that he had kept the work he had put into bringing you back, no matter whether you wanted to be back or not. 

The time alone had also given you the opportunity to think about whether you were upset about being back in the first place, even when you began to think about all the wrong things that came with breaking the laws of nature. You did not mind anymore, and maybe the only thing that had changed in your view of death had been that you did not mind being above or below. 

It was indifference. A blessing as well as a curse. It made you reckless knowing that there was no limit that soobin had not gone to, to bring you back in the first place. He had become a thief, stealing not only the supplies needed but your body as well. He had taken the care to pump you full of blood, stitch you at the parts that had been falling apart in your decay, and still found you beautiful enough to bathe and sleep next to. 

If that was not love, what was? 

Your hands that reached out for the old black and white photographs of the two of you after your engagement, how even in the still, he had leaned into you, smiled when it was not customary for love to be written so passionately over someone's features. Madness or not, he had brought you back. He had given you the ability to hold on again, and you would not let go so easily this time. 

You had been a pair, your certificates hung on the same walls, your rings hung on the same chains, pressed to hearts that beat for the same soul, because to you it was the only way that you had found your way back to this body in the first place. Past science and to something that neither of you would ever truly understand. The only name you could put to it was love. 

The love you felt for him had been there right on the cusp of your mind that first night, you had tried to say it, searched for a way to question him, to tell him thank you. And now, with everything feeling so much more alive, so much more precious because you knew what it meant to be gone, you knew you loved him more than anything in the world. It was the only thing you could hold onto when you climbed into the bed. 

He was on your mind, the memories flooding back as slowly as the words had. But now you were fluent, and you wanted him as you had him before. 

If you tried hard enough, you could trick your new nerves to imagine him and his fingers tracing up the length of your leg, the crest of your ribcage, the hollow of your throat. The two of you had been as alive as you felt now, the heat covering your bodies as he whispered I love you‘s into your skin. If you had nothing, you would have had at least that, at least a soulmate. 

✄

I had come back to pack my things, writing you a hasty letter that would have to suffice at the end of it all. 

It was cowardice, pure and undisturbed by anything besides what it was. I was a coward, and it must have always been there in my bones, stamped along my skull with a poison that had only set in the moment you had opened your eyes. 

I'd have apologized to you in that moment if it had not been for the shock of it all, or how easy it was to fall into some routine, or even the loose one I had set up in my plans for when you had come back, if you had. 

And you had, but still, I could not think past how much of a transgression it was or how horrible I had been not only to you but to everyone around us. 

I planned to go as far north as I could find myself. On a ship, past the dreaded treeline, somewhere that was so cold it burned like hell. So I had knelt by the foot of the bed where you slept so soundlessly, my coat tucked under the wire frame as I reached under to pull free the box it had been left in when I caught sight of the stitches I had done on you one last time. 

Maybe it was the moonlight; it was easy enough to drink down its spells of madness when it was so dark. You could not hide in the daytime, not when the sun came down and left you bleached anew. But here in the room washed in the pale light, it was easy to see why exactly I had dug you up under her watchful eye, or why I had waited for the perfect night for a storm to roll in. Just like this one, where the rain pattered down on the window like tears of warning, the thunder sounded like outcries of soon to be made regret. 

It was so hard to turn away. Because in the daytime, seeing yeonjun, it had all been so clear as to what I was to do. Run, run until I couldn't run anymore. But in that moment, all I could think about was how it was time to pluck the stitches from your skin to reveal the healed scars now left because, against all odds, you had healed as if you had not died at all. 

The decision was quick; I would stay only long enough to pull the stitches loose, smooth a balm over the scars, and leave without much goodbye at all. It would be as clean as closing a casket, as cold as throwing dirt into the grave. But as soon as I had brought myself to sit at your knee again, as I had that first time you had asked me to stay? I could do nothing but run my finger against your arm, bare and warm and alive. 

Every shadow thrown against you made it seem as if you had no stitches at all, as if you were there on a late night when we should not have been sharing a bed at all, but we had needed to. 

The tears were quick, falling down my cheeks and dripping onto your nightgown, splattering against the pale pearlescent fabric like blood. Because I would miss you, I'd miss you more than I had before, because I could no longer think about seeing you again in the afterlife, or even this waking life, when I knew this was not at all what I had expected. 

I should have known. What made me think I was above everyone else? What made me think I could do what no one should have ever thought about doing? 

Stupidity.  

And with it, I had lost even the hope of seeing you in any life, because now I was damned for good. I didn't even deserve to cry, not in a way that called for you to wake up to wipe at my tears as you had done before, like cleaning the rain from a window that would only be speckled again in seconds, but you did, voice so soft, so familiar as you tried to soothe me. “Soobin? What's wrong?”  

And what was I to say? You sounded like her, like my lover, like the other half of my soul that had been cut out from one foolish mistake. You looked like her, now more than ever, as the blood finally made its way through your veins to leave you flushed with life that was so easy to mimic now in the moonlight, where I couldn't tell fact from fable. 

All I could do was lay my forehead to yours, your fingers so warm against my cheek, cupping the side of my face, your ring, the one I had gifted you, was cold against my jaw. It broke me, shattered me like a mirror set under a careless foot. “I'm so sorry,” 

I've never been anything other than weak when it comes to you, and as you held me in the poisonous moonlight, the rain a chorus playing out the sound of my destruction, you muttered soft enough to grasp, “it's okay,” as if it was truth, as if it was truly you.  

Without thinking, drunk on my fragility, I leaned into you, pressing my lips to yours as if I could swallow your amnesty and drown my sorrow. 

✄

Maybe there should have been shame in how fast you leaned into his kiss. Hand curling in his hair, now overgrown at the base of his neck from his worrying. But it was hard to find a reason to pull away when all you had been able to think about was how badly you wanted him the way you had had him before. 

He had been soft, gentle in his touch as he laid you in the grass, his lips peppering down from your cheek to your neck, half breathless as he went because he could not find it in himself to pull away. Even now, he made it as if he were to devour you, brows pulled together like it had pained him to have been withheld from your touch for so long. 

He trailed his kisses down your jaw, one hand moving to grip your thigh, his fingerprints etched into your skin if he held on any harder. And he whimpered, low in the back of his throat with a need that had not been passed between you two since you had shared this very bed together for the first time. 

You didn't want him to stop, not even when he caught your mouth again and you felt as if your lungs would combust from the feeling of him drinking you down like it was his last taste. You had died without a regret, but you wouldn't have known how to pull him back if he had gone, so you pulled away, letting the two of you catch your breath. “Soobin-” 

But he could not stop now that he had started, could not think about anything else besides having you in that moment. His hand on your thigh slid up further, your nightgown bunched under his palm as he gripped your hip, thumb pressing into the healed stitches there. It had been a single moment that had pulled him back to some kind of reality; there, written over his features was the list of reasons why he should not have been doing this. But it had only been a second as he looked down, seeing the flash of your skin in the moonlight, your lips flush from kissing, the strap of your nightgown falling down your shoulder, leaving you exposed, even the row of seams he had done with such care, and whatever had been leading him to pushing away was now set out to wash with the rain before he leaned back in. 

His free hand came up to your jaw, sliding back enough to feel his fingers at your pulse, your erratic, uneven heartbeat roaring just for him. He laid you back against the pillows, climbing over your body, pressing you into the sheets, the hand fisting your nightgown now sliding up your ribs, and instinctively, you arch against him, wanting him impossibly closer. 

Everything felt so visceral, every point of you pressed to him as you wrapped your arms around his shoulders, nails scratching at the thin linen of his shirt made you feel so much more alive than you had in ages. And when he kissed at your throat, moaning your name like a prayer, it was like waking up again, only this time with no outcry of pain, so you chased the feeling, letting him slot himself between your legs, letting him lean in close enough to ruin you. 

His fingers curled in the top of your dress, pulling the silky fabric down until he could find his lips kissing from your collarbone to the peak of your breast. His hand curling into your flesh, kneading with enough pressure to make you whine, his teeth dragging along your skin. And when he bit down just enough to catch your nipple, your head rolled back, his name falling from your mouth on a gasp. 

You were nothing but a mess, pulling at his hair, needing him closer as you rolled your hips up to meet his. “Please, Soobin,” there were no other words that would come to mind, not when he was breaking you piece by piece, slow enough to undo your sanity one thread at a time, “please.” 

But he only pulled away, lifting himself up enough to catch the sight of your chest rising and falling in the silver moonlight, the trail he'd left with his mouth catching in the illumination, like a line drawn in the sand, one that had gotten far too blurry for him to care anymore, and yet he paused. 

He was the most beautiful man you had ever met. It had been true when you had been swearing against the idea of finding a husband, and it had been true now with his ring on your finger, his eyes dark and full of a pain you didn't think you would ever understand, traced over your features before he muttered, “I can’t.” 

His cross necklace, silver and hanging in the air between you two, glinted like a beacon, the brightest thing in the room. You reached for it, fingers threading through the chain, his lips, kissably pink, parted as he let out a shaking breath, his hand lifting him up curled into a fist against the pillow you rested your head. “But I need you,” and it still felt too small a word. 

There had been an emptiness in death, one that could not be filled as easily as it was before. You could be satiated on kisses in the garden, with hand holds, and promises, and now? 

Now, you needed to be consumed, pulled apart, and put back together again. Tonight, with him pressed hard against you, you needed to be completely undone. 

You tugged only once on the necklace in your hand, enough for him to lean down, following the pull like a prophecy. Eyes still rimmed red from crying, lips still seeking your kiss, he let go of his thoughts, gave way to his temptations, and let the flood of your love drown him. He pressed closer, pushing his hips, his hardness right to the center of you, before he was back to his work of devouring you whole. Every small movement made you hum into his mouth, his answering moans ringing in the back of your throat. 

Soobin explored your body as if it were new, as if he hadn't let his hands rest in all the same spots they kept returning to time and time again. And when he pulled off his shirt, letting it fall to the floor in a puddle, he sat back on his knees, unbuttoning his pants just enough to free himself. 

The first time had been like this, slow as he pushed into you, your sanity on the edge of your hazy mind, only this time, as the stretch of him worked its way through you, there was no going back to how you were before. Why had you denied yourself of him for so long before? Why had you waited? Why had you let your morals hold you hostage even after having already been in this position before? After death, you had only come to realize how precious time was; you could not waste a moment denying yourself the pleasures of having him so wholly, not anymore, not when it made you feel this good, not when it felt like love. 

Soobin’s mouth presses to the edge of yours, his kiss coming after the slow shuddering breath he has to release after settling so deeply into you. Your hands on his shoulders slide up into his hair and twist into the strands when he rolls his hips. “Tell me-” he starts, the whispered words pressed to the side of your mouth, your exhaled whimper at his movement catching him off guard before he continued, “tell me you love me,” 

“I love you,” the words as soft as sugar, as gentle as a purr, your body adjusting, legs loosening to the slow pace he's now found thrusting into you. Soobin groaned softly at the sound, and without much time passing, he was now losing himself in the feeling of you and your warmth, his confessions coming in waves. 

“I've missed you so much,” his kisses falling over your jaw, down the barrel of your neck as he murmurs against the very spot he can feel the vibrations of your answering hums. “You have no idea what it's done to me, how you've ruined me.” 

He's pressed so close to you, leaning half his weight onto your body as he lets one hand fall back down your side, sliding down until he's found his fingers meeting right at your pleasure point. He applies just enough pressure for you to cry out as if returning the favor on his ruination. 

This is a dream, born from your desire to have him back, forged by every effort he's made in bringing you back to him. This is the restless space you had been searching to find yourself back to, right on the edge of his fingers, his devotion. He’s built you up to this moment, and in a single leap, you’re falling into sensation. 

Here and now, you have never been more alive, coming undone from his touch, his name echoing into the night, your love confession trapped behind your ribs as you arch into him, trembling like lightning had kissed your skin once more. And soon after, he follows, every jagged breath now turned into throaty moans of pure pleasure. He falls to you, wrapping you in his hold, like he'd never let you go, like it would pain him to be pulled away now. 

Only you hadn’t known it was the beginning of the end. 

✄

There is no coming back from what I have done. But let's not play this was ever about redemption. As much as I plead for forgiveness, I know I am undeserving. This is nothing more than a confession of what I have done wrong in life. 

I let you go, as easily as if it had been nothing at all and not the cause of your death. I fell into the clutches of my grief, let it strangle the reason from my mind, and leaned into my ego like it was something to be proud of. I brought you back, against all laws of nature; it was done. And when you opened your eyes, I had done the one thing I had never thought possible of me, and that was push you away and keep you at arm's length. 

Then, in a moment of weakness, I fed my greed. 

I looked upon you, half in delusion and half in desperation, and still I chose to pick at fruit far too forbidden to be forgiven at the end of it all. For that, I write this as my last goodbye. 

My love, my life, do not come after me, even before it all, before your death, I was never deserving of your light. We had studied so heavily on the topic of science, and without realizing it,  I had not noticed how it poisoned me. Or maybe I had always been fated to spend the rest of my days as a man who could not resist temptation or knowledge. What a deadly cocktail to pass around at such a young age. But it is the spine of academia, one that cannot be broken, no matter how hard you try to land your blow. 

I do not want to blame everything on my study because I do know that at the root of it all, I was the only one who could have stopped me. Not you, not God, not anyone. 

Your death had plucked a thread from me, unraveling the truth of who I was at my very core; the fine string I had used to sew you up had only been the start of a discovery that I still cannot face. 

The only thing I can say, even as I leave you, is that I love you with everything in me. Every twisted, rotted rind that I am built on and stitched of knows it. 

Forever regretful, Choi Soobin 

✄

The bed was cold, achingly so, even with the sun cutting across the room and into your eyes. 

It was the sight of the wardrobe door half open that made you realize he had gone. Every hanger that had once held his clothes was empty, no sway to them as if he had just left, but a stillness that would soon sink into your heart when you made it to the study. 

He had left a single letter, signed as he had his school papers, the pen still resting against the parchment, leaving a watercolor ink stain. You reached for it, the edges crinkling under your palm now tightened hard enough to make you realize your stitches at your wrist were on the verge of popping. 

It took everything in you not to crumple the paper and burn it, toss it into the fire of your now burning rage at the realization that he would not come back. 

And now with every sensation feeling tenfold, you found that the revival had also peaked your emotional scale. Because if he were here, you would rip him apart. 

Leaving now, when you had only just found yourself back, not only mentally but physically, was like a betrayal. To run instead of face you, to stand at the foot of the bed after sharing it only that night, and still choose to leave? The question made the anger bubble under your skin, the prickling of it like the heat of a burn you had been too careless to see coming. 

You let the letter fall, reaching for the tools you would need to take your stitches out, to make the final step that you needed to find yourself whole. And the anger simmered as you stood in the mirror, cutting away sutures he had been so careful to sew, the knots coming undone with every pass of the blade, abandoning the tweezers in your fury. 

Here, he had left you nothing more than an empty house that wasn't even yours, just one more grave he had left you to rot in. But now you would not need him to climb back out, and maybe for that you should have been thankful. Still, as you removed the memory of him thread by thread from your skin, it did not take away the ghosting feeling of his lips on your throat. 

If he could not look in the mirror and face what he had done, what you had become, you would be the one to hold it right where he could see it. He had not asked you if you wanted this, but you had accepted it, and maybe if you forced him to see you one last time, he would know it was not a mistake, that your love was as real as it had been the day you died. 

✄

I've made it into the cold, and I know you are not far behind. 

You had always been strong willed, maybe I should have known you would find me eventually, or maybe somewhere deep down, I wanted you to. Maybe this running I'm doing is just some self punishment I've found fun to inflict on myself as a way to make me feel better. Although it is not working. 

When I first knew you were after me, I fought long to keep myself from turning around and going toward you instead of away. All I could think about was your warmth, how your skin had felt after lying in the gardens together under the sun, and how your lips felt saying my name against my skin. And for a moment, I almost did turn back. 

Almost. 

But I am full of shame, so much so that it clouds my longing. 

Is it love anymore if I cannot think to look at you when you have become my greatest sin? I ask myself this often when I hear them talk of the scar on your wrist like a bracelet. I had given it to you, and maybe if it had been gifted by someone else, some other man, I would have welcomed you back with open arms instead of thinking about how I was eternally damned for what I had done. 

I sit here in the cold, on this ship headed even farther north, and think about forgiveness, sin, stitches, and oranges. I think of you and the last thing you said to me, asked of me, and if my mind finds itself back to its madness, I can almost always change the exact words to fit whatever narrative I have strung together to make myself hurt or hope, all it needed to do was end with your ‘promise?’ 

You’ll come home to me, promise? You won't ever come back, promise? 

And every time it ends with my last love letter to you, that same single word that could end with you dead, or me. 

promise. 

Yours forever, Choi Soobin. 

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He didn't know why he had come. Hands digging into the sand, the grains slipping between his fingers as he tried to recount the moments leading up to the train ride. His bed had been cold even with him in it, curled under the covers with a pounding in his head mimicking the repetitive slamming of a door somewhere down the corridor. The headache was not one that would lead to him calling out of work, and yet he was sitting on a beach in Montauk. 

The surf crashing in its constant lullaby drowned out the line of Soobin's questioning. The chill of the last freeze was working its way throughout his body, enough to make him focus only on how red his nose must look, cold enough to fall off without him even noticing. There was still snow on the beach, pushed into the half melted piles around the worn down, sun bleached steps. The sky a hazy blue, only found in the winter months, grey and hidden behind a smokescreen of clouds blocking out any sun. 

At first, he had not seen you standing right at the edge of the water. Scarf wrapped round and round, half shielding your face from the sea breeze. Your coat was a size too big, bunching around your wrists, fingers curled in your pockets, numb without gloves. 

There had been an ache in your heart the moment you had woken up, hand curled in your pillow, wishing it was the strands of a lover's hair to run through absentmindedly. The thought had been trapped in your mind for a week, seen somewhere or read in a book you shouldn't have been flipping through during your shift at work. But it was persistent, continuously on a loop, your humming mixed with the gentle touch as if you could lull your imaginary love interest to sleep with nothing more than the brush of your fingerprints along their scalp. 

It had never interested you to find someone to serenade, someone to comfort. But it had interested you to find that soft song here on the beach, the wind picking up enough to caress your cheek like the brush of a loving backhand. There had been little to do so far upstate except come here and stare at the shore while trying to find why you felt so hollow. 

When you had told your roommate about taking the trip upstate, it had been nothing more than a passing sentence. “Montauk?” The word had sounded bitter coming from Kai, like the little beach town had personally hurt him in some way. “Why do you want to go there?” He had been distracted enough to spill his coffee, the counter covered, so you tried to explain whatever it was you were feeling. 

“Yeah, I don't know why I just feel this need to go to the beach today.” You had shaken your head, “Don't wait up, I don't have to be into work till the afternoon tomorrow, and I might get dinner out there.” 

“You want to take the last train out of Montauk?...” he had let the question linger in the air as if you were missing the context of something so clearly written out for everyone but you to see. For well over a week, it had been like this: Kai with his careful words punctuated with his scrunched brows as he watched you go about your daily life. It made the days feel like a cup at the edge of a counter, his worried looks only making it seem like you were one wrong move from shattering the glass with a careless brush of your sleeve. 

“You make it sound like I suggested we should rob a bank and not look at a lighthouse on my day off,” you tried to laugh past it, shrugging on your coat that felt as if it had gotten a size too big in nothing more than a week. You toed on your shoes, hand bracing yourself on the handle of the door as Kai cursed, looking for a rag to clean up his mess, his eyes jumping back up to you like he was worried he missed your exit. It made you pause, brows scrunching. “Is something wrong?” 

The question had been weighing heavily on your tongue since the first sight of Kai and his hollow eyes watching you. He looked like he hadn't slept in days, working on assignments, worrying over calls on his phone like someone was sick and he needed updates on their wellbeing. You had known him for years, longer than you knew any of your other friends. This was him after long nights of studying in his college dorm, only coming out for dinner after begging for him to take a break. This was not the smart, sensible Kai who went about starting his first year at his new job right with a neatly arranged sleep schedule. 

“What?” he looked caught, playing dumb enough to make you push away from the subject. You would ask again if he kept it up because with the reaction he had now, it felt as if he was desperately trying to hide whatever it was until he fixed it. You would give him time, you would give him space until he was drowning and reaching out for your hand. 

“Nothing,” you shook your head, “you can come if you want, I know the first train in, last train out, isn't really for you, especially in the winter, but it could be fun. We don't even have to stay all day,” the offer was a calming olive branch but Kai only looked away. 

“I have work, why don't we go next weekend? We can take Yeonjun, and maybe it will be a bit warmer.” he was already fiddling with his phone, “I can ask him-”

“No, don't do that, we can still go next weekend, but I really feel like I have to go today, I don't even know how to explain it. I didn't realize living in the city would make me miss the beach so much.” Because your fingers ached to run through sand like they would run through hair, but it was impossible to say that to him, “And don't bother Yeonjun, he's been here all week, I'm sure he needs a bit of time away from seeing our faces.” 

Like clockwork, Yeonjun had found time to spend with the two of you since last Saturday. He would be at the door, twisting the lock with the key Kai had gifted him the second you two had moved, so that someone would have the spare. In hand, he had your favorite warm drink from the shop right next to his place, his eyes scanning for Kai as he hung his coat. You wonder if he had sensed the change in him just as easily as you had. Their soft whispers in the living room lingered in the air when you rounded the corner to collect Yeonjun's kind gift. 

But he had not come this morning with his to-go cup offering, and maybe that was because Kai was busy just as you needed to be. “I'll be fine. I'll text you when I'm on the train.” You go through the door before he can get the last word, closing it as you tell him. “Both ways!” 

It wasn't until you were already on the train that Yeonjun called, phone tucked to your ear, voice low so the one other passenger wouldn't be bothered too much. “I could have called out, you know I love the little lighthouse, and the beach when it's cold,” 

“No, you have been stuck at my apartment longer than your own. I'm sure your home office missed you just as much as your work office did.” Your knees were tucked up against the seat in front of you, arm slung across your stomach. “And the beach will be there next week.” 

“I know, just call me if it gets too lonely, okay?” But tucked in between the way he said it was the undercurrent of worry, easily passed over if you hadn't known Yeonjun for years. Because as he tried to brush it off as casual, the glass was still right there on the edge of the counter, even if you weren't in the room. “Call me for anything.” 

And almost as soon as you had hung up with Yeonjun, your mother called, the singsong tone echoing in the train as it pulled to a stop. You tucked the phone against your ear, hurrying off to the platform. The wind kissed along your cheeks, your lashes fluttering as you turned against the oncoming sea breeze. “Why are you taking solo trips all the way out to Montauk? It's not even the season for it.” 

“Mom-” either one of your friends could have told her, your money placed right over Kai's name. 

“No, you should have gone with someone, what if-” 

“I'm fine, god. Why is everyone worrying over a train ride? It's not like I’ve never been out here alone, and hardly anyone ever comes out here anyway. Hell, only one other person was on the train with me,”  the other lone passenger already headed out in the direction of the beach. 

“I'm just worried, what if-” 

“I'm fine, I'll text you just as well as Kai when I'm headed back, I'll even send you a picture of the lighthouse.” You shoved your free hand into your coat pocket, fingers already tingling from the cold, balling the digits into a fist, trying to keep the warmth tucked into the space for as long as you could. “I'll call you when I get back if that works to clear your mind.” It was the only way to soothe her enough to let you off the line. 

The calls played in your head for only as long as it took you to get to the edge of the water. The lapping rhythm of the surf is enough to make your eyelids heavy. It didn't matter how long it had been since you stood on the edge of the sea; its soft song never ceased to intertwine with your circadian rhythm. And whatever longing you had been feeling was slowly washing away with the tide, pulling the ache in your fingers away until it was lost to the only place that could make you feel whole. 

Closing your eyes, you let the wind coming off the water rustle your coat, tug at your red scarf. And like an unfurling ribbon, it went blowing behind you, your shocked gasp at the sudden kiss of cold on your lips more surprising than the way the scarf twisted in the air. 

Soobin had been halfway to standing, hand at the back of his thigh, brushing away the sand, just about to leave, when he watched you stumble to rush after the windswept fabric. It was hurtling towards him, unravelling a string of events that would last longer than a lifetime. 

He caught the scarf before it could slip by him, your shoes kicking up the sand behind you, as you slowed to a stop from your running, awkward laugh mixed in with his nervous smile. “Sorry, I didn't even realize I hadn't tied it right.” 

“It's okay,” he passed it back to you, warmth from his gloved hands already seeping into your greedy skin from nothing more than a brush. “I’ve lost a fair bit of scarves to the wind here, umbrellas, and I think a pair of shoes once.” 

“You took the train home barefoot?” You only made the assumption he wasn't from around here because of the shared train ride, the only other passenger stuck to hear your conversation with Yeonjun, and maybe even the one with your mom if he cared enough. 

“I still had my socks but not my dignity,” he smiled enough to show the round crater dimple punctuating his cheek like a statement of cuteness, his hair caught in the wind on his brow, easily tossed and pushed aside, begging to let your fingers run through to fix. “So, might as well come to the rescue and return this to you.” 

It was a moment, fleeting, and yet unmistakable: “Do I know you?” You were trying to place his face, his build, rifling through your memory looking for spaces that would seem to fit him in, and yet you came back with nothing at all. All except that ache in your fingers. “Or do you shop at the bookstore off of 6th Ave?” 

Soobin was caught on your face long enough to get stumped on the question, trying and failing to picture you sitting behind the counter at the checkout, trying again for the counter at the shared coffee shop in the same building. “I do, but I d-” but he couldn't quite place his finger on it; he knew he would never be able to forget a face like yours, and it nagged him to no end when he looked at the dip of your nose and knew he had only just dreamt of a shape so similar. 

“That must be it, I see so many people from all around New York, or even all the states,” you wound your scarf back around your neck, tucking the end into your coat. “You should come by next Friday, we are having this huge sale on hardbacks, although if you live far, it probably wouldn't be good to carry all of them through the city,” 

“Good to know, I'm only a block over, so it's no big deal,” he felt himself flushing, cheeks and ears red over a casual conversation. Because in everything in him, he wanted to keep talking to you, and it made him embarrassed to feel this crush sink in, in nothing more than a second of easy going. He hadn't had a crush in a long time, not one that suddenly made his stomach twist in that all too familiar way; it wasn't a feeling one forgot often. 

“Great, if you stop by my checkout kiosk, I'll give you a discount, a ‘save my scarf savings,’” you giggled, smile hidden, and Soobin wanted nothing more than to catch it with his eyes at least once. 

He had never felt brave, not enough to step up to girls and ask questions, never brave enough to rush for the door before it shut just so that he could squeeze in on the ride up a crowded elevator. He preferred to take the long way, hoping that one day he would stumble upon a girl while she took that same trip, but it was never in his mind to reach out first. But now, with you standing here, the two of you the only ones on a beach that felt healing, he asked a question he had never predicted coming from his lips, even on the most confident of days. “Do you want to get lunch with me?” 

You watched the way the wind ruffled his hair again, blowing back and exposing his forehead, only to sweep along his temples. And for a moment, there was an inkling of jealousy threaded through the sight because you wanted to be the one to do it at least once. “Of course, I know this little sandwich shop right past the last lighthouse, and I also know how to get us up to the top of said lighthouse to eat if you want.” 

Soobin didn't feel a hint of discomfort at the idea. Spending a moment alone with a pretty girl over the water would have made his palms sweat, but with you? He hung onto the invitation like a token of some new beginning he wanted to keep in a jar. “Okay,” the words on the edge of some whispered hope, worried if he spoke too much, too loud, you'd slip away as easily as your scarf had. 

There was something easy about the way the two of you fit side by side. As if your footsteps were on top of each other instead of behind you, leaving trails of your passing only a few inches away from the other. Your hands shoved down into your coat pockets, chin tucked as you looked at him, both of you caught on features of the other's face as if you were still looking for something. Because never in your life had you believed what was read in books, that people fall in love with nothing more than a glance, catching sight of something in the other person without having ever spoken a word to them, and just knowing. 

Standing here sharing names felt like a rerun of a life you didn't know if you had lived before. Everything was so easy that time slipped away, crunched and forgotten like leaves fallen and blown away until it was only just the two of you sitting on that train back to New York. 

You hadn't sat right next to each other, one seat in front of him, leaning over the back of it, peering over the edge like a child caught in her crush. You didn't want to waste too much of a good thing, greedy on the best of days, but not when it felt like if you ran out of him, you'd feel nearly as empty as you had just that morning. 

The two of you had spent the whole day together, piecing a life together from all the past things until they made one person you hadn't yet discovered. And you stumbled to understand everything about him, hands pushing back the layers of him, reading the book of him cover to cover, starting with his order at the sandwich shop, all the way to his fear of slipping from the salt rusted bars keeping the two of you from falling over the side of the lighthouse into the sand. 

“It feels like I've known you forever,” your fingers aching, the sentiment bubbling up slowly until it was overflowing from your lips, once, twice, a third time, sitting right there in front of him on the train home, wishing that the day wouldn't end so fast. “Is that weird?” 

You were slightly lifted, looking down on him in his seat, his stare caught between a look of awe and understanding. And maybe that's what it was, that look of his round brown eyes, drawing lines along your body that had never felt so seen before. Because he only blinked back at you with a lazy grin, the kind that was only there because they didn't know it was, the kind people ask why you're smiling, wanting a taste of that carefree tilt to their lips. “No, not weird at all,” 

And he wasn't lying, the pounding in his head was gone, replaced by your giggle, a bell versus that constant slamming of a door he found himself waking up to and not for. “I feel the same way,”  

Neither of you knew that it had not been the first time you had met. And neither of you knew it wasn’t the first time you had reached out with steady hands and pushed his hair back and behind his ears, threading through the strands like a memory. That ache satisfied and ignited something that would make it impossible to go out because it had already been kindling, waiting to turn roaring. Only neither of you knew how easily it had been close to being snuffed out entirely after a blow strong enough to leave a candle flickering in half smoke and half desperation. 

Because it had been on a beach in Montauk that the two of you had met all those years ago, a summer bustling with people, shoeless and down on dignity, Soobin had stumbled into your life. Your laugh caught him as easily as he had your scarf. Your eyes pinned to his wiggling toes, trying to shake the sand from the fibers of his socks with little progress being made. “They sell sandals right on the edge of the beach, right next to the beach houses.” 

“I just think my friends are hiding my shoes from me, they will give them back eventually or i hope so at least.” because Beomgyu had taken them right off of him, tugging on his legs until he could free the shoes while ignoring Soobins shouting, Taehyun holding him down from twisting too much as Beomgyu did the dirty work. But it had been a while since he had seen either of them, too busy mingling with the rest of the summer crowd to care about Soobin and his shoes. 

“Well, if they don't, just think of my suggestion,” and it would have been the end right there if it hadn't been that Yeonjun and Taehyun went to the same gym, or even if Kai hadn't shared a mandatory study schedule with beomgyu. The pairs of them suggested taking the last train out, to just stay long enough to watch the sunset over the water, to sit along the sand for as long as it took to watch the families make their ways home to the beach houses littering the shore off in the opposite direction of the lighthouses so neatly waiting at the rocky cliffsides. 

No one had brought entertainment, the food had long since been eaten, and Soobin's shoes were found to make excellent toys to kick around between the boys like a makeshift ball. And it had been there where he had found the only courage he had needed to talk to you, no long path, no avoidance, just casual as you watched the way the sky went from a blue primary hue, to pink orangesicle, to a dusty salted dreamscape. Because as the boys played, the two of you started a fire, sat around the embers with knees touching and souls twisting. Talking long enough for the two of you to forget you had come with others and not alone, with only one another. 

The two of you dragged behind as you walked, Soobin's shoes in hand, wet and dripping from the final kick, sending them all the way into the ocean, enough so that Yeonjun went in the still sun-warmed water to catch them before they could be lost to the tide. But he didn't even care that he was trekking in sand after him on the train, not when the two of you sat knee to knee, thigh to thigh as you listed your favorite novels. All stocked on the shelves back at your apartment, on the shelves at your job, just waiting for Soobin to buy and find one more chapter of you that he had yet to discover. 

And when the train pulled into the station, he had been distracted enough to truly lose his sneakers, left under the seat; he wished he could have spent all night so long as it led to him talking more with you about nothing and everything. And when you two were supposed to split, waving goodbye to new friends and old ones, neither of you wanted to let go. 

With Beomgyu on one side, teasing him, and Taehyun on the other, telling Soobin he should have given you his number, he looked back at you across the street looking back at him. And it didn't matter if he looked like a madman, he turned back, hand cupping his mouth as he shouted across that nearly empty New York street right at the head of the subway stairs, “Do you work tomorrow?” 

The question had pulled everyone to a stop, your face heating up, not caring if Yeonjun and Kai joked over the clear crush you had formed over a single beach trip, “On Monday! You'll visit me, right?” 

“I wouldn't miss it!” Not when he had found someone so interesting he forgot himself enough to shout into the busy city just to catch one more line with you. And while both of you left in the opposite direction, you still wore identical, hazy, love-struck, love-sick smiles all the way home. 

It had been instant then, and it was instant now. The unfurrowing of your life lines not crossing once, but twice, when the two of you had done everything in your power to forget one another. 

The treatment had been offered as a last ditch effort to pull your relationship out of a sinking ship. A lifeline tossed into the water, thrashing with unrelenting emotions, drowning the both of you until the waves were too high and too heavy to fight. But it had not been like that at first; your ship was just sailing, and the masts were heavy and strong with each gust of wind heading your way. No low going self-implosion waiting on your horizon. At least not just yet. 

Because at the start of it all, on that Monday morning, Soobin had called in sick, faked a strained voice with the aid of his sleep-ridden one, and made sure to secure the full day without a blink of an eye. He didn't know when you started your shift, if it was in the afternoon or even at night; all he knew was that he would be there waiting to be checked out with your favorite novel tucked in the crook of his elbow. 

He hadn't gotten your number, and distance made the heart grow fonder, so the only replay in his mind was the way you made him laugh and the way he wanted to see you laughing right along with him. And when he arrived, you hadn’t been in sight, the checkout counters bare of people, just as the rest of the store. His languid stroll only made him take in the place as you might have seen it. The towering light washed wooden shelves holding far too many books to not make the place feel cramped in the best way possible. Ladders sitting at the edge of each aisle waited, and he wondered how often you must have had to climb up one for a customer scared to reach a height they hadn't been expecting for a paperback. 

And as he rounded that last corner, he ran into you with your apron on, the bookstore logo tattooed on the front in delicate green stitching above the neatly done black of your name. “You came,” your voice hooking him in the way it was just so easily said, an exhale that he had been waiting to feel the second he saw you again. Because it had been a bit like holding his breath. His anxious mind worked to ask him the question: Was she really like how he remembered her, or was it just the salt and the sand influencing his mind? 

But it hadn't been the beach, not when you stood so vividly alive there, just as you had sitting next to him on the shore and the train. “I told you I wouldn't miss it,” because anything he had been feeling washed away, and he was just a boy in a store flirting with a girl he felt like he had known for a lifetime. 

Soobin had followed you around for your shift, watching you stock the shelves, letting you talk through a book you liked, telling him the plot, the setting, the hook, line, and sinker. He didn't need to speak, didn't feel the need to interject about himself when it was so easy and intoxicating to soak up all the knowledge you laid out before him. Your dislikes were wrapped up neatly in the nonfiction section, and your likes were presented right before him in every little microexpression as you read him the opening paragraph of the one book he had come in searching for. 

And when customers came over to speak to you, asking questions, checking out, Soobin stumbled around, busying himself with sorting his feelings as if they hadn't just dumped on him like a bucket of ice cold water. He had never liked someone so instantly, so intensely, so much so that he cataloged your favorite drink from the cafe without a second thought, promised himself to try it if he couldn't kiss the flavor from your lips one day. 

And when it was the end of your shift, he was your last customer; he slid the book over the counter with a smile permanently tuned onto his face. “Just the one?” your easy act as if you hadn't spent the whole time talking together, working to make him chuckle. 

“Yeah, I heard this great review of it,” the scan of the barcode mingled with your giggle. 

“Did you? They must have excellent taste,” you were sitting down, looking up at him, the receipt printing before you tugged it free, taking a pen and writing out your number right on the bottom with a little heart written next to that girl from Montauk. You tucked it into the book, sliding it over to him, breaking the spell of your joking with, “Will you wait for me until I clock out? I mean, you don't have to, I know you spent nearly all day with m-” 

“I wouldn't want to spend it anywhere else. I know a great cafe near my place, if you want to get a late lunch?” he had blushed, cheeks and ears a kissable pink as you nodded yes. Because neither of you wanted the day to end, holding onto whatever you could so that the time wouldn't pass like it had that first day. So when your late lunch ended, the two of you walked around the park, sat at the benches looking out over the fountain, and talked like you would never run out of things to say before it was growing dark, and you both had to find a way home. 

The air had been cold, dropping to a point that even the dense city couldn't keep out the wind, and you linked your arm in his, taking a step closer so that every few feet the two of you nearly stepped on one another. “So you wanted to be a…” 

“Singer,” Soobin shook his hair out at the confession, your fingers drumming along his bicep, reminding him how close the two of you stood. “I know it's a bit embarrassing, but if I could do anything at all besides you know being an accountant, I think I'd be a performer,” 

“I think we have to go out to karaoke for our next date.” It had been a slip of words, one he caught and held onto without letting go. 

“Next date?” he had taken you right up the stairs, standing outside your apartment door with the front light glowing and golden washing down on you, putting you on the spot. You felt hot all over, face pressing into his arm like it would hide your slip up and yet it didn't matter because you wanted all your cards on the table; you wanted him to see every facet of your mind, even for a blinding second. 

“Forget I said anything embarrassing, okay?” You dug around in your pocket for your keys, “and call me after your mind has been erased of my misstep.” 

But Soobin didn't care, not when the slip up made him feel seen. He had felt blind, looking for any reason that you might like him enough to keep this up, whatever it was, but he knew he didn't want to be just friends. And finding out now that you weren't viewing him in that way fixed his stomach, unraveling all the knots when his mind had been leading him down a path of self-destruction and irrationalization. “Next time we can see a movie, eat, get drinks, and then karaoke.” 

You had looked over at him, smiling, trying and failing to keep it away, tipping down at the edges as you nodded, “Okay,” the soft whisper so hopeful it hurt. You had just opened the door, the handle caught in your hand, as the sound of Kai's laughter rang out into the night, the faint sound of the video game filling in all the space in the hall. " And next time, kiss me before you leave.” 

Soobin couldn't help but look down at your lips, eyes flickering from your mouth and back up the slope of your nose to make sure he had heard you right. His nod so shy he felt his palms sweat. It was one thing you had loved so much about him, the way he made it feel like you were the only person who had ever or could ever make him feel this way. The awkward cuteness he found himself wearing so often would trail around the two of you, with every brush of your hand, every kiss, and every word. You watched his throat bob, his mind working so fast he didn't have time to question if it was the wrong thing to do before he was leaning in. 

It was a short kiss, his lips meeting yours just enough so that his mind could catch up with what he had done, so he tried to pull away. But you had let go of the doorknob, hand sliding up the front of his sweater in a way that left him aching for more, and you gave it to him, pulling him right back to your mouth and clearing his worries. Because you wanted him just as desperately as he wanted you. The small touches, the gentle laughs, and all the words you could fit between the two of you. Kissing only clarified both of your emotions, made it known that whatever was blooming would be diligently taken care of until it was a packed garden buzzing with life and understanding. 

And when Soobin left and went home, he replayed the way your fingers had found their home right to the back of his neck, threading through his hair and tugging him closer. He lay in bed with the echoing of that feeling sinking into his bones like a shot of something he should have never taken, for it was the worst kind of thing to find yourself addicted to. It had only been two days of knowing each other, a few more of knowing of each other, and yet he wanted nothing more than to wrap you in his arms and tuck himself as close as he could, to feel the hum of your words on your neck as he pressed his face against your pulse. 

It was instantly recognized when you closed your door behind you after that first kiss. Kai looked over at you standing in the entry, caught in that webbing only a crush could tug you into, with your fingers ghosting over your bottom lip, trying and failing to mimic the feeling of his mouth on yours, so you could aid the replay. Your names mixed in with the rhythmic teasing of the words, sitting in a tree k-i-s-s-i-n-g, your hands covering your face because you couldn't help the smile at the sing-song tilt to Kai's voice. 

Soobin had texted that next morning, setting a song for your ringtone, putting a heart next to your name, and deleting it again because he felt silly and like you weren't quite his just yet. But in every sense, the two of you belonged together, even if not visible to the two of you, it was impossible to deny from an outside perspective. 

He worked late, woke up earlier, and had little time for himself, but he would make time for you. Before, when he would come home, loosening his tie, he'd kick off his shoes and stretch out on the couch to watch whatever he had been playing to pass the time, or even load a quick game on a weekend that he didn't have to leave the comfort of his home for. Now he was thinking of ways to blend you in without feeling like it was too much too soon. But you didn't mind any of it, taking the opportunities as they came. 

So the two of you spent time grocery shopping, Soobin pushing the cart, following you down every aisle, even the ones you didn't need to spend time down, only to spend more time together, just talking and giggling as you went. He carried the bags upstairs, only making you take the bread and eggs even when you complained that you could handle more, while still making time to hold the door open for you when you made it up. Trusting you with the keys and still reaching around you to push it open. 

You would sit on his kitchen counter, watching him move around, placing everything away, talking about the way he had empty walls and hardly any furniture. “You live like a college student with your first paycheck,” and when Soobin pulled open his cabinet, he pulled out a single mug and asked you if you wanted tea. “You only have one mug! How are we supposed to enjoy tea together?” 

“Well, I didn't think I'd have a pretty girl over who would need her own mug, but I'm more than willing to give her mine,” 

He smiled to show his dimples, cute teeth on display when you muttered, “Next date we have to go pick up a picture frame or two, and another mug.” 

“I was thinking we could go back out to Montauk for the fireworks show this Friday, but only if you wanted to, or we could do something else, anything you want.” His rambling and pink cheeks only made you nod. Your laugh easing his nerves. 

“We can do anything, and I love the beach, there is something about the sea that you can just never forget about, like I think I'll always remember the way the sand feels between my fingers." You held your hand out, spreading each digit in front of you, peeking between them before he reached out, lacing his fingers with yours, the width of his palm eating up your own, the pads of his fingertips soft along the back of your hand. 

He had stepped into your space, right between your legs, equal height, sitting up on the counter, looking at each other, remembering your kiss, and wishing you had never stopped kissing him. His free hand rested next to your thigh, his eyes trained on your lips before he leaned in, stopping so close that the two of you brushed noses. So close that it felt easy to confess even something as small as a grain of sand, “You remind me so much of the sea.” Your hand not intertwined with his now threading through his hair, right at the back of his neck, just as he had remembered and prayed for to happen again. Your words whispered so close to his mouth that he could swallow them down and keep them tucked to his heart. “Like you’ll be impossible to forget,” 

You had spoken out his exact thoughts, written them out between the two of you just before he kissed you again and again. And it never needed to be more, both of you following the ease with which the relationship was taking you. Breathing so easily, even when you pulled away and knew it was okay, felt that a kiss could be something that wasn't scary and added questions, but something shared because you wanted to, needed to. 

That night had been spent on his couch watching movies and playing games, falling asleep and leaning on his shoulder, waking up to his arms around you holding you just as close as you had held him. 

Neither of you had asked your friends to come out to Montauk that second time, taking the trip on one of the busiest trains that went out that time of year. With Soobin carrying your picnic basket out and you with the blanket rolled and tucked under your arm, ready to be placed on the sand amongst the families who made it a yearly thing to come out to see the fireworks. It didn't matter that you had only just met, not when you fit so closely that there was no need to stretch out your arms and ask for distance. 

Both of you eating and playing a card game, the deck loosely held down by stones collected from the sand so they wouldn't blow away. The world went on around you two. The giggling of the kids being chased by their parents rang out in the salt soaked air, the sun just setting out over the water, as people started their bonfire, getting ready to roast marshmallows, to sit back and enjoy their prepared food and carefully grilled barbecue. 

And when the show started, you both sat side by side, thigh to thigh, leaning back on your hands just enough to see the dark night sky bursting with colors. Red and yellow, raining down and casting threads of illumination on the pretty features of Soobin's face. Your eyes traced the shape of his nose, the dip of his dimple, the catch in his smile as he looked up in awe. 

Looking at him left no room for questions; if this was a glimpse into a life you could have, you wanted it, reached out with greedy fingers, and begged never to lose. And neither of you felt like letting go just yet, not when the two of you could spend most of your time out on the beach in silence. Picnic left to find the quieter side of the sand. 

It was only just up from the crowd that the row of spaced out beach houses rested. Right amongst the long sun lightened blades of grass swaying in the salty breeze. Linking arms, the two of you looked up at the two stories, half lit with families who had turned in early. 

“I wonder if people live here year round, if they listen to the sea even in the winter,” you questioned as Soobin's warmth cut through the thin fabric of his jacket, soaking into you and making it easier to speak without thought. 

“I don't know if the houses right on the beach are built for much snow. I'm sure they have a hard time keeping all the sand out.” 

“It's kinda sad for them to just stay empty,” out over the water, the lighthouse shines, the slow circle of the beam easy to follow from any distance. You're sure that even a lighthouse keeper would find it lonely to spend their days on a cold beach in January compared to nights like this in July. “Imagine all the snow on the beach, that alone feels kinda magical, just to be left empty…” 

“You would live in a house like this year round?” The question had set him thinking, picturing a life with you right here on the beach where you met, the sand building in the corner by the front door, watching the water from the porch, sharing a cup of coffee with the mug you had picked out for such occasions so early on in the relationship where it should have been a suggestion to slow down. 

But it didn't feel like either of you was moving fast. For a second, it felt as if the blurred edges you had held around relationships had sharpened with a clarity you would have never known, less you met Soobin that day. The suggestion of slowness felt like wading through water instead of swimming through it. If he wanted you to spend time wrapped up in his arms at his place, you wouldn't stop him from asking with a waving yellow flag. 

Being with him felt like being in the center of a high school gymnasium dance floor, blue iridescent streamers hanging from the rafters and swaying in a rhythm that mimicked your shy steps on the linoleum. The glowing mirrorball reflecting spots of incandescent light over the two of you, framing you in a world alone where you felt giddy enough to be even asked to share this dance. Soobin was wrapped up in a shyness that did not show inexperience but willingness to learn with a faint hint of worry about messing things up when they felt so fragile. It was that softness that pulled you in, and it was the confidence that you had in him that sent him stumbling right in after you down that rabbit hole of this uncharted relationship. 

He didn't care if it felt too soon to just sit and think about you and him sharing a house, dancing in the kitchen, sharing a bed, inviting all your friends over just because you wanted to bask in the giddy glow he was radiating. Being a hopeless romantic felt suffocating on the worst of days, enough so that he had tricked himself into believing he was a skeptic, putting distance between his heart and his sleeve in fear of a stray swing of a backhand that would take years to recover from. He kept his place bare, buried himself in his work, and prayed to stumble on love, and he had gotten what he had wanted. 

Everything he had been looking for was standing right at the edge of those sand-covered stairs, your head tilted into his bicep as you hummed in question. “I could see it, and I think I’d love to live right here, quiet in the winter, warm in the summer, seagulls as pets.” 

The last line was enough to catch him unexpectedly, giggle genuine and lasting. “Seagulls? They would probably wake us up like roosters do on farms,” 

“Built in alarm clocks, maybe we would become morning people? Watching the sunrise as the waves hit the rocks by the lighthouse,” 

“As much as I would pray it would be warm, I'm sure the mornings and nights would be a bit chilly. I'd want to spend as much time curled up in bed as I could, snuggling for hours.” Soobin had pulled you in closer, his nose dipping to your ear as he said it, burying his face into your neck at the suggestion. The tickling of his lashes and soft lips made you laugh. 

It had been the first night you had spent in his bed, the train coming in late enough for you to worry about him walking all that way back to his place alone. His persistent talk of him sleeping on the couch shut down over and over again. “It's your bed, if anything, I should be the one-”

“I'd never make you sleep on the couch,” he seemed appalled by the suggestion, pushing the door to his room open to reveal the half-made bed, still sleep wrinkled with half the duvet pulled to the side. “Here,” he had pulled out his pajamas from his neatly folded clothes in his dresser, “you can take anything you want to wear to sleep, and the bed is yours.” 

It was only after you changed that he finally let you convince him to get between the sheets. The white duvet pulled up to your chin as you rolled your eyes at his suggestion of making you uncomfortable. “I've never felt more comfortable with a person before,” you reached out, taking his hand just to trace the lines of his palm, his fingers twitching from the sensitivity, curling around your own. “I've never been so happy to have met someone,” 

The swell of that feeling sat in your chest, not heavy but whole. You slid closer to him, sinking into the dip in the bed his body made, until it would take effort to pull away. His arms were a comforting weight around your body as you lay your head on his chest, tucked under his chin to hear his heartbeat, the erratic rhythm of it making you smile. And you had fallen asleep that first night in his bed, listening to the way his heart slowly started to even out, his body relaxing just as well as yours, melting into one another, tangled legs and syncing breaths. 

It had been easy to fit into each other's lives, your friend group getting along enough to spend every other weekend out together at one of your apartments, although your shared place with Kai became a closet as you spent most of your off time over at Soobin's. Within the year of you two being together, you had hung up frames, bought mugs, and shopped for groceries with your things mixed in the cart, Soobin reaching for them without thinking twice. 

The six of you crammed into Soobin's tiny living room, the couch only big enough for two and a half. Hence, you wedged yourself into his lap, his arms wrapped around you, the younger three boys sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table, while Yeonjun sat focused on the tv next to Soobin and you. Video game controllers taking turns between four of you at a time. It was all you ever needed on a weekend, time slipping past until in that soft, comforting way that made you realize that maybe these little things were all you needed to feel content. 

The summer had come in a wave of heat, Soobin, and you were making it out to Montauk for the fireworks just as you had the year before, taking the last train back without the question of where you would spend the night. Pulling open the drawer he had cleared for your things, only to pick one of his shirts to wear time and time again to bed. 

There was no loss of that shyness Soobin held seeing you in his bed, no loss of that admiration that you wanted to spend your free time wrapped up in him, with him. He would spend a million mornings watching your eyes open, your first instinct to kiss at his neck, the soft brush of your lips making the corner of his mouth tip up like you had found the button to his happiness right against his adam's apple, his pulse point. 

He would shuffle out of bed after you, rubbing sleep from his eyes, watching you in the mirror as you brushed your teeth, his hands over your body begging you to just call out, stay back with him in bed so he wasn't so lonely on his day off. You had tried to fix your work schedule to align with his, taking shifts so that you both worked the same, so that you didn't have to resist his pleas, the temptation so easy when he was this warm. 

“Stay with me,” his mouth right at your ear, as you rubbed your moisturizer onto your face, his hands slipping under the shirt you had just put on for work, thumbs running soft circles over the skin of your stomach. “I'd make it worth it,” he'd whisper, his fingers just slipping into the waistband of your jeans, tracing along the thin fabric of your panties. 

It was nearly impossible to pull away from him, his promises always fulfilled, his words of encouragement and praise filling his small bedroom with each pass of his skilled fingers. Your work clothes carefully tugged off, forgotten on the floor, and not picked up until the next day because you would inevitably get up again at noon after falling right back asleep in his arms. You didn't care if you walked around his apartment in nearly nothing, his shirt taken off his back and given to you, his grey sweatpants low on his hips as he made you both a mug of tea. 

You'd sit on the counter like that first time, blowing the steam from your mug that he had picked out for you that first week of being together, one extra in the cabinet for when his mom came over for a visit. Soobin between your legs looking over his own cup with his dark hair a mess from either sleep or your fingers. 

And on days when you needed to resist, he would walk you all the way to your job, kiss you, and leave only to come back half an hour later with a cup of coffee, order memorized since that first day, a muffin picked from the display case because he knew you needed something to eat. He would sit in the coffee shop with his laptop, playing games or reading, following you around as you stocked books to plan weekends with the boys. “It's going to snow next week, we could go out to Montauk and sit at the lighthouse drinking hot chocolate,” 

“Your birthday is next weekend, don't you want to spend it with everyone?” You had already planned to pick up his cake, the boys saying they would come over with their gifts and games. 

“I kinda wanted to rent a place out there, spend it with my favorite person, in our favorite place,” he blushed as he said it, pursing his lips as if he let too much slip, as if the two of you hadn't made it any more clear that you were obsessed with each other. But he couldn't help himself, every passing day he found more that he didn't know about you, more to discover because knowing each other a year wasn't enough when he wanted a lifetime of birthdays spent in bed with you on a cold beach, kissing warmth back into each other with every passing day of new discovered knowledge. “Too much?” 

“No,” you let the word out on a short, breathy laugh, “we can do anything you want, you're never too much,” you couldn't kiss him then, not while the store was half full of regulars as you reach up to put a book on the shelf but you want to, felt it calling to you whenever it was that he let that boyish shyness show. “Just let me know if I should invite everyone, even if it's only for a few hours.” 

“Yeah, we can do breakfast at that spot right by the apartment, pancakes with a candle in it, that kinda thing, then we take the train out together, I don't really care, I just want you to be there.” 

“Of course I'll be there, you act as if I don't basically live at your place.” You couldn't remember the last time you slept alone there. You had made quick visits to see Kai and pick up loose items you hadn't realized hadn't made it over to Soobin's. You still paid rent, and Kai said he'd never kick you out because he would always give you a place to stay, rent or no rent. The only reason he couldn't keep you from paying was because you had the account information to submit your half when it was due. And when the time came that you did officially move in with Soobin, it was never a big transition. Kai kept your room just as it was, your sheets still on the bed, your boxes still in the closet. 

“I know,” he shrugged, shoulder to his ear, cheeky smile showing his dimple you found yourself kissing almost too often. “I just like to hear you say it.” 

You booked your weekend stay on the beach even if it was going to snow, and changed the plans with the boys so they could catch him before the train ride out of the city. That Friday morning, the six of you packed yourselves into one booth, ordering a table's worth of food, plates clinking from the amount. You had packed a bag's worth of loose birthday candles, enough for every year you were celebrating him being alive. His stack of pancakes punctured with a rainbow of candles, the lighter you had brought going slowly as you tried to light each one, Yeonjun leaning over the table to help take one fast melting candle around to the others, trying not to get wax all over and failing. 

Happy birthday was sung loud enough for people to join in over their morning coffee, clapping as Soobin shyly blew out his candles, hiding his face in your neck when the boys didn't stop singing and started to harmonize. “Make them stop,” his laugh caught right against your collarbone. 

And when the two of you left to catch your train, you sat in the same seats you always did, right in the middle with Soobin sacrificing the window seat so that you could get the best view, even on his birthday. Your weekend bag was packed together and tossed over his shoulder as he held your hand while you got off. The snow had not started to fall, but would come in the night just as the forecast had stated. Both of you bundled up in your coats, walking close together until you were almost stepping over each other. 

“Look at that,” the rental right at the edge of the sand, overlooking the slice of beach just in sight of the lighthouse. The place is big with five rooms, a house made to host people on the summer weekends like the one you had met on. “The street is empty, all except our place.” The road right at the back of the houses void of any cars, even the trash bins are all pulled in and kept away from any blowing winds. 

“It's why I could get us the best price at the best place, the beach is private and blocked off just for us.” Even if no one was there, it felt special and all your own, cut away from the city, from everything but your love. 

You had picked up the keys where you had been told they would be, fiddling with the lock, trying to get your fingers to steady with the wind pinching them enough to leave them trembling. Tossing your bag down right next to the entrance, not caring about anything else besides making it out to see the sunset over the water before it was too late. Soobin wraps his arm around your shoulder, pulling you into his chest, to warm both of you up. 

With only the sound of the water, you both sat down in the sand, seagulls gone and the lighthouse making its rounds as the night started to dip to a faded grey, sun caught behind the clouds, so there was only the outline of light along the shore. Soobin kissed the top of your head, keeping his cheek right there over the spot as if that would keep it ingrained into the memory you were both creating. 

“I love you.” The words were easy the first time, and so now, when you speak them, it's natural enough not to even be felt slipping from your lips. But the impact is felt just the same, a weight that keeps you grounded instead of suffocated, because he never pushed away your feelings and always responded the same way with “I love you more,” a fight he would die on the hill of each time you shook your head and declared you loved him more. 

And even there in the open, he laid you down on the sand, the warmth of his body pressed against yours through the layers of fabric separating you, his hand hot against your skin as he slipped it under your sweater, holding your side. Your fingers cold as you twisted them in his hair, your head thrown back while he kissed along the column of your throat, muttering between each peck, “I need to get you a scarf,” his nose bumped right behind your ear, smelling your perfume, the trail his mouth made turning cold when he pulled away to find your lips again. 

He'd have you right on the sand if he wasn’t worried about you getting sick from being out in the cold for so long. So he pulled you up, helping to brush the sand away from your coat before you giggled, giving him one last quick kiss to his cheek before taking off towards the house, “race you!” 

It was harder to run in the sand, your feet slipping and heavy to pull up with each footfall. Soobin was right on your heels, laughing and calling out your name as you shrugged off your coat even while the snow had started its dusting. The second you had reached the long walkway up back to the house, the sunbleached wood creaking under you, you dropped your jacket, knowing he'd bend down to get it, giving you time to beat him even with his long legs. 

And it was exactly what he did, “not fair!” his laugh trailing through the frosting air, salted with the fast falling flakes of snow. You were already tugging off your sweater as soon as you got to the door, pushing it open because neither of you had cared enough to lock it when it was a ghost town. But before you could step foot inside, his hand, now cold, landed against your stomach, pulling you back against him. “Nope, not this time,” his face icy from the wind pressing into your neck until you shrieked from the shock of it. 

You had turned in his hold, wrapping your arms around his neck, trying to pull him into your warmth as much as possible. And he let you, cold hands slipping along your bare back, fingers dancing along the clasp of your bra, teasing you with the idea of him unfastening it. Your nose bumped against his, “I win,” your words brushing long his lips, catching in his laugh. 

“You cheated.” His tone was dipped in a hazy mix of lust and love-sick desire. His eyelids heavy; body so close to melting into yours. 

“I was only making it easier for you, skipping a bit of the undressing.” You pushed your hands into his coat, giving him the hint to take it off, sliding down along the toasty fabric of his sweater until you could slip under the hem. 

His stomach flexed under the ghosting of your fingertips, his lips light as they kissed over your jaw, following the line up to your ear as he whispered, “But that's half the fun." His soft inhale of your perfume made him close his eyes, “like unwrapping a present.” 

He did want to pull away, not even to undress himself, half rumpled coat caught in the crook of his elbows, sweater pushed half up his stomach, jeans low on his hips, the band of his underwear hugging him just right. You could see it all over him, that desperation kissed along his creased brow, the look of a man who would go to the ends of the earth for one glimpse of you, even if it was through the mist of a heavy mirage. 

So when you led him up the stairs, he followed, stumbling all the way after you, stopping at the door to watch the way you fell back on the neatly made bed, sitting up on your elbows. It was a memory that was tattooed into his mind, the way you spilled out on the sheets for him. You took up all the space in his mind, so much so that if anyone walked into the room of his brain you would be the first person they turned to see, that image of you in the sand, in the sheets of this bed, or his own, hung up on the wall like a recall of every good time the two of you shared. 

Soobin dropped his coat, grabbing the back collar of his sweater to tug it over his head, not caring where any of it landed when the straps of your bra were slipping from your shoulders, just barely keeping the thin material in place over your chest. “God, I love you so fucking much,” the words bubbling up out of his lips like a confession he hadn't felt slip, his voice dropping into a needy groan as you rolled your hips. 

“Prove it,” your chin lifted, smile biting into him as he sank to his knees at the edge of the bed, his hands sliding up your thighs, fingers curling around the waistband of your jeans, already unzipped and unbuttoned, showing the fine lace of your panties. He would be right at the foot of the bed till the end of time, proving his love, his desperation, his devotion, to you if you had asked. 

He was slow to drag the fabric down your legs, your hips lifting to help him get it off of you. Placing one of your ankles on his shoulder, he kissed your calf, trailing up your skin as you leaned forward to brush his hair back from his brow. He wanted to take his time on you, spend all night pulling every little sound he could from the depths of your soul, make you just as flushed and flustered as he always felt when wrapped up in you. And you would let him, your thighs widening slightly just for him to nip at the soft plushness of them. 

Your quiet whimpering encouraged him, his cheek pressed to your leg, he reached out to press his thumb over your clit, circling just enough to make your head roll back. “How could someone be this perfect?” and it was the raw honest curiosity in the question that made your heart flutter. The look he casts on you leaves no room for you to be shy. He would not take any head shakes of contention, not when you were already trying to push your hips closer to his fingers, wanting him as thoroughly as he wanted you. 

He did not stop his teasing, the slow circles building you up at just the pace he wanted before he pulled away. Your whine was short-lived when he slipped his fingers right into you, smiling at the way your lashes fluttered for him. You tried to close your knees at the feeling, but he had wedged himself perfectly to keep you spread, one arm wrapped around the underside of your leg propped up on his shoulder. 

Your eyes screw shut when his mouth falls down to your clit, kissing so softly like a thank you. His hum of approval at your gasp runs along your spine. He leisurely keeps his fingers pumping into you, kisses soft and barely there, content with making you messier, taking his time. There is no room for embarrassment with how wet you are, your hips trying to chase his mouth, needing more pressure, needing more attention. 

The desperation is written out in the way you pull him forward, hand cupping the back of his head until you can feel his grin teasing you. He does not make you wait long, your orgasm so close to the surface with his lips greedy to please you, sucking and toys with your clit, fingers building up their speed before he curls them. The pressure makes your thighs tremble around him, your body too weak to keep up, you fall back, arching off the bed with a low whine cumming as he hums against your clit. 

Your chest rises and falls with each breath you try to grasp, your hand leaving his head to place over your heart, feeling the way it beats erratically behind your ribs. He kisses back up your leg, leaning his cheek on your knee, watching the way you are nearly spilling out of your bra, face flushed, with your cunt still fluttering around his fingers, he keeps in place to draw out your high. “You're so pretty like this, just a mess over me.” 

Soobin's lips are kissably reddened now as he leans down, blowing cool air along your pussy glistening with aerosol, your body jolts at the stimulation barely provided and proving your sensitivity. You're whining at the pout of his face, at the feeling of simultaneously being filled but not enough. His name is drawn out on a whisper as your hips pick back up their grinding, chasing another orgasm as if you had even recovered from the first. “More, please, I need more,” the words just above a whisper. 

“More?” It's the tilt to his head that does it, his examination of your body laid out, not cynical but teasing, “Do you think I'll even fit?” he reaches out with his free hand, sliding up your side, pressing down on your pelvis, “Could you take all of me?” 

You don't even care if you've had sex before, that he's asked these same questions and got the same answer. Your body was made for him, and yet the words always made you weak in the knees, mind going fuzzy, body aching to have him as deep as he could go. “Please.” 

Your whispered plea was a direct line to his cock, already leaking beads of pre-cum and straining in his jeans. He had tried hard to last, to keep his mind, his hips grinding against the edge of the mattress, looking for some form of relief and finding little. He pulled his hands from you, loved the way you sounded as you pulled your knees in together while he stood. 

He groaned deep in his throat at the taste of you, cleaning off your wetness from his fingers before undoing his belt, the clinking of the metal making you sit up. You watched the way he slowly undid his button, the outline of him devastatingly mouth-watering as he pushed his jeans down his waist. You reached behind you to unhook your bra, tossing the fabric as he freed himself. 

You had never gotten over the size of him, not when the sight provoked your body to clench around nothing, your mind wondering exactly how he did manage to fit. The length of him twitching in his hand as he loosely tugs, your eyes following the movement until you're squirming, watching the way his thumb swirls along his tip. You instinctively widen your legs at the sight, free hand not twisted in the sheets, reaching up to pinch at your nipple, drawing his eyes right where you wanted him. 

He can't help himself from climbing on top of you, pushing your hands away to cup your breasts, and peppering kisses along the thin skin. He drags his teeth down to your pebbled nipples, biting and tugging on them until you're whining under him, hips working against his because he's so close to slipping right into you with his cock pressed flush against your cunt. But he doesn't care, not when he's leaving marks along your skin, kissing up your chest until he's back to your lips. 

Leaning up, he has his cock laid against your stomach, the length of him high enough to reach your belly button, “look at how deep I'll be in you,” his words a mix of awe and lust as you reach up to twist your fingers in his hair. And when he finally presses into you, he catches your gasp right in his mouth, swallowing it down as he resists pushing in too fast. He can only go as far as the tip before he has to pull back out to try again, taking his time when you're whining at the sheer stretch you feel when he inches in so slowly. 

You're clenching around him, trembling and needing him closer. His groan pressed right to your ear when he finally bottoms out, free hand falling to your hip to try and get you to stay still so your body can adjust. “Fucking perfect,” he's muttering, kissing behind your ear as you say his name, lost in a dreamy haze as you melt for him. But your impatience is building the longer he just stays still, his hair held tight in your hands as you attempt to move your hips, but he had you pinned against the mattress under his weight, until you’re desperate enough to beg with tears building at the corners of your eyes. 

It's when he finally moves that has you clawing at him, nails scratching down his back enough to leave red marks along his skin. He goes so slow at first, dragging his hips back so that you feel the veins of him, feel the way he just leaves his tip in before he's pushing right back in, building up a pace that leaves you right on the edge of insanity. 

Your gasp is twisted into a shocked moan when he moves his hand from your hip and presses down on your pelvis, your body seizing around him while he applies pressure to the bulge of his cock inside you, “you feel that?” but you can't answer, mind a mess, words spilling from you incoherently while you tighten around him, “made just for me,” his voice throaty as he says it against your neck, kissing along the mark he'd made. 

He's intoxicated by the way you react, hips dragging just right so that he can feel the way he's bumping just the right spot to make you tremble. Because you're shaking under him, legs widening before he reaches down further to circle at your clit. “Wait,” you're gasping because you can feel the knot in your stomach tightening to the point of breakage, so close to coming undone that you want him closer to keep you together because you know the second you cum, you’ll be falling apart, melting into the mattress without hope. 

But Soobin is lost, drowning in the ocean of his desire, finding it harder to keep his moans at bay, lips greedy as they taste the vibrations of your whimpers along your throat. Addicted to the way your body feels against his, the way you draw out the rawest form of himself. And the words bubble up without him realizing what he's saying, the question, demand, plea falling out as he keeps up his pace, hips lulling you to your cresting orgasm, bodies chasing their highs without shame. 

“Marry me,” he gasps, breath fanning over your ear. 

You almost don't catch it, the words washing over you but not sticking until he says it again, “marry me,” the desperation laced between each syllable. You pull him closer, his hand once holding him up now falling to your leg, dragging up the back of it before hooking behind your knee to stretch you wider, allowing his hips to sink deeper. 

The slight change of angle sends a ripple of pressure through your body, cunt fluttering around him before you're cumming, nails digging into his back, body trembling as he lays his weight on you. The rumbling of his moans pressed right against you as he buries his face into your neck, following right along with you as he cums. His stuttering hips stop as he presses in deep, so much farther now like this, spilling his warm cum into you in hot spurts. 

He doesn't pull out as he kisses along your skin, a fine layer of sweat coating both of your bodies. And it's between the heavy breathing that he slowly pumps into you again, your soft whine at the slight overstimulation making him chuckle. He pulls back, hand dropping your leg as he finally pulls out, dipping his nose to yours, kissing away your whimper when you feel the warm gush of your combined release spill out after his absence. 

You push your fingers into his hair, tucking the strands behind his ear. His cheeks flushed when he put his forehead to yours, kissing the tip of your nose. Soobin was clingy in the best of ways, trying to catch the pattern of your breathing to line up with his. His lips to your pulse, counting each flutter of your heartbeat as if it were a prayer he would have to recite later by memory. And as much as he would love to lie in your arms, melting into one on top of the duvet, he never missed cleaning you up. 

And it was only when he pulled away that you started to think about what he had said. The words came back the second that he had flicked on the glowing white lights of the bathroom, like it had only taken that one bulb to turn on for you to finally realize what he had said in the heat of the moment. Marry me. Whispered like a confession instead of a plea, as if he had already known your answer, because you knew exactly how the two of you felt about each other. There was no doubt in your mind, at least not until he wasn't in the room. 

He had kissed you, held you, and walked off, leaving you on the sheets with those words hanging in the air, in the light now shining directly onto your relationship. You were caught in your own thinking when he came back with a warm rag, his hand soft on your legs to pull you out of your mind. “You okay?” His question was soft, just for the two of you, a welcome reprieve from the way you turned those words over again and again; marry me, marry me, marry me.  

It was not the idea of marrying him that had thrown you off, but how he had not instantly brought it back up. Soobin was a shy mess of emotions most of the time, questioning himself and if he was ‘too much’ in the relationship, unless he was grasping out at avoidance, hoping and praying you hadn't heard him. And it was that which had caught you in the webbing of worry. That maybe, just maybe, he hadn't meant to say it at all, or maybe he had and was worried about how you would take it. 

You didn't know how to say it, bring it up only for him to get flustered, enough so that he confessed your deepest worry. The one where he hadn't meant it, the one where he said it was in a moment of weakness, that he didn't want to marry you, and the words had just slipped out. 

“I'm okay,” you tried to blink away your thoughts, shake your head ‘yes,’ but all you seemed to be able to do was shake your head ‘no.’ 

But Soobin could see the lie for what it was. The cover-up was a half done job of deception as he cleaned you up and kissed your skin again like an apology. “Are you sure? Was I too much?” 

He stood there, brows pulled together, looking at you with his puppy dog worry, his trip to the bathroom giving him the time to pull on his underwear, leaving you feeling exposed only because you felt like confessing your line of thinking was going to have you set out before the two of you, raw. “No, never,” and it was the truth because it was in that moment that you realized even if it would break your heart to know he didn't want to marry you, you would still swallow it down to be with him. 

You looked past him to the pile of clothes on the floor, his eyes following until he picked up his sweater, the discarded lace panties still tucked in with your jeans. He picked them up, tugged his sweater over your head, and gave you the space to pull yourself together a bit. It felt so much more intimate letting him watch you pull on your underwear than letting him take them off. 

His sweater was still warm from his skin, bringing you comfort to drop the question down between the two of you before you could take it back. “Did you mean it?” The four words tossed out on the bed like a spilled glass of wine, soaking into the air until it was thick with your worry and his confusion. You bit your inner lip, absentmindedly picking at your nails avoiding looking at him like it would be written on his face before he had a moment to hide what he really meant. 

“What?” he was caught, not in the way you had been worried about, but in genuine puzzlement over the question itself, and that way you looked on the verge of tears, ready to shatter with his next words like stones on a carefully cleaned glasshouse. 

“When you…” The words stuck in your throat, lost in your lungs, dying on what felt to be your last breath, “When you said marry me, did you mean it?” 

You looked up, facing your fear with a shovel in hand to bury his rejection deep, the moment you saw the truth written out, even if it didn't match his soft words, to try and cover it up. But he did not look panicked or pitiful, like you had already painted your mind to believe he would be. No, he looked caught, a boy, a mess of innocence who had been asked to explain why in his dreams he reached out for desires unimaginable. 

Because he had not realized he had said the thoughts on his mind, tucked a confession in between passion and pleasure like it was a bookmark between pages of a moment, and not a moment he should have written an entirely different story of. And now you were looking at him like it tore you apart to ask, the words a steel blade to his careful plans. He had planned it all out, thought about it the whole train ride over, a whole week, a month, even the moments you had spent right there out on the beach that day you two had met, because he had been sure then, and he was so sure now. 

And he had ruined it with loose lips and a mind made of mush because he couldn't help himself when it came to you, and he didn't know how to apologize for ruining his grand proposal without even having realized he had let the words slip in the first place. “Of course I meant it, i-i-” he was hot all over, from his ears down to his neck, hand jumping to his hair to calm himself because this wasn't the way it was supposed to be, not here but on the beach where you two had met, in the snow, together on the lonely sand made less lonely when you had each other. 

“Soobin-” because now, watching the way he was panicking, stumbling to find the words to fix the moment, you felt silly for worrying, silly for bringing it up because you should have known, and you did, it was only your fear blurring your sanity. 

“No baby, I'm so sorry, I didn't even realize I said it, of course you would freak out, and I just walked off like it was nothing-” he was pacing, thinking over only the few passing minutes after the two of you were done, and analyzing them, “fuck and I said it twice,” 

And you couldn't help but laugh, the sound a bubble holding all your pent up fear until it popped, dissipating as he looked at you and chuckled all the same because it was silly and something only he seemingly could have done. “It's okay,” you giggled, nerves settling down, now ready to shake yourself for negative thoughts when he had never done anything to make you doubt him. “Truly, Soobin, it's okay.” 

But he pouts no less, sinking to his knees at the edge of the bed as if he hadn't just been there, pressing his face into your bare thighs to try and quell his embarrassment. His arms wrap around your waist as he mutters against your skin, “I wanted it to be a surprise.” You're caught in your place, looking down at him, your hand in his hair, scratching along his scalp in the same way you used to lull him to sleep on late nights. 

As much as you had thought about him not wanting to marry you, it hadn't crossed your mind that he had wanted to do it then, that if he had meant to say it, it had only been in practice but not a question for you to answer any time soon. “What?” 

He turned his cheek, looking up at you with his chin on your knee, before sitting back on his heels at the look on your face. Because you were searching again for something he couldn't quite decipher, eyes flickering over the bridge of his nose like you were full of disbelief. 

The plan had been the beach, nothing fancier than the waves and sand, the lighthouse right on the hilltop, with the snow all around. Him on his knee, awkwardly stumbling through a speech while sinking under his weight, blinking to keep the hair from his eyes. He could see it like it had always been meant to happen, like a memory he had uncovered and needed to replay. But it didn't matter where he did it when all he wanted was to spend it confessing the truth of his love to you, because he couldn’t keep it in, and here was perfect all the same. 

“I even got you a ring,” he leaned over, reaching out on the floor for his coat, fumbling in the pockets for the little velvet box he had been carrying around for far longer than he cared to admit, trying to build up the courage. 

He was trembling, your gasp making him nervous in ways he had never expected. He knew how scary it would have been to ask you, but the words had already slipped out, and even in knowing you would more than likely say yes, he still had a devil on his shoulder saying otherwise. But it was laying himself bare before you that made his stomach twist in knots, not because he didn't trust you but because he was worried that he loved you too much, that you would look at him and see someone clingy in the worst ways, over emotional and searching for your love in a crowded room of passing affections. 

“I was thinking a lot about what I would say and realized I'm not very good with words,” he said with a short chuckle, trying to laugh off the tremor in his voice. It took a moment for him to look up at you, your fingers curled in the hem of his sweater, the one he had pulled onto you to try and find some way to bring you comfort. 

Now, you have tears in your eyes. Vision blurry as you looked down on him, dressed in nothing but his underwear, hair a mess of tousled strands, with shaking hands and stammering words. “I wanted to ask you in the place that I first realized I wanted to marry you, the place I knew you were the one. It's kinda silly to be scared now because even if I knew that first day that you would be the only one I could see myself buying a ring for, it's impossible not to be. Because I love you with everything in me. I love my friends, my family, my bed, and still, I never realized love, real love, felt like this. And I feel it in a new way when I'm with you, I read books, I watched movies, I saw how my parents were with each other, and I wanted affection, but I didn't think much of it past just being an emotion people shared,” 

“But when I met you, I felt so seen. I didn't have a crush; those words feel so childish because my love for you, my feelings for you, are bigger than anything I can pinpoint in the world. When I say you're made for me, I don't mean it in a possessive way, I mean it in a, I was put on this earth to love you, kinda way. Because when I'm with you, when I'm not, I ache. I think about how lucky I am to have you when you're here, and burn when you're not, and it feels bigger than the both of us, and that is scary, but also very comforting because it only tells me that you are the one,” 

“My life didn't feel like it had started until I met you, and I can't think of any other person whom I would rather spend the rest of my life with because you are mine, someone i would never be able to forget, someone i want to spend hours with on this beach, sipping tea, and reading books, sleeping in with, and loving forever, doing exactly what i know i was put here for. So I'll ask again, properly this time, will you marry me?” 

He opened the little box, the ring perfect and hardly seen through your tears as you nodded, not caring how you looked and just needing to be closer to him. There was no space at the foot of the bed, but you found a way to wedge yourself into it when you threw your arms around him, face pressed into his neck, the words still on your lips as you said them again and again, “yes, a million times yes,” 

The grin he had plastered on his face hurt his cheeks, dimpled, and stuck with the swell of his happiness. Neither of you cared that you were on the floor, your hand shaking just as badly as his had been, and it only made him bite back a giddy laugh. Because he was slipping the ring he had picked so long ago onto your finger, twisting the silver band until it rested just right to place the diamond on display. He kissed your still trembling fingers right along your knuckles before pulling you back in to hold. 

It felt a bit surreal the next morning when the sun was filtering in through the gauzy curtains. The diamond caught the light as you held your hand up in front of you, the smile heavy on your lips, Soobin’s body curved into yours, still sleeping soundlessly. You wanted to tell everyone, call up Kai just to gush about the moment, and spill the details of the love confession you had been waiting a lifetime for. Nothing felt half full, not now, not when it was so fresh in your mind. 

“Do you like it?” Soobin’s sleep ridden voice caught you, his nose still tucked into your neck, his soft yawn pressed to your collarbone. 

“I love it.” It didn't matter what the ring had looked like, not when you hadn't expected to ever be given one in the first place. You couldn't turn away from it, your eyes catching it with every passing moment after he had slipped it onto your finger. While you poured coffee, brushed your teeth, and pushed Soobin’s hair back behind his ears, you couldn’t stop yourself from thinking back to him, his words. 

It made the house feel all your own, the two of you fitting in like testing the future life you would both share. And even when you made it back into the city, cut from the sea and salt stained air, your happiness followed after the two of you, bled into the monotonous parts of your day. His voice echoed in your mind while you stocked books at work, ‘you are the one,’ replaying over and over, your heart aching to get back home to him, even if it had only been a few passing hours since you had last seen him. 

There had been love before, but there was something keenly different about coming back with a ring. Your friends who had known you two at the very start even looked on with softer eyes, truly happy smiles, while you shared over late night takeout, still wedged onto Soobin’s couch, holding your hand out to Yeonjun, giggling like you had shared your crush had slipped a note into your locker and not slipped a ring onto your finger. 

“You two are disgustingly perfect for each other,” Beomgyu had joked, his teasing smile turning into something sappy, “I'm really happy for you two.” 

It had been so good to bask in the light of your love, to think about what it would look like to see Soobin at the end of a long aisle. It had been easy to ask questions lying in bed late at night, your fingers grazing his cheek as the two of you whispered about wedding plans, flowers, tables, chairs, dresses, and friends. But each night that hazy state of readiness slipped from just a feeling into a blurry question of when. 

It had been slow, a passing of time that felt natural to share while engaged, the planning light, dates set and passed without much worry when you were both busy and didn't make things set in stone. It didn't scare you, and neither of you pushed to plan past the late night dreams and pillow talk. And even when the ring had been sitting on your finger for longer than a year with no plans made, you didn't let it bother you. 

Or you tried not to. 

Soobin did not love you any less, neither of you felt any different, but the weight of the ring began to feel heavy when every new question was swept under a rug you hadn't seen being placed right at the front door of your relationship. You could shrug it off just as easily as it was to brush anything away from your mind, waving your hand at the light teasing remarks made by your friends, coworkers. But each passing word was a stone hitting against your ribs until it was hard not to see the bruising starting to bloom. 

“Do you guys just not have a date in mind?” Kai had asked when it was just the two of you out. 

“Not really,” you didn't want to look up from the rack of clothes you were distracting yourself with, mindlessly pushing each hanger aside without looking at the shirts. 

“Are you…nervous about marrying him?” The question traveled along your skin like a bug you were trying fast to swat away. 

“No-it's not- we just never really talk about it,” you felt weird to say it aloud, to confess something you were holding in when you felt it to be small. Because it would be a lie to say you hadn't been thinking about the passing time, that each month that went by, where you talked less about a wedding and slipped back into boyfriend and girlfriend and not fiancés, pained you. 

But it felt small because Soobin was seemingly happy with the wait, happy to sit in a still frame instead of moving color. And nothing was wrong, you had not fought, you had not felt him pull away, it was just stagnant, a ring but with no follow through.  You didn't want to seem greedy, you had a man, a devastatingly devoted man who kissed you every morning on the cheek after making you a cup of coffee, who followed you around like a love sick puppy, made time and space for you in his day not because you had asked but because he had confessed to not being able to live without you. 

But it brought you right back to that feeling in the bed, the one where you sat and told yourself it was okay to swallow down his not wanting more, just so that you had enough of him. You had felt in some way that he had slipped up with his question, caught him too soon, and now, with plans half made, you could not help but think again about him not being ready. And that was okay, you knew it was, you loved him more than a marriage, but it didn't stop you from aching. 

“You don't talk about it? Like ever?” You didn't have to look up to know his brows were scrunched, his slight frown working on his lips to pull you to backtrack. 

“Well, kinda, I bring it up occasionally, and he always says, ‘we don't have to be married just yet to be in love, we just are,’ and it's very sweet, and he kisses me, and you know I get distracted, and it's just a cycle.” but even that feels like running, the truth heavy on your heels as you lie, “and it's not that big of a deal, he's right, we love each other, we’re just playing by ear,” 

“So married…five years after the engagement is likely? Asking so I can possibly get a week off of work and not just a sneaky sick day,” but Kai's joke misses its landing, the words a piano on a string, hanging over your head with no room for you to move away. 

Five years was a long time, and you were already struggling with the one year long engagement as it was, and each day, Soobin made it less clear on his direction with the casual wave of his relaxed words. While he was stretching out in the room of your relationship, you felt the walls moving in, not all at once, not enough for you to see, but it was as if the ring had moved every piece of furniture one inch over and you kept almost missing the your seat each time you tried to sit down next to him. You could get used to the room again, you're sure of it, but in five years with no wedding, you're sure the walls would be tight. 

The conversation followed you all the way home, like the words had been stones you were forced to swallow, and now they turned in your stomach. Each passing second you sat alone on the couch waiting for Soobin to get back. You had tried to busy yourself, showering until the water ran cold, brushing your teeth once, twice, tugging on Soobin's sweater, trying and failing to calm your racing mind because he wasn't there to quell it. 

There had been cracks already spider webbing along the windows of the little glass house you kept neatly placed around your relationship. Each one starting from your own worries, easy to ignore when no one else talked about it, but the conversation with Kai had only turned you to look at the glass, run your finger along the seam, and question if you were really okay. 

And you weren't. The more you pressed that bruise, you thought you would get used to the pain, but you couldn't, and you knew well enough that it was wrong to sit in silence and leave Soobin in the dark. He had done nothing wrong, and you knew, telling him, asking him the questions directly on why the two of you were waiting would only help and not hurt. 

But keeping it in would hurt. Every time he made those small comments, as if you were already married felt like a reminder that you weren’t. So you talked yourself into it, paced the living room, sat down on the couch, and stood right back up to pace again. It was how Soobin had found you biting at the skin around your nails halfway to standing when he kicked off his shoes. “You okay, baby?” He dropped his bag, suit still neatly pressed even after spending all day at the office, glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. 

“I-” it had hit you then, the twisting nausea once mistaken for worry over a conversation long coming, now sinking into something swift and unforgiving. Your mouth filled with saliva, your feet carried you to the bathroom before you fell to your knees to throw up.

It was fast and upsetting enough to bring tears to the corners of your eyes. The back of your hand wiped at your mouth, Soobin's hand soft and warm on your back as he rubbed soothing circles, your first instinct to whine, “No, you can't watch me be sick.” 

“It's okay, in sickness and in health, right? You can’t scare me off that easily,” and although the words are supposed to make you feel better, they only serve as a reminder of why you were pacing in the first place. Because it felt a bit like unintentional teasing, like you were right on the cusp of knowing the joke but not being able to fully digest it. But it was only in your mind, because Soobin cared enough to buy you a ring, to profess his love, over and over again. 

You shouldn't worry, the statement repeated in your mind until it was nearly a reality. It shouldn’t matter if you got married within the year or the next five; it only matters if he loves you. And he does, enough so that he kisses your sweaty temple, and helps you stand on wobbly legs to lean against the sink while he preps your toothbrush so you can feel clean again. How could you wallow in your insecurity when he's done everything to show you he loves you, married or not? Wasn’t it greedy to beg him for a wedding when he had done everything he could to love you right? 

And while you rinsed out your mouth, he kept his hand on your lower back, keeping you steady, watching you in the mirror as you brushed away the tears you had been building. “Were you feeling bad all day?” 

“No,” at least not enough to get sick over, “it just hit me all of a sudden, I don’t know, I've never felt like that before, at least not without having something bad to eat first,” you sat at the lip of the tub, fingers pressed lightly into your eyes, mind working over the last things you had eaten. 

“Maybe you're just getting sick, you've been sleeping in a lot lately, like when you got the flu.” Soobin got down on his knees in front of you, hands sliding up your thighs, rubbing in warmth with the pads of his thumbs, “I could go and get you some medicine, something to settle your stomach if it's still feeling upset,” 

You let out a weak whine, pained over your line of thinking for hours, twisting you into knots when Soobin hadn't even brought a ribbon into the equation. You wanted to kick yourself. “No, you just got home, I don't want you to have to go back out.” You dropped your hands down to his, the bathroom light catching the diamond on your finger, “It's probably just my period coming, I'll be fine.” 

He was looking up at you, brows knit in his gentle concern, ready to go out even after a long day, just to make sure you were okay, and you were worrying about him setting a date. You felt sick, but only because he was too sweet for you and your worrying mind. “I don't mind the trip, it's right on the cor-” 

“No, not tonight, I'm feeling a bit better, it was just a wave of nausea, no need to worry,” you threaded your fingers into his hair, messing up the neat style he tried to keep for work. “Thank you,” 

He rolled his eyes, playful and annoying, “Don’t thank me,” he sat up straighter, leaning in, “just give me my welcome home kiss, you missed it earlier,” but you turned your cheek, his lips falling to your jaw. 

“No, I’ll get you sick-” but it didn't stop him, his lips falling again and again onto your cheek, down the bridge of your nose, right on the edge of your mouth. 

“You just told me you felt better,” he said between each peck, his smile felt along your skin while you wrapped your arms around him, letting him pull you into the circle of his arms. “And a little sickness isn't going to gross me out when I love my girlfriend,” 

Girlfriend. The word hit you as bittersweetly as honey flavored cough syrup, but you swallowed it down anyway because he cared to share it with you. And when he kissed you, you kissed him back, pushing past his work blazer and helping to unbutton and untuck his shirt. Not caring that you had already showered when he pulled you in after him, letting him scrub away your worries, kiss them away from your water drop speckled shoulders. 

And when both of you were done, dried and laid out on the couch, waiting for the takeout order you had sent in, you couldn’t even remember why you had been worried in the first place. But it wasn't until you opened the takeaway box filled with rice that your nausea came back, the wave of it making your head feel light on your shoulders, with a chill down your spine. 

Soobin had been next to you on the couch, chopsticks holding his next bite of food up, his cheeks already stuffed as he watched you run back to the bathroom. 

You hardly had anything left to throw up in your system, but it didn't stop your body from tying. And when Soobin's hand was back to rubbing comfort between your shoulder blades, you wanted to cry again. “No, go back to eat, don't worry-” 

“No, it doesn't bother me, let me take care of you.” Each word pulled the tears right from you, your emotions overwhelmed with having thrown up, feeling like a little kid at the edge of their bed, needing someone, but not knowing how to call out for them. “It's okay, baby.” he kissed the tear on your cheekbone, “I'll go get you something, okay? I'll be quick,” 

It was only after you were done brushing your teeth again for the fourth time that you realized there was another possibility, Soobin pressing a swift goodbye kiss to your temple, already having his coat shrugged on to head out, when you reached out for him. “Could you pick up a pregnancy test?” You’d have gone with him if the word hadn’t made your limbs feel numb all over again, “just to make sure.” 

“Okay,” he breathed the word out, let it hang on his lips like he was still trying to understand what you had asked him, but he could see the slight twinge of panic on you and didn't want to freak you out. “And I'll get crackers cause you still need to eat something,” he kissed you again, right at the crease of your worrying brow, “it's okay, I'll be right back, and we'll be fine.” 

You watched the door close behind him, your hands shaking as you twisted them together, tugging on your fingers as if that could pull your anxiety fright from them. You could picture the way the two of you had been curled in the sheets, his whispered kisses pressed to the shell of your ear as he hummed, “I don't want anything to change.” you don't know why you picked that memory of all of them to think of while sitting at the edge of your shared bed waiting for him to come back. 

Soobin's panic was not felt until he stood right in front of the rows of pregnancy tests, the pink, blue, and white boxes all lined up, warping his emotions into something masquerading as confusion, as if his body knew that's what he needed to lean into instead of worry. He had been here before with you, in well over two years of being together, you had experienced a pregnancy scare twice over, but never had you been sick before making the call to just pick one up just because. Never had you looked up at him like you almost knew the answer. 

So he grabbed an array of boxes, all the colors, all the types, single packs and triple, carrying them to check out, watching them get scanned, and coming to terms with what he was feeling. Thought about how it would be to see any of the tests read negative, how it would be to find that it read positive. And it was only when he reached the door of your shared place and knew that in some way he would find himself sad to have you read out that it was negative, and when he pushed open the door to see you worrying, he wondered if you would feel the opposite. Because now while you turned the tests upside down on the bathroom counter, he couldn't help thinking about a baby with your smile, a small, dimpled cheek so easy to kiss when they giggled a laugh made from your love. 

Both of you sat with your backs against the bathtub, your body half spilled onto his as he rested his chin atop your head, his cheek falling to your hair as you laid your hand against his stomach, counting his breaths instead of the seconds passing. “We will be okay,” he muttered, his hopeful smile trying to curve on his lips, but he didn't want to give too much away without knowing how you felt. 

You were biting at the skin on your inner lip, thinking over all the outcomes, wanting more but fearing it was too much, because it was less about how you were currently feeling and how you would feel. That same game of chicken was playing out just like it had been in that bed in Montauk when he had asked you to marry him. And when you started to think about a baby, a real one with his kind eyes behind dark lashes, you couldn't stop yourself from seeing them in his arms.

But your stomach still hurt, the unknown origin muddling up your thoughts until the alarm you had set went off like someone had pulled a cord on your back to set your hands back to trembling, cupped in Soobins as he kissed along your knuckles, right against the ring he had put there with a promise to love you like he was made to. 

He stood behind you, hand heavy on your hip as you lifted the first test, watching you in the mirror as you turned it over, your hand jumping to your mouth as you looked at the little pink plus sign, you reached back out, turning over each test you had decided to take, each one coming back with the same reading. You looked up at him, feeling flushed all over, both of you with tears in your eyes, and for only a second, you were worried, but that was washed away the moment he smiled, his laugh like a child's, pure and uncontrollable. 

You two didn't need words, his kisses coming fast, his arms wrapped around your waist, spinning you around as you both giggled, your toes touching the ground only making you breathe out a sigh of shocked disbelief, that test still in your hands as Soobin guided it closer to his eyes. All teeth and dimples when he looked back at you, “God, I fucking love you,” and he was back to kissing you, his soft lips feeling like a thank you, like a confession, his cheeks wet as he started to cry, leaning his forehead on yours when he needed a breath, his palm falling right down to your stomach, his smile watery with his tears. 

And you were crying too, crying more so when he got down before you, pushing up the sweater you wore, kissing right under your belly button, your fingers threading through his hair as he whispered right against your skin, “and I'm going to love you so, so, much,” 

It didn't feel real for only as long as it took you two to make it to your appointment. The three days of waiting since the test felt as if they went by too slowly, the bubble of your joy encasing the two of you as you vibrated with your happiness. You didn't imagine it to be so hard to keep the positive test a secret, both of you deciding to wait at least until after you had seen the scans. But that first call with Kai felt like walking on a tight rope. 

You had rushed to put the phone down, too worried that it would just jump from you in between casual conversation about the next time the boys would come over for dinner. Your hand fell to your stomach instinctively, even if you hadn't been showing since you were hardly far along. There wasn't even bloating, just the occasional nausea and heavy sleeping, missing alarms, and whining every time Soobin reminded you that you had to wake up with the sun. 

But you had kept the secret just as well as he had, sealing your lips until you walked into the doctor's office. Soobin had called in to come in a bit later to work, your appointment made for your day off. Both of you sat in your seats in the waiting room, his knee bumping yours as he leaned closer to watch you fill out the forms needed. Your pen hesitates over the emergency contact information, wondering if you should check the little box for husband/spouse, or check the one for boyfriend/partner, under Soobin's name. 

When you turned in the papers, it had been only a few minutes before they called the two of you back, the ultrasound room half dark with the soft lights from the machines and monitors. There had been little nerves until you were lying down in the bed, the paper crinkling under each movement you made, Soobin sitting on the stool next to you, holding your hand and bringing it up to kiss your knuckles. 

In the half-lit room, it felt easier to confess, “I'm nervous,” when it was the two of you, your fingers toying with his, looking for anything to focus on besides your racing pulse. 

“We’re okay and we are going to be okay.” his smile was a balm, his gaze falling over you in a way he had never once looked at you before. Your relationship was a ball of clay slowly being worked into new shapes as each day passed with this new information, as your body worked to grow a little physical form of your love. “I'm actually really excited right now, I feel like I just drank a tub's worth of coffee,” it would explain the way his leg bounced erratically, the thrum of it bumping against the bed like the hum of a car. 

“You did have two cups this morning,” you chuckled, soaking in his excitement to try and mask your nerves. 

“And I'm really excited to tell my mom,” he whispered like it was a secret, his smile eating at your heart, kissing your soul. “The boys too, I'm really excited to tell them. I've been fighting to keep it in, ignoring everyone.” 

“I guess I am a little excited about that,” he kissed your hand again, keeping it in his grasp when the doctor came in, her soft smile and cheerful voice reflected in her words of congratulations. 

It wasn't until she had placed the cold gel over your pelvis that she asked the question, “Married?” She had tilted her head as she said it, pulling out the wand for the scan, free hand working to click the keys on her keyboard to get started. 

“Nearly,” Soobin had smiled, lifting your intertwined fingers to show off your ring. The word pressed like a weight on your chest, heart skipping a single beat, but there was little time for you to wallow in your insecurity when the doctor placed the wand to your skin, and the echo of waves filled the room around you. 

Because that's what it had sounded like, the surf crashing in, pulling you into reality. The doctor's voice was a hum of sound, washed out and faded in the back of your mind as you listened in on the rhythmic swell of the ocean, “Congratulations, your baby has a very strong heartbeat,” she turned the monitor to face the two of you, finger extended out to point at the fuzzy black and white screen, “and here they are, about the size of a little sugar pea,” 

It was your gentle sob that broke from you that made you realize the two of you were sitting silent, listening in on the sound of your love like someone had bottled that very moment on the beach, Soobin's toes wiggling and your laugh catching him enough to make him blush right there on the edge of the water where he had confessed his love and you found happiness. 

And now both of you were crying, Soobin's laugh pressed to your knuckles, his eyes caught on the screen just as yours were, wet with joy you hadn't known would feel so sunsoaked in the bed of a hospital you'd never been to before. Nothing felt more important than that moment; nothing had felt more real. You wanted to reach down to lay the flat of your palm over the spot you knew them to be, to confess how scared you were, but never scared enough not to tell them how much you love them and would love them. 

“They're so perfect,” Soobin sniffled, laughing at himself but not caring because he never knew exactly how happy he could be; how proud he could be for something as little as a heartbeat, but it wasn't little, it was a blanket wrapping around him, and instead of smothering, it was healing. 

His fingers trembled as he held the printouts of the scans, the echo of their heartbeat tattooed along his skull. He had thought his life had changed seeing the test, holding you in his arms, telling you everything would work out, but he had been wrong. He had not known what it would be like to have his life truly changed. 

Meeting you had felt as if everything was falling into place, like the two of you had always been a picture, and the years together had been the frame around you. But hearing the heartbeat of your baby, seeing them even as small as a little pea, had painted your picture in vivid color. 

He loved you because it was the most natural part of himself; if he knew nothing, he at least knew that. Loving your baby was fixing parts of him he hadn't even known needed tending, not because they needed fixing, but just because they could. He cried on the phone with his mom, kissed you like he never wanted to stop, and texted the boys to meet you guys for dinner in the city. 

And there in the circular booth of a restaurant that the six of you frequented too often, you shared the news. Held the little sonogram photos up, the golden lights reflecting off the glossy paper, but not enough to obscure the image. 

Kai nearly choked on his drink, setting it back down on the table as he tried to clear his throat. Taehyun reached out for the pictures with wide eyes, needing a closer look, shocked into silence. Beomgyu gasped, mouth open in a soft O, leaning in to look at the pictures now in Taehyun's hands. And Yeonjun, sitting right next to you, pulled you into a hug. His warmth triggers your eyes to water, his kind words making the tears spill, “Congratulations,” and says for you to hear and no one else, “you're going to be the best mom.”

You sit back, cleaning at your eyes, laughing like he hadn't plucked his fingers along your heart strings to hum out the single line you wanted desperately to hear. It felt so hard to brush off all the emotions you were feeling as some kind of hormones when all you could picture in your head was spending the rest of your life friends with these very people, good men who would love your child like they were their own, singing songs, playing games. 

It didn't matter how you changed because they would be there, giggling on the floor of your living room, spending nights together as a family none of you knew you had been searching for. And now it was only expanding, a seat opening up for a baby you all already loved more than you could form words for. It didn't matter about rings, promises, or distance, when all you needed was late nights like this where you sat at a table laughing over Yeonjun's cheeks being stuffed, and Beomgyus' tearful jokes. Nights where both Soobin and Kai bumped their heads on low doorways and tried to play it off. And nights where Taehyun and you watched laughing from the sidelines. 

And tonight, when everyone went their separate ways at the base of the stairs at the subway station, they each held you a little longer when they hugged you goodbye, as if they were letting their comfort seep into your bloodstream just for the little added heartbeat that sounded like the ocean. 

You hung the sonogram pictures up on the fridge, next to film strips of you and Soobin kissing cheeks at the aquarium, of Soobin and the boys all trying to mash themselves into one photobooth. And when the two of you had an off day, you stood in the kitchen, your favorite mug pressed to your lips as you looked at the little black and white photos. Soobin coming up behind you, hands warm and slipping under his shirt that you wore, palms heavy against your stomach like a hug. “Spend the day with me?” 

“Did you imagine I had other plans on the schedule?” You melted into him, your head leaning right onto his shoulder. 

“I just like to hear that you want to spend the day with me,” he kissed right along your temple, letting his lips ghost over the spot as he muttered, “preferably at the beach.” 

Both of you knew it was always an option for the two of you, the train ride never one you felt like took too much time when you had the sand and sea waiting at the other end. So you packed a bag just for the day, sat knee to knee on the train, holding hands, watching the city disappear as you both made up fake baby names to see who could get the other to laugh first. 

“I like the name rutabaga,” your lips fighting to break into a smile, Soobin's dimples fighting against the soft swell of his cheeks. 

“Ruta-” he couldn’t help but laugh, losing as his teeth tried to sink into his bottom lip, “what even- how do you even spell that-” 

“It's a vegetable,” you're giggling, the two of you trying to keep it down, your happiness sounding louder in the silent train car. “You seem to like to call them food names.” 

“Only because the baby book we got says that right now they are the size of a blueberry, that's a cute name, baby blueberry.” It had been one of the first things he had picked up after walking you to work, slipping the small stack of baby books he had found on the counter. Every morning with his tea, he would sit down and flip through them, content with reading you quotes as you curled up next to him. 

“That is cute,” you leaned back in your seat, hand over the button of your jeans, “little baby blueberry,” 

And when the train pulled into the station, you walked hand in hand all the way down to the surf, following the same path you took time and time again. It was early enough for the sky to be washed in a grey blue haze, tipped in golden yellow where the sun tried to peek through the cover of the clouds. The lighthouse came closer and closer into view as you walked past the front of the beach houses, half empty and half full, as people started to come down for the early season. 

Sitting right at the end of the row of houses was a single house with a sign in the yard, half tucked into its own space, being so far off from the others. Soobin tugged you to a stop, his hands clammy with nerves that you passed off as the warming weather. 

He found it a bit embarrassing to still stumble into shyness around you, like he was still who he was before he met you, looking to impress you because he wanted all your attention. He would follow you till the end of the world with his puppy dog stare, circling around your head like a halo he had placed there. For a long time, he had planned this all out, longer than his plan to marry you; it felt like a package deal, like the house and the wedding were wrapped up together with a bow that would only be placed with your answering yes to his coming questions. 

When he had proposed, it had been easy to see what he wanted next, to focus on the plans he had seen that second time on the beach when you had watched the fireworks and talked about the snow. Everything was working out, the listing for the house going up only days after the two of you had gone home from the proposal. He had debated it a lot, thought about your work and his, what it would be like truly to live out by the sea. 

He wondered if it had only been a dream, something you joked about but never truly wanted, or worse, if you never truly wanted it with him, but you had said yes to his ring, said yes to life with him. So he had put in a bid on the house, looked into his savings, and wondered if it was a mistake or something you would both look back on with happiness. 

And then he heard the baby's heartbeat, like a wave on the shore, the final sign telling him that dreams came true every day if you reached out for them and caught them like falling stars. Sometimes they slipped through fingers, and others they landed right in the palm of your hand, and all you had to do was hold on through the ride. So he held on, took the opportunity to look into buying the house, and now here he was with you. 

It was on the same strip of beach as the one you had rented on his birthday. The long wooden walkway leading down to the sand, sun-bleached and surrounded by wispy, uncut grass. A wrap around porch already with a built-in swinging bench. The windows bare of curtains, the empty rooms waiting for all of the things you had packed away in your old room at Kais' apartment, all the things you both had picked up for Soobin's place. The two stories would hold the three of you, the baby's room already picked out, overlooking the lighthouse sitting on the cliff, just far enough to not wash the room in light all night long. 

He had walked the place only once before putting in his bid, and saw his life playing out right between those walls, the hardwood creaking on the stairs enough to give the house character he was ready to remember.

His hand fell to the back of his neck, fingers trying to calm him in the way you did as he blushed, sharing what he had done. “I wanted to wait to tell you until it was all official. I wanted it to be a wedding gift, and now it's more of a…I don't know,” he tried to laugh, his lips pursing for a second as he looked at your face for confirmation that he wasn't overstepping, as if you hadn’t been dreaming of moments like this with him. “I want you to like it, and if you don't, we can always find a new place, you know, or stay in the apartment, find a bigger one in the city if you want.” 

He took your shocked silence as denial, his rambling mouth working to find some way to redeem himself when he didn't need it at all, “my job said they could transfer me out here and i looked into schools and they all seem really good, they even have a after school program that takes them out for swim lessons in the warmer months. And I know that's a long time off, but I thought it would be good to look into and I know it's hectic in the summertime with tourists, but the house has enough rooms to invite the guys or family over and-” 

You laughed, watery and unmistakably happy. 

“Do you hate it?” because you were tearing up, looking up at him with eyes unreadable to him. 

“You bought me a house on the beach where we met,” you whispered, trying to hold in as much as you could without spilling out in front of him like a bag of gems on a table. “How could I ever hate it when I love you so, so, so much?” 

“Was it too much?” he reached out for you, thumb on your cheek, brushing along your skin, fingers pressed right under your ear. 

“No, you're never too much,” because you didn't feel like you deserved a love like this, not when he made it so easy to love him, so easy to let yourself be loved in return. In a past life, you must have paid all your dues, worked day and night to finally make peace for this version of yourself, and you felt like your luck was running out. That one step to reach for more would break you in two instead of bending you. But if you had spent all your hard work to have someone like Soobin next to you, loving you, you had no reason to ask for more. 

To live right there with the sea, with your little heartbeat, and the love of your life, you'd spend a million more lifetimes working to pay off whatever debt you must have been building. He took you to the front door, watching you as you looked around with wide eyes, hand squeezing his as you looked at all the empty space. A fireplace unlit, a wall of windows, a kitchen fit for holidays, and bedrooms made for life. 

He had waited to sign the papers until you had seen the house, sharing the place in both of your names, keys hanging next to keychains you had bought at a gift shop down the street years ago. And only a week later you began packing, late nights spent deciding what to keep and what to throw away. Your names were written on boxes carried down the steps by the boys who had helped you guys. A truck rented that was large enough to fit your whole life in without you ever realizing how you had far too little and seemingly too much stuff. 

The air is a mix of curse words and laughter, none of them letting you lift a thing, leaving you to tell them where to place boxes. The struggle of getting the mattress up the stairs was worse than when they had gotten it down the apartment's stairs. Taehyun and Yeonjun on either end, one always trying to go faster than the other, and neither of them listening to beomgyu, who insisted over and over again that Yeonjun was one misstep away from tripping and falling backward. 

But Beomgyu was already lying out on the couch they had brought in earlier, leaning up on his elbows to shout from the living room as you and Kai unboxed the dinnerware in the kitchen. Soobin was laughing, the echo of the sound heard from all the way upstairs as he told them where to place the mattress. It was one of the last things that needed to be done; the sun only just started to set when you all decided to stay out on the beach. 

Taehyun and you stayed back in the kitchen while the rest of them found something to kick around for a game. Earlier, you had paused in the day to pick up things for lunch and dinner just for the day, now you cut up the fruits they had picked, Taehyun happy to take up cooking the rest of the food. He hummed softly under his breath, the echo of the sizzling and chopping the soundtrack of your evening, before he asked without even looking up, “Are you happy?” 

The question was not one that was full of concern but genuine curiosity, like he was only asking because he could see it on you. “I'm very happy,” because it was the truth, like you had been captured in a snow globe, only nothing could have shaken you to disrupt the image. 

“I'm glad, I'm happy for you, I'm happy for him.” he left no room for anything else but his honesty, like he knew what it meant to you. 

“Thank you for everything, the move, and bringing him to Montauk randomly one summer day.” 

“Oh, don't thank me for that, any of it, I'm sure in some way you would have met and I would still be moving you two in here, maybe a little bit off from this timeline, but eventually. You two were made for each other,” he transferred his food onto plates as he said it, like it was something he didn't have to think twice about. “Should we call them in or just take it out there?” 

“Let's take it out.” So you did, you carried the sides and fruits, setting them down on the beach towel you had put out with a few water bottles for them. 

All of you sat down in the sand, knee to knee, listening to the waves like your little heartbeat was right there with you, the boys flushed from running around, eating like they hadn't had a feast for lunch. They all decided to stay until the morning, the lot of them driving the truck back to the city to drop it off. They asked about your new job at the little shop in town, and you told them about how you were going to miss the bookstore in the city, how your coworkers teared up and promised you always had your spot back if you changed your mind, but they knew it was falling on deaf ears. 

Kai joked about being sad that his roommate was moving out, even though you hadn't spent a night at your old apartment in years. The six of you leaned back in the sand until the wind off the water started to feel a bit too chilly, your shiver felt in Soobin's arms as he held you. “Okay, let's go in; the boys have something to show you.” 

“Me?” You press your hand to your chest, shocked that the night wasn't ending. And even when they took you upstairs to your little heartbeat's room, you didn't realize what you were seeing. You had believed it to be empty, your shopping not having been done just yet. But there, right under the little window looking out to the lighthouse, was a white wooden crib, a mobile of stars hanging down over the center of it like they had known your whole world needed the view of what they would look like in your eyes. 

They all turned to you, holding their breath for your reaction, smiling when you pouted, “You guys just like to see me cry, huh?” 

“Do you like it?” Kai looked at you so hopefully, his boyish smile breaking out as you nodded, “I love it so much.” 

“We researched to find the best one,” Taehyun clarified, “even the mattress and sheets.” 

“It was a bitch to build, I pinched three of my fingers,” Yeonjun said, holding up his hand, the tips of three slightly pinker than the others. 

“It was only so hard to build because he couldn't follow directions,” Beomgyu interjects. He throws his arm around your shoulder, tugging you into the safe space of his side, like he knew you needed someone there to hold you even for a second, “But don't cry, we even checked to make sure it was eventually done right, Taehyun tested it out.” 

“You put Taehyun in the crib?” You giggled at the thought, wiping at your cheeks even when you felt as if you had a million more tears to shed. 

“He is baby sized,” Beomgyu shrugs, only feeling brave enough to say it with you blocking him from Taehyun's swift hit. 

“We are only a few centimeters off from each other; you act like I'm on the floor in comparison.” he rolls his eyes. 

“Thank you guys, truly this is perfect,” but it doesn't feel like enough, like no thank you will even make up for all the good things they have put into your life. And when they go home the next morning, you ache to watch them go, to see them waving goodbye from the driveway of your new life. You had told Soobin to make it a point to invite them often, to tell them never to think they are not welcome over, because you would miss not having easy access to weeknight laughs over video games and takeout. 

If you had known what was coming, you wonder if you would have told him you wanted to stay in the city. But there was no way of knowing, not when your last days of happiness were spent wrapped up in Soobin, the two of you lying out on the beach, falling asleep under the sun, half hidden by the umbrella you had set out. 

You listened to the sound of the waves like you were back in that ultrasound room listening to your little heartbeat. Your love for both your baby and Soobin was so sun-warmed that it soaked into you as you rested on the beach towels you had spent so long rolling into the perfect position to sit up, slightly elevated. Soobin lying sprawled between your legs, arms circling your waist, his ear pressed to your barely there bump as if the sea was their lifeline, your fingertips tracing hearts and stars on his sun-kissed back, warm and lulling him to sleep when you moved on to threading your fingers into his hair. 

This was to be your life, happy and quiet on the beach, humming as the sun set over the horizon. Days spent with Soobin's lips on your skin, reminiscing about the time you went skinny dipping, the time when he had kissed you under the sprinkling snow, and yelled across the streets of New York to ask you when you worked next. 

You had spent those first three months of your pregnancy happy. With Soobin's lips pressed to just under your belly button, whispering to your baby like they would talk back, pressing his ear to that barely there swell and humming in response like he already knew their answers. The two of you unpacking slowly because you will have enough time later since you planned on spending a lifetime raising your family between those walls. 

Every kiss to your ring finger felt more like a promise and not a placeholder. You couldn't find it in yourself to stress over a wedding when everything was already falling into place. Because he had done what you wanted, he was committed to you, wedding or no wedding. Your baby would grow up loved, and that's all you truly needed. 

But that morning, you had felt the first faint undercurrent of pain. 

You wonder if you should have known what was coming. That hazy calm before the storm wrapped around you, blinding you enough so that you ignored that first unsteady sway of the boat you sailed on. Only a day away from four months, the first morning you had woken up with the sun and not after it, Soobin still curled around you in bed instead of being the first one awake, trying to sneak away to get ready for work without waking you. The window had been left open just a bit to let in the fresh air, the gauzy white curtains you had picked out blowing in the soft breeze coming off the water. You watched the way the sun filtered in, catching the specks of dust in the air, and listened to the way the surf hit the shore and how the seagulls chirped. 

Soobin nuzzled in close to you, pressed his nose right to your pulse point, humming low and content with the warmth of the bed, your body. You didn't need to be up until midday when you and Soobin had plans to grab lunch with Beomgyu and his family. The lot of them renting a house down the road from your own, spending the weekend capturing what had captured you after your first train ride out to the beach. 

It was just warm enough for tourists to start pouring in; the tables of every restaurant and café were packed full. But you all had grabbed your food to-go and found a spot near the docks to watch the boats take off. 

All of it felt normal, easy, happy, no twinge of foreshadowing staining the edges of your picture. Not even when you waved goodbye to Beomgyu and his family as they walked in the opposite direction from your home and towards the lighthouse. Soobin kissed your head, your hands interlocked, swinging between you two while you held your shoes in your free hands, feet digging into the sand with each step, making you go slower as you watched the water. 

“It feels like I'm exactly where I want to be, like I could die right now, I'm just…happy,” Soobin mutters when you're back in bed that night, looking at you in the moonlight with eyes shining, tracing the planes of your face like he was feeling them under his fingertips, following the slop of your nose, the curve of your bottom lip. “I love you so much,” like a prayer said in a confessional, whispered as if it were caught in candlelight and hope. “Nothing could ever change that.” 

You had fallen asleep happy, a vase filled with water, a tapestry yet to unravel. And there, the moment you had let hide behind your ignorance, danced to life with one careless glass-shattering swoop, unweaving your endearing dreams. 

It had been the sound of the faucet that woke him, the deafening rush of it like an omen whispered off the wind. His stomach had fallen, sinking down in a sea of worry over nothing more than faintly warm sheets, like everything had been fine only a few fleeting minutes ago. His arm was still under your pillow, body curved around the shape of you, except there was nothing but a few spots of blood where you should have been. 

The yellowing light from under the bathroom door washed over the carpet, mingling with the moonlight. And even now, Soobin can't help but question that if he would have known what was waiting for him, would he have been able to respond differently. Mold the part of himself that fell into unwavering silence and devotion into something that could have made you stay, that could have brought you back to him. 

But he could not undo the past, only erase it, and if there was anything he had wanted to erase, it was that pain; the agony of his loss, yours. And yet down deep inside of himself, he must have remembered that moment, almost as clearly as he had remembered the first time you had met, with his feet sinking into the sand, his heart on his sleeve, and the sea sounding like a lifeline, like a memory, like hope. 

He would have fallen to his knees for you then, just as he did there on the bathroom floor, speckled with red and tears, your hands trembling like a caught moth between his, your ring cutting into his palm as you mixed your water-stained words, the cocktail like a shot to his nervous system. “It hurts.” 

“It's okay, it's going to be okay-” but he hadn't known if that was true, the words feeling like a lie as they sank to the floor, his arms pulling you in as if that would stop the bleeding, stop the hurt. He would have done anything to take it away, shell-shocked into action, your phone turned downward on the tile as if it had slipped from your hands the moment you had noticed all the blood. He reached out for it, keeping you against him as you cried, tears pressed into his chest as he dialed the only number he could think of when you see that much blood. 

He had held you until the paramedics came, his hands trembling while they told him the same things that he had just said to you, as if he were the one breaking apart. He's sure he must have been, that everything was sinking under his skin, but he didn't feel the effects, not just yet, because of the shock of it all. Because there were strangers in his house, dressed up in navy blue, soothing voices slipping right past him when he watched them carry you out, and he was there following after, trying to keep up, his shoes not even half on. 

It wasn't until they pulled into the hospital's drop-off lane that he realized he hadn't even closed the door, hadn't even grabbed his keys. All he could see was your hand, so small in his, loosening your grip, the gradual release like an unraveling he wasn't ready to face. “Most of her bleeding has stopped,” the paramedic had said, the line supposed to bring some relief, but all he could feel was that ache, his mouth dry. 

And he watched the way your eyes kept shut, squeezed instead of softened by some kind of merciful sleep, tears slipping down your cheeks from the corners as you bite your bottom lip to keep in the sound. 

For years, the two of you had kept your relationship like a ball of clay, every new thing learned like a thumb pressed into the piece, molding the two of you into shape, unfired and easily worked. But that night had been a fire, burning and solidifying the two of you into place. If it had been a careless hand, smushing the relationship into a new shape, he's sure the two of you could have made it out. 

But when they pulled you into your own private room, the lights a blinding contrast to the rest of the night, half hidden in shadow, they wheeled in an ultrasound monitor and even without the sound turned on, you both knew your ocean wave heartbeat was gone. 

Left alone in your room to decide on next steps, the silence weighed heavier than the rush of your sobbing that soon broke. Awful chest-wracking sobs that tried to fill up the emptiness, tried to cover the sound of the roaring fire hardening the two of you into something that could only shatter instead of dent and take new shape. 

He held you through the blaze, tried to stay a rock that would not break down, would not cry, not when you needed strength, not when you needed him. 

“I'm so sorry.” Your words, drowning around a sadness he could not masterfully describe, were a bat to the glass house of his dreams, swung with no intent to hurt anyone, not even him. And yet they were a gut punch, a soul-leveling whispered statement. 

The soft voice of the nurse explained over and over about how there was nothing that could have prevented what happened, nothing that could have been undone. There, they had looked at you, hands clasped in front of them, voice as soft as the look they gave, as if their gaze would add more weight to the crumbling structure above you. 

Your hand rested in his, your fingers cleaned by a sweet nurse while his stayed red, your blood drying under his nails. And the only thing that came to his mind was the way the door to the house had stayed open, leaving room for more strangers to come in without knowing the scene they would step into. The undoing of your world before their feet in a way he wasn't ready to revisit so soon. 

While the nurse prepped you for overnight monitoring, hooking you up and taking your vitals, he stepped just outside the door, thumbs working fast to solve any problem he could reach for, anything easily obtainable, your phone the only one he had taken in the rush of it all. 

The screen had cracked during the drop, the fracture cutting across the background you had picked out of the two of you on the beach, a clumsy phone taken by Kai. Soobin's eyes had been squeezed shut, all teeth and dimples as he laughed, your lips pressed to his cheek. 

He couldn't look at himself happy, not then, not when before it had felt like a mirror, and now it only felt like a lie. So he scrolled through your contacts, Beomgyu's name flashed across the screen, his silly face a welcome reprieve, and for the first time that night, Soobin felt his chin wobble. Looking at his friend even in a picture was a constant he needed then, and as the numbers on the call started to tick by, he lifted the shaking phone to his ear. 

“Are you okay?” Beomgyu’s voice was a deep rumbling of worry and sleep, and in his mind, Soobin could see the way his brows must have been pulled together, his hand pushing his hair back as he looked at the time, too late in the night or too early in the morning. And then it was Soobin's voice instead of your own. 

“I'm-” he hadn't said it in the room with you; instead, he had let it hold his tongue down until it felt solid in place. And now it choked out of him, the force of it moving him forward, “im so sorry,” he tried to hold the tears back, wanted to stay the stoic partner who didn't crumble but the second he had heard Beomgyu’s panic it washed over him almost as if someone had pushed him off the pier after tying a boulder around his waist, he couldn't swim to the surface of his sanity, not now when he was being dragged down by his sadness, his mouth opening but filling with water, with tears. 

“Soobin? What happened- what's wrong- where's-” and somewhere in a house on the beach, Beomgyu sat up in his bed and listened to his best friend sob over the phone as if he had his heart ripped out of his chest. 

He was trying to wipe his tears, but his crying felt like bleeding, uncontrollable, and he couldn't find the strength in himself to stop it, not when it was this bad, when it hurt this much all at once. “She lost- we lost the baby,” his lips moved on their own, the corners turning down, quivering as he tried to catch his breath, his free hand covering his eyes, pressing into them as if that could stop the spilling. 

The words were a blade, cutting across his back, his chest, into his heart, burning and leaving him choking on the ash. He was trying so hard to calm the shaking, to stop the feeling of thrashing happening inside of him. But it was inevitable, the pain, the heartache. 

Dreams had not felt real to him as a child, you, had been the person to show him they could become a reality, your laugh was the soundtrack to dreams he never knew he had, your touch making them bloom alive under his skin, and before they had never felt so tangible but now, now he knew the consequences of being so deeply in love with something, someone, some idea, hope. Because this ripped him apart, split him down the middle, and burned. 

He sobbed, cried out like he was ready to spill his guts, the sounds feeling so deep within him they might as well have, the tears coming from some reserve he never knew was buried so deep. And beomgyu let him, he listened, he muttered into the hollow of Soobin's chest over and over again that, “it's going to be okay,” the nurses had said it, but he couldn't believe it, it went in one ear and out the other. But here with his best friend at his ear, his brother, he could swallow it down; he had to, for you. 

“I'm getting dressed, I can be there in five minutes-” he could hear beomgyu on the other end, shuffling around, climbing out of bed, tugging on his hair as he did when he looked for something. 

“No, no, I um- I called because I-i left the front door open, i-” he didn't know how to put into words that he didn't want to lose anymore, not tonight, not today. He sniffled, reigning himself in, his hand sliding along a deck as he tried to pull himself from the ocean, or at least hold on until the tide started to pull back out. “I just need you to lock up, and clothes, I-i don't have any clothes and I'm-” but his chin wobbled again, the tears that had been slowing now trying to wash back up his throat as he looked down at his stained shirt. 

“I'll be there, I promise.” he didn't need to say anything else, not when he could hear the war between each breath that soobin was taking, feel it in the way his fingertips had gone numb at the sound of his sorrow. He knew his friend, knew he was trying to pull himself back together even if he had to be on strings to do so. “I love you guys.” 

Soobin's teeth bit hard into his lip, the pressure heavy as his throat constricted, his breath held as if that would keep his sob back. He waited until he could handle opening his mouth without it reading the sound of a wound he didn't think would be closed for a long time, “thank you,” 

And when the call was over, soobin returned to your room, face flushed a deep red, the corners of his nose, the tips of his ears, the edges of his lips, the rimming of his lashes, and you couldn't hold yourself together. He came to your bed, your hand, tapped over with the IV they had set up, curled into his, clinging with little strength. He didn't care that he probably shouldn't climb into the bed with you, but he did anyway. 

He held you, your face flush against his neck, damp with your tears as you spilled out a fraction of your mourning. You didn't speak; there was no need, not even when he got up to collect the overnight bag from Beomgyu. 

Soobin could find no other words besides thank you, but it did not feel like enough, not when this was no light thing, but he knew beomgyu would have brushed it off. He would have gone to the ends of the earth for the two of you without question; this was no different, no thanks needed. But soobin knew he could not stay, not when he knew having beomgyu see you like this was not anything you would have wanted. So he left, understanding and with a hug that did nothing but fracture the glass further. 

Making quick work of changing, soobin made it back just as the doctors were coming in for another check-up, clipboards in their hands. soobin sat down in the chair that he was expected to spend the rest of the night in, pulling your fingers back to his, he held tight. 

“We so very sorry for your loss,” the words hardened something within him, the weight of them tightening his understanding of how his future would look, it didn't matter if it took months, or years for him to grow around the pain, these words would still linger in the backs of so many peoples minds, his friends minds, his own. There would be before this moment, and there would be after. He had seen it faintly in beomgyu when he had hugged him, and now he saw it written across the doctor's faces as they explained how they could make the transition easier. 

“Over the last few years, a new type of recovery treatment has been offered here at the hospital. It's minimally invasive and painless, only offered to those who have gone through tragedies such as your own. We know the pain is fresh, and the decision does not have to be made today. Because of the magnitude of your loss and grief, we offer both partners the opportunity to undergo the procedure. But I'll let Dr. Howard explain exactly what it is,” 

With that, the second doctor stepped closer to the bed you lay on, the machines beeping into the silence left between the spaces of melancholy. “Hello, this is quite a horrible time to meet, and I am very sorry for your loss.” 

Your fingers twitched in Soobin’s at the words, as if you too could feel the weight of the albatross being placed around your neck. “I specialize in the neurological field that targets memory. Through my many years of working with retrieving memory, we have found the very root of how they have been erased in the first place. This led to the memory erasure procedure we are offering the both of you now. It is entirely painless and leaves almost no trace at all that it has been completed; it happens right at home after a single visit to the office.” 

“No,” it was instant, almost as raw and true as your tears had been, immediate, and the strongest thing you had said in hours. “I don't want- just no.” because they were offering it to erase the sound of the very thing you had held inside you, not just the sound of the waves but the outline of a dream you never wanted to live without, even when it felt as if it had slipped from your fingers in nothing more than a few hours. 

It was too fresh, too painful, but you knew you needed to feel the pain, needed to know that the agony you were going through physically and mentally was because they were real, your baby had been real, they had been an amalgamation of your years spent in Soobin’s arms, an amalgamation of your love for each other. You would not wave it away as if it were nothing more than what it actually was. You would sit, you would wallow, and you would feel their loss, because it was the only thing you had left of them. 

“You do not have to decide now, we only come to offer some reprieve in this trying time-” and in a flash, you felt it, red hot anger, it cut through your sorrow sharper than any scalpel they could ever wield. 

“Get out- go-” you shook your head, hand shaking in Soobin’s as he tried to clear the air, his face still red but tearless as you silently shed your own at the thought of these people taking anything from your mind.

“We are very sorry-” 

“Get out!” it tore through you as if you were as fragile as a piece of paper, ripped from somewhere deep between your ribs, your lips trembling as you tried to hold onto the tears, because as soon as the fire was raging, it was just as quickly snuffed out. As if it had been the last cry for help you could give before it was all over, the last breath. 

Neither of the doctors stayed; they apologized once, twice, and left as quickly as they had come. Soobin did not stop them, did not speak up, and there your relationship began to mummify. 

It did not happen all at once, but slowly, achingly wrapped up in the emotions you were feeling all the way home, sitting in the back of a cab with your head leaning on Soobin’s shoulder. Your hand resting over your stomach as it had before, the paperwork scattered in the seat next to you, a pamphlet for the memory erasure procedure ripped in two. 

The two of you returned to an empty house, made emptier now that you were ghosts of the people you were before leaving that night. Beomgyu had made sure to pack a set of your keys into the bag of clothes he had brought for the two of you. Soobin, carrying the papers, the bag, the keys, unlocked the door for you, letting you step in first. 

But you could make it in no more than the doorway, not when you knew what was waiting upstairs, the unmade bed, the bloodied floor, the nursery. You felt your head shake, your eyes squeezing shut as you swallowed down the new wave of tears as they crashed down on the shore of your resolve. “I can't-” it was too much, too soon. Because something in your heart was dried up, wrung tight in a fist that was too strong to be anyone's but your own anguish’s. Here, back in the house you had built and filled with dreams was like walking into a coffin, and going upstairs would only shut the lid. 

Soobin's hand was heavy as it pressed to your lower back, warm and flat against you, trying to guide you forward through the mist clogging up the interior. “Here,” he didn't care as he dropped everything down at the doorway, he let it spill, and pulled you to the couch. 

Neither of you would know until later that beomgyu had taken the time to change your sheets, stripped the bed you would not want to lie in for days after your return. The bathroom was scrubbed clean when he had not needed to do so. He had come back and cleaned because he knew what it would mean to walk back into this house and see the mess. 

So you lay on the couch, soobin flush on his back, holding you against his chest, your hands making fists in his shirt, fingertips just brushing your pulse to remind you that you were alive. Because lying there had never felt more surreal, your body swaying in your mind, the couch a boat on a sea you could not hear anymore. 

And maybe that's why you couldn't hear it, because there was no sea at all, just a mountain of sand, so fine it did not brush your cheeks. The wind, his lungs pressed to your ear, the only sound you heard as your world hollowed and echoed the hum of your emptiness back at you, and that one line you had heard soobin speak. 

“She lost- we lost the baby,” whimpered from lips trying too hard to keep in sobs. 

You wished to reach out at the anger you had felt at the thought of erasing the memory of your happiness. Hold onto it as strongly as a balloon string in the gusting wind, pull it into you so that for one moment it would not be this ache but a fire. Something that cleaned and crackled, spit sparks instead of feeling like a pit that had opened up at the bottom of your feet. 

There was no curiosity as you fell down into the darkness, no light looking down on you. It was just nothingness. An empty black void that had no floor. Because as the time passed, as you lay out on the couch, with or without soobin, you looked up at the ceiling and wondered what it would be like to stand and bark instead of cry. 

But as you curled into the cushion, the emptiness pressed down like a blanket, comforted you like the hand soobin had pressed on your back when you had walked in. There was no warmth to it, but it was constant, weighty, and easy. 

There was no struggle to get up when you did not try; you could stay right there on the couch with no one's company but your own, and shed your incessant tears. That first week, you had learned crying was as easy as breathing, as forgettable if you did not think too hard about it. It happened, and there was no stopping it, not unless you paid attention. 

Not until soobin came and wiped at your cheek, his sweater sleeve wet as he sat next to where you had found yourself stuck, melted into the threading. He did not speak, not into the silence that had taken over; he simply helped you to sit up and wrapped his arms around you, held the back of your head as you pressed your face into the soft spot where his throat met his shoulder. You could not find it in yourself to hug him back, arms limp around his waist. 

You had been prepared to feel sadness, swallowing that thought down like a mouthful of salt water when you were asked if you wanted your memory erased. The pain would be better than forgetting, but you had not prepared for the way the pain had turned into emptiness. Into nothing at all. 

“You should change,” he whispered, the suggestion written down on a list of things you should have done, knew you would have to do eventually, but felt too daunting to do just yet. 

The sound of his voice, patient and soft, made your fingers curl into his sweater, as if the words had been the key to getting a small reaction out of you. The thought of getting up, of pushing your limbs farther than the bathroom, made you shake your head. “I don't want to go upstairs,” it was muffled but true, “not right now.” 

He did not press, not when you were all bruise, purple, and far from yellowing. He stood, let you fall back to the only safe space in the house, and rest. In the night, he tucked himself behind you as he would in bed and slept, his lips at the back of your neck, his breath like a kiss that helped lull you to sleep that you would not find yourself out of until well into the next day. 

Every morning you woke on the couch, your eyes opened to the dust dancing in the pale light, the sky grey, the sea churning. You would follow the trail of it, looking for something to bring you back into the beam, something that made you feel anything like yourself before. But even with the heat of the sun on your skin, there was nothing that could have made you want to climb up the stairs. 

You were a knot, braided of twine, fraying around the tension, unkept and struggling to make tea in a mug you had picked out when you thought love would always be enough to make it through anything. You let the ceramic burn your fingers as you cupped your hands through the handle, did not jump when the heat scorched your tongue, or the roof of your mouth. 

Tea was all you could keep down, chewing too difficult when your jaw felt locked from your grief, stilled too because soobin had gone silent, in the wake of your depression. He would hum in wordless greeting, kiss your cheek, and change the bedding on the make-shift safe space he held you in. 

The couch was the only space in your house that looked any different, a divot made from the hours of rest, a collection of empty mugs scattering the coffee table, a sweater thrown over the armrest where you kept your pillow. Everything else had stayed perfectly the same, frozen and as cold as you felt when you looked upon it. 

And that was the cruelest part. That everything moved on as if your world had not fallen apart right there in the bathroom upstairs. That every dream had not been misshapen, that every star you wished on had not blinked out as quickly as flicking off a light switch, when your whole life you had been reminded that the stars shone for you and your happiness. And now this house was a time capsule of your dream now lost, your ring a reminder, and your bed upstairs a collection of memories far too sharp around the edges to touch with your still healing flesh on display. 

But you tried, picked yourself up at the small suggestions that soobin made, even when it felt as if it took everything in you. Because how are you supposed to tell the one person who had seemingly stitched you back to life when you hadn't felt like needing fixing that you were nothing more than an open wound that was hemorrhaging the moment you walked past the threshold of your doorway? That there wasn't enough needle and thread to cover the damage that had been inflicted by no one other than yourself. He could try to blot away the blood, pack the site, and place his tourniquet, but it was no use when you felt this far gone. 

He had called out of work for you, his gentle voice rough around the edges as he talked to your new boss. The call ending was a vacuum seal to the room, sucking all the air out until you felt the film tightening around your skin. He called his job next, muttered dates and apologies like either of you had anything to be sorry for. 

The sweater he had helped you put on, a day ago? Two days? Softened with wear, the laundry detergent scent of your bed, worn away each time the cuff of your wrist brushed clean your tears. The mugs, a mix-matched collection of the years you had spent together, sat, molding at the hollow of them where you couldn't swallow down the last dregs of your pretending. 

You could tell him you just needed a bit more time; it was true, but after every utterance of it, where you felt worse instead of better, it felt more like a lie. And as the time went on, days blurred into something like condensation on the outside of a cold glass, you wondered how long he would be able to handle you like this. 

A shell of the person you once were for him, someone who was trying to claw their way out of the darkness, but found that, as thick as it might have felt around them, it was made out of nothing tangible, nothing that could have let you sink your hooks in as deeply as it had sunk its claws into you. 

He did not show it, did not say it; he kissed your temple, held his lips there, and muttered an ‘I love you’ like a prayer. Like his faith in you would pull you both from the wreckage in time, the ocean thrashing, your nails digging into the hull, refusing to leave because the building of it had been special, your initials carved into the mast. For him, you surfaced, face just out of the water, enough to try and trick yourself into normality. 

So you answered the calls on your phone, even when they hurt, and accepted Kai's invitation to lunch. Soobin's careful stare followed you as you changed in the laundry room, still too much for you to make it up to your bedroom, his reminder of how he could come with, call out again from work, hold your hand on the train ride into the city. 

Your refusal had been soft and insistent, he had taken care of you like he was piecing together a puzzle someone had carelessly swept off the table. Taking his time and letting the two of you breathe through your grief in their own separate, silent ways, but he was yet to find that you were missing pieces that once had been the center of your picture. 

And instead of letting him know, instead of telling him, you took the train, and the second you saw Huening waiting right at the end of the station, you fell apart. 

As soon as the doors had opened and you saw your best friend's downward smile, you knew you wouldn't be able to handle it anymore. Shoulders heavy, sagging under the pressure you had felt keeping them up on the ride, your meek smile dipping down as your chin wobbled, you couldn't hold in the tears again. 

Limbs weak, he pulled you into his hug, warm and all enveloping, he didn't complain as people split around the two of you right at the doors, like you were standing stones in a stream that roared too loud, too fast. He didn't tell you to stop soiling his shirt while you sobbed into him; he carried the weight of your body as you melted into your sadness. 

“You're so strong,” he muttered, like it wasn't a lie you threw at yourself to convince you to make it out here in the first place. He said it like he believed it, and you couldn't take it anymore. You pulled away from him, fingers rough against your cheeks, pushing at your skin to clean away the mess you were leaving. 

“I'm sorry.” It had been the only words that surfaced when you looked at anyone but yourself. You bit your lip hard enough to stop it shaking, holding your breath to keep your lungs from struggling. The pain scratched at your throat, rang in your ears like the sound of nails on a door, paint flaking, and wood chipping. 

“Don't.” Kai would never demand anything from you, but he drew the line here at you pretending, apologizing. “I wanted to see you, not a lie, you have nothing to be sorry about,” he wrapped his arm around your shoulder, tucking you into his armpit, and taking off some of the weight of walking. 

It wasn't far to the spot you two liked to go, a place that felt safe when it had been there well before your dreams started to change into something that looked a lot like the house out on the beach in Montauk. Here, on the street where the rain soaked into the scuffed, cracked pavement, underfoot, you realized how little you had thought about the senses you couldn't feel. Before, in the house, you had thought it was just the sea, but as the train took off, the tracks sounded faint, the rain did not have its same smell, the horns honking as you crossed the street you used to live on took far too long to reach your ears. 

If you had surfaced as well as you wanted everyone to believe, it would not have felt like this. This was you gasping for breath from lips pursed so the water covering your ears still wouldn't slip into your mouth like it desperately tried to. And for a moment, with Kai, you didn't have to keep your arms moving, thrashing under the waves to keep your body up, because he understood you without sitting in the same room. 

He was not in the water like soobin was. Kai could reach out without also trying to keep himself afloat. 

He would let you cry until your ribs hurt, shake until your bones had gone loose under your skin, and you didn't feel the pressure of having to stop so soon, to realign yourself so that your spine was strong enough to carry the weight of Soobin’s grief too. And it made you feel guilty. Devastatingly so, because you wanted to be strong, to hold him as he held you, and yet all you could do was crumble in front of him. 

Here at the cafe of your past, sitting across from Kai, who pressed his knee to yours under the table to remind you of his presence. You could ignore how the scent of coffee did not make you giddy with morning anticipation, how the grinding of the beans, the chatter of the patrons, giggling of the students studying in the corner all sounded dull, traveling under water to meet your ears too late for you to care if someone called your name for your order. 

Kai brings your tea over, places it in the circle of your hands resting on the table, and sits in the silence with you, unbroken as you watch the steam rise from your cup. “You're allowed to not be okay.” 

And you wonder if he can see the guilt that's clawing up your throat like smoke from a house still burning even after it's sunk to the bottom of the ocean. If, after every attempt at speaking, the evidence is tattooed all the way down to the pit of you. 

Blinking, you shake your head, looking anywhere but at his kindness, “No, no, it's not that, it's just-” you circle your fingers around the paper cup, missing the cardboard cupholder that's supposed to keep the heat away. You let the burn numb your hands, distract you from the stuttering, let it ground you enough to spit out the one thing you couldn't find the strength to say when out on the sand. “How can I move on when everything has changed? How do I make it better when I was the one who broke it in the first place? How do you just get back up after this?” and you're not looking for answers, just an outlet that isn't the inside of your own skull, you bite back the tears, “how do I go on when I did this to us?” 

“You didn't do anything wrong, it was nothing you did-” 

“I know- I know that, but the aftermath, it feels like I'm the one who's holding on, like I can't let go. And he's never asked me to. God, we don't even talk, and I think that's always what it is, my mouth feels too heavy to say anything when I see him, and he’s looking at me like he still loves me, and I don't- I don’t love me. Because I don't know who I am right now, I don't know anything, I just know I'm not who I was, who he loved before, and I'm worried,” 

“Worried he won't love you anymore?” he said it like it was hard to swallow, as if he, too, could see that first time the two of you sat on the train together, blushing and giggling like you had known each other a lifetime. 

“Worried that I made the wrong decision,” your voice cracks at the confession, split down the middle like a broken heart drawn on blue-lined paper. “Back at the hospital, they told me about this memory thing, that they could take away the loss, and I just- I couldn't. They wanted me to just give it all up, like it would be easy, they made it seem easy, like the loss wasn't something that needed to be remembered, as if it wasn't the only thing I had left of us before I-” your voice gave out, flatlined as you imagined all that blood. 

Kai reached out for your hands, twisted his fingers between yours, and pulled you back up for air. “Nothing about this is easy, for either of you, and it's okay to go back and want to redo things-” 

“But that's just the thing, I still don't want to forget them, even when it hurts, but it feels like…” like it might as well be the only path you have left to take, like the tunnel you're falling down is already taking you there, because there is no pinprick of light, just darkness. “I don't know,” you look to the glass window next to you, your face reflected, distant and only faintly familiar. 

Kai doesn't try to force it out of you, and it's exactly why you knew you needed to do this, have this conversation, sit here in a space that didn't feel like the kitchen at a wake for a funeral you should have never attended. “And soobin? Did he say he wanted to forget?” 

“No, we didn’t talk about it,” he had picked up the papers from the floor after that first day, put them away somewhere you couldn't see, and didn't say anything but I love you. “And that's just it, if I forgot, maybe I could be the person I can see him waiting for. Because that's what he's doing, he's waiting for me to be okay when instead I'm just rotting from the inside out, and he doesn’t deserve that, it makes me hate myself.” 

Your tears patter down on the hardwood table like the rain on the asphalt road outside. You feel the drip of them from your chin, but you don't clear them, don't care about hiding as kai looks in on the mess you've made. “I love him, but I can't love him, not in the way he deserves, not right now, and it feels like I'm just empty. And I know soon, when I can't even make it up the stairs after months of this, that he will know and he will be too nice to leave me.” 

Because all your dreams had turned to nightmares, the only thing that came to mind was the way it would look as he walked out the door. You wanted it to hurt, wondered if then you would feel it as sharp as a knife twisting in your stomach, or if you would have been too far gone. You let everything hang between the two of you now, let it hurt you and be just as unforgivable and inconceivable as you knew it should have been. 

“You lost your baby, you're grieving,” and you know he's right, but it doesn't sink in; you won't let it. 

“We, we lost our baby, but I'm the one who is making us lose everything else. I can't think about the house, the ring,” you lift your hand from his, your ring feels looser now, turning around your knuckle until it bit into your palm when you curled your fist to feel your nails dig into your flesh. “I was happy, this all made me so happy, and now all I can think about is how he got us that house to fill with life, and I've done nothing but lie on that couch dead.” 

“And what would forgetting get you?” The line was a coin you turned over in your head night after night since making it back from the hospital. Soobin's lips just brushing the hair at the back of your neck, enough to remind you he was there, so close you wondered when it would hit you that the cavern you felt between you two was internal. 

“It would be easier for him,” but you couldn't stop thinking about how it would be no easy thing to walk in, remembering the dreams you had of holding your baby, a baby you had not yet picked a name for, but knew you loved more than life itself, and leave with nothing, not even a scar. Your lips trembled, “it wouldn't feel like this,” 

Because if it hurt, so much so that it felt like you were a black hole, it meant that you had loved them, and it was the love you didn't want to forget. Didn't want to clear out the nursery beomgyu had painted, giggling as he put paint in soobins hair; didn't want to hide the crib the boys had built and gifted to you that first night. You didn't want to forget the way their heartbeat had sounded like the ocean, how soobin had cried and held you, kissed your skin like a promise. 

But the sea had stopped making a sound in your empty house, and maybe it was far easier to forget that love than drown yourself in the pit of the sadness it left behind. 

You knew Kai could see it, like an outfit you wore, no matter how well you tried to dress yourself up, clean around the edges, comb your hair, brush your teeth, that sadness was still written over you like a red pen to a paper you had spent far too long on to get such low marks. He did not turn away from the sight; he drank it in, having you in front of him, he memorized the divots under your eyes, dark and shadowed by a pain he knew he had little understanding of. All he knew was that your grief was clinging to you like a second skin, bleeding into your soul, and all he could do was be there. 

“I think that if you choose to forget, it won't be because you don't love them but because you loved them so much,” his voice was low, solid, and present, “and you have every right to want to hold onto that love, and every right to want to go back to the way things were. But please, please, know that no matter what path you decide, I'll be here for you,” 

Your shoulders slumped, your chin turned to the ceiling as you tried to blink away the glass in your eyes, “I know,” you whispered it because it never would have been able to come out any louder than that. “And I want to try, I'm trying to get back on track so that I don't have to decide, so that I don't- I don't want,” and there before you, you dropped your one fear, the one thing that you were fighting with yourself over and over again, "I don't want to lose him like i lost our baby, its killing me, and losing him, it would be too much, i dont think i would ever recover,” 

Kai nodded, his frown of understanding enough for you to stop the conversation dead in its tracks. “Small steps, I want to get better, I'll try,” 

And when you were headed home, Kai walked you to the train station instead of down the block where your old bed was still made, kept neat behind the door Kai always left open just for you. He held you, and this time, you kept the tears down, clinging to him as if that was the equivalent of a thank you. “Here,” he took your hand, wrapping your fingers around the gift, not letting you give it back. “You will always have a place with me, no matter what happens, forgetting or not, I will never turn you away,” 

He kissed the top of your head and sent you off. Your body slumped in your seat when you unfurled your hand to reveal a silver key, your old apartment number stamped into the side, half rubbed smooth from the years it had spent in your purse, pocket, hand. You had given it back to him when he was on the ride home from unloading your life in Montauk, months ago, and now you wished the gesture didn't feel like a step backward instead of forward. But a lifeline was a lifeline at the end of the day, no matter what turmoil it stirred inside of you. 

And when you got home, soobin still gone at work, you climbed the stairs. Your hand gripping the banister hard enough to crack your knuckles, you stood looking at the half open door to your bedroom, building the courage to cross the threshold you had been struggling with since you had returned home that night. 

It was small, but it was enough, and you were so, so tired. 

So you peeled off your clothes and fell into bed, under the duvet, between the sheets that had been unused since Beomgyu had changed them those months ago. You looked up at the ceiling, feeling the weight of the day start to settle over you. The conversation had been enough to get you to this point, to the bed you had feared, but it was a bandage, not a scab, over the wound you had been carrying. 

Without thinking, just as you had the second you had known you were sharing your body, you placed your hand right below your belly button and let yourself cry. No need to hide or to feel ashamed, as you thought about how far along you would have been, how you would have known if you were going to be having a boy or a girl. You would have stayed up late at night with soobin, genuine names slipping from your lips, whispered with question marks between the ones you giggled just to poke fun at each other. 

It hurt to think, but you forced it onto yourself, broke the bone again so that it would be able to heal straight. “I miss you,” you whisper out into the empty room, and you don't know who it's for, yourself, soobin, your baby. All you know is that it's true and all-encompassing. 

You sob, horribly, painfully, until you're curling in around yourself, face pressed into pillows that don't smell like him, like you, holding yourself with limbs too phantom to keep you from spilling between the cracks. 

It's Soobin’s soft hand on your back that wakes you. He drags his palm across your shoulder blades, fingers brushing the soft skin on the back of your neck. “I didn't mean to wake you.” The room was washed in moonlight, his shadow thrown across your body like a blanket. He was dressed down, out of his work uniform, and cleanly washed, his hair still dripping as he climbed in next to you. 

He did not ask about the room change, just pulled you in as he had on the couch, and held you until you fell back asleep. 

It was your first attempt at pulling yourself back up; the rest was found in going back to work, in stepping on the tiles of your bathroom as you got ready without picturing the way the speckles of blood had looked like ink underfoot. Instead, you avoided the ground, watched yourself as you smoothed your moisturizer over your cheeks, applied cream on the dark circles under your eyes to try and lessen the contrast of the bruises your insomnia was blooming against the soft skin. 

Soobin sat at the edge of the bed, his gaze following each of your movements, watching you in the way one watched a storm roll in over the sea, helpless and accepting. But he did not follow you in as he once had, no soft pleads of you to call out when all he wanted you to do was find some form of normality again. 

Neither of you acknowledged the way it once had been, how he would hang off your shoulder, trying to peel off your clothes when you were trying to tug them on. His soft kisses peppering down your neck like a promise of more to come if you just stayed. His lips tasted like honey from tea he had brewed freshly for you, like love you didn't know would grow stagnant. 

If you thought too much about it, felt it all at once, you'd have stayed, not because of him, not because he had asked, but because he hadn’t. You would finally wrap him in your arms instead of letting them lie limp around him each night. 

You wanted that, to kiss him and not think about how it felt like a reminder of times when it made your stomach light up with anticipation, joy, like little fireflies flickering in tandem with each peck. And maybe that's what you're missing when you leave for work. A kiss from him that feels less like something he does because he's worried, but because he wants to kiss you from nothing more than desire. 

“Call me if it's…” too much, you can see it in the way he waves at it, scared to say it out loud. Like if he utters the words, they will become real. 

“It's okay, I think it's what I've been missing,” but it's not; it's a lie. What was missing was so much larger than work, and falling into it like he had was not something you thought would fill the space, but was well worth the try. 

“I still want to know about your day,” you were standing in the kitchen, looking up at him as he brushed your cheek, holding your gaze as if he could catch what you were feeling in his hands and help you mold it into something else, something that would be easier to carry if you shared the weight of it. 

But you smiled, as best as you could make it, like pretending would let it bleed into you and help. You did it for him, for what you were worried about losing, and he smiled back. Something small and fractured, nothing big enough to show his soft dimples that hadn't been seen in months. It made you waver, sway in your step when he leaned down and kissed you just soft enough to make you see how you weren't yet whole again, both of you still two ghosts in an empty house. 

You were determined as you walked out to use the time away to recharge, to soak up your pretending of normality and calmness so that when you got home, it would almost feel real. The little bookstore with its sunbleached wooden bookshelves and creaking floorboards was a welcome space to try and heal in. 

But it had only just passed an hour in when you felt the filter you tried to hold up over yourself begin to wane. It had not been what you believed would have broken you down. The mothers with their children sitting around the little toy lighthouse under the strings of fairylights, reading and giggling over books you had set up. 

No, it had been your coworker, sitting at the checkout desk, her whisper picked up over the small shop as she tried to hold back the sounds of her happiness. She was talking to a boy, who leaned over the edge of the counter as he listened to her every last word. His dark hair was shaggy in his eyes as she leaned in, bumping her nose to his. 

It was easier to ignore something you had never felt but dreamed of than it was to watch something you had before slip away. You had not planned to cry, you had found that in this last week, you had gone dry, that the nothingness had taken the well and drained it out as it had your emotions. It was what had made the decision easy to call your boss and tell them you could handle a day shift. No worry that if you thought too long and hard about everything that you would burst like a water balloon thrown right at the pavement. 

But seeing some excerpt of your life before had your throat tightening, your swallow thick and hard to choke down as you busied yourself with stocking books you had no intention of reading or looking into, as you once would have. Now it was just a monotonous routine, a performance you went through while you counted down the hours until you could leave. 

You did not cry on the walk home, not even when you curled yourself up on the couch as you had that first day you had gotten back, the throw pillow tucked against your chest as if it could replace soobin and his gentle breathing. But you were rocking on the boat alone this time. 

If going into work had been to rebuild yourself in some kind of peace, it had done the opposite; it had only been a reminder of how much you had changed, how much your relationship had changed. Maybe in time, it would have been something that would have thinned, worn down into a shape that was completely different than the way you had started. 

But it would have been after years, not months, not a single night. You would have lived out your dreams, married, in your house, wrapped up in him, in your bed, kissing like love instead of routine. It's what you dreamt of before he finally got home, his hand on your back as it always was. “Let's go upstairs,” as if he could see the backsliding you were doing down the hill you had been playing at climbing and he was coming in to help you back up the small progress you had made. 

So you followed him, and as if he knew your dreams, remembered just as well as you had the morning spent with him, his hands all over, slipping into the waistband of your pants, along your sides as he pushed your shirt free from your body, undressing you. He mimicked the movements, helped you not into bed but into the shower, the warmth of the water fogging up the glass of the mirror until it was easier to play that this was the past and not a reenactment of it. 

This was easier, lying against him as he washed you, scrubbed you new because you were not strong enough to do it. His lips on your shoulder, speckled with droplets of water, his fingers scrawled across your stomach as he let you curve into his chest, held you as if he had always been made to, but you just happened to find yourself in separate drawers until now. 

And you cried, let the water beat down on you, let it cover your cheeks like the tears spilling because it had been a drought, and today it rained, memories and dreams like falling stars that did not bring wishes but mourning anew. Soobin could see it, worried over it the second he saw you curled back up on the sofa, the indent mimicking the shape of you, worn away and not made for you like he was. 

He cleaned you, and didn't bother about cleaning himself when you needed it more. He dressed you in nothing but his old shirt and your underwear, the same as he had seen you waking up in for years, and laid you down in the bed as he had in the sand, holding you to him, twining your legs with his like a loose braid. 

Your fingers holding his shirt, smelling like him, your nose running up the slope of his neck as you pulled yourself impossibly closer, wedging yourself against him until all you could think about was the way he felt so strong, so comforting. 

It had been so long since you had kissed over his pulse, lips just grazing his skin. It happened, once, twice, where you let yourself lean into wanting him just as you had before it all. You held him, body once stiff, melting into the shape of someone you once were, who you wanted to be again. 

And you kissed him, trailing up his throat, to his jaw, the edge of his mouth, where he gasped, not questioning the sudden surge of need, as you tangled your legs in his, rolled your hips closer to him, fingers curling in his hair like a memory. 

His body reacted instantly, hot and alive, unfurled as he met you halfway, pushing as you pulled. And when he kissed you, he did not jump back from the way you went from soft pecks, finding your footing, to a full on devouring. Something had been sparked, like an ember tossed from a car wreck, catching in a grassy field, lighting and raging. 

You pulled on his hair, moaning into his mouth when his leg brushed against a spot of you that had long since been forgotten. He swallowed your whimpers, matched them when you rolled on top of him, straddling his waist. It was new and yet all so familiar to find the spots of your waist he had held before, his fingers digging into your thighs, pulling you down flush against him. 

Your hands rested on his chest, pushing yourself up to catch your breath, to reel in your mind at what exactly you were doing. There, the two of you froze, looking at one another, washed in the moonlight, the sound of your restless breathing the only thing filling the room besides the rushing of blood in your ears. 

Soobin lay under you, lips kiss-reddened, hair a mess of inky strands on the pillow, spilling along the threads, his thumbs working circles into your hips, not coaxing but remembering. It was with a painfully fragile look in his eyes that he ran down your body. And for a moment, you almost pulled away, snuffed out the fire like one blows out a candle, but you leaned back down, ghosting your lips over his until he tilted his chin and pulled you in for the kiss you wanted desperately. 

He pulled himself up, meeting you as he leaned back against the headboard, his open mouthed kisses finding the landmarks they had missed for so long: the soft spot where your jaw met the edge of your ear, the thump of your heart pressed to his lips, your collar bone, and the hollow it left at the base of your neck.

You were greedy with your touch, limbs now revitalized for this one mission of exploring him the same as you had before, flipping through the pages of a book you had thought was lost as you pulled off your shirt, your arms wrapping around his neck, fingers dragging through the fine strands of hair at the back of his head. Your body arched into his as he dragged his nose down your chest, between your cleavage, and kissed at your sternum as you rolled your hips against his, still clothed at the waist and yet never feeling more exposed. 

His hands reached around you, holding you close, his fingers outspread along the expanse of your back, the warmth of them all encompassing, dragging down your spine until you were trembling for him. And you hadn’t even noticed that you were crying, silent tears that caught in the pale, glowing light. Didn't notice until soobin pulled away, cupping your cheek. “Baby,” 

And it broke you, your lips finding a pout until you couldn’t hold in the sob anymore, you fell forward, burying your face into his neck, clinging to him as he held you. “I'm sorry,” you tried, when you pulled away, shaking your head as you cleared your tears, “I'm fine,” but the words were watery, mixed in with your sniffle as you threaded your fingers back into his hair. 

“We don't have to,” he whispered, his hands holding you still on his lap, running up and down your sides, warming you, telling you it was all okay when it was the last thing you felt. 

“I want to,” you bit at your lip, trying to stop the way your chin was wobbling. You didn't know if it was a lie or not; you wanted him, you wanted normality, you wanted this moment, you wanted to remember who you were before, but you couldn't have it without tears, without some kind of ache. 

“I want you,”  you whispered it, looking into his eyes so he knew that, at the very least, was what you felt in your heart. 

“I just want to lay here with you, okay?” and you couldn't tell if it was pity or guilt he was feeling, couldn't read this look smoothed between his brows because you could hardly understand your own emotions. All you knew was that it made you cry. The tears followed a trail down your skin, dotting along his shirt, before he cleared them away. “I just want you to come back to me, nothing more, nothing less.” 

But you were here, right in front of him, hollow but not in a way that you thought would ever be filled. But you nodded nonetheless, letting him pull you back into his chest, rolling the two of you into your place in bed, the blankets pulled up into place as he kissed the top of your head. 

“I love you,” as soft as a first breath, a first kiss, a heartbeat. 

And you were broken, ground down to dust, sprinkled like sand, like ashes. 

The next day, you called out of work, watched soobin as he got ready, while you stayed in bed, your face pressed into the pillow on his side, looking out the window, half open, watching the surf crash down on the sand. He leaned over the bed and kissed your shoulder as a goodbye, and when he came back, he found you had not moved, and you didn't even realize the sky had gone just as dark as you felt. 

He washed himself, slid into the space you had kept for him, and did it all over again in the morning. Only this time, he pulled you to sit, handing you a cup of tea he had made, and cringed when you grabbed the mug around its base and not the handle. He sat until you finished it, and left without a kiss. 

There on the nightstand, your collection grew, a new mug for every year you two had spent together, piled up, haphazardly stacked, spoons still glazed with honey, stuck to the hardwood. The bottle of your prenatal vitamins was wedged between the wall and the back of the drawers when you had knocked it over that second night in bed. 

The window stayed open to circulate the air into the room, the curtains catching in the breeze, as you watched over and over again how the sea rose and fell without a sound. The silence of it was as loud as your relationship had become. 

It hurt, somewhere distantly inside of you, the shape of it circling around the center of you like razor wire. But it wasn't enough to pull you up. All you could think about was how much you wanted to do things, but the energy that would be needed was wasted there.

As you lay, as you let yourself be, you could see the way the only energy you had left was resting like a fine layer of water where your joints met the bed, like you were a glass on its side, still clinging to something but not enough for a mouthful if picked up and swallowed down. You wouldn't have even noticed if the ocean had swallowed you whole. 

It's how Yeonjun found you, the spare key you had gifted him so long ago, finally in use after not hearing from you for well over a month. You hadn't even heard the front door open, didn't hear him climbing the stairs, but even if you had, it would have been brushed off as Soobin coming home from work, your perception of time lost. 

“Hey,” he said it just from the doorway, your back still turned from him, but you knew his voice, could recognize it anywhere. He had come around when you had been stuck on the couch, but you had turned him away, not wanting him to see you like that. And even if this was much worse, you didn't really care anymore. 

You rolled to your side, looking at him with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his coat, his face giving nothing away as he looked at the mess your room had become, even when you hardly got up to dirty it. The laundry was piled in the closet, spilling from the hamper so that the door didn't shut, the nightstands with their graves, the sheets just as mussed as your hair, and the sweater you had not changed out of in a week. 

The house had become a tomb, stuck in place everywhere except the kitchen and your bedroom. Not one made out of stone, but one of molding mugs, dried tea bags, and silence that sank to the bottom of the floor like deadweight, suffocated and consuming. The dishes piled up, the rack of shoes next to the door empty, the contents spilled out, the mail stacked up next to the bowl of keys collecting dust. 

And you, Ophelia in her river, just at the surface of yourself, drowning in clothes now too heavy around your bones. Eyes bruised, pale, and sunken around every soft curve you had possessed nearly a year ago. “I didn't know you were coming.” You didn't even move to sit up. 

“I know, you didn't answer my calls.” he pulled out his phone, holding it to give him something to do besides worry, even if it was all his body was doing. 

“Sorry,” and he knew you meant it, even when it was said so weakly. 

“Don't be, I get to see the beach now, it's been a while,” he stepped in, crossing the threshold into the stale air even with the window open, sitting at the edge of the bed, reaching out for your hand, laying as limp as a flower cut too soon from its stem, fingers curled as if you were just starting to unfurl them. “You're cold,” he whispered, mostly to himself, thumb gently rubbing curled on the back of your hand. “It's colder in here than outside.” 

“It's going to snow soon,” you sniffled, pushing yourself up, pulling your hand from his because it felt all too revealing. You pressed your fingers into your eyes, yawning as you stretched your legs out in front of you. 

You knew the grey skies and seagulls' departure for what it was, the seasons changing, the crowds leaving. 

“Do you remember the summer we spent two days here and I got that horrible sunburn?” he laughed at the memory, and you couldn't help but give the smallest chuckle because you did remember that summer. The one right before you had met soobin, yeonjun had been pink and red all over, sitting up from a nap on the beach and groaning as he realized his grave mistake. 

“You laid yourself on the tile floor in the airbnb's kitchen and curled up like a shrimp someone dropped, even your ears were burned.” You pulled your knees up, hugging them closer to your body as yeonjun nodded, smiling at himself, at the fun you had somewhere not far from his house now. 

“Kai had to cover me in that slimy off-brand aloe gel we found, and it only took two days for my skin to look like a lizard's,” he had gone back to your shared lecture with sunglasses on just to try and draw attention away from the way his nose had started to peel. You and Kai had picked on him for months after, hanging the picture of him on the floor on the fridge. “You told me that the next year we should come when it snows, that you prefer the less crowded beach in the colder months.” 

“Yeah,” the two of you had made it out to the beach, too late in the day to spend much time just watching the water. You had sat in the sand, bundled in your coats, watching them string lights on the long walkway leading up to the lighthouse. The sea had been loud, crashing into every sentence you shared, the wind strong enough to turn Yeonjun's ears just as pink as they had been with his burn. 

You can't even remember the last time you set foot on the sand, or the last time was that you made it past the doorway of your room. Yeonjun doesn't ask you to go, not out loud, but somehow you both end up there, right at the end of your winding pathway leading down to the sand, grey instead of its lemon-rine color it holds in the summer. 

Yeonjun had helped you put on your coat, now somehow too big for you, bunching around your wrists as you curled your hands into fists in your pockets. Your scarf was still loosely hanging around the collar, the same one soobin had gotten you after proposing, bright and red like the string he had whispered was wrapped around your pinky and his. 

And there the sea sat, calm, lulling back and forth, slow enough to drag its sound out until it was stretched thin enough for you to talk. “Stop looking at me like that,” because his stare was heavy when he believed you wouldn't notice, weighty on your shoulders as you kept your eyes locked somewhere in the distance, where the waves broke the grey horizon with its white rolling foam. 

“Like what?” but he said it like he knew, because it was obvious, he had carried your mugs down to the kitchen sink even though you had protested, embarrassed all that once seeing them in his arms, even if he wasn't judging you. 

“Like you're worried about me,” the wind cut in across your face, your lips pursed as you looked down at your shoes, dark against the sun-withered wood speckled with sand, and yet you still didn't take the final step out onto the beach just yet. 

“I am,” he doesn't even try to deny it, as he steps in front of you, sinking in the sand, bending to catch your eyes, following them even when you try to look away. “How could I not be? Look at you,” it's not accusatory, it's laced with concern, pulled tight around ribs that were finding it hard to take a deep breath.  “You don't-, you’re not-, I am worried.” 

He let it hang between you two, looked right into your eyes as he said it, so you knew, so he could watch you swallow the bitter pill of it down. And still, even when you knew, felt it as deeply as the chill kissing the tip of your nose, you wanted to lie. “I just need time,” 

Yeonjun huffed, a sound that was more sarcastic than humorous, “time,” he nodded, biting back anything else he wanted to say, before he just let it go. You could see the battle, watched as he gave up, shoulders sagging, pursing his lips as he turned away from you. “I miss you,” 

It sounds so close to the way soobin had said it, I just want you to come back to me, as if you weren't standing right there before them. “I'm right here,” you had wanted to say it there in the dark, shout it out at the sea, at him, at the mirror. 

“Yeah.” yeonjun sniffled, his knuckle coming up to rub at his cheek, “I know, just buried.” 

“I'm trying,” but you hadn't been, not after the one day of work, a week ago? Two? They had been calling more than you had to ask for time off. You could feel that panic, somewhere flickering in the back of your mind, when you saw their number appear on the screen of your phone, but talking felt too much like teaching a lecture on something you only had an hour to learn beforehand. 

Nothing around the house was done, soobin went to work for longer and longer, and the days stretched like an elastic band that had lost its shape. “It's just a lot. I'm working on it. What do you want from me? To take up meditation? Hot yoga? Join a book club for depressed housewives? If you can even call me that.” It had been the most you had spoken in one go, the deflection like a hiss from a cat backed into a corner, too scared to realize this might be someone who wouldn't hurt but heal. 

“I just want you to be honest, not with me, fine, whatever, but with yourself.” Your jaw hurt, teeth grinding as you shook your head, your heel dug into the wood, and slid on the sand as you looked back up at the house. 

The window of the nursery was shut, the mobile stuck frozen in place as if it had been painted against the glass. Your bedroom window open, the gauzy curtain pulled by the call of the wind rippling like a white flag in the air. “You want honesty?” Your throat was tight, pulled in on itself as you squeezed out the words you needed to say, “i hate who ive become, i hate that i cant feel like i use to, that im numb, and it makes me feel so guilty because he- he still loves me, or i hope so, and that hope makes me feel worse, because he shouldn’t,” 

Yeonjun stays quiet, lets you sit with your confession between you two because he's not judging, he's grieving. “This isn't the end all.” 

You look back out at the water, to the dark, wet sand where the tide meets the shore. “Like I said, I'm trying,” 

The two of you stood out there for far longer than you had expected, shoulder to shoulder, not quite touching, but enough for you to feel the warmth of him. And when you both made it back to the house, yeonjun picked through your fridge, the eclectic array of foods had been bought by soobin on short trips to the store on the way home from work. But it was enough for yeonjun to piece together a meal for the two of you to sit and share. 

He cleaned after himself even after your protesting, washing every dish in the sink, stacking the ceramic plates and cutlery like Jenga blocks, playing at his own private game he was positive he would win after convincing you to shower. 

And when you were clean, your hair still wet, Yeonjun kissed your head, scuffing over the spot with his coat sleeve as if he were cleaning a window, a joke he found funny every single time he did it. Your smile was slow but genuine; his was melancholy-tinted at the edges. “Don't stay a stranger,” 

“I won't,” although neither of you knew if it was true or not, but it was enough. He left to catch a late train back into the city, looking over his shoulder at you when the door was closed. 

It was only the next morning that you found yourself up early, far earlier than soobin, who slept soundlessly on his back, one arm tucked under your head like a pillow, when you opened your eyes. His chest rose and fell, and you mourned to feel so far away from him. 

Without waking him, you made your way downstairs, following the same monotonous routine that felt easiest on days like this. Filling the tea kettle, you set it on the stove, clicking once, twice, on the burner until it caught with its flame. 

The mugs all sat in the dish rack, half emptied in your attempt to keep up with the boost Yeonjun’s visit had brought you. And when the phone rang, you answered, knowing it was your boss, knowing you didn't feel up to going to work, and yet still you felt dejected when she muttered a soft, “We're really sorry, but it's just not working out, if we need an extra set of hands in the busy season we will give you a call, but for now it's just not the right fit anymore. I'm sorry.” 

“No, it's okay, I understand,” because you did, wholeheartedly, you had called out more times than you had been in the building itself. Most times, you hadn't even called, and you were new, not like how you had kept the same job in the city for years, the seniority and friendships giving more grace. 

You should have seen it coming, smelled it out when the calls kept coming and you didn't pick up, the denial written off as anything else but what it actually was. 

The first mug to fall had been an accident. The brush of your sleeve as you placed your phone down had sent it toppling. The tea bag pressed under the broken ceramic. The watercolor painting of the lighthouse cracked in two, severed in a diagonal, like a sword had been wielded right through the memory. 

The little Montauk slogan found on hats, shirts, and coffee mugs is kept in perfect view. The catchy little joke because the beach was right at the very tip of New York's east end, just dipping into the Atlantic Ocean. 

at the end. Montauk, NY.

You had picked it up on your first solo trip out together, where you kissed his cheek over and over again as if you could spare the touches like grains of sand, giggling as you held the mug up for soobin, “so at the end of the day, you always have a mug to share,” he had smiled, dimples and teeth, nose scrunching when he pulled a hat onto your head with the same saying. Singing softly, “With youuu.” as if you had left off the last bit of your sentence and he needed to fill it in, just clarifying that he only wanted to share coffee with you, and only you. 

Time still stood, like an oncoming car had flashed its brights in your eyes as you crossed a road you shouldn't have been traveling down. You read the line over and over again, at the end, as if someone had carved it into the bathroom tile upstairs the second the first drops of blood had appeared.  

You didn't move to clean it, but instead reached out for the drying rack, picking up the next souvenir from a past too muddy for you to dig through. The logo of the bookstore you had worked at in the city was tattooed on the base, a chip already at the foot of the mug. You had picked it up the first time his mom had come to visit, the first time she had held your hand and told you how happy she could see he was. 

And this time, you let it fall to the floor deliberately, relishing in the shattering, the sound like an exhale. Because as you picked up the next one, throwing it down, hard enough for the ceramic shards to spray along the tile like spilling beads from a bracelet ripped from a wrist, you could finally breathe, force out all the air in your lungs until you picked up the next mug. 

The creamy white porcelain, one half to a whole set, a gift from Taehyun, silly his & hers mugs he had found soon after your engagement announcement. They had been sweet, painted with hearts, and the final ones to be thrown, cracking and splitting like bone, brittle and built on a promise you felt had been for a girl you didn't know anymore. 

Left in the rack, a navy blue mug, bare of any inscription at all, the same mug that had been in the cabinet of Soobin’s apartment when you first met. The lone survivor of the massacre you had never seen coming until it was too late. And there, scattered on the floor, a mosaic of memories lost too soon, swept off the counter in a fit that tried to mask itself as rage but wasn’t close to it at all. 

This had been a lapse, not in judgment but in your play at healing. And you had never been a good actor, because as much as you tried to hold it back, suck down gulps of air to avoid the shake in your resolve, you couldn't hide from the tears. “No, no, no,” the single syllable repeated like a prayer, a plea, a spell, as you fell to knees far too weak to rest on an altar made of fragmented dreams and vows. 

You swept the mess with the side of your hand, trying to collect the fragments, not feeling them cut along your palm, into your pinky finger. But the burn traveled up to your elbow, your whine mixing in with the whistle of the tea kettle, screaming and screaming, continuously ringing in ears that had blocked out anything but the echo of their own sorrow. 

Soobin rushed down the stairs, disheveled, hair an inky mess, as he slid to a stop at the sight of you, bent, bloody fingers curled around a fractured half of your Montauk mug, pulled to your stomach, as if it would pull you back together while you swept the shards of glass up with your free bare hand.   

For a second, he froze, stuck, still half asleep as he had been that night, the whistling kettle mimicking the ring in his ears before he hurried to push at the pot from the burner, his hiss at the heat from the metal quick before he kneeled down with you. “Stop-” 

He swept up your hand, thin shards of the ceramic digging into his skin as he cupped yours, your head shaking, as he moved to catch the large piece you had been reaching for. “Soobin-” but it was too late, his hand brushed at just the right angle, the burn of it as instant as the kettles had been. And there along his lifeline, blood bloomed.

“Fuck-” he sucked in the word, his fist closing instinctively over the wound. 

“I-” but you didn't know what to say, how to apologize for so much destruction. There was no word for how sorry you were, not just over the mugs, or spilled blood that now dotted the floor like a cruel retelling of your mutual ruination, but for everything. 

He didn't let you continue; he pulled you away from the kitchen and the shattered relationship you both had bled on the tile. Standing behind you, he cupped your hands over the running sink in the downstairs restroom. Peeled your fingers back away from the single piece you clung to like he would an orange, letting the shard of your past clink to the base of the blood-spotted bowl like a lost baby tooth that you would never get back. 

With care, he held your hands under the warm stream, brushed his thumbs over the length of your fingers, letting the pink water wash over the saying you had never associated with pain until now, at the end. Montauk, NY. 

There he waited until the water had gone cold, gone clear, and pulled away. 

You could hear him sweeping up the mess, the glass clinking against the dustpan loud like the grinding of cars sliding against the on-ramp rail. And in the mirror, your reflection only showed you in grey, speckles of blood over your sweater. It's how you found yourself in the closet. The door pushed open just enough so that you could step into the mess of the laundry. 

Your foot sank into it, and the light flicked on as you looked at the half-empty hangers. The mess of the drawers was half pulled open, as if you and soobin had been in a rush to collect the necessities and leave as fast as possible. It didn't matter what sweater you pulled out to replace the one you wore so long as it did its job. You added to the pile on the floor, kicking at it as if that would help. 

Half hidden, a pale white box was tucked into Soobin’s dresser, the emptying of his shirts from his collection revealing it just enough to catch your eye. Nearly the size of a shoe box, only flatter, was the hidden archive of that very day. 

It was almost as if it had been calling you, laid out just right in your line of sight when you were thinking about it the most. Because when you push back the lid, the ripped pamphlet is waiting at the top of your discharge papers. The Memory Erasure Procedure, as done by Dr. Howard M. 

The tear had almost underlined the name, all while cutting the grassy background of a sunny field in two. A picture of how your days could be if you just went and cleared away all the bad memories, or so they wanted it to appear. 

You picked up the second half of it, the slogan making your jaw ache, restoring peace & renewing clarity. It had hurt you, hand still trembling in the back of the cab, but steady enough to know you hadn't wanted it. It had been your instinct to deny it, to go against the way your body, your mind, wanted to grieve, felt too unnatural to dig around in someone's head for memories that didn’t hurt. 

But they did hurt; they broke something inside you to look back on, if you lay in bed and thought too long about the sand, Soobin’s ear pressed to your belly, your laugh, his. It was all enough to have you crushed far longer than you had intended the memory to leave you. 

You had been holding onto them still, waiting for the moment when they would clear up, when the haze around them was not poisonous to breathe in, waiting for the part in the play when you knew it would end happily. Only it was months later, nearly a year later, and you weren't better, no incline on your health but a downward spiral that was never ending, as if you had been sucked down the drain and hadn't yet fallen into the lake just yet.

And that's the bit you were holding on to, the just yet, you were waiting for the moment of clarity to come on its own, the internal peace that would work its way into the spaces that had collected dust and echoed your silence back at you. But whatever hill you had been climbing was steep, steep enough to burn your calves and lock them in place, freezing you in time so that when the landslide came, it swept you back to the bottom and buried you under the rubble, and now you were too tired to dig yourself out from the mess. 

There had been hope that someone would come and help, but it was given up when they had attempted, and you found that there was a certain comfort in the darkness, one that was familiar because it was coming from deep within your bones, as if somewhere inside you, that instinct of an animal knowing its time was near had taken over. You had circled your spot like a vulture did its prey, and laid down and sank deeper into the reprieve. 

You could see the end, felt it with every absence of a kiss on your cheek when soobin left for work, where he had called for extra hours outside of the house he had built on the very dreams and memories they had offered to erase. 

Your thumb ran over the list of benefits they provided: Reduced symptoms of grief, trauma, or anxiety, Improved mood and emotional stability, Enhanced ability to form new, healthy attachments.  

It shouldn't have felt so gutting. The list was like a sharp knife that completed the evisceration. And you knew it was everything you should have wanted, for yourself, for him. How easy they made it seem, painless, no scars, just spots in your mind that you couldn't fill in. days and moments that would be replaced like most insignificant moments in life were, you would know you had lived that day but it would be written off as having done what you always did, not anything life altering enough to be forgotten. 

At the first mention, it had made you angry, your snap as loud as a whip, as fractured as the mugs you had just thrown down, and yet now even that memory had been eaten by the emptiness. And now all you sat with was guilt. 

If there had been time to think, talk it through, maybe the two of you could have been saved. Mourned and let it shred you to ribbons, and then find yourself awake in bed braided anew. But you had let yourself, your relationship, your dreams, rot at the bottom of a sea that never stopped churning. And soobin had fought the waves, carried you as best as he could, but you could see how tired it was making him to love you. 

And how could he not be tried? As much as Kai and Yeonjun could tell you otherwise, they did not live in your skin, did not sleep in the same bed as him and wonder how life for him would be so much easier without you in it. It kept you up, not just the lost dreams but the torment of knowing you were the problem. He could get up, brush his teeth, comb his hair, get dressed, work, and what could you do? What had you done?

The seedlings of the separation had been set early, maybe even before the loss, maybe in the thin stretch of the years between the engagement and the wedding that never came. Maybe your rose colored glasses had been too thick, too pink, too red, for you to see the signs. You had picked over that scab so often that the wound would never heal, and this, who you had become, had only stitched the skin in the opposite direction, flayed instead of healed. 

He waits, patient, and as hopeful as the boy who had waited until Monday rolled around so he could see you again at your job. And as of right now, it feels like he will be waiting a lifetime because you don't have a breadcrumb trail leading back to the girl you used to be. 

If time could heal all wounds, how could it not also create them? He would wait, he would stay, he would watch you, love you until it was only because he remembered that he once had, not because he did. You would suck the life out of him, you already had, even if you were the only person who could see it, admit it. And you couldn't let him do that. 

Couldn't let him sit and love you, couldn’t let him sit and wait for someone who knew they were too far gone, who had stitched their shared loss into their skin and wore it like a tattoo, and let it scream out into the silence. Couldn't let him pour himself empty into your glass that was riddled with fractures. 

If you love him, really, truly, deeply loved him, you would give him the only thing you had left inside you, worth anything at all; your ability to let go. The opportunity to move on without having you there to hold him back. 

There was no fight left in you when you made the decision; your mind was set, and even that didn't evoke anything else besides sadness. 

You dropped the pamphlet, placing the lid back onto the box, and neatly closed the drawer. Soobin was still in the kitchen when you made it down the stairs. He didn't question when you pulled on your coat, your shoes forgotten as you walked out in nothing but socks onto the deck. 

The tide was pulled back, showing the rippled, dark, wet sand. The line was distinct and cut across the expanse of your eyeline like someone had taken scissors to the sea and the shore. The air was just cold enough so that every exhale was like a puff of smoke, fanning out in front of you like a lost soul, curling around the edges of your lips like a goodbye kiss. 

“It's going to snow.” You didn't move at the sound of his voice, low and falling down your back like rain. Gingerly, he wrapped your dropped scarf around your shoulders, the brightest thing against the cloudy backdrop and your dark coats. 

You tilt your chin towards the sky, frosted pale blue, just bright enough to let you know somewhere the sun is hidden under all the layers of white sheet clouds. Icy and bitter, the wind burns your cheeks until soobin blocks the gust, stepping next to you. 

It's enough to bring the tears forward, the building of them catching on the edges of your lashes, not quite falling as he hums,” I don't even remember the last time I came out here to see the beach.” 

Neither of you had to say why, not with the rise and fall of the waves, the cawing of the seagulls gone for the season, the boats pulled in with the water this choppy. It was just the sound of the sea, even the lighthouse stood abandoned, the row of houses a graveyard of wood and glass. For all you knew, it could have been just the two of you out this far off the end of the Long Island peninsula. 

“Soobin, I’m-”  he can hear the weaver in your voice, in the way it gets caught in the cold and freezes in the wind. 

“Don't,” no matter what it was that you were going to say, he knew he didn't want to hear it, couldn't swallow it down when being out on the beach felt as close as he had been to you in months. Your hands, pushed into your pockets, left just enough room for soobin to link his arm with yours. “Walk with me?” 

Neither of you had your shoes on, and neither of you cared. The walk down was slow, and you leaned into him, his warmth. And this time, you didn't stop right where the wood dipped into the sand, but stepped out, let the grains slip around your feet, and watched how soobin wiggled his socked toes. 

You wanted to tell him, explain how you couldn't do this anymore, but when you opened your mouth, all that came out was a short, breathy laugh. Because he was here, still, pulling your scarf around you, blocking the cold, striking memories like you would a match, and despite the wind, you were willing to cup your hand around the flame so it wouldn't go out, not just yet. 

Dropping your head to his arm, you let yourself go and whispered, “I love you,” because it was true; despite all else, you knew that. 

“I love you more,” said like it was the start of a song you hadn't heard in forever but knew all the words, felt it in your fingertips, and sang along to every bittersweet nostalgic note. It hurt that you had almost forgotten it, almost as badly as you knew it would be to forget the color of his eyes. “So, so, much more,” 

You turned your nose into his coat sleeve, breathed in the scent of him deep enough to let it catch in your lungs, and held the air until you were sure you wouldn't burst into tears. “No, I love you more,” and even with your voice weak, it was a declaration, a vow, an oath. A vocal snapshot collected from all the flickering facets of your past together, where you had said the words between kisses, moans, and casual goodbyes. 

The two of you let the silence settle, the sea pushing back at it with its rise and fall, the waves sounding like the turning page of a book caught at its edge, the kind you had to check to make sure it wasn't ripped by the end. And you wondered if he, too, was thinking of your shared heartbeat, if it was at the shell of his ear like a whisper of a past you only thought of when the ghosts hummed late at night. 

“I lost my job.” You didn't need to say anything else, not when you both knew it was coming eventually. But you had needed to fill the space with something other than the creeping memory of the silent ultrasound. 

He lifted his free hand, letting it cup your cheek, not turning your head away from his arm but resting. “There are hundreds of jobs out there for when you're ready.” 

Your lashes were soft against your cheeks, forehead heavy against his arm, before you reached up to take his hand, as you pulled away just enough to look up at his already expectant face. 

He was so pretty, even in sadness, the cupid's bow of his lip, still slightly parted, ready to tell you no, because he knew what was coming, it was written all over you. You were looking up at him like you were tracing over every last feature of him, trailing the pen across his eyebrows, following his lash line, painting the exact shade of brown his eyes were. “Stop,” he shook his head, his teeth sinking into his bottom lip, holding himself back from saying it any louder. 

“I think it would be better if I went back to the city,” his fingers curled around yours as he twisted his lips into a pout carved out of denial. 

“No-,” because he knew you meant alone, without him. 

“Just for-,” he didn't let you lie, he pressed his lips to yours, drinking down your words, pulling them away from you as if it would make it any better. 

The kiss was soft, testing as the first one had been, and when he pulled away, his nose bumped yours, and he was flushed. Cheeks a shade of pink you had imagined was lost with the version of yourself that had been pulled from under your ribs. He looked as if he were worried he had startled you, as if he had accidentally caught an animal in hands that had only meant to feed it. As if you had just told him they sold shoes right at the end of the street. 

The wind rustled his hair, brushed it along his temples, and pushed the strands back to expose his forehead. And for a small moment, you mourned that you would never be back here with your fingers in his hair, your jealousy of the wind making your hand twitch. If it was going to be the last time, one last memory, you might as well just sink into it until you drowned. 

You lifted just enough to crash your lips against his, unlinking your arms with his so that you could thread your fingers into his hair, leaning into the familiar give of his mouth and the curve of his body. He wrapped you up in him, tugging you closer as your scarf brushed your cheeks as it fluttered from the breeze you couldn't feel when he was so warm. 

He kisses you like there was no time lost, as if you never stopped pulling that soft shyness from deep within him, as if you were cracking him open, splitting him right down the middle so that he could make room for you to share his space. He wanted all of you, in any way you gave it to him, in this love disguised as lust, and even in sadness.

Neither of you knew how you had found yourselves in the sand, your cold fingers at the base of his neck, his lips on the edge of your mouth, sliding down your jaw, his nose cold as he dragged it down your throat. He whimpered into your skin when you dragged a hand down the front of his chest, gasping when you slipped your hand into the hem of his shirt. 

You felt each breath under your fingertips, his stomach flexing as he rolled you onto your back. You matched him with every kiss, every push, as you widened your legs, memorizing him with every sense you could. Because he smelled like the day you had shared a bed for the first time, where he laid next to you as stiff as a board, blinking up at the ceiling as you linked your hand in his. And his breath caught just as it had the first time the two of you had made out on his couch. His body shuddered above you when you kissed under his ear. 

Neither of you had to speak, not when you could read every I love you, between touches and heartbeats, like a eulogy, so focused on holding onto the moment, tattooing it along your skin as he dragged his hand down your side and pushed up your sweater just enough to feel your skin against his. Your breaths mingling in the cold air, puffing out like mist, like lost promises, lost time. 

He didn't let the chill reach out for you, letting his open coat block most of the wind, his body doing the rest as he rolled his hips against yours. And he didn't stop you when you reached down to the button on his jeans, unzipping them just enough for you to slip into the waistband of his underwear. He moaned into your mouth when you wrapped your hand around him softly. You swallowed the sound down, held it in your lungs. 

It had been so long since either of you had been so close in this way, past the shower and the attempt in the bed that felt empty even with you in it. He hummed against your pulse, his open-mouthed kiss caught against your skin when you let yourself get lost in the familiar motion of drawing out his desire. You had been here before, just like this, with his hand sliding down your side until his fingers pushed past your panties and could circle sweetly over your clit.

He’d kissed salt and sun from your skin, blushed just the same as he did now, not from the cold but from your touch, greedy to feel more as he rolled his hips into your hand. Mimicking your slow movements, he soaked in every soft sound you made, pushing his fingers into you, pressing the heel of his palm in place for you to grind. 

It didn't matter how long it had been, not when you had spent years learning every little thing about each other, enough so that you knew that this last attempt at memorization was futile. Still, it wasn't because you wanted a last goodbye but because you needed it, and he deserved it. So you whispered the word into his mouth, “please,” as if begging him to ask you to stay instead of begging for more. 

It didn't matter that you were on the beach, the very one you had met, or that it was winter, just as you dreamt of spending with him. You let him push your pants down, let him melt into you, keep you pressed against your coat, the sand. You gasped at the heat of him, the stretch, the familiarity. 

Your hands, still sore from your cuts, made from memories too sharp, burned as you tangled your fingers into his hair, his face pressed firmly to your neck as he let himself be surrounded by you. The two of you in a world alone, wrapped up in your affection, your lust, the nostalgia. 

There was no rush; every movement, careful and deep, threaded with memory, so close as if neither of you could stand to be apart. He held you, kissed the salt on your skin from his tears away, as he had the salt from the sea. Not caring about crying when you were so close to slipping away from him. He knew it, felt it between every breathy whimper the two of you shared. This was different than the last time you two had tried; he had felt you grasping at him desperately, trying to hold on, find purchase on him as if it would have been able to pull you from the water. 

This time, here now, he knew you were letting yourself go, breathing him in as if he was the last bit of air you would ever swallow down before your lungs stopped trying behind ribs too bruised from chest-wracking sobs. And he was greedy, he wanted you, even like this, in any way he could, because he loved you, loves you, had never stopped, and he never thought he would, and he was just as willing to give everything up for one more moment. 

His tears caught on the hollow of your throat, sliding down your skin like an undone necklace, his lips finding your jaw, catching your moans when he finally pulled his mouth back to yours. He held you as you trembled, coming undone for him one last time, his weight keeping you in place as he reached a high too bittersweet and yet blisteringly vehement. 

And he didn't ask you to stay, not when he clung to you as if he was moments away from waving you off to a plane he was too late to grab a ticket on. You were as close as you could get, legs wrapped around him, arms locked around his neck, his nose pressed to your cheek, his browbone slotted into the hollow of your eye as he whispered against your skin like a ghost would into an unsuspecting ear, “Do you remember when I called out for you in the street?” 

His hands slid under you, between the sand and your coat, fingers tucked against the warm spots where the two of you met chest to chest. And you can see him back at the beginning, shoeless, one hand shoved deep into his pocket, the free one cupped around his mouth as he yelled into the night, the streetlights shining down like golden sunrays, his hair a mess, his expectant smile, his dimples. 

And just as the snow began to fall, in small, fragile puffs that melted on your cheeks and clung to his hair, you whispered, “I remember everything.” 

“That was the day I knew you were the love of my life,” and he held you as he had on the couch, as he had the moment he could finally wrap his arms around you for the first time. kissed you just as he dreamed he would while taking sips of coffee from paper cups he picked up from your job, just to get a taste of your lips. And the two of you lay in the sand like a swaying boat on a sea gone dry. 

His letting go and your running was a mutual mercy. 

This is what you repeated when you stood at the train station, your ticket the only one printed for the empty ride. The scarf tied around your neck felt heavy on your shoulders, your nose tucked into the fabric as if that would convince you in some way he would still be with you. Because his hands had been so soft as they wrapped you up as if you were a gift he had been all too excited for, peeling back the paper the day before he was supposed to open it, careful to make sure no one would know he had sneaked a peek. As if he were hopeful you would still be there in the morning, still his, even if you were in the city, even if you weren’t in your shared bed. 

The scarf felt like a name tag, one you wouldn't throw away, but tuck into the back of the closet like you would a receipt between pages of a book for safekeeping. The color is like a burning reminder of him, and as you try to keep the wind from your cheeks, you're flooded with memories of how he smells, what it was like to press your face into the fabric of his sweater, his pillow. 

The heel of your palms are numb, nails pinched against your skin, jaw aching as your teeth rattle, grind, the pressure holding in each trembling breath that wants to turn into a weak whine. You focused on the feeling of your closed eyes, how your lashes felt heavy with unshed tears you refused to let go of, not willing to look up at the way the snow fell on the beach with increasing speed since leaving the sand. 

It fell like rain, sheets and sheets of the flanks swirling in the air under the streetlamps lined up on the edge of the platform you stood on alone. Your world felt like a salt shaker, taken in a careless fist over a boiling pot, too casual with the flicking of a wrist that never intended the harm it was causing with one simple movement. Every inhale with closed eyes and aching hands made you sway, like you were the tide and he was your moon, beckoning you with slowness and promises you had to push against like waves at the edge of the rocky cliffs the lighthouses sat on. 

There was no Shakespearean end, no half-written tragedy uncovered with your closing of the door behind you, only silence. And when the train pulled in, tugging on the red end of your scarf with its arrival, you couldn't help but follow the line of its direction. He would be sitting on the back porch watching the snow exactly where you left him, the sea loud enough to cover the sound of your leaving, because to him it swallowed even the silence. 

You looked back because somewhere deep down you wanted him to be running back up the side of the hill, flushed red, socks slipping in the sand and snow, begging you to come home even if it was a house that hadn't been a home for far too long. There was no reason to be disappointed not to see him there; you had done nothing but ruin, nothing but lie stagnant like water at the bottom of a covered well, no stone he could throw at windows or like pennies mimicking wishes could change that. 

He did not come, he did not beg, and you did not stay, no matter how much either of you wanted to do the opposite. You climbed the short steps into the belly of the empty rain, let the seat right by the door swallow you down, and waited for the memories to chew you, to spit you out on the streets of New York. because behind you, the ghosts of the past sat giggling, sharing book recommendations to blushing boys who lost their shoes, who whispered funny baby names just to see you smile, who kissed you under every bridge you passed. 

You let the ghosts leech off your sadness, a final gift as if that would make them stay longer than you would ever know. Feeding their memory so that even when you forgot, they would sit here, haunting the very train you took to fall in love. 

There was no reason to push any of the thoughts away, not when you had so little time to dwell on them. You had only one thing in your pocket besides your phone and key ring, the half-ripped pamphlet with the number to Dr. Howard's office. 

As much as it said it would not hurt, you wondered if you would know, somewhere deep down, that something was missing in you. You had not known exactly how vast and empty you could feel, not until this wave of depression, and if that could be hidden, would the memory of him be tucked away somewhere? Folded down over and over like a piece of paper or burned to ashes? 

Loving soobin would leave a scar, even if they said it would be unnoticeable. There was no amount of perfected surgery or magic that could pull him away from your being unmarked. In the fine wedding of your heartstrings, his fingerprint was etched; you had not known it, not until he looked up at you with his boyish smile and eyes warm enough to feel like nostalgia. It was not something they could erase, not entirely, because it was a part of you far longer than you had known him. 

It would not be easy to erase him when he was woven too deeply into the threads of your tapestry. You knew it as soon as you stepped off the train and looked out at the road, packed with cars leading to places you never envisioned going, with people you never cared to meet. His question hangs in the air like a knife on a string. Do you remember when I called out for you in the street? Here you had been just a girl, and you learned that heartbeats had wings, ones that were made of wax and beat for boys who felt like the summer sun on bare shoulders. 

You ran, not caring about the stares, face scrunched to keep back the tears because it felt all too real now, three hours away from him. Your coat was too heavy, too warm, suffocating when it wasn't snowing in the city just yet. Every step down your old street, up the stairs to your apartment shared with a life before him felt heavy, weighted with iron tied around your ankles. 

You had not called Kai, not when you had only thought about soobin and his hands, his last breaths puffed into your lungs as if it would reanimate you. It had slipped your mind to ask if it was okay to run to him when you were looking for someone to tell you it was okay, that it would all work out no matter what you chose to do. 

Instead, you had picked up the key that Kai had turned into your palm, and fell into the familiarity of coming back to your shared apartment as if it was another day after class, or work, only now your hands were shaking, trembling enough to miss each attempt to fit the key into the lock. 

Everything was overstimulating: the flickering overhead light down the hall, the sweat now making its way down the back of your neck from so many layers of clothes, the tears that blurred everything around you and made your throat tighten enough to feel like a hand had replaced your scarf. “Fuck,” you blurted the word, moments before the door pulled open. 

Kai stood bathed in the golden light from the lamp in the far corner, still dressed down in his pajamas, hair a frizzy mess, eyebrows pulled in concern at the very sight of you being at his doorstep. “Kai,” his name was a sob, like the bubbling sound from a stopper being pulled from a tub's drain. 

He pulled you into him, tucked your face into his chest, and held you while you fell apart, the gentle swaying of his body allowing you to spill out. It didn't matter how or why you showed up, he would take you in just as he said he would. You let him pull you in past the door, and as soon as he let you go to shut it, you ripped off your scarf, shedding your coat, your shoes. Your hands wiped at your cheeks, knuckles digging into your eye sockets to force yourself to stop the incessant tears. 

You wanted to sound clear, to make it known that this was a decision made from reason and not one made from wallowing, even if it was all that was written over you. 

Holding your breath, you looked around at the space you once shared, now tinted with the years of Kai having been alone. The small touches you had placed over it were still there, only added to. He kept the hooks by the front door, still half filled haphazardly with his winter coats, your jacket placed right where he always kept the spot open for guests. Your scarf slipped to the floor, even after he had taken the time to make sure it would stay in place, the red fabric like a pool of blood at the entryway. 

He still used the blanket you kept on the back of the sofa; the pillows never switched out, even as they started to flatten over the years. The coffee table was picked out for its color and price when the two of you had scraped by for cash to spend on to have somewhere to eat besides standing in the kitchen. He had added to the collection of photos on the fridge, replacing the magnets you had taken with you to the house in Montauk with his own memories. 

Your old bedroom door was closed, right across the living room from Kais, the door half open to show where he must have climbed out of bed on his off day to let you in. 

Life had gone on, yours, his, even if it felt familiar, it felt distant. As if you were stepping back into your childhood bedroom after the first year of college, no ghosts but dusty reminders of what you had grown into. The bittersweet nostalgia felt cold around its middle like a reheated meal you hadn't let do a full turn in the microwave. And there on the side table, a picture frame of your friend group, Kai’s sisters, all sitting around the living room on his birthday, crammed onto the small two-seater couch, smiling for the camera. Soobin's face was pressed into your cheek, his eyes scrunched in a laugh because you were fighting hard to get away from the way his lashes had been tickling you. 

You had only been able to call Kai for his birthday this year, promising him that in a week you would make it up to him when you felt less under the weather, even when both of you knew you weren't fighting a cold. 

It was the picture that pushed you to say why you had come to, “I can't do it anymore,” and even if all you felt was shame to come out with the confession, you were shocked to find relief in between every syllable. “I thought when I saw you in the city that I would be okay, that eventually I would get better, that somewhere there would be a light at the end of the tunnel, and I just hadn't found it yet, but it’s taking so fucking long,” 

And he knows what you mean, the realization not something that he thought was shocking when he could hear it in your voice after every call, knew it when yeonjun had gone and came back with red-rimmed eyes after the train ride home. “It's so much, and I lost my job, and I don't even really care about it, and I think that's the thing. I know how I would have reacted before, and now not even feeling a hint of that? Every emotion is so far away, and I can't do it anymore. I can't sit there and make him suffer through it with me when I don't think there will be any end to it, not unless I forget what happened.” 

“Did you talk to him about it? Have you told him-” 

“What is there to tell? I know exactly how he will react. I love him so so much, I can't hide that, because that's all there is, that's what's left, but it's so hard to act on, to be who I was for him before when I first started to love him, who i was when we first moved into the house because now im just empty, and he still would love me and when he couldn't anymore, because one day he will see what I've done to us, he will still stay and let himself be brought down by me because that's who he is thats that he does,” you fall to the couch, elbows heavy on your knees as you lean your face into your hands. 

“You didn't do anything wrong, none of this is your fault-” 

“I know that, somewhere deep down, I'm sure I know it, but we are losing everything. I lost my job, I lost my feelings, we lost…we lost our baby,” you whisper the end of the sentence, and you're sure it's the first time you've said it allowed. Soobin had been the one to make the calls to your family, to your friends, you had replayed the sound of his voice, growing cold with each pass of condolences and weak thank yous, over and over again in your head until it was all you could hear. 

You should have been there with him, at his side, leaning on him as he leaned on you, carrying the weight of the truth so that it was spread between you two instead of sinking you both. But you had been just as silent as he had grown. Let him sit with the heavy words from people who didn't really know you two, their comfort like bullets to glass, far too cracked to do anything but shatter. Everything happens for a reason. You can have another one, move on by bringing in happiness, showing that the spark is still there, and you can still be happy… 

It was all bullshit. You had heard it in the distance, and you hadn't given him any outlet to talk it through, both of you shell-shocked, knowing it was meant well, and yet it did anything but soothe your hearts. And maybe that's also why you were running, some selfish part of you was embarrassed about who you had become for him, a partner who did not know how to help with his grief, had not tried. Your mother had told you that it was natural and not something you should beat yourself up about. But it was so hard not to throw fists at a mirror that now only showed the parts of yourself that you hated. 

You had tried, but it felt so lackluster in comparison to what he had done for you, how he had made attempts and had been met with a brick wall, and still did not give up, even if it was silent. He was waiting for you so that you could build new dreams together, build yourselves back up, and work through your feelings in healthy ways that would help process your grief.  

But it was so easy to get stuck, so easy to think about what was gone, what had gone wrong, and still he waited loving you even when you didn't anymore. 

“I'm drowning, fully, and I don't know how to help it, but I know this,” you pull out the pamphlet, place it down on the table before you, letting kai take the half ripped sheet, “every time I think about picking myself back up to live out the dreams we had set out for us im right back down in my bed. Because once I think about it, all I can see is how easy it was for it to be taken away from us, how easy it was for the wave to come and knock me on my ass. There was no fighting it. I'm trying, but I can't do it anymore, not when I see him and what I did to him. I'm not the girl he proposed to, not the one he fell in love with anymore. We hadn't gotten married in all the time it took before I got pregnant, years, it took the thought of having a baby for him to talk about it again, for us to move out of the city, and now that's all gone.” 

“And I don't know why I'm so caught up in that dream being lost, why I can't get out of bed, why I can't let him love me. That's why I can't let him suffer anymore, because at the end of the day, I wouldn't want to marry me either, I wouldn't want to be saddled with someone who crumbles instead of snaps, he deserves so much better than whatever I have to offer, and I can't do this anymore. I try, Kai, that's that part, this is me giving it 100% and I want to give so much less, I feel it, weighing me down, it keeps me in bed, it keeps me from forgiving myself for what I did-” you’re bleeding tears, they coat every words and shaking breath as you lay out every thing that had been plaguing you. 

Your last moment on the beach had pulled a thread from you, anchored it to the sand and sea, and as you ran, you unraveled. That fine red sting pulling taut as you spoke without fear because you needed Kai to know why you were doing this, you needed someone to know it was out of love, just as well as it was selfishness. 

The couch dipped next to you, his weight drawing you closer to him before he wrapped you in his arms. And without knowing it, your shoulders sank involuntarily at the realization that it was not soobin pulling you into his sweater, but Kai. “You didn't do anything wrong,” 

“But I did! It was me, it was my body, it was my baby, it was my life, and I ruined it. I can't do this anymore, I can’t sit here and feel this anymore, and I love him so much, so much it hurts, it rips at me, it kills me and I cant lose him not like I lost our baby, and I’d rather forget it all then wait for him to realize im the cause, that im everything I know I am, I can't do that to him, I can't hurt him anymore than I already have and I don't want to forget him but I have to, I need to, for him,” 

“You don't have to, you could go to therapy, stay here for a bit, give it a week, a month, time.” His hand, warm and heavy, soothes circles over your back, grasps at ways to calm you.  But your mind is made up. 

You were always back in that hospital bed, screaming to be left alone, avoiding the one thing that maybe could have kept all this pain away in the first place. So quick, so simple, like knocking off all the dinnerware from a table, but you had been worried about the mess, concerned about collecting the pieces of broken glass like scattered bones grown from wombs of memories, that you had rejected everything besides grief. And now everything was laced with regret, and all you wanted was the first option. 

All you wanted was painlessness. It was the only dream rattling around in a heart made up and dressed like a tomb. 

Kai knew it, you both did. His attempts at convincing you otherwise were lost, and when he called yeonjun and left the two of you alone in the apartment, he knew it too. Saw it in the way you had begged to sleep on the couch, scared to find yourself in a bed that you had shared with soobin only a few times, the mattress far too short and his legs too long, having to curl up into you like the perfect excuse to hold you tighter. 

Instead, you lie on the couch as you would in your own home. Yeonjun didn't even speak up. He sat with you, your feet resting on his lap, his coffee cup, too cold for winter, dripped onto his numbing hand as the ice slowly melted enough for him to ask, “Are you sure?” 

You had already made the appointment for that day, making Kai promise that he wouldn't tell Soobin, that he wouldn't tell anyone besides Yeonjun. 

The office had asked for memorabilia from your relationship, one item that had significant enough meaning to keep soobin right at the forefront of your mind. You had nothing more than the clothes you had come with and your engagement ring. Your fingers curled, but you did not take it off, not yet, not until they asked you for it, not until the last moment. 

Yeonjun had promised to pick up the rest of your things in time from soobin, swearing to keep the secret even when you could see it on him that he didn't want to. You could only tack it to the list of reasons why you felt so guilty, your one choice of not erasing your memory sooner rippled the waters enough to affect everyone around you. If you could go back, you would. You had been closest to the shore then, closest to soobin, to your baby, to the life you had dreamed of. 

“I'm sure.” Even if it was heavy like a lie on your tongue, weighing the statement down with some resonance of truth, you carried it all the way to your appointment. 

Yeonjun held the door open to the sterile office space, the walls grey and peeling, tacked up with inspirational posters every few feet like a color bandaid on a scraped knee, too small to cover all the damage, but pretty enough for its job. 

It was nothing like the hospitals you had been to before, more like a dentist's office, the few seats already filled with people holding boxes and photo albums like driftwood on a thrashing sea, they prayed would calm soon. It was a small building with no more than three rooms in the back, faint elevator music covering the soft, muffled voices behind the thin walls. 

“Good morning,” the receptionist smiled, the brightest person in the room, the sunny disposition shining down on the wilted flowers we all found ourselves being once we had decided this was the only option. “Appointment?” 

For a second, your throat had tightened up, as if tears would come instead of words; spill with a desperation that read more like a plea than a declaration. You swallowed, hands tightening on the hold you had on your coat, tugged off from your shoulders to use as a blanket between you and the realization of what this all meant. 

It was Yeonjun who spoke up for you, nodding and taking the clipboard, papers, and pen with his pursed smile, the one he used for work and bad days. He led you to the only two free seats together, waiting for you to sit so that he could make sure you weren't running. He wouldn't stop you if you did. You're sure it would make him happy to leave here with you, intact but not whole, but the rawest form of you that there would be before bits of you were picked out like fruit from a cake. 

He passed the clipboard over, set the pen in your hand, and watched as you filled out your name. It was the only thing you could do to distract yourself, list out the basic information about you that had nothing to do with soobin, no, that wouldn't happen until later, until at least the second page of forms, where you would have to list out your explanation of why you were here in the first place. 

The stinging in your eyes was like someone was blowing air right along your lash line, your blinking only working for so long before you were finding it hard to read the checkmark boxes asking who you had brought along with you to take you home. It was only a little reminder of Soobin, of a time when you had been happy enough that the anxiety was eaten away at the edges like ends of books you had stacked on your shelf; spouse/partner.  

It had been so simple then, when your problems had been nothing more than cold feet worries and not soul-crushing silence, but even now you can't help but want him right here with you, pressing his knee into yours, his legs too long for the chair so he needed to spill closer to yours, when really all he wanted was to be closer to you, touching you. His laugh lit up the silent room, echoing as he joked about the posters, eyes going wide when your name was called, like he had been caught by a teacher for passing notes. 

The pen slipped from your fingers, falling before you had even realized you had been crying so openly. Yeonjun bent and picked it back up without much thought, held it out for you on the flat of his palm like an invitation, one to take or one to leave. He'd walk out with you if you asked, you kept reminding yourself over and over about it, and still you couldn't stop now, not here. 

But it didn't feel real until they pulled you back without him, your lifeline slipping between your fingers with lightning speed at a rate you couldn't catch, but you could feel the burn of. The chair, much like that of a dentist’s, was cold and squeaky, the pleather not worn down or softened by any number of people who had come and shared this very seat. The lights dimmed like the ultrasound room you had shared with soobin by your side, a screen pulled up right in front of you just the same. 

Your knuckles ached, the grip you held on your coat too tight as you bit back the wave of fresh tears threatening, the questions rising from somewhere deep you didn't want to look down into. If you went back, pulled away now, and ran all the way to the waiting bed you made for the two of you, neither of you would survive. 

You could go, let him tuck you in close to him, whisper that everything would be alright when you both knew it wouldn't. You could convince yourself that he was telling the truth long enough to make it feel real, even for a night. 

But what were you running back to? An empty house, gutted clean with the cracked porcelain made from memories you found so easy now to throw away, or so it seems. The ocean singing its mocking tune that you couldn't quite hear unless you were thrown into the deep end, haunted by the sounds of heartbeats and I love yous. 

There he would be sitting, waiting for you to drag him under the tide that had spit you out like weathered driftwood that hadn't touched the sand long enough to remember just what it had been grounded to before it snapped and drifted out into a sea it had never seen coming. He would wake next to you, in the house you had turned into a crypt, and place the last mug of tea down on your nightstand like he would flowers right at the edge of your grave. Whisper so soft like he would blow you out like a candle if he spoke too loud, kiss your temple like the cold headset they now laid against your skin. 

The dry acidic tang of the rubbing alcohol they used to clean at the edge of your brows burned your nose. Gentle fingers making sure the headset, icy and awakening, was set right into place, the drone of the doctor's voice coming in waves, painless, simple, all you have to do is remember for one last time. 

Your ring, the one he kissed at your knuckles while in bed, in the sand, slipped from your finger, placed, clinking like the tines of a fork on a glass of champagne for a wedding the ring never saw, on a silver tray just a foot away from you to look at and picture him as if he wasn't always on the forefront of your mind. Hands now empty, lay so neatly against your coat in your lap, as if forcing yourself not to curl them into fists would help distract you from what you were doing. And when they told you to close your eyes, you let your lids fall heavy, let yourself get lost in the memories, in poison you had slipped in the well to tell yourself that this was the right way, the only way. 

The machine hummed low next to you, the buzz of it like the beating of a moth's wings, like the littered kisses he'd pepper along your hairline. 

“Baby?” his nose nuzzled against your ear, so close it almost felt real, his voice a memory of a time you had been just on the verge of waking, tucked under the sheets in his apartment, his hands a heavy weight against skin worn into sleep-ridden bliss. “Stay with me?” 

You had lived this moment, heard him whisper over and over again the one thing you had been waiting for him to ask when you were laid out in the sand, when the snow began to fall. You had turned in his arms, legs tangling with his, pressing your face into the warm spot at the base of his neck, nose dipping into the hollow of his throat as you pulled him in closer. “Ask me again,” 

“Stay with me, stay with me, stay with me…” the words faded out, slowly until you couldn't even hear what was being said, only the rumbling from your own throat as you rolled out of an empty bed for work. The heater had been turned off late into the night, Kai and his plans to save money on the electricity, leaving both of you to sleep bundled up under layers of blankets, wrapped around you like arms. 

You rubbed the sleep from your eyes, cringing at the overhead light from the bulb right over the checkout counter, a stack of books waiting for stickers at your side, as your jaw ached from the stretch of your yawn. He laughed, the kind that you knew his dimples would show through, teeth just caught at the bottom of his lip, “sleeping on the job?” 

He placed a mug, steaming with tea, on the smooth wood, as if it were on your kitchen counter, not the register. Distantly, you can remember that you had lost a job, cried over it until you had broken something that had hurt instead of healed. But here right now, soobin was leaning over the checkout, bending to kiss the tip of your nose as you rolled your eyes, “you kept me up all night.” he had been humming in the kitchen, clinking plates, mugs, making something late at night because you had craved it. 

“They kept you up all night.” You couldn't help but smile, hand falling to the waistband of your jeans, only fitting snug enough to make it seem like you hadn't changed overnight. “How are my girls doing now besides being tired?” 

“Girls? Our baby is the size of a pea, and you're just picking a girl just because?” You tilted your head, looking up at him like some lovesick, love-struck fool, mid shift. But he was blushing, flushed pink, his smile turned downward as if he was trying too hard not to act caught detailing dreams you hadn't yet shared while tucked in bed at night. 

“I'm happy with whoever they end up being, so long as they are healthy, but when I think about you holding our baby, I see you and her, and she smiles like you.” he was just pulling in to kiss you, taste the edge of your happiness caught on your lips, when someone cleared their throat. 

You were caught frozen, distracted enough to spill the paper cup of tea you had grabbed at the beginning of your shift right over the edge to splash on your shoes. The customer waiting in the spot you had just been looking at, lost in some daydream you can't remember, passing you a book about whales, the familiar lighthouse out in the distance, just at the edge of your periphery as you ground your reality, listening to the echo of the waves on the shore. The water just reached the tips of your shoes, threatening to soak your socks if you didn't take a step back. “Do you remember our first time out here? Together when we walked on the beach?” 

“Like the back of my hand,” you had held it out for him, showing him the smooth expanse of skin, fingers spreading before he caught them in his, intertwining them like yarn woven to make a blanket, a sweater, before he pulled your knuckles up to kiss. You had no ring then, not until the next time you went out to Montauk together for his birthday. But for now, it was you and him, caught in the snowglobe left unshaken, just a picture of a memory now being cleaned of dust bunnies dressed in the shape of him. 

“Can we stay here?” Your heart was picking up speed, beating to the rhythm of your steps as you ran, feet dragged down from the sand slipping into your boots, clinging to your socks. Laughing as he chased you, bent to pick up your coat, your dropped sweater as you pushed open the door of your home. 

Not a house, but your home, with its creaking floorboards and open windows, the fridge covered in magnets, the sonogram picture hung right next to the filmstrips, every mug stacked in the dish rack. And soobin is standing in the kitchen with your baby on his hip. 

This was something close to a memory, the dream you had caught in your hands that first night in your bed after taking a million pregnancy tests. sick and yet too happy to care as he kissed your skin, explored your body in ways he never had before, fingers drawing shapes of hearts and whispered names like first laughs made in cribs that birthed fairies like stars blinking alight in the sky. 

He called out your name, a question on the edge of his lips as he looked over his shoulder at you, one hand holding a spoon as he stirred the pot he had boiling, bouncing the baby with their dark hair, giggling as the bubbles rose and popped, the floor a sticky mess as you stepped into the kitchen. The sweet powdery smell of baby lotion mixed with the salted air from the sea breeze. “Listen to how happy she is,” 

Your breath stilled, frozen in the moment, the weight of your dream so close to the feeling of holding her in your arms, not quite able to see her face but seeing the swell of her dimpled cheek as soobin bent to press his face into her neck, blowing a raspberry just to hear her squeal. 

In your dream, you had met them in the middle, brushed your fingers into your daughter's hair, and listened to the happy babbling. But now the image blurred out of focus, as if you had drawn them with ink and not the starlight the dream had been made of. Dipping the parchment into the water now swirling around your feet, the colors running, the ink bleeding, dripping like blood on tile, in the sink, until the water ran clean. 

Your throat was tightening, mouth opening, gasping as you watched your empty house fill with the sea, water rising, the hollow halls purged clean of anything but salt, and you. The rush was loud, like a dumping waterfall off a cliff, the hum heard even under the water as the riptide pulled you in. Spit out into reality as you surfaced, the offices dimmed lights a stark reminder of what exactly was happening, what was being lost. 

It was only at the dripping of your tears off your chin that you realized why you felt as if you had broken through the surf. “No-no- not that one-” the words sounded so loud, so desperate like closing fists and prayers. The memory of your proposal crashing into you at the sight of your ring sitting on the metal tray. 

“I even got you a ring.”  his trembling hands cupped the little velvet box, his laugh so shy, the tremor in his voice carrying over your bones, sinking into your joints and building you up at the realization that this was exactly where you had wanted to be. Happy and lovesick, right at the end, on a bed in Montauk. Eyes burning, hazy with tears that welled up just at your lashline like they did now. 

His voice was echoing around you, the words left when the sight of him, the feel of him, was slowly slipping away behind your tears. “I was put on this earth to love you, kinda way. Because when I'm with you, when I'm not, I ache. I think about how lucky I am to have you when you're here, and burn when you're not, and it feels bigger than the both of us, and that is scary, but also very comforting because it only tells me that you are the one,” like a church choir sitting in the rafters, he went on, your body remembering the motions, how he pulled you in, how he kissed you. 

You reached out fingers digging into your coat, tight enough to bruise knuckles, crack skin, as you cried, because now everything felt wrong, you didn't know how, didn't know why, but it felt so wrong to erase wanting this boy who was blushing before you as you leaned against your apartment door. “And next time, kiss me before you leave,” you were saying it, but somewhere distantly your mouth could only form the words, “no- not this one, let me keep just this one-” 

Soobin was looking down at your lips, his throat bobbing with his forced swallow, his mind working so fast he didn't have time to question if it was the wrong thing to do before he was leaning in, reaching for something you couldn't remember if you had ever had before. It was all too short, so shy like sitting under a playground slide, the woodchips digging into your palms the way your nails did as you clawed to hold onto this one thing. 

Because your hand was sliding up his sweater, drawing him in closer like you were nothing more than the only person in the world who could bring him to his knees. His lashes fluttered, hazy and drunk off the feeling of you curling your fingers in the hair at the back of his neck, wanting him just as desperately as he wanted you; every small touch, gentle laugh, so you pulled him in for one last kiss. 

Your eyes were heavy and raw, blinking open in the golden, dimmed office, lips buzzing as if you had only just been kissed, the salt of your tears bittersweet on your tongue. Your knuckles creaked, stiff and aching like you had them curled around a steering wheel for hours on a road trip. Nothing was pointing out why the crescent-shaped indents from your nails were burned in like a gruesome engraving into your palms. 

But somewhere right on the edge of your vision, you could tell something was off. Inside, there was a space so vast and full of seawater that there must have been something lurking underneath. You were a corked ship in a bottle, snuffed, and filled with echoes, but hollow while seemingly being told you were complete. 

“All done!” the doctor clapped behind you as the nurse lifted the headpiece from your temples. “Your scans are all clear, and it looks like you are free to go.” 

But it must not have been right, there was something you wanted to ask, found it right at the tip of your tongue, and yet you couldn't imagine what it was that you were forgetting. Your thumb swept over the indents your nails had left, counting: one, two, three, four, over and over as the nurse wheeled away an empty metal tray that had been sitting in front of you. 

There was nothing you could ask, nothing you knew how to pin down, when all you felt was empty. 

ོ  ⸝⸝⸝

It was easier to imagine you were still in the house, somewhere in another room, late to bed as if you had a long shift and an early morning. He would sleep because you had sent up to the room to warm the sheets, promised you'd make it up before he closed his eyes, and yet you never did. 

He left the bed wrinkled, the covers just pulled back on your side, just as you had left it that morning that he woke to find you a mess on the floor of the kitchen. Your sweater still thrown over the foot, dotted with blood gone dry, left out from his meticulous tasks he had set out to do while you were gone. 

The list had been long, and there was dust collecting around every corner of the house. He started with the ceiling fans, pulling a ladder from the garage left by the previous owners, climbing up with no worry of falling off with no one spotting him. You would have laughed at how he climbed far too high, bending back at an awkward angle once he realized he could hardly do anything with his head pressed flush against the rooftop. 

But he didn't find it funny, his jaw ticked, tight as he imagined it, angry at the way his reality was working up. The dust falling like the snow had over the sand; like ashes over the grave the couch had become the first time you had come home from the hospital. 

He vacuumed, the house silent instead of full of the music you would play loud enough to sing over the violent hum of the hover. The windows were open, the cold puffing in through the curtains pulled back, his coat and sweater on as if this was all he could get, the heater turned off when it was just him, and since he wasn't keeping you warm. 

He washed every dish in the sink, the single mug, carried down load after load of laundry, separated them by color, by delicacy, and made the laundry room his oasis. You had always dumped the warm clothes on him while he sat on the couch playing games. The fabric softener's scent flooded his senses before you jumped on him, pulling him as close as you could get him, not caring if he lost his game when he felt so cozy like this. 

You would sit watching him play over a voice call with Beomgyu and Kai, folding everything into piles that he would carry with him upstairs to put away after you had fallen asleep, curled up. It was how you had done it at the apartment and the start of your lives right at the edge of the sea. 

He didn't want to sit back on the sofa and think about how you had tucked your feet under his thigh on the colder nights, holding up socks to see which pair went together when they were seemingly all the same. So instead, he stood folding clothes straight from the dryer, precise with his technique, taking his time until the light in the dryer went off and all the clothes had grown cold. 

He mopped baseboards, fixed squeaky doors, and repainted the porch swing blue. Anything to keep his mind off the fact that it had been two weeks and you had not called him, had not texted him, had not breathed a single thought in his direction.

Maybe it was better. Something that you truly did need, you had spent so many years together, nearly every day and every night had been in the same bed, the same house, with words shared over the phone, or between shared air. 

Like a bone snapped in half, his life had fallen into two distinct pieces: you on one end and him on the other. And maybe to you this was a rebreak so that you could heal properly, and it was taking a lot longer than the first time the injury had occurred. Hastily plastered over in hopes that it would all be alright, but the splint had done nothing but make the two of you heal in a shape he had never seen before, close to the real thing but not quite right. 

He told himself over and over that you just needed time, more than he could give you when he was right there; he would wait in the same bed, on the same beach, far away, or close by, but he would wait. If it were the last thing he would do, it would be done, and he would clean the house, go over every little thing that had been set askew, and place it right so it made it easy. 

But with each thing he cleaned, each thing he fixed, you were still gone, and the house was cold and just as empty as it had been before you left. 

It pushed him to the beach, to sit out in the snow, not feeling the wind on his face, but feeling the way it threaded through his hair like your fingers would. The boats would be out, rare now that there was hardly anything to catch, but to watch the whales as they came by chasing warmer waters. The lighthouse would shine its light in its constant circle, going round and round as he told Taehyun not to worry about coming over, that he was busy enough. 

“Just for the weekend,” he wasn't trying to push; Taehyun was only giving him the option, showing that he was on his side as if there were sides at all. But it felt wrong to have someone else come into his space when you weren't there. 

Any other time, he would have been okay to have him over, but Soobin had left the door open for you and no one else. He was waiting for you to walk in next. Even if he wanted to see his friend, even if he knew it was okay to show you were grieving someone alive or dead, he still wanted to do it alone, and now that the house was clean, he wanted to do it alone on the beach. 

It was the closest place he felt to you when you weren't here, the last place he had held you, kissed you, told you he loves you. He could lie in the bed all day, smell you on the sheets he had neglected in his cleaning, see the spots of your blood on the sweater, and still it would not be as close as he felt with you right in the sand. 

It was the first place he knew you would go if you came back, right to the edge of the shore, looking out over the water with him, reaching out and sticking your hand in his pocket to grasp his, twisting your cold fingers into his warm ones, leaning your head against his shoulder without saying a word because there was no need to. He wanted that back, needed that back, and this was where he could imagine it best. 

Looking up at the house felt like looking at a closed book, as if someone had written the ending as soon as you had left, and now he was here with the only copy. He couldn't stand it. 

He wanted to run to the city, scratch at the door of Kai’s apartment, and beg you to let him stay, to make a home right there like you had before, when everything felt easy, when everything was better. He’d sell the house, put all the money back into a studio with windows looking out at the park, or a townhouse, a brownstone, anything you wanted, so long as you let him stay. 

Because all he wanted to do was have you back, whole or not, and maybe that was selfish, maybe he was greedy, but it's all he ever felt after one taste of your love. Living three hours away now felt like torture; a few blocks like it had been at the start would be enough for him, enough to relearn each other. Trace fingers over all the new scars and grooves that had been carved into skin far too weak to realize the damage that would come with playing at happiness. 

He wanted you back, in any amount he could get, and he'd change just about everything to get it. Because he had never stopped loving you, he had not come to any grand conclusion that he wanted to stay separated once you had pulled away. If anything, it had made it so clear that he could not do it alone, and he could not spend any more time waiting when it was eating him alive. 

He was angry, far too angry at himself, at the situation, at the damn house and its mocking bedrooms painted to hold cribs and wedding photos. Now it was a dusty shelf, cleared of dust he supposed, but still a mausoleum of all the dreams that he had let slip right past him. 

Letting the sea drown out his thoughts helped, but only so much; he was raging on the inside, thrashing around searching for meaning in the middle of an ocean that had been searched thoroughly enough to have nothing left for him. He let the cold burn, slip past his coat, gnaw on the parts of him that had been left out to dry after the sea had gone stagnant with your leaving. 

It was never anger at you, always at himself, for his silence, but every time he had opened his mouth, nothing had come out. The words were stacking up inside him, shifting around with every movement, every dusting, every fake smile he walked in with when going to work. He was not okay, not entirely when you were here, but now it felt so much worse. With you, he could hold onto something that he knew was right, and without you, all he could think was a list of things that needed to be done, what he should have done differently. 

It had only been a few days after you had left that he came out to the beach on a grey day like this, his navy blue mug in hand, spilling as he stepped out onto the sand. Standing in the kitchen, smelling chemically cleaned, he had made it out and stood where he does now. Picturing himself in his mind standing behind you as you slept on the couch. 

He had wanted to say something, anything, to make it better, if there was a way that he could make it better. But he had stayed silent, shedding his work shirt, and climbing in behind you, holding you because it's all he could think to do. What was there to say to someone you had let down? 

Without thinking, he had thrown his mug into the sea, tossed it like he would a stone, and it had flown, heavy and smooth, tea a ripple in the air before hitting the dark water and sinking without a sound. It had only taken him a second before he had rushed in after it. 

The water had been cold, soaking into his clothes, his coat suddenly heavy enough to keep him down, his eyes burning from the salt, his mouth flooded as he gasped at the icy shock of the needle pricks digging into his neck and hands. It had not been hard to find the mug, to turn it upside down, feet dragging in the sand as he walked out of the ocean on a day far too cold to be this wet. 

Pressing his thumb into the ceramic hard enough to hurt, he sank to the sand, not caring anymore if he was too close to the water's edge. He let the tide come in, watched the way the sand darkened, and poured away from him, sinking him lower and lower. 

You would have laughed at him, a blush creeping on his cheeks at the sound, instead of how they only turned red now because of the cold. He pushed his free hand into his eyes until the world went white and then red, into black. He laid back, snow still pushed back on the shore where the tide couldn't melt it. It didn't even affect him when it slipped down the back of his collar. All he did was laugh, sharp and cutting, splitting him in two at how ridiculous he was being. 

He had thought of selling the house then; it's the same thought he had now, dry and more of a sound mind than he had been so soon after you had left. Now he just watched the lighthouse, the beam spinning, guiding ghost ships that would never find their way past the rough waves; relentless in their search. 

Maybe that's what he had become, someone who sat still and waited, silent, or maybe it hurt him to admit that's all he's ever been. Burning as the lighthouse did, stuck circling for someone that had already seemed to vanish from view without him seeing it. But he had seen it, felt the way you had slipped away from him, and he had been holding onto the remnants, the house, when he should have followed, run after you, and helped patch up the relationship that had been wrecked, and he had been too stunned to help before. 

It's why he found himself back in the city. Getting off a train that led to you, standing in front of your old apartment, counting each of his breaths as if it would finally give him the courage to step up and knock on the door he remembered so well. 

He had whispered his speech to himself on the train ride, pacing back and forth at the station before it pulled in. A love confession tied up in promises and pleas, apologies and vows. What felt like a lifetime ago, he had spilled out before you, speaking without thinking truths he had not found fully formed until they left his lips. 

It had been the most honest telling of his emotions that he had shared, and even when he felt as if he was going to be sick, he had said what he knew to the deepest part of himself. You were made for him, the one person whom he had been put on this earth to love, to ache for. And it ruined him, pulled him apart at the seams to be so far from you, to sit there amongst your things and know you weren't coming back. 

He had sensed it when you had kissed him in the sand, one final time before you ran, and he hadn't run after you, even when everything in him was telling him to go after you. 

But that would have been selfish, he knew; you needed time and space. He knew it when you came back from visiting Kai and seemed revitalized, or as much as you could be at the time. It had made him jealous, the snake of it twisting around his insides for only as long as it took him to realize how anything to make you better was worth it. 

This was like that, this was as if he was standing, watching his friends talk about memories he wasn't privy to, happy they had a good time, and yet trying to find his own space to fit into. He wanted nothing more than for you to be happy, to find a routine that helped you get out of bed, even if it looked different without him. But it didn't stop the feeling of guilt, as if he wasn't enough to help, hadn't been the one who could, even after promising everything he was and had to you. 

He wanted to see you happy when you opened the door, even if it was a different kind of happiness that he had not been able to provide, but it wouldn't burn any less, and it was something he would never confess to anyone, not even you. It was something he would have to learn to get over, and for now, he avoided that pain with more distractions. 

The city was so much louder than he remembered it: the car horns, the lovers yelling in the street, the shuffling of his own feet against the concrete as he walked down the familiar road to your old job. He hated to admit that it made him feel so small, hated the echoing mock of it all, asking him what exactly he thought he was doing here. 

But he needed time, something to give him a warm up to seeing you again, in whatever state you would be in when he intruded on your well deserved seclusion. So he picked the one spot he remembered you best, the neutral middle ground outside of your place or his. 

The bookstore had not changed much since the last time he had picked you up here. The shelves were stacked high, with books littering the tables and carts yet to be put away, the coffee shop's buttery desserts and bittersweet coffee filling the air with warmth and fresh baked memories. You had talked about wanting to bottle the scent: books, coffee, and cinnamon, something to light when at home, tucked together on the couch with no plans. 

He stood in line, this time not looking back at the checkout counter you would have been waiting for him at. His smile plastered on his face as you made silly faces at him or blew him kisses. He would pretend to catch them, unashamed of the people around him watching his display of obsession. He had walked into your orbit, and he would stay as long as he could, circling you like a moon, round and round, never dizzy. 

But now your ghost was waiting at the edge of his periphery, the memory like a haunting, your air kisses jaw breaking sucker punches if he looked too long at something he had let burn too bright. So instead, he focuses on the chalkboard menu even when he knows he's ordering the same thing he always orders. The same cup of coffee taste that he had kissed off your lips so many times before. 

He practiced how exactly he would pass it to you in his mind. Where he would place it, whether you were in the living room, your bedroom, or the one opening the door for him. He stood in line, blushing as if you were looking up to him then, and not just a figment of his imagination, a mix of who you were at the house in Montauk and who you had been living in your apartment when everything had been fresh and new. 

You'd lean against the door, not quite letting him in. This sad, resigned look falling away to the faintest smile, the kind that warmed his cheeks and twisted a hand around his heart. He would let you pull it free from his ribs, let you yell at him to leave, go back to the beach, wait. He would let you pull him in, hand twisting in the fabric of his sweater as he pressed his forehead to yours, shyly breathing out that he couldn't stay away any longer, couldn't keep himself from seeing you. 

He was a tornado of emotions, ribbons tied tight over his insides, guts made into knots at the idea of you pushing him away. He would sell the house, move back to the city, start over, fresh like scar tissue, anything, even if it hurt. 

The barista called out his name, messily written on the side of two takeaway cups when he heard it. 

Your laugh, bubbly and alive. 

If there had been a moment to haunt him, it should not have been now, not when he was so close to seeing you. Not when you had not run through the halls of his dreams, or down the sand dunes covered in sand after him as he jumped into the winter water. You should have been there, even if you were just a laugh he had imagined hearing. This felt cruel but not artificial. Because deep down he knew he could never forget the way your laugh had sounded, anywhere, caught in the wind, at his neck, pressed into his skin, his lips, and most certainly here between the stacks of books where you had spent so much time trying to keep it down when he told you jokes that weren't even fun. 

It shocked him still, limbs prickling over as they had when he went in after the most trivial mug you guys shared. He feared turning around to find a stranger who had the same laugh, although he didn't think it was possible, and that's what made it so much worse. He knew exactly how you had sounded, had captured the sound in his mouth and swallowed it down, answered to it over the phone with his own laugh, played the soundtrack in his dreams because he knew. 

And when it came again, it echoed in his ears, over the coffee grinder, over the honking cars in the stress, and even over the sound of his own racing heart. Because it was beating wildly in his chest, both hands fisting coffees, the sea of people parting around him as he stood looking down at his feet, as if he looked back, he would know there would be an angel waiting, frozen in stone just as him, but there. 

“I'll call you after my shift ends,” it was small, something he had heard too many times when he had been late at work and you had early off. He remembered the way you would tease him about lying in his bed with him gone, rolled up in the blankets half dressed, waiting for him. He’d groan, beg the universe for more time off, or at least schedules that lined up, and still he would wait for your call on your walk to his place, standing outside his work building on a break just to stay on the phone after your shift had ended so he knew you made it home safe. 

“Stop worrying, you act like I haven't had this job and the exact same walk back to the apartment before.” and again you chuckle, “Okay, I'm hanging up now, Kai, byeee, stop worrying about me pleaseee,” and he turned around, fully to see across the short path it was to the checkout where he had found you so many times before just like this. Two coffees in hand and a prayer that no one else would walk up to disturb the two of you for the whole shift, so he could stay perched right there talking your ear off as if he had nothing better to do because he didn't. 

He didn't know exactly what to expect when seeing you again, at least not here, not when he had been planning everything in his head about seeing you in the apartment, laughing or not, but here it felt as if he had walked into a spider web, caught like the fly on the way he saw himself as now. 

You turned off your phone, placing it face down next to the register as you pulled a stack of books over for you to place stickers on. It had been one of your favorite things to do, meticulous in your work as you lined up barcodes and numbers with the spine. 

And he couldn't help himself but admit you did look better, fuller, as if you were finally taking meals at the right times, eyes less sleepless but still slightly hollow from the months of late nights and long days. 

It scared him to think he had not grown at all in his time apart, that you would see someone stuck in a past you had run from and did not care to turn back to. He had done nothing but clean, and even that had been in silence, no pondering besides the questions of what he could have done differently, and the anger. He felt nothing now but panic that he would not live up to whatever it was that had helped you. 

Worried that you were growing separately and not intertwined as you had been before. And it was okay, maybe the two of you had been too codependent, maybe it was good to find yourselves away from one another. But he still felt as if he hadn't found anything at all. He had done nothing but keep everything the same, silently waiting to orbit his moon again. 

He squashed his fears, takeaway cups burning into his hands because he forgot the paper sleeves at the sound of your happiness, and he walked up to the counter. 

You did not look up at first, and he took the time to follow the shape of your nose, how it dipped and led to your lips, pulled between your teeth as you lined your sticker, concentrated on the task to not notice him. Not until he whispered a weak, “hey,” 

It had taken almost everything in him to say, his heart bleeding on his sleeve as you looked up, your eyes, the ones he knew so well, passing over him, and this time without a spark of realization for who was standing in front of you. “Hi, how can I help you, sir?” 

Soobin gave a humorless chuckle, dry and brittle enough to crack a bit of the ice inside him. Maybe it would have been different if you had looked as he remembered, or if you had said it with the light in your eyes that you got from joking with him, or even if it didn't gut him to truly realize that he really had done nothing but wallow while you grew. 

But as the time stretched where he did nothing but look at you without speaking, he realized there was no recognition in your eyes. This was a look you gave to customers who truly did come to the counter to ask for help, your questioning, “Sir?” echoing around him before he opened his mouth like a fish out of water. 

He wasn't even angry, shocked that he must have looked so different, just as you did as time passed, but it had been two weeks, nothing long enough to forget, and yet you didn't even get the glint he saw at the edge of your eyes when you turned your attention to him. He had seen it even at your lowest, memorized the look as if he had been a light you couldn't turn away from and chose to look at head-on. 

Now there was nothing. Not a single glint, no teasing, no anything. Just a girl who had gone off and left him bleeding because it was better than bleeding out right next to him. Maybe he had been pulling you down, and he hadn't even noticed. Every talk he had with himself over these past two weeks had been right; you had been right to leave because he truly hadn't been enough for you. And he knew it must have been the truth seeing you here like this. 

“I forgot what I was going to say.” And as his world was falling apart, you smiled the same as you did on the beach in Montauk, when he didn't know you, and you didn't know him, and your laugh grabbed him in its hold just the same. Saying, “They sell sandals right on the edge of the beach, right next to the beach houses,” instead of, “If you remember it, just let me know, I'll be here all day.” 

He felt himself nod, chin making the motion as he turned on a foot too numb to know where it was going, and he left. Pushed past the door with his back so that he could catch on glance at you, not even turning to watch him leave, your head dipped to place the next sticker on the spine of a book he would never read. 

His hands were trembling, following the pattern of the earthquake he was experiencing as his hands clammed too tight over the cups he had picked up, one for you, one for him, now crushed, coffee spilling over the backs of his hands like a caress’ he’d brush over your cheeks. The scalding hot liquid bleeding into the cuffs of his coat before he let the cups fall to the concrete floor, splattering like paint onto his shoes, the street. 

Eyes burning, he knew how he must look, fighting back tears, eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot as he gasped silently for air. His chest tightened with every step he took, air scratching down his throat as he reached into his pocket for his phone, for something to ground him as he was running away. Fingers numb and far too slippery, he dialed the only person who would give him a straight answer. 

Kai had been avoiding his calls, texting back hours later with the same line, She's doing okay, I'll let you know if anything changes. But it seems he had lied, you had changed right before his eyes, and he hadn't found it important enough to mention. ‘Okay’ seemed to mean something internally different to him than it did to Soobin. This was better than okay; seeing you like this was when you was so much better was devastatingly bittersweet. You did not look as you did coming home from your job in Montauk; this was a new look, refined and aged as if your healing had taken no time, and his had stayed still open, frozen. 

He was happy and yet torn apart. Yeonjun could hear it over the phone, the shocked gasping mixed with the swift humiliation that he knew would come, “I just saw- I um-” he was breaking down, walking so fast, weaving between the walkers on the street, avoiding bicyclists, and honking cars. He didn't know where he was going, paying no attention to street signs but needing to bring back the distance as if that would help fix him too, give him the sight you had gained living back out here. 

“Soobin-” he didn't know what to say, didn’t know how to even when he had known it would come eventually. 

“She acted like she didn’t even know me,” he was crying now, tears hot on his cheeks, his hand pressing too hard into his skin to push them away. 

There was no need to be angry, not now, not at you. He knew this is what was best, this is what was needed for you, the relationship but it didnt hurt any less to see you happy without him, sitting at your old job like the world had moved on and he had been there on the beach waiting for you to dock your boat at the edge of the clif you had planned to build your life together. 

He was cracking open again, as if seeing you had snapped him, and now everything was spilling out, raw and unfiltered as he went, “she just- God, she just looked right past me, she didn’t see me like she does, she just smiled,” he laughed something broken and ugly, wet with his tears, voice slick with the sound, “was i that bad? Had I been that bad? Did I not see it? Did I not have it in me enough for her to stick around to not act like she doesn't know me anymore? Or have I changed that much not having her with me? Have I been that different?” 

Soobin walked right into someone, tilting and running into the wall from the collision, “Watch it!” he didn't even register the stinging of his shoulder, moving forward without any plans. 

“Where are you?” Yeonjun stood on the other end of the line, pulling on his jacket and grabbing his keys. He had witnessed you falling apart and didn't enjoy hearing your other half melting away. 

“I don’t know,” he was crossing street after street, not caring if the light was green to walk or not, he didn't even know the direction, just away from what felt close to shame. You hadn’t even been wearing his ring. 

“Meet me at the diner near your old place, the one we had your birthday at before you moved,”  he was nodding like Yeonjun could see, looking up at the street signs now having something to do, someone to explain, a direction to go besides home to a house he had cleaned till he saw bleached bone and faded memories. “Stay on the line, I'll be there in ten.” 

Neither of them talked as they made their way, the clash of sound from Yeonjun’s side of the phone mixing with Soobin’s as he made it into the only empty booth in the otherwise full diner. 

It was the one in the far back, the same one he had sat at for his birthday, only now it was him, clutching the plastic casing of his phone with white knuckles, and fighting back tears as the fresh sleet started to rain down against the window behind him. The low hushed mumbling of the other patrons felt like bees in a hive, buzzing over his skin, tingling behind his ears at the spot you loved to kiss when tucked into bed against him. 

There was no hiding from yeonjun when he came, hair wet and sticking to his temples before he pushed it back, shaking from the cold after getting caught in the frozen rain. Soobin was hot all over, but he knew his body must have felt it somewhere that he was dripping, his breaths had come out in puffs of smoke, the city blurring around him as he made it in, the neon sign fuzzing out around the edges telling him he had arrived. 

He had not tried to wipe his eyes, not anymore as he sat back, replaying your words coated in professionalism, “how can i help you, sir?” it felt like a knife he couldn't quite pull out, one he didn't know if he had placed there himself or if you did. 

“She looked right at me and pretended to not even know me,” 

Yeonjun had nothing to say, his jaw tight, cracking under the pressure of his teeth as he tried to hold in the confession he knew soobin deserved. Kai had promised not to tell but yeonjun never did, he had promised to look out for him, not keep secrets. And now soobin was a crumbling house, the roof ripped off in the storm, folding in on itself with splintering wood and curses. 

“Shes better now, or looks it… she looks happy, she's laughing,” he sniffled, lips turned down as he tried to hold in the sob waiting to break through, "happier than she was with me,” it had been all he wanted, for you to find some way back to him, to be okay. 

You had not broken up with him, you had taken the ring, left all your things, made it seem as if you would be right back, the bed still unmade, your sweater thrown over the edge, his heart still in your palms. He wanted you to find yourself, to know that it was okay to grieve in any way you needed but he hadn't seen you pushing him away, hadn't seen this cruel ending coming, and maybe that's what had been the final stab. Knowing that whatever you had found, he could not find with you, had not been a part of some plan that was out there in your healing, instead, he was this: a boy sitting in a diner where he once wished for a life with you on candles weak enough to snap under careless fingers. 

“I wanted her to be happy, to smile again, to laugh,” and he felt evil for wishing anything different, not if he was the one who had been bringing you down. “I just didn't think she would act as if she didn't know me. I should have run after her, but that's stupid because she wasn't doing well; she needed this, she didn't need me. But it hurts so fucking much to realize that,” 

“Wanting her to be okay doesn't change the fact that it would hurt like hell to be without her.” Yeonjun took a breath, using the clinking of the plates from the bar seats to push in further. You were his friend first, but it would kill you to be in his place; it would kill you to know that just as Kai and Yeonjun tried to convince you of his love that he did feel the loss of you just as deeply as you would have felt his. “Soobin, she's not acting.” 

His face felt tight, the confusion settling in for as long as it took for yeonjun to continue, to mutter the name of the procedure as if it hadn't been on his mind. It had been the one thing that had brought back so much emotion into you in the last few months, your anger sharp and instant, so vivid in comparison to the way you had hollowed out for him. He knew exactly why you had done it, what had pushed you over the edge to get to this point. 

“I thought I was…I don't know why I thought I was ever going to be enough.” The words caught on his trembling lips, his sob soft like a last breath, the confession taking everything in him, his last little hope that he had over everything. Because he understood exactly what it all meant, “I should have known, I should have seen it coming,” 

Yeonjun opened his mouth, but soobin did not stop; he kept going, spilling out as if the knife had finally been pulled and it was taking all the blood from his body, every word that was left of him. “I would have changed. I didn't know how, but I could have learned. I cleaned the house. I would have sold the damn thing; it doesn't mean anything without her. I would have done anything. Instead, I just stood around and watched her bleed out in front of me without saying a damn thing and thought it was love, and I deserve it- I promised so much and I wasted it all- Even through my grief, I tried,” 

“Stop it- she didn't do it because you weren't enough-” 

“You can't tell me it wasn't one of the reasons- I was content, pushing through the day and letting us try and heal around each other, and I didn't even see, I mean I saw- but I hoped I would be enough, even if we were apart, even if it took us time, I hoped she would come back to me.” 

“She loved you, down to the last second, I know she did, and she didn't do it because she didn't, she did it because she loved so much. I know she wanted to be more for you, to do more, and she felt this was the only way, and I'm so sorry,” Yeonjun looked down at the table, his eyes following the soft circles decorating the wood, sanded down to be something useful. He had kept to himself for a long while after you had come back to Kai's apartment from Montauk, sobbing, hollowed out with the only sign of life being that aching sound he would never get out of his head. He knows Soobin had tried; you had told him enough for him to see it, but that wasn't the poison that had been put in the well. “But love is not just about showing up, it's about showing yourself, and I don't think she's been herself for a long, long time,” 

And soobin didn't think he had either. Not since he lost you and you hadn't slipped through his fingers two weeks ago, it had been the moment he had woken up alone in a bed dotted with blood in the space you should have filled. 

He took the train back to the house out in Montauk, no more home than a museum, walked past the front door and around to the back, the moon hanging heavy in the sky, the stars hidden behind clouds painted over their canvas. He walked down the creaking wooden sun-bleached path to the sand, his jaw just as set as his mind was when he pulled his phone out to call Beomgyu. 

Answering on the first ring, he cautioned his name, “Soobin?” 

“I need you to tell me what I'm doing is right, even if it's wrong,” he could hear Beomgyu’s shuffling on the other end, sitting up in bed, on his sofa. “Just lie to me,” and maybe he called Beomgyu because he knew he wouldn’t. 

“Today I went to see her, and I heard her laugh. Like a genuine one, the kind that makes you want to laugh with her, the kind that I love so much and haven’t heard in forever,” he bit on his inner lip, hard enough until it bled, before he continued, “and the second I heard it, I knew I'd ruin it, just by being there,” he whispered it, said it aloud because he didn't have you who would have known what he was feeling with a single look. 

“And then Yeonjun told me that she…she erased everything, and I feel so selfish,” he had thought it over on the train, just as you must have when you left and he didn't run after you. And he would have, he wanted to, but had beaten himself down into the sand just hoping that you would ask him to come with, that you would turn back around and chase him with the realization that you needed him just as badly as he needed you. 

Only now he felt as if he was holding onto the corpse of your relationship, clutching you to his chest, every memory a compression on a chest long since done rising and falling, every plea was a breath past lips that did not wish to breathe any longer. Keeping his memories now after knowing what you had done to survive felt like desecration, and he knows himself. 

If he kept on to everything, he would die; it would poison him to know that he couldn't run to the city to find you, to confess his love over and over, even if you didn't know him. He was selfish when it came to you, and he hated it about himself, and he didn't want to ruin your happiness to find a taste of what had been. He saw what the memories had done to you, what they had done to him, and it was not anything he ever wanted to you to feel ever again. Forgetting would be a mutual mercy for you both. I final goodbye that did not tease him with the possibility of messing up the one thing you had wanted. Peace. 

“If I did the same, it would be like meeting her halfway, carrying the rest of the burden to bury, because I don't think I can live knowing I had everything I ever wanted and all I needed to do was go to New York to try and get it back. I’d ruin everything again, and I hate how badly I want to do it anyways, even when I know it's wrong. If i dont erase her, ill still be imagining her laughing as I dust the house I got for us, I’d dream she was just in the living room and I fell asleep too early for her to see her climb in the bed after me, I’d jump into the water and search for her until I drowned. I'd never give her up, not when I needed to, not when I knew the result of letting her walk away the first time. I would have never let her leave, Beomgyu, I’d take it back, I’d run after her, I’d do it all over again because I love her, I love her, I love-” 

And for the first time Beomgyu spoke, soft and unwilling to hide the pain he felt for his friends, “do you really think that's love?” anything was better than nothing at all, years of your relationship would be gone in an instant, and maybe it was better than pain, maybe anything was better than that, but he’d like to hope somewhere out there you two would find each other, work it out without having to erase the love. 

His throat closed, but he forced the words out anyway, “I think it’s the only thing I have left to give her,” 

Soobin sat with the phone in his hand until he watched the sun start to rise, long after the call had ended with Beomgyu, who promised to take care of the house, sell it with all its furniture that you had picked out, help him move back into the city, and take him to the inevitable appointment. 

He was ashamed to say he felt closest to you sitting in the office chair, his one item to bring forth your memory tucked against the healing scar across the lifeline on his palm. A single folded receipt that he had saved under a fridge magnet, your handwriting tattooed along his veins, your number, the one he almost called every night, right on the bottom with a little heart written next to that girl from Montauk. 

You had been that girl, and so, so much more to him. And when they pushed back his hair with their gloved fingers, it made him cringe to know he would not remember the feel of your hands twisting the fine strands of his hair until he fell asleep. 

He wondered if you had been scared or relieved to sit back against the unforgiving pleather of the chair. If the stink of the alcohol pad and the buzzing of the headpiece made you just as sick as he felt. Queasy enough to close your eyes and fall back into a memory you had not visited in so long it felt like coming home. 

“We will be okay,” he had been optimistic, leaning against the bathtub, your body spilling onto his as he silently hoped for the pregnancy tests to read positive because all he could see was a baby with your smile, echoing your laugh. Walking into a bedroom on the beach, with you leaning back against the headboard, your baby laying on your chest, and him climbing in after you. 

Every warm sheet wrapped around you, only for his eyes to open to find he was asleep on a bed swaying in the middle of the ocean, cold and empty, your ring, the one he kissed at your knuckles waiting on the pillow, the one he leaned down to press his face into until he couldn't breathe. 

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” your fingers in his hair, scratching down his bare back, lips kissing his shoulders, right at the nape of his neck, he turned over, pulling you into him, pressing his face into your collar, into your warmth. “I should be able to sleep in on my birthday.” your laugh alive, and for him and not a room full of people you didn't know, even ones you had chosen to forget. 

“But if you sleep in, I won't be able to give you my gift,” and he rolled onto you, followed the same trail of kisses he repeated until he knew in another life, every spot would turn into a freckle, a vivid mark of his love left for him to find time and time again throughout every lifetime. He caught your words on his lips, your moans in his mouth, your laugh right against his ribs. His hands digging into the sheets, the sand, his nose drawing along your chin until you pushed him, rolled him onto his back, sitting above him like the sun. 

He closed his eyes for only a second, and you were gone, and he was alone again, sitting up as he gasped, half naked in the snow, his boxers cold, his socks wet. “Oh god, you fell.” Your laugh doubled you over, shivering and pale as you wrapped your arms around your middle. He did not remember whose idea it was to go nearly skinny dipping mid January in the ocean, the snow thick on every guardrail, the wind cutting against his wet skin. “Hard.” 

You had run up to him, let him pull you down with him, screeching at the cold waves lapping at the shore, his lips turning blue as the two of you grabbed all your clothes, running back to the rental beach house to climb into the tub, the hot water raining down as he peeled off your bra, soaked your hair with the steaming showerhead. The rush of the sound was loud like the passing train outside his childhood bedroom window. 

The same window that faced out to the tracks, his bed, still made with his old high school navy blue sheets, nestled against the wall where you examined every photo he had pinned up. He had never had a girl in his bed before, not that one, not anyone he loved as much as you. “You have stars on the ceiling,” the sticky faded green stars, still holding on to the white popcorn of the roof. He had flipped off the switch, let them glow for themselves as you lay back against his only pillow, making room for him to climb in next to you, close enough so both of you were slightly hanging off either edge. 

“My mom put them up for me, said I have stars on my baby mobile, and they helped me go to sleep.” Your knuckle had brushed the back of his hand until he stiffened, blushing in the dark of his room as if you two hadn’t kissed, as if you hadn’t just met his mom, and said I love you. 

You had slipped your hand into his, looking up at the green stars as if you were lying in the grass on a warm summer's day, sharing first love confessions, and he couldn't help himself but say into the night, “I wish we had met when we were kids, but I still don't think that's enough time to love you the way I was made to,”  

And somewhere down the hall, he had heard the phone ring, his mother's voice interrupting the moment as she yelled out for him to pick up the landline for her. But before he could roll away, you had tightened your hand in his, pressing a whisper to his ear like a kiss, “There's never enough time, so make sure you stay with me.” 

“Wait-” he wanted to a redo of this one, to not let the words morph into a lie so far down the line, his hands, sweaty against the armrests of the chairs, slipped as he tried to get a better grip to sit up with, a nurse pressing him down softly muttered behind her mask, “we are almost done,” 

And as he leaned back into you, the phone still ringing, like the warning bell of a disaster waiting to happen he whispered back, “I promise I'll stay, I’d run after you, I don't think I'd ever just be able to watch you leave,” 

He shook his head, hard enough for the head piece to jostle, the nurse rushing to place it back as he reached for the phone in his memories, answering with a lovesick smile warped onto his lips when he saw your name appear on the caller ID, a white heart at the end as if he could mimic the one you had drawn for him on the receipt he kept pinned to his fridge. 

“We made it to the end,” he could hear the smile in your voice, right over the sound of Yeonjun and Kai bickering in the back. On the yearly trip the three of you took out to Montauk, the first weekend you would be spending without an excuse to see Soobin, even if it had only been a month since you had met. 

“You say it so hauntingly,” he sat on his couch, leaning back, trying to imagine you curled up right next to him, looking up with that specific shine you got in your eyes that made him feel like the only person in the world. 

“Hauntingly beautiful, I hope, since it just so happens to be the spot we will be telling our friends we met at,” he had wondered if this was what the honeymoon phase was, or if this would be the rest of his life, giddy to pick up the phone when you called, aching to have you right next to him. He knew you had meant your families. Your friends, and his had been teasing the two of you for the entirety of the month when you came back to your separate apartments with grins wide enough to make anyone wonder what had gotten into you. 

“Right at the end?” 

“Right at the end.” You echoed back, “We should get a mug for your place that has that on it, something for me to drink out of.” 

“You drink out of my mug just fine,” he could see you sitting on his kitchen counter, blowing the steam of your tea into his face, your bottom lip flush against the navy porcelain as you tried to convince yourself the too hot mug was ready to be sipped from. He’d take it from you so you wouldn't burn the roof of your mouth, again, and kiss you just because he couldn't help himself, your lips so warm he couldn't help but pull you in again and again. 

“But I want to share tea, not watch you sip on a glass of cold water, while I get hot water,” you had brought it up every time you came over, and he wanted to hold out longer, listen to you beg to spend time with him even if it was just to share tea and fold the laundry you had brought over to his place and his in unit washer and dryer. 

“Fine, next time we go out there together, we can pick up a mug, maybe make it a tradition,” you cheered over the phone, happy, and he even ventured to guess, in love, even if it was new, it had felt like he had known you a lifetime. 

“I miss you.” It had only been four hours then, or maybe even in his memories, he knew that he would be sitting in that chair, missing you for a lot longer than he ever wanted to. 

“You dooo?” You had stepped outside, so close to the surf he could hear the sound of the waves like a heartbeat. 

“I do.” 

You gasped, hand over your heart, or maybe wrapped around his, “You know that basically makes us married now?” 

“Does it?” and he was a blushing mess, smiling in his empty apartment, dimples hurting his cheeks, teeth digging into his bottom lip. 

“Uh-huh, so now you have to make plans to join me and see the place where we are going to spend the rest of our lives,” the waves crashed, and he could almost see the lighthouse, golden like the light he knew your love bled. 

“In the place we met?” 

“The very same,” he could see it written out on the mug, knew it was the place he'd propose to you, even if in that moment he felt as if the two of you were already married, your pinkies tied together with an invisible red string, winding round and round the two of you, pulling you in together until the end of time. 

“I do miss you… a lot,” and he couldn't tell if he had said it allowed, like he was repeating the lines of his favorite movie, or if it was an echo of a past he was now desperately regretting letting go of. He imagined your face looking up at him, his eyes tracing the slope of your nose, catching on your lips right before he pulled you in for a kiss, your eyes recognizing him in every shade of your life, even past this. 

“I guess you’ll just have to come over and meet me in Montauk.”